Before the nineteenth century ended, the Samoan, Hawaiian, and
Venezuelan episodes had done much to quicken a national consciousness in
the people of the United States and at the same time to break down their
sense of isolation from the rest of the world. Commerce and trade were
also important factors in overcoming this traditional isolation. Not
only was American trade growing, but it was changing in character.
Argentina was beginning to compete with the United States in exporting
wheat and meat, while American manufacturers were reaching the point
where they were anxious for foreign markets in which they felt they
could compete with the products of Great Britain and Germany.
In a thousand ways and without any loss of vigor the sense of American
nationality was expressing itself. The study of American history was
introduced into the lower schools, and a new group of historians began
scientifically to investigate whence the American people had come and
what they really were. In England, such popular movements find instant
expression in literature; in the United States they take the form of
societies. Innumerable patriotic organizations such as the "Daughters
of the American Revolution" and a host of others, sought to trace out
American genealogy and to perpetuate the memory of American military and
naval achievements. Respect for the American flag was taught in schools,
and the question was debated as to whether its use in comic opera
indicated respect or insult. This new nationalism was unlike the
expansionist movement of the fifties in that it laid no particular
stress upon the incorporation of the neighboring republics by a process
of federation. On the whole, the people had lost their faith in the
assimilating influence of republican institutions and did not desire to
annex alien territory and races. They were now more concerned with the
consolidation of their own country and with its place in the world. Nor
were they as neglectful as their fathers had been of the material means
by which to accomplish their somewhat indefinite purposes.
The reconstruction of the American Navy, which had attained such
magnitude and played so important a part in the Civil War but which
had been allowed to sink into the merest insignificance, was begun by
William E. Chandler, the Secretary of the Navy under President Arthur.
William C. Whitney, his successor under President Cleveland, continued
the work with energy. Captain Alfred T. Mahan began in 1883 to publish
that series of studies in naval history which won him world-wide
recognition and did so much to revolutionize prevailing conceptions of
naval strategy. A Naval War College was established in 1884, at Newport,
Rhode Island, where naval officers could continue the studies which they
had begun at Annapolis.
The total neglect of the army was not entirely the result of
indifference. The experience with volunteers in the Civil War had given
almost universal confidence that the American people could constitute
themselves an army at will. The presence of several heroes of that war
in succession in the position of commander-in-chief of the army had
served to diffuse a sense of security among the people. Here and there
military drill was introduced in school and college, but the regular
army attracted none of the romantic interest that clung about the navy,
and the militia was almost totally neglected. Individual officers, such
as young Lieutenant Tasker Bliss, began to study the new technique of
warfare which was to make fighting on land as different from that of the
wars of Napoleon as naval warfare was different from that of the time of
Nelson. Yet in spite of obviously changing conditions, no provision
was made for the encouragement of young army officers in advanced and
up-to-date Studies. While their contemporaries in other professions were
adding graduate training to the general education which a college gave,
the graduates of West Point were considered to have made themselves in
four years sufficiently proficient for all the purposes of warfare.
By the middle nineties thoughtful students of contemporary movements
were aware that a new epoch in national history was approaching. What
form this national development would take was, however, still uncertain,
and some great event was obviously required to fix its character.
Blaine's Pan-Americanism had proved insufficient and, though the baiting
of Great Britain was welcome to a vociferous minority, the forces making
for peace were stronger than those in favor of war. Whatever differences
there were did not reach to fundamentals but were rather in the nature
of legal disputes between neighbors whom a real emergency would quickly
bring to the assistance of each other. A crisis involving interest,
propinquity, and sentiment, was needed to shake the nation into an
activity which would clear its views.
At the very time of the Venezuela difficulty, such a crisis was taking
shape in the Caribbean. Cuba had always been an object of immediate
concern to the United States. The statesmen of the Jeffersonian period
all looked to its eventually becoming part of American territory. Three
quarters of a century before, when the revolt of the Spanish colonies
had halted on the shores of the mainland, leaving the rich island of
Cuba untouched, John Quincy Adams, on April 28, 1823, in a lengthy and
long-considered dispatch to Mr. Nelson, the American Minister to Spain,
asserted that the United States could not consent to the passing of Cuba
from the flag of Spain to that of any other European power, that under
existing conditions Cuba was considered safer in the hands of Spain than
in those of the revolutionaries, and that the United States stood for
the maintenance of the status quo, with the expectation that Cuba would
ultimately become American territory.
By the late forties and the fifties, however, the times had changed,
and American policy had changed with them. It was becoming more and more
evident that, although no real revolution had as yet broken out, the
"Pearl of the Antilles" was bound to Spain by compulsion rather than by
love. In the United States there was a general feeling that the time had
at last come to realize the vision of Jefferson and Adams and to annex
Cuba. But the complications of the slavery question prevented immediate
annexation. As a slave colony which might become a slave state, the
South wanted Cuba, but the majority in the North did not.
After the Civil War in the United States was over, revolution at length
flared forth in 1868, from end to end of the island. Sympathy with the
Cubans was widespread in the United States. The hand of the Government,
however, was stayed by recent history. Americans felt keenly the right
of governments to exert their full strength to put down rebellion, for
they themselves were prosecuting against Great Britain a case based on
what they contended was her too lax enforcement of her obligations to
the American Government and on the assistance which she had given to
the South. The great issue determined the lesser, and for ten years the
United States watched the Cuban revolution without taking part in it,
but not, however, without protest and remonstrance. Claiming special
rights as a close and necessarily interested neighbor, the United States
constantly made suggestions as to the manner of the contest and its
settlement. Some of these Spain grudgingly allowed, and it was in part
by American insistence that slavery was finally abolished in the island.
Further internal reform, however, was not the wish and was perhaps
beyond the power of Spain. Although the revolution was seemingly brought
to a close in 1878, its embers continued to smolder for nearly a score
of years until in 1895 they again burst into flame.
War in Cuba could not help affecting in a very intimate way the people
of the United States. They bought much the greater part of the chief
Cuban crops, sugar and tobacco. American capital had been invested in
the island, particularly in plantations. For years Cubans of liberal
tendencies had sent their sons to be educated in the United States, very
many of whom had been naturalized before returning home. Cuba was but
ninety miles from Florida, and much of our coastwise shipping passed
in sight of the island. The people of the United States were aroused
to sympathy and to a desire to be of assistance when they saw that the
Cubans, so near geographically and so bound to them by many commercial
ties, were engaged against a foreign monarchy in a struggle for
freedom and a republican form of government. Ethan Allen headed a
Cuban committee in New York and by his historic name associated the new
revolution with the memory of the American struggle for freedom. The
Cuban flag was displayed in the United States, Cuban bonds were sold,
and volunteers and arms were sent to the aid of the insurgents.
Owing to the nature of the country and the character of the people, a
Cuban revolution had its peculiarities. The island is a very long and
rugged mountain chain surrounded by fertile, cultivated plains. The
insurgents from their mountain refuges spied out the land, pounced upon
unprotected spots, burned crops and sugar mills, and were off before
troops could arrive. The portion of the population in revolt at any
particular time was rarely large. Many were insurgents one week and
peaceful citizens the next. The fact that the majority of the population
sympathized with the insurgents enabled the latter to melt into the
landscape without leaving a sign. A provisional government hurried
on mule-back from place to place. The Spanish Government, contrary to
custom, acted at this time with some energy: it put two hundred thousand
soldiers into the island; it raised large levies of loyal Cubans; it was
almost always victorious; yet the revolution would not down. Martinez
Campos, the "Pacificator" of the first revolution, was this time unable
to protect the plains. In 1896 he was replaced by General Weyler, who
undertook a new system. He started to corral the insurgents by a chain
of blockhouses and barbed wire fences from ocean to sea--the first
completely guarded cross-country line since the frontier walls of the
Roman Empire in Europe and the Great Wall of China in Asia. He then
proceeded to starve out the insurgents by destroying all the food in the
areas to which they were confined. As the revolutionists lived largely
on the pillage of plantations in their neighborhood, this policy
involved the destruction of the crops of the loyal as well as of the
disloyal, of Americans as well as of Cubans. The population of the
devastated plantations was gathered into reconcentrado camps where,
penned promiscuously into small reservations, they were entirely
dependent upon a Government which was poor in supplies and as careless
of sanitation as it was of humanity. The camps became pest-holes,
spreading contagion to all regions having intercourse with Cuba, and in
vain the interned victims were crying aloud for succor.
This new policy of disregard for property and life deeply involved
American interests and sensibilities. The State Department maintained
that Spain was responsible for the destruction of American property
by insurgents. This Spain denied, for, while she never officially
recognized the insurgents as belligerents, the insurrection had passed
beyond her control. This was, indeed, the position which the Spanish
Treaty Claims Commission subsequently took in ruling that to establish a
claim it would be necessary to show that the destruction of property was
the consequence of negligence upon the part of Spanish authorities or
of military orders. Of other serious grievances there was no doubt.
American citizens were imprisoned, interned in reconcentrado camps, and
otherwise maltreated. The nationality of American sufferers was in some
cases disputed, and the necessity of dealing with each of these doubtful
cases by the slow and roundabout method of complaint to Madrid, which
referred matters back to Havana, which reported to Madrid, served but
to add irritation to delay. American resentment, too, was fired by
the sufferings of the Cubans themselves as much as by the losses and
difficulties of American citizens.
One change of extreme importance had taken place since the Cuban revolt
of 1868-78. This was the development of the modern American newspaper.
It was no longer possible for the people at large to remain ignorant
of what was taking place at their very doors. Correspondents braved the
yellow fever and imprisonment in order to furnish the last details of
each new horror. Foremost in this work were William Randolph Hearst, who
made new records of sensationalism in his papers, particularly in the
New York Journal, and Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York World.
Hearst is reported to have said that it cost him three millions to
bring on the Spanish American War. The net result of all this newspaper
activity was that it became impossible for the American people to remain
in happy ignorance of what was going on in the world. Their reaction to
the facts was their own.
President Cleveland modeled his policy upon that of Grant and Grant's
Secretary, Hamilton Fish. He did not recognize the independence of the
Cuban republic, for that would have meant immediate war with Spain; nor
did he recognize even its belligerency. Public men in the United States
were still convinced that Great Britain had erred in recognizing the
belligerency of the Southern Confederacy, and consistency of foreign
policy demanded that the Government should not accord recognition to a
Government without a navy, a capital, or fixed territory. This decision
made it particularly difficult for the President to perform his
acknowledged duty to Spain, of preventing aid being sent from the
United States to the insurgents. He issued the proper proclamations, and
American officials were reasonably diligent, it is true, but without any
of the special powers which would have resulted from a recognized state
of war they were unable to prevent a leakage of supplies. As a result
General Weyler had some ground for saying, though with characteristic
Spanish extravagance, that it was American aid which gave life to the
revolt.
President Cleveland energetically pressed all cases involving American
rights; he offered mediation; he remonstrated against the cruelty
of Weyler's methods; he pointed out that the United States could not
forever allow an island so near and so closely related to be in flames
without intervention. Spain, however, assumed a rather lofty tone,
and Cleveland was able to accomplish nothing. Senator Lodge and other
Republicans violently attacked his policy as procrastinating, and the
nation as a whole looked forward with interest to the approaching change
in administration.
William McKinley, who became President on March 4, 1897, was not
actively interested in foreign affairs. This he illustrated in a
striking way by appointing as Secretary of State John Sherman of Ohio,
a man of undoubtedly high ability but one whose whole reputation rested
upon his financial leadership, and who now, at the age of seventy-four,
was known to be incapacitated for vigorous action. To the very moment of
crisis, McKinley was opposed to a war with Spain; he was opposed to the
form of the declaration of war and he was opposed to the terms of
peace which ended the war. Emphatically not a leader, he was, however,
unsurpassed in his day as a reader of public opinion, and he believed
his function to be that of interpreting the national mind. Nor did
he yield his opinion in a grudging manner. He grasped broadly the
consequences of each new position which the public assumed, and he was a
master at securing harmonious cooperation for a desired end.
The platform of the Republican party had declared: "The Government
of Spain having lost control of Cuba, and being unable to protect the
property or lives of resident American citizens, or to comply with its
treaty obligations, we believe that the Government of the United States
should actively use its influence and good offices to restore peace and
give independence to the island." With this mandate, McKinley sought to
free Cuba, absolutely or practically, while at the same time maintaining
peace with Spain. On June 26, 1897, Secretary Sherman sent a note to
the Spanish Minister, protesting against the Spanish methods of war and
asserting that "the inclusion of a thousand or more of our own citizens
among the victims of this policy" gives "the President the right of
specific remonstrance, but in the just fulfillment of his duty he cannot
limit himself to these formal grounds of complaint. He is bound by the
higher obligation of his representative office to protest against the
uncivilized and inhuman conduct of the campaign in the island of Cuba.
He conceives that he has a right to demand that a war, conducted almost
within sight of our shores and grievously affecting American citizens
and their interests throughout the length and breadth of the land, shall
at least be conducted according to the military codes of civilization."
Negotiations between the United States and Spain have always been
peculiarly irritating, owing to temperamental differences between the
two peoples. McKinley, however, had in mind a program for which there
was some hope of success. He was willing to agree to some form of words
which would leave Spain in titular possession of the island, thereby
making a concession to Spanish pride, for he knew that Spain was always
more loath to surrender the form than the substance. This hope of the
President was strengthened, towards the end of 1897, by a dramatic
incident in the political life of Spain. On the 8th of August, the
Spanish Prime Minister, the Conservative Antonio Canovas del Castillo,
was assassinated, and was succeeded on the 4th of October by the
Liberal, Praxedes Mateo Sagasta.
The new Spanish Government listened to American demands and made large
promises of amelioration of conditions in Cuba. General Blanco was
substituted for General Weyler, whose cruelty had made him known in the
American press as "the Butcher"; it was announced that the reconcentrado
camps would be broken up; and the Queen Regent decreed the legislative
autonomy of Cuba. Arrangements had been made for the handling of minor
disputes directly with the Governor-General of Cuba through the American
Consul General at Havana, General Fitzhugh Lee. On December 6, 1897,
McKinley, in his annual message to Congress, counseled patience.
Convinced of the good intentions of the new Spanish Government, he
sought to induce American public sentiment to allow it time to act. He
continued nevertheless to urge upon Spain the fact that in order to be
effective action must be prompt.
Public sentiment against Spain grew every day stronger in the United
States and was given startling impulse in February, 1898, by two of
those critical incidents which are almost sure to occur when general
causes are potent enough to produce a white heat of popular feeling. The
Spanish Minister in the United States, Senor Dupuy de Lome, had aroused
the suspicion, during his summer residence on the north shore of
Massachusetts Bay, that he was collecting information which would be
useful to a Spanish fleet operating on that coast. Whether this charge
was true or not, at any rate he wrote a letter to a friend, a Madrid
editor visiting Havana, in which he characterized McKinley as a
vacillating and timeserving politician. Alert American newspaper men,
who practically constituted a secret service of some efficiency, managed
to obtain the letter. On February 9, 1898, De Lome saw a facsimile of
this letter printed in a newspaper and at once cabled his resignation.
In immediately accepting De Lome's resignation Spain anticipated an
American demand for his recall and thus saved Spanish pride, though
undoubtedly at the expense of additional irritation in the United
States, where it was thought that he should have been punished instead
of being allowed to slip away.
Infinitely more serious than this diplomatic faux pas was the disaster
which befell the United States battleship Maine: On January 24, 1898,
the Government had announced its intention of sending a warship on a
friendly visit to Havana; with the desire of impressing the local Cuban
authorities with the imminence of American power. Not less important was
the purpose of affording protection to American citizens endangered
by the rioting of Spaniards, who were angry because they believed that
Sagasta by his conciliatory policy was betraying the interests of Spain.
Accordingly the Maine, commanded by Captain Sigsbee, was dispatched to
Cuba and arrived on the 25th of January in the harbor of Havana. On the
night of the 15th of February, an explosion utterly wrecked the vessel
and killed 260 of the crew, besides wounding ninety.
The responsibility for this calamity has never been positively
determined. It may have resulted from an accidental internal explosion,
from the official action of the Spanish authorities, from the unofficial
zeal of subordinate Spanish officers, or even--as suggested by Speaker
Reed who was an opponent of war--by action of the insurgents themselves
with the purpose of embroiling the United States and Spain. The careful
investigations which were afterwards made brought to light evidence of
both internal and external explosions; it therefore seems probable
that an external mine was the prime cause of the disaster and that the
internal explosion followed as a consequence. No direct evidence has
been discovered which would fix the responsibility for the placing of
the mine, but it is reasonable to attribute it to the Spanish hotheads
of Havana. It is not impossible that the insurgents were responsible;
but it is incredible that the Spanish Government planned the explosion.
The hasty, though perhaps natural, conclusion to which American public
sentiment at once leaped, however, was that the disaster was the work of
Spain, without making any discrimination between the Government itself
and the disaffected factions. A general sorrow and anger throughout the
United States reinforced the popular anxiety for national interests
and the humane regard for the Cubans. Press and public oratory
demanded official action. "Remember the Maine!" was an admonition
which everywhere met the eye and ear. The venerable and trusted Senator
Proctor, who visited Cuba, came back with the report that conditions on
the island were intolerable. On the 9th of March, "Uncle Joe" Cannon,
the watchdog of the Treasury, introduced a bill appropriating fifty
million dollars to be used for national defense at the discretion of the
President. No doubt remained in the public mind that war would result
unless the withdrawal of Spanish authority from Cuba could be arranged
peaceably and immediately.
Even in this final stage of the negotiations it is sufficiently
obvious that the United States Government was particularly desirous of
preserving peace. There is also little doubt that the Spanish Government
in good faith had the same desire. The intelligent classes in Spain
realized that the days of Spanish rule in Cuba were practically over.
The Liberals believed that, under the circumstances, war with the
United States would be a misfortune. Many of the Conservatives, however,
believed that a war, even if unsuccessful, was the only way of saving
the dynasty, and that the dynasty was worth saving. Public opinion in
Spain was therefore no less inflamed than in America, but it was less
well-informed. Cartoons represented the American hog, which would
readily fall before the Spanish rapier accustomed to its nobler
adversary the bull. Spanish pride, impervious to facts and statistics,
would brook no supine submission on the part of its people to foreign
demands. It was a question how far the Spanish Government could bring
itself to yield points in season which it fully realized must be yielded
in the end.
The negotiation waxed too hot for the aged John Sherman, and was
conducted by the Assistant Secretary, William Rufus Day, a close friend
of the President, but a man comparatively unknown to the public. When
Day officially succeeded Sherman (April 26, 1898) he had to face as
fierce a light of publicity as ever beat upon a public man in the United
States. Successively in charge of the Cuban negotiations, Secretary
of State from April to September, 1898, President of the Paris Peace
Commission in October, in December, after a career of prime national
importance for nine months in which he had demonstrated his high
competence, Day retired to the relative obscurity of the United States
circuit bench. Although later raised to the Supreme Court, he has never
since been a national figure. As an example of a meteoric career of a
man of solid rather than meteoric qualities, his case is unparalleled in
American history.
The acting Secretary of State telegraphed the ultimatum of the
Government on March 27, 1898, to General Stewart L. Woodford, then
Minister to Spain. By the terms of this document, in the first place
there was to be an immediate amnesty which would last until the 1st of
October and during which Spain would communicate with the insurgents
through the President of the United States; in the second place, the
reconcentrado policy was to cease immediately, and relief for the
suffering Cubans was to be admitted from the United States. Then, if
satisfactory terms were not reached by the 1st of October, the
President was to be recognized as arbiter between the Spaniards and the
insurgents.
On the 30th of March, Spain abrogated the reconcentrado policy in
the "western provinces of Cuba," and on the following day offered to
arbitrate the questions arising out of the sinking of the Maine. On
Sunday, the 3d of April, a cablegram from General Woodford was received
by the State Department indicating that Spain was seeking a formula for
an armistice that should not too obviously appear to be submission and
suggesting that the President ask the Pope to intervene and that the
United States abstain from all show of force. "If you can still give me
time and reasonable liberty of action," ran Woodford's message, "I will
get you the peace you desire so much and for which you have labored
so hard." To this the Secretary of State immediately replied that the
President would not ask the intervention of the Pope, and that the
Government would use the fleet as it saw fit. "Would the peace you are
so confident of securing," asked the Secretary, "mean the independence
of Cuba? The President cannot hold his message longer than Tuesday." On
Tuesday, the 5th of April, General Woodford cabled:
"Should the Queen proclaim the following before twelve o'clock noon of
Wednesday, April 6th, will you sustain the Queen, and can you prevent
hostile action by Congress? At the request of the Holy Father, in
this Passion Week and in the name of Christ, I proclaim immediate and
unconditional suspension of hostilities in the island of Cuba. This
suspension is to become immediately effective as soon as accepted by
the insurgents of that island, and is to continue for the space of
six months to the 5th day of October, 1898. I do this to give time for
passions to cease, and in the sincere hope and belief that during this
suspension permanent and honorable peace may be obtained between the
insular government of Cuba and those of my subjects in that island who
are now in rebellion against the authority of Spain...." "Please read
this in the light of all my previous telegrams and letters. I believe
this means peace, which the sober judgment of our people will approve
long before next November, and which must be approved at the bar of
final history."
To this message the Secretary of State replied:
"The President highly appreciates the Queen's desire for peace. He
cannot assume to influence the action of the American Congress beyond a
discharge of his constitutional duty in transmitting the whole matter to
them with such recommendations as he deems necessary and expedient."
On the 9th of April the Queen granted the amnesty, on the formula of a
request by the European powers. On the next day, General Woodford cabled
that the United States could obtain for Cuba a satisfactory autonomy, or
independence, or the cession of the island.
It was evident that there was no difference of opinion among those in
authority in the United States as to the fact that Cuba must be severed
from Spain. There were, however, differences of judgment as to which of
the three methods suggested by Woodford was preferable, and there was a
substantial disagreement as to the means necessary to realize the aims
of the American Government. General Woodford believed that Spain would
grant the demands of the United States, if she were given time and were
not pressed to the point of endangering her dignity. The overwhelming
majority in Congress, and particularly the leaders of the dominant
Republican party with the exception of Speaker Reed, refused to believe
in the sincerity of the Spanish Government. The Administration could not
overlook the fact that the Spanish Government, however sincere it might
be, might not be able to execute its promises. Great Britain had just
recognized the United States as intermediary in a dispute between
herself and one of the American nations. Spain, in a dispute much
more serious to the United States, refused publicly to admit American
intervention, while she did recognize that of the Pope and the European
powers. Was it then possible that a Government which was either
unwilling or afraid openly to acknowledge American interest in April
would, by October, yield to the wishes of the Administration? Was it
certain or likely that if the Spanish Government did so yield, it would
remain in power?
Reluctantly President McKinley decided that he could not announce to
Congress that he had secured the acceptance of the American policy.
In his message to Congress on the 11th of April, he reviewed the
negotiation and concluded by recommending forcible intervention. On
the 19th of April, Congress, by joint resolution, called upon Spain to
withdraw from Cuba and authorized the President to use force to compel
her to do so. Congress, however, was not content to leave the future of
the island merely indefinite, but added that the United States did not
desire Cuba and that the "people of the island of Cuba are, and of
right ought to be, free and independent." This decision ruled out both
autonomy and cession as solutions of the problem. It put an end to the
American century-long dream of annexing Cuba, unless the people of the
island themselves desired such a relation; and it practically determined
the recognition of the unstable Cuban Government then in existence. This
decision on the part of Congress, however, reflected the deep-seated
conviction of the American people regarding freedom and plainly put
the issue where the popular majority wished it to be--upon a basis of
unselfish sympathy with struggling neighbors.
The resolution was signed by the President on the 20th of April. On
the following day, Admiral Sampson's fleet left Key West with orders to
blockade the coast of Cuba, and, in the absence of a formal declaration
of war, this strategic move may be considered as its actual beginning.
On the 25th of April, Congress declared "that, war be, and the same
is hereby, declared to exist, and that war has existed since the
twenty-first of April, Anno Domini, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight,
including the said day, between the United States of America and the
Kingdom of Spain."