The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 1 of 2)Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
History
The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 1 of 2)
Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
Philippines; Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946
"The policy of concentrating the people in protected zones
and destroying the food which was used for the maintenance of
guerrilla bands was not new. There had been precedents even
in the United States. One of these is the order issued on
August 25, 1863, by Brigadier-General Ewing, commanding the
district of the border, with headquarters at Kansas City, Mo.,
in which he ordered the inhabitants of a large part of three
counties of that State to remove from their residences within
fifteen days to the protection of the military stations which
he had established. All grain and hay in that district was
ordered to be taken to those military stations. If it was not
convenient to so dispose of it, it would be burned (Rebellion
Records, Series I, Vol. XXII, Part II, p. 473). The American
commanders in the Philippines had adopted no new method of
procedure in dealing with war traitors; they had, however,
effectively employed an old one.
"The insurrection had originated among the Tagálogs and had
spread like a conflagration from the territory occupied by
them. The fire had been quenched everywhere else. General
Bell had now stamped out the embers in the Tagálog provinces.
"On July 2 the Secretary of War telegraphed that the
insurrection against the sovereign authority of the United
States in the Philippines having come to an end, and provincial
civil governments having been established throughout the
entire territory of the archipelago not inhabited by Moro
tribes, the office of military governor in the archipelago was
terminated. On July 4, 1902, the President of the United States
issued a proclamation of amnesty proclaiming, with certain
reservations, a full and complete pardon and amnesty to all
persons in the Philippine Archipelago who had participated
in the insurrection."
General Bell's motives and methods in reconcentrating the inhabitants
of this troubled region have been grossly misrepresented, and he
himself has been sadly maligned. He is the most humane of men, and
the plan which he adopted resulted in the reëstablishment of law and
order at a minimum cost of human suffering.
Many of the occupants of his reconcentration camps received there
their first lessons in hygienic living. Many of them were reluctant
to leave the camps and return to their homes when normal conditions
again prevailed.
The number of Filipinos killed during the Batangas campaign was
very small. [429] Blount has sought to make it appear that partly as
an indirect consequence of war there was dreadful mortality there,
citing by way of proof the fact that the Coast and Geodetic Atlas,
published as a part of the report of the first Philippine Commission,
gave the population of Batangas as 312,192, while the census of 1903
gave it as 257,715. [430]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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