Arthur MacArthur Jr.

Biography

Arthur MacArthur won the Medal of Honor at eighteen for seizing the colors at Missionary Ridge, and spent the next three decades in the frontier army waiting for another war. It came in 1898: he led a division in the capture of Manila from Spain, then commanded the decisive fighting of the Philippine war's conventional phase — the Battle of Manila, Caloocan, and the drive up the railway that took Malolos. As military governor from May 1900 he ran the counterinsurgency at its hinge point, pairing amnesty offers and civic programs with the hard policies of General Order 100 — deportations, detentions, and destruction of guerrilla-supporting villages. It was under his command that Funston captured Aguinaldo. His governorship ended in a bitter public feud with William Howard Taft, whose civilian commission MacArthur treated as an intrusion into a war zone; Washington sided with Taft. He died in 1912, mid-speech at a reunion of his Civil War regiment. His son Douglas would accept Japan's surrender forty-three years later — and preside over the Philippine independence his father had fought to postpone.

Key Battles