THE SECOND OREGON VOLUNTEERS IN THE PHILIPPINES BY WAY OF THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

You can tell important seminal moments in many American cities by some memorials and parks found within the city.  Philadelphia has the Liberty Bell.  San Antonio has the Alamo.  Indianapolis has the massive Soldiers and Sailors Monument from the Civil War.  Portland has a leafy park across from the Federal Courthouse and the former Multnomah Courthouse where a statue stands proudly in the middle of the park.  At first glance, someone might think the Civil War is being remembered in some way.  But the rest of the monument has nothing to do with the Civil War.  It is a monument honoring the dead of the Second Oregon Volunteers who fought in the Spanish-American War.  Surrounding the monument, a series of marble stumps resemble artillery shells.  The battle names inscribed have nothing to do with Oregon in Cuba or Spain, but everything to do with the Philippines.

LOWNSDALE SQUARE

Downtown Portland features three park blocks separating office buildings containing mainly government – Federal, City, and County.  The north block is named for Daniel Lownsdale who got to Portland in 1845.  He originally owned the land making up most of downtown Portland today.  In the center of this park the tall statue dating to 1906.  Around the base are two small howitzer cannons Henry Dosch, a Portlander from later in the 19^th century by the way of Germany and Missouri, donated.  He found the cannons buried in the sands around Charleston, South Carolina in 1902. The War Department gave him permission to bring them out west as part of the monument.  “Howitzers fired in the defense of Fort Sumpter 1861” reads a bronze plaque.

Monuments to local soldiers tend to go up in seminal moments in a town’s history and that seem to be the case here.

SECOND OREGON VOLUNTEERS

The Second Oregon Volunteers were a local militia group called to supplement the small Federal army during the 1898 Spanish-American War.  War was declared with Spain, mainly over causes to do with the ongoing civil war in Cuba on 21 April. President William McKinley asked the State of Oregon to provide for a regiment to supplement the small Federal army. 

States’ militia had adopted the term of National Guard since the Civil War. Organized and administered by the states, the Guard would not be federalized until the 1903 Dick Act. This act, the first of several acts clarifying the Guard as the primary reserve of the Regular Army by 1916. 

There were two regiments making up the Oregon National Guard in 1898 with the 1^st Regiment based out of Portland under the command of Colonel Owen Summers.  Since McKinley called for only one regiment, but the war proving very popular, too many volunteers clamored for positions. The Governor had to choose those who would serve. 

WAR WITH SPAIN

By early May, the regiment began to form up in Irvington Park – renamed “Camp McKinley”.  The men signed up for a one-year term of service or until the time hostilities with Spain ended.  As four companies swore in to form a battalion, that battalion travelled south to San Francisco. The entire regiment forming an encampment at the Presidio by the end of May.

On 22 May, Colonel Summers was informed the regiment would form part of the American force being gathered to be sent to the Philippines.  Two days later, the men broke camp and boarded vessels for the long voyage across the Pacific, the first regiment to sail west.  The men of the Second Oregon became the first Oregon guardsmen to fight on foreign soil.

OFF ACROSS THE OCEAN – OREGON GOES TO THE PHILIPPINES

The American force was dispatched to the Philippines after Admiral Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet at Cavite on 1 May.  Dewey needed troops to the Spanish naval yards which his men captured. The men were also needed for any offensive actions against Spanish troops still in Manila and the Philippines. 

He also needed men and ships to supplement his force in case the Spanish sent a relief force.  The Spanish did send such a force, with 4,000 Spanish troops, led by the battleship Pelayo.  They only made it as far as the Red Seas. With the Spanish Atlantic squadron annihilated off Santiago de Cuba 3 July, Spain recalled the Philippine relief force to help defend the Spanish coastline.

END OF THE FIRST CHAPTER

The little American flotilla coming west from San Francisco, captured Guam on the way to Manila. The Spanish there were unaware a war was even going on.  The force debarked from their ships at Cavite at the end of June. They had little to do as they had to wait a month and a half. The rest of the American force needed to arrive before moving against the Spanish in Manila.

The Spanish, besieged by Filipino insurgents, with American forces not moving on Manila until 31 July.  Realizing their situation hopeless, the Spanish agreed to surrender after a sham defeat arranged.  On 13 August, the American fleet moved in on of the Manila forts and bombarded the fort for an hour.  The fort then surrendered and the city soon after.  The whole episode could have been avoided. Admiral Dewey cut the Spanish international cable shortly after destroying their Philippine fleet. The war had already ended the day before with the cessation of hostilities between the US and Spain.

FILIPINO INSURRECTION

Next came the question of what to do with the Philippines.  American efforts against the Spanish in the Philippines had the help of Philippine insurrection forces. The insurrectos had been fighting against the Spanish since 1892.  The Spanish defeated most of the revolutionary forces by late 1897. They paid off the revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo, sending him into exile in Hong Kong with a lot of cash.  Money was to be paid in three lots.  Aguinaldo claimed he never received the last two payments. He boarded a boat from Singapore on 27 April for Hong Kong as a first stage in resuming the insurrection.  He arrived in Hong Kong the day of Dewey’s victory. Boarding an American naval vessel, the USRC McCulloch, he reached Cavite on 19 May.

Reversing the defeats of the 1897, the insurgents controlled of most of the islands within three months. The exception was Manila which they besieged with 12,000 men.  He declared independence for the Philippines 12 June 1898.  That declaration not recognized, however, by either Spain or the US.

WAR’S END

The official treaty between Spain and the US – the Treaty of Paris 10 December – gave the US control of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico as colonies and Cuba was a protectorate.  Considering the events, relations between the local insurrection forces under Aguinaldo and the US broke down 4 February 1899. The Philippine War – Fil-Am War – ensued over the next three years. It cost many more lives than the war against Spain.

PHILIPPINE WAR – OREGON STAYS ON IN THE PHILIPPINES

Initially, American action was undertaken by Volunteers, since there was only one Regular regiment present – the US 14^th dispatched from Alaska.  Slowly, with the end of hostilities in Cuba and Puerto Rico, the Regular Army returned to the US to make good significant losses incurred mainly from disease in the Caribbean.  Regiments were then sent on to the Philippines to augment and supplant the Volunteers.  Those regiments were comprised of mostly newly signed on recruits who, like in the Civil War, were not the equal in combat, initially, to the citizen-soldiers. 

Most of the Medals of Honor issued to Army members during the Philippine War were to volunteers. The volunteers members from both the initial Span-Am volunteers and later volunteer regiments raised to augment the 65,000 strong post-Span-Am Regular Army.   Three of those medals would go to members of the Second Oregon.

The Second Oregon took part in five campaigns and forty-two battles before their service was up.  Sixteen men died in action and forty-eight from other causes, mostly disease.  They sailed home 14 June 1899 and mustered out of Federal service on 7 August.

ARMORY OF THE FIRST REGIMENT OF THE SECOND OREGON

Two other sites in the city relate to the adventures of the men of the Second Oregon.  The first is the First Regiment Armory in what is today the Pearl District of Northwest Portland.  One block north of the massive bookstore block making up Powell’s Books is the Armory.

Built in the fashion of many late 19^th century armories in North America, the building originally built in 1891, housed the 1^st Regiment of the Oregon National Guard.  An earlier armory built in 1888 proved too small for troops to practice maneuvers inside.  It was one of the few buildings in Portland able to handle large crowds in the early 20^th century.  Over time, a host of different events took place in the building. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft and Woodrow Wilson all gave speeches inside.

Eventually, a local brewery purchased the building in 1968 by a local brewery, using it as a warehouse.  After the brewery went out of business, the building gained a new purpose. Rebuilt in 2000, today it houses two theaters – the Portland Center Stage at The Armory.

VETERANS’ CEMETERY

On the south edge of the city is another memorial of the Spanish-American War.  In Portland’s cemetery containing most of the movers and shakers of the city through its history, River View, you can find the Spanish-American War Veterans Memorial.  In the middle of a circle of headstones, another tall monument surmounted by a soldier with a rifle stands on guard The soldier looks less like a possible Civil War participant than the one in Lownsdale Square. 165 headstones encircle the monument, graves of former soldiers of the Second Oregon Volunteers.  The men buried here are mainly former enlisted men of the regiment.  Their commander, Owen Summers, lies in the same cemetery, but a little way away from his men.

SOLDIERS’ ANNEX

Other Portlanders who served in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine War or were involved in the Boxer Relief Expedition are buried in an annex to the Second Oregon group. This part of River View served veterans predating the later construction of a large Veterans Cemetery built up on Mount Scott on the southeast edge of the city today.

“MCKINLEY’S BULLDOG” – ANOTHER OREGONIAN IN THE PHILIPPINES

The last obvious monument to the Spanish-American War in Portland is the mast of the former battleship USS Oregon.  Nicknamed “McKinley’s Bulldog”, the battleship built as the third and last of its class of three coastal-protection pre-dreadnought ships for the US Navy in 1896.  Naval architecture quickly outdated the coastal-protection ships, even by the time of its completion.  Even though quickly overshadowed, the ship served the Navy faithfully – dramatically during the Spanish-American War – until the end of World War One, including service in the Philippines. The ship retired as a museum along the Willamette waterfront in Portland. 

END OF A BULLDOG

World War Two emerged onto the scene and the governor, not realizing the ship as totally out of date by 1942 gave the ship to the US Navy for the purpose of re-using the ship.  The only purpose the Navy could find, however, was to begin scrapping the historic ship.  When the governor heard the Navy was ripping apart the famous ship, he rescinded his offer. Too late by then, however, with much of the ship’s superstructure gone by that time.  the main mast recovered, found its way here to the riverfront in Portland.  The two post-Span-Am smokestacks hide away in a warehouse for some form of possible future exhibition.

REPURPOSE

A couple of anchor hoists found new life, re-purposed to haul logs at a sawmill. They worked along Opal Creek deep in the forest up in the Oregon Cascades east of Salem. It remains to be seen, if they remain on the ground after a huge fire roared through the area in September 2020.

The main bulk of the Oregon lived on as an ammunition barge during the latter part of World War Two and towed to Guam.  The Oregon, now IX-22 a mere hull number, stayed in Guam except for one episode in mid-November 1948. During a typhoon, she broke free of her moorings. She drifted 580 miles to the southeast before being found.  Returned to Guam, she remained there until 1956. Her life ended broken up in Japan with the pieces sold for scrap.