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September 2013 � ARMY 53

ThePhilippine

During the Spanish-American War, the Philippines fell to then-Com-

modore George Dewey in the quick and decisive Battle of Manila

Bay in May 1898. Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States

for $20 million at the Treaty of Paris later that year. Filipino independence lead-

ers had been at war for independence from Spain before Dewey’s arrival. The

chief revolutionary leader was Emilio Aguinaldo, who was in exile in Hong

Kong. Dewey brought him back to the Philippines, and Aguinaldo set up a local

government centered south of Manila Bay at Cavite. Aguinaldo’s revolution

was political, not social, and his role was symbolic, not military. He did not

announce a military strategy until later. In addition, the U.S. government

brought in troops to occupy parts of the Philippines and start what President

William McKinley called benevolent assimilation of the Philippines.

By LTC Thomas D. MorganU.S. Army retired

Above, U.S. troops rest in a trailside campon the Philippine Island of Mindanao.Opposite, clockwise from top left: U.S.ships pound the Spanish fleet in the 1898Battle of Manila Bay; President WilliamMcKinley called for the “benevolent assim-ilation” of the Philippines; place names appear in Spanish on an 1899 politicalmap of the islands; the capture of EmilioAguinaldo led to the fall of the First Philip-pine Republic. Aguinaldo designed the national flag (center).

National Archives

The Spanish-American War was initiallyfought by Civil War generals who werepushing the mandatory retirement age

of 64, by the small Regular Army that had justfinished “winning the West,” and by volunteerand state militia units. The units had regimentaldesignations and were brigaded together underbrigadier generals. Once in the Philippines,three regiments of troops were grouped underdivisional organizations for administration, lo-gistics and decentralized control. The U.S. regi-ments were much like today’s modular brigades—they had limited artillery, signal, intelligenceand logistical support.

Training for a Philippine deployment wassimple: The troops were collected at assemblylocations and were issued tropical-style uni-forms (khaki trousers, wool/flannel shirts,wrap-around leggings or cavalry boots as ap-propriate) and new Krag-Jørgensen rifles withsmokeless cartridges to replace the old Civil War Spring-fields. After a quick trip to a firing range to zero their rifles,they boarded transports for the 30-plus-day voyage to thePhilippines.

The officers were a storied lot. Many—such as GeneralsWesley Merritt, Elwell S. Otis, Arthur MacArthur (Douglas’father), Samuel B.M. Young and Adna R. Chaffee—hadbeen “boy” colonels and generals during the Civil War andcompany grade officers for as long as 20 years after that,fighting Indians in the West before achieving high rankagain in the Spanish-American War.

MG Merritt’s VIII Corps, composed of 11,000 men, ar-rived in Manila after Commodore Dewey’s victory inManila Bay; and in December 1898, President McKinley fi-nally revealed his plan to annex the Philippine Islands un-der benevolent assimilation. When Merritt went back to theStates to retire, President McKinley appointed his deputycorps commander, MG Otis, to be his military commanderin the Philippines. Otis was a highly competent Civil Warveteran and a Harvard-educated lawyer. He cleaned upfilthy, disease-ridden Manila and established good govern-ment to replace the Spanish corruption, but that did not re-solve the Philippine independence issue. Aguinaldo put to-gether a Philippine government and created an Army ofLiberation for the archipelago.

Relations between Filipino and U.S. forces became tense.On February 4, 1899, a disturbance outside Manila resulted

in a battle between Aguinaldo’s troops and U.S. forces.Aguinaldo’s forces were defeated, and U.S. soldiers marchedinto the interior of Luzon, splitting the Philippine army intonorthern and southern factions. On the Luzon plains, manyof Aguinaldo’s soldiers were killed, and he lost most of themodern weapons and ammunition that he had capturedfrom the Spanish.

After this, U.S. forces developed a strategy that had threeparts:

� Benevolent assimilation was continued in order toshow the Filipinos that Americans were there to help them.With the Treaty of Paris in December 1898, the war withSpain was over and Aguinaldo announced in February1899 that the conflict had become a war for independence.The United States called it an insurrection, however, fortwo reasons: First, the Philippines was now a U.S. territory;second, most of the U.S. forces now in the country were Na-tional Guard and militia, which the Constitution allows todeploy only to deal with insurrections.

� The United States imposed a naval blockade that pre-vented Aguinaldo from shifting his troops from island to is-land and from receiving supplies.

� U.S. forces moved north along the main railroad in thecountry between Manila and Lingayen Gulf on the main is-land of Luzon to force Aguinaldo to fight a decisive battle.

U.S. forces chased Aguinaldo but had trouble catchingup with his lightly clad, bolo-armed soldiers. The Americantroops faced challenges such as disease and fatigue. Sol-diers could not carry heavy loads without collapsing, andeven their rifles were a burden. Soon, almost half the troopswere out of action. Finally, in the fall of 1899, after regroup-ing and resting, the U.S. forces continued pursuing

54 ARMY � September 2013

LTC Thomas D. Morgan, USA Ret., is a West Point graduate,former field artilleryman, Vietnam War veteran and militaryhistorian. His articles have been published in ARMY and otherprofessional military periodicals.

U.S. forces use trenches to battle Filipino insurgents. Relations deteriorated as it grew clearthat the United States would keep the Philippines

rather than grant the islands independence.

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Aguinaldo to Luzon, where he dispersed his army and be-came a fugitive in the mountains of that island. U.S. forceshad also swept the insurrectionists all the way into south-ern Luzon and the Visayan Islands and had established al-most 500 garrisons throughout the Philippines.

Aguinaldo then announced that guerrilla warfare wouldbe his strategy. As it is today, waging conventional warfareis much easier than suppressing guerrilla warfare. In March1900, MG Otis created four departments/military regionsin the Philippines: Northern Luzon, Southern Luzon, theVisayan Islands, and Mindanao and Jolo. Each military re-gion was commanded by a general officer, and most of thestateside Regular Army and militia regiments were sent tothe Philippines on an annual rotational basis. As many as70,000 U.S. troops were in the Philippines during the waryears (1899–1902), but the average was about 40,000. Ofthose, about half were unavailable for combat because ofillness, travel and detached duty.

Because there was no decisive outcome followingmonths of initial battlefield victories, a policy ofchastisement was developed using General Order

(GO) 100, originally published in 1863 for the Civil War as “In-structions for the Government of Armies of the United Statesin the Field.” GO 100 forbade looting, torture, needless de-struction and disproportionate reprisals against the popula-tion. Known as the Lieber Code for its author, the German-American jurist and political philosopher Francis Lieber, itrecognized that harsh measures would be necessary to

counter guerrilla threats and acts of terrorism. GO 100 gavecommanders the option to punish civilian supporters of guer-rilla forces. Guerrillas would be granted protection as legiti-mate combatants only if they wore uniforms and were part ofan organized, larger traditional army; those who did not wereto be treated as criminals rather than soldiers.

How GO 100 was interpreted and implemented was inmany ways both commendable and reprehensible. Concen-tration camps were established, and aggressive policies offood and property destruction were used. When MG Adna R.Chaffee succeeded MG Arthur MacArthur Jr. as military com-mander in the Philippines, he believed that the Army hadbeen too lenient, and he prescribed harsh measures for Batan-gas Province in southern Luzon and the island of Samar.

What gave the U.S. forces their edge was not their num-bers but their effectiveness. The Filipinos could not standup to the U.S. artillery, machine guns or heavily armoredgunboats. The open-order tactics developed in the Army in1891 proved effective in rice paddies and jungles, and ahighly effective amphibious capability was crucial to paci-fying the coastal regions. U.S. forces fought the war withstate volunteers, the Regular Army and U.S. volunteers,who were especially good infantry soldiers.

The Philippine War became a difficult and controversialwar by 1899; today we would call it a Phase IV militarycampaign. The counterinsurgency program in the Philip-pines is interesting when juxtaposed with the recent U.S.surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military personnel fromthe top down had both political and military duties. TheUnited States turned increasingly to using Filipinos tofight the insurrection. The Macabebe Scouts were used byBG Frederick N. Funston in March 1901 to finally captureAguinaldo. A group of U.S. soldiers pretended to be cap-tives of the scouts, who were dressed in Philippine armyuniforms. Once Funston and his “captors” enteredAguinaldo’s camp, they immediately fell upon Aguinaldoand his guards and quickly overwhelmed them. In April,Aguinaldo swore allegiance to the United States.

The capture of Aguinaldo resulted in the decline andeventual fall of the First Philippine Republic. Gen. MiguelMalvar took over leadership of the Philippine Republic andcontinued the war in the Batangas region of South Luzon.BG James F. Bell adopted severe tactics against the remain-ing guerrillas, forcing civilians to live in concentrationcamps, using “water cure” interrogation techniques, andimplementing a scorched earth policy of destruction ofhomes and crops that took a heavy toll on the Filipino revo-lutionaries. Finally, Malvar surrendered on April 13, 1902.The Philippine War ended in July, when President TheodoreRoosevelt declared the “insurrection” over. The militarygovernment was terminated, and President Roosevelt, whohad succeeded to the Presidency upon the assassination ofMcKinley, proclaimed a full and complete pardon andamnesty for all people in the Philippines who had partici-pated in the conflict. Although the war was officially over,some quasi-religious groups called pulajanes still foughtagainst U.S. forces in Samar and other parts of Moroland.

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An 1899 lithograph illustrates the harsh measuresthat were taken against Aguinaldo and his guerrillas.

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September 2013 � ARMY 57

The island of Samar, located to the east of Leyte by a nar-row channel of water in the Visayan Islands, was the last placewhere insurrectionists put up major resistance during thePhilippine War. The insurrectionist leader there was Gen. Vi-cente Lukban, one of the original island presidentes appointedby Emilio Aguinaldo when he declared the First PhilippineRepublic in 1899. Lukban was resourceful and effective.

The military governor of the Philippines at that time, MGChaffee, sent BG Jacob H. Smith to pacify the island. Smithwas another Civil War veteran who had been somewhat ofa hero, but he was unethical and had used governmentfunds to invest for his own business purposes. Court-mar-tialed in 1885 for “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gen-tleman,” he was censured, but he was allowed to remain inthe Army. Throughout his career, however, he had been care-less with government funds and had been in trouble manytimes. Due to some quirk of fate in the War Department, hehad been promoted to brigadier general to speed his retire-ment, but instead he was sent to the Philippines to commanda brigade in the Visayan Islands.

When one of his units was attacked by insurgents in itsgarrison at Balangiga, Samar, nearly 50 officers and menwere killed, partly because of their own carelessness. BGSmith decreed that all Filipino males over the age of 10were to be killed and that the island was to become a“howling wilderness.” Eventually court-martialed for thatand other misdeeds, even though a copy of his infamousorder was never found, he was finally retired.

During this period, Samar also became notorious for ac-tions taken by U.S. marines to avenge the Balangiga mas-sacre. A marine major, Littleton W.T. Waller, led an ill-ad-vised march across the island, and his men executed 11Filipino porters on his expedition for supposed treachery.He was also court-martialed but basically was acquitted be-cause of a jurisdictional matter between the Army and theMarine Corps.

Finally, on February 18, 1902, a patrol of Filipino scoutscaptured Lukban. The last of Samar’s guerrillas surrendered

on April 27, and military rule on the is-land ended. The longest and most bru-tal pacification campaign of the Philip-pine War had ended. Samar cast a pallover the Army’s achievements and forgenerations was seen by the public astypifying the Philippine War.

* * *The Philippine War can lay claim to

being one of the most successful coun-terinsurgency campaigns in American

history. The counterinsurgency efforts involved the “carrotand stick” approach. The Army was the “stick,” and theU.S.-inspired civil government was the “carrot” once aprovince was pacified, but sometimes, fear proved to be agreater motivator than kindness.

The impact of the Philippine War looms large in U.S. his-tory, but it is sometimes called the unknown or forgottenwar because it has been overshadowed by the “splendid lit-tle” Spanish-American War and World War I. The UnitedStates emerged as a global power, and by 1918 it held thebalance that would win World War I. It also led to theUnited States being pulled into other military interventionsover the years and being committed to a global presencewith its military force as the “stick.” �

Photographed just as they lay downtheir weapons, a group of Filipino insur-gents prepares to surrender. The Philip-pine War finally ended in July 1902.

MG Adna R. Chaffee became military governor andcommander of U.S. forces in the Philippines in 1901.

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