Publisher's Synopsis
"NEEDOM FREEMAN, in the United States regular army during the years 1898-1900, was born in the quiet little country village of Barrettsville, Dawson County, Ga., on the 25th of September, 1874. Many things have been said and written of army life during the Spanish-American war, but usually from the officers' point of view. As a matter of fact the ideas of a private if spoken or written are unbelieved simply because the prestige of office was not attached, and receives but little credit." Thus begins this short memoir of the experiences of one soldier at war. The Spanish-American War had been called the "Splendid Little War" as the United States, in three months, defeated the Spanish Empire in what could legitimately be called the Yellow Journalist War, due to the shameless war mongering on the part of the newspaper magnates William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Although the conflict with Spain ended after a quarter of a year in 1898, the United States found itself bogged down in a war of occupation in the Philippines after annexing the archipelago instead of recognizing its independence, as the Filipino people, who had been fighting for their freedom from Spain, had expected. This treachery on the part of the US government sparked a bloody conflict that lasted from 1899 to 1902 and claimed the lives of more than 4,000 American soldiers, about 15,000 Filipino soldiers and at least 200,000 Filipino civilians. In "A Soldier in the Philippines" we can see the beginning of the American Empire through the eyes of a private soldier with no axe to grind and no career to advance.
