Philippine War

Philippine War (1899–1902) a conflict directly resulting from the Spanish-American War (1898). After a U.S. Army expedition captured Manila on August 13, 1898, Spain ceded the Philippine archipelago to the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris. President William McKinley hoped to convince Filipinos to allow American rule under the policy of “benevolent assimilation,” but Filipino nationalists instead proclaimed the Philippine Republic on January 21, 1899, with Emilio Aguinaldo as president. For most of 1899, the Republican Army, comprised of volunteers, conscripts and former Spanish soldiers, battled American forces. Though Filipino troops often fought with great personal courage, they were poorly armed and abysmally led. The U.S. Army made significant inroads into Republican-held territory by the end of March, but undermanned and ravaged by sickness they could not hold territory or sustain an offensive. Only after a five-month hiatus could Maj. Gen Elwell S. Otis lead a three-pronged attack into north-central Luzon. As a result, virtually every important town in the archipelago lay under the U.S. flag by February 1900.

From December 1889 until its official termination of July 4, 1902, the war continued as a series of localized campaigns of counterinsurgency and pacification. Aguinaldo proclaimed a policy of continued resistance through guerrilla warfare, hoping that faced with a long and brutal war the American public would reject McKinley for antiannexationist William Jennings Bryan in the upcoming presidential election. The U.S. High Command, however, was slow to recognize the depth of the resistance. Otis supported McKinley's policy of benevolent assimilation, ordering his officers to establish local governments, restore trade, build schools, and otherwise demonstrate America's good intentions. As the guerillas became adept at harassment, garrison and provincial commanders began to develop their own pacification policies. The war, in short, became a series of regional struggles, differing greatly from island to island and even village to village. In December 1900, bolstered by reinforcements and McKinley's reelection, Maj. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, Otis's successor, instituted a comprehensive pacification campaign aimed at disrupting the connections between the guerrillas and their civilian supporters. By July, when William H. Taft became governor, only a few provinces remained under military control and the war appeared all but over. The massacre of an American infantry company at Balangiga, Samar on September 28, 1901, however, proved that significant resistance remained, provoking severe countermeasures. By July 4, 1902, after a brutal campaign that inflicted terrible hardships on the population, President Theodore Roosevelt declared the “insurrection” over.

Among the least costly wars the U.S. ever fought, the Army saw 1,037 soldiers killed in action, 2,818 wounded, and a total of 4,374 died of all causes. Still, postwar disorder in the Philippines took years to suppress. Thee conquest, moreover, had been highly controversial. Though the government claimed it was necessary for economic and humanitarian reasons and the public supported the annexation, anti-imperialists condemned the war as immoral and unconstitutional.