Emilio Famy Aguinaldo Sr. was born on March 22, 1869 in Cavite el Viejo (present-day Kawit), in Cavite Province, to Carlos Jamir Aguinaldo and Trinidad Famy-Aguinaldo, a Tagalog-ilocano Chinese mestizo couple that had eight children, the seventh of whom was Emilio Sr. The Aguinaldo family was quite well-to-do, as his father, Carlos J. Aguinaldo, was the community’s appointed gobernadorcillo (municipal governor) in the Spanish colonial administration and his grandparents Eugenio K. Aguinaldo and Maria Jamir-Aguinaldo. He studied at Colegio de San Juan de Letran but could not finish his studies because of an outbreak of cholera in 1882.

He became the “Cabeza de Barangay” in 1895 when the Maura Law called for the reorganization of local governments was enacted. At the age of 25, Aguinaldo became Cavite el Viejo’s first gobernadorcillo capitan municipal (municipal governor-captain)]] while he was on a business trip in Mindoro.

On January 1, 1895, Aguinaldo became a Freemason, joining Pilar Lodge No. 203, Imus, Cavite by the codename “Colon”.

On March 7, 1895, Santiago Alvarez, whose father was a Capitan Municipal (Mayor) of Noveleta, encouraged Aguinaldo to join the “Katipunan”, a secret organization led by Andrés Bonifacio that was dedicated to the expulsion of the Spanish and the independence of the Philippines through armed force. Aguinaldo joined the organization and used the nom de guerre Magdalo in honor of Mary Magdalene. The local chapter of Katipunan in Cavite was established and named Sangguniang Magdalo, and Aguinaldo’s cousin Baldomero Aguinaldo was appointed leader.

The Katipunan-led Philippine Revolution against the Spanish began in the last week of August 1896 in San Juan del Monte (now part of Metro Manila). However, Aguinaldo and other Cavite rebels initially refused to join in the offensive for lack of arms. Bonifacio and other rebels were forced to resort to guerrilla warfare, but Aguinaldo and the Cavite rebels won major victories in carefully planned and well-timed set-piece battles and temporarily drove the Spanish out of their area. On August 31, 1896, Aguinaldo started the assault by beginning as a skirmish to the full-blown revolt Kawit Revolt. He marched with his army of bolomen to the town center of Kawit. Prior to the battle, Aguinaldo strictly ordered his men not to kill anyone in his hometown. Upon his men’s arrival at the town center, the guards, armed with Remingtons and unaware of the preceding events, were caught completely by surprise and surrendered immediately. The guns there were captured and armed by the Katipuneros, and the revolt was a major success for Aguinaldo and his men. Later that afternoon, they raised the Magdalo flag at the town hall to a large crowd of people from Kawit that had assembled after ir heard of the city’s liberation.

In August 1896, as coordinated attacks broke out and sparked the revolution beginning in Manila. Aguinaldo marched from Kawit with 600 men and launched a series of skirmishes at Imus that eventually ended in open hostilities against Spanish troops stationed there. On September 1, with the aid of Captain Jose Tagle of Imus, they laid siege against Imus to draw the Spanish out. A Spanish relief column commanded by Brigadier-General Ernesto de Aguirre had been dispatched from Manila to aid the beleaguered Spanish defenders of Imus. Supported only by 100 troops and by cavalry, Aguirre gave the impression that he had been sent out to suppress a minor disturbance. Aguinaldo and his men counterattacked but suffered heavy losses that almost cost his own life. Despite the success, Aguirre did not press the attack, felt the inadequacy of his troops, and hastened back to Manila to get reinforcements. During the lull in the fighting, Aguinaldo’s troops reorganized and prepared for another Spanish attack. On September 3, Aguirre came back with a much larger force of 3,000 men. When Spanish troops arrived at the Isabel II Bridge, they were fired upon by the concealed rebels. As surprise was on the side of the revolutionaries, almost all Spaniards sent there were trapped and annihilated, such as Aguirre.

Alarmed by previous siege, led by General Aguinaldo in Imus, in September 1896, Governor-General Ramón Blanco y Erenas ordered the 4th Battalion of Cazadores from Spain to aid him in quelling the rebellion in Cavite. On November 3, 1896, the battalion arrived carrying a squadron of 1,328 men and some 55 officers. Also, Blanco ordered about 8,000 men who recently came from Cuba and Spain to joint in suppressing the rebellion. Prior to the land attacks, Spanish naval raids were conducted on the shores of Cavite, where cannons bombarded the revolutionary fortifications in Bacoor, Noveleta, Binakayan, and Cavite Viejo. The most fortified locations in Noveleta were the Dalahican and Dagatan shores, defended by Magdiwang soldiers commanded by General Santiago Alvarez, and the adjacent fishing village of Binakayan in Kawit was fortified by Magdalo under General Emilio Aguinaldo. Spanish naval operations were determined to crush the fortifications in these areas, mainly because the lake around Dalahican was strategic by connecting to the interior of Cavite. Apart from defending Binakayan, the Magdalo soldiers also kept the lower part of Dagatan up to Cavite’s border near Morong Province (now Rizal Province). Between the towns of Binakayan and Dalahican, the Spanish forces lost decisively since the Filipino rebels, led by Aguinaldo and Alvarez, routed them back to Cavite City in which the remaining Spanish troops would eventually surrender. The successful defenses of Binakayan and Dalahican was considered to be the first major victory of the Filipinos over a colonial power.

On January 1, 1896, he married Hilaria del Rosario (1877–1921), which was his first wife. They had five children: Carmen Aguinaldo-Melencio, Emilio “Jun” R. Aguinaldo Jr., Maria Aguinaldo-Poblete, Cristina Aguinaldo-Suntay, and Miguel Aguinaldo. Hilaria died of pulmonary tuberculosis on March 6, 1921, at the age of 44. Nine years later, on July 14, 1930, Aguinaldo married Maria Agoncillo (February 15, 1879 – May 29, 1963) at Barasoain Church. She died on May 29, 1963, a year before Aguinaldo himself. His grandsons Emilio B. Aguinaldo III and Reynaldo Aguinaldo served three terms as mayor (2007–2016) and vice-mayor of his hometown Kawit, Cavite, respectively. One of his great-grandsons, Joseph Emilio Abaya, was a member of the Philippine House of Representatives and represented Cavite’s first district, which contained their hometown, Kawit, from 2004 to 2012, when he was appointed as Secretary of Transportation and Communications in 2012, a post he that served until 2016, and another great-grandson, Emilio “Orange” M. Aguinaldo IV, married the ABS-CBN news reporter Bernadette Sembrano in 2007.

The newly appointed governor-general Camilo de Polavieja was now fully aware that the main weight of the revolution was in Cavite and so decided to launch a two-pronged assault to defeat the revolutionaries, led by Aguinaldo. He ordered General José de Lachambre with a much bigger force to march against Silang to take on the Katipuneros from the rear, and he would engage the Filipinos head on. On February 17, 1897, Aguinaldo ordered soldiers to plant dynamite along the bridge and to place pointed bamboo sticks in the river beds below the bridge. Several hours later, 12,000 Spaniards began to cross the bridge. The trap was sprung, and the dynamite was detonated, which killed several Spanish troops and injured many more. The rebels then emerged from the bushes, fought hand to hand, and repelled consecutive waves of enemy troops charging across the river. Edilberto Evangelista was shot in the head and died. Cavite Province gradually emerged as the Revolution’s hotbed, and the Aguinaldo-led Katipuneros had a string of victories there. After the battle, the demoralized Spanish soldiers retreated towards Muntinlupa.

While Polavieja was poised to strike at Zapote, another Spanish contingent is marching towards Aguinaldo’s rear. On February 15, 1897, the Spaniards launched the powerful Cavite offensive to drive and crush Filipino revolutionaries under Aguinaldo and his Magdalo forces that held numerous victories against the Spanish in the early stages of the revolution. Renewed and fully equipped with 100 cannons, 23,000 Spanish cazadores forces under Major General Jose de Lachambre saw town after town fall back to the Crown. Starting the offensive at Pamplona, Cavite, and Bayungyungan, Batangas, Lachambre’s men later marched deep into the heart of Aguinaldo’s home province.

Having just won the Battle of Zapote Bridge, Aguinaldo turned his attention at the new Spanish threat and was determined to recapture most of Cavite. Aguinaldo decided to deploy his forces at Pasong Santol, a bottleneck of Perez Dasmariñas on the way to Imus, which rendered the Spanish immoble and served the revolutionaries by its natural defensive positions. On February 19, Silang fell to the Spanish juggernaut despite attempts by Filipino forces to defend and then to recover it. Nine days later, Spanish forces marched into Dasmariñas to reclaim the town. A week later, Spanish troops used artillery pieces well to attack again as they moved towards Aguinaldo’s capital, Imus. Meanwhile, at the Tejero Convention, Aguinaldo was voted in absentia as president of the reorganized revolutionary government. Colonel Vicente Riego de Dios was sent by the assembly to fetch Aguinaldo, who was in Pasong Santol. Aguinaldo refused to come and so Crispulo was then sent to talk to his brother. He greeted and talked to his brother and explained his purpose, but Aguinaldo was hesitant to leave his post because of the pending attack of the Spanish in Dasmariñas. In March 1897, a stalemated battle between the revolutionary army of Crispulo Aguinaldo, who took over Aguinaldo’s leadership in the battle, and the Spanish forces, led by José de Lachambre, occurred in the trail. The Filipinos’ resistance was tenacious as ever by refusing to give ground, but the Spaniards were far more disciplined and advanced steadily. Aguinaldo realized the size of the enemy and the danger of the situation and so sent Magdalo troops to reinforce the threatened salient, but Supremo Andres Bonifacio summoned Magdiwang troops under, Artemio Ricarte, to intercept the Magdalo troops to Pasong Santol and refused to help the revolutionary soldiers and stated that he needed the soldiers elsewhere. The Spaniards pressed the offensive and achieved tactical superiority, which led to the massacre of the Filipino soldiers, including Aguinaldo’s brother. The Spaniards captured the salient only after Crispulo had been killed during the battle, and the rebels promptly broke off the engagement and reorganized inside the town. Exploiting the gap among the revolutionaries, the Spaniards decisively defeated the Magdalo forces.

Conflict within the ranks of the Katipunan factions, specifically between the Magdalo and Magdiwang, led to Bonifacio’s intervention in Cavite Province. The rebels of Cavite were rumored to have made overtures to establish a revolutionary government in place of the Katipunan. Though Bonifacio already considered the Katipunan to be a government, he acquiesced and presided over a convention held on March 22, 1897, in Tejeros, Cavite, in which the Republic of the Philippines was proclaimed, with Aguinaldo being elected as president, Mariano Trias as vice-president, Artemio Ricarte as captain-general, Emiliano Riego de Dios as the director of war, and Andres Bonifacio as director of the interior. The results were questioned by Daniel Tirona for Bonifacio’s qualifications for that position. Bonifacio was insulted and declared, “I, as chairman of this assembly, and as President of the Supreme Council of the Katipunan, as all of you do not deny, declare this assembly dissolved, and I annul all that has been approved and resolved.”

The Spanish Army launched an attack that forced the revolutionary forces under Aguinaldo into a retreat. On June 24, 1897, Aguinaldo arrived at Biak-na-Bato, San Miguel, Bulacan, and established a headquarters there in what is now called “Aguinaldo Cave” in Biak-na-Bato National Park. In late October 1897, Aguinaldo convened an assembly of generals at Biak-na-Bato that decided to establish a constitutional republic. A constitution, patterned closely after the Cuban Constitution, was drawn up by Isabelo Artacho and Felix Ferrer and provided for the creation of a Supreme Council composed of a president, a vice president, a Secretary of War, and a Secretary of the Treasury. Aguinaldo was named president.

In March 1897, Fernando Primo de Rivera, 1st Marquis of Estella, the Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines, had been encouraging prominent Filipinos to contact Aguinaldo for a peaceful settlement of the conflict. On August 9, the Manila lawyer Pedro Paterno met with Aguinaldo at Biak-na-Bato with a proposal for peace based on reforms and amnesty. In succeeding months, Paterno conducted shuttle diplomacy, acting as an intermediary between de Rivera and Aguinaldo. On December 14–15, 1897, Aguinaldo signed the Pact of Biak-na-Bato under which Aguinaldo effectively agreed to end hostilities and to dissolve his government in exchange for amnesty and “₱800,000 (Mexican)” (Aguinaldo’s description of the $MXN800,000 amount) as an indemnity. The documents were signed on December 14–15, 1897. On December 23, Aguinaldo and other revolutionary officials departed for Hong Kong to enter voluntary exile. $MXN400,000, representing the first installment of the indemnity, was deposited into Hong Kong banks. In exile, Aguinaldo reorganized his revolutionary government into the “Hong Kong Junta” and enlarged it into the “Supreme Council of the Nation”.

Bonifacio refused to recognize the revolutionary government headed by Aguinaldo and reasserted his authority. He accused the Magdalo faction of treason and issued orders contravening orders issued by the Aguinaldo faction. In April 1897, Aguinaldo ordered the arrest and the execution of Bonifacio on some allegations implicating Bonifacio’s involvement in some events at Indang. After the trials, Andrés and his brother, Procopio, were ordered to be executed by firing squad under the command of General Lazaro Macapagal on May 10, 1897, near Mount Nagpatong, Mount Buntis, Mount Pumutok, and Maragondon, Cavite. The facts that led to Bonifacio’s execution remain questionable, Aguinaldo had allegedly originally opted to have the Bonifacio brothers exiled, rather than executed, but Pío del Pilar and Mariano Noriel, both former supporters of Bonifacio, persuaded Aguinaldo to withdraw the order for the sake of preserving unity.

On April 25, the Spanish–American War began. The war mostly focused on Cuba, but the US Navy’s Asiatic Squadron was in Hong Kong and, commanded by Commodore George Dewey, it sailed for the Philippines. On May 1, 1898, in the Battle of Manila Bay, the squadron engaged attacked and destroyed the Spanish Army and Navy’s Pacific Squadron and proceeded to blockade Manila. Several days later, Dewey agreed to transport Aguinaldo from Hong Kong to the Philippines aboard the USS McCulloch, which left Hong Kong with Aguinaldo on 16 May and arrived in Cavite on 19 May. Aguinaldo promptly resumed the command of revolutionary forces and besieged Manila.

Aguinaldo had brought with him the draft constitution of Mariano Ponce for the establishment of federal revolutionary republic upon his return to Manila, but on May 24, 1898, in Cavite, Aguinaldo issued a proclamation upon the advice of his war counselor Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, and Aguinaldo assumed the command of all Philippine forces and established a dictatorial government with himself as titular dictator and power vested upon him to administer decrees promulgated under his sole responsibility. The dictatorial government was provisional in character until peace was established and unrestrained liberty attained.

On May 28, 1898, Aguinaldo gathered a force of about 18,000 troops and fought against a small garrison of Spanish troops in Alapan, Imus, Cavite. The battle lasted from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. After the victory at Alapan, Aguinaldo unfurled the Philippine flag for the first time and hoisted it at the Teatro Caviteño in Cavite Nuevo (present-day Cavite City) in front of Filipino revolutionaries and more than 300 captured Spanish troops. A group of American sailors of the US Asiatic Squadron also witnessed the unfurling. Flag Day is celebrated every May 28 to honor the battle.

By May 1898, Filipino troops had cleared Cavite of Spanish forces. In late June 1898, Aguinaldo, with the help of American allies, who were now landing in Cavite, was now preparing to drive the Spaniards out of Manila. The first contingent of American troops arrived in Cavite on June 30, the second under General Francis V. Greene on 17 July, and the third under General Arthur MacArthur Jr on 30 July. By then, 12,000 US troops had landed in the Philippines.

In August 1898, life in Intramuros, the walled center of Manila, had become unbearable, and the normal population of about 10,000 was now 70,000. Realizing that it was only a matter of time before the city fell and fearing vengeance and looting if the city fell to Filipino revolutionaries, Jáudenes, suggested to Dewey, through the Belgian consul, Édouard André, for the city to be surrendered to the Americans after a short, “mock” battle. Dewey had initially rejected the suggestion because he lacked the troops to block Filipino revolutionary forces, which numbered 40 000, but when Merritt’s troops became available, he sent a message to Jáudenes, agreeing to the mock battle. A bloodless mock battle had been planned, but Spanish troops opened fire in a skirmish that left six Americans and forty-nine Spaniards dead after Filipino revolutionaries, thinking that the attack was genuine, joined advancing US troops. Besides the unplanned casualties, the battle went according to plan. The Spanish surrendered the city to the Americans, and it did not fall to the Filipino revolutionaries, who felt betrayed. By the end of September, Aguinaldo’s forces had captured over 9,000 Spanish prisoners, who were relieved of their weapons. They were generally free to move around but remained within the control of Aguinaldo. Aguinaldo did not know that on December 10, 1898, the Treaty of Paris had been signed; it transferred the Philippines from Spain to the United States for the sum of $20 million.

On August 12, 1898, American forces captured Manila during the Battle of Manila and on August 14, 1898, established the United States Military Government of the Philippine Islands, with Major-General Wesley Merritt as the first American Military Governor. On the night of February 4, 1899, a Filipino was shot by an American sentry. That incident was considered to be the beginning of the Philippine–American War, and culminated in the 1899 Battle of Manila between American and Filipino forces. Superior American technology drove Filipino troops away from the city, and Aguinaldo’s government had to move from one place to another as the military situation escalated. At the Battle of Marilao River, Aguinaldo himself led his forces to prevent American crossings. The Americans gained superiority in the battle only after severe fighting and the use of gunboats in the river that “made great execution” of Filipino soldiers. On November 13, 1899, Aguinaldo disbanded the regular Filipino army and decreed that guerrilla warfare would now be the strategy. Aguinaldo led the resistance against the Americans but retreated to Northern Luzon.

The First Philippine Republic was formally established with the proclamation of the Malolos Constitution on January 21, 1899, in Malolos, Bulacan and endured until capture of Emilio Aguinaldo by the American forces on March 23, 1901, in Palanan, Isabela, which effectively dissolved the First Republic. Aguinaldo wrote in Tarlac during the First Republic the Tagalog manuscript of his autobiographical work, which would later be translated by Felipe Buencamino into Spanish and released as Reseña Veridica de la Revolucion Filipina (in English, True Account of the Philippine Revolution).

Antonio Luna was a highly regarded General in the revolution who was sometimes at odds with Aguinaldo. On 2 June 1899, Luna received two telegrams (he failed to receive two others). One asked for help in launching a counterattack in San Fernando, Pampanga, and the other, sent by Aguinaldo himself, ordered him to go to the new capital at Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, to form a new cabinet. In his jubilation, Luna wrote to Arcadio Maxilom, military commander of Cebu, to stand firm in the war. Luna set off from Bayambang, first by train, then on horseback, and eventually in three carriages, to Nueva Ecija with 25 of his men. During the journey, two of the carriages broke down and so he proceeded with just one carriage with Colonel Francisco Román and Captain Eduardo Rusca, having earlier shed his cavalry escort. On 4 June, Luna sent a telegram to Aguinaldo to confirm his arrival. Upon arriving at Cabanatuan on 5 June, Luna alone proceeded to the headquarters to communicate with the president. As he went up the stairs, he ran into an officer, whom he had disarmed for insubordination, Captain Pedro Janolino, the commander of the Kawit Battalion, and an old enemy whom he had once threatened with arrest for favoring American autonomy, Felipe Buencamino, Minister of Foreign Affairs and a member of the Cabinet. He was told that Aguinaldo had left for San Isidro in Nueva Ecija. (He had actually gone to Bamban, Tarlac). Enraged, Luna asked why he had not been told that the meeting had been canceled.

On March 23, 1901, with the aid of Macabebe Scouts forces led by General Frederick Funston, Aguinaldo was captured in his headquarters in Palanan, Isabela. One of the forces was led by General Macario Sakay, who established the Tagalog Republic. On April 19, 1901, Aguinaldo took an oath of allegiance to the United States, formally ending the First Republic and recognizing the sovereignty of the United States over the Philippines. After the capture of Aguinaldo, some Filipino commanders continued the revolution. On July 30, 1901, General Miguel Malvar issued a manifesto saying, “Forward, without ever turning back…. All wars of independence have been obliged to suffer terrible tests!” General Malvar surrendered to US forces in Lipa, Batangas, on April 16, 1902. The war was formally ended by a unilateral proclamation of general amnesty by US President Theodore Roosevelt on July 4, 1902.

Displaying the Philippine flag was declared illegal by the Sedition Act of 1907, but it was amended on October 30, 1919. Then, Aguinaldo transformed his home in Kawit into a monument to the flag, the revolution, and the Declaration of Independence. As of 2020, his home is known as the Aguinaldo Shrine.

In 1931, an American Pre-Code documentary film, Around the World in 80 Minutes with Douglas Fairbanks, had Douglas Fairbanks pose and speak for the camera as he talked with Aguinaldo.

Aguinaldo retired from public life for many years. In 1935, when the Commonwealth of the Philippines was established in preparation for Philippine independence, he ran for president in the 1935 Philippine presidential election but lost by a landslide to Manuel L. Quezon. In 1938, Aguinaldo was quoted to hold anti-Semitic beliefs in his opposition to Quezon’s plan to shelter Jews in the Philippines. The two men formally reconciled in 1941, when Quezon moved Flag Day to June 12 to commemorate the proclamation of Philippine independence.

After both American and Filipino troops retook the Philippines in 1945, Aguinaldo was arrested along with several others accused of collaboration with the Japanese and was jailed for some months in Bilibid prison. He was released by presidential amnesty.

Aguinaldo was 77 when the US government recognized Philippine independence in the Treaty of Manila on July 4, 1946, in accordance with the Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934.

In 1950, President Elpidio Quirino appointed Aguinaldo as a member of the Philippine Council of State, where he served a full term. He returned to retirement soon afterward and dedicated his time and attention to veteran soldiers’ “interests and welfare.”

He was made an honorary Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, by the University of the Philippines in 1953.

On May 12, 1962, President Diosdado Macapagal changed the celebration of Independence Day from July 4 to June 12 to honor Aguinaldo and the Revolution of 1898, rather than the establishment of the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands by the United States. Although now in poor health, Aguinaldo attended that year’s Independence Day observances. On August 4, 1964, Republic Act No. 4166 officially proclaimed June 12 as the Philippine Independence Day and renamed the Fourth of July holiday to “Philippine Republic Day”.

Aguinaldo was rushed to Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City on October 5, 1962, under the care of Dr. Juana Blanco Fernandez, MD, where he stayed for 469 days until he died of coronary thrombosis at 94 on February 6, 1964, one month before his 95th birthday. A year before his death, he had donated his lot and mansion to the government. The property now serves as a shrine to “perpetuate the spirit of the Revolution of 1896.”

In 1964, he published his book, “Mga Gunita ng Himagsikan” (Memoirs of the Revolution). A second publication was made in 1998 during the 100th anniversary of Philippine Independence.

In 1985, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas issued a new 5-peso bill depicting a portrait of Aguinaldo on the front. The back features the declaration of the Philippine independence on June 12, 1898. Printing was discontinued in 1996, when it was replaced with a ₱5.00 coin one year earlier (with the last production year was stamped in 1995) with an obverse that features a portrait of Aguinaldo. In 2017, Andres Bonifacio, officially replaced Aguinaldo in the ₱5.00 coin.