line on territory which ought not to have been occupied by the Americans, and that General Otis officially reported: “The engagement was one strictly defensive on the part of the insurgents, and of vigorous attack by our forces.” This is one of the things which the President also forgot.
But the question of the first shot is not the main one. The main question is who was responsible for the condition of things which made that bloody conflict inevitable? And I maintain that President McKinley was responsible. It was he who by his famous “benevolent assimilation” order of December 21, 1898, officially informed the Philippine Islanders that they would not be permitted to be independent; that the United States were prepared to impose upon them American foreign rule instead of Spanish foreign rule, and that our Army would, if they refused to submit, subject them to that American foreign rule by force of arms. It was an open and rude declaration of war against the Filipinos standing up for their freedom and independence.
Is it not amazing that in order to make the Filipinos appear as a wantonly attacking party, Mr. McKinley should go so far as to say in his letter of acceptance: “The insurgents did not wait for the action of Congress—before the treaty was ratified by the Senate, they attacked the American Army”? How groundless the assertion is that the Filipinos were the first assailants, I have already shown. But who was it that really “did not wait for the action of Congress”? Who was it that took the decisive step “before the treaty was ratified by the Senate”? Not the Filipinos, but President McKinley himself; for it was he who six weeks before the ratification of the treaty by the Senate, without the slightest legal authority and by a barefaced usurpation of power, issued that order which was a declaration of war and a direct
