Allegiance and Identity: Race and Ethnicity in the Era of the Philippine-American War,

1898-1914

by

M. Carmella Cadusale

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in the

History

Program

YOUNGSTOWN STATE UNIVERSITY

August, 2016
 Allegiance and Identity: Race and Ethnicity in the Era of the Philippine-American War,
1898-1914

M. Carmella Cadusale

I hereby release this thesis to the public. I understand that this thesis will be made
available from the OhioLINK ETD Center and the Maag Library Circulation Desk for
public access. I also authorize the University or other individuals to make copies of this
thesis as needed for scholarly research.

Signature:

M. Carmella Cadusale, Student Date

Approvals:

Dr. L. Diane Barnes, Thesis Advisor Date

Dr. David Simonelli, Committee Member Date

Dr. Helene Sinnreich, Committee Member Date

Dr. Salvatore A. Sanders, Dean of Graduate Studies Date

ABSTRACT

Filipino culture was founded through the amalgamation of many ethnic and

cultural influences, such as centuries of Spanish colonization and the immigration of

surrounding Asiatic groups as well as the long nineteenth century’s Race of Nations.

However, the events of 1898 to 1914 brought a sense of national unity throughout the

seven thousand islands that made the Philippine archipelago. The Philippine-American

War followed by United States occupation, with the massive domestic support on the

ideals of Manifest Destiny, introduced the notion of distinct racial ethnicities and

cemented the birth of one national Philippine identity.

The exploration on the Philippine American War and United States occupation

resulted in distinguishing the three different analyses of identity each influenced by

events from 1898 to 1914: 1) The identity of Filipinos through the eyes of U.S., an

orientalist study of the “us” versus “them” heavily influenced by U.S. propaganda; 2) the

identity of the Filipinos themselves—the Spanish American War introduced an awareness

of Philippine national identity, and the Philippine American War cemented this idea; 3)

associating with a national identity—emphasized in the papers of David P. Barrows,

William Howard Taft’s Manila Superintendent of Schools. Barrows introduced U.S.

citizens to the perception of Filipinos as “Negritos,” his own personal ethnographic study

of possible African blood within all of the Filipino classes. Barrows’ patriotic loyalty to

U.S. ideals of Manifest Destiny can be comparatively analyzed through the experiences

of David Fagen, an African American soldier from Florida, and several of his fellow

African American soldiers of the twenty-fourth regiment who defected from the United

States military to join the ranks of Philippine Revolutionary leader, Emilio Aguinaldo.

iii
Table of Contents

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………. 1

Chapter One…………………………………………………………………………… 9
Mga Anak ng Bayan (The Country’s Children): The Rise of Filipino Nationalism and the
Two Revolutions for Filipino Identity

Chapter Two…………………………………………………………………………… 37
Creating the Filipino Savage: How Science and Popular Media Influenced the American
Perception of the Philippines, 1898-1914

Chapter Three…………………………………………………………………………. 62
The Black Man’s Burden: Buffalo Soldiers and the Question of Allegiance

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………... 84

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………… 88

iv
 Introduction

Filipino culture emerged from the blending of many ethnic and cultural

influences, such as centuries of Spanish colonization, and the immigration of surrounding

Asiatic groups as well as the long nineteenth century’s Race of Nations. However, the

events between 1898 and 1914 enhanced the sense of national unity for the people of the

7,000 islands that make up the Philippine archipelago. Two years prior, in 1896,

nationalist sentiments were initiated through Philippine literature and dialects during the

height of the Philippine Revolution against Spain. The Philippine-American War (1899-

1902), followed by United States occupation, introduced the concept of distinct racial

ethnicities, cemented the birth of a national Philippine identity, and emphasized the

influence of an imperialist agenda on national allegiance. Through political propaganda

that promoted the ideals of Manifest Destiny, the U.S. aggressively pursued its position in

the Philippine archipelago—acts heavily documented by academics and politicians of the

time. The Philippine-American war influenced U.S. perception of the Filipinos and

Philippine culture, while Philippine national identity was further cemented as a result of

the unification of Filipinos in reaction to the U.S. conflict and occupation. The U.S.

imperialist agenda both motivated national loyalty and identity. U.S. relations with the

Philippines provides a strong example of how imperialism affected both the governing

country and those they were trying to control. This study analyzes these ideas through the

examination of identity, race, and ethnicity in a world where nations concentrated on

imperialistic expansion, and how these factors emphasized the notion of nationality and

allegiance.

1
 Historical examination of the Philippine-American War and United States

occupation has prompted three different types of analysis focusing on identity, each

influenced by events occurring between 1898 and 1914: U.S. perceptions of Philippine

identity, Filipinos’ own awareness of a distinct nationality, and national allegiance

fostered through that identity.

First, the conflict affected the notion of national identity within the mentality of

the Filipinos themselves. Filipino historian Teodoro Agoncillo has examined how the

existing culture and class system in the Philippines were affected during the Philippine-

American War and early U.S. colonization.1 Research has shown that prior to the

conflicts against Spain and the U.S., Filipinos identified with their region before they

would identify with Philippines as a whole. For example, people from the region of Cebu

deemed themselves as Cebuanos, while the people of Ilocos would first claim to be

Ilocanos before they would say they were Filipinos.2 The Philippine Revolution against

Spain, which occurred during the Spanish American War in 1898, introduced the

awareness of a Philippine identity that prompted an organized revolution. Following the

conflict with Spain, the Philippine-American War further cemented the notion of being

Filipino, and that national identity aided the agenda of Philippine revolutionaries in

unifying the regions throughout the islands against U.S. imperialism.

The second thrust of analysis looks at the identity of Filipinos as seen through the

eyes of the U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century, and sparked an Orientalist study of

the “us” versus “them” heavily influenced by U.S. propaganda as can be seen in the

papers of David P. Barrows, William Howard Taft’s Manila Superintendent of Schools.

1
Teodoro Agoncillo, Introduction to Filipino History (Manila: Radiant Star Publishing, 1974), 56
2
Ibid.

2
Racial hierarchy was heavily emphasized in political propaganda, speeches, and in the

studies of scholars such as Barrows, coinciding with the worst decades of race relations

in the U.S. as well as the increase popularity of eugenics. Barrows’s work, founded on his

western upbringing and a product of imperialist agenda, clearly parallels the ideas found

in Edward Said’s 1978 critical study of western perceptions of eastern culture as well as

Said’s analysis of how the west typically deals with “the Orient”—the goal being to

dominate, restructure, and acquire authority.3 Barrows’s multiple works appeared while

he worked in the Philippines and clearly display such a mentality.

Lastly analysis of identity can be linked with national allegiance. Barrows’s

patriotic loyalty to the U.S. ideals of Manifest Destiny throughout his career stand in

stark contrast to the experiences of David Fagen, an African American soldier from

Florida, and several of his fellow African American soldiers of the U.S. military who

defected from their regiments to join the ranks of Philippine Revolutionary leader Emilio

Aguinaldo. The actions and writings of these men, both born in the U.S., illustrate how

perceptions of identity—may it be through race, gender, or nationality—influenced

allegiance and opinions on war. These three varying analyses of identity emphasize the

critical role of communities in the formation of individual allegiance and agenda in the

midst of war.

Modern-day scholars deemed the events between 1898 and the early twentieth

century as a “forgotten war,” and many historians continue to disagree on whether the

three year military conflict between the U.S. and the Philippines was an “insurrection” or

a “war.” For clarity, this thesis engages the events beginning in 1898 and ending in 1902

3
Edward Said, Orientalism (1978; New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 3 and 11-15.

3
between United States and the Philippines as the “Philippine-American War,” followed

by the after-effects of the war to the start of the Great War in 1914. The bulk of the

research for this study relies on historical military documents, correspondence,

periodicals, and various mediums of propaganda. During the U.S. occupation of the

Philippines—and continuing to the present-day—historians of both Philippine and U.S.

history have studied the history of the Philippines through both macro and micro studies,

with varying perspectives of the event’s classification. Filipino historians, such as

Teodoro Agoncillo, have considered the Philippine-American war as an extension of the

revolution against Spain, a war for independence against a new foreign invader.4

Interpretations by U.S. historians, however, vary depending on the decade of publication

with some studying the event as an “insurgence.” Examining the Philippine-American

War as an uprising against the U.S. government is a perspective entailing that the U.S.

already acquired ownership of the Philippines during the war. This study focuses on the

Filipino revolutionaries’ desire to acquire the right for independence upon winning the

Philippine Revolution against Spain. This thesis contends that the events between the

Philippines and the United States was a war, not an insurgence, which assisted in the

construction of the Filipino identity.

U.S. scholars of the field and their research were consistently influenced by

conflicts and events of their time, from the patriotic force of Manifest Destiny to the

conflict of the Vietnam War. Historical perspective in this field of study was engineered

by the time’s current affairs, however, assessment of the research has evolved through

various scholastic lenses. Historians throughout the twentieth century established analysis

4
Teodoro Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People (Quezon City: R.P. Garcia Publishing Co., 1977),
61.

4
of Philippine American relations through an Orientalist scholarship that evolved into

varying forms of social, cultural, gender, global, and Marxist studies. Early scholars of

U.S. and Philippine relations, writing from the 1900s to the 1920s, were greatly

influenced by the events of Philippine-American War and sought to either justify or

negate the U.S. imperialist agenda.5 Decades later, the 1960s and 1970s saw

comprehensive military and political studies of the Philippine-American War that was

consistently compared to the events of the Vietnam War era.6 Scholarship from the 1980s

forward saw a diverse analysis of race and military accounts in the history of Philippine

American relations as well as the first Pulitzer Prize winning book on the subject.7 Race

and ethnicity has played an important role in understanding the political and cultural

concepts of the war, and these subjects have been centralized in studying the Philippine-

American War within the new millennium. This thesis will build on the transnationalist

studies of race and ethnicity, examining how both subjects affected the notion of identity

in the United States and the Philippines.8

5
David P. Barrows, The Negritos and Allied Types in the Philippines (Lancaster, PA: The New Era
Printing
Company, 1910), 358-359; Moorfield Storey and Marcial P. Lichauco, The Conquest of the Philippines by
the United States: 1898-1925 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons The Knickebocker Press, 1926), 4-9.
6
Leon Wolff, Little Brown Brother: America’s Forgotten Bid for Empire which cost 250,000 Lives
(1960. Reprint, New York: Longmans Kraus Reprint Company, 1970), 10; Bonifacio S. Salamanca, The
Filipino Reaction to American Rule (New York: The Shoe String Press, 1968); Daniel B. Shirmer, Republic or
Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company, Inc.
1972); Richard E. Welch, Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War,
1899-1902 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979), xiiii.
7
Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines (New York, NY: Ballantine
Books, 1989), 36-39; Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked
the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 5 and
133.
8
Brian McAllister Linn, The Philippine War: 1899-1902 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas,
2000); Julian Go, American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures in the Philippines
and Puerto Rico during U.S. Colonialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); David J. Silbey, A War
of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902 (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007); Paul A.
Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 11.

5
 Terminology, based on the events, is vital in the analysis. Manifest Destiny in the

Philippine archipelago at the turn of the twentieth century was constructed on the U.S.

imperialist agenda—more specifically: American cultural imperialism. Colonialism and

imperialism, both methods of economically and politically subjugating an “other” and

often used interchangeably, are completely unalike in meaning. Colonialism depends on

taking political and economic control of a nation with full intention of exploiting the

area’s resources along with building communities through the migration of people to the

new conquered land. Imperialism comes with the intention of creating an empire by

executing control over conquered lands to expand political and economic commands.9

American cultural imperialism, specifically in the Philippines, was a reflection of U.S.

occupation of the islands as well as the further westernization of the Filipino people. The

practice of American cultural imperialism is evident in the agenda of the Second

Philippine Commission, known as the Taft Commission, in March 1900. Led by William

Howard Taft, the first Governor-General of the Philippines, one of the primary objectives

was to construct and implement public education based on the U.S. school system.10

Cultural imperialism is built on the political and economic objectives of imperialism but

with the notion that the culture of the sovereign nation is inherently “better” than the

other.11

9
Ronald J. Horvath, “A Definition of Colonialism,” Current Anthropology 13, no. 1 (Feb., 1972):
45-47.
10
Rene R. Escalente, The Bearer of Pax Americana: The Philippine Career of William H. Taft,1900-
1903 (Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 2008), 22 and 67; “United States Rule,” edited by
Ronald E. Dolan in Philippines: A Country Study (Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1991),
accessed June 7, 2016, http://countrystudies.us/philippines/16.htm.
11
John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (London: Continuum International
Publishing Group, 1991), 2-4; David Rothkopf, “In Praise of Cultural Imperialism? Effects of Globalization
on Culture,” Foreign Policy, no. 107 (Summer 1997): 38-53; Said, Orientalism, 3-7; Luis S. David, “Notes on
American Cultural Imperialism,” Budhi 9, no. 1 (2005): 139-145.

6
 This study comprises an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion. The first

chapter provides a brief introduction to Philippine history: the migration of various Asian

nomads as well as the exploration and colonization of Spain. The chapter heavily

examines the development of one, unified, Philippine identity with the transition from

Spanish colonialism to the Philippine-American War. It examines the birth of the two

Philippine revolutionary organizations: La Liga Filipina and the Katipunans, the fight for

Filipino independence, and the strengthened desire for a united Filipino identity with the

start of U.S. occupation.

Chapter two explores how the United States perceived the culture and the people

of the Philippines at the beginning of the conflict and during American occupation. The

analysis focuses on the responses of U.S. citizens to American imperialism and President

William McKinley’s advocacy of Manifest Destiny. Propaganda and literature of the time

form the basis of material for this chapter. Analysis of political cartoons, lithographs, and

texts as well as poems serves to discern the general opinions of the American people

towards the events and the people in Philippines. Filipinos were consistently portrayed in

political cartoons and lithographs with “black-African” features. Racial propaganda was

strengthened by ethnographical studies with popularity of Social Darwinism and

eugenics. This fits within the ideology of Manifest Destiny and cultural imperialism as

well as reinforced racial mistrusts and prejudices within the United States during what

historians have called the worst decade of race relations.

Chapter three looks at how identity influenced the notion of allegiance with an in-

depth examination of U.S. military soldiers who defected during the Philippine-American

War. An analysis of allegiance as it is associated with national identity—emphasizing the

7
actions of specific historical figures during the time: David P. Barrows, an ethnographer

whose study reflected American imperialist agenda; Emilio Aguinaldo, Filipino

revolutionary leader and first president of the First Philippine Republic; finally, David

Fagen and various African American soldiers of the Twenty-fourth regiment who

defected from the United States military to join the ranks of Philippine Revolutionary

leader, Emilio Aguinaldo.

Finally, the conclusion will reiterate the thesis concepts and supported research.

Philippine national identity was born during the Spanish colonization and was cemented

due to the unification of Filipinos during U.S. conflict and occupation, while the

Philippine-American war influenced U.S. perception of the Filipinos and Philippine

culture, and how U.S. agenda can both motivate and dissuade national loyalty and

identity. Therefore, making U.S. relations with the Philippines a solid example of how

imperialism affects both the governing country and those they are trying to control.

8
Chapter One

Mga Anak ng Bayan (The Country’s Children): The Rise of Filipino Nationalism and the

Two Revolutions for Filipino Identity

What love can be

Purer and greater
Than love of country?
What love? No other love, none.
-“Love of Country” by Andres Bonifacio1

Nineteenth and twentieth century tenets of colonialism and imperialism guided

Western perceptions of Filipino identity. Social Darwinism was an accepted concept,

where an artificial racial hierarchy was structured according to varying degrees of human

evolution, with Anglo-Saxons at the very top and people of color on the bottom. Christian

missionary activity allowed Western nationals to believe they had a “Western Duty” to

civilize people at the bottom of the social Darwinist pyramid using the cultural, religious

and political values of the Anglo-Saxon Western nations.

Meanwhile, due to its island geography, the Philippines was a country divided by

language, with the country’s many regional dialects derived from various merchant

settlers that ranged from European to Asiatic. Inhabitants of the islands saw consistent

changes in culture and language, one that was neither European nor Asian and was never

clearly defined, especially during Spanish colonial rule. The United States’ occupation of

the Philippine islands, as a consequence of the 1898 Spanish American War, followed

Spanish colonization of the archipelago at the turn of the twentieth century. It was the

continuous existence of Western foreign powers that introduced the desire for

1
Andres Bonifacio, “Pagibig sa Tinubuang Bayan (Love of Country),” as found in The Writings and
Trial of Andres Bonifacio, collected and translated by Teodoro A. Agoncillo and S.V. Epistola (Manila:
University of the Philippines Press, 1963), 5.

9
independence, which produced an identity that belonged solely to the inhabitants of the

Philippine archipelago. The rise of Filipino nationalism, with the people’s desire for

independence, exceeded the divide created by geography and was reinforced by every

adversity brought by Western powers. Consequently, the very formation of a Filipino

national identity was a direct result of a Western colonial and imperialist agenda.

Spain established its colony in the Philippines in the early sixteenth century, from

1521 to 1529, during the time of global Spanish expeditions.2 Spanish colonization of the

Philippines introduced the Asian archipelago to Western culture and the Catholic faith.

The Philippines was under Spain’s control until the Filipino Revolution in 1896, which

exerted the idea and desire for a united Filipino identity built on the desire to acquire self-

rule. The people of the Philippine archipelago, through centuries of foreign relations,

were able to realize an identity that was their own, not strictly European or Asian, but an

amalgamation of both. The desire for a distinct identity, unmarked by foreign ideals, gave

birth to Filipino nationalist leaders, ideas, and a vocabulary that did not exist in prior

Filipino history.

However, the people of the Philippines found themselves fighting two wars for

their independence as well as for the validation of their newfound identity. From the

ashes of Spanish colonization rose the imperialization and occupation of the United

States that originated with a betrayal of allegiance. The outbreak of the Philippine-

American War, followed by the U.S. occupation of the islands, did not discourage the

Filipino people from their nationalist ideas and beliefs. Instead, the Western imperial

power that was the U.S. emboldened Filipinos’ love and loyalty for their country, as

2
Teodoro Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People (Quezon City: R.P. Garcia Publishing Co., 1977),
71; Sonia M. Zaide, The Philippines: A Unique Nation, Second ed. (Quezon City: All Nations Publishing Co.,
Inc., 2006), 71.

10
displayed in their writings and actions throughout the conflict. Spanish colonization and

U.S. imperialism, with their Western political and cultural ideas of race and ethnicity, did

not hinder the notion of Filipino identity and independence, which was initiated by the

Philippine Revolution (1896-1898) and was further conceptualized during the Philippine-

American War (1899-1902). Instead, these external factors actually aided in the

establishment of Filipino identity through two revolutions that conveyed a connection

that surpassed region, class, and ethnic background—but concentrated most on love of

country.

In the time of Spanish colonial rule, the Philippines was as divided by ethnicity as

it was by islands. The arrival of various European and Asian merchants who settled in the

area outlined how early Philippine society viewed its social class system, but it was the

economy that further defined the hierarchy of the societal pyramid. Under Spanish rule,

the Philippines was the empire’s “leading commercial center of the Orient.”3 Spanish

colonial officials encouraged trade from the country’s main port, Manila, to the

surrounding Orient such as China, Thailand, and Indonesia as well as other Spanish

colonies like Mexico. Spain classified this trade across the Pacific as the “galleon trade”

where goods such as spices, silk, and porcelain that left Manila were traded for double

their actual value, providing high profits for Manila merchants and settlers. The galleon

trade, also termed the “Manila Galleon,” made the city of Manila a prime European

trading port in Southeast Asia for two and half centuries, from the early 1500s to the mid-

1800s, and was the longest shipping route from east to west of its time.4 Opening the

3
Teodoro Agoncillo, Introduction to Filipino History (Manila: Radiant Star Publishing, 1974), 56.
4
Glyn Williams, The Prize of All the Oceans: Anson's Voyage Around the World (New York: The
Viking Press, 1998), 4; William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1939),
17 and 218.

11
country up to the global market brought in more than goods. The golden trade brought

back foreign soldiers, officials, merchants, and settlers that influenced Filipino culture

and ethnic developments.5 Intermarriage between foreign persons and Filipino indigenous

people as well as the growth of the economy created a distinct community that was not

specifically of Spanish, Asian, or Native ethnic background. A stratified center was

introduced to Filipino society, beneath Spanish aristocrats and conquistadors—Spanish

empire soldiers—but above the indios, the people of native Filipino tribes. This new

fragment of Filipino society derived from the agrarian community and were dubbed

creoles, full-blooded Spaniards born and raised in the Philippines, or mestizos, people

mixed with Spanish and Asian blood. This new community of people associated more

with the islands than the original nations of their parents and presented one of the earliest

impressions of “Filipino consciousness.”6

Social classes in the Philippine archipelago stemmed from Spanish colonization

and were divided by wealth and ethnic background. The combined Filipino middle class

of creoles and mestizos, who accumulated wealth from trade and commerce built from

the galleon trade, were known as ilustrados. They gained broader access to education and

Western ideas, and as a result, they were exposed to concepts of independence inspired

by the works of Enlightenment philosophers like Voltaire, Paine, and Rousseau. These

ilustrados would later demand social and political reforms from Spain, which led to the

desire “to unite the entire archipelago into one compact, vigorous, and homogenous

5
Ibid; Luis H. Francia, A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos (New York: The
Overlook Press, 2010), 74-75.
6
Agoncillo, Introduction to Filipino History, 66; Maria Teresa Martinez-Sicat, Imagining the Nation
in Four Philippine Novels (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1994), 13; John D. Blanco,
Frontier Constitutions: Christianity and Colonial Empire in the Nineteenth Century Philippines (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2009), 148-149.

12
body.” Consequently, this class led the country’s revolution for independence from

Spain.7

By 1892, ilustrados had formulated two Filipino revolutionary organizations. The

first, La Liga Filipina (The Philippine League), was created to unite the entire

archipelago by creating a society of reformers who recognized the interest of the people

as its main priority. This led to the formation of Samahang Kataastaasan, Kagalanggalang

Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Supreme and Most Honorable Society of the

Children of the Nation), shortly tagged as the Katipunan or “KKK”. Members of the

Philippine KKK were inspired by Western political revolutions in the United States and

France, and aimed to gain complete independence from Spain.8

The organization was led by one of its founders, Filipino nationalist Andres

Bonifacio. Orphaned at an early age and born to the lower class, Bonifacio was

introduced to Western ideals of independence—specifically, the French Revolution—

through his work as a merchant in Manila.9 Bonifacio proclaimed that the revolution was

an “honor that will be a legacy to our country, to our race and to our progeny.” The

Katipunan began introducing vocabulary that belonged strictly to the natives of the

archipelago.10 Letters and proclamations directed to the country’s Katagalugan or

Sangkatagalugan were sent in hopes of inspiring people across the islands into a unified

7
“La Liga Filipina: Rizal’s Liga,” The Philippine Revolution Documents, MSC Institute of
Technology, accessed January 19, 2016, http://www.msc.edu.ph/centennial/liga.html; Onofre D. Corpuz,
The Roots of the Filipino Nation, vol. 2 (Quezon City: Aklahi Foundation Inc., 1989), 209-210.
8
“The Katipunan,” The Philippine Revolution Documents, MSC Institute of Technology, accessed
January 19, 2016, http://filipino.biz.ph/history/katipunan.html; “The Founding of the Katipunan,”
Republic of the Philippines Presidential Museum and Library, accessed January 19, 2016,
http://malacanang.gov.ph/4304-the-founding-of-the-katipunan/.
9
Teodoro Agoncillo, The Revolt of the Masses: The Story of Bonifacio and the Katipunan (Quezon
City: University of the Philippines Press, 1996), 4.
10
Andres Bonifacio, “Katipunan Mararahas Ng Mga Anak Ng Bayan (Proclamation of the Society
of the Children of the Nation),” as found in The Writings and Trial of Andres Bonifacio, 4.

13
revolution for the Inang Bayan (Mother Land). Originally reserved for people who spoke

the Tagalog language in major cities like Manila, the Katipunan’s concept of the

Katagalugan or Sangkatagalugan described the citizens of Philippines as a whole in an

attempt to culminate a nation.11 These concepts can be found in Katipunan documents

such as Bonifacio’s “Ang Dapat Mabatid Ng Mga Tagalog,” modernly translated as

“What the Filipinos Should Know,” where the revolutionary leader initiated his work

with a call to the Katagalugans and further described them as his Kababayan, meaning

“fellow countrymen.”12 Bonifacio urged his Kababayans to be united in reclaiming land

as strictly Filipino in hopes that a military insurgency against the Spanish empire would

heighten self-awareness in individual connection, not just to their community but the

entire nation.

During the birth of the Filipino Revolution, the concept of a “Filipino” identity

surpassed the people’s loyalty or connection to region, class, or ethnic background—a

notion originally connected to the social class divide built under Spanish rule. The

“Filipinos” included everyone considered beneath the Spanish aristocrats and

conquistadors, such as the creoles and mestizos—from the middle class ilustrados to the

lower class farmers. The Katipunans propagated these ideals across the islands through

the establishment of various print media, including the revolutionary newspaper the

Kalayaan (Freedom).13

In August 1896, the Katipunans were discovered in Manila by Spanish Friar

Mariano Gil, who instantly conveyed the Katipunan’s activities to the local Spanish

11
Corpuz, The Roots of the Filipino Nation, vol. 2, 221; Martinez-Sicat, Imagining the Nation in
Four Philippine Novels, 14.
12
Ibid.; Andres Bonifacio, “Ang Dapat Mabatid Gn Mga Tagalog (What the Filipinos Should
Know),” as found in The Writings and Trial of Andres Bonifacio, 2-3 and 68-69.
13
Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 164.

14
government. The colonial government then propagated mass arrests of about five hundred

Filipino revolutionaries. Katipunans who were not caught, such as Bonifacio,

congregated in Pugad Lawin, a town eight miles from Manila to discuss further actions.

With Bonifacio’s proclamation and call to Kababayans to fight against Spanish control,

known as the “Cry of Pugad Lawin,” the Filipino Revolution officially began on August

23, 1896.14 Battles took place in the capital of Manila and through island provinces.

Some led to victories—such as the Battle of Imus on September 1, 1896 in the province

of Cavite—but revolutionaries were mostly met with losses and struggles. Bonifacio

initially tried to take hold of the capital city of Manila, but failed.

However, Bonifacio’s greatest loss was to his own fellow revolutionaries. His

fellow Katipunan comrades ordered his execution in 1897 after he was accused of treason

against the revolutionary government, as a member of a conspiracy to murder fellow

revolutionary leaders and soldiers.15 According to a statement by Artemio Ricarte, a

Filipino general that served under Bonifacio, Spanish friars paid Bonifacio to send

unarmed Filipinos to Spanish government officials with plans of full surrender during a

conflict in the province of Limbon. Ricarte also declared that Bonifacio acted against the

principles of the Katipunan and had ordered the burning of churches and convents if

Spanish forces were to capture a village or town.16

With the death of Bonifacio, leadership of the Katipunans fell to the Filipinos’

propertied elites, with military leader and ilustrado Emilio Aguinaldo in the highest rank.

14
Ibid., 170.
15
Ibid., 178-179; Francia, A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos, 132-133.
16
Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 176-178; Artemio Ricarte, “Artemio Ricarte on the
Arrest and Execution of Bonifacio: Principal Events From May Until the Arrival of Aguinaldo in Biyak-na-
Bato (San Miguel de Mayumo, Bulacan),” May 1897, Bonifacio 150 Collection, Republic of the Philippines
Presidential Museum and Library, accessed February 27, 2016, http://malacanang.gov.ph/3622-artemio-
ricarte-on-the-arrest-and-execution-of-bonifacio/.

15
Aguinaldo was a complete opposite to Bonifacio’s working-class representation.

Aguinaldo was from a middle class family of Spanish and Chinese descent. His father

was a lawyer who served as the gobernardorcillo, the town municipal governor under

Spanish rule, in their home town of Cavite el Viejo.17 Months after Bonifacio’s

execution, from December 1897 to January 1898, Aguinaldo and other Filipino

revolutionary leaders were exiled to Hong Kong under the Truce of Biyak-na-Bato. A

pact that was supposed to end the Philippine Revolution in hopes of less bloodshed, the

document provided a total of 800 thousand pesos (under Spanish colonial currency) for

the revolutionaries’ voluntary exile.

Simultaneously, however, on the other side of the world in 1898, the United

States declared war against Spain to end the latter’s colonial rule in the Americas,

specifically Cuba, and in retaliation for the sinking of the USS Maine.18 The Spanish

American War brought the U.S. to another Spanish colony that was also fighting for

independence. While in exile, Aguinaldo was approached by American Consul E.

Spencer Pratt, who requested the cooperation of Filipino revolutionaries with U.S.

Commodore George Dewey as the latter planned to attack the Spanish Navy stationed in

Manila Bay. The Filipinos’ first foreign alliance provided the Filipino revolutionaries

with an optimistic outlook on the possibility of liberty.19

On May 1, 1898, the United States won its first naval battle in Manila Bay against

Spain and ended the centuries old colonization of the Philippines. Aguinaldo arrived to

17
Emilio Aguinaldo, Memoirs of the Revolution, translated by Luz Colendrino- Bucu (Manila: C.A.
Suntay, 1967), 4.
18
John L. Offner, An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain Over Cuba,
1895-1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 56 and 131-135.
19
Ibid; Emilio Aguinaldo and Vicente Albano Pacis, A Second Look At America (New York: Robert
Speller & Sons, Publishers, Inc., 1957), 32-39.

16
Manila on May 19 and quickly declared Filipino independence on June 12. In what was

hoped to be the first public show of nationalism, the Filipino flag was officially flown

and the national anthem was performed for the first time.20 The Philippine Declaration of

Independence, modeled after the United States’, was signed the same day by 98 Filipino

revolutionaries in the presence of United States Colonel of Artillery L.M. Johnson.21 In

hopes of gaining recognition from what Aguinaldo believed was a stable ally,

Commodore George Dewey was invited to the celebration and recognition of the United

States was added to the declaration:

under the protection of our Powerful and Humanitarian Nation, The United States
of America, we do hereby proclaim and declare solemnly in the name by authority
of the people of these Philippine Islands, that they are and have the right to be free
and independent; that they have ceased to have allegiance to the Crown of Spain;
that all political ties between them should be completely severed and annulled;
and that, like other free and independent States, they enjoy the full power to make
War and Peace, conclude commercial treaties, enter into alliances, regulate
commerce, and do all other acts and things which and Independent State Has right
to do.22

Dewey declined the invitation and did not report the event to the United States

government, an act that the revolutionary leaders did not find suspicious. They focused

their attention on solidifying their claim of independence by attaining the most important

part of the archipelago that was still under Spanish control: the capital, nicknamed

“Walled City,” of Manila.23

20
The national anthem was originally entitled “Marcha Filipina Magdalo (Magdalo Philippine
March)” but has seen many alterations and is currently known as “Lupang Hinirang (Chosen Land)”.
21
Ibid. 139; Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, “Acta de la Proclamación de la Independencia del
Pueblo Filipino (Act of Declaration of Philippine Independence),” Miguel de Benavides Library and
Archives: Digital Collection, The University of Santo Tomas, accessed January 26, 2016,
http://digitallibrary.ust.edu.ph/cdm/ref/collection/section5/id/136015; Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista,
“Acta de la Proclamación de la Independencia del Pueblo Filipino (Act of Declaration of Philippine
Independence),” translated by Sulpicio Guevara, The Philippine Revolution Documents, MSC Institute of
Technology, accessed January 26, 2016, http://filipino.biz.ph/history/declaration.html.
22
Ibid.
23
Francia, A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos, 138-139.

17
 Unbeknownst to Filipino revolutionaries, who surrounded the city and planned a

siege, the United States made private negotiations with Spain to plan their own

acquisition of Manila. Despite having reinforcements that easily outnumbered the

Spaniards, Dewey believed that possession of Manila could be attained though diplomatic

negotiations instead of armed force. Surrendering the capital city of Manila was reduced

to one matter: Spanish pride. Confronted with U.S. troops on one side and Filipino

revolutionaries on the other, Spain’s peninsular government concluded that it was best for

“Spanish code honor” to surrender to the U.S. troops.24 However, Spain’s General Fermin

Jaudenes insisted that if the Spanish were to surrender, it must be through a mock battle

that prevented the Filipino revolutionaries from ever entering the city. Dewey accepted

the terms and assured Jaudenes that Filipinos would not participate in the battle, an

agreement that was kept strictly between the two men without even providing this

knowledge to their own men.25

As the mock battle approached, the thirteen thousand troops sent as U.S.

reinforcements were met in Manila with raised suspicions amongst Filipino

revolutionaries.26 U.S. headquarters were constructed all around Manila, on areas that

were secured by revolutionaries. The Filipino flags were brought down and were replaced

by U.S. flags, an action that alarmed Filipino soldiers. Mariano Noriel, one of

Aguinaldo’s generals, communicated his concerns exclaiming, “Look, general, look at

what they are doing! If we don’t look out, they will be replacing our flags with their own

24
Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 192; A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to
Filipinos, 140-141.
25
Ibid.; George Dewey, Autobiography of George Dewey: Admiral of the Navy (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 273-275 and 279.
26
Dewey, Autobiography of George Dewey: Admiral of the Navy, 269.

18
all over the country!” To which Aguinaldo replied, “You are being tragic. They’re our

allies, remember that!”27

However, Aguinaldo was disappointed when, on August 13, the morning of the

mock battle, the U.S. military barred Filipino troops from the fighting and from entering

the city walls of Manila under the threat of gun shots. General Thomas M. Anderson of

the U.S. Army telegraphed Aguinaldo before the battle commenced, “Do not let your

troops enter Manila without permission from the American commander. On this side of

the Pasig River you will be under fire.”28 This “insolence” towards the Filipino

revolutionary leader, and the exclusion of the Filipinos from the city led to a silent

hostility from Filipino troops towards the U.S. forces.29

The mock battle began at 9:30 in the morning and was won by 5:43 pm, right

before the sun set over Manila Bay. The Spanish flag was brought down and in its place

the U.S. flag flew over the capital city of Manila, accompanied by the guns of U.S. ships

that “thundered out a national salute” as “The Star Spangled Banner” played in the

background.30 Outside the walls, Aguinaldo and his troops looked on as they

contemplated their “own losses of thousands in killed and wounded” as well as their

“exclusion and snubbing in the hour of final triumph,” which Aguinaldo stated was “an

insult and a betrayal that was hard to take.”31

Despite the negative feelings and suspicions upon being excluded from a battle

that marked the end of Spanish colonial rule, revolutionary and nationalist leaders urged

Aguinaldo to hastily assemble the first official congress of the First Philippine Republic

27
Emilio Aguinaldo and Vicente Albano Pacis, A Second Look At America, 75.
28
Ibid., 76; Aguinaldo and Pacis, A Second Look At America, 75.
29
Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 194.
30
Dewey, Autobiography of George Dewey, 280.
31
Aguinaldo and Pacis, A Second Look At America, 78.

19
while U.S. troops took hold of the capital city. As the first official president of the First

Philippine Republic, Aguinaldo led an assembly made up of eighty-five appointed

provincial representatives in Malolos, Bulacan—a city just twenty-five miles outside of

Manila—as early as September 1898, just weeks after the United States ended its war

against Spain on Filipino soil.32 Formally dubbed the Malolos Convention, or the first

“National Assembly,” the congress began drafting a Filipino constitution that would

convey the needs of Filipinos and, at the same time, would assist in the acknowledgement

of Filipino independence by foreign powers. The world power that Filipino

revolutionaries called on for support was the same nation-state they had assisted in

recolonizing the archipelago: the United States.

The document became known as the Malolos Constitution and was originally

written in Spanish, which was the Philippines’ most commonly-spoken language at the

time, even more so than Tagalog. The document was written with ninety-three articles

emphasizing the civil liberties of Filipinos as well as the nation’s form of government.

The constitution went through several revisions in response to the nation’s conflicts and

would not see a final draft until January 1899.33 Concurrently, pamphlets of Filipino

propaganda, printed under the order of Aguinaldo’s new government, were shared

throughout the islands, honoring and celebrating the liberation of the archipelago from

centuries of imperial rule as well commemorating the people’s newfound identity as

32
Ibid., 142; Teodoro A. Agoncillo, Malolos: The Crisis of the Republic (Quezon City: University of
the Philippines Press, 1960), 224.
33
“1899 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines: Malolos Convention,” Corpus Juris,
Philippine Law Library, last modified 2014, accessed January 19, 2016,
http://www.thecorpusjuris.com/laws/constitutions/item/1899-constitution.html?category_id=70; The
Laws of the Philippine Republic: The Laws of Malolos, 1898-1899, compiled and edited by Sulpicio Guevara
(Manila: National Historical Commission, 1972), 104-119; Agoncillo, Introduction to Filipino History, 151-
152.

20
Filipinos. Apolinario Mabini, a revolutionary leader as well as Aguinaldo’s principal

adviser, composed “El Verdadero Decalogo (The True Decalogue)” that framed ten

revolutionary and nationalist ideals pertaining to the First Philippine Republic.34 The

True Decalogue was modeled after Moses’ Ten Commandments, and thus was a

reflection of the Philippines’ major Roman Catholic background as well as the late

revolutionary leader, Bonifacio’s, nationalist sentiments. The document outlined the

objectives of Filipino patriotism:

Love your country after God and your honor, and more than you love yourself,
because your country is the only paradise that God has given you in this life; the
only patrimony of your race; the only inheritance from your ancestors; and the
only future of your descendants: because of your country you have life, love and
interests; happiness, honor and God.35

The first three commandments were dedicated to the Filipinos’ Roman Catholic faith,

with great emphasis on the worship and honor of the Christian God. The fourth, cited

above, stressed the importance of national unity and pride of country. Prior to revolution,

identity and allegiance for the Filipino people were connected to their local provinces and

classes due to Spanish rule. As the leaders of the First Philippine Republic awaited the

recognition of Filipino independence from foreign powers, it was important to have the

people understand that the nation and its interest was more vital than their local

community and even themselves.36

However, despite the efforts of revolutionary leaders, no foreign power,

especially not Spain nor the United States, recognized Filipino independence, and this

34
Apolinario Mabini, “El Verdadero Decalogo (The True Decalogue),” June 1898, courtesy of the
National Historical Commission of the Philippines in Republic of the Philippines Presidential Museum and
Library, accessed January 19, 2016, http://malacanang.gov.ph/8132-the-true-decalogue-by-apolinario-
mabini/.
35
Ibid.
36
Agoncillo, Introduction to Filipino History, 47-48.

21
inaction further confirmed the fears of Filipino revolutionary leaders. The U.S. still held

the capital of Manila and the American troop presence increased. Aguinaldo sought

diplomatic representation for the Philippines abroad to assist in the nation’s claim for

independence. He sent Felipe Agoncillo, a lawyer and revolutionary, to Washington

D.C., then to Paris to campaign for Filipino recognition. Agoncillo arrived in Paris in

October 1898, while the U.S. and Spain formally settled the Spanish-American War and

began negotiations that included the possession of the Philippines. The Asian nation was

“acquired” by the U.S. for $20 million under the Treaty of Paris, without the consultation

of the Filipino representatives and leaders.37

The terminology used to describe the U.S. possession of Philippines has to be

carefully worded. Although many colonial powers historically ceded and traded colonies

with each other from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, the ceding of the

Philippines from Spain to the U.S. was unique with the inclusion of the Philippine

Revolution. Filipino revolutionaries immediately rejected this aspect of the Treaty of

Paris negotiation arguing that Spain had no right to cede a nation that was not theirs to

relinquish. Revolutionary leaders asserted that the Filipino people, with U.S. aid,

adamantly believed that they won their independence from imperial Spain, and formed

the First Philippine Republic. The Filipino people had been fighting Spain for their

independence for years before the U.S. military arrived in the Philippines. Agoncillo

fervently opposed the treaty in a formal protest that he presented in Washington, D.C.:

If the Spaniards have not been able to transfer to the Americans the rights which
they did not possess; if the latter have not militarily conquered positions in the

37
“Treaty of Peace between the United States and Spain; December 10, 1898,” The Avalon
Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale University, accessed January 22, 2016,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/sp1898.asp; Francia, A History of the Philippines: From Indios
Bravos to Filipinos, 141.

22
 Philippines; if the occupation of Manila was a resultant fact, prepared by the
Filipinos; if the international officials and representatives of the Republic of the
United States of America offered to recognize the independence and sovereignty
of the Philippines, solicited and accepted their alliance, how can they now
constitute themselves as arbiters of the control, administration and future
government of the Philippine Islands?38

Agoncillo argued that Spain had lost its colonial power over the Philippines, since the

Filipinos had fought for and won their independence. In the perception of Filipino

revolutionaries, Spain had no authority over the Philippines when the treaty was signed,

and, therefore, had no right to relinquish the Asian archipelago to the United States.

Days after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, on December 21, U.S. President

William McKinley issued a “Benevolent Proclamation” which asserted the U.S. objective

of bestowing “the blessings of good and stable government upon the people of the

Philippine Islands under the free flag of the United States”—and once again disregarded

the government of the First Philippine Republic.39 The U.S. decision, according to

Aguinaldo, “hit [the revolutionaries] with a devastating effect. It was disillusioning,

disappointing, and tragic.”40 Filipino historian and novelist Nick Joaquin famously wrote,

“When [the Filipinos] speak of the “Unfinished Revolution”… we should ask, which

one?...”41 Joaquin’s statement was considered a precise depiction of the U.S. betrayal of

Filipino independence. The U.S. government’s refusal to recognize Filipino

38
Felipe Agoncillo, “Felipe Agoncillo's Protest on the Injustice of the Treaty of Paris December
1898,” The Philippine American War Documents, MSC Institute of Technology, from The Statutes At Large
of the United States of America from March 1897 to March 1899 and Recent Treaties, Conventions,
Executive Proclamations, and The Concurrent Resolutions of the Two Houses of Congress, Vol. 30, the U.S.
Library of Congress, Asian Division (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1899), accessed January
9, 2016, http://filipino.biz.ph/history/ag9812xx.html; “Agoncillo is Persistent,” The New York Times,
January 16, 1899.
39
“The Philippine American War: McKinley’s Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation, December
21, 1898,” The Philippine American War Documents, MSC Institute of Technology, accessed November 4,
2015, http://filipino.biz.ph/history/benevolent.html; Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 211.
40
Aguinaldo and Vicente Albano Pacis, A Second Look At America, 87.
41
Nick Joaquin, A Question of Heroes (1977; Manila: Anvil Publishing, 2005), 96; “Nick Joaquin,”
accessed January 22, 2016, http://pinoylit.webmanila.com/filipinowriters/njoaquin.htm.

23
independence and its aggressive claim to the archipelago destroyed the Filipino-

American alliance forged out of their mutual enemy in Spain. The situation further

strengthened the Filipino desire to be independent and tested the Filipinos’ newly found

identity and nationality. Aguinaldo stated that the U.S. “discredited the system by lightly

scorning the friendship, the pride, the honor, and patriotism of the [Filipinos].”42 Filipino

revolutionaries realized that their war for independence was not over, and that their fight

for independence simply carried a new face and name: the Philippine-American War. As

Aguinaldo once stated prior to the military conflict against the U.S., “Knowing our fierce

racial pride and our obsessive aspirations to be recognized as equals…if unappeased, we

would fight even the Americans.”43

Initially, revolutionary leaders were divided over how to tackle the issue of U.S.

occupation. Aguinaldo realized that going to war with the U.S. so soon after the nation’s

war with Spain would sacrifice even more Filipino lives when they already lacked

capable soldiers and ammunition.44 Other nationalist leaders, like Apolinario Mabini,

decided to avoid fighting and instead spread the ideals of the Philippine Revolution

through print. Mabini refused to acknowledge U.S. sovereignty and was determined to

hold on to the Filipino nationalist agenda. On January 5, 1899, Mabini published an

official statement regarding the betrayal of the U.S. alliance, the occupation of Manila, as

well as the hypocrisy of their actions:

[The Philippine Republic] cannot remain indifferent in view of such a violent and
aggressive seizure of a portion of its territory by a nation which has arrogated to
itself the title champion of oppressed nations…I denounce these acts before the
world…mankind may pronounce its infallible verdict as to who are the true

42
Aguinaldo and Vicente Albano Pacis, A Second Look At America, 81.
43
Ibid., 80.
44
Ibid., 83.

24
 oppressors of nations and the true tormentors of human kind…upon their heads be
all the blood which may be shed.45

In the weeks that followed, Aguinaldo requested meetings with U.S. commissioners in

hopes of resolving the “conflicting political interests of both nations.”46 The

revolutionary leader and first president of the Philippine Republic reminded U.S.

representatives that it was the western nation that sought the alliance with the Philippines,

stating that Aguinaldo’s “relations with the United States did not bring me over here from

Hong Kong to make war on the Spaniards for their benefit, but for the purpose of our

own liberty and independence.”47 Protests and arguments by Filipino revolutionaries

were consistently ignored until the silent hostilities between the two nations erupted into

complete warfare when the first shots of war erupted on February 4, 1899.48

Conflict began when two soldiers of the Nebraska Volunteer Infantry Regiment,

William Grayson and Orville Miller, shot and killed two Filipino soldiers, while the latter

were trying to cross the San Juan Bridge to a nearby village in Santa Mesa. According to

Grayson, he warned the men to “halt” twice, but the latter yelled back, “halto!” (halt!)

Grayson and his squad’s final reply was to shoot the men down.49 The attack forced

Filipino revolutionaries to take up arms, with Aguinaldo sending telegrams to his

45
Apolinario Mabini, “Proclamation,” January 5, 1899, collected, edited, and translated by
Teodoro Agoncillo, Filipino Nationalism, 1872-1970 (Quezon City: R.P. Garcia Publishing Co., 1974), 233.
46
Ibid., 86-87; Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 213.
47
Emilio Aguinaldo, “Aguinaldo's Manifesto Protesting the United States' Claim of Sovereignty
Over the Philippines,” January 5, 1899, The Philippine American War Documents, MSC Institute of
Technology, from The Statutes At Large of the United States of America from March 1897 to March 1899
and Recent Treaties, Conventions, Executive Proclamations, and The Concurrent Resolutions of the Two
Houses of Congress, Vol. 30, the U.S. Library of Congress, Asian Division (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1899), accessed January 9, 2016,
http://filipino.biz.ph/history/ag990105.html.
48
Francia, A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos, 144-145; Agoncillo, History
of the Filipino People, 214.
49
Ibid., 214-215; “Man Who Fired First Shot: Private Grayson of the First Nebraska Tells How He
Began the War,” Omaha Bee, August 2, 1899; Donald Chaput, "Private William W Grayson's War in the
Philippines, 1899," Nebraska History 61 (1980): 355-366.

25
generals throughout the islands warning them about impending hostilities.50 To the

people of the Philippines, Aguinaldo’s Kababayans, he sent a message of a nationalist

agenda for independence: “I know that war has always produced great losses; I know that

the Philippine people have not yet recovered from past losses and are not in condition to

endure others. But I also know that we should sacrifice all on the altar of our honor and

of the national integrity so unjustly attacked.”51

The better equipped U.S. army was able to capture towns and villages because the

capture of Manila meant they were also able to welcome thousands of trained American

reinforcements, who carried superior arms. The struggle disheartened many Filipinos,

and Aguinaldo was quick to remind his Kababayans as to what they were fighting for:

Filipinas!...acknowledge her, salute her who warned thee with the breath of her
own culture and civility. Thou hast longed for independence, and thine
emancipation from Spain has come... But thou, Filipinas, flower of the ocean,
delicate flower of the East, still weak, scare eight months weaned from thy
mother's breast, has dared to brave a great and powerful nation such as is the
United States, with thy little army barely disciplined and shaped. Ah, beloved
brethren, all this is true; and still we say we will be slaves to none, nor let
ourselves be duped by gentle words.52

50
Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 215.
51
Emilio Aguinaldo, “Aguinaldo's Manifesto Recognizing the Opening of Hostilities,” February 5,
1899, The Philippine American War Documents, MSC Institute of Technology, from The Statutes At Large
of the United States of America from March 1897 to March 1899 and Recent Treaties, Conventions,
Executive Proclamations, and The Concurrent Resolutions of the Two Houses of Congress, Vol. 30, the U.S.
Library of Congress, Asian Division (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1899), accessed
January 9, 2016, http://filipino.biz.ph/history/ag990105.html.
52
Emilio Aguinaldo, “Aguinaldo's Manifesto Reminding the Filipino People on the Importance of
the Independence Struggle,” June 12, 1899, The Philippine American War Documents, MSC Institute of
Technology, from The Statutes At Large of the United States of America from March 1897 to March 1899
and Recent Treaties, Conventions, Executive Proclamations, and The Concurrent Resolutions of the Two
Houses of Congress, Vol. 30, the U.S. Library of Congress, Asian Division (Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1899), accessed January 9, 2016, http://filipino.biz.ph/history/ag990612.html.

26
Mabini added that war was “the last discourse left for the salvation of country and

national honor, let us fight as long as there is strength left in us.”53 Despite the

revolutionary leaders’ attempt at stirring the nationalist spirit and their own soldiers’

military experience, the Filipino militia relied mostly on villagers inexperienced with war

who fought a guerrilla war with bolo knives. The knives, though found in most villages in

the Philippines, were no match for the advanced arsenal of the U.S.54 U.S. troops quickly

conquered major Filipino cities such as Malolos, Zapote, Bacoor, and Dasmariñas, while

revolutionary leadership began to fold from within.55 The losses divided the Filipino

revolutionaries, and led to the gradual fall of the First Philippine Republic.

In March 1899, the McKinley administration sent the First Philippine

Commission to the Philippines. Appointed in January, the group was led by Dr. Jacob G.

Schurman, president of Cornell University. The First Philippine Commission, dubbed the

Schurman Commission, was comprised of George Dewey, U.S. Navy Admiral, Charles

H. Denby, U.S. Minister to China, Elwell S. Otis, U.S. Military General, and Dean C.

Worcester, American Zoologist and Philippine scholar. The group’s mission was to

outline how to best approach U.S. occupation of the Philippines.56 The Commission met

with fifteen Philippine Republic members willing to listen to U.S. plans regarding the

occupation of the Philippines. Commission members were authorized to offer “American

Autonomy” where an American colonial administration planned to build a democratic

and Christian nation with wealthy Filipino elites of the revolution at the helm. The

53
Apolinario Mabini, “The Struggle for Freedom,” 1899, as found in Teodoro Agoncillo’s Filipino
Nationalism, 1872-1970, 240.
54
Timothy K. Deady, "Lessons from a Successful Counterinsurgency: The Philippines, 1899–
1902,” Parameters (Spring, 2005): 55-57.
55
Agoncillo, Introduction to Filipino History, 163.
56
"The Philippines: As viewed by President McKinley's Special Commissioners, ‘The People
Intelligent, But as Yet they are incapable of self-government,” The Daily Star, November 3, 1899.

27
colonial government would therefore ignore the existence of the First Philippine Republic

as well as the country’s main Catholic faith. U.S. representatives emphasized their desire

to “establish in the Philippine Islands an enlightened system of government under which

the Philippine people may enjoy the largest measure of home rule and the amplest

liberty.”57

The U.S. proposal of “American Autonomy” led to a divide within the Filipino

cabinet between the independistas (true nationalists) and the americanistas (pro-

Americans). Mabini, an independista, believed that the americanistas had the best interest

of the nation in mind, but emphasized that leadership under the U.S. was not the

definition of true independence. He believed that Filipinos rightfully won their

independence from Spain and should continue to fight for their nation, so Filipinos could

cultivate a culture and nation that was solely theirs. Mabini also believed that acceptance

of “American Autonomy” and surrender would be for the benefit of “the Americans, not

for ourselves, who were being conquered and enslaved.”58

Despite Mabini’s warnings, americanistas dominated the cabinet, most of them

wealthy and powerful elites such as Pedro A. Paterno, Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, and

Felipe Buencamino. Aguinaldo appointed this cabinet, yet most of its members were

prepared to abandon his values in favor of their own future political power in the

Philippines. Aguinaldo, due to pressure from americanistas, dismissed Mabini and his

supporters and a new cabinet was appointed that consisted mostly of American

sympathizers led by Paterno and Bautista. Other independistas were dismissed or banned

57
United States Philippine Commission, Report of the Philippine commission to the President:
January 31, 1900, vol. 1, no. 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1900), 4.
58
Apolinario Mabini, “La Intransigencia (The Stubborness),” an article referring to the
americanistas, November 6, 1899, in La Revolucion Filipina (The Philippine Revolution), vol. 2 (Manila:
Bureau Printing, 1931), 111.

28
by Aguinaldo from the cabinet, under the full encouragement and insistence of Paterno

and Bautista. One particular nationalist and high general of the Philippine Republic,

Antonio Luna, was assassinated by his own troops, an act believed to have been ordered

by the americanistas.59 The U.S. proposal attracted wealthy merchants throughout the

islands with the possibility of financial gain and the appeal of the dollar and North

American trade.60

The apparent success of the First Philippine Commission presaged the

development of the Second Philippine Commission. Known as the Taft Commission, it

was led by William Howard Taft, the first Governor-General of the Philippines. The

commission’s objectives were to create a governing body under the full control of the

U.S. based on the findings of the first commission.61 Established by President McKinley

in March 1900, the commission was fully executed under President Theodore Roosevelt,

after the assassination of McKinley. The Taft Commission implemented a centralized

education system based on the U.S. model. Filipino elites selected by the commission ran

for election as provincial governors of various provincial islands. The U.S. tactic of

integrating U.S. leaders within Philippine political society enabled the easy capture of

island regions such as the Visayas. Filipinos in main trade ports such as Ilolo, Cebu, and

Negros did not greet U.S. troops with much hostility, due to leaders controlled by U.S.

and Filipino merchants eager for U.S. trade. The Negrenses, with its large population of

wealthy merchants and americanistas, raised the U.S. flag upon the arrival of U.S.

59
Agoncillo, Introduction to Filipino History, 164-165; Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People,
218-223.
60
United States Philippine Commission, Report of the Philippine commission to the President:
January 31, 1900, 149.
61
“United States Rule,” edited by Ronald E. Dolan in Philippines: A Country Study, Washington:
GPO for the Library of Congress, 1991, accessed March 13, 2016,
http://countrystudies.us/philippines/16.htm.

29
ships.62 The dismissal of Mabini, the assassination of Luna, and the swift U.S. conquest

of major regions demoralized Filipino troops on the front lines and the supporters of

Aguinaldo. Aguinaldo himself escaped to the mountains to reconvene with his trusted

advisers to plan their next move. However, his disappearance led to a complete loss of

morale and subsequent surrender of Filipino soldiers to U.S. troops.

On March 23, 1901, Aguinaldo was betrayed by the americanistas he assigned to

the cabinet and was captured by U.S. General Frederick N. Funston. He was brought to

Manila on April 1, where Aguinaldo formally declared an end to the First Philippine

Republic, swore an oath of allegiance to the United States, and recognized U.S.

sovereignty over the archipelago.63 On April 19, he issued a final proclamation regarding

his submission to the United States emphasizing that the “complete termination of

hostilities and a lasting peace are not only desirable but absolutely essential to the welfare

of the Philippines.”64 Aguinaldo believed that the “country has declared unmistakably in

favor of peace; so be it. Enough of blood; enough of tears and desolation.” He placed his

faith in the U.S. promises of Filipino liberty. He believed that the revolution would

submit to U.S. control but would not surrender its national loyalty; concession would not

be a display of “Filipino weakness” but of Filipino “fortitude and courage.” Aguinaldo

viewed his surrender as his ultimate love and service for his country and his Kababayans:

“By acknowledging and accepting the sovereignty of the United States throughout the

62
Agoncillo, Introduction to Filipino History, 165; Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 219.
63
Ibid., 224; Zaide, The Philippines: A Unique Nation, 274-275.
64
Emilio Aguinaldo, “Aguinaldo's Proclamation of Formal Surrender to the United States,” April
19, 1901, The Philippine American War Documents, MSC Institute of Technology, from The Statutes At
Large of the United States of America from March 1897 to March 1899 and Recent Treaties, Conventions,
Executive Proclamations, and The Concurrent Resolutions of the Two Houses of Congress, Vol. 30, the U.S.
Library of Congress, Asian Division (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1899), accessed January
9, 2016, http://filipino.biz.ph/history/ag010419.html.

30
entire Archipelago, as I now do without any reservations whatsoever, I believe that I am

serving thee, my beloved country. May happiness be thine!”65

Despite the surrender of thousands of Filipino soldiers as well as Aguinaldo’s call

for surrender, a number of Filipino generals refused to lay down their arms and withdraw

their troops. General Vicente Lukban and General Miguel Malvar continued the

resistance for almost a year after Aguinaldo’s capture. The two men led guerrilla

operations in various areas of the archipelago such Batangas and Samar, the latter being

the location of hundreds of Filipino soldiers and villagers.66 On July 4, 1902, President

Theodore Roosevelt provided complete amnesty to “all persons in the Philippine

Archipelago who have participated in the insurrections,” and the insurrection largely

came to a conclusion.67

U.S. attempts at peaceful propaganda through the Filipino elites did not sit well

with the Filipino agrarian class, whose dealings with U.S. troops differed drastically from

those of the elites. From the first days of the Philippine-American War, U.S. troops

invented a racial hierarchy for Filipinos of lower classes, whose skin color was darker

than those of the elites due to farming under the hot tropical sun. U.S. sentiments of

racism, at an all-time high on U.S. soil, were brought to the islands. Filipinos’ brown skin

and almond eyes leant themselves readily to a racial classification founded on white

supremacy. White U.S. soldiers were quick to place Filipinos in the same position within

65
Ibid.
66
Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 227; Veltisezar Bautista, The Filipino Americans (1763-
Present): Their History, Culture and Traditions, Second ed. (IL: Bookhaus Publishers, 2002), 71-72.
67
Theodore Roosevelt, “President Theodore Roosevelt's Proclamation Formally Ending the
Philippine "Insurrection" and Granting of Pardon and Amnesty,” July 4, 1902 The Philippine American War
Documents, MSC Institute of Technology, from The Statutes At Large of the United States of America from
March 1897 to March 1899 and Recent Treaties, Conventions, Executive Proclamations, and The
Concurrent Resolutions of the Two Houses of Congress, Vol. 30, the U.S. Library of Congress, Asian Division
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1899), accessed January 9, 2016,
http://filipino.biz.ph/history/tr020704.html.

31
the social and racial hierarchy as other people of color and often called them “niggers.”

Frank M. Erb, of the Pennsylvania Regiment, wrote home on February 27, 1899:

We have been in this nigger-fighting business now for twenty-three days…The

niggers shoot over one another’s heads or any old way... The morning of the 6th a
burying detail from our regiment buried forty-nine nigger enlisted men and two
nigger officers... We are supposed to have killed about three hundred. Take my
advice, and don’t enlist in the regulars, for you are good for three years. I am not
sorry I enlisted, but you see we have had some excitement.68

American exceptionalism and perception of Western supremacy ran through the various

ranks of the U.S. military. General Funston, the U.S. colonel who captured Aguinaldo,

believed that the Filipino people were “as a rule, an illiterate, semi-savage people, who

are waging war not against tyranny, but against Anglo-Saxon order and decency.”69 In his

1899 letter to the editor of the Kansas City Journal, General Funston was candid in his

allegiance to the U.S. agenda of Manifest Destiny, stating that he had hoped that “Uncle

Sam” would apply the “chastening rod” upon the Filipino people, until the Filipinos agree

to be good “Injuns (Indians).”70

The subjugation of Filipino “Injuns” and “niggers” brought a sense of bloody

enthusiasm amongst the U.S. troops for the project of U.S. imperialism. The Military

Order of the Carabao, an exclusive patriotic society for U.S. soldiers, was founded in the

midst of the Philippine-American war with the marching anthem:

In the days of dopey dreams—happy, peaceful Philippines,

When the bolomen were busy all night long.
When ladrones would steal and lie, and Americanos die,
Then you heard the soldiers sing this evening song:
Damn, damn, damn the insurrectos!
Cross-eyed kakiac ladrones!

68
Frank M. Erb, letter to home, dated February 27, 2016, “American Soldiers in the Philippines
Write Home about the War,” History Matters: The U.S. Survery Course on the Web, last modified January
26, 2016, accessed February 3, 2016, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/58/.
69
Federick N. Funston. “Interesting Letter from Funston,” Kansas City Journal, April 22, 1899.
70
Ibid.

32
 Underneath the starry flag, civilize 'em with a Krag,
And return us to our own beloved homes.71

The lyrics referred to the Filipinos as the “bolomen,” in reference to the bolos knives

used by Filipino soldiers, and “ladrones” for thieves. The line, “civilize ‘em with a krag,”

reflected U.S. soldiers’ attitudes in implementing U.S. ideals of Manifest Destiny—with

necessary force. The “krag” referred to the Krag-Jorgensen rifle issued to the U.S.

military during the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars.72 F.A. Blake of the

American Red Cross told a reporter of the Boston Globe on June 27, 1900, "American

soldiers are determined to kill every native [Filipino] in sight."73 Blake was stationed in

Manila and witnessed the execution of captured Filipino soldiers:

I never saw such execution in my life, and hope never to see such sights as met
me on all sides as our little corps passed over the field, dressing wounded. Legs
and arms nearly demolished; total decapitation; horrible wounds in chests and
abdomens, showing the determination of our soldiers to kill every native in sight.
The Filipinos did stand their ground heroically, contesting every inch, but proved
themselves unable to stand the deadly fire of our well-trained and eager boys in
blue. I counted seventy-nine dead natives in one small field, and learn that on the
other side of the river their bodies were stacked up for breastworks.74

Brutalities of war materialized on both sides, especially with the torture and rapid

executions of captured soldiers. Filipino soldiers would also terrorize civilians who did

not rally behind the ideals of Filipino nationalism, while U.S. troops burned villages not

protected by a U.S. elected provincial leader.

71
Military Order of the Carabao, “History,” last modified 2016, accessed February 3, 2016,
http://carabao.org/about/history; Ralph M. Ghormley, The Military Order of the Carabao: Centennial
History (Marine Corps Association, 2000), 111; Francia, A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to
Filipinos, 146.
72
John Malloy, “The Last Krag,” Gun Digest 2013, 67th Ed. (2012): 260-261.
73
“Eventual U.S. Victory, U.S. colonization of the Philippines,” The Boston Globe, June 27, 1900.
74
Ibid.; “F.A. Blake, of California, in charge of the Red Cross,” 1900, History Matters: The U.S.
Survery Course on the Web, last modified January 26, 2016, accessed February 3, 2016,
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/58/.

33
 The Western perception of Filipinos as “savages” justified U.S. military violence.

In one extreme example, on September 28, 1901, townspeople of Balangiga on Samar

Island initiated a guerrilla attack against U.S. troops, killing 48 American soldiers. In

retaliation, U.S. Army Officer Jacob Hurd Smith then ordered the massacre of every

person on the island capable of bearing arms against the United States. Upon acquiring

Samar, Smith famously stated, “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more

you kill and burn, the better it will please me... The interior of Samar must be made a

howling wilderness…”75 Smith specifically ordered to “kill everyone over ten,” which

included Filipino children ten years of age who were capable of carrying a bolo.76

Smith’s instruction to assassinate children caused negative reactions from people in the

U.S. and led to a court martial under allegations of violating the 58th Article of War,

which prohibits “murder, assault and battery with an intent to kill” in time war.77

However, Smith was acquitted and was praised by fellow soldiers on Filipino soil such as

General Funston, who proudly stated, “I personally strung up thirty-five Filipinos without

trial, so what was all the fuss over…'dispatching' a few 'treacherous savages'?”78

Racial tensions continued after the war. The notion of racial consciousness

deepened the social divide in Filipino society during a sensitive time when their new

identity as Filipinos was being tested. Filipinos’ unique physical features meant that they

looked neither European nor Asian. Their physical appearance and ethnic make-up was

founded on centuries of racial amalgamation from various ethnicities emanating from the

75
Ibid.; “President Retires Gen. Jacob H. Smith: Philippine Officer Reprimanded for ‘Kill’ and
‘Burn’ Order,” New York Times, July 17, 1902.
76
Ibid.; “Kill Everyone Over Ten,” cartoon, published by New York Journal, May 5, 1902.
77
Ibid., Mark Oswald, ” The "Howling Wilderness" Courts-martial of 1902,” Department of the
Army (Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2001), 3-7 and 15-17.
78
Frederick Funston, quoted in the New York Sun, March 10, 1902.

34
Malayan peninsula, from indigenous people of the archipelago, and the Spanish

colonizers—one that made the people uniquely Filipino. Amongst racist American

occupiers, it also meant they were uniquely attacked in the American colonial system,

labeled with any racial epithet a soldier could come up with to describe any person of

non-white skin.

Under U.S. imperial control, the class system built under Spain, with the

emergence of the Ilustrado middle-class, was deemed insignificant. The variation of

brown to black skin did, indeed, make the colonized people “Filipino” in the eyes of the

Americans. However, no matter what class they associated with, the Filipinos, due to the

color of their skin and physical characteristics, were still racially beneath Americans.

Guerrilla tactics by Filipino soldiers were viewed as a prime example of “savagery” by

U.S. soldiers, with its scattered and unorganized style of warfare. However, to the

agrarian Filipino soldier, despite being undisciplined in the realm of warfare, any sort of

battle tactic, formal or informal, was their way of serving their Kababayans and their

nation for the ultimate goal of “kalayaan” (independence).79 Mabini recognized U.S.

racial prejudice for what it was: an attempt to subjugate Filipinos into thinking that they

were an inferior race and weaken Filipinos’ newfound national pride. He stated that “race

prejudices separates [Filipinos] from the [Americans],” so the promises of liberty and

amnesty from U.S. representatives were insufficient. “Annexation,” Mabini continued,

“will result in our eternal slavery by people…who do not want to see a brown people

beside them.”80 Early attempts to pacify Filipinos and end Philippine-American conflicts

79
Paul A. Kramer, “Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire: The Philippine-
American War as Race War,” Asia Pacific Journal 4, Issue 6, No. 0 (June 2006); 14-15.
80
Apolinario Mabini, “The Struggle for Freedom,” 1899, as found in Teodoro Agoncillo’s Filipino
Nationalism, 1872-1970, 239-240.

35
further impassioned Filipinos in their desire for independence, while the racial and ethnic

prejudice displayed by U.S. troops allowed Filipinos to fully discern and cement the

recognition of a national Philippine identity.

36
Chapter Two

Creating the Filipino Savage: How Science and Popular Media Influenced the American
Perception of the Philippines, 1898-1914

Take up the White Man’s burden…

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
-“White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling1

The amalgamation of many ethnic and cultural influences have shaped Filipino

culture and identity. These include: the immigration of surrounding Asiatic groups, most

being Malayans from the Malay peninsula of Malaysia and Indonesia; Catholicism and

various Western influences imported over centuries of Spanish colonization; and United

States imperialism and the impact of the long nineteenth century’s Race of Nations.2 The

United States’ motivation to enter into the world of imperialism and to play a role in the

Race of Nations manifested itself in a military conflict against the Philippines. The

Philippine-American War occurred just months after the U.S. won the 1898 Spanish

American War, during the “bloodless” Battle of Manila, which took place from July to

August 1898. The battle marked the conclusion of the Spanish American War as well as

the end of the Philippine Revolution against Spain. The revolution initiated the founding

of the First Philippine Republic and an independent government, or so the Filipinos

believed. However, the 1898 Treaty of Paris ceded the newly liberated and established

1
Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” McClure’s Magazine 12, no. 4 (1899): 290; Rudyard
Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” 1899, Fordham University. Modern History Sourcebook: Rudyard
Kipling, The White Man's Burden, accessed May 30, 2015,
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Kipling.asp
2
Teodoro A. Agoncillo and Oscar M. Alfonso, History of the Filipino People, 2nd Edition (Quezon
City, Philippines: Malaya Books, 1969), 4-6; Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America's Empire in the
Philippines (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989), 36-39.
First Philippine Republic from Spain to the U.S. in exchange for the amount of twenty

million dollars.3 The treaty initiated a military conflict between the United States and the

Philippines that lasted from 1899 to 1902 and was driven by the imperialist ambitions of

the United States.

The conflict introduced Americans to the seven thousand islands that make up the

Philippine archipelago. U.S. political propaganda, literature, and scientific racism

promoted the ideals of Manifest Destiny, the U.S. “right” to expand its western ideologies

to imperialized nations, and formulated a western perception of the identity of Filipinos.

The U.S. government argued Filipinos were unfit to govern their own land without proper

guidance of a more “civilized” western culture, despite the fact that the nation had

endured centuries of colonization under Spanish rule. The American popular culture

depiction of a “Filipino savage,” with their grass skirts and “Negrito” blood, implied that

the Filipinos lacked the skills in governing a nation, and was used to validate U.S.

aggression in the Philippine archipelago.4

American notions of Filipino identity were formulated to support the imperialist

agenda of the United States. At a time when western states expanded their political and

economic control to non-western areas of the world, inspired by notions of heroic

Western Duty and Manifest Destiny, a complete understanding of the culture and

background of the people whose nations they were trying to assert power over was

deemed insignificant. Filipino identity was controlled and manipulated to validate the

3
“Treaty of Peace Between the United States and Spain; December 10, 1898,” The Avalon
Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale University, accessed June 22, 2015,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/sp1898.asp.
4
David P. Barrows, The Negritos and Allied Types in the Philippines (Lancaster, PA: The New Era
Printing Company, 1910), 14.

38
U.S. hold within the Asian archipelago and was justified by the studies of scientific

racism. American intellectual society was consistently inundated by propaganda that

supported the claims of racial hierarchy and fed on the scientific arguments that justified

social prejudice. This biased concept of Filipino identity as savage, barbaric, and non-

Christian—despite being colonized by the Catholic nation of Spain for centuries—was

deeply imbedded in U.S. society. The idea was presented and reinforced through political

satire and communal entertainment presented as “human zoos” at international

exhibitions. Americans used the international trend of imperialism led by Great Britain to

accept and justify the barbaric and savaged Filipino identity introduced to them. Science,

assisted by the media of illustration, entertainment, and literature, validated the U.S.

acquisition of the Philippines as well as created a position for America’s Filipinos within

the ranks of western racial hierarchy.

Scientific racism ascended to prominence at the turn of the nineteenth century, as

physical anthropological studies began to expand beyond animals and plants.5 Carl

Linnaeus first established racial classification in 1735 with his method of “taxonomy,”

where he defined groups by their biological characteristics and divided species based on

shared features.6 Linnaeus’s findings became a part of the foundation of man’s biological

ability to identify and breed an ideal human race. This can be seen in the works of

Samuel George Morton (1839) and his theory of craniometry in Crania Americana, the

idea that you can divulge the ethnic origins of a person based on the properties of their

5
“Science: 1680s-1800s, Early Classification of Nature,” Race Exhibit, A Project of The American
Anthropological Association, 2015, accessed November 1, 2015,
http://www.understandingrace.org/history/science/early_class.html
6
“Timeline of Scientific Racism,” Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, accessed November 1,
2015, http://www.nyu-apastudies.org/hauntedfiles/about/timeline/

39
head. In Scottish geologist Robert Chambers’ Vestiges of the Natural History of Mankind

(1844), he argued that each race stood on a different stage of human evolution with

whites being the highest and most evolved.

Finally, scientific racism reached a crucial and historic apex with Francis Galton’s

(1869) development of the study of social Darwinism as well as coining the term and

principles “eugenics.”7 Eugenics is the science of enhancing the human species by

manipulating genetic human heredity with great emphasis on defining “positive” and

“negative” eugenics. Eugenicists encourage the breeding of individuals with “positive” or

“normal” genes—individuals who exhibit higher-than-average and therefore desirable

traits of intelligence and talents, such as professors, other professionals, and the upper

middle class. On the other hand, eugenicists oppose the breeding of “negative” genes by

individuals who exhibit metabolic disorders such as the mentally ill, the mentally

incompetent, criminals, and alcoholics. Galton believed in “breeding for the highest order

of intellect” and in human “equal protection” but not “equal rights.” He acknowledged

racial hierarchy by defining a “minor race,” which was cemented during Galton’s travels

to Africa, and placed people of dark complexion under the category of negative

eugenics.8 Eugenicists used social Darwinism as well as scientific racism to argue that

human racial differences were not separate from the differences between animal species

and its own hierarchy—the idea that one species was better than the other.

Historians wove social Darwinism into their analysis of the conflict between the

U.S. and Philippines as early as the first two decades of the twentieth century. Some of

7
Ibid.
8
Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 9

40
the earliest studies of Philippine and U.S. relations came from David P. Barrows.

Barrows was an educator and anthropologist who traveled to Morocco and the

Philippines and examined the culture and people for academic purposes. He was born in

Chicago in 1874 but grew up in California on his wealthy family’s Ventura ranch.

Barrows graduated with his master’s degree in political science from University of

California-Berkeley in 1895, then received his PhD in anthropology from the University

of Chicago in 1897.9 He taught at a state school in San Diego for two years prior to being

appointed as Manila Superintendent of Schools in 1900 by William Howard Taft,

Governor-General of the Philippines during the Second Philippine Commission.10 He

published three works about the Philippines and its history between 1900 and 1914, all

within the first decade and a half of U.S. occupation, each one inspired by his work with

the Filipino people and the contemporary American ideology of Manifest Destiny.

Barrows published his first book, A History of the Philippines, in 1905. It was used as a

textbook in Philippine public high schools in order to “introduce [the Filipinos] to their

own island country.”11 His work was a comprehensive study of Philippine history that

contributed to the migration studies of the Philippines.

Barrows’ research went as far back as the migration of Philippine natives from

surrounding countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia prior to Spanish settlement in

1512. Barrows followed their development under Spanish rule, and the early years of

9
“Barrows, David P. (David Prescott), 1873-1954,” National Endowment for Humanities, accessed
November 24, 2015, http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=barrows-david-p-david-
prescott-1873-1954-cr.xml; Online Archive of California, “Finding Aid to the David P. Barrows papers,
1890-1954,” Bancroft Library, accessed November 22, 2015,
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2f59n67s/.
10
Ibid; "Philippines: United States Rule," U.S. Library of Congress, accessed November 22, 2015,
http://countrystudies.us/philippines/16.htm.
11
David Barrows, A History of the Philippines (New York: American Book Company, 1905), 10.

41
U.S. occupation. Ethnography, with an emphasis on the Philippine connection to African

ancestry through a nationalist and orientalist lens, shaped the perspective of Barrows’

historical work. According to Barrows’ 1905 study, Filipino ancestry was a mixture of

peoples from the surrounding geography that influenced Philippine history and culture.

The close proximity of countries such as Japan, China, and Malaysia provided the Asian

physical features westerners considered standard of the people within the region.

However, as Barrows pointed out, Filipino features vary from skin tone to hair texture

ranging from the light skin of those mixed with centuries of European Spanish blood and

“Oceanic Mongols” to dark-skinned natives he described as “Negritos.”12 Barrows

theorized that these types of Filipinos had inhabited the islands since before the arrival of

Spaniards, in part because of documents left by early Spanish settlers that include

descriptions of the “Negritos.” Although Barrows admitted that he did not discover any

written proof concerning ancient people from Africa migrating to the islands, he did not

dismiss the idea. He believed these people to be of the same ancestry as Africans based

on their similar physical features and their alleged lack of evolution.13

Barrows’ research on Filipino ethnography expanded in his 1910 work, The

Negritos and Allied Types in the Philippines. His second book was a physical study of

Filipinos’ ethnic connections to Malaysia as well as Indonesia and the “mixing of blood”

resulting from Spanish and other Asiatic influence. Barrows insisted on the prevalence of

“Negrito” blood within all the Filipino classes—specifically in those residing in

mountainous regions and in native tribes—and his assertions marked the beginning of

12
Barrows, A History of the Philippines, 28.
13
Ibid., 11-14 and 30.

42
race studies in Philippine history.14 According to Barrows’ research, tribes of Negritos

escaped to various mountain areas of the Philippines as more Spaniards arrived and

increased the size of their colonies throughout the islands. Barrows spent nine years

traveling to several isolated mountain areas and used various men and women of the

tribal population and culture as sources for his work. Barrows employed the methods of

French anthropologists and physician Paul Topinard in his ethnographic surveys to

evaluate what he believed was “Negro blood.”15 The “Topinard method of study” used

scientific theories committed to proving the superiority of men with European lineage.

Methods of study include “the nasal index,” a method of examination that classified one’s

ethnicity based on the ratio of the bridge of a nose to its height.16 Following Topinard’s

research procedures, Barrows measured various parts of the bodies of tribesmen and

women such as their head, nose, and arms and compared his findings to people of African

descent. Barrows placed his findings in graphs and separated them through “cephalic”

(cranial) and “nasal” indexes.17 Barrows spent over a decade in the Philippines collecting

data and returned to the U.S. in 1919. He later served as president of the University of

California, where he also lectured about his ethnographic study in the Philippines.18

Scientific racism supported by ethnographic research prevailed during the early

twentieth century through various levels of American scholarship with the rising

popularity of science in American society. It provided a conventional understanding of

western social hierarchy through race, especially when it concerned the validation of

14
David P. Barrows, The Negritos and Allied Types in the Philippines, 358-359.
15
Ibid.
16
Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Race and Racism (Lanham, MD: Rowman Altamira, 2006), 139-140.
17
Barrows, The Negritos, 359-361.
18
“Barrows, David P. (David Prescott), 1873-1954,” National Endowment for Humanities.

43
American expansion to countries like the Philippines. Racial propaganda concerning the

acquisition of the Philippines, was strengthened by ethnographical research conducted by

American historians such as Barrows’ A History of the Philippines and The Negritos and

Allied Types in the Philippines. These works supported the ideology of Manifest Destiny

and reinforced racial mistrust and prejudice within the United States. The emerging

scientific racism that justified the clear subjugation of Filipinos was built on the existing

racism and ideas about social hierarchy already strongly entrenched within the United

States. During the events of the Philippine-American War, from the late nineteenth

century to the turn of the twentieth century, western society saw an intense decade of

racism and racial divide in post-Reconstruction America. The introduction of Jim Crow

Laws, segregation, and mass lynchings relegated African Americans in the South to a

second-class status, while in the North, mass xenophobia prompted U.S. government

immigration restrictions and emphasized the enforced racial hierarchy of the time.19

The notion of white

supremacy, based on the

findings of scientific racism,

also appeared in popular

media, further discouraging

disregard for immigrants and

African Americans. Figure 1

Illustrations such as H. Strickland Constable’s 1899 “Ireland from One or Two Neglected

19
Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2001), Introduction; Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy,
and the Canon," Constitutional Commentary 17, (2000), 12-27.

44
Points of View” (figure 1) published in the popular and influential American political

magazine, Harper’s Weekly, presented a side profile of three men described from left to

right as: “Irish Iberian,” “Anglo-Teutonic,” and “Negro.” The illustration included the

text:

The Iberians are believed to have been originally an African race…They came to
Ireland and mixed with the natives of the South and West, who themselves are
supposed to have been of low type and descendants of savages of the Stone Age,
who, in consequence of isolation from the rest of the world, had never been out-
competed in the healthy struggle of life, and thus made way, according to the laws
of nature, for superior races.20

The “Anglo-Teutonic” man, with his long-elongated nose and fair features, was

comparatively placed in the middle between the “Irish Iberian” and the “Negro.” The

illustration depicts the latter two men as having the same features, and therefore,

according to the accompanying text, the same genetic background. Cartoons and

illustrations, such as Constable’s “Ireland from One or Two Neglected Points of View,”

became a popular aspect of political satire at the turn of the twentieth century. The

emergence of American humor magazines such as Puck and its rival, Judge, provided the

public with weekly illustrative humor and political satire based on the current events of

the time.21 Comedy and entertainment may have been the magazines’ implemented

mission, but the presentation of the subject matter reinforced and contributed to existing

racial prejudices.

20
H. Strickland Constable, “Ireland from One or Two Neglected Points of View,” illustration,
published by Harper’s Weekly, 1899, as seen on George Bornstein, Material Modernism: The Politics of the
Page (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 146.
21
“Puck,” United States Senate, accessed November 23, 2015,
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/puck/puck_intro.htm; “Guide to the Samuel Halperin Puck and
Judge Cartoon Collection,” Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The
George Washington University, accessed November 23, 2015, https://library.gwu.edu/ead/ms2121.xml.

45
 Political propaganda in cartoons and illustrations aided in the retention of the

United States’ racial order, which supported the U.S. government agenda to popularize

Manifest Destiny. The history of McKinley’s relationship with the Philippines can be

described as complicated at best. His presidency led to one of the first U.S. ventures in

foreign land acquisition and sovereignty. Scholars have perceived the initial actions of

McKinley towards the Philippines as a “chivalrous crusade to redeem American honor”

after the Spanish allegedly sunk the U.S. battleship, the Maine.22

The U.S. war against Spain involved the colonized peoples of the Philippine

archipelago, who were simultaneously fighting with Spain for their independence when

Commodore George Dewey sank the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. On August 13, 1898,

reinforcements sent by President McKinley seized the city of Manila from Spain, while

Filipino revolutionaries initiated positions of attack within the outskirts of the city, an

event historically known as the Battle of Manila.23 The battle, sometimes called the Mock

Battle of Manila, was a premeditated conflict by both the U.S. and Spanish generals to

keep the city from falling to advancing Philippine Revolutionaries led by Emilio

Aguinaldo. The plan led to the U.S. victory against Spain.

The Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10, 1898, approved of the U.S.

occupation of Cuba as well as the annexation of the former Spanish colonies of Puerto

Rico, Guam, and Philippines, providing the U.S. with its first overseas empire.24 The

Philippines was ceded to the U.S. for twenty million dollars, and McKinley proceeded to

22
Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the
Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 5 and 133.
23
“The Evolution of Manila,” Republic of Philippines Presidential Museum and Library, last
modified 2013, accessed November 6, 2015, http://malacanang.gov.ph/75830-the-evolution-of-manila/
24
“Treaty of Peace Between the United States and Spain; December 10, 1898;” Teodoro A.
Agoncillo and Oscar M. Alfonso, History of the Filipino People, 194-195.

46
lay claim to the islands with the “earnest wish and paramount aim…to win the

confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines.” McKinley

proclaimed a “Benevolent Assimilation,” the official proclamation of terms and

occupation by the U.S., and assured the Philippine people the “full measure of individual

rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples” with emphasis on democracy so

that the people might learn to govern themselves.25 In the United States, McKinley was

celebrated as well as attacked for his acquisition of foreign lands. Magazines and

newspapers published political satires in forms of cartoons and illustrations that criticized

the patriotic ideology of Manifest Destiny used to justify American foreign relations.

The McKinley era’s vision of Manifest Destiny, led by race, religion, and the U.S.

sense of exceptionalism, can be seen in the propaganda of the time. McKinley and his

advisors believed that their actions towards the acquisition of the Philippines honored the

American notions of the advancement of freedom and expansion of Christianity.

McKinley did not initially wish to obtain the Philippines due to the costs required in

occupying a nation oceans away, but he believed that annexing the nation was “a gift

from the gods.” Under Manifest Destiny, he reasoned that support for American

expansion was led by God, who provided him with four crucial reasons to retain the

Philippines under U.S. rule:

(1) That we could not give them back to Spain—that would be cowardly and
dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany—our
commercial rivals in the Orient—that would be bad business and discreditable;
(3) that we could not leave them to themselves—they were unfit for self-
government—and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse
than Spain’s was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them
all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and

25
“The Philippine American War: McKinley’s Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation, December
21, 1898,” The Philippine American War Documents, MSC Institute of Technology, accessed November 4,
2015, http://filipino.biz.ph/history/benevolent.html.

47
 by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom
Christ also died.26

McKinley also received pressure from his own administration and fellow politicians to

annex the islands. Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana was one of the many politicians

that supported U.S. expansion with the advocacy of Manifest Destiny. When asked about

the Philippine question, Beveridge stated “of all our race [God] has marked the American

people as his chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the

divine mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the

happiness possible to man.”27

The McKinley administration used popular media and issues of the time to

express U.S. relations to the public as well as rally support. Pictures that depicted the

Philippines, a country that was completely foreign to United States citizens, as a nation

full of “barbaric” and “savage” people in need of western Christianization were

illustrated in various magazines and newspapers. Filipinos were consistently portrayed in

satirical cartoons and lithographs with “black-African” features and in the form of

children. Political illustrator Christopher L. Bartholomew featured many of these

“savage” characteristics in his works that were published in newspapers like the

Minnesota Tribune, one of the prime daily newsprints for the state at the time.

Illustrations such as “Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines celebrate the Independence Day

of the United States” (figure 2) depicted the three nations holding hands and celebrating

26
General James Rusling, “Interview with President William McKinley,” The Christian Advocate 22
January 17, 1903, edited by Daniel Schirmer and Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, reprinted in The Philippines
Reader (Boston: South End Press, 1987), 22–23.
27
Albert J. Beveridge, “In support of an American empire on January 9, 1900,” Congressional
Record, 56 Cong., 1st Sess.: 704-712.

48
the anniversary of United States independence.28 Their hands are held together, implying

that the countries were united and in support of the U.S. government, as they skipped

along and proudly waved U.S. flags. This was a way for the government to portray that

these countries wanted and were grateful to be imperialized. The people were drawn the

way United States citizens perceived them, with

Hawaii and the Philippines in grass skirts and

“Negro” features. The figure in the middle

represents Cuba in western clothing, indicating

its closer connections to western values. The

features of the Cuban were portrayed as an

“evolved” version of its Philippine and

Hawaiian counterparts, whereas the latter two

have darker and more “savage” features. The

Figure 2
Cuban also displayed a less broad nose and

thinner lips. The three figures were shown as children and were barefoot— signifying the

need for “adult supervision” in governing their nation since, like children and according

to the illustration, the people of these nations exemplified irresponsibility and

foolishness.

The notion of the United States as an adult “father figure” or educator was

popular within newspapers and magazines that advocated Manifest Destiny. Judge, one

of the weekly United States magazine that published satire and propaganda from 1881 to

28
Charles L. Bartholomew, “Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines celebrate the Independence Day of
the United States,” cartoon, published by Minneapolis: Journal Printing Company, 1898, The Asia-Pacific
Journal 11, No. 1 (October 7, 2013), accessed November 4, 2015, http://www.globalresearch.ca/selling-
empire-american-propaganda-and-war-in-the-philippines/5355055.

49
1947, depicted a cartoon titled “The Filipino’s First Bath” (figure 3) on the magazine’s

June 10, 1899, cover.29 McKinley was depicted holding a brush on one hand and a baby

“savage” on another, over a body of water

labeled “civilization.” The baby was drawn

with dark complexion, stark naked except for

tribal jewelry, and holding a spear. As

McKinley gave this baby “savage” a bath, he

exclaimed, “Oh, you dirty boy!” In the

background, two older children, labeled Cuba

and Philippines, eagerly gathered their new

western clothing after their alleged bath in the

water of civilization.30 This image highlights

McKinley’s call for Benevolent Assimilation

Figure 3
and goal of Manifest Destiny, where he genuinely believed in the democratic and moral

standing of his administration’s imperialist agenda. McKinley was adamant in his beliefs

that the U.S. had a divine responsibility in civilizing “savages.” The U.S. government,

specifically those within the Philippine Commission, U.S. led governing bodies within

the islands appointed by the president, believed that educating nations in western

democracy was an American moral obligation that would benefit the people within

imperialized nations like Philippines and Cuba.

29
George Washington University, “Guide to the Samuel Halperin Puck and Judge Cartoon
Collection, 1879-1903,” Collection Number MS2121, last modified 2015, accessed November 13, 2015,
http://library.gwu.edu/ead/ms2121.xml; Grant Hamilton, “The Filipino's First Bath,” Judge, 1899,
published by New York: The Forbidden Book: The Philippine American War in Political Cartoons, JMU
Omeka, accessed November 13, 2015, https://omeka.jmu.edu/main/items/show/3271.
30
Grant Hamilton, “The Filipino's First Bath.”

50
 Louis Dalrymple’s 1899 chromolithograph, titled “School Begins,” (figure 4)

portrays the United States, in the form of Uncle Sam, as the world educator of self-

government.31 Uncle Sam was illustrated towering over all the students in the classroom

with a book titled U.S. First Lessons in Self-Government on his desk. Four students

labeled "Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii, [and] Philippines" sat in the front—drawn, again, as

children with dark complexion and in western clothing, except they lacked shoes. The

children were drawn to look infuriated, uninterested, or afraid. The caption states:

Uncle Sam (to his new class in

Civilization) Now, children, you've
got to learn these lessons whether
you want to or not! But just take a
look at the class ahead of you, and
remember that, in a little while,
you will feel as glad to be here as
they are!32

This caption insinuates that the

Figure 4 people of these imperialized

nations may not desire the presence of the U.S., but Americans who believed in

“Benevolent Assimilation” adamantly defended their actions as good for these people.

Uncle Sam, in this illustration, indicated other nations/people that the U.S. had

imperialized with emphasis on their “gladness.” Behind the front row, students were

drawn in full westernized clothing (including shoes) and with mostly lighter skin. They

were still illustrated as children, albeit they seem older than the students at front, and sat

holding books labeled "California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, [and] Alaska.” The

31
Louis Dalrymple, “School Begins,” chromolithograph, published by New York: Keppler and
Schwarzmann, January 25, 1899, Library of Congress, accessed November 13, 2015,
http://www.loc.gov/item/2012647459/.
32
Ibid.

51
lithograph reflects on the social and racial philosophies of the time, the idea that western

education assisted in the human evolution of imperialized nations.

The rigid social hierarchy within American society was strengthened by the

amalgamation of religion and scientific racism, which supported the God-given “white

superiority” practiced by those of imperial nations. An argument supported by politicians

to advocate the objectives of Manifest Destiny and imperialism as well as occupation of

the Philippines. American cartoonist, Udo J. Keppler, published a chromolithograph of

Chauncey M. Depew and Robert G. Ingersoll depicting their agreement on the U.S.

presence within the Philippines titled “For once, science

and religion agree” (figure 5).33 Depew, a Republican

senator from New York, believed that God blessed the

westernization of the Philippines and was “clothed with

the powers, the authority and the beneficence of

representative institutions [the United States].”34

Ingersoll, on the other hand was a political leader of the

Golden Age of Free Thought, who believed human

existence as well as ideas and beliefs could be explained Figure 5

through science and logical reason. Also known as “The Great Agnostic,” Ingersoll

supported the U.S. acquisition of the Philippines in the hopes of expanding the American

flag as the “first and only republic that ever existed” based on the Social Darwinian belief

33
Udo J. Keppler, “For once, science and religion agree,” chromolithograph, published by New
York: Keppler & Schwarzmann, September 7, 1898, Library of Congress, accessed November 14, 2015,
http://www.loc.gov/item/2012647468/.
34
Ibid.; Chauncey Michael Depew, “At the Banquet of the American Chamber of Commerce, at
Paris, July 4, 1902,” in Speeches of Chauncey M. Depew, April 1902-November 1904 (New York: Astor,
Lenox, and Tiller Foundations, 1905), 32.

52
of survival of the “physical fittest.”35 The illustration presents the merging of two

philosophies as the two men embrace each other and point to aspects of their own

political speeches that justified American imperialism in the Philippines. Although the

speeches were delivered in two separate years (Ingersoll’s was from 1899 and Depew’s

was from 1902) their main arguments provided the same melding of both religion and

science. In a society that built a social hierarchy drenched in prejudice and

discrimination, leaders like Ingersoll and Dephew provided American society with a

convincing argument for U.S. imperialism and the consequent possession of the

Philippines.

Social Darwinism and the popularity of eugenics rose from society’s interest in

the history of human ethnic backgrounds in an age when Darwin’s theory of evolution

was thought to pit those ethnicities in competition with one another for survival. The

desire to seek validation of the existing social hierarchy – applying social Darwinism to

class as well as ethnicity – grew as quickly as the popularity of scientific racism.

American society, as a whole, acquired justification of racial and class prejudice through

science.

From the late nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century, when

imperialism expanded, exhibitions of the exotic attracted nearly one hundred million

people to international expositions or World Fairs.36 Exhibits of foreign villages from

conquered nations, later dubbed derogatorily “human zoos,” became a common and

35
“Robert Green Ingersoll, The Great Agnostic, (August 11, 1833- July 21, 1899),” last modified
2015, accessed November 14, 2015, http://www.robertgreeningersoll.org/robert-green-ingersoll/; Robert
G. Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, edited by Herman E. Kittredge, vol. 13 (New York: Dresden
Publishing Company, 1912), 243 and 507.
36
Robert W. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International
Expositions, 1876-1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 2.

53
central attraction in world’s fairs held in major cities of Europe such as Paris and London

and in the United States.37 International expositions provided physical evidence for the

growing ideas concerning human evolution and defined what scientific racism considered

“primitive.” The public exhibits of people from the colonized world were used to support

imperialism abroad, to legitimate racial hierarchy, and emphasize the growth and

expansion in the United States’ case, of “American Progress.” McKinley described the

expositions as “timekeepers of progress” during the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo

in 1901.38 McKinley believed expositions to be a necessary advertisement for the

expansion of American markets and the acquisition of natural resources from colonized

nations, such as the Philippines. The United States should be working to “impose

American civilization overseas” in the same fashion and with the same success as the

British achieved in India, and expositions were a good way of displaying the benefits of

the imposition.39

Eugenics and ethnographic studies, such as those conducted and written about by

David P. Barrows, also influenced the creation and design of “human zoos” in U.S.

international expositions such as the

Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904.

The largest exhibit at the fair was the

Philippine Exposition that consisted of

almost one hundred structures ranging

Figure 6
from native huts to Spanish influenced

37
“The Human Zoo: Science’s Dirty Secret,” Race Science Last Taboo, 2009, accessed November
1, 2015, http://www.usd116.org/profdev/ahtc/lessons/goerssfel10/lessons/lesson3/thehumanzoo.pdf
38
Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 4.
39
Ibid.

54
buildings. The exhibit was presented as a “Walled City” with a “Bridge of Spain”

entrance that mimicked the stone walls that surrounded the city of Manila (figure 6).40 It

was divided into various villages that portrayed the different types of Filipinos: the

Visayans and Tagalogs (figure 7) of the “high and more intelligent class of natives,” the

Morros who were “followers of Mohammed,” the Bagobo

“savages,” and the “monkey-like” Negritos and Igorots.41

The Tagalogs were displayed to be somewhat assimilated

into western culture due to Spanish colonization. In the

exhibit, Tagalogs were found in school buildings that

stressed American education with students and teachers

dressed in western

attire of Spanish
Figure 7
influence.42

The exposition also displayed Morros,

Islamic barefooted warriors in tribal vests and pants.

The Morros tribe was chosen to demonstrate the

religious divide in the Philippine archipelago that

persisted despite centuries of colonization under

Catholic Spain (figure 8).43

Figure 8

40
1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, The Philippine Exposition Booklet (digitized by HumanZoos.net), 2-
4, last modified 2015, accessed November 27, 2015, http://www.humanzoos.net/?page_id=175.
41
Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 171.
42
1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, The Philippine Exposition Booklet, 8.
43
Ibid., 15.

55
 Exhibition of the Tagalogs accentuated the possibility of westernization for

Filipinos with the Tagalogs’ alleged desire to acquire American education and acceptance

of western attire. Morros experimented with wearing western clothing, and thus

represented the transition stage of the Filipino “savage” to the more evolved Filipino

Tagalogs. The more “primitive” type of Filipinos, such as the Igorots, drew the most

visitors during the Philippine Exposition. The tribes’ copper skin and worship of “natural

spirits” attracted many visitors to the exposition’s Igorot Village, built with huts made up

of Nipa leaves. Warriors much like the Morros,

Igorots were depicted to be more “savage” in their

lack of clothing with hand-made spears as well as

wooden carved shields (figure 9).44 According to the

1904 Philippine Exposition Booklet provided to the

fair visitors, eugenicists and other scientists of the

time declared that, with proper western training,

Igorots were “susceptible to high state development”

and were capable of understanding “American

advancements.”45 The exhibit planners may have

also been influenced by earlier exhibitions that Figure 9

promoted eugenics and racial divide, such as Carl Hagenbeck’s 1874 exhibit of the

Samoan and Sami people (Laplanders) in Germany. Hagenbeck built a “purely natural”

village for visitors to present the Samoan and Sami people in their primitive states. The

Parisian World Fairs of 1878 and 1889 exhibited an entire “Negro Village” with a

44
Ibid., 33.
45
Ibid., 26.

56
complete ethnographic display of simulated villages of non-whites such as Asians and

Africans.46 The villages within these various international expositions were created as

evidence and case studies for “scientific” arguments of the “barbarisms” of non-Western

civilizations, which further manifested racist ideas. These exhibitions provided insight

into how, through the turn of the twentieth century, society conceptualized race and

ethnicity during the time of land expansion and racial tensions.

World’s Fairs touted the expansion of nations and the imperialization of the

Philippines provided the U.S. a spot in the twentieth century Race of Nations. Some

printed media illustrated countries such as Great Britain as being successful at

colonization and imperialism, and urged the United States to expand under the notion of

“The Duty of Great Nations.” As seen in an 1899

chromolithograph of the same title (figure 10), Uncle

Sam is consoled by his British equivalent, John Bull,

who stated:

Don't get discouraged, Sam! I've had just that

sort of trouble for three hundred years, while I've
been building this monument. It has cost many
human lives and much money, but the whole
world, as well as England, has benefited by it.47

Uncle Sam looks worriedly at storm clouds labeled

“Philippine Complications” as John Bull points at a large

monument marked “Civilization” with various carved Figure 10

figures labeled "Guiana, Australia, Ireland, Scotland, India, Canada, Egypt, S. Africa,

46
Ibid., 56, 61, and 66; “The Human Zoo: Science’s Dirty Secret.”
47
Udo J. Keppler, “The Duty of Great Nations,” chromolithograph, published by New York:
Keppler & Schwarzmann, February 15, 1899, Library of Congress, accessed November 14, 2015,
http://www.loc.gov/item/2012647397/.

57
[and] W. Indies” in silhouettes that resemble the people and culture of the portrayed

countries. At the top of the monument is a golden “Britannia,” the English emblem for

British imperial power seated by the British lion.

Britain’s success in imperialism led to a relationship with the U.S., where

American imperialists seek the “advice, approval, and model” of British imperial rule.

U.S. imperial officials studied colonial developments of British empires and modified

these elements into American imperial policy.48 The illustration showed the international

power that nations such as Britain acquired through imperialism as well as the notion that

Manifest Destiny had an international equivalent.

The idea of “Western Duty” to civilize the rest of the world extended to the

literary media of the time. One of the most influential British writers, Rudyard Kipling,

penned a poem whose title became a euphemism for western expansionism. Published in

McClure’s Magazine at the same time the United States’ war against the First Philippine

Republic began, Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” was written as a possibly satirical

appeal to the United States to assume the task of colonizing the Philippines for western

culture after the Spanish-American War.49 The poem was originally published with the

subtitle “The United States and the Philippine Islands.” Kipling directly spoke to western

nations with the opening lines, “Take up the White Man’s Burden—“emphasizing the

imperialist concept of “Western Duty.” Kipling also highlighted the presence of various

cultural and social themes that existed within the realm of twentieth century imperialism

such as eugenics, racism, and western Anglo-Saxon superiority. The poet called to send

48
Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 11.
49
Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden.”

58
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50
Ibid.
51
Ibid.
52
Victor Gillam, “The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling),” cartoon, Judge, April
1, 1899, CGACGA - The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in “Civilization and

59
 Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah slowly) to the light:
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night?”53

The climb began with “barbarism” and was accompanied with “oppression, ignorance,

superstition, vice, brutality, slavery, cannibalism, cruelty, and ignorance.” A reflection of

society’s prejudiced ideas regarding the imperialized people’s identities, the cartoon

depicts “barbaric” and “savage” characteristics of the people. The illustration is

consistent in depicting how westernization physically evolved people of imperialized

lands from barbarism. John Bull, whose empire has had more experience in the world of

imperialism, was depicted as carrying people of a more civilized appearance, such as

China and India. Britain’s colonized people were drawn looking ahead towards

civilization and laughing at the “primitive” people on Uncle Sam’s back. Uncle Sam was

drawn carrying a basket of people labeled “Porto Rico, Hawaii, Samoa, Cuba, [and]

Philippines,” who looked more savage and barbaric in comparison to the people in John

Bull’s basket. The physical features of the people who ride on Uncle Sam’s back are

more primitive and less human.54 The cartoon emphasized that the “burden” of the white

men were the barbaric and ignorant people of these non-western nations, who were not

white or Christian and lacked knowledge of western values.

Barbarism” by Ellen Sebring, accessed November 14, 2015,

http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/civilization_and_barbarism/cb_essay02.html.
53
Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden.”
54
Gillam, “The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling).”

60
 U.S. perception of the Filipino identity was constructed to support the imperialist

agenda of the United States. The complete understanding of the culture and background

of the people whose nation they were trying to imperialize was deemed insignificant, as

long as it was definable by the standards of western imperial nations. Filipino identity

was controlled and manipulated by western science and media to validate the U.S. hold

within the Asian archipelago as well as exhibit U.S. views on racial identity that would

filter to the Philippine islands.

61
Chapter Three

The Black Man’s Burden: Buffalo Soldiers and the Question of Allegiance

I was struck by a little [Filipino] boy asked me, which ran about this way: “Why
does the American Negro come…to fight us when we are much a friend to him
and have not done anything to him. He is all the same as me and me all the same
as you. Why don’t you fight those people in America who burn Negroes, that
make a beast of you, that took the child from its mother’s side and sold it? –
William Simms, 19011

The blatant demonstration of racism against Filipinos did not go unnoticed by

African American soldiers of the segregated black infantry regiments during the

Philippine-American war. The African American community within the United States

generally opposed U.S. expansion and recognized the racial implications in the U.S.

imperialist agenda. Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden,” a poem that became a

euphemism for western expansionism, received a poetic reply called “The Black Man’s

Burden.” The poem, written by African American clergyman and editor of the Christian

Recorder, H.T. Johnson, argued that American imperialism extended white America’s

demeaning of people of color across a metaphorical bridge past U.S. soil to the rest of the

non-white world.2 African American community leaders emphasized the reasons African

Americans opposed U.S. imperialism. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the African American

journalist known for exposing the horrors of lynching in the South, believed that “all

1
A 1901 letter from William Simms, an African American soldier, sent from Bong-a-Bong,
Philippines. The letter was published in the Indianapolis Freeman on May 11, 1901, the first illustrated
African American Newspaper.
2
H.T. Johnson, “The Black Man’s Burden,” Voice of Missions 8, no. 1 (Atlanta: April 1899),
reprinted in the Cleveland Gazette, April 8, 1899, presented by the National Humanities Center, Research
Triangle Park, from the online collection The African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920, also
accessible through Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 1898–
1903 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 183–184.

62
Negroes should oppose expansion until the government was able to protect the Negro at

home” from white mob violence.3

During the events of the Philippine-American War at the turn of the twentieth

century, the United States experienced a decade of escalating racism and widening racial

divide. Mass xenophobia led to the exclusion of immigrants and support for immigration

reform. The subjugation of African Americans in the South and Midwest was cemented

with the introduction of Jim Crow Laws and mass lynchings. Two intellectuals of the

black community led different philosophies regarding the development of the African

American community. Booker T. Washington, a prominent leader and educator within

the black community at the turn of the twentieth century, was born a slave and faced

hostilities from white supremacists throughout his life. W.E.B. DuBois was born a free

black in Massachusetts and grew up in a primarily white community. Washington’s and

DuBois’s different backgrounds were emphasized in their ideologies—while Washington

vied for technical education for the black community as a whole, DuBois advocated to

provide education for the black community’s most intelligent individuals. Washington

believed that the black community could progress together if individuals acquired basic

skills that would benefit society, a plan he called “industrial education,” even if it meant

accepting the practices of Jim Crow Laws.4 DuBois believed that racial advancement

would be achieved through the college education of the community’s top ten percent of

3
"Ida Wells-Bartlett Against Expansion,” Cleveland Gazette, January 7, 1899, from an account of
a meeting of the Afro-American Council, Washington D.C.; Nerissa S. Balce, “Filipino Bodies, Lynching, and
the Language of Empire,” Positively No Filipinos Allowed, edited by Antonio T. Tiongson, Edgardo V.
Gutierrez, and Ricardo V. Gutierrez (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 54-55.
4
Booker T. Washington, “The 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech,” The Booker T. Washington
Papers, edited by Louis R. Harlan, vol. 3, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), 583–587, Raymond W.
Smock, Booker T. Washington: Black Leadership in the Age of Jim Crow (Chicago: The Library of African-
American Biography, 2009), 3-4, 52.

63
black Americans. These people would be trained as leaders and to be black professionals

such as educators, ministers, and lawyers.5 At the same time, white intellectuals were

fascinated with social Darwinist conceptions of “white supremacy,” based on the findings

of scientific racism.

African Americans recognized what American expansion could do to Filipino

society and newly constructed Filipino identity. However, there were African Americans

who found in the war an opportunity to serve the U.S. as citizens.6 The U.S. sent four

African American regiments to the Asian archipelago during the Philippine-American

War.7 In the midst of the conflict, several members of the African American regiments

defected from the United States military to join the ranks of Philippine Revolutionary

leader Emilio Aguinaldo. The most well known defector was David Fagen of the Twenty-

fourth Infantry Regiment. The actions of these soldiers reflected a common struggle

shared with the Filipinos: disenfranchisement caused by the ideals of “white supremacy.”

The soldiers’ desertion of their duties brings up a number of historical questions about

citizenship, identity and how wartime creates conflicts of identity, and concepts of

nationality and allegiance. From the African American soldiers to U.S. imperialists and

Filipino nationalists, national allegiance was a consequence of personal affinities and

beliefs based on the racial and ethnic communities with which each individual identified.

5
Ibid., 168-169.
6
Willard B. Gatewood, Black Americans and the Quest for Empire, 1898-1903 (Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 1975), 8-9.
7
Robert Mullen, Blacks in America’s Wars: the Shift in Attitudes from the Revolutionary War to
Vietnam (New York: Monad Press, 1973), 35.

64
 African Americans participated in all U.S. domestic and foreign wars, as far back

as the American Revolution.8 African Americans’ contribution to the U.S. militia and

formal army were often restricted, however. African Americans still viewed military

involvement as evidence of citizenship and indication of national loyalty. The first

sanctioned all-black regiment originated in the midst of the Civil War, formed after

Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and was created in Massachusetts in

January 1863. Promoted by Boston abolitionists and approved by the Massachusetts

governor, John A. Andrew, the 54th Massachusetts regiment recruited from all over the

North and Canada.9 On May 22, 1863, the United States Department of War issued

General Order 143. The action established the Bureau of Colored Troops to facilitate the

recruitment, creation, and "all matters relating to the organization of colored troops."10

African Americans from all states of the Union were recruited to form various regiments,

such as combat engineers, infantry, cavalry, light and heavy artillery units, and units such

as the 54th Massachusetts were incorporated into the United States Colored Troops.11

On July 28, 1866, during the first session of the 39th Congress, the Senate and

House of Representatives passed the Army Reorganization Act of 1866.12 The act set

8
Gail Buckley, American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert
Storm (New York: Random House, 2001), 3; William Cooper Nell, with an introduction by Harriet Beecher
Stowe, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution: With Sketches of Several Distinguished Persons to
which is added a Brief Survey of the Condition and Prospects of Colored Americans (Boston: J.B. Yerrinton
and Son Printers, 1855), 128-130.
9
Buckley, American Patriots, 89.
10
Our Documents, “War Department General Order 143: Creation of the U.S. Colored Troops
(1863),” May 22, 1863, accessed March 31, 2016,
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc_large_image.php?flash=true&doc=35.
11
Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (1955; New
York: W.W. Norton, 1965), 129-131; James M. McPherson, The Negro's Civil War (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1965), 170.
12
Trevor K. Plante, “Researching African Americans in the U.S. Army, 1866-1890 Buffalo Soldiers
and Black Infantrymen,” Prologue 33, no. 1 (Spring 2001), accessed April 1, 2016,
http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/spring/buffalo-soldiers.html.

65
terms of enlistments as well as the reorganization of the military’s forty-five infantries

and ten cavalry regiments. Congress ordered that four infantry and two cavalry regiments

must be composed of African Americans.13 The introduction of these regiments laid the

foundation of all-African American regiments dubbed “Buffalo Soldiers” by Native

Americans due the soldiers’ skin color and their “dark kinky hair” much like the fur of

buffalos.14 This term was mostly given as a sign of respect. The Native Americans

viewed buffalos to be proud and formidable by nature, much like the African American

soldiers during the U.S. western land expansions.15

All four regiments of the Buffalo Soldiers were called-to arms during the Spanish

American War, the first official war since the founding of the new U.S. regiments. On

February 15, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine was bombed; 260 American sailors were

killed, twenty-two of them black.16 The African American 25th infantry was the first U.S.

unit ordered to Tampa, Florida, the decided port of embarkation to war. That Buffalo

Soldiers were among the 16,000 men sent to fight the Spanish in various points of the

country’s empire, from Cuba to the Philippines.17

At a time when African Americans faced repression and discrimination, the

Buffalo Soldiers took pride in their service to country. Soldiers wrote letters expressing

13
Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Army, edited by Jerold E. Brown (Wesport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 2001), 39-40; A Buffalo Soldier, “Thirty-Ninth Congress, Sess. I, CH. 299 (1866),” History of the
Regiment: Army Reorganization Act of 1866, accessed April 1, 2016,
http://www.abuffalosoldier.com/lrgatrf.1.gif.
14
Plante, “Researching African Americans in the U.S. Army, 1866-1890 Buffalo Soldiers and Black
Infantrymen”; Buckley, American Patriots, 110-111; Mullen, Blacks in America’s Wars: the Shift in
Attitudes from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam, 34.
15
Ibid.; “The Name Buffalo Soldier,” Buffalo Soldiers: 10th Cavalry, Co. G of Northern California,
accessed May 12, 2016, http://www.buffalosoldier.us/history.html.
16
Buckley, American Patriots, 139; Rebecca Livingston, “Sailors, Soldiers, and Marines of the
Spanish-American War: The Legacy of USS Maine,” Prologue 30, no. 1 (Spring 1998), accessed April 1,
2016, http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/spring/spanish-american-war-1.html.
17
Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “Smoked Yankees” and the Struggle for Empire: Letters from Negro
Soldiers, 1898-1902 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 40.

66
their pride in their accomplishment on the battlefield, and the fear they would convey to

their enemies as “standard-bearers of American liberty and freedom.”18 M.W. Saddler, an

African American sergeant of the Twenty-fifth infantry, wrote:

The Spaniards call us “Negretter Solados” and say there is no use shooting at us,
for steel and powder will not stop us. We only hope our brethren will come over
and help us to show to the world what true patriotism is…all we need is leaders of
our own race to make war records, so that their names may go down in history as
a reward for the price of our precious blood.19

Despite Saddler’s pride for his regiment’s contribution in “the compelling

surrender of Santiago,” the African American sergeant wrote that he was distressed over

fighting Cuban and Spanish soldiers that looked like him, people that were of his “own

hue and color.” However, Saddler insisted that American patriotism was imbedded in the

“fitness,” “coolness and bravery” of the African American soldier. Implying that no

matter the “hue and color” of their adversary, Saddler believed that African American

soldiers would stand firm in their American duty and patriotism.20 This sense of

nationalism and racial pride was highlighted when John Jordan, a black soldier aboard

Commodore George Dewey’s flagship the USS Olympia, fired the first American shot

during the Battle of Manila Bay that led to U.S. victory during the Spanish American

War.21

The Philippine-American War lasted until 1902, and African American soldiers of

the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry were on Philippine soil as early as July

1899. Nearly 70,000 U.S. soldiers participated in the advancement of the U.S. imperialist

18
Ibid., 46.
19
M.W. Saddler, Twenty-fifth Infantry, Santiago, July 30, 1898 as found in Gatewood, Jr.,
“Smoked Yankees” and the Struggle for Empire, 55-57.
20
Ibid.
21
Buckley, American Patriots, 139-140; Michael Lee Lanning, The African-American Soldier: From
Crispus Attucks to Colin Powell (New York: Citadel Press, 2004), 92.

67
agenda. By fall 1899, all four regiments of the Buffalo Soldiers were on the archipelago,

followed by two regiments of the recruited black volunteers known as the Forty-eighth

and Forty-ninth Infantry.22 General Robert P. Hughes, Brigadier General and Chief of

Staff of the Eighth Corps, stated that Filipinos viewed African American troops, initially,

with “awe and fear.”23 Yet unlike the white soldiers, African American soldiers were

rarely engaged in full-on combat. Instead, they were used to maintain U.S. control in

captured towns and were responsible for “guarding the lines of communication, interior

guard duty, scouting, escorting supplies…and laying the foundations of civil

government.”24

The presence of African American soldiers in Filipino villages, cities, and towns

allowed for a level of association with the Filipinos and an emerging friendship, based on

the common awareness of skin color. The initial “fear and awe” that Filipinos felt

towards African Americans turned into familiarity and the key observation, as stated in

the Manila Times: “These are not Americanos; they are Negritos…very much like

ourselves, only larger.”25 John W. Galloway of the Twenty-fourth Infantry wrote to the

Richmond Planet, an African American newspaper, on November 16, 1899 from his

location on San Isidro, Philippines. In his letter to the editor, Galloway discussed his own

observations regarding the U.S. imperialist agenda as well as his recorded conversations

22
Annual Reports of the Department of War, 1899-1900, House Document 2, Parts 4-8, 56th
Congress, Session 2; Annual Reports of the Department of War, 1900-1901, House Document 2, Parts 2-5,
57th Congress, Session 1.
23
Robert P. Hughes, testimony in Hearings before the Committee on the Philippines of the United
States Senate, Senate Document 331, Part 1, 57th Congress, Session 1, 647; New York Times, “Major Gen.
R.P. Hughes Dead: Former Commander in Philippines and of Department of California,” October 29, 1909.
24
Ibid., Manila Times, June 29, 1902.
25
Manila Times, June 29, 1902.

68
with local, educated Filipinos and the “affinity of complexion” that existed between

African American soldiers and Filipinos:

The whites have begun to establish their diabolical race hatred in all its home
rancor in Manila, even endeavoring to propagate the phobia among the Spaniards
and Filipinos so as to be sure of the foundation of their supremacy when the civil
rule that must necessarily follow the present military regime, is established.26

Galloway highlighted the introduction of racial concepts to the Filipinos by white

Americans. In a conversation Galloway had with a Filipino physician, Tordorica Santos,

he realized that Filipinos “knew nothing of the different races… under Spanish rule we

[Filipinos] never knew there was a difference between men on account of racial identity.

Our differences were political.”27 According to Santos, white U.S. soldiers warned

Filipinos of the inferiority of African American soldiers in comparison to the whites, but

to never question the African American brutality:

[White U.S. soldiers] began to tell us of the inferiority of the American

blacks…of your brutal natures, your cannibal tendencies. How you rape our
senioritas… Of course, at first we were a little shy of you, after being told of the
difference between you and them; but we studied you, as results have shown.
Between you and him, we look upon you as the angel and him as the devil.28

Awareness of U.S. views on race assisted Filipinos in understanding where the white

U.S. soldiers placed them in their own defined hierarchy of race. “[White soldiers] push

[Filipinos] off the streets, spit at them, call them damned ‘niggers,’ abuse them in all

manner of ways, and connect race hatred with duty, for the colored soldier has none such

for them.”29 Galloway observed the rough treatments of white soldiers towards Filipinos

with the personal conclusion:

26
John W. Galloway, letter to the editor, November 16, 1899, published in the Richmond Planet,
December 30, 1899, as found in Gatewood, Jr., “Smoked Yankees” and the Struggle for Empire, 249-251.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.

69
 The future of the Filipino, I fear, is that of the Negro in the South. Matters are
almost to that condition in Manila now. No one (white) has any scruples as
regards respecting the rights of a Filipino. He is kicked and cuffed at will and he
dare not remonstrate.30

The notion of using military force to subjugate a country that just fought for its

independence from a colonial power, was not lost on African American soldiers. U.S.

soldiers such as Patrick Mason of the Twenty-fourth Infantry struggled with U.S.

justifications for the occupation of the Philippines. On November 19, 1899, he wrote to

the Cleveland Gazette, an African American newspaper, “I have not had any fighting to

do since I have been here and don’t care to do any.”31 Mason “felt sorry” for the Filipino

people and identified with the discrimination they faced under the control of the U.S.

white military:

I don’t believe [the Filipinos] will be justly dealt by. The first thing in the
morning is the “Nigger” and the last thing at night is the “Nigger.” You have no
idea the way these people are treated by the Americans here…the poor whites
don’t believe that anyone has any right to live but the white American, or to enjoy
any rights or privileges that the white man enjoys.32

It was not difficult for African American soldiers to identify with the Filipino struggle for

independence and citizenship. It was a familiar struggle for the African American

community in the States, all for the sake of what American whites believed to be the

“white man’s burden.” Both African Americans and Filipinos, under the hierarchy of

white supremacy, were deemed unworthy of citizenship and independence due to the

color of their skin. The “white man’s burden” became a dramatization of the “Anglo-

Saxon duty” to westernize and “humanize” people of color, but based on the terms of

white society and derived from British writer Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s

30
Ibid.
31
Patrick Mason, letter to the editor, November 19, 1899, published in the Cleveland Gazette,
September 29, 1900, as found in Gatewood, Jr., “Smoked Yankees” and the Struggle for Empire, 257.
32
Ibid.

70
Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” This poem about Anglo-Saxon

society’s obligation to westernize and Christianize the rest of the world was not received

favorably by African American communities. African American writers quickly penned a

reply to Kipling’s work, entitled “The Black Man’s Burden.” There were many variations

of this poem throughout the turn of the twentieth century, the earliest written by African

American clergyman H. T. Johnson:

Pile on the Black Man’s Burden.

'Tis nearest at your door;
Why heed long bleeding Cuba,
or dark Hawaii’s shore?
Hail ye your fearless armies,
Which menace feeble folks
Who fight with clubs and arrows
and brook your rifle’s smoke.
Pile on the Black Man’s Burden
His wail with laughter drown
You’ve sealed the Red Man’s problem,
And will take up the Brown,
In vain ye seek to end it,
With bullets, blood or death
Better by far defend it
With honor’s holy breath.
Pile on the Black Man’s Burden,
His back is broad though sore;
What though the weight oppress him,
He’s borne the like before.
Your Jim-Crow laws and customs,
And fiendish midnight deed.
Though winked at by the nation,
Will someday trouble breed.
Pile on the Black Man’s burden,
At length ‘twill heaven pierce;
Then on you or your children
Will reign God’s judgment fierce.
Your battleships and armies
May weaker ones appall
But God Almighty’s justice
They’ll not disturb at all.33

33
H.T. Johnson, “The Black Man’s Burden.”

71
The poem was published in the African American religious journal, Voice of Mission, in

April 1899 and was reprinted in other publications such as the Cleveland Gazette. It

depicted the mistreatments of various minorities due to the U.S. ideology of Manifest

Destiny, including Native Americans, Cubans, and Filipinos with lines like, “Pile on the

Black Man’s Burden/ His wail with laughter drown/ You’ve sealed the Red Man’s

problem/And will take up the Brown.” From “Red” Native Americans during the U.S.

expansion to the “Brown” people of Cuba and the Philippines, African Americans

recognized the same suppression and prejudice. Johnson wrote, “In vain ye seek to end

it,” indicating the desire of African American soldiers, as well as black communities in

the U.S., to end the exploitation of the “Brown” and “Red” people. Johnson found

particularly bitter irony in that the exploitation of “Brown” people was assigned to

another group of minorities, African Americans, who were also subjugated by the U.S.

racial hierarchy. Johnson fearlessly described the black man’s burden as a weight that

“oppress[ed] him,” highlighting the time’s Jim Crow laws and lynchings. The

Indianapolis Recorder and the Washington Bee, newspapers directed to African

American communities, both argued that American racial prejudice surpassed the U.S.

agenda to Christianize and westernize nations of color.34 Critics believed that the conflict

in the Philippines was more than just a bid for an American empire. A journalist at an

African American newspaper, the Savannah Tribune, concluded that the U.S agenda of

Manifest Destiny was really to “oppress weaker races and rob them of rights and liberty

God has given them.”35

34
Indianapolis Recorder, “Indiana Negroes,” March 4, 1899; Washington Bee, March 11, 1899.
35
Savannah Tribune, March 18, 1899.

72
 Despite the identical acts of suppression by white Americans in both the African

American and Filipino communities, the final lines of Johnson’s “Black Man’s Burden”

highlighted the objective of African American soldiers for fighting in the war—

patriotism and citizenship. “With bullets, blood or death/ Better by far defend it/ With

honor’s holy breath,” stated Johnson’s poem. To some African American soldiers, such

as M.W. Saddler, service during the conflict would enhance black status within American

society.36 In another letter from Saddler to the Indianapolis Freeman dated September

1899, the African American sergeant insisted that the black soldiers’ goal was to enhance

their “standing among American soldiers and add another star to the already brilliant

crown of the Afro-American soldier.”37 Saddler was consistent in his realization that

fellow soldiers struggled to fight people who, like them, were placed in the lower

spectrum of the U.S. racial hierarchy. The African American sergeant of the 25th

regiment was quick “to keep [the soldiers] informed in regards to our arborous orient

duties,” followed by the claim:

Whether it is right to reduce these people [Filipinos] to submission is not a

question for a soldier to decide. Our oath of allegiance knows neither race, color
nor nation, and if such a question should arise, it would be disposed of as one of a
political nature by a soldier. There is one great desire among the colored
soldiers…that is to be represented in the file as well as the ranks…we moisten the
soil with our precious blood, stain the colors with our oozing brains, only to make
an already popular race more famous.38

Saddler’s analysis of the situation for African American soldiers seemed simple:

progress for the African American soldier and the black community was attainable

through the successful execution of their “orient duties.” However, Saddler’s statement

36
Ibid.
37
M.W. Saddler, Twenty-fifth Infantry, Manila, Philippines, September 1899, published in the
Indianapolis Freeman November 18, 1899 as found in Gatewood, Jr., “Smoked Yankees” and the Struggle
for Empire, 247-249.
38
Ibid.

73
that a black soldier’s “oath of allegiance knows neither race, color nor nation” brings

forth the question: what social, cultural, mental or emotional position did the African

American soldier occupy in return for his loyalty to the U.S. cause? If that position was

not defined by “race, color or nation,” did that not position the soldier as a dupe for the

white racists that ran his nation-state and its army? The answer was within Saddler’s

letter itself. Loyalty depended on the personal objective and identity of each African

American. In the case of Saddler, his goal was to paint the African American soldier as

an American patriot far removed from the stereotypes of inferiority built within black

ancestry due to slavery. Ideologies for African American progress, such as Washington’s

and DuBois’, were as divided on foreign land as they were on U.S. soil.

Not all African American soldiers sided with Saddler, especially with the racial

divide created between white soldiers versus blacks. So many African American soldiers

identified with Filipinos, and the opposition of black soldiers to fight against their “little

brown brothers” that the War Department questioned whether to bring African American

soldiers home in 1899.39 One official doubted black soldiers’ ability to exert the U.S.

agenda for “if brought face to face with their colored Filipino cousins could not be made

to fire on them.”40 African American soldiers, despite their service to country, did not

escape discrimination and prejudice from the white soldiers throughout their time in the

Philippines. White soldiers uttered the term “nigger” in a derogatory way enough times

that a common racial identity as people “beneath” whites was understood between

39
Stephen Bonsal, “The Negro Soldier in War and Peace,” North American Review 185 (June
1907): 325.
40
Washington Bee, September 9, 1899 as found in Gatewood, Jr., “Smoked Yankees” and the
Struggle for Empire, 13 and Mullen, Blacks in America’s Wars, 39.

74
Filipinos and African Americans.41 War correspondent Frederick Palmer, who was

stationed in Manila, wrote that any non-white man was included “in a general class called

‘nigger,’ a class beneath our notice, to which, so far as our white soldier is concerned, all

Filipinos belonged.”42 According to Major Cornelius Gardner of the Thirtieth Infantry,

“natives are beginning to understand what the ‘nigger’ means,” since soldiers and U.S.

officers often called “natives ‘niggers’ in their presence.”43

The consistent prejudice against Filipinos made African American soldiers

shoulder the burden of racism that spread across the archipelago with the U.S. takeover.

African Americans, who hoped to advance their race status through service, continued

fighting. However, desertions by both black and white soldiers were not uncommon.

According to Stephen Bonsal, an American journalist and historian stationed in the

Philippines during the war, defection from African American regiments differed from

whites. He considered white deserters to be “lazy and idle” who found military life

“irksome.” White soldiers, Bonsal stated, would only fight alongside Filipino

revolutionaries to “attain the dream of being a wild man in the woods.”44 African

American defectors, on the other hand, “deserted in scores for the purpose of joining the

insurgents…such acts as they are charged with committing are the acts of savages.”45

An estimated fifteen to thirty black soldiers from the four regiments of the

Buffalo Soldiers defected during the Philippine-American War. The actual number of

41
Bonsal, “The Negro Soldier in War and Peace,” North American Review 185 (June 1907): 325.
42
Frederick Palmer, “White Man and Brown Man in the Philippines,” Scribner’s Magazine 27
(January 1900): 81.
43
Hearings before the Committee on the Philippines of the United States Senate, Senate
Document 331, Part 2, 57th Congress, Session 1, 884.
44
Bonsal, “The Negro Soldier in War and Peace,” 325-326; The Encyclopedia of the Spanish
American War and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History, vol. 1: A-L, edited by
Spencer C. Tucker (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2009), 66.
45
Ibid.

75
deserters, along with names, is not readily available for “their names have been

expurgated from ordinary historical accounts.”46 Some actions of African American

deserters were known, including the four defectors from the Ninth Cavalry who actively

fought with the Filipino insurgents, but the only name ever recorded was of David Fagen

of the Twenty-fourth Infantry.47

David Fagen, sometimes spelled “Fagin” or “Fagan,”48 enlisted in the Twenty-

fourth Infantry on June 4, 1898, when the regiment first arrived in Tampa, Florida on the

way to Cuba. Fagen worked as a laborer for Hull’s Phosphate Company and lived with

his widowed merchant father before enlisting. At his enlistment he was twenty-three

years old and stood at five feet six inches tall with a curved scar on his chin.49 After the

Twenty-fourth Infantry finished its tour in Cuba, Fagen and the regiment moved to Fort

Douglas, Utah near Salt Lake City. He and several hundred soldiers in the regiment were

discharged on January 1899 upon the notion that they were no longer needed by U.S.

militia. After the initiation of the Philippine-American War, however, Fagen was

approved for re-enlistment on February 12, 1899 at Fort McPherson, Georgia.50

According to First Lieutenant Matthias Crowley of the Seventh Infantry, Fagen’s

46
Epifanio San Juan, Jr., “An African American Soldier in the Philippine Revolution: A Homage to
David Fagen,” Cultural Logic 4, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 6.
47
Gatewood, Jr., Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 288.
48
Various newspaper articles spelled his last name as “Fagin,” while Frederick Funston, General
in the United States Army during the Philippine-American War, spelled the African American deserter’s
last name as “Fagan” in his personal memoir, Memories of Two Wars. Other written accounts that spelled
it as such is Robert W. Mullen’s Blacks in America’s Wars, Stephen Bonsal’s “The Negro Soldier in War and
Peace.” However, other accounts such William B. Gatewood’s works as well as Michael C. Robinson and
Frank N. Schubert’s “David Fagen: An Afro-American Rebel in the Philippines, 1899-1901” have spelled it
“Fagen.”
49
Michael C. Robinson and Frank N. Schubert, “David Fagen: An Afro-American Rebel in the
Philippines, 1899-1901,” Pacific Historical Review 44, no. 1 (February 1975): 73.
50
Ibid.

76
enlistment documents stated that he had “good character” and has met “all the

requirements.”51

Along with the Twenty-fourth Infantry, Fagen sailed to Manila from San

Francisco on June 1899.52 During the Philippine-American War, Fagen’s regiment won

the Battle of Mt. Arayat, fought on an extinct volcano against Filipino soldiers on

November 20, 1899.53 Despite early victories for his regiment, Fagen had a difficult time

with his company. He did not get along with his superiors, both black and white. Fagen

was promoted to corporal upon his re-enlistment but, according to his military

documents, “was made to do all sorts of dirty jobs” such as “night soil removal and

kitchen guard.”54

On November 17, 1899, for reasons that were not fully documented, Corporal

David Fagen defected from the Twenty-fourth Infantry regiment. According to his

military documents, he was aided “by an insurrecto officer who had a horse waiting for

him near the company barracks” near San Isidro and headed towards the jungle

surrounding Mt. Arayat.55 His defection, considered an act of treason towards the United

States, was a message of rejection. David Fagen rejected his limited American

citizenship, bound by prejudice and systematic discrimination, along with the U.S.

agenda of Anglo-Saxon supremacy that hid behind the false ideologies of Manifest

Destiny. The following years exhibited Fagen’s commitment to the Filipino fight against

51
First Lieutenant Matthias Crowley to the assistant general, Feb. 7, 1899, AGO file 198322; Army
and Navy Journal 36 (Feb. 4, 1899): 543.
52
Robinson and Frank N. Schubert, “David Fagen: An Afro-American Rebel in the Philippines,
1899-1901,” 74.
53
William G. Muller, The Twenty-fourth Infantry: Past and Present (Fort Collins, CO: Old Army
Press., 1972), 32, 34-37.
54
Information slip on David Fagen, AGO file 431081, NA, RG 94; Manila Times, September 19,
1901.
55
“Record of Events,” Regimental returns, 24th Infantry, November 1899, NA, Record Group 94;
information slip on David Fagen, Adjutant General Office file 431081, NA, RG 94.

77
the Americans. He rose up the ranks of the Philippine military, being promoted from

lieutenant to captain on September 6, 1900. Fagen commanded somewhere between 150

to 400 soldiers, who dubbed him “General Fagen.”56 Fagen’s promotion was approved by

Emilio Aguinaldo and was awarded by General Jose Alejandrino, a Representative of the

First Republic of the Philippines who served as an Army Chief during the Philippine-

American War.57

News of Fagen’s treason was met with varied reactions by U.S. media. Major

newspapers such as the New York Times described his “rank of General among the

insurgents” in an October 29, 1900 headline.58 Other smaller newsprints throughout the

nation, such as Utah’s Salt Lake Herald and Paris, Kentucky’s the Bourbon News,

described Fagen as “violent,” a traitor who swore “special enmity against his former

company” and would send former comrades threatening messages with warnings of

torture if Fagen were to ever capture them. Reports of his cruelty to prisoners were

published throughout the last few months of 1900, sensationally describing the “horribly

mutilated bodies” of enemies he killed.59

U.S. military officers were aware of the African American defectors with U.S.

General Frederick Funston’s personal and in-depth inscription regarding David Fagen

and the other African American defectors. Funston was the U.S. Army General who

56
“Philippine Advices: Two United States Soldiers are Killed—Tagal to Die,” Rock Island Argus,
October 29, 1900.
57
Senate of the Philippines, “Jose Alejandrino,” accessed April 9, 2016,
https://www.senate.gov.ph/senators/former_senators/jose_alejandrino.htm; Commission signed by
General Jose Alejandrino, Central Luzon, September 6, 1900, AGO file 431081, NA, RG 94; New York
Times, “General Fagen,” October 29, 1900.
58
“General Fagen,” New York Times, October 29, 1900.
59
“Deserter from 24th: A Filipino General,” Salt Lake Herald, October 29, 1900; “Insurgents
Active: A Detachment of Americans Attacked by 400 of Them,” Bourbon News, October 30, 1900; “Rout of
Filipino,” Worthington Advance, November 2, 1900; “Rebels Badly Punished,” New York Tribune, October
29, 1900; “Attacked by Insurgents,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 29, 1900; “Filipinos Fought a
Pitched Battle,” St. Louis Republic, October 29, 1900.

78
captured the president of the First Republic of the Philippines and Filipino nationalist

leader, Emilio Aguinaldo. The U.S. general also authorized the six hundred dollar reward

for Fagen’s capture.60 According to Funston, “for months we had known of the presence

with the insurgents of this region of an American negro named Fagan, a deserter from the

Twenty-fourth Infantry.” Funston was also aware that Fagen was promoted into the

higher ranks and reported receiving threats and warnings from Fagen, which he described

as “impudent and badly spelled letters.”61 Funston was involved in several battles with

Fagen’s troops. The first was in late October 1900, Fagen captured Lieutenant Frederick

W. Altstaetter and took the American soldier’s West Point class ring as a war trophy.62

Funston stated “it was mighty understood that if [Fagen was captured and] taken alive by

any of us he was to stretch a picket-rope as soon as one could be obtained.” He followed

this with a vow that not only would they reclaim Altstaetter’s ring but “Fagan’s head in a

sugar-sack.”63 Funston’s second encounter, the first time he was able to see Fagen’s face,

was on December 5, 1900, during a battle in San Isidro, the same location where Fagen

reportedly defected. Funston claimed to have finally gotten a “good look at the notorious

Fagan.”64

On March 23, 1901, Funston captured Filipino revolutionary leader Emilio

Aguinaldo.65 Weeks later, on May 19, 1901, Urbano Lacuna surrendered to Funston’s

army. Lacuna was commanding general to over two hundred Filipino soldiers and was

60
Frederick Funston, Memories of Two Wars: Cuban and Philippine Experiences (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 434.
61
Ibid., 376.
62
Ibid.; “Attacked by Insurgents,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 29, 1900.
63
Funston, Memories of Two Wars, 376.
64
Ibid., 379-380.
65
“Funston Trap for Aguinaldo,” Minneapolis Journal, March 23, 1901; “Gen. Funston Plans to
Take Aguinaldo,” Deseret Evening News, March 23, 1901.

79
considered the last “insurrectionary leader.” Funston considered his capture the

“termination of the state of war.”66 Coincidentally, Fagen was part of Lacuna’s company.

According to Funston, Lacuna understood that he and his men would be protected under

a promised amnesty. Fagen, though, would “not be received as a prisoner of war…if he

surrendered it would have to be with the understanding that he would be tried by court-

martial, in which event his execution would be a practical certainty.”67

However, Funston would not capture Fagen. He and several Filipino fighters were

somehow able to escape the May 1901 capture. No news of Fagen surfaced until

December 1901, after Funston declared a six-hundred-dollar reward for Fagen’s capture.

Anastacio Bartolome, a former Filipino soldier who once fought alongside Fagen,

answered the reward, published in both Tagalog and Spanish. Bartolome and his

companions found Fagen, along with two Filipinos and three women, camped out in

Dingalan Cove on the Pacific coast beach of Aurora, Philippines. Bartolome was certain

it was Fagen and, with bolos, decapitated him and the three other Filipinos. Fagen’s head

was brought to Lieutenant R.C. Corliss of the Thirty-Fourth Infantry, along with two

revolvers, three Remington rifles, Fagen’s two commissions as lieutenant and captain

signed by Jose Alejandrino and Urbano Lacuna, and, most importantly, Alstaetter’s West

Point class ring, taken by Fagen during one of his battles with U.S. soldiers. The piece of

jewelry that Funston promised to reclaim assisted in the confirmation of the decapitated

head as Fagen’s. Further validation was acquired when Lacuna, himself, confirmed the

identity of the head.68

66
Funston, Memories of Two Wars, 431-432.
67
Ibid., 430-431.
68
Ibid., 434-435; Lieutenant R. C. Corliss to the Adjutant General, Second Brigade, Bongabong,
Nueva Ecija, P.I., December 6, 1901, AGO file 431081, NA, RG 94; “Deserter Killed: David Fagin Slain and

80
 Records of David Fagen’s activities during the Philippine-American War are slim.

The most vital accounts of the events of his defection include his military documents and

Funston’s memoir. Fagen cannot be found in published military documents. In William

G. Muller’s The Twenty-fourth Infantry: Past and Present, published in 1972,

information about defectors, such as their name and enlistment information, were not

included. Soldiers’ data, such as history, battle statistics, and company deaths, were

included from the regiment’s conception until after the First World War. Information

about the defectors were omitted throughout the section concerning the Philippine-

American War. Regimental Returns from the National Archives, specifically Record

Group 94 concerning documents of U.S. Colored Troops, and other records reveal that

there were twenty-nine desertions among the four regiments of the Buffalo Soldiers.

Historical analyses of these African American soldiers are also very limited and,

sometimes, almost dismissive.

Historians and journalists have studied Fagen and other defectors as minor figures

of the Philippine-American War and African American military history. Earliest study of

the defectors can be found in Stephen Bonsal’s 1907 article, "The Negro Soldier in War

and Peace," published in the North American Review. Bonsal provided analysis of

African American connections with Filipinos, referring to them as black soldiers’ “little

brown brother.”69 Leon Wolff’s Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased

and Pacified the Philippine Islands at the Century's Turn, published in 1961, described

Fagen as “an enormous Negro” with barbaric qualities who “drank heavily, played a

Beheaded by Native Scouts,” Indianapolis Journal, December 9, 1901; “The Negro David Fagin: The
Deserter from the Twenty-fourth Infantry Captured and Decapitated,” Macon Beacon, December 14,
1901; “American Negro Deserter Killed: He has been Leading Filipinos for More than Two Years,” St. Louis
Republic, December 9, 1901.
69
Bonsal, “The Negro Soldier in War and Peace,” North American Review 185 (June 1907): 325.

81
guitar, fought like a wildcat, and lived in a camp with a native woman.” Wolff ends his

reference to Fagen with, “his life was to be short but interesting.”70 The views of these

publications were a reflection of society’s lack of progress regarding the ideologies of

race. The most extensive analysis of Fagen’s life is Michael C. Robinson and Frank N.

Schubert’s 1975 journal article, “David Fagen: An Afro-American Rebel in the

Philippines, 1899-1901,” published in the Pacific Historical Review. They were able to

expand past the study of Fagen as the stereotypical black man, a “barbarian” who

betrayed this country. Instead, Robinson and Schubert portrayed the humanity and life of

Fagen, painting him as a son and a soldier who, just like other people of color, hoped to

progress his citizenship through patriotic services, but realized that he was only assisting

the U.S. expand the borders of discrimination.

What history has failed to study are the influences of identity and nationalism on

the soldiers’ actions. The actions of Fagen and other African American defectors were

highlighted in an African American newspaper, the Indianapolis Freeman. Journalist

George Knox provided an analysis that summarized the “Black Man’s Burden” that

David Fagen and other defectors faced:

Fagen was a traitor, and died a traitor's death, but he was a man, no doubt,
prompted by honest motives to help a weaker side, and one to which he felt allied
by ties that bind. Fagen, perhaps, did not appreciate the magnitude of the crime of
aiding the enemy to shoot down his flag. He saw, it may be, the weak, the strong,
he chose, and the world knows the rest.71

There is no document that fully states the reasons for Fagen’s desertion of both the U.S.

military and his American citizenship. One could assume, due to the domination of white

70
Leon Wolff, Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased and Pacified the Philippine
Islands at the Century's Turn (1961; New York: History Book Club, 2006), 249.
71
Indianapolis Freeman, December 14, 1901.

82
supremacy in the United States that filtered throughout the archipelago, that Fagen joined

the Filipino revolutionaries for his own “revolt” against U.S. racial hierarchy. When other

African Americans were fighting for the U.S. agenda of Manifest Destiny as a means to

develop black citizenship, Fagen and other defectors actively denied the U.S. agenda to

expand the subjugation of people of color past the shores of the United States.

In the case of the Philippine-American War, the question of allegiance was

connected to the notion of identities through community. That community was based on a

hope for citizenship and independence proven by the varying demonstration of allegiance

during the Philippine-American War. White American soldiers were able to provide

support for U.S. Manifest Destiny for they were part of the community that defined

Christianization and Westernization. Their citizenship and independence was already

provided and guaranteed by people of the white community, a privilege of white

supremacy justified by the “science” of the time and Social Darwinism. For people of

color, such as African Americans and Filipino nationalists, race and ethnic identity placed

them in a common community that deprived and limited their independence and sense of

citizenship. The lack of validated citizenship through discrimination, prejudice, and

political independence invigorated Filipinos’ of nationalism, while it compelled some

African American soldiers, such as Fagen, to deny their American identity. The African

American and Filipino communities, though geographically separated, found

commonality in the sense that both groups struggled to attain validation of their

respective identities, therefore blurring the lines in defining distinct races and ethnicities

and, instead, realized the common enemy in the ideologies of U.S. Manifest Destiny.

83
Conclusion

The Philippine-American War introduced the United States to the Southeast Asian

archipelago of the Philippines and its annexation provided a pawn for the U.S. entrance

into the Race of Nations. Imperialization forced target nations to conform to the culture

of western nations, and outlined the global narrative of the turn of the twentieth century.

The U.S. involvement in the Philippines was no exception. Exploring the conflict

between the Philippines and the United States allows historians to analyze how peoples’

discernment of identity influenced the perception of the war and its coinciding events.

The U.S. employed its own characterization of a Filipino identity and used it to justify

expansion as a part of Manifest Destiny. However, among the Filipino people, the rise

and recognition of their own nationalist ideals and formation of the Filipino nationality

stood in opposition to further western dominance on the Philippine archipelago. Instead,

the foundation for the desire of Philippine independence built on ethnic and racial pride.

The acknowledgement and the development of identity—based on race, identity, or

mutual experiences of communities and rejection of U.S. cultural imperialism—

influenced the notion of national allegiance, as chronicled in this historic conflict that

historians have dubbed as a “forgotten war.”

American expansionists insisted that imperialization of the Philippines was a

“Western Duty,” a notion illustrated in the poem “White Man’s Burden,” by British poet

Rudyard Kipling. Originally subtitled, “United States and the Philippine Islands,” the

piece was believed to have been a satire of American exceptionalism. However, western

imperial powers took the poem and made it into a “battle cry” for “western duty” to

Christianize the world. The poem itself was heavily influenced by the dominant culture of

84
the time for it describes the Filipinos as barbarians and savages. Popular and academic

sources of the time show that the popularity of scientific racism and eugenics were

heavily imbedded in American society and influenced notions of race. From academia to

various forms of media such as written propaganda, political cartoons, popular

entertainment in the form of human zoos, and literature, the notion of American Anglo-

Saxon supremacy and the perception of Filipinos as “barbaric savages” was so

entrenched in American everyday life, along with domestic racial ideas and tensions of

the time, that most Americans could not help but accept the evidence of cultural

imperialism, provided by their perception of science, and support the U.S. imperialist

agenda.

However, on the other side of the world, Filipinos themselves were in the midst of

the identifying and defining their own national identity. Prior to the twentieth century, the

notion of a single “Filipino” identity was non-existent. The characteristics and spirit of

the Filipino identity was built on a history of centuries of Spanish colonialism and the

amalgamation of various Asian ethnicities, but emerged as one that was still distinctively

Filipino. The Philippines was colonized by Spain in the sixteenth century and was used as

the primary trade post in Asia for Spain’s galleon trade that included Spanish western

colonies such as Mexico. This international trade introduced western ideas and culture to

Filipino society, including Roman Catholicism and ideas of independence. Western

Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire, Paine, and Rousseau and events like the

American Revolution and French Revolution influenced the Ilustrados, the educated

Filipino middle class, who began their own propaganda movement during the last

85
decades of the nineteenth century that advocated for Philippine independence that

emphasized the unique development of Philippine history and identity.

By 1892, Philippine revolutionary leaders formed two organizations: La Liga

Filipina and the Katipunan. Led by Filipino nationalists such as Andres Bonifacio and

followed by Emilio Aguinaldo and Apolinario Mabini, the organizations aimed to unite

the entire archipelago by creating a society of reformers who placed the interest of the

people as its main priority. These leaders began to spread revolutionary ideologies

throughout the Philippines with their own propaganda that advocated for the Filipino

nationalist agenda. Eventually, the notion of being Filipino surpassed the class system,

based in wealth and ethnic background that was built during Spanish colonial rule.

Revolutionary leaders believed that acquiring independence from Spain required a united

nation that surpassed regional identification. Spain’s colonial rule provided the Filipinos

the awareness of the Filipino identity, but it was the U.S. move to assert its Western Duty

and further its Manifest Destiny that cemented Filipinos’ acknowledgement of a unified

Philippine national identity.

The U.S. acquisition of the Philippines under the Treaty of Paris led to the

Philippine-American War in 1899. The war introduced western ideas of racial hierarchy

into Philippine communities through the racial and ethnic prejudices displayed by white

U.S. troops. Racial tensions were rampant in the U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century

and many African Americans spoke out against the hypocrisy of the U.S. occupation of

the Philippines. One responded satirically with the “Black Man’s Burden” opposing

Kipling’s symbolic “White Man’s Burden.” Nonetheless, differing philosophies among

the leaders of the African American community figured into the debate over the

86
Philippine conflict. Arguments between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B DuBois

demonstrated that African Americans themselves were divided in defining citizenship

and patriotism within African American communities who hoped to acquire social

equality through either education or military service to their country. African American

soldiers stationed in the Philippine archipelago illustrated the struggle soldiers of color

had acting as agents to execute the agenda of white supremacy that hid behind the U.S.

notion of Manifest Destiny and U.S. cultural imperialism. A few U.S. military defectors

like African American soldiers of the Twenty-fourth regiment, particularly David Fagen,

demonstrated that one could deny and reject citizenship in a nation if that country’s

“patriotic” agenda does not personally apply to an individual.

The perception of identity during the Philippine American conflict varied. The

United States easily viewed the Filipinos as “barbaric,” “savage,” and “other.” The

American imperialist agenda was supported through the manipulation of defining Filipino

identity based on contemporary, pseudo-scientific techniques. Filipino identity at the turn

of the twentieth century required full independence to be fully validated as a nation, and

stripped of foreign imperial or colonial power. The goal of Filipino nationalists was to

cultivate the unique history and culture of Filipinos into a nationality for which the

community would be willing to fight. However, the Filipino identity, as shown in the

defection of African American soldiers during the Philippine-American War, surpassed

the bounds of race and ethnicity. People of color subjugated by western notion of white

supremacy found common bonds across oceans, connected by the desire of independence

and citizenship.

87
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