ON FEBRUARY 16, 1899, ten days after the United States Senate ratified the treaty ending war with Spain and twelve days after Filipinos demanded their independence by firing on American troops, President William McKinley explained to the Home Market Club of Boston his decision to annex the Philippines. Despite a snowstorm delaying travel all along the East Coast, he came to assert his goal: to establish “law and liberty” in that distant place. “Our priceless principles,” he said, “undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag.”1 The blizzard also pushed back sailing day for four United States Army regiments ordered to the Philippines, but on February 19, the transport Sheridan slipped from Brooklyn harbor building steam for a fifty-four-day journey to the archipelago. It soon joined the Grant and the Sherman already steering toward Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, and aboard the Sheridan, First...

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