We read that this happens and that happens. This is an underlying cause and that is an immediate cause. The events reflected a trend of this and that and flowed seamlessly to the next event. History had to happen the way it happened because that is what happened.
That is wrong, of course. History is what happened, certainly. But history was made by people who made decisions. They made the decisions as current events and they did not know what the future had in store for them.
Remember the Spanish-American War? "The splendid little war?" It was an easy victory over a crumbling Spain that represented the dying gasp of the European colonization of the Americas by the rising power that would dominate the twentieth century. This was our entry onto the world stage with our mini-empire seized from the Spanish and there was no turning back from world-spanning power.
But none of that was inevitable. The opposition to war with Spain and ruling overseas possessions was powerful and strident. The longer fight to suppress the independence movement in the Philippines gave even more opportunity for the opposition to wage battle against the government.
I was recently re-reading portions of Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower, and was reminded of the domestic context of the war and the Philippines Insurrection, in particular. The Anti-Imperialist League opposed the war early and included even a former president (Cleveland) in its ranks. The longer the war lasted, the "louder and angrier" their protests became. In October 1899, only a year and a half after the war started, they were demanding an immediate end to the war. And it was no polite debate:
They collected and reported all the worst cases of American conduct in the Philippines and of the most egregious speeches of imperialist greed and set them against the most unctuous expressions of the white man's mission.
Even the enemy knew where the main fight was:
Aguinaldo fought for time in the hope that anti-imperialist sentiment in America would force withdrawal of the forces already sickening of their task.
Yet the party in power that backed the war in the beginning stuck with the fight:
Despite difficulties there was no re-thinking or hesitancy among the dominant Republicans about the new career upon which America was launched.
And the election of 1900 loomed large. The Democratic hopeful, William Jennings Bryan, urged his supporters in early 1899 to support the treaty with Spain to acquire the Philippines. His reasons were pure politics:
He was sure that retention of the Philippines would be productive of so much trouble as to make a flaming campaign issue--but it must be consummated first. Consequently, he told his party, it would not do to defeat the treaty.
And so Bryan supported the war he opposed to ride the hoped for trouble to the White House.
Wrote Tuchman:
As the war passed its first anniversary with the American forces deeply extended, there was one event ahead that might yet bring it to an end: the coming Presidential election. In this the Anti-Imperialists and Aguinaldo placed their hopes.
Aguinaldo bolstered his forces' morale with the promise of deliverance by American voters:
The great Democratic party of the United States will win the next fall election," Aguinaldo promised in a proclamation. "Imperialism will fail in its mad attempt to subjugate us by force of arms." His soldiers shouted the war cry, "Aguinaldo-Bryan!"
When this hope ended with the Republicans winning, Aguinaldo gave up hope. He retreated to the mountains and in March 1901 he was captured. In a couple years the insurrection died down for the most part.
This is our history. A history made by our forebears and not chiseled in stone. We are making our history. We have a choice of winning or losing.
And for anybody who says that the loud dissent that our opposition exercises has no impact, remember the Philippines Insurrection. We have paid a price in blood for this dissent by giving our enemies hope for victory over a powerful nation unwilling to achieve victory.
