Jacob H. Smith

Also known as: Jacob Hurd Smith (full name) · "Hell-Roaring Jake" / "Hell Roaring Jake" (press sobriquet, for extravagant language) · "Howling Jake" / "Howling Wilderness Smith" (for the Samar order) · "The Monster" (press label after the orders became public) · Brigadier General, U.S. Volunteers (promoted June 1, 1900)

Society

Definition

Jacob H. Smith (January 29, 1840 – March 1, 1918) was a United States Army brigadier general from Jackson County, Ohio, whose orders during the pacification of Samar (1901–1902) — issued in retaliation for the Balangiga attack of September 28, 1901 — made him the most notorious American officer of the Philippine–American War. In the exchange preserved in the court-martial record, Smith told Major Littleton Waller of the Marines: “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States,” and, asked the age limit, answered “Ten years.” (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith, Wikipedia — Pacification of Samar)

The order became a national scandal through the press — a New York Journal editorial cartoon of May 5, 1902 captioned “Criminals Because They Were Born Ten Years Before We Took the Philippines” — and through Waller’s own court-martial, where Smith’s denial under oath collapsed. Tried by court-martial in May 1902, Smith was convicted not of murder or war crimes but of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline, sentenced “to be admonished by the reviewing authority,” and retired from the Army by order of President Theodore Roosevelt with no additional punishment. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)

Identities

Authority	Value
Wikipedia	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_H._Smith
Wikidata	Q13479548
DBpedia	https://dbpedia.org/page/Jacob_H._Smith
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings	N/A
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Jacob+H.+Smith%22+Samar
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Jacob Hurd Smith (full name)
“Hell-Roaring Jake” / “Hell Roaring Jake” (press sobriquet, for extravagant language)
“Howling Jake” / “Howling Wilderness Smith” (for the Samar order)
“The Monster” (press label after the orders became public)
Brigadier General, U.S. Volunteers (promoted June 1, 1900)

Examples and Analogs

The order in the record: the Smith–Waller exchange — no prisoners, kill and burn, the age limit set at ten — is documented not in the press but in sworn testimony, corroborated by three officers and by copies of Smith’s written orders when Waller revealed it at his own trial. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)
The newspaper record: where the papers amplified — the December 1899 interviews in which Colonel Smith boasted the Filipinos were “worse than fighting Indians,” under the headline “Colonel Smith of 12th Orders All Insurgents Shot At Hand,” and the May 5, 1902 New York Journal cartoon — the adjudicated record is narrower: the court convicted on the good-order charge, not on killing. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)
The subordinate’s countermand: before the march, Waller privately told Captain David Dixon Porter: “Porter, I’ve had instructions to kill everyone over ten years old. But we are not making war on women and children, only on men capable of bearing arms” — restraint by counter-order that shaped what the campaign actually did. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith, Wikipedia — Pacification of Samar)
The toll in the documents: Waller’s own report counted 255 dwellings burned, 13 carabaos shot, and 39 people killed in eleven days; retrospective estimates of civilian deaths across the campaign run from about 2,000 to about 2,500, with higher figures (up to 50,000) attributed to typographical error — while Samar’s population, the record notes, grew during the war. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)

Usage Scenarios

1. Studying the Samar Campaign

Historians of the Philippine–American War use the Smith record as the campaign’s central document: the Balangiga attack that killed 51 soldiers of Company C, 9th U.S. Infantry; Chaffee’s assignment of Smith to pacify Samar on orders from Roosevelt; and the starvation-and-destruction strategy that followed. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)

2. Analyzing Military Justice Under Empire

The two courts-martial — Waller’s (for executing eleven Filipino porters, acquitted 11–2 on April 28, 1902) and Smith’s — are studied together as the era’s test of command accountability: the subordinate tried for murder and acquitted, the general tried only for indiscipline and merely admonished. (Wikipedia — Littleton Waller, Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)

3. Reading Atrocity News

Media historians trace how the orders moved from testimony to sensation: uncovered at Waller’s trial (beginning March 17, 1902), denied by Smith on April 7, 1902, then fixed in public memory by the New York Journal‘s “Kill Everyone Over Ten” cartoon — the newspaper quote and the adjudicated conduct separating almost immediately. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)

Strategies

Distinguish the three layers: the sworn testimony of what Smith said; the press version (headlines and the Journal cartoon); and the court’s finding of what he was culpable of — conflating them is the commonest error in retellings. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)
Anchor on court-record dates: Balangiga, September 28, 1901; Waller’s trial from March 17, 1902; Smith’s denial, April 7, 1902; Smith’s trial, May 1902; retirement ordered July 1902 — the verifiable spine of the affair. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith, Wikipedia — Littleton Waller)
Use the Filipino record alongside the American one: the Balangiga historical marker’s translated text remembers the retaliation as days of “killing and burning” that made the town a “howling wilderness” and says Smith and Waller were “dismissed” (liniwalag) — a harsher verdict than the American court’s, and itself a primary source. (Wikipedia — Balangiga massacre)
Handle casualty figures by source: cite the counted figures (Waller’s report) separately from the estimates (2,000; about 2,500) and flag the discredited extremes. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)

Security and Safety Measures

Accountability through court-martial: the episode established on the record that exterminatory orders by a U.S. general in the Philippines could be exposed by subordinates’ testimony and adjudicated — even if the sanction (admonishment and retirement) struck contemporaries as inadequate. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)
Waller’s application of General Orders No. 100: the countermand to Porter invoked the limits of lawful warfare — “we are not making war on women and children” — the documented restraint mechanism actually operating in the field. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith, Wikipedia — Pacification of Samar)
Command vetting: Smith’s file — a Civil War wound and brevet, but also an 1860s bounty-brokerage scandal, an 1885 court-martial for unpaid poker debts, an 1886 false-statement conviction, and the 1899 “worse than fighting Indians” interviews — is the standing case study in what an unrestrained commander’s prior record reveals. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)

Historical Context

Smith enlisted in the Union Army early in the Civil War and was wounded at Shiloh in April 1862, carrying a Minié ball in his hip for the rest of his life; a saber scar from Barboursville, Virginia (July 1861) and a bullet from El Caney in the Spanish–American War completed his three documented battle wounds. Invalided out of field service, he recruited — with marked success, his record notes, for the United States Colored Troops — in Louisville through the war, during which his assets grew from $4,000 to $40,000; pressed to explain, he described a bounty-brokerage scheme, and the Judge Advocate General, Joseph Holt, found his explanations unavailing, ending his temporary judge-advocate appointment. Further disciplinary scrapes followed: an 1885 court-martial in San Antonio for conduct unbecoming an officer over $135 in unpaid poker losses (a year’s confinement at Fort Clark and half-pay forfeiture), a second trial in 1886 for lying to the Adjutant General — from which President Cleveland’s intercession saved him with a reprimand — and an 1891 charge of using enlisted men as household servants. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)

In the Philippines, Smith was promoted brigadier general of volunteers by Governor William Howard Taft on June 1, 1900. After Balangiga, Chaffee gave him Samar. The campaign that followed — food and trade cut off, the interior swept and burned — ran from late 1901 into 1902, its orders surfacing only at Waller’s trial. Smith’s own trial came in May 1902; Secretary of War Elihu Root recommended and Roosevelt ordered retirement, announced in the press in July 1902. Smith retired to Portsmouth, Ohio, volunteered for service again in April 1917 at American entry into World War I, and was refused; he died in San Diego on March 1, 1918, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)

Challenges and Controversies

What the Order Meant and What Was Done

The adjudicated record is precise but narrow: Smith was convicted of the good-order offense for the order itself, not for any count of killings; how far the order was carried out remains disputed — Waller’s countermand, subordinate restraint (the Judge Advocate General credited “the good sense and restraint of the majority of Smith’s subordinates”), and the demographic record of a growing Samar population all argue against the wildest tolls, while the counted burnings and killings remain. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith, Wikipedia — Pacification of Samar)

The Punishment Controversy

“Admonished” and retired, Smith escaped the dismissal and disgrace that the facts might have demanded — a verdict that outraged anti-imperialists in 1902 and that the Filipino historical marker answers with its own word, liniwalag (dismissed). The gap between the American court’s finding and both Filipino and press memory is the episode’s living controversy. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith, Wikipedia — Balangiga massacre)

The Death Toll Debate

Estimates of Filipino civilians killed on Samar range from the counted (Waller’s 39 in eleven days) through encyclopedic figures of about 2,000 and research estimates near 2,500, up to Filipino-historian claims of 5,000 and even 50,000 — the last now attributed to typographical error; responsible accounts give the number with its source and its status. (Wikipedia — Jacob H. Smith)