The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912Blount, James H. (James Henderson)
History
The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912
Blount, James H. (James Henderson)
Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946; Philippines -- Politics and government -- 1898-1935
in the same breath, participation in that war and profound regret that
it ever had occurred, is not an incriminating admission. In this case
as in any other where you have done another a wrong, by thrashing him
or otherwise, under a mistake of fact, the first step toward righting
the wrong is to frankly acknowledge it. As soon as Aguinaldo's flight
and wanderings terminated in the finding of permanent headquarters,
he began sending messages to his various generals all over Luzon and
the other islands, and wherever those orders were not intercepted they
were delivered and loyally obeyed. This kept up until General Funston
captured him in 1901. One traitor among all those teeming millions
might have betrayed his whereabouts, but none appeared. The obstinate
character and long continuance of the warfare in northern Luzon after
the great round-up which terminated with the final junction of the
Lawton, Wheaton, and MacArthur columns near Dagupan, as elsewhere
later throughout the archipelago, was at first very surprising to our
generals. It had been supposed that to disperse the insurgent army
would end the insurrection. As events turned out, it only made the
resistance more effective. So long as the insurgents kept together
in large bodies they could not hide. And as they were poor marksmen,
while the men behind our guns, like most other young Americans,
knew something about shooting, the ratio of their casualties to ours
was about 16 to 1. [266] When General MacArthur began his advance
on Tarlac, General Lawton his great march up the valley of the Rio
Grande, and General Wheaton his closing in from Dagupan, Aguinaldo
with his cabinet, generals, and headquarters troops abandoned Tarlac,
their capital, and went up the railroad to Bayambang. Here they held
a council of war, which General MacArthur describes in his report
for 1900 (from information obtained later on) as follows:
At a council of war held at Bayambang, Pangasinan, about November
12, 1899, which was attended by General Aguinaldo and many of the
Filipino military leaders, a resolution was adopted to the effect
that the insurgent forces were incapable of further resistance
in the field, and as a consequence it was decided to disband the
army, the generals and the men to return to their own provinces,
with a view to organizing the people for general resistance by
means of guerrilla warfare. [267]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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