The Proud Tower (29 page)

Samuel Gompers spoke against conquest of foreign lands not only as a betrayal of American principles but as a danger to the standards of American wage-earners. Strange combinations were wrought in the cause of anti-imperialism. When, at a later meeting in Chicago, Gompers declared that retention of the Philippines would show that “our war was without just cause,” Andrew Carnegie sent him a telegram of congratulations saying, “Let us stand together to save the Republic.”

President McKinley, after soul-searching and prayer, had arrived at the decision desired by his advisers and popular with his party: the Philippines must be kept. In Paris, Spain’s commissioners were given to understand that the time for dickering was over; possession talked. They would have to yield or face renewal of the war. A token payment of $20,000,000 was offered to grease acceptance of the inevitable. On December 10 the Treaty of Paris was signed, transferring sovereignty of the Philippines to the United States, with the $20,000,000 to follow upon ratification. “We have bought ten million Malays at $2.00 a head unpicked,” remarked Reed acidly, and in the most prescient comment made by anyone at the time, he added, “and nobody knows what it will cost to pick them.”

Although by now it was half expected, Aguinaldo and his forces learned of the settlement in bitterness and anguish, many of them hardly able to believe that their liberators and allies had turned into a new set of conquerors. Without an organized army or modern weapons, they prepared to fight again, while waiting for a still possible default. The strong anti-imperialist current in the United States was known to them and there was hope that the Senate would fail to ratify the treaty.

Reopening on December 5, 1898, the winter session of Congress was dominated by the fight over the treaty, more intense than that over Hawaii. Every vote counted. To gather their two-thirds, the Republicans led by Lodge as chief Whip had to utilize every artifice, every argument, every avenue of pressure upon their own members and whatever Democrats might be amenable, while the anti-expansionists struggled to hold firm just enough Senators to make a third plus one. In the House at this time certain members proposed to Reed a coalition of Democrats and anti-imperialist Republicans in order to pass a House resolution against the treaty which would lead to its defeat in the Senate. Though it was no secret in Washington’s inner circles by now that he “despised” the Administration, Reed refused. While he remained its pilot, he was not prepared to lead a revolt against it. His task as Speaker was filled with gall. “Reed is terribly bitter,” wrote Lodge to Roosevelt, “saying all sorts of ugly things about the Administration and its policy in private talks so that I keep out of his way for I am fond of him and confess that his attitude is painful and disappointing to me beyond words.”

The public was not happy about the Philippine adventure and confused as to its duty. Democrats and Populists especially had felt the war in Cuba to be in the cause of freedom. Now, through some sorcery of fate, the war had turned into a matter of imposing sovereignty over an unwilling people by right of conquest. America had become the new Spain. In this unhappy moment impressive advice was offered through the combined effort of two men with the same extraordinary sensitivity to history-in-the-making. On February 1, 1899, S. S. McClure published in a two-page spread in his magazine an exhortation in verse by Rudyard Kipling addressed to the Americans in their perplexity.

Take up the White Man’s burden
Send forth the best ye breed,
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild,
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.…

Take up the White Man’s burden
The savage wars of peace,
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease.…

Ye dare not stoop to less—

The note of righteousness was reinstated; Kipling had struck the perfect combination of noble destiny and unselfish mission. Widely reprinted and quoted, the poem spread across the country within a week, doing much to reconcile the hesitant to the imperial task.

In Washington it appeared as if opponents of the treaty might be successful, for the Republicans lacked one vote to make up the two-thirds for ratification. Suddenly, William Jennings Bryan arrived in Washington and to the amazement of his followers urged them to vote
for
the treaty. As leader of the Democratic party, he fully intended to be the standard-bearer himself in 1900, but he recognized the need of a new standard. Calculating that he could not win on a repetition of the silver issue, he was perfectly prepared to give it up in favor of imperialism, a new crown of thorns. He was sure that retention of the Philippines would be productive of so much trouble as to make a flaming campaign issue—but it must be consummated first. Consequently, he told his party, it would not do to defeat the treaty. This extraordinary reasoning astounded and even shocked those legislators who had thought a principle was involved. Senator Pettigrew, the “silver” Senator of South Dakota, was “so incensed that I finally told him he had no business in Washington on such an errand.” In the delicate balance that prevailed, the most important issue since Secession depended on the votes of one or two vacillating Senators. Some were affected when Bryan argued that to ratify the treaty would end the war.

At this point, with the vote scheduled for February 6, with the outcome uncertain, with each side anxiously canvassing and counting every possible aye and nay, the Filipinos rose in their own war of independence. Their forces attacked the American lines outside Manila on the night of February 4. In Washington, although the news intensified the frenzied speculation, no one could be certain what effect it would have. A last-minute petition signed by ex-President Cleveland, President Eliot of Harvard and twenty-two other men of national prominence was addressed to the Senate, protesting against the treaty unless it included a provision against annexing the Philippines and Porto Rico. “In accordance with the principles upon which our Republic was founded we are in duty bound to recognize the rights of the inhabitants … to independence and self-government,” it said, and pointed out that if, as McKinley had once declared, the forcible annexation of Cuba would be “criminal aggression by our code of morals,” annexation of the Philippines would be no less so. Its text was unanswerable but it offered no judgeships, political futures or other coin that Lodge and Bryan were dealing in.

When the Senate voted on February 6, the treaty won by 57–27, with a one-vote margin. It was “the closest, hardest fight I have ever known,” said Lodge. In the aftermath one thing on which all agreed was that Bryan had swung the deciding votes. By the time the vote was counted 59 Americans were dead and 278 wounded and some 500 Filipinos were casualties in the Philippines. The cost of picking Malays was just beginning to be paid.

“The way the country puked up its ancient principles at the first touch of temptation was sickening,” wrote William James in a private letter. Publicly, to the Boston
Evening Transcript
, he wrote, “We are now openly engaged in crushing out the sacredest thing in this great human world—the attempt of a people long enslaved” to attain freedom and work out its own destiny. The saddest thing for men such as James was the parting with the American dream. America, Norton wrote, “has lost her unique position as a leader in the progress of civilization, and has taken up her place simply as one of the grasping and selfish nations of the present day.”

To many others the knowledge of American guns firing on Filipinos was painful. The anger of the Anti-Imperialists deepened and their membership increased to half a million, with branches of the League in Boston and Springfield, in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon. “We are false to all we have believed in,” wrote Moorfield Storey. “This great free land which for more than a century has offered a refuge to the oppressed of every land, has now turned to oppression.” Still unwilling to give up, he hoped for leadership from Reed, whom Roosevelt had called “the most influential man in Congress.” Writing to Senator Hoar, Storey begged him to “persuade Mr. Reed to come out as he should. He is very sluggish and lacks aggression in great matters. If he would come out I think he might really be the next President.”

It was too late. Reed’s sluggishness was that of a man for whom the fight has turned sour. Others whose main interest lay in non-political fields could feel as deeply without being shattered. Reed’s whole life was in Congress, in politics, in the exercise of representative government, with the qualification that for him it had to be exercised toward an end that he believed in. His party and his country were now bent on a course for which he felt deep distrust and disgust. To mention expansion to him, said a journalist, was like “touching a match” and brought forth “sulphurous language.” The tide had turned against him; he could not turn it back and would not go with it.

Like his country, he had come to a time of choice. He could go on to another term as Speaker, but already he could see signs of growing feeling in the House that he was too hostile to the Administration to continue as its principal lieutenant. Joe Cannon and others of his old associates were antagonized by his attitude and his remarks about the President but none dared attempt a contest to unseat him. The President lacked the nerve to come out openly in support of anyone else. Reed knew he could hold his command but it would be a term at bay against a pack snarling at his feet. He became “moody and ugly” in these days and curt to old colleagues whom he saw deserting him.

To retain office as Speaker would be to carry through a policy in the Philippines abominable to him. It would be to continue as spokesman of the party of Lincoln, which had been his home for so long and which had now chosen, in another way than Lincoln meant, to “meanly lose the last best hope of earth.” To his longtime friend and secretary, Asher Hinds, he said, “I have tried, perhaps not always successfully, to make the acts of my public life accord with my conscience and I cannot now do this thing.” For him the purpose and savor of life in the political arena had departed. He had discovered mankind’s tragedy: that it can draw the blueprints of goodness but it cannot live up to them.

In February, 1899, after the vote on the treaty, he made his choice. Although he said nothing publicly at this time, rumors that he intended to withdraw from politics began to appear in the press. When reporters came to ask him about his hostility to the Philippines policy and the Nicaragua Canal bill, he brushed aside their questions with an expression of “fatigue and disgust.” In April, after the close of the Fifty-fifth Congress, he authorized an announcement. The unbelievable proved true. Speaker Reed would retire from Congress and after a vacation in Europe would take up the private practice of law in New York as senior partner in the firm of Simpson, Thacher and Barnum.

“Congress without Tom Reed! Who can imagine it!” exclaimed an editorial in the New York
Tribune.
Everywhere was felt a half-frightened sense as of some great landmark being removed, leaving a gaping hole at the feet of observers. The
Times
, never one of his admirers, was moved to a full-column editorial on the “national loss.” It felt “there must be something wrong in the political condition” that made such a man leave public life for the private practice of law. Its Washington correspondent called the event a “calamity” for Congress in the degree to which it would reduce the level of ability after the Speaker departed. Godkin in the
Evening Post
mourned the passing from political life of that rare phenomenon, “a mature, rational man.”

Reed himself offered no public explanation of his going except to say, in a farewell letter to his constituents in Maine, “Office as a ribbon to stick in your coat is worth no-one’s consideration.” Cornered in the Manhattan Hotel in New York by reporters who urged that the public would want to hear from him, he replied, “The public! I have no interest in the public,” and turned on his heel and walked away.

Military operations in the Philippines swelled in size and savagery. Against the stubborn guerrilla warfare of the Filipinos, the U.S. Army poured in regiments, brigades, divisions, until as many as 75,000—more than four times as many as saw action in Cuba—were engaged in the islands at one time. Filipinos burned, ambushed, raided, mutilated; on occasion they buried prisoners alive. Americans retaliated with atrocities of their own, burning down a whole village and killing every inhabitant if an American soldier was found with his throat cut, applying the “water cure” and other tortures to obtain information. They were three thousand miles from home, exasperated by heat, malaria, tropical rains, mud and mosquitoes. They sang, “Damn, damn, damn the Filipino, civilize him with a Krag …” and officers on occasion issued orders to take no more prisoners. They won all the skirmishes against an enemy who constantly renewed himself. A raiding party which missed Aguinaldo but captured his young son made headlines. Reed, coming into his office that morning, said in mock surprise to his law partner, “What, are you working today? I should think you would be celebrating. I see by the papers that the American Army has captured the infant son of Aguinaldo and at last accounts was in hot pursuit of the mother.”

Aguinaldo fought for time in the hope that anti-imperialist sentiment in America would force withdrawal of the forces already sickening of their task. The longer the war continued, the louder and angrier grew the Anti-Imperialist protests. Their program adopted at Chicago in October, 1899, demanded “an immediate cessation of the war against liberty.” They collected and reported all the worst cases of American conduct in the Philippines and all the most egregious speeches of imperialist greed and set them against the most unctuous expressions of the white man’s mission. They distributed pamphlets paid for by Andrew Carnegie, and when the League’s executive head, Edward Atkinson, applied to the War Department for permission to send the pamphlets to the Philippines and was refused, he sent them anyway.