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La Follette’s Illness in the Fall and Winter of 1898–1899 Peace negotiations in Paris officially terminated the Spanish-American War on 10 December 1898, although hostilities had been over since the 12 August signing of an armistice protocol. Christmas arrived early that year for the United States. The most valuable present under the tree, the deed to the Philippines , came with a price tag of twenty million dollars as a payment to Spain, but in December 1898, before the insurrection, it seemed to rank as one of the greatest real estate bargains of all time. The Teller Amendment, which had been part of the war resolution signed by McKinley on 20 April 1898, specifically required the United States to disclaim any intention of assuming sovereignty over Cuba. Nevertheless, at war’s end, a U.S. military administration under General Leonard Wood in fact controlled the island. American strategic and financial interests necessitated exactly this kind of close supervision from Washington. Cuba, then, could be counted as another one of the big presents bestowed upon the United States by the Treaty of Paris, the independence of the island being more technical than real at this point. The Platt Amendment of 1901 would formalize the American restrictions on Cuban independence.1 Yuletide stocking-stuffers included the cession of Puerto Rico and Guam. The nation by and large accepted these gifts as a just compensation for its virtuous actions in freeing the peoples of Cuba and the Philippines from the tyranny of the Spanish. Virtue in this case, however, was not its own reward. La Follette meanwhile lay in bed seriously ill from nervous exhaustion, a problem that would plague him at regular intervals for the rest of his life. From October 1898 to April 1899, he absented himself completely from his law office and virtually ceased all business and political activity. Even without 51 3  Lessons Unlearned La Follette and the Subjugation of the Philippines La Follette’s help, the Republicans had won a smashing statewide victory in the November elections. Explaining his lack of involvement to Thomas Gill, on 22 November, he wrote, “I believe I am improving, but very, very slowly. This is the fifth week I have been on my back.”2 On 4 December, his friend and law partner Gilbert E. Roe told Dr. R. D. Rood of Stevens Point, Wisconsin , that “Bob is improving slowly, and he is not yet able to give his attention to either law or politics.”3 On the fifteenth, La Follette expressed the desire to take the water cure in West Baden, Indiana. Writing to the proprietor of a hotel there, he described his condition: “I have been ill some eight weeks with congestion of liver and stomach, and am still confined to my bed.”4 He wanted to know what it would be like taking the cure at that time of year. Roe assumed the burden of La Follette’s law practice and kept friends and clients informed about the patient’s progress. To their mutual friend Henry F. Cochems, then at Harvard, he wrote on 19 December: “Bob’s long, continued sickness is of course a great calamity, although I expect he will be around again in the course of a few weeks.”5 In a letter two days later to George P. Rossman, Roe explained that in the early stages of La Follette’s illness he would read important letters to him, but for the past four or five weeks “no one has been permitted to see him, and the doings of the outside world are kept absolutely from his mind.”6 His diet at this time consisted of a half-glass of milk every four hours: “we can only say that he is holding his own, and we feel gradually becoming stronger.” On the twenty-sixth he gave Henry B. Faville a guardedly optimistic prognosis, but then added: “To be frank, however, we do not expect to have his ever inspiring presence in the office for weeks, and perhaps months.”7 The new year began with La Follette still bedridden and out of touch with the rest of the world. In January he did begin to write letters again. On the twenty-fourth, he informed a Mr. Maxwell of Creston, Iowa: “I have been very sick for several months, but am so much improved.”8 For his health, he and Belle made a month-long sojourn to southern California, beginning in early February. California, he predicted...

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