Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 64

We had sustained a peculiar relation to it. American missionaries had redeemed the people from barbarism and Paganism. Many of them, and their descendants, had remained in the Islands.

The native Hawaiians were a perishing race. They had gone down from 300,000 to 30,000 within one hundred years.

The j.a.panese wanted it. The Portugese wanted it. Other nations wanted it. But the Hawaiians seemed neither to know nor care whether they wanted it or no. They were a perishing people.

Their only hope and desire and expectation was that in the Providence of G.o.d they might lead a quiet, undisturbed life, fishing, bathing, supplied with tropical fruits, and be let alone.

We had always insisted that our relation to them was peculiar; that they could not be permitted to fall under the dominion of another power, even by their own consent. That had been declared by our Department of State under Administrations of all parties, including Mr. Webster, Mr. Seward, and Mr.

Bayard. They were utterly helpless. As their Queen has lately declared: "The best thing for them that could have happened was to belong to the United States."

By the Const.i.tution of Hawaii, the Government had been authorized to make a treaty of annexation with this country. It was said that that Const.i.tution was the result of usurpation which would not have come to pa.s.s but for American aid, and the presence of one of our men-of-war. But that Government had been maintained for six or seven years. Four of them were while Mr. Cleveland was President, who it was well known would be in full sympathy with an attempt to restore the old Government.

So if the people had been against it, the Government under that Const.i.tution could not have lasted an hour.

President Harrison had negotiated a treaty of annexation, against which no considerable remonstrance or opposition was uttered. My approval of it was then, I suppose, well known. Certainly no friend of mine, and n.o.body in Ma.s.sachusetts, so far as I know, in the least objected or remonstrated against it. The treaty was withdrawn from the consideration of the Senate by President Cleveland.

Another was negotiated soon after President McKinley came in. Meantime, however, the controversy with Spain had a.s.sumed formidable proportions, and the craze for an extension of our Empire had begun its course. Many Republican leaders were advocating the acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands, not for the reasons I have just stated, but on the avowed ground that it was necessary we should own them as a point of vantage for acquiring dominion in the East. It was said that China was about to be divided among the great Western powers, and that we must have our share. I saw when the time approached for action of the McKinley Treaty that the question could not be separated, at least in debate, from the question of entering upon a career of conquest of Empire in the Far East.

Under these circ.u.mstances the question of duty came to me: Will you adhere to the purpose long formed, and vote for the acquisition of Hawaii solely on its own merit? Or, will you vote against it, for fear that the bad and mischievous reasons that are given for it is so many quarters, will have a pernicious tendency only to be counteracted by the defeat of the treaty itself?

I hesitated long. President McKinley sent for me to come to the White House, as was his not infrequent habit. He said he wanted to consult me upon the question whether it would be wise for him to have a personal interview with Senator Morrill of Vermont. He had been told that Mr. Morrill was opposed to the Treaty. The President said: "I do not quite like to try to influence the action of an old gentleman like Mr. Morrill, so excellent, and of such great experience. It seems to me that it might be thought presumptuous, if I were to do so. But it is very important to us to have his vote, if we can." The President added something implying that he understood that I was in favor of the Treaty.

I said, "I ought to say, Mr. President, in all candor, that I feel very doubtful whether I can support it myself." President McKinley said: "Well, I don't know what I shall do. We cannot let those Islands go to j.a.pan. j.a.pan has her eye on them.

Her people are crowding in there. I am satisfied they do not go there voluntarily, as ordinary immigrants, but that j.a.pan is pressing them in there, in order to get possession before anybody can interfere. If something be not done, there will be before long another Revolution, and j.a.pan will get control. Some little time ago the Hawaiian Government observed that when the immigrants from a large steamer went ash.o.r.e they marched with a military step, indicating that they were a body of trained soldiers. Thereupon Hawaii prohibited the further coming in of j.a.panese. j.a.pan claimed that was in violation of their treaty, and sent a ship of war to Hawaii.

I was obliged to notify j.a.pan that no compulsory measures upon Hawaii, in behalf of the j.a.pan Government, would be tolerated by this country. So she desisted. But the matters are still in a very dangerous position, and j.a.pan is doubtless awaiting her opportunity."

I told President McKinley that I favored then, as I always had, the acquisition of Hawaii. But I did not like the spirit with which it was being advocated both in the Senate and out of it. I instanced several very distinguished gentlemen indeed, one a man of very high authority in the Senate in matters relating to foreign affairs, who were urging publicly and privately the Hawaiian Treaty on the ground that we must have Hawaii in order to help us get our share of China. President McKinley disclaimed any such purpose. He expressed his earnest and emphatic dissent from the opinions imputed to several leading Republicans, whom he named.

I never, at any time during the discussion of the Philippine question, expressed a more emphatic disapproval of the acquisition of dependencies or Oriental Empire by military strength, than he expressed on that occasion. I am justified in putting this on record, not only because I am confirmed by several gentlemen in public life, who had interviews with him, but because he made in substance the same declaration in public.

He declared, speaking of this very matter of acquiring sovereignty over Spanish territory by conquest:

"Forcible annexation, according to our American code of morals, would be criminal aggression."

He said at another time:

"Human rights and const.i.tutional privileges must not be forgotten in the race for wealth and commercial supremacy. The Government of the people must be by the people and not by a few of the people. It must rest upon the free consent of the governed and all of the governed. Power, it must be remembered, which is secured by oppression or usurpation or by any form of injustice is soon dethroned. We have no right in law or morals to usurp that which belongs to another, whether it is property or power."

I suppose he was then speaking of our duty as to any people whom we might liberate from Spain, as the results of the Spanish War. He unquestionably meant that we had no right, in law or morals, to usurp the right of self-government which belonged to the Cubans, or to the Philippine people.

Yet I have no doubt whatever that in the att.i.tude that he took later he was actuated by a serious and lofty purpose to do right. I think he was led on from one step to another by what he deemed the necessity of the present occasion. I dare say that he was influenced, as any other man who was not more than human would have been influenced, by the apparently earnest desire of the American people, as he understood it, as it was conveyed to him on his Western journey. But I believe every step he took he thought necessary at the time. I further believe, although I may not be able to convince other men, and no man will know until the secret history of that time shall be made known, that if he had lived, before his Administration was over, he would have placed the Republic again on the principles from which it seems to me we departed--the great doctrine of Jefferson, the great doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, that there can be no just Government by one people over another without its consent, and that the International law declared by the Republic is that all Governments must depend for their just powers upon the consent of the governed. This was insisted on by our Fathers as the doctrine of International law, to be acted upon by the infant Republic for itself. In this I am confirmed by the testimony of Mr. Secretary Long, who was in President McKinley's most intimate counsels.

The Treaty negotiated by President McKinley with Hawaii was not acted upon. It was concluded to subst.i.tute a joint resolution, for which there was a precedent in the case of the acquisition of Texas. I voted for the joint resolution, as did Senator Hale of Maine, and several Democratic Senators, who were earnestly opposed to what is known as the policy of Imperialism.

I left the President, after the conversation above related, without giving him any a.s.surance as to my action. But I determined on full reflection, to support the acquisition of Hawaii, in accordance with my long-settled purpose, and at the same time to make a clear and emphatic statement of my unalterable opposition to acquiring dependencies in the East, if we did not expect, when the proper time came, to admit them to the Union as States. This I did to the best of my power. I was invited to give an address before a college in Pennsylvania, where I took occasion to make an emphatic declaration of the doctrine on which I meant to act.

Afterward, July 5, 1898, I made a speech in the Senate, on the joint resolution for the acquisition of Hawaii, in which I said that I had entertained grave doubts in regard to that measure; that I had approached the subject with greater hesitation and anxiety than I had ever felt in regard to any other matter during the whole of my public life.

I went on to say:

"The trouble I have found with the Hawaiian business is this: Not in the character of the population of the Sandwich Island, not in their distance from our sh.o.r.es, not in the doubt that we have an honest right to deal with the existing government there in such a matter. I have found my trouble in the nature and character of the argument by which, in the beginning and ever since, a great many friends of annexation have sought to support it . . . .

"If this be the first step in the acquisition of dominion over barbarous archipelagoes in distant seas; if we are to enter into compet.i.tion with the great powers of Europe in the plundering of China, in the division of Africa; if we are to quit our own to stand on foreign lands; if our commerce is hereafter to be forced upon unwilling peoples at the cannon's mouth; if we are ourselves to be governed in part by peoples to whom the Declaration of Independence is a stranger; or, worse still, if we are to govern subjects and va.s.sal States, trampling as we do it on our own great Charter which recognizes alike the liberty and the dignity of individual manhood, then let us resist this thing in the beginning, and let us resist it to the death.

"I do not agree with those gentlemen who think we would wrest the Philippine Islands from Spain and take charge of them ourselves. I do not think we should acquire Cuba, as the result of the existing war, to be annexed to the United States."

I reinforced this protest as well I could. But I went on to state the reasons which had actuated me in favoring the measure, and that my unconquerable repugnance to the acquisition of territory to be held in dependency did not apply to that case.

I cited the Teller resolution, and declared that it bound the American people in honor, and that its principle applied to all Spanish territory. I maintained that there was nothing in the acquisition of Hawaii inconsistent with this doctrine.

I think so still.

I was bitterly reproached by some worthy persons, who I suppose will always find matter for bitter reproach in everything said or done on public matters. They charged me with speaking one way and voting another. But I am content to leave the case on its merits, and on the record.

The war went on. The feeling of the country was deeply excited.

President McKinley made his famous Western journey. He was greeted by enthusiastic throngs. The feeling in that part of the country in favor of a permanent dominion over the Philippine Islands was uttered by excited crowds, whom he addressed from the platform and the railroad cars as he pa.s.sed thorough the country. But the sober, conservative feeling, which seldom finds utterance in such a.s.semblies, did not make itself heard.

The President returned to Washington, undoubtedly in the honest belief that the country demanded that he acquire the Philippine Islands, and that Congress should govern them.

I have never attributed publicly, or in my own heart, to President McKinley any but the most conscientious desire to do his duty in what, as the case seems to me, was an entire change of purpose. Many military and naval officers, from whose reports he had to get his facts almost wholly, insisted that the Philippine people were unfit for self-government.

After the unhappy conflict of arms the solution of the problem seemed to be to compel the Philippine people to unconditional submission. It would not be just or fair that I should undertake to state the reasons which controlled the President in adopting the conclusions to which I did not myself agree. I am merely telling my own part in the transaction.

When I got back to Washington, at the beginning of the session in December, 1898, I had occasion to see the President almost immediately. His purpose was to make a Treaty by which, without the a.s.sent of their inhabitants, we should acquire the Philippine Islands. We were to hold and govern in subjection the people of the Philippine Islands. That was pretty well understood.

The national power of Spain was destroyed. It was clear that she must submit to whatever terms we should impose.

The President had chosen, as Commissioners to negotiate the Treaty, five gentlemen, three of whom, Senators Cushman K.

Davis, and William P. Frye and Whitelaw Reid, the accomplished editor of the New York _Tribune,_ former Minister to France, were well known to be zealous for acquiring territory in the East. Mr. Frye was said to have declared in a speech not long before he went abroad that he was in favor of keeping everything we could lay our hands on. I suppose that was, however, intended as a bit of jocose extravagance, which that most excellent gentleman did not mean to have taken too seriously.

Mr. Day, the Secretary of State, and Senator Gray of Delaware, were understood to be utterly opposed to the policy of expansion or Imperialism.

I do not know about Mr. Day. But it appeared, when three years afterward the correspondence between the Commissioners and the Department of State became public, that Mr. Day expressed no objection to the acquisition of Luzon, but objected to a peremptory demand for the whole Philippine Island group, thereby--to use his language--"leaving us open to the imputation of following agreement to negotiate with demand for whole subject matter of discussion ourselves."

The public impression as to Senator Gray is confirmed by the following remonstrance, which appears in the same correspondence:

PEACE COMMISSIONERS TO MR. HAY [Telegram]

PARIS, October 25, 1898.

The undersigned cannot agree that it is wise to take Philippine Islands in whole or in part. To do so would be to reverse accepted continental policy of the country, declared and acted upon throughout our history. Propinquity governs the case of Cuba and Porto Rico. Policy proposed introduces us into European politics and the entangling alliances against which Washington and all American statemen have protested. It will make necessary a navy equal to largest of powers; a greatly increased military establishment; immense sums for fortifications and harbors; multiply occasions for dangerous complications with foreign nations, and increase burdens of taxation. Will receive in compensation no outlet for American labor in labor market already overcrowded and cheap; no area for homes for American citizens; climate and social conditions demoralizing to character of American youth; new and disturbing questions introduced into our politics; church question menacing. On whole, instead of indemnity--injury.

The undersigned cannot agree that any obligation incurred to insurgents is paramount to our own manifest interests.

Attacked Manila as part of legitimate war against Spain.

If we had captured Cadiz and Carlists had helped us, would not owe duty to stay by them at the conclusion of war. On the contrary, interests and duty would require us to abandon both Manila and Cadiz. No place for colonial administration or government of subject people in American system. So much from standpoint of interest; but even conceding all benefits claimed for annexation, we thereby abandon the infinitely greater benefit to accrue from acting the part of a great, powerful, and Christian nation; we exchange the moral grandeur and strength to be gained by keeping our word to nations of the world and by exhibiting a magnanimity and moderation in the hour of victory that becomes the advanced civilization we claim, for doubtful material advantages and shameful stepping down from high moral position boastfully a.s.sumed. We should set example in these respects, not follow in the selfish and vulgar greed for territory which Europe has inherited from mediaeval times. Our declaration of war upon Spain was accompanied by a solemn and deliberate definition of our purpose. Now that we have achieved all and more than our object, let us simply keep our word. Third article of the protocol leaves everything concerning the control of the Philippine Islands to negotiation between the parties.

It is absurd now to say that we will not negotiate but will appropriate the whole subject-matter of negotiation. At the very least let us adhere to the President' instructions and if conditions require the keeping of Luzon forego the material advantages claimed in annexing other islands. Above all let us not make a mockery of the injunction contained in those instructions, where, after stating that we took up arms only in obedience to the dictates of humanity and in the fulfillment of high public and moral obligations, and that we had no design of aggrandizement and no ambition of conquest, the President among other things eloquently says:

"It is my earnest wish that the United States in making peace should follow the same high rule of conduct which guided it in facing war. It should be as scrupulous and magnanimous in the concluding settlement as it was just and humane in its original action."

This and more, of which I earnestly ask a reperusal, binds my conscience and governs my action.

GEORGE GRAY.

WEDNESDAY, 12.30, night.