ws arrived on the 7th of May of Dewey's
victory on the 1st of May, the Government had anticipated such a result
and had decided to send an army to support him. San Francisco was made
a rendezvous for volunteers, and on the 12th of May, General Wesley
Merritt was assigned to command the expedition. Dewey reported that he
could at any time command the surrender of Manila, but that it would be
useless unless he had troops to occupy the city.

On the 19th of May, General Merritt received the following orders: "The
destruction of the Spanish fleet at Manila, followed by the taking of
the naval station at Cavite, the paroling of the garrisons, and the
acquisition of the control of the bay, have rendered it necessary, in
the further prosecution of the measures adopted by this Government for
the purpose of bringing about an honorable and durable peace with Spain,
to send an army of occupation to the Philippines for the twofold purpose
of completing the reduction of the Spanish power in that quarter and
giving order and security to the islands while in the possession of the
United States."

On the 30th of June the first military expedition, after a bloodless
capture of the island of Guam, arrived in Manila Bay. A second
contingent arrived on the 17th of July, and on the 25th, General Merritt
himself with a third force, which brought the number of Americans up to
somewhat more than 10,000. The Spaniards had about 13,000 men guarding
the rather antiquated fortifications of old Manila and a semicircle of
blockhouses and trenches thrown about the city, which contained about
350,000 inhabitants.

It would have been easy to compel surrender or evacuation by the guns of
the fleet, had it not been for an additional element in the situation.
Manila was already besieged, or rather blockaded, on the land side, by
an army of nearly ten thousand Philippine insurgents under their shrewd
leader, Emilio Aguinaldo. It does not necessarily follow that those who
are fighting the same enemy are fighting together, and in this case
the relations between the Americans and the insurgents were far from
intimate, though Dewey had kept the situation admirably in hand until
the arrival of the American troops.

General Merritt decided to hold no direct communication with Aguinaldo
until the Americans were in possession of the city, but landed his army
to the south of Manila beyond the trenches of the Filipinos. On the
30th of July, General F. V. Greene