Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [102]
A three-day conference to consider “some of the most momentous problems in the history of the Republic” was convened at Saratoga in August by leaders in public life both for and against expansion. The favored theme of the expansionists, which called forth their most energetic arguments, was a vision of the vast untapped markets of the Orient with their limitless opportunities for American enterprise. Speaking for the Anti-Imperialists, Henry Wade Rogers, president of Northwestern University and chairman of the Conference on opening day, forcefully made the point that it was not necessary to annex territory in order to trade with it. But he could not summon passion equal to that of Judge Grosscup, notorious as the man who had issued the injunction in the Pullman strike, who delivered an exuberant paean to “the new career of commercial activity upon which I trust we are about to enter.” With the Philippines and Hawaii in her hands, the United States would control the path to Asia, a whole continent with “doors swinging inward that will lead us to one half the desirable territory and one third the population of the earth.”
Samuel Gompers spoke against conquest of foreign lands not only as a betrayal of American principles but as a danger to the standards of American wage-earners. Strange combinations were wrought in the cause of anti-imperialism. When, at a later meeting in Chicago, Gompers declared that retention of the Philippines would show that “our war was without just cause,” Andrew Carnegie sent him a telegram of congratulations saying, “Let us stand together to save the Republic.”
President McKinley, after soul-searching and prayer, had arrived at the decision desired by his advisers and popular with his party: the Philippines must be kept. In Paris, Spain’s commissioners were given to understand that the time for dickering was over; possession talked. They would have to yield or face renewal of the war. A token payment of $20,000,000 was offered to grease acceptance of the inevitable. On December 10 the Treaty of Paris was signed, transferring sovereignty of the Philippines to the United States, with the $20,000,000 to follow upon ratification. “We have bought ten million Malays at $2.00 a head unpicked,” remarked Reed acidly, and in the most prescient comment made by anyone at the time, he added, “and nobody knows what it will cost to pick them.”
Although by now it was half expected, Aguinaldo and his forces learned of the settlement in bitterness and anguish, many of them hardly able to believe that their liberators and allies had turned into a new set of conquerors. Without an organized army or modern weapons, they prepared to fight again, while waiting for a still possible default. The strong anti-imperialist current in the United States was known to them and there was hope that the Senate would fail to ratify the treaty.
Reopening on December 5, 1898, the winter session of Congress was dominated by the fight over the treaty, more intense than that over Hawaii. Every vote counted. To gather their two-thirds, the Republicans led by Lodge as chief Whip had to utilize every artifice, every argument, every avenue of pressure upon their own members and whatever Democrats might be amenable, while the anti-expansionists struggled to hold firm just enough Senators to make a third plus one. In the House at this time certain members proposed to Reed a coalition of Democrats and anti-imperialist Republicans in order to pass a House resolution against the treaty which would lead to its defeat in the Senate. Though it was no secret in Washington’s inner circles