Miguel Malvar likewise surrendered on 16 April (1902). Two months later, he would testify before a Board of Investigation.

[QUESTION] You stated in the direct examination that the means used by General Bell caused you to surrender. Give in detail so that we will understand fully just what those means were.

[MIGUEL] The reconcentration in zones, the extinction of food supplies in the country, all had a part in influencing that the towns should aid General Bell.

[MIGUEL] There were three things that made me come in: the methods of General Bell, because I had no more to eat there, and in view of these measures all the towns hunted for me asking me to surrender, and lastly I had received a letter from Don Pedro Paterno with the approval of General Chaffee, which letter contained some points which brought me to come in. Those are the three things that I have said.

[QUESTION] Then as far as your present desire and understanding is, you would yet be in the field with your army if it were not for the activity displayed by General Bell and his forces in compelling you, by the means you stated, to surrender?

[MIGUEL] If it had not been for the measures of General Bell and the letter received from Don Pedro Paterno with the approval of General Chaffee, I would yet be in the field complying with my word of honor with the revolutionary government.

[QUESTION] You would not have surrendered, would you, upon the receipt of the letter from Paterno alone?

[MIGUEL] I made my presentation for those three things.

[QUESTION] State the points in the letter from Paterno that caused you to surrender.

[MIGUEL] That the Philippine Islands were in danger of being sold by the American Government to other powers; second, that we would be given later our own administration; that the war would be suspended and if I should enter, I could work more for the liberties of the Philippines within the generosity of the United States.

[QUESTION] Then do I understand you to say that you would not have surrendered at that time had it not been that you had received this letter [from Paterno]

[MIGUEL] If I had not known what was passing with the people who petitioned my surrender that their deaths were very certain in the coming year, 1903, unless they could plant the rice in the month of May, I should not have surrendered, because I had [made] the decision to send my family into a town because I knew that nothing would happen to them inside, and [then I would] try to escape [to] the north where I was expected.

Note that the Board was keen to promote the narrative that Malvar's surrender was instigated by the American offer, coursed through the Federalista agent Paterno, to protect the Philippines against the intrusion of other imperial powers and through its "generosity" to grant incremental self-rule and "liberties" to the country. This is none other than the trope of tutelage and benevolent assimilation that have continued ever since to dominate the narrative of the war's ending. Yet it is clear in the final statement above that Malvar sidesteps this issue and instead underlines the subsistence crisis, caused to a certain extent by Bell's scorched earth methods, as the primary reason for his surrender.

As the guerilla commanders raised the white flag, the U.S. garrisons soon began receiving emotional letters from barangay headmen pleading for assistance. What ought to be familiar to students of the empire is the way that the U.S. Army was able to turn a situation of utter devastation and suffering, for which it was largely responsible, into a redemptive opportunity. With the destruction of crops, the loss of farm animals and implements, and the overall breakdown of agriculture, the southern Tagalog region became dependent, for eight years at least, on the importation of food. Only the colonial regime, of course, was capable of importing food stocks, the commissaries in the U.S. posts becoming the local distribution centers.

In such a situation of total dependence on the occupation forces for such basic necessities as rice and medicine, it is not difficult to imagine how "resistance" could be forgotten, and the generosity, the kindness, of the U.S. commissaries remembered. The U.S. Army played the role of benefactor extremely well. Sentiments of utang na loob, or inner debt, then came into play as lives were actually saved through the interaction with the Americans. When the population was on its knees, the use of force was lifted. there were no mass executions, no long-term imprisonment -- just rigorous disciplining as befitted a people under benevolent tutelage.