In such a changing condition of public sentiment, McKinley was a better index of what the majority wanted than a referendum could have been.In August he stated: "I do not want any ambiguity to be allowed to remain on this point.The negotiators of both countries are the ones who shall resolve upon the permanent advantages which we shall ask in the archipelago, and decide upon the intervention, disposition, and government of the Philippines." His instructions to the commissioners actually went farther:
"Avowing unreservedly the purpose which has animated all our effort, and still solicitous to adhere to it, we cannot be unmindful that, without any desire or design on our part, the war has brought us new duties and responsibilities which we must meet and discharge as becomes a great nation on whose growth and career from the beginning the Ruler of Nations has plainly written the high command and pledge of civilization.
"Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial opportunity to which American statesmanship cannot be indifferent....Asking only the open door for ourselves, we are ready to accord the open door to others.
"In view of what has been stated, the United States cannot accept less than the cession in full rights and sovereignty of the island of Luzon."The American commissioners were divided.Day favored the limited terms of the instructions; Davis, Frye, and Reid wished the whole group of the Philippines; Gray emphatically protested against taking any part of the islands.On the 26th of October, Hay telegraphed that the President had decided that "the cession must be of the whole Archipelago or none." The Spanish commissioners objected strongly to this new development, and threatened to break off the negotiations which otherwise were practically concluded.This outcome would have put the United States in the unfortunate position of continuing a war which it had begun in the interests of Cuba for the quite different purpose of securing possession of the Philippines.The Spanish were probably not without hopes that under these changed conditions they might be able to bring to their active assistance that latent sympathy for them which existed so strongly in Europe.Nor was the basis of the claim of the United States entirely clear.On the 3d of November the American commissioners cabled to the President that they were convinced that the occupation of Manila did not constitute a conquest of the islands as a whole.
By this time, however, the President had decided that the United States must have the islands.On the 13th of November, Hay telegraphed that the United States was entitled to an indemnity for the cost of the war.This argument was not put forward because the United States wished indemnity but to give a technical basis for the American claim to the Philippines.In the same cablegram, Hay instructed the commissioners to offer Spain ten or twenty millions for all the islands.Upon this financial basis the treaty was finally concluded; it was signed on December 10, 1898; and ratifications were exchanged on April 11, 1899.
The terms of the treaty provided, first, for the relinquishment of sovereignty over Cuba by Spain.The island was to be occupied by the United States, in whose hands its subsequent disposition was left.All other Spanish islands in the West Indies, together with Guam in the Ladrones, were ceded to the United States.The whole archipelago of the Philippines, with water boundaries carefully but not quite accurately drawn, was ceded to the United States, which by the same article agreed to pay Spain $20,000,000.All claims for indemnity or damages between the two nations, or either nation and the citizens of the other, were mutually relinquished, the United States assuming the adjudication and settlement of all claims of her own citizens against Spain.
This treaty, even more than the act of war, marked a turning point in the relation of the United States to the outside world.
