LEWIS L. GOULD
Chocolate Eclair or Mandarin
Manipulator? William McKinley, the
Spanish-American War, and the
Philippines: A Review Essay
The Spanish War: An American
Epic-1898. By G.J.A. O'Toole. (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1984. 447p.;
photographs, notes, bibliogra-
phy, index. $19.95.)
Sitting in Darkness: Americans in the
Philippines. By David Haward
Bain. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
464p.; notes, bibliography,
index, photographs. $24.95.)
The Spanish-American War and the
Philippine Insurrection that
followed were significant historical
events that continue to attract
scholarly and popular authors. G.J.A.
O'Toole sees the war with
Spain as "a national rite of
passage, transforming a former colony into
a world power" (p. 18). His book
examines the background of the
conflict, but concentrates most heavily
on the military events in the
spring and summer of 1898. David Haward
Bain uses the life and ca-
reer of Frederick Funston, and
especially his capture of the Filipino
leader Emilio Aguinaldo in 1901, as a
basis for exploring the Ameri-
can relationship with the Philippines
since George Dewey's victory at
Manila Bay on May 1, 1898.
Though the amount of space which each
book devotes to Pres-
ident William McKinley varies with their
contrasting purposes,
O'Toole and Bain both attempt to
interpret and analyze the twenty-
Lewis L. Gould is Eugene C. Barker
Centennial Professor of American History at the
University of Texas at Austin.
Chocolate Eclair or Mandarin Manipulator? 183 |
|
fifth president as diplomat and war leader. Their conclusions about him reflect the negative emphasis of most writing on McKinley, but they criticize him in mutually inconsistent ways. O'Toole follows what might be called the traditional "chocolate eclair" approach, arguing as Theodore Roosevelt reportedly said, that the president was weak and had "no more backbone than a chocolate eclair."1 Bain, on the other hand, depicts McKinley as a "mandarin" who controlled events for his own imperial designs (p. 56).
1. Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1979), 610. |
184 OHIO HISTORY
O'Toole extends an historiographical
tradition that is more than six
decades old. After the First World War,
the belief grew among
scholars that the war with Spain should
have been avoided. McKin-
ley's alleged submission to the tide of
popular hysteria in the spring
of 1898 became a cliche of American
history. It ran through the pages
of Walter Millis, The Martial Spirit (1931),
Ernest May, Imperial De-
mocracy (1961), and even David F. Trask, The War with Spain
in 1898
(1981), the most recent and impressive
one-volume history of the war.
This point of view has withstood the
challenges of Margaret Leech,
H. Wayne Morgan, Paul Holbo, and others,
and persists in most
American History texts to this time.2
O'Toole does not list Wayne Morgan's
book among his sources, nor
has he consulted President McKinley's
own papers or the equally im-
portant collection of the president's
secretary, George B. Cortelyou.
He has done some interesting digging
into the military intelligence
side of the conflict, but he does not
integrate these findings into a
fresh look at how the president managed
the fighting. And there are
a number of careless slips. Enrique
Dupuy de Lome was a minister,
not an ambassador (p. 65), William
Jennings Bryan was nominated by
the Democrats in July 1896, not June (p.
66), and McKinley spent sev-
en terms in the House of
Representatives, not two (p. 84).
More important, however, O'Toole simply
slides McKinley away
from the center of events, and installs
Theodore Roosevelt in particu-
lar and other proponents of war with
Spain in general into the spot-
light. Diplomatic and military policy in
1897-1898, in O'Toole's ver-
sion, appears to have been the product
of autonomous forces apart
from the president himself. Thus,
Roosevelt, a sub-Cabinet official
and relatively minor military figure in
these years, gets equal space
and more with the actual architect of
American policy. Had O'Toole
looked at Courtelyou's diary in the
Library of Congress, the Cortel-
you Papers, and McKinley's own records,
he would have had a
much sounder grasp of how the war came.
The central issue in the onset of
hostilities in April 1898 is whether
Spain had capitulated to American
demands about Cuba before
McKinley sent his message to Congress on
April 11. O'Toole claims,
as do many other writers, that Madrid
asked for an armistice. In fact,
the Spanish sought a suspension of
hostilities on April 9. The distinc-
tion is crucial. A Spanish armistice
would have involved political rec-
2. Joseph A. Fry, "William McKinley
and the Coming of the Spanish-American
War: A Study of the Besmirching and
Redemption of an Historical Image," Diplomatic
History, 3(1979),
77-97.
Chocolate Eclair or Mandarin
Manipulator? 185
ognition of the Cuban rebels; a
suspension of hostilities merely would
give Spain a temporary military respite.
It did not include agreement
to the American demand for Cuban
independence, and it left the de-
cision about the resumption of the
fighting to the Spanish command-
er on the island. Getting this key issue
in the dispute right is decisive
for a judgment about whether Spain gave
in, whether they wanted a
settlement and Cuban independence, and
whether McKinley's
message on Cuba was justified or not.
O'Toole has the matter wrong
on almost every aspect of this question,
and it tilts his whole narrative
against McKinley in a false way.
The Spanish War is more an historical pastiche than a fresh treat-
ment of its subject. It adds little that
is new to a comprehension of
the war's significance, and it achieves
its narrative effects by dodging
the hard historical questions and
misrepresenting McKinley's presi-
dency.
Sitting in Darkness belongs in a newer tradition of Spanish-
American War scholarship about McKinley.
In the early 1960s, histo-
rians critical of American foreign
policy, most notably William A.
Williams, Walter LaFeber, and Thomas
McCormick, described
McKinley as a sort of imperialistic evil
genius. According to these and
other writers, McKinley managed events,
manipulated men, and was
an adroit agent of American capitalism
as it sought overseas markets.
A popular writer named Walter Karp
adopted this view and he, in
turn, convinced Bain of its accuracy.3
Bain has large pretensions for his
study, and his handling of Mc-
Kinley is a relatively small part of his
sprawling narrative. His text fol-
lows Funston from his Kansas origins
through a stint in Cuba and on
to the Philippines between 1898 and
1901. Bain himself and some
friends actually went to the Philippines
in 1982, and physically dupli-
cated Funston's route in Northern Luzon.
The book speaks of histor-
ical events as they relate to the
current crisis in the Philippines, and it
is as much an indictment of the rule of
Ferdinand Marcos now as a
critique of American policy between 1898
and 1902.
At first glance it would seem that Bain
has been more thorough
than O'Toole. Wayne Morgan's book is
present, as are the McKinley
papers, although Bain did not use the
Cortelyou Papers either. Some
careless errors are troublesome. Once
again, de Lome is an ambassa-
3. Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An
Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-
1898 (Ithaca, New York, 1963), 327-33; Walter Karp, The
Politics of War: The Story of
Two Wars Which Altered Forever the
Political Life of the American Republic (1890- 1920)
(New York, 1979), 69-95; Bain, Sitting
in Darkness, 423 at 56.
186 OHIO HISTORY
dor, and Spain declares an armistice in
April 1898. Bain confuses
Thomas Collier Platt (R.-N.Y.) with
Orville H. Platt (R.-Conn.), and
he has George Dewey (1837-1917) serving
with Stephen Decatur
(1779-1820). Presumably he means David
Farragut (1801-1870).
Finally, William Howard Taft never
served as Vice President (Bain,
pp. 58, 61, 68, 393).
There are, however, more serious errors
that impair the credibility
of Bain's narrative. He has McKinley in
December 1897, April 1898,
and February 1899 delivering messages to
Congress in person. On the
last occasion, as the Senate debated the
peace treaty with Spain,
Bain says that "William McKinley
appeared in the hall. He stood
ready to address them" (p. 78). As
every American history student
should learn in a survey course, no
president addressed Congress in
person from Thomas Jefferson's
abandonment of the practice in 1801
through Woodrow Wilson's resumption of
it in 1913. It might be pos-
sible to attribute this blunder to
simple ignorance. A non-historian
raised in an era when chief executives
regularly appear before joint
sessions of Congress might
understandably slip on a point of fact in
this way. Since McKinley did send
messages to Congress in Decem-
ber 1897 and April 1898, Bain's
quotations from these documents as
presidential speeches are careless
errors, not fatal ones.
In the case of McKinley's alleged
appearance before the Senate in
person on February 6, 1899, no such
excuses can be made. The event
never happened, and McKinley said
nothing. Bain proceeds to quote
words that the president supposedly
uttered. Checking Bain's notes,
one finds a reference to a volume of
McKinley's published speeches.
The cited pages reveal that the
president did in fact say the words
quoted, but he delivered them not in
February 1899 but six months
later. And they were not addressed to
senators but to the Tenth
Pennsylvania Regiment of Volunteers in
Pittsburgh on August 28,
1899. Bain's notes give no clue to what
he has done with McKinley's
August 1899 remarks.4
Two possible interpretations exist for
this strange bit of legerde-
main. Bain may have been inexcusably
careless and sloppy in his
handling of the evidence. Or he may have
deliberately manipulated
the information to enhance his argument.
When an author breaks the
trust that must exist with the reader,
and does so either willfully or
carelessly, confidence in the rest of
his narrative vanishes. If he can
misuse a McKinley speech either out of
ignorance or to further his po-
4. Speeches and Addresses of William
McKinley From March 1, 1897 to May 30, 1900
(New York, 1900), 216; Bain, Sitting
in Darkness, 78, 425-26.
Chocolate Eclair or Mandarin
Manipulator? 187
lemical goals, then why should the
reports of his conversations in
the Philippines, quotations from primary
sources, or conclusions
about historical events be trusted at
all. It would be interesting to
check all of Bain's sources to see what
else he may have done, but
surely it is not the task of every
reader to see that an author is accu-
rate and trustworthy. That is the
responsibility of Bain and his pub-
lisher, and on this point they have
failed.
If historical scholarship is cumulative,
then it is time that writers
on William McKinley, the
Spanish-American War, and the Philippine
Insurrection recognize their obligation
to deal with the sources about
these subjects fairly and fully. That
does not mean, of course, that
their conclusions must be favorable to
the twenty-fifth president.
The importance of McKinley's tenure and
its consequences for the
nation insure that debate will continue.
If the United States had not
intervened in Cuba in 1898, would the
war there have persisted, re-
quiring American action at a later date
under more difficult circum-
stances? Some scholars, especially
Philip S. Foner, assert that the
Cuban rebels had virtually achieved a
victory over Spain by April
1898. The Spanish, however, did not
admit defeat and resolved to
continue the struggle to preserve Cuba
as part of their nation. In the
case of the Philippines, if the United
States had sailed away after the
war ended, the outcome for the
inhabitants of the archipelago
would likely have meant Japanese,
German, or other imperial overse-
ers, not national independence.5
The broad tends of writing about
McKinley and his times that
these books represent will persist. The
alternative thesis-that Mc-
Kinley was the first modern president
with a varied record of success
and failure-may even in time prevail. In
fairness to McKinley, how-
ever, everyone should concede that he
made policy between 1897
and 1901, not Theodore Roosevelt, and
that it is wrong to view his
administration as if he was not in
charge. Whether he was eclair,
mandarin, or modern president, he is
entitled to have his deeds
rendered accurately, and the
significance of his presidency analyzed
fairly and honestly. McKinley asked no
more from history when he
was alive and he deserves no less now.
5. Philip S. Foner, The
Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Im-
perialism, 1895-1902 (2 vols., New York and London, 1972), I, 248-49.
LEWIS L. GOULD
Chocolate Eclair or Mandarin
Manipulator? William McKinley, the
Spanish-American War, and the
Philippines: A Review Essay
The Spanish War: An American
Epic-1898. By G.J.A. O'Toole. (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1984. 447p.;
photographs, notes, bibliogra-
phy, index. $19.95.)
Sitting in Darkness: Americans in the
Philippines. By David Haward
Bain. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
464p.; notes, bibliography,
index, photographs. $24.95.)
The Spanish-American War and the
Philippine Insurrection that
followed were significant historical
events that continue to attract
scholarly and popular authors. G.J.A.
O'Toole sees the war with
Spain as "a national rite of
passage, transforming a former colony into
a world power" (p. 18). His book
examines the background of the
conflict, but concentrates most heavily
on the military events in the
spring and summer of 1898. David Haward
Bain uses the life and ca-
reer of Frederick Funston, and
especially his capture of the Filipino
leader Emilio Aguinaldo in 1901, as a
basis for exploring the Ameri-
can relationship with the Philippines
since George Dewey's victory at
Manila Bay on May 1, 1898.
Though the amount of space which each
book devotes to Pres-
ident William McKinley varies with their
contrasting purposes,
O'Toole and Bain both attempt to
interpret and analyze the twenty-
Lewis L. Gould is Eugene C. Barker
Centennial Professor of American History at the
University of Texas at Austin.