U.S. troops seized Apolinario Mabini, the paralyzed intellectual architect of the First Philippine Republic, near Rosario, Batangas. Mabini had served as Emilio Aguinaldo's chief adviser and drafted the republic's constitution. His capture, following Aguinaldo's own seizure earlier that year, marked another severe blow to organized Filipino resistance against American colonial occupation.
Mabini contracted polio as a young man and spent his revolutionary career largely paralyzed from the waist down, dictating strategy and policy from a chair or carried on a hammock through the countryside as American columns pursued him. Filipinos called him the Sublime Paralytic, a nod to both his physical condition and his unbending moral authority within Aguinaldo's government.
After his capture near Rosario, Batangas, American authorities offered him a pardon in exchange for swearing allegiance to the United States. Mabini refused for months, insisting on Philippine independence, and was eventually exiled to Guam. He relented and took the oath only in 1903, returning home just weeks before his death from cholera. His writings on republicanism and his 'True Decalogue' of civic duties remain foundational texts in Philippine political thought.