The James F. Smith Collection is made up of 20 letters and documents dating from the times of Brigadier General Smith's employment in the Philippine Commission and Secretary of Public Instruction in the Philippine Islands (1904-1906), as Governor General of the islands (1906-1910), and as a judge in Washington, D.C. The bulk of the materials pertain to Smith's services in the Philippines, with a particular focus on criticisms and arguments related to James F. Smith's favoritism or non-favoritism of Protestant versus Catholic missionaries' interests there, Catholic lands in the islands, education, and Henry D. Estabrook's speech on the American involvement in the Philippines. A particularly lengthy report pertains to a 1906 investigation of a possible arson in Oriental Negros, with charges that the people of Bais celebrated the destruction of the Luzuriaga church. The collection includes letters by U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Bishops Jeremiah Harty and James Gibbons, and others.
Please see the box and folder listing for detailed information on the contents of each item in the collection.
James F. Smith was born on January 28, 1859, to Irish immigrants Patrick and Ann Smith, in San Francisco, California. He was educated at Santa Clara College (graduated 1878) and Hastings Law School (passing the bar in 1881).
James F. Smith and Lillie A. Dunnigan married in 1885, and the couple had one child, Cyril J. Smith (1888-1957). The family remained in San Francisco where James Smith worked as an attorney, until the United States' entrance in the Spanish-American War. Smith arrived in the Pacific in 1898, as commander of the 1st California Volunteers. He would spend around 11 years in the Philippines. He served as part of the United States forces that stormed Manila in fall 1898 and was the American commissioner in discussions with Emilio Aguinaldo's representatives in 1899. He was a Colonel and then Brigadier General of the 1st Calf. Vols. during the Philippine-American War, the military commander of Visayas, the military governor of Negros, and customs collector at Manila in 1900. He was a Supreme Court justice of the Philippines between 1901-1903. He left the court reluctantly to serve the Philippine Commission and as the secretary of public instruction. He served in that capacity until 1906, when he became governor general. According to Kenton J. Clymer's American National Biography entry for Smith, the governor general "had a reputation for candor and often clashed with the press and with Commissioner (later governor general) W. Cameron Forbes. He publicly acknowledged that racial tension was increasing in the islands. Concerned about charges that Americans wanted to exploit the islands, Smith made few concessions to potential investors." When the Philippine Assembly was elected in 1907, Smith did not support the political party that pushed for immediate independence from the United States. This matched administrative beliefs that American presence in the Philippines should continue indefinitely.
James Francis Smith found some difficulties navigating American Christian missionary desires in the Philippines. Smith was a Catholic, and yet received complaints from both Protestants and Catholics, each believing the other was receiving unfair advantages. Smith remained in the Philippine Islands until receiving an appointment in 1910, by U.S. President William Howard Taft (who had been civil governor of the Philippines and on the Philippine Commission with Smith) as associate judge of the Court of Customs in Washington, D.C. Lillie Smith died in 1912, and her husband remained associate judge until his death from a heart attack in Washington, D.C., on June 29, 1928.
