Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State University Libraries.) THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF THE PHILIPPINES 1898-1912 By JAMES H. BLOUNT Officer of United States Volunteers in the Philippines, 1899-1901 United States District Judge in the Philippines, 1901-1905 With a Map G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1912 Copyright, 1912 By James H. Blount The Knickerbocker Press, New York To JOHN DOWNEY WORKS OF CALIFORNIA AS FINE A TYPE OF CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN AS EVER GRACED A SEAT IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES WHO BELIEVING, WITH THE WRITER, AS TO THE PHILIPPINES, THAT INDEFINITE RETENTION WITH UNDECLARED INTENTION IS INDEFINITE DRIFTING HAS READ THE MANUSCRIPT OF THIS WORK AS IT PROGRESSED LENDING TO ITS PREPARATION THE AID AND COUNSEL OF AN OLDER AND A WISER MAN AND THE CONTAGIOUS SERENITY OF CONFIDENCE THAT RIGHT WILL PREVAIL THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED BY The Author PREFACE Pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirit that hath dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Henry V. To have gone out to the other side of the world with an army of invasion, and had a part, however small, in the subjugation of a strange people, and then to see a new government set up, and, as an official of that government, watch it work out through a number of years, is an unusual and interesting experience, especially to a lawyer. What seem to me the most valuable things I learned in the course of that experience are herein submitted to my fellow-countrymen, in connection with a narrative covering the whole of the American occupation of the Philippines to date.