Murat Halstead - The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions

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Title: The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, Including The Ladrones, Hawaii, Cuba and Porto Rico The Eldorado of the Orient

Author: Murat Halstead

Release Date: May 22, 2004 [EBook #12409]

Language: English

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Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Distributed Proofreaders Team.

The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions,
Including The Ladrones, Hawaii, Cuba and Porto Rico.

The Story of the Philippines.

Natural Riches, Industrial Resources, Statistics of Productions,
Commerce and Population; The Laws, Habits, Customs, Scenery and
Conditions of the Cuba of the East Indies and the Thousand Islands
of the Archipelagoes of India and Hawaii, With Episodes of Their
Early History

The Eldorado of the Orient

Personal Character Sketches of and Interviews with Admiral Dewey,
General Merritt, General Aguinaldo and the Archbishop of Manila.

History and Romance, Tragedies and Traditions of our Pacific
Possessions.

Events of the War in the West with Spain, and the Conquest of Cubaand Porto Rico.

By Murat Halstead,

War Correspondent in America and Europe, Historian of the PhilippineExpedition.

Splendidly and Picturesquely Illustrated with Half-Tone Engravings fromPhotographs, Etchings from Special Drawings, and the Military Maps ofthe Philippines, Prepared by the War Department of the United States.

Our Possessions Publishing Co.

1898

The engravings in this volume were made from original photographs,and are specially protected by copyright; and notice is hereby given,that any person or persons guilty of reproducing or infringing uponthe copyright in any way will be dealt with according to law.

Inscribed
To the Soldiers and Sailors
of
The Army and Navy of the United States,
With Admiration for Their Achievements
In the War With Spain;
Gratitude for the Glory They Have Gained for the American Nation,
And Congratulations That All the People of All the
Country Rejoice in the Cloudless Splendor of Their Fame
That is the Common and Everlasting
Inheritance of Americans.

Author's Preface.

The purpose of the writer of the pages herewith presented hasbeen to offer, in popular form, the truth touching the PhilippineIslands. I made the journey from New York to Manila, to have thebenefit of personal observations in preparing a history for thepeople. Detention at Honolulu shortened my stay in Manila, butthere was much in studies at the former place that was a help at thelatter. The original programme was for me to accompany General Merritt,Commander-in-Chief of the Philippine Expedition, but illness preventedits full realization, and when I arrived in Manila Bay the city hadalready been "occupied and possessed" by the American army; and thedeclaration of peace between the United States and Spain was made,the terms fully agreed upon with the exception of the settlement ofthe affairs of the Philippines. While thus prevented from witnessingstirring military movements other than those attending the transferof our troops across the Pacific Ocean, an event in itself ofthe profoundest significance, the reference of the determinationof the fate of the Philippine Islands to the Paris Conference,and thereby to the public opinion of our country, in extraordinarymeasure increased the general sensibility as to the situation of thesouthern Oriental seas affecting ourselves, and enhanced the valueof the testimony taken on the spot of observers of experience, withthe training of journalism in distinguishing the relative pertinenceand potency of facts noted. Work for more than forty years, in thediscussion from day to day of current history, has qualified me forthe efficient exercise of my faculties in the labor undertaken. Ithas been my undertaking to state that which appeared to me, so thatthe reader may find pictures of the scenes that tell the Story thatconcerns the country, that the public may with enlightenment solvethe naval, military, political, commercial and religious problems weare called upon by the peremptory pressure of the conditions local,and international, to solve immediately. This we have to do, facing thehighest obligations of citizenship in the great American Republic, andconscious of the incomparably influential character of the principlesthat shall prevail through the far-reaching sweep of the policies thatwill be evolved. I have had such advantages in the assurance of theauthenticity of the information set forth in the chapters following,that I may be permitted to name those it was my good fortune to consultwith instructive results; and in making the acknowledgments due. Imay be privileged to support the claim of diligence and success inthe investigations made, and that I am warranted in the issue of thisStory of the Philippines by the assiduous improvement of an uncommonopportunity to fit myself to serve the country.

Indebtedness for kind consideration in this work is gratefullyacknowledged to Major-General Merritt, commanding the PhilippineExpedition; Major-General Otis, who succeeds to the duties ofmilitary and civil administration in the conquered capital of theislands; Admiral George Dewey, who improved, with statesmanship,his unparalleled victory in the first week of the war with Spain,and raised the immense questions before us; General F.V. Greene,the historian of the Russo-Turkish war, called by the President toWashington, and for whose contributions to the public intelligencehe receives the hearty approval and confidence of the people; MajorBell, the vigilant and efficient head of the Bureau of Informationat the headquarters of the American occupation in the Philippines;General Aguinaldo, the leader of the insurgents of his race in Luzon,and His Grace the Archbishop of Manila, who gave me a message for theUnited States, expressing his appreciation of the excellence of thebehavior of the American army in the enforcement of order, giving peaceof mind to the residents in the distracted city of all persuasionsand conditions, and of the service that was done civilization in theprevention, by our arms, of threatened barbarities that had causedsore apprehension; and, I may add, the Commissioner of the OrganizedPeople of the Philippines, dispatched to Washington accompanyingGeneral Greene; and of the citizens of Manila of high character,and conductors of business enterprises with plants in the communitywhose destiny is in the hands of strangers.

These gentlemen I may not name, for there are uncertainties thatdemand of them and command me to respect the prudence of theirinconspicuity. This volume seems to me to be justified, and I have nofurther claim to offer that it is meritorious than that it is faithfulto facts and true to the country in advocacy of the continued expansionof the Republic, whose field is the world.

Steamship China, Pacific Ocean, September 20, 1898.

The Origin of this Story of the Philippines.

The letter following is the full expression by the author of thisvolume of his purposes and principles in making the journey to theEast Indies.

Going to the Philippines.

Washington City, D.C., July 18.

With the authorization of the Military Authorities, I shall go tothe Philippine Islands with General Merritt, the Military Governor,and propose to make the American people better acquainted with thatremarkable and most important and interesting country. The presenceof an American army in the Philippines is an event that will changebroad and mighty currents in the world's history. It has far moresignificance than anything transpiring in the process of the conquestof the West India possessions of Spain, for the only question there,ever since the Continental colonies of the Spanish crown won theirindependence, has been the extent of the sacrifices the Spaniards, intheir haughty and vindictive pride, would make in fighting for a lostEmpire and an impossible cause with an irresistible adversary. Thatthe time was approaching when, with the irretrievable steps of thegrowth of a living Nation of free people, we would reach the pointwhere it should be our duty to accept the responsibility of thedominant American power, and accomplish manifest Destiny by addingCuba and Porto Rico to our dominion, has for half a century been thefamiliar understanding of American citizens. Spain, by her abhorrentsystem, personified in Weyler, and illustrated in the murderousblowing up of the Maine with a mine, has forced this duty upon us;and though we made war unprepared, the good work is going on, and thefinish of the fight will be the relegation of Spain, whose colonialgovernments have been, without exception, disgraceful and disastrousto herself, and curses to the colonists, to her own peninsula. Thiswill be for her own good, as well as the redemption of mankind fromher unwholesome foreign influences, typified as they are in thebeautiful city of Havana, which has become the center of politicalplagues and pestilential fevers, whose contagion has at frequentintervals reached our own shores.