Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/199

Rh  a deliverance that the supreme court, in sustaining it on final appeal, incorporated it bodily in the decree of affirmation. In the midst of this service on the bench, Judge Taft shouldered a further responsibility by becoming dean of the Cincinnati school of law at which he had been prepared for the bar; and it was while he was doing this double duty that his career took a portentous turn.

The treaty with Spain which ended the war of 1898 ceded the Philippine Islands to the United States. The change of sovereignty was no sooner effected than the intermittent struggle for independence which the islanders had been carrying on for many years against Spain was revived against her successor. Until the beginning of 1900 it was necessary to keep the military arm of the government most active in the disaffected quarters; there had been a civil commission, also, sitting at Manila, but its functions were more in the line of investigation than of administration. When the rebel leaders had become pretty well convinced of the hopelessness of their cause, President McKinley realized the need of giving a more definite guaranty, both to the Filipinos and to the world, that his policy in dealing with the adopted colonies contemplated only benevolence; he accordingly set about the reorganization of the civil commission, with someone at its head whose name and