One of the richest Americans in history, Andrew Carnegie was a steel magnate from New York whose wealth could compete against the pharaohs of old. And like most billionaires, Carnegie somehow managed to become embroiled in politics. As one of the world's richest men, Carnegie had the courage to call out the encroaching imperialism of the United States of America, as well as the privilege to call them out on it. One cause that urged him to oppose imperialism was a small smattering of islands on the other side of the world—The Philippines.
When the Spanish lost the Spanish-American War, the U.S. purchased the Philippines for $20 million as part of the Treaty of Paris, effectively annexing the country into the American colonies. Like Mark Twain and Leo Tolstoy, Andrew Carnegie opposed America’s involvement in the Philippines, calling out the government on denying Filipinos their independence. The move to purchase the Philippines contradicted the U.S.’ involvement in the Spanish-American War in the first place. The war began when the U.S. backed Cuban revolutionaries fighting for independence from the Spanish, but the U.S. sang a different tune when it purchased the Philippines from the Spanish, leading to the eventual Philippine-American War.
Carnegie was so against the act that in 1898 he offered to donate $20 million to the people of the Philippines so they could buy their independence back from the Americans. Take note, this $20 million would have come out the pocket of Carnegie himself, although it certainly wasn’t a dent in his wallet as Carnegie was estimated to have a net worth of $310 billion.
“Mr. Carnegie went to [then President William] McKinley when the Spanish treaty was pending, and said to him that America was in face of war in the Philippines; that our people and the Filipinos would soon be killing one another,” a 1902 article in the New York Times reported. “He asked to be sent to Manila with the fullest authority to declare that America desired good things for the little brown men and would soon recognize their independence.”
The Bud Dajo Massacre, 1904
MARK TWAIN AND THE PHILIPPINES :
CONTAINING AN UNPUBLISHED
LETTER
MORTO N N . COHE N
Although Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" is the most famous piece
of literature evoked by the Philippine phase of the Spanish-American War,
it is not only the utterance by a man of letters on America's venture into
imperialism. One of the most forceful voices heard on the subject on this
side of the Atlantic was that of Mark Twain, who held strong convictions
diametrically opposed to Kipling's. *
Twain's political opinions in general and his views of American expansion in particular have been well chronicled, but the account is enriched by
an unpublished Twain letter that has recently come to light and the unpublished letter from the admirer that elicited it.
2
At -the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Twain was living in
Europe, lecturing and writing, his only means of earning enough- money to
pay the debts he had incurred when the Webster Company collapsed. While
abroad, he undoubtedly heard a good deal of criticism of his country's policy in Cuba. But he defended the United States' position, believing that
America was genuinely concerned for the Cuban people. He was not, however, sympathetic with the government's'attitude toward the Philippines,
for even before he returned home he saw that Washington did not intend to
give the Filipinos immediate independence.
He had, of course, read the reports of Dewey's victory over the Spanish
fleet in Manila Bay, of the Rough Riders' victory in Cuba, and of Spain's
capitulation to McKinley's demand that she relinquish the Philippines in exchange for $20 million. He also knew that the Filipinos had risen in revolt
when they realized that they were merely trading Spanish for American domination and that the United States had sent 70, 000 men to the archipelago to
defend Old Glory. He was certainly disturbed by the reports that American
soldiers has resorted to humiliating bushwhacking to route Filipino guerillas
and that atrocities had been committed by American prisoner-of-war camp
authorities.
He arrived back in New York on October 15,1900, to a tumultuous welcome, and he seized the opportunity, while in the limelight, to speak out
quickly and passionately against American imperialism. During his first
interview, on the evening of his arrival, he excoriated the government. "I
have seen, " he said, "that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the pie of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. "^
And when he spoke at a dinner in his honor at the Lotus Club on November
10, he again expressed anti-expansionist sentiments.
His was clearly a minority position. Imperialism, in the guise of Destiny, was the cry of the day, especially in the yellow Hearst and Pulitzer
press. Twain, at the height of his success, must have realized fully that
by embracing an unpopular cause he was jeopardizing the very audience upon whom he depended for a living. "Mark Twain feared a possible return
into debt as he feared almost nothing else,TT
Professor Gibson has written;4
and yet hardly a month passed in the three years after his return to this
country during which he did not, in one way or another, denounce imperialism. The more he read about American operations in the Philippines, the
stronger grew his indignation, the more frequent his outspoken appeals, the
more vehement his public denunciations. On December 13, 1900, at a Waldorf-Astoria banquet, when he introduced Winston Churchill, then a young
war correspondent, he interspersed his gracious compliments with frank
admissions that he and Churchill did not see eye to eye on imperialism, and
he restated his position on recent events in South Africa and China, as well
as the Philippines.
It is not surprising, in the light of his pronounced views and his obvious
desire to influence American policy if he could, that he granted a request
from the Red Cross Society at the end of 1900 to write a greeting which, he
understood, would be read on New Year's Eve, along with other messages
from famous people, at numerous meetings across the country. But after
he wrote his statement, he discovered that the Society was using only his
name in its advance notices, and he asked the Red Cross manager either to
publish the other names as well or return his contribution. The manager
returned the greeting, and Twain sent it instead to the New York Herald,
which printed a photograph of it in its issue of December 30, 1900. The
text reads as follows:
A salutation-speech from the Nineteenth Century to the
Twentieth,
taken down in short-hand by Mark Twain:
I bring you the stately matron named Christendom,
returning dedraggled, besmirched and dishonored from
pirate-raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, &
the Phillipines [sic] , with her soul full of meanness, her
pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap &-a towel, but hide the lookingglass.
Mark Twain5
New York, Dec. 31, 1900
Professor Gibson has pointed out why this piece is perhaps Twain1
s
"most perfect single piece of persuasive writing" and has described the re -
action to it in some detail. " The hitherto unpublished material, a letterMark Twain and the Philippines 29
from an admirer and Twainf
s reply, give further evidence of Twain's strong
opinions.
The admirer was Abner Cheney Goodell (1831-1914) of Salem, Massachusetts, a lawyer and historian, sometime President of the New England
Historic Genealogical Society, who owned an exceptional library on witchcraft and was, at the time he wrote to Twain, an editor and annotator of
the laws of colonial Massachusetts.
7 He writes from Salem, on the same
day that Twain's greeting appeared in the Herald:
Dear Sir:
Will you forgive a stranger for obtruding upon your
scant leisure this expression of gratitude for your ''Salutation " to the incoming century.
In my opinion it is, so far as I know, the best thing
you ever did. Indeed, I rank it with Lincoln's immortal
speech at Gettysburg.
It has done me good. I have stopped taking medicine,
now that somebody has done something effectual to rouse
the public from their chronic apathy in this universal reign
of terror.
It is a great strain upon one's self-confidence to continue to harbor the conviction that he is right, and all the
"powers that be" of Christendom are wrong in their fearful onslaughts upon human beings And if wrong, how appalling the magnitude of the error of crime !
You have cheered me. You reassure me against the
depressing doubt of my own sanity, and you encourage me
to believe there is yet hope that-old Waller's sentiment,
echoed by Charles Sumner in the title-page of his first
great plea for universal peace, may prevail throughout
the world:--
'What angel shall descend to reconcileThese Christian states, and end their guilty toil?"
I implore you to continue to improve the advantage
which the high place you have attained gives you for reaching the public ear and conscience, by stirring up the pharisees until they stop, to think; which it would be distrusting the providence of God to doubt must be followed by re -
lenting and repentance.
I end, as I began, with the profound thanks of,
Yours cordially,
Abner C. Goodell
Mr. Samuel Clemens,
14 W. Tenth St. ,
New York, N. Y.
Tolstoy against the hypocrisy of the West
Like the members of the Anti-Imperialist League, Tolstoy condemned the Philippine invasion with the same ferocity as the suppression of the Boxer nationalists in China and the invasion of the Boer republics by Britain. He noted that these actions only demonstrated the hypocrisy of the West and its so-called discourse on freedom. Opposing the argument of the imperialists, Tolstoy wondered how countless atrocities could be committed in the name of civilization.
Unsurprisingly, the remarks of Tolstoy fell on deaf ears. Even in the standard historiographies of the Philippines, the Philippine-American War was skipped in favor of highlighting the material improvements under American tutelage. This partially stems from historians such as Rafael Palma and collaborators such as Pardo de Tavera who viewed America as a force for the greater good.
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