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Lieutenant Ellicott thanks Governor Roosevelt for acknowledging his pamphlet on the Battle of Manila Bay and for the high commendations Roosevelt gave his reconnaissance work in Hawaii.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1899-08-27
General Frederick Dent Grant and General Andrew Sheridan Burt (commander) returning from Mount Arayat, at the head of the famous 25th Infantry, colored. Filmed March 23, 1900, in the Philippine Islands, following the 25th Infantry’s participation at the battle of Mt. Arayat in January 1900.
Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound
1900
Secretary of the Navy Moody quotes the telegram he sent to Major Littleton Waller Tazewell Waller, discouraging him from giving interviews about actions in the Philippines.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-06-14
Newspaper article discussing three Philippine issues; Admiral Dewey’s testimony before Congress and Senator Carmack, Major Gardner admitting that he cannot supply evidence to support the charges in his report, and an amnesty for political offenders and prisoners.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-06-30
Brigadier General George W. Davis includes a collection of telegrams to be read to the infantrymen. The telegrams congratulate them on their successful battle and outline the expected behaviors regarding the Moros.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-05-07
Russell B. Harrison writes primarily on Indiana politics where the Republicans had off year defeats and the Philippine-American War is damaging the Republican party image. He also thanks President Roosevelt for naming a military post in Indianapolis after his father, President Benjamin Harrison.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-05-30
President Roosevelt thanks Father Belford for enclosing Father Wynne’s letter, which has been recently published in the Evening Post. Roosevelt refutes Wynne’s criticism of U.S. policy in the Philippines, and suggests that Wynne has “a lot to learn” before he is justified in issuing such criticism.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-07-31
In a speech given in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Vice Presidential candidate Roosevelt emphasizes the successes of the current McKinley administration. He criticizes free silver and the platform of William Jennings Bryan. Roosevelt asserts that a stable currency is the most important factor in sustaining the prosperity of the nation. Roosevelt also discusses the issue of trusts and industry, the ongoing war in the Philippines, and compares the current campaign to that of 1864 when Abraham Lincoln was re-elected.
1900-09-07
George F. Hoar, Carl Schurz, David B. Hill, and former Massachusetts Governor George S. Boutwell place their “Anti-Expansion Speech” at the feet of a huge American soldier holding a rifle and the American flag, while opposite them Filipinos place guns and swords at the soldier’s feet. Caption: The American Filipinos and the Native Filipinos will have to submit.
Pughe’s cartoon is a diplomatic portrayal of a rather diplomatic cessation of hostilities and American military withdrawal from the Philippines, where insurrection had raged, with brutality on the “Filipino” and American sides almost from the moment of Spanish surrender in 1898. Senator George Frisbie Hoar (R-MA), the most prominent Congressional opponent of the “pacification” by American troops, had demanded investigation of American atrocities. In 1902 an American Marine was tried for the murder of 11 Filipinos; and an American general was convicted of ordering the death of all males over 10 years old on one of the Philippine islands (he was verbally reprimanded, returned to the United States, and discharged). On July 4, 1902, President Roosevelt ordered the full and complete pardon and amnesty to all Philippine citizens and rebels. This cartoon appeared between the surrender of the last rebel leader and the announcement of United States troop withdrawal.
David B. Hill stands on a platform, speaking to an unseen audience. He holds a paper that states “Jefferson! Jeffersonianism!! Jeffersonian Simplicity!!!” The ghost of Thomas Jefferson is tapping him on the elbow. Caption: “Hold on there, David! – Don’t make me ridiculous! Remember, I was always an Expansionist – and if I were alive to-day I should be doing just as McKinley and Roosevelt have done.”
David Bennett Hill, the former governor and senator from New York State, was a Democrat whose career seemed defined by his concurrent rise to power, and perennial opposition to, fellow New York Democrat Grover Cleveland. While senator, he was a rare Eastern Democrat who favored bimetallism, one of the reasons that Cleveland came out of retirement in 1892, to thwart Hill’s presidential ambitions. Cleveland won the nomination and re-election and in 1896 supported, though somewhat tepidly, the Populist-Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Through all political apostasies, he found himself having to assert his party loyalties, stating more than once, “I am a Democrat,” which mantra became a feast for cartoonists. In this cartoon by Pughe, Hill’s hyperbolic identification with Jefferson slightly distorts history. Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase was regarded by the third president as an aberration or at least an evolution, not a revelation: he originally desired to acquire Louisiana itself and the port of New Orleans. France’s offer turned his head. Ironically, it was the remnants of the Federalist Party that opposed the deal, which almost doubled the land area of the United States. The cartoons maintains that Jefferson was a pragmatist, and Hill was not.
George F. Hoar sits on the U.S. Capitol dome using a telegraph to send a “wireless” message “Keep it up! We are with you!” across a body of water to the insurgent forces fighting against American troops in the Philippines. At the base of the Capitol are several men waving “Anti-Expansion” banners.
Republican Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts was the most prominent sitting politician in the small but influential band of anti-Imperialists following the Spanish-American War. Mark Twain, William Jennings Bryan, and a number of prominent newspaper editors were loudly opposed to expansion. This cartoon by Pughe was published at a time when American troops were dying in American efforts to pacify the Philippines, and suggested that aid and comfort were being telegraphed to the rebels. “Wireless telegraphy” was a recent innovation, so the cartoonist included a popular topic in that regard.
John Bull stands up to his knees in a morass labeled “Boer War £16,000,000 yearly,” and Uncle Sam steps through a similar morass labeled “Philippine War $80,000,000 yearly.”
Cartoonist Dalrymple strangely drew Uncle Sam and Joan Bull with smiles, but in fact these foreign-policy challenges were more than just financial drains. Moral challenges, fatalities, and seemingly hopeless solutions faced the two nations. From 1899 to 1902, when the Boers ultimately surrendered, and the Transvaal and Orange Free State were merged as constituents of the British Empire, the Boers (farmers) waged strong guerrilla campaigns, and the British accelerated their brutal responses. It was Britain’s longest war, lasting between 1815 and 1914, sustaining 22,000 deaths; and almost 50,000 casualties on the South African side, 15,000 of them were black. The United States’ suppression of the Filipino insurrection was nominally ended in 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt signed an amnesty, but pockets of resistance and sometimes brutal American responses festered almost behind the scenes for years.
William Jennings Bryan stands in the stirrups of his mount, a donkey labeled “Democracy,” directing the honor guard led by Adlai E. Stevenson, and including Henry R. Towne, Joseph Pulitzer, and Carl Schurz carrying a large flag with a portrait of Emilio Aguinaldo under the heading “The George Washington of the Philippines.” Also included are Oswald Ottendorfer, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, William Bourke Cockran, John Peter Altgeld, and William Sulzer.
Emilio Aguinaldo’s revolutionary campaigns for Filipino independence from Spain began in the 1890s, variously as a guerilla and conventional armed insurrection, through the Spanish-American War, ultimately with and against the victorious American liberators. As a rebel leader his forces sustained and committed atrocities. He was captured and then released by President Theodore Roosevelt as part of the United States’ general amnesty, a putative end of hostilities. Aguinaldo became a hero to his countrymen and a symbol for the cause of American anti-imperialists. Of William Jennings Bryan’s ragtag “army” on this political issue, their professions provide a hint of the American movement’s constituents: Stevenson was Bryan’s running mate, committed to the Democrat party plank; Pulitzer, Schurz, Ottendorfer, and Godkin were editors and publishers; Towne was an industrialst (Yale locks); Bouke Cochran a politician and orator of unorthodox consistency; Altgeld the radical Governor of Illinois (famous for partiality to the Haymarket bombers); Sulzer a New York politcian who eventually became Governor, only to be impeached. Cartoonist Pughe clearly considered the leadership of Bryan (on an undersized donkey) and the number and prowess of the “guard” to be targets of ridicule.
William Jennings Bryan attempts to tear down American flags in Cuba and the Philippines. The spirit of General Henry Ware Lawton, who was killed in the Philippines, orders Bryan to “Halt!” The stripes on the American flag in the Philippines are labeled “Honor, Patriotism, Commercial Progress, National Dignity, Glory, Duty to Humanity, [and] National Self-Respect.” A headstone on the bottom right reads, “The American Soldier, who died for his country after planting this flag.”
comments and context
This cartoon that was dated after the presidential election of 1900, but drawn and printed beforehand. Cartoonist Louis Dalrymple was obliged to draw a general-theme commentary on a major theme of William Jennings Bryan’s campaign: anti-Imperialism. Puck had been a proponent of the war, and supported American expansionism.
Illustration showing Senator George Frisbie Hoar standing, full-length, wearing a child’s nightgown, holding up in his right hand a candle labeled “Twaddle” and clutching a wooden doll labeled “Philippine Question.” Hoar was generally an anti-Imperialist, though Republican, and a fervent proponent of immediate independence for the Philippine Islands.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1900-01-17
President Roosevelt is reading a headline that proclaims the Philippine War is over, while Uncle Sam stands over a still smoking bomb labeled “Escape of Landrone Chiefs.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-07-23
American soldiers are lined up as a firing squad facing Filipino children. Cartoon is addressing the Balangiga Affair and Massacre. Caption: Criminals because they were born ten years before we took the Philippines.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-05-05
The “kill and burn thorn bush” in “the Philippines” is shown with dead bodies hanging from it and vultures roosting. Secretary of War Elihu Root appears at the base of the tree, among the roots.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-05-09
President Roosevelt offers Senator Hoar an update on the situation in the Philippines. Governor General William H. Taft and Secretary of War Elihu Root are against political figure Apolinario Mabini returning to the Philippines where he can only be a burden and “center of all the plotting by the irreconcilable.” Roosevelt finds Mabini’s excuse for not taking the oath as “trifling and disingenuous” and will not grant an exception for fear of further agitation. There are troubles ahead in the Philippines, and American officials should not be hampered in their important work. However, Roosevelt is impressed with Hoar’s desire to do what is wise and good, and will continue to consult with Taft and with Vice Governor Luke E. Wright in order to determine the earliest moment that Mabini’s return will not threaten the safety of the islands.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-12-23
President Roosevelt writes to Senator Hoar to deny that Apolinario Mabini, as well as other former prisoners of the Philippine War, are confined on Guam. As part of the amnesty proclamation, the oath of allegiance is required to reenter the Philippines.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-01-23