The Great Republic by the Master Historians The Conditions Leading up to the Crisis byBancroft, Hubert H.
[Cuba, the largest and richest island of the West Indies, has had a history
singularly in accord with the ill-fortune her superstitious people associate
with the gem after which it has been named, the Pearl of the Antilles. On
discovering it in 1492 Columbus christened it Juana, after Prince John, son of
the Spanish monarchs. This was changed to Fernandian on the King's death. Later
on the name of the patron saint of Spain was substituted and it figured on the
maps as Santiago (St. James). Again its official name was changed, this time to
that of Ave Maria, in honor of the Blessed Virgin. The natives called it by the
name which has prevailed. They were an interesting people, enjoying a peaceful
and contented existence before the foreigner introduced the mixed blessings of
European civilization, as known in those turbulent days. Havana was founded in
1519 as a Spanish settlement, but was destroyed twenty years later by a French
force, and again in 1554. The culture of tobacco, sugar, and slavery dates from
1580. After nearly two centuries of assaults by pirates and foreign adventurers
Havana was captured by an English fleet under Lord Albermarle, backed up by
fourteen thousand soldiers. Their booty amounted to over three and a half
million dollars. In a few months Cuba was restored to Spain, and a new era of
peace with great prosperity was inaugurated under the sagacious guidance of
Captain-General Las Casas, who entered upon his duties in 1790. The Cubans
remained loyal to Spain despite the deposition of the Spanish royal family by
Napoleon.
If Spain had treated its subjects in Cuba with anything like reasonable
consideration that loyalty need not have turned to hate. By using the island as
a means for enriching rapacious court favorites it created the conditions which
inevitably ended in the loss of its richest possession. The Cubans are a mixed
race and difficult to govern, but timely concessions of moderate liberties,
safeguarded, might have developed the qualities which have made other crown
colonies the pride of the mother country. Generations of serfs are not to be
lifted to the plane of freemen by any instantaneous stroke of fortune. Cuba has
weltered in blood, bondage and ignorance too many decades to come to its right
mind in a day. Certain of its natives, inspired largely from without, have risen
again and again in desperate hope of ridding their country of its old
oppression. During the first half of the nineteenth century there were five
vigorously conducted insurrections. Many pioneer victims were sacrificed but
their cause flamed up the more.
A party of moderates was formed, whose aim was to induce Spain to come to terms
granting civil and religious rights to Cuba without impairing its subjection to
Spain. This effort ended in a heavier taxation. President Polk expressed
American sympathy by his proposal to buy Cuba for a million dollars. In 1858 the
Senate raised our bid to thirty million dollars. From 1868 until the
interference of the United States over the loss of the Maine the island was in a
state of chronic revolt, involving incalculable loss to the people and to Spain,
ill to be borne by an impoverished population but unmistakably foreshadowing
their speedy ejection of the fool-tyrant. It was admitted in the Spanish Cortes
in 1876 that the employment of 145,000 soldiers in eight years in trying to
stamp out the revolt had been an utter failure. So it continued until the end.
Our selections are taken from " The Story of Cuba" by Murat Halstead, who
recorded his studies of the whole question during various sojourns on the
island.]
General Martinez Campos had great celebrity for his success in closing the war
of 1868-1878 by the convention known as the Treaty of Zanjon. He is conspicuous
in the gallery of the captains-general that is an attraction in the Spanish
palace at Havana. He was the first man thought of in Spain when the rebellion
broke out in Cuba in February, 1895, to put it down; but he found it a much more
serious affair than he had before encountered, and he so far recognized the
belligerency of the Cuban insurrectionists as to attempt carrying on war in a
civilized way. The struggle gradually assumed far greater proportions than he
had imagined possible, and his enemies charged that his tenderness in dealing
with rebels was the great fault that filled insurgent ranks. That, however, was
a gross injustice to a competent soldier. There is a good deal of intense
politics in Havana, and soon all the politicians, except a few moderates, were
against him. Then he was recalled, and his successor, General Weyler, is
believed by all Cubans to have been indebted for the appointment to his
reputation for severity, but Campos does not deserve his good name for
benignity, nor Weyler the fulness of his fame for brutality and barbarism. They
have had a greater task assigned them than is understood, for the Spaniards have
not realized that they have lost Cuba and that all the captains-general
henceforth are foredoomed failures.
[The war between the Cuban forces, numbering about 60,000, and the 130,000
soldiers from Spain, reged furiously during 1897. There were loud demands from
the American people, voiced by the Senate, that the government should in some
way intervene, in the interests of justice. It was proposed to recognize the
insurgents as belligerents, and demand independence for the island, as Spain had
completely failed, after two years of vigorous effort to suppress the rising, to
reduce the country to subjection. On the contrary, her methods had inflicted
terrible sufferings and industrial ruin upon the non-combatant population.]
The most distressing feature of the struggle is the concentration of the Cuban
small farmers within the Spanish military lines, where they are perishing of
famine and pestilence. Captain-General Weyler invented the policy of making the
peasantry leave their humble homes and fields and put themselves under the
protection--that is, within the power--of the Spanish forces, because the
assistance the country people gave the insurgents was constantly obvious. A
Spanish column could not move an hour's march without full reports reaching
their enemies, with endless facilities for ambuscades, while it was impossible
for the regular troops to get news of rebel movements. No persuasion or threats
could prevail with the islanders to aid by giving information to those
attempting their subjugation. This fact is itself proof of the desperate
resolution of the Cubans to fight Spain to the last. They feel that Spanish rule
is intolerable--that it is martial law modified by corruption, and not, under
any conditions, to be endured. The information of the terrible sanitary
conditions of the camps in which the Cubans are penned, reached President
McKinley very early in his administration. Special reports were ordered from all
our representatives in the Island, and these confirmed the narratives of the
privation and perishing of those children of Spain who would not serve her and
aid in extinguishing their own hopes of liberty.
The Cubans have been intensely anxious, from the first, as to the position of
the United States, and had hopes that our presidential election in 1896 would
turn upon the Cuban question. The form in which the policy of the islanders was
presented in Congress, and through the organs expressing the sentiments of the
insurgents, was that of obtaining recognition of their rights as belligerents;
but the real question was whether the rebellion should be aided by our action.
Senator Morgan's joint resolutions, so warmly debated, in May, in the Senate,
was in these terms:
Resolved, etc., That a condition of public war exists between the government of
Spain and a government proclaimed, and for some time maintained by force of
arms, by the people of Cuba, and that the United States of America shall
maintain a strict neutrality between the contending powers, according to each
all the rights of belligerents in the ports and territory of the United States.
It was anticipated that this resolution, vehemently discussed, would make
necessary a declaration of the Cuban policy of the McKinley administration. The
leadership of the movement was in the hands of the Southern Democratic Senators,
aided by the Populists, and a few Republicans took advanced ground on the same
side, passing the resolution May. 30. The vote was: years, 41; nays, 14; not
voting, 33.
[Senator Fairbanks moved to amend the Morgan resolution by substituting a
request that the President offer to mediate between Spain and Cuba on the
suggested basis of independence for the latter.]
President McKinley was from the first profoundly impressed by the seriousness of
the Cuban situation, and anxious to preserve "peace with honor." He has been
painstaking in procuring information, and his influence has been constantly
conservative. His solicitude to perform humane offices has been conspicuous. His
first official act in the affairs of Cuba was to ask an appropriation to buy
medicines and food and transportation out of the land for Americans stranded
there. He has availed himself fully of consular reports and the observations of
travellers in whom he had confidence. He has refused the call in Congress for
the full reports of consuls, for if they were written with a view to immediate
publicity their value would be destroyed. He has studied every phase of all the
questions involved. He has witnessed with clear intelligence the efforts of the
filibusters to involve this country in a war with Cuba, that they might
appropriate the usufruct of the conflict. We presume that he understands
perfectly that there are two classes of American citizens in Cuba--one the
actual Americans, who are engaged in various Cuban industries that have been
annihilated by the war; and the other the Cubans, who have sought American
citizenship for the purpose of using it in their political relations.
The administration has been under filibuster fire from the first. It seemed to
the President to be his duty to assume that Spain was a civilized nation, and
that if we were forced into war with that country, it would be on such grounds
that she could not find friends to protest against our action or interfere with
it, even with a demand for arbitration.
It seemed to the President that if General Blanco could in a humane way pacify
the Island, he should have reasonable time, and our disturbing intrusion would
be unfortunate; at the same time, our interests in Cuba were enormous, and we
certainly had a right to put out the fire, if it did not speedily burn itself
out. In his first annual message to Congress, the President candidly declared
himself--gave impressively the record of our relations with Cuba--spoke plainly
of the peculiar horrors of war in the Island, and indicated that the time might
come when we must interfere.
This, the announcement of an ultimatum, was in terms that were without asperity
and without date, and yet had in them the substance of things known to both
parties. The President closed his recital of the Cuban situation in his message,
after stating efforts would be continued to bring about a peace honorable and
enduring, with these words: "If it shall hereafter appear to be a duty imposed
by our obligations to ourselves, to civilization and humanity, to intervene with
force, it shall be without fault on our part, and only because the necessity for
such action will be so clear as to command the support and approval of the
civilized world." The American people will not entirely understand the
situation, if they do not contemplate the presence here and in Cuba of a
filibuster party, the object of whose existence is to bring about a war between
Spain and the United States. The extravagances of the filibusters have harmed,
in the judgment of all enlightened people, the cause of Cuba. One of the most
frequent and the loudest outcries of the filibuster was that we should have a
ship of war in Havana, and the pretence was to protect American citizens. The
real object to get a ship there was always to increase the chances of war, by
causing a sharper friction between the Spanish and American officials.
In reply to an inquiry by the present writer, General Weyler said that a civil
call by one of our ships of war would, of course, be cordially responded to. The
horrible pollution of Havana Harbor causes yellow fever all the year round. We
would sacrifice many lives by making a naval station of Havana. This is a fact
that could not force an impression upon the public mind until recent experiences
imparted information. There was no end of the clamor for a war-ship, but it was
disregarded until the turbulent elements in Havana became riotous against the
Blanco administration. The hostility the disorderly people manifested was
divided about evenly between the Autonomists and the Americans. It was
essentially a manifestation of the implacable character of the volunteers, who
have been guilty of bloody work that has darkly stained Cuban history.
These disturbances marked the degeneracy of the rioters and the decadence of the
fortunes of Spain, A reactionary revolution was narrowly escaped, and the Maine,
ordered to Havana, was received by the Spanish officials with outward marks of
respect. The firing of salutes by the forts attracted great crowds to the water
front, and later the Maine ran up the Spanish royal ensign and saluted the flag-
ship with thirteen guns. In response the Alfonso hoisted the Stars and Stripes
and returned the salute, gun for gun. There was a great deal of feeling behind
the show of civilities, and the exertion of politeness only emphasized the fact
of strained relations. The Spaniards were at once active in naval
demonstrations, sending the Vizcaya, one of their best ships, to make a call at
New York, where the first news she got was the explosion of the Maine.
