Correspondence relating to the war with Spain : including the insurrection in the Philippine Islands and the China Relief Expedition, April 15, 1898, to July 30, 1902 PDF
Preview Correspondence relating to the war with Spain : including the insurrection in the Philippine Islands and the China Relief Expedition, April 15, 1898, to July 30, 1902
CORRESPONDENCE Relating to THE WAR WITH SPAIN INCLUDING THE INSURRECTION IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS AND THE CHINA RELIEF EXPEDITION April 15, 1898, to July 30, 1902 Volume 1 Center of Military History United States Army Washington, D.C., 1993 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data United States. Adjutant-General's Office [Correspondence relating to the war with Spain and conditions growing out of the same 1 Correspondence relating to the war with Spain : including the insurrection in the Philippine Islands and the China Relief Expedition, April 15, 1898, to July 30,1902. p. cm. Facsim of: Correspondence relating to the war with Spain and conditions growing out of the same. Washington G.P.O.,1902. "Correspondence between the Adjutant General, U.S. Anny and field commanders"-Introd. I. Spanish-American War, 1898-Campaigns. 2. Spanish-American War, 1898-Regimental histories. 3. Philippines-History Insurrection, 1899-190 I. 4. China Relief Expedition, 1900--190 I. I. Title. E717.US 1993 973.8'9-<1c20 92-45262 ClP CMH Pub 70-28 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402 Foreword Projecting military forces over great distances to achieve strategic objectives became a halhnark of the U.S. Army in the twentieth century. Now that our Army is once again based largely in the continental United States, we have become keenly interested in the challenges associated with such force projection. These volumes remind us that those challenges are not easily met. America's Army of 1898 was not prepared to achieve the objectives selected by its political masters. A flood of patriotic volunteers could fill its ranks but could not overcome fundamental shortcomings in staff orga nization, planning capacity, and sustainment capability. Although inspired innovation, good luck, and resilient soldiers offset many deficiencies, major reforms followed on the heels of the shaky performances outlined by the documents in these volumes. The U.S. Army's original tradition in supporting military history scholar ship centered on publication of key documents. The multivolume series of Official Records from the Civil War is reasonably well known in today's Army, and the recent reprint of United States Army in the World War has made that series more readily available. This reprint is in that same tradi tion, even though its scope is somewhat limited. Soldiers who leaf through these volumes will be struck by similarities and differences as they consider the past and the world around them. The one major similarity is that leaders must lead. Obstacles, uncertainties, and mistakes will all be encountered as a nation goes to war. Seeing our fore bears overcome their problems can give us perspective on our own. In this spirit, these volumes are reprinted in anticipation of the centennial of the events they chronicle. Washington, D.C. HAROLD W. NELSON 30 November 1992 Brigadier General, USA Chief of Military History Introduction by Graham A. Casmas For the United States Army, the Spanish-American War of 1898 possess es significance far beyond the familiar image of Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill. The war was a major event in the Army's evolution from a frontier constabulary into the military arm of a twentieth-century world power. During the conflict, the Army gained its first experience in overseas deployment and support of major expedi tionary forces, literally on opposite sides of the world. Following the war with Spain, the Army waged and won a difficult counterinsurgency cam paign in the Philippines that in many respects foreshadowed the later struggle in Vietnam. In the China relief expedition of 1900 Army troops participated in their first multinational coalition operation. In recent years the historiography of the Spanish-American War has moved far beyond the kind of semisatirical popular account typified by Walter Millis' The Martial Spirit. Present-day historians, using the wide range of primary source materials now available, have examined the com plexity and importance of the war's diplomacy and military operations in the context of tum-of-the-century American political and institutional his tory. Influenced by the so-called New Military History, recent students of the war and its associated events have broadened their focus beyond the traditional tactical and operational themes. The social history of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Army, the influence of American culture on American war making, the black experience in the wars of empire, and the Army's role in government and counterinsurgency in the Philippines all have been the subject of important recent works. At the time of the war and since, the Army's official efforts to record the history of the conflict have been minimal. Although in 1898 the War Department only recently had completed publication of th~ monumental Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, it possessed no organized historical agency and had no tradition of writing narrative accounts of operations. Army reformers referred frequently to the "lessons" of the Spanish War in pressing for the creation of a general staff during the early 1900s, and individual officers published histories or mem oirs of the campaigns; but there was no formal institutional Army histori cal effort. An officer in the War Department's Bureau of Insular Mfairs compiled a history and documentary collection on the Philippine-American War, based largely on captured Filipino records, which, for a variety of rea sons, never was published. However, the manuscript and its supporting documents are preserved on microfilm in the National Archives. Thereafter, the "little wars" with Spain and the Philippines soon were over shadowed by the Army's participation in World War I, concerning which the War Department assembled and published a documentary record which has recently been republished by the Center of Military History. For published documentation of the Army's role in the Spanish and Philippine-American Wars, therefore, the historian must resort to the annu al reports of the Secretary of War, which are voluminous and detailed and include much primary material; to the proceedings, testimony, and sup porting documents of the Dodge Commission, which investigated War Department management during the fall and winter of 1898-99; and to the two volumes of the Adjutant General's correspondence reprinted here. In the pre-general staff War Department bureau system, the Adjutant General performed most of the functions later assumed by the Chief of Staff of the Army. This was especially true during and immediately after the Spanish-American War. The Commanding General at that time, Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, proved unable to work effectively with President William McKinley and Secretary of War Russell A. Alger. McKinley, Alger, and Alger's successor, Elihu Root, relied on Adjutant General Henry C. Corbin, a skillful, politically astute administrator, as their channel of com munication to the other bureau chiefs and the field commanders and as a policy adviser. Corbin's office, as a result, played a central role in the con duct of all aspects of wartime Army operations. Its correspondence with the field commanders, reprinted in these two volumes, accordingly is an indispensable source for the study of the Army in the war with Spain. The correspondence is organized by campaign. Volume 1 covers the mobilization of the Regulars and Volunteers, the Santiago and Puerto Rico campaigns, and the China relief expedition. It contains as well brief histo ries of the eight army corps formed during the war and of the state Volunteer regiments mobilized for the conflict. Volume 2 is devoted entire ly to the Philippines, with sections on the capture of Manila in August 1898, the growing tension between the United States forces and Emilio Aguinaldo's nationalist army, and the campaign in the Philippines from February 1899 through the officially proclaimed end of the conflict on 30 June 1902. For the most part, the material reproduced consists of telegrams between the Adjutant General and the commanders of expedi tions. Often, the Adjutant General transmitted messages to the field from the President and Secretary of War. There is also telegraphic correspon dence, related to organizing and supporting the expeditions, between the Adjutant General and unit, post, and military department commanders in the United States. Interspersed among the telegrams are occasional memo randums, general orders, and longer reports. The documents, reproduced in chronological order, show little sign of deliberate editing or arrange ment and contain a mixture of high policy and strategy with operational and logistical detail. Coverage goes much beyond combat activities, to include the minutia of supply, personnel management, and medical care, as well as extensive material on military government, political relations with Cubans and Filipinos, and the difficulties of Army commanders in dealing with the American press. Through these messages one can follow the making and execution of policy on many subjects; hence the telegrams provide valuable insights into the actual workings of Army command and administration at the tum of the century. Valuable as they are, these volumes do not cover a number of important aspects of Army activity in the Spanish-American War era Because they focus on communications between the Adjutant General and theater head quarters, they contain little on planning and decision making within the War Department, for example on strategy and mobilization. They also can not be relied on for coverage of decisions and operations below the theater headquarters level. Certain major subjects are largely neglected due to the focus on the overseas campaigns, notably the organization and administra tion of the large Volunteer Army training camps in the United States, the partial demobilization and reorganization of the Volunteer force after the August 1898 armistice with Spain, the deployment of nearly 50,000 United States troops to occupy Cuba during the winter of 1898-99, the drafting and enactment of the Army reorganization act of March 1899, and the rais ing of a new United States Volunteer force to fight in the Philippines. Deployment of the latter force can be followed through the published cor respondence. For other subjects, the historian must consult the War Department annual reports, the records of bureaus and commands in the National Archives, and the personal papers collections in the Library of Congress, the U.S. Army Military History Institute, and other repositories. In spite of these gaps, the Adjutant General's published correspondence remains a major primary source on the Army in the Spanish-American War era. Until the last couple of decades, it formed the basis for most histori ans' accounts of Army operations; hence the collection, and its limitations, shaped the historiography of the conflict. More recent works have gone beyond the correspondence to fill in its gaps and produce more compre hensive views of the Army in the period. Nevertheless, these volumes con tinue to be heavily used by writers on the war, and with good reason, since they provide a solid core of primary material and a starting point for research on a wide spectrum of topics related to the conduct of the over seas campaigns. It is thus appropriate that the Center of Military History, as part of its observance of the approaching centennial of the war with Spain, make this valuable and long out-of-print primary source once again available to the Army and the public in the form of a facsimile reprint.
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