Address by the Presdient
the Hon. George S. Boutwell
We shall embarrass ourselves if we try to find any other way than a direct way out of the difficulties in which the country has been placed. We and our friends, from time to time, may present to the country the evils which we think exist and are incident to the policy on which the President has entered. But behind all these evils is the evil of great magnitude, and which if not now speedily arrested, can never be arrested until this country becomes like Rome and Spain, or England, that has reached the acme of her power, and henceforth hastens to her decline.
Our declaration is one, and everything else is but an incident to that declaration, and that is, that the people of the Philippine Islands, whether they are few or many, whether they are capable or incapable, are not ours. Jurisdiction, which has a claim to be observed, depends upon two facts: the people that are to be controlled and the people that are to control, and between them, as in every other agreement, there must be a concord of purpose expressed in the form which the agreement may take. Therefore I say we ought not to enter into the inquiry as to whether this thing or that thing can be done in the way of government, but only whether we have a right to exercise jurisdiction over the Philippine Islands.
If the Declaration of Independence be true, then this follows as a fact regarding which there can be no mistake: the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands are to decide for themselves what the form of government shall be under which they are to live; otherwise there is no freedom.
Let the people of the Philippine Islands say whether they wish to come to us; then let the American people decide whether we will have them. The probability is we shall decide that we do not wish to have them.
I have no misgivings as to the result of the pending presidential election. Of the eight-and-twenty presidential elections I have participated in fifteen. I was in the contest of 1840 as a Democrat, and when as a young man, I emerged from the debris after election I found that we had carried five States.
I see that there are reporters present, and I want them to take this down as my prophecy: If Mr. McKinley is the candidate of the Republican party upon the platform that he has created, he will be a more surprised man than Van Buren was, who believed until the end came that he was to be elected to the presidency of the United States.
He was elected to return to Kinderhook.
As, in the course of my remarks, I shall criticize with freedom a position taken by Senator Lodge in his speech at the dinner of the Republican Club, it is a satisfaction to me to be able to anticipate myself in that respect, and to concur with the Senator in a view of public affairs which appears to be of signal importance to him, but which is of minor consequence to me.
A part of the opening of that speech, to the extent of a third of a newspaper column, was devoted to Mr. Croker, of Tammany Hall, New York. That feature was a surprise to me. Was Mr. Croker about to invade Massachusetts with his peculiar political system and better the teachings that we have had already? Was the speech an alarm signal gun? Further reading gave assurance that there was no peril in that direction. Mr. Croker had been in England. Upon his return he had expressed the opinion that the public sentiment of England was hostile to the present policy of the United States.
Senator Lodge had also been in England, and he asserts that Croker is in error, and the Senator refutes the error.
I concur with the Senator. England, the England of authority, is with us. We are engaged in the same business, with entire freedom from rivalry for the moment. England is engaged in suppressing the aspirations of infant republics in Africa, and we are crushing a young republic in Asia.
There is a concurrence of policy, there is also harmony of action, and there should be entire unity of sentiment and opinion in support of that action, among the advocates of the policy.
Mr. Croker may not have associated with the ruling classes in England, and he has returned to America with erroneous ideas concerning the future policy of Great Britain. Since the speech of October 31 was delivered, Senator Lodge’s position has received very important support. Lord Salisbury has delivered his annual speech of recognized authority, and in that speech he gives us full assurance that England and the United States are in accord. English sentiment, by which English policy is guided, is with us in the war in the Philippines, and with corresponding reasons our Administration and its supporters should give aid and encouragement to England in its efforts to subjugate its rebellious subjects in Africa.
But I pass from the controversy between Senator Lodge and Mr. Croker in the confident opinion that Mr. Croker is vanquished beyond hope of recovery.
Impressed as I am by the events of the times, I am forced to one ethical reflection.
We find melancholy evidence of the perversity of our human nature in the fact that the Filipinos refuse our tender of good government, and that the inhabitants of the southern quarter of the African continent, with like perversity, refuse the tender of good government at the hand of Lord Salisbury.
The world has been called to witness an impressive and instructive spectacle in two parts, and exhibited in two hemispheres.
At the unimportant city of Rennes the civil authorities of France have been engaged in an uncertain contest with the military power of the republic, a power already dangerous in not fatal to its freedom, whose existence is due in a large degree to the imperialistic spirit which has survived the Napoleons, and which has led France to contend for Empire in Africa, in Asia, and in the islands and the continent of America.
While these events are passing before us, the President of the United States has entered upon a policy of invasion, of conquest—a policy of vast navies and mighty armies—a policy which will furnish an excuse, and to many a justifying reason for the creation and maintenance of vast navies and mighty armies, through the lifetime of the nation, whether called a republic or empire. Despotism—absolutism in government—is the necessity of the army and the navy, and in such schools and from such training can we expect to create or even to preserve ideas and practices that are consistent with republican institutions?
Already we are forced to listen to expressions from individual officers—expressions to which the body of their associates give no assent as yet—that are hostile to the principles on which this government was founded.
Herein is the criminal character of the President’s policy—a policy of great armies in which the youth of the country are to be trained and in which their principles will be perverted. Liberty perishes in the presence of the army. That is the maxim of the law deduced from the experience of ages.
In April last, in a speech that I delivered at the Tremont Temple, I made these observations concerning the President and the policy which he was then pursuing, and to which as I think he has adhered. I then said:
“The President has entered systematically upon a colonial policy in imitation of the colonial policy of Great Britain,” etc. “I give the President credit for ability, for signal ability, in the work of transforming the Government.”
The President’s speech made at Ocean Grove, Friday, August 25, 1899, sustains these propositions. As I am to comment upon the speech, I reproduce it as it was printed in the papers of Aug. 26.
The President said:
“Love of flag and love of country are not inconsistent with religious faith. I believe that there is more love for our country, and that more people love the flag, than ever before. Wherever the flag is raised it stands not for despotism and oppression, but for liberty, opportunity, and humanity, and what that flag has done for us we want to do for all people and all lands which by the fortunes of war, have come within its jurisdiction. That flag does not mean one thing in the United States and another in Porto Rico and the Philippines. There has been doubt in some quarters respecting the policy of the Government in the Philippines. I see no harm in stating it in this presence. Peace, first, then, with charity for all, establish a government of law, of order, protecting life and property and occupation, for the well-being of the people who will participate in it under the Stars and Stripes.”
When the tumult stopped the President said: “I have said more than I intended.”
The President eulogizes the flag, and he claims “that more persons love the flag than ever before.” This is an unimportant assertion. The important inquiry is this: Is the flag more worthy of the love of the people than ever before? Has Mr. McKinley’s Administration strengthened the affection of the people for the flag? The love of Americans for the flag, however they may deplore and regret the use to which it has be put in the Philippines, is not diminished. Such is their affection for the flag that they will redeem it from the degradation of foreign service in a war against human rights.
It may be true that the President said more in his brief speech at Ocean Grove than he intended, but what he did say is an admission in exact form of the evil policy which we were left to infer from his language on former occasions, but which seemed designed for concealment rather than for the information of the people.
Those who are opposed to the Philippine war may than the President for the disclosures made at Ocean Grove. His speech justifies these conclusions:
(1.) No compromise. The war is to go on until a peace has been conquered, and yet with charity for all.
(2.) A government is then to be set up by the United States.
(3.) The people of the Philippines will participate in that government “under the Stars and Stripes.”
Not in that speech, nor in his speech of August 28 to the Pennsylvania volunteers, does he intimate that the inhabitants of the islands are to be self-governing people, or that they are to become members of the American Union. The flag has been set up in the Philippines. Wherever that flag has been set up there it is to remain. “Wherever that flag is set up it stands.” These words are from the Ocean Grove speech. Thus does the President lead the country into an English colonial policy. Thus does he confess to the justice of my statement of April last.
I repeat what I said then: “The President has entered systematically upon a colonial policy in imitation of the colonial policy of Great Britain.” If not, will he then enlighten the county on these points:
Do you intend to allow the inhabitants of the Philippines the exercise of the right of self-government free from the jurisdiction of the United States?
Answering that question in the negative, or omitting to answer it, do you favor the incorporation of the Philippine Islands into the American Union as the equals of the existing States?
And if these questions are answered in the negative, or if they shall remain unanswered, the American people may then demand an answer to this question: What is to be the policy of the United States in regard to the status and government of the Philippine Islands when their subjugation shall have been accomplished, if that event shall occur as the outcome of the President’s policy? And to that question the American people will make answer by according to the inhabitants of the Philippines the right of self-government under a flag of their own choosing.
In the Philippine Islands our flag is no longer a flag of freedom, of equality, of justice. That, however, it once was. It is now an emblem of injustice, of wrong to 10,000,000 human beings, who, in the month of May, 1898, hailed its coming and accepted it as a messenger of peace, of independence, of justice.
In May, 1898, there were 10,000,000 Filipinos who respected the flag of the republic, and many of them were its devoted admirers. By the policy of the President and the doings of the army they have been changed to enemies of the flag. Upon a survey of the entire field, has the dominion of our flag been promoted? Can a war against humanity be justified or its horrors be palliated by eulogies of the flag under which the war has been carried on? Satisfy the country that the war is a just war, and eulogies upon the flag will not be needed.
The flag has not made America what America is, as the President would have us believe; but America being what it is, what it was from 1776 to 1898, has made the flag what it was, what it has been, and what it has stood for in all that long period—the emblem of freedom, of justice, of human equality, of those essential principles that are set forth in the Declaration of Independence, which are now derided by supporters of the President’s policy, and which cannot be read in any assembly of American citizens call to vindicate and justify that policy.
In harmony with the many declarations of the President, Senator Lodge says: “I vote with the army that wears the uniform and carries the flag of my country.” Nothing more. He will not inquire whether the flag is carried in an honorable cause, but he will arraign and condemn those who may thus inquire. When the President has entered upon a war, or even when Congress may have declared a war, are the people to be stifled into silence or forced into timid acquiescence? In time, is the flag, the free flag of America, to become the instrument for the suppression of that freedom which it was designed to cherish and to protect—the freedom to inquire, to judge, to pass finally upon every question, not merely upon the relatively insignificant questions of trade and finance, but as well upon the supreme question, not of this hour only, but of every hour of the republic, whether the national emblem of freedom at home, and of justice abroad, is to be degraded into the servile service of destroying the property and lives of millions of people in one island who owe us no allegiance and who have done us no wrong, and to the hateful service of protecting slavery and polygamy in another island from which we neither have derived, nor can derive, and benefit whatsoever, and all in defiance and disregard of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which was purchased at a price—a price such as was never paid in other times or elsewhere by human beings for any human good,--purchased by the lives of 400,000 citizen-soldiers, and by a contribution of $6,000,000,000, wrought into gold from the labor of the survivors and their descendants?
And now comes Senator Lodge and tells us that there is to be no inquiry, no judgment.
The thirteenth amendment may be trampled under foot, the flag may be betrayed into the criminal service of suppressing freedom in one island and of upholding despotism in another, and we can only say: “I vote with the army that wears the uniform and carries the flag of my country.”
Impotent conclusion! Unworthy of our American citizenship. On the contrary, let this be remembered: whatever may stand, or whatever may fall, let the American people keep in their own possession, as an undying right, freedom of debate, as the means, the only means by which they can restrain wrongdoing, the only means by which they can secure honest and acceptable service in public affairs. That freedom the President and Senator Lodge are denying, sometimes openly and sometimes covertly, but always denying. We are not to speak lest we may be heard by some one who, as the President thinks, ought not to hear.
If we are to speak, we speak that we may be heard. The printing-press and the telegraph are the enemies of wrongdoers and of wrongdoings, and without their aid the human voice would be powerless relatively. If our words are taken up and carried over the oceans it may be that men struggling for freedom may find cause for hope in the thought that America is not given over, wholly over, to a war of aggression and to the exercise of despotic powers.
If there shall be such a return to our words it will bring no rebuke to me, but rather inspiration and hope that they who are struggling for freedom are to achieve freedom.
But more important to us it is that we should withdraw our armies, that we should recognize the right of men to be free, and that we again, and our children after us, may look upon a flag purged of all the impurities gathered in a war of aggression and of service in the protection of crimes forbidden by the Constitution and laws of the United States. When the flag of the republic was placed in the hands of William McKinley it was revered, it was beloved at home by all, and abroad it was respected by all, it was beloved by many, and it was neither hated nor distrusted by any. In these two years he has carried that flag into foreign lands and there set it up as an emblem of absolute power and demanded abject submission to his will from millions who owe no allegiance to him or to us. It is strange that those millions hat eh flag and hate us with an ineradicable hatred, or that that States of South America, republican States, that we welcomed into the confederacy of republics, should now contemplate a union of all for the protection of each against the process of “benign assimilation” under the folds of the American flag?
The outlook for the weaker States of the world has been rendered more forbidding than it might have been had not the claim been set up that Mr. McKinley is the compelled servant of a blind destiny, or the unwilling agent of an incomprehensible divinity. If either of these conjectures has a foundation in truth, then there can be no security that our flag may not be carried across the Rio Grande into Mexico, or to the mouth of the Amazon, or to the city of Rio Janeiro.
In such an event Senator Lodge can only say: “I vote with the army that wears the uniform and carries the flag of my country.” Is herein to be found security for liberty? Or is it offered in justification for aggressive wars? Or as a defence for those who refused to suspend hostilities upon a tender of conciliation and peace?
Upon the statement of the Commission it appears that an American soldier fired the first shot in the Philippine war. No matter about the provocation. The shot opened the war. The act of the soldier was indorsed by General Otis in his refusal of peace when Aguinaldo tendered peace and a renewal of the status quo.
That act of war has been indorsed by the Administration, and in harmony with a policy on which the President had entered as early as the sixteenth day of June, 1898. This statement I undertake to establish by proof, and by the same evidence I shall demonstrate the fact of premeditated deception practiced by the President upon Aguinaldo and his followers.
I refer first to a letter written by Consul Pratt to Secretary Day, dated April 28, 1898. The receipt of that letter was acknowledged by Secretary Day June 16, 1898. In this letter Secretary Day gives an account of the steps by which Aguinaldo was brought from Singapore and induced to cooperate with our forces. It is true that there is no statement of promises made to Aguinaldo, but in Pratt’s letter of April 30 the position of Aguinaldo is set forth distinctly. Pratt says: “The general further stated that he hoped the United States would assume protection of the Philippines, for at least long enough to allow the inhabitants to establish a government of their own, in the organization of which he would desire American advice and assistance.” On the thirtieth day of May Mr. Pratt writes thus: “I have the honor to submit for your consideration a proclamation in Spanish, issued prior to the departure of our fleet for Manila, by the insurgent leaders in Hong Kong, calling upon the Filipinos not to obey the appeals of the Spaniards to oppose the Americans, but to rally in support of these, as they came as their friends and liberators.”
The proclamation contained these words: “Divine Providence is about to place independence within our reach, and in a way that the most free and independent nation could hardly wish for.
“We your brothers, are very much afraid that you may be induced to fire on the Americans. No, brothers never make this mistake.
“There, where you see the American flag flying, assemble in numbers; they are our redeemers.”
This proclamation was sent out from Hong Kong, with the knowledge and approval of Consul Pratt, who was then at that port. Without delay he communicated the facts, and the details of the facts, to the Secretary of State and to the President.
Especially were the expectations of Aguinaldo set forth in the letter of Consul Pratt of April 30.
At that point, and with that knowledge, what was the duty of President McKinley? He says, and his Peace Commissioners say, there was no alliance with Aguinaldo. I appeal from the interested opinion of interested men to the facts and to the rules of propriety, and to the rules of law applicable to the facts.
We solicited the aid of Aguinaldo. We called him from Singapore by an urgent telegraph dispatch from Dewey in these words:
“Tell Aguinaldo come soon as possible.
“Dewey”
We accepted his services and aid as guide and director in the expedition against Manila from May until November. He was cooperating with us and under our direction, for the expulsion of the Spaniards, and always, after a date earlier than the 16th of June, with full knowledge by the President of the terms under which Aguinaldo was rendering the much-needed service. What was the duty of the President when he had received knowledge that Aguinaldo had made his terms known to our accredited representatives, and under which he was cooperating with us? What was the rule applicable to the case, not the rule of law merely, which may be treated as the outgrowth of civilized, of cultured life, but the rule of ordinary propriety and justice, which, in the least enlightened class of the most rustic population, is uniformly observed?
It was his duty to notify Aguinaldo that the arrangement could not be continued upon the terms that he had named, and that upon the expulsion of the Spaniards he and his people must submit unconditionally to the Government of the United States. It is now demonstrated that it was the purpose of the President as early as the sixteenth day of June, 1898, to compel the submission of the Filipinos. Under that date Mr. Day wrote to Mr. Pratt a letter in which he recited in detail the history of the steps by which Aguinaldo had been induced to leave Singapore and to cooperate with the United States in the expedition against Manila. Neither Mr. Pratt, nor Mr. Day, nor the President, needed any assurance upon one point. They knew that Aguinaldo did not obey the summons of Dewey with alacrity, and leave Singapore and enter with spirit at the hazard of his life into the expedition against Manila for the purpose of escaping from the tyranny of Spain, a weak power, and under the expectation that he was to encounter war and the threatened tyranny of the United States. The world knew the purpose of the Philippinean war against Spain. The purpose was independence and self-government. Every one knew that who had heard of the rebellion. In the presence of this common knowledge, Mr. Day, under the direction of the President, ventured upon this false statement: “This Government has known the Philippine insurgents only as discontented and rebellious subjects of Spain, and is unacquainted with their purposes.” At that moment the purposes of the insurgents were of common knowledge, and for years they had been known the world over, and never anywhere had there been a doubt that the twin purposes were independence and self-government.
To this assumed plea of ignorance of what was of common knowledge, the Secretary of State in his letter of June 16, 1898, informed Mr. Pratt of the purpose of the President in this paragraph: “The United States, in entering upon the occupation of the island, as the result of its military operations in that quarter, will do so in the exercise of the rights which the state of war confers, and will expect from the inhabitants, without regard to their former attitude toward the Spanish Government, that obedience which will be lawfully due from them.”
More than once in the letter is Pratt cautioned against any arrangement with Aguinaldo, and yet while Aguinaldo was proceeding upon the expectation that he was gaining independence and statehood, the President was preparing to subjugate the Filipinos to the authority of the United States, and using Aguinaldo and his armies for the accomplishment of that purpose. When the Spaniards had been driven from the islands, when the protocol had been signed, when there was no longer a possibility of an alliance between the remnants of the Spanish armies and the Filipinos, then came the President’s proclamation of Dec. 21, 1898, in which he asserted supreme dominion and exacted unconditional submission.
Whatever may be the extent of one’s vocabulary, no one epithet can set forth the wickedness of this transaction. We accepted the services of Aguinaldo as an ally, and upon full notice that he expected in return independence and statehood. That knowledge on our part, and that service on his part, created a trust, and the obligation arising from that trust, are to be performed by the American people, but in the meantime there may be those who will repeat the language of a Massachusetts Republican, who, in a discussion of the fugitive slave system, gave voice to this exclamation:
“I long for a more voluminous vocabulary in which I can express my abhorrence of this nefarious business.”
In the presence of this history can it be said that the American flag is more worthy of our affection than ever before?
Has its character been advanced since it was put into the hands of Mr. McKinley? He asks: “Who will haul down the flag?” We answer: “The flag is the flag of the people of the United States, and they will haul it down in all lands where it has been set up for the purposes of aggressive war and brutal conquest.” They will haul it down wherever it has been set up as the protector of crimes that are denounced by our Constitution and laws.
The flag of the American people is a flag of equality, of freedom, of justice as home and of justice abroad.
That flag they will cherish and defend, and they are realizing that eulogies are vain in presence of the degradation to which the flag has been subjected in the last twenty months.
The people of the United States will haul down the flag which President McKinley has set up in the Philippine Islands, and they will run up the flag of Washington, of Jefferson, of the Adamses of many generations, the flag of Abraham Lincoln, purified, as it was purified by the blood and sacrifices of 2,700,000 citizen soldiers of the republic, from the stain the hereditary stain, of the crime of slavery.
“Who will haul down the flag?” The question you put to us with taunts and in scorn we answer in a tone of defiance, it may be, but in full confidence that the authorities of the United States under instructions which they will not venture to disobey, will haul down the flag that has been set up by a force over an unwilling, but otherwise friendly, people.
M. Patrick Cullinane, Liberty and Anti-Imperialism, July 1, 2007. 