Creed Fulton Cox

Brigadier General Creed Fulton Cox (June 12, 1877 − January 15, 1950) was a United States Army officer who attained the rank of brigadier general, commanded field artillery during World War I, and served as chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs from 1933 to 1937. A graduate of the United States Military Academy, he was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal for his direction of artillery in the Aisne-Marne, Saint-Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne offensives.

As head of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, Cox was one of the principal War Department officials responsible for American relations with the Philippine Islands during the passage and implementation of the Tydings–McDuffie Act, approval of the 1935 Philippine Constitution, and establishment of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. After leaving the bureau, he moved to Manila as a senior adviser to Philippine president Manuel L. Quezon.

Early life and education Cox was born on June 12, 1877, at Saddle Creek in Grayson County, Virginia, the son of Melville Beveridge Cox and Martha Elizabeth Fulton Cox. One of his brothers, Joseph Winston Cox, later became a judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Appointed to the United States Military Academy from Virginia, Cox entered West Point in 1897 and graduated with the class of 1901. He was commissioned in the cavalry and transferred to the newly organized 11th Cavalry Regiment on May 15, 1901.

Army career

Cox served with the 11th Cavalry in the Philippines from 1903 to 1905, including assignments at Angeles in Pampanga and at Manila. By 1907, as a first lieutenant, he had been selected to attend the Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Before the United States entered World War I, Cox served in cavalry and field-artillery assignments and as an inspector-instructor of National Guard troops. North Carolina military records identify him among Regular Army officers detailed to the state's organized militia. In 1916, he was one of the Atlanta-based officers liable for service connected with the Mexican border crisis.

World War I During the first World War, Cox served in France with the American Expeditionary Forces. He commanded the 77th Field Artillery Regiment, part of the 4th Division, and at times directed additional elements of the division's 4th Field Artillery Brigade. His combat service included the Aisne-Marne, Saint-Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne operations. During the Meuse-Argonne offensive he supervised the brigade's artillery barrage groupings.

Interwar assignments In the early 1920s Cox served as the United States military attaché in Vienna, accredited in the postwar period to Austria and Hungary. He later returned to field-artillery duty in the United States. He served in senior artillery commands, and by the early 1930s he was president of the Field Artillery Board at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Cox was promoted to colonel with date of rank June 12, 1930. In May 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated him to become chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs with the rank of brigadier general.

Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs

Cox served as acting chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs early in 1933 and formally took office on May 24. The bureau, then part of the War Department, supervised American civil-affairs responsibilities in the Philippines and retained functions involving several other island territories and customs receiverships. Cox worked in the bureau's Munitions Building headquarters in Washington.

His tenure coincided with a major contraction and transformation of the bureau's colonial responsibilities. Executive Order 6726 transferred responsibility for Puerto Rico to the Department of the Interior, while the Philippines moved from insular government toward commonwealth status and promised independence.

Philippine currency and commonwealth transition

One of the bureau's most consequential financial questions under Cox concerned Philippine currency reserves held in the United States. After the 1934 reduction in the gold content of the dollar, Cox's bureau prepared a detailed memorandum arguing that the Philippine government should receive a Treasury credit of $23,862,750.78. The figure represented the calculated increase in the reserves' value, less interest previously earned. Cox recommended legislation authorizing the credit, and the proposal received the support of the Treasury Department, War Department, Bureau of the Budget, Governor-General Frank Murphy, and President Roosevelt.

Cox also participated in high-level discussions surrounding the Philippine constitution and the new commonwealth. Cox attended a White House meeting in February 1936 with Roosevelt, Secretary of War George Dern, and Philippine resident commissioner Quintin Paredes. Cox was also among the American and Filipino officials closely involved when Roosevelt approved the Philippine Constitution.

In late 1935, Cox accompanied Secretary Dern on an official Asian tour aboard the cruiser . The party traveled by way of Japan and reached Manila in advance of the November 15 inauguration of the Philippine Commonwealth. Cox took part in meetings in Manila with Quezon, Murphy, General Douglas MacArthur, and other officials during the inauguration period.

Defense, trade, and independence policy

The bureau under Cox continued to advise the administration on the timetable and conditions for Philippine independence. In December 1936 he prepared a memorandum on future United States policy toward retaining naval bases in the islands after independence. In March 1937, Cox joined Assistant Secretary of State Francis B. Sayre, Chief of Naval Operations William D. Leahy, High Commissioner Paul V. McNutt, and others in discussions with Quezon over Philippine trade and the possibility of modifying the independence timetable.

Historical scholarship has examined Cox's role in disputes among Washington, Governor-General Murphy, and Filipino leaders over the scope of American authority during the transition. Political biographer Sidney Fine noted Cox's participation in drafting and withholding proposed instructions defining residual American sovereignty, while later studies cite his memoranda on defense, bases, immigration, labor, and economic policy.

Adviser to Manuel Quezon

Cox's four-year term as chief ended on May 23, 1937, and Brigadier General Charles Burnett was sworn in as his successor the following day.

As an adviser, Cox remained involved in discussions of public administration, Philippine-American relations, defense, and the scheduled 1946 independence date. Former governor-general Francis Burton Harrison described Cox as a "sound, sensible fellow" and recorded Cox's view that the independence date would not be altered and that a Japanese attack on the Philippines was the likeliest path to a United States-Japanese war.

Personal life and death

Cox married Margaret Hughes Kennedy in 1925. She died in 1934. He died on January 15, 1950, in Union, South Carolina, at age 72. He was buried in the Cox family plot at Saddle Creek Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery in Grayson County.