Part 33 (1/2)
Early in 1905, Hon. George Curry, of New Mexico, who was an officer of Colonel Roosevelt's regiment in Cuba, and had gone out to the Philippines with a volunteer regiment in 1899, remaining with the civil Government after 1901, was made Governor of Samar. Governor Curry has since been Governor of the Territory of New Mexico, and is now (1912) a member of Congress from the recently admitted State of New Mexico. Governor Curry has told me since he was elected to Congress that it took him all of 1905 and most of 1906, aided by several thousand troops, native and regular, to put down that Samar outbreak. Yet a certificate signed March 28, 1907, by the Governor-General and his a.s.sociates of the Philippine Commission states that ”a condition of general and complete peace”
had continued in the Islands for two years previous to the date of the certificate. [457] We will come to this certificate in its chronological order later. How many and what sort of uprisings were blanketed in that ”forget-it” certificate of 1907 is material to the question whether or not the National Administration has ever been or is now frank with the country about the universality of the desire of the Philippine people for independence and local self-government, and pertinent to the insistently recurring query: ”Why should we make of the Philippines an American Ireland?” But inasmuch as, in addition to the Samar uprising which raged all through 1905, another insurrection occurred in that year, which was duly ”forgotten” by said certificate, this last movement must now claim our attention.
The provinces which were the theatre of the outbreak last above mentioned were all near Manila. They were: Cavite, a province of 135,000 people almost at the gates of Manila; Batangas, a province of 257,000 inhabitants adjoining Cavite; and Laguna, a province of 150,000 people adjoining both. Some five hundred brigands headed by cut-throats claiming to be patriots were terrorizing whole districts. Far be it from me to lend any countenance to the idea that the leaders of this movement, Sakay, Felizardo, Montalon, and the rest of their gang, were ent.i.tled to any respect. But they certainly had a hold on the whole population akin to that of Robin Hood, Little John, and Friar Tuck. In refusing in 1907 to commute Sakay's death sentence after he was captured, tried, and convicted, Governor-General James P. Smith gives some gruesome details concerning the performance of that worthy, and his followers, yet in dealing with the nature and extent of the trouble they gave the Manila government he says they ”a.s.sumed the convenient cloak of patriotism, and under the t.i.tles of 'Defenders of the Country' and 'Protectors of the People' proceeded to inaugurate a reign of terror, devastation, and ruin in three of the most beautiful provinces in the archipelago.” [458]
It has already been made clear that, during the time of the insurrection against both the Spaniards and Americans, the insurrecto forces were maintained by voluntary contributions of the people. Major D. C. Shanks, Fourth U. S. Regular Infantry, who was Governor of Cavite Province in 1905, after calling attention to this fact, adds [459]:
When the insurrection was over a number of these leaders remained out and refused to surrender. Included among them were Felizardo and Montalon. The system of voluntary contributions, carried on during the insurrecto period, was continued after establishment of civil government.
Again Governor Shanks says, with more of frankness than diplomacy, considering that he was a provincial governor under the civil government:
The establishment of civil government of this province was premature and ill-advised. Records show the capture or surrender since establishment of civil government of nearly 600 hostile firearms.
One of the causes contributory to the Cavite-Batangas-Laguna insurrection is stated in the report of the Governor-General for 1905 thus:
In the autumn of 1904 it became necessary to withdraw a number of the constabulary from these provinces to a.s.sist in suppressing disorder which had broken out in the province of Samar. [460]
Another of the contributory causes is thus stated:
There was at the time [the fall of 1904] also considerable activity among the small group of irreconcilables in Manila, who began agitating for immediate independence, doubtless because of the supposed effect it would have on the presidential election in the United States, in which the Philippines was a large topic of discussion. Evidently this was regarded as a favorable time for a demonstration by Felizardo, Montalon, De Vega, Oruga, Sakay [etc]. All these men had been officers of the Filipino army during the insurrection.
Consider the benevolent casuistry necessary to include these fellows, and the tremendous following they could get up, and did get up, in Cavite, ”the home of insurrection,” and the adjacent provinces, in a certificate to ”a condition of general and complete peace” alleged in the certificate to have prevailed for two years prior to March 28, 1907. To make a long story short, on January 31, 1905, a state of insurrection was declared to exist, the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in Cavite and Batangas, the regular army of the United States was ordered out, and reconcentration tactics resorted to, as provided by Section 6 of Act 781 of the Commission. This is the act already examined at length, intended to meet cases of impotency on the part of the insular government to protect life and property in any other way. Political timidity is conspicuously absent from the resolution of the Philippine Commission of January 31, 1905, formally recognizing a break in the peerless continuity of the ”general and complete peace.” It is virilely frank, the presidential election being then safely over. [461] It concludes by authorizing the Governor-General to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and declare martial law, ”the public safety requiring it.” Then follows a proclamation of the same date and tenor, by the Governor-General.
It appears from the case cited in the foot-note that in the spring of 1905, one, Felix Barcelon, filed in the proper court a pet.i.tion for the writ of habeas corpus, alleging that he was one of the reconcentrados corralled and ”detained and restrained of his liberty at the town of Batangas, in the province of Batangas,” by one of Colonel Baker's constabulary minions down there. The writ was denied by the lower court. In one part of the opinion of the Supreme Court in the case it is stated (p. 116) that the pet.i.tioner ”has been detained for a long time * * * not for the commission of any crime and by due process of law, but apparently for the purpose of protecting him.” The opinion of the court, delivered by Mr. Justice Johnson, very properly held that the detention was lawful under the war power, basing its decision on the authority conferred on the Governor-General of the Philippines by the Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, section 5 of which expressly authorizes the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus ”when in cases of rebellion, insurrection, or invasion the public safety may require it.” A long legal battle was fought, the court holding that the Executive Department of the Government is the one in which is vested the exclusive right to say when ”a state of rebellion, insurrection, or invasion” exists, and that when it so formally declares, that settles the fact that it does exist. At page 98 of the volume above cited [462] the court held, as to the above mentioned resolution of the Philippine Commission and the above mentioned executive order declaring a state of insurrection in Cavite and Batangas:
The conclusion set forth in the said resolution and the said executive order, as to the fact that there existed in the provinces of Cavite and Batangas open insurrection against the const.i.tuted authorities, was a conclusion entirely within the discretion of the legislative and executive branches of the Government, after an investigation of the facts.
Yet two years later the same ”const.i.tuted authorities” certified to the President of the United States, in effect, as we shall see, that no open insurrection against the const.i.tuted authorities had occurred during the preceding two years. They do not in their certificate ignore Cavite and Batangas. They mention them by name, with a lot of whereases, explaining that after all they really believe that the majority of the people in the provinces aforesaid were not in sympathy with the uprising. However, after they get through with their whereases they face the music squarely, and certify to ”the condition of general and complete peace.” Of the ”n.i.g.g.e.r in the woodpile” more anon.
Governor Wright was not a party to the certificate of 1907. He left the Islands on leave November 4, 1905. A speech made by him prior to his departure, as published in a Manila paper, indicates an expectation to return. He never did. In 1906 he was demoted to be Amba.s.sador to j.a.pan, a place of far less dignity, and far less salary, which he resigned after a year or so. Vice-Governor Ide acted as Governor-General until April 2, 1906, on which date he was formally inaugurated as Governor-General.
Just why Governor Wright did not go back to the Philippines as Governor, after his visit to the United States in 1905-6, does not appear. It would seem almost certain that if Secretary of War Taft had wanted President Roosevelt to send him back, he would have gone. Mr. Taft never did frankly tell the Filipinos until 1907 that they might just as well shut up talking about any independence that anybody living might hope to see. Governor Wright began to talk that way soon after Mr. Taft left the Islands. Possibly Governor Wright undeceived them too soon, and thereby made the Philippines more of a troublesome issue in the presidential campaign of 1904. President Roosevelt recognized the sterling worth of the man, by inviting him to succeed Mr. Taft as Secretary of War in 1908. But President Taft did not invite him to continue in that capacity after March 4, 1909. Gossip has it that when the incoming President Taft's letter to the outgoing President Roosevelt's last Secretary of War, Governor Wright, was handed to the addressee, and its conventional ”hope to be able to avail myself of your services later in some other capacity”
was read by him, the outgoing official quietly remarked: ”Well, that is a little more round-about than the one Jimmie Garfield [463] got, but it's a dismissal just the same.”
I have always thought that the reason Governor Wright did not go back to the Philippines as Governor after 1905 was that he did not continue to ”jolly” the Filipinos, and abstain from ruthlessly crus.h.i.+ng their hopes of seeing independence during their lifetime, as Mr. Taft did continuously during his stay out there. The inevitable tendency of the Wright frank talk was from the beginning to discredit the Taft pleasing and evasive nothings. Also, it was followed, as we have seen, by quite a crop of serious disturbances of public order, and somebody had to be ”the goat.”
CHAPTER XX