THE SPANISH WAR

Cuba broke out in one of her numerous insurrections in 1895. The island had been nominally quiet since the close of the Ten Years' War, in 1878, but had always been an object of American interest. More than once it had entered into American diplomacy to bring out reiterations of different phases of the Monroe Doctrine. Its purchase by the United States had been desired to extend the slave area, or to control the Caribbean, or to enlarge the fruit and sugar plantation area. The free trade in sugar, which the McKinley Bill had allowed, ended in 1894, and almost immediately thereafter the native population demanded independence.

The revolt of 1895 was defended and justified by a recital of the faults of Spanish colonial government. Caste and monopoly played a large part in Cuban life. The Spanish-born held the offices, enjoyed the profits, and owned or managed the commercial privileges. The western end of the island, most thickly settled and most under the influence of Spain, gave least support to the uprising, but in the east, where the Cubans and negroes raised and ground cane, or grazed their herds, discontent at the system of favoritism and race discrimination was an important political force. Here the insurgents soon gained a foothold in the provinces of Santiago, Puerto Principe, and Santa Clara. From the jungle or the mountains they sent bands of guerrillas against the sugar mills and plantations of the ruling class, and when pursued their troops hid their weapons and became, ostensibly, peaceful farmers. A revolutionary government, sitting safely in New York, directed the revolt, raised money by playing on the American love of freedom, and sent cargoes of arms, munitions, and volunteers to the seat of war. Avoiding pitched battles and living off the country, the patriot forces compelled Spain to put some 200,000 troops in Cuba and to garrison every place that she retained.

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ALASKA, THE PHILIPPINES, AND THE SEAT OF THE SPANISH WAR

Through 1895 and 1896 the war dragged on with no prospect of victory for the authorities and with growing interest on the part of the United States. Public sympathy was with the Cubans, and news from the front was so much desired that enterprising papers sent their correspondents to the scene of action. The reports of these, almost without exception, magnified the character and promise of the native leaders and attacked the policy of the Spanish forces of repression.

The insurgents began, in 1895, a policy of terror, destroying the cane in the fields of loyalists and burning their sugar mills. To protect the loyalists and repress the rebels the Queen Regent sent General Valeriano Weyler to the island in 1896, with orders to end the war. Weyler replied to devastation with concentration. Unable to separate the loyal natives from the disloyal, or to prevent the latter from aiding the rebels, he gathered the suspected population into huge concentration camps, fortified his towns and villages with sentinels and barbed-wire fences, and endeavored to depopulate the area outside his lines. American public opinion, unused for a generation to the sight of war, was shocked by the suffering in the camps and was aroused in moral protest. Sympathy with the insurgents grew in 1896 and 1897, as exaggerated tales of hardship and brutality were circulated by the "yellow" newspapers. The evidence was one-sided and incomplete, and often dishonest, but it was effective in steering a rising public opinion toward ultimate intervention.

The nearness of the contest brought the trouble to the United States Government through the enforcement of the neutrality laws. There was no public war, and Spain was thus unable to seize or examine American vessels until they entered actual Cuban waters. It was easy to run the Spanish blockade and take supplies to the rebel forces, which was a permissible trade. It was easy, too, to organize and send out filibustering parties, which were highly illegal, and which the United States tried to stop. Out of seventy-one known attempts, the United States broke up thirty-three, while other Powers, including Spain, caught only eleven. Enough landed to be a material aid to the natives and to embitter Spain in her criticism of the United States. Cleveland issued proclamations against the unfriendly acts of citizens, and enforced the law as well as he could in a population and with juries sympathizing with the law-breakers. Even in Congress he found little sympathy in his attempt to maintain a sincere neutrality.

Congress felt the popular sympathy with the Cubans and responded to it, as well as to the demands of Americans with investments in Cuba. In the spring of 1896 both houses joined in a resolution favoring the recognition of Cuban belligerency. This Cleveland ignored. In December, 1896, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations reported a resolution for the recognition of Cuban independence, and individual members of Congress often read from the newspapers accounts of horror, and made impassioned speeches for recognition and intervention. But Cleveland kept his control over the situation until he left office, as Grant had done during the Ten Years' War and the excitement over the Virginius affair. He left the determination of the time and manner of ultimate intervention to his successor.

Among the planks of the Republican platform of 1896 was one asserting the duty of the United States to "use its influence and good offices to restore peace and give independence to Cuba," but there is no evidence that President McKinley contemplated a forcible intervention when he organized his Cabinet. John Sherman had, as Senator, spoken freely in sympathy with Cuba. As Secretary of State he recalled Hannis Taylor from Madrid and sent out General Stewart L. Woodford, with instructions looking toward a peaceful mediation. Not until the autumn of 1897 was it possible to press the Cuban matter, for Spain suffered two changes of Ministry and the murder of a Prime Minister. But by the end of September Spain had been notified that McKinley hoped to be able to give positive assurances of peace to Congress when it met in December.

A Liberal Government, headed by Sagasta, took office in Spain in October, 1897. It declined mediation by the United States, retorting that if the United States were to enforce the law of neutrality the war would soon cease. It recalled Weyler, however, sent out a new and milder governor-general, modified the reconcentrado orders that had so enraged the United States, and issued, on November 25, a proclamation establishing a sort of home rule, or autonomy, for Cuba. In the winter of 1897 the Spanish Government was endeavoring to give no excuse for American intervention, and at the same time, by moderate means, to restore peace in Cuba. The Spanish population of Cuba opposed autonomy and made the establishment of autonomous governments a farce. In January there were riots in Havana among the loyal subjects. Outside the Spanish lines the rebels laughed at autonomy, for they were determined to have independence or nothing. Woodford, in touch with the Spanish Government, believed that in the long run the Spanish people would let the Queen Regent go beyond autonomy to independence, and that with patience Cuba might be relieved of Spanish control.

There was no positive news for Congress in December, 1897, but by February the conditions in Cuba had become the most interesting current problem. The New York Journal obtained and published a private letter written by the Spanish Minister, De Lome, in which McKinley was characterized as a temporizing politician. The Minister had no sooner been recalled than the Maine, a warship that had been detached from the North Atlantic Squadron, and sent to Cuba to safeguard American citizens there, was destroyed by an explosion in the harbor of Havana, on February 15, 1898. There was no evidence connecting the destruction of the Maine with any person, but unscrupulous newspapers made capital out of it, using the catch-phrase, "Remember the Maine," to inflame a public mind already aroused by sympathy and indignation. After February, only a determined courage could have withstood the demand for intervention and a Spanish war.

The negotiations with Spain continued rapidly in the two months after the loss of the Maine. McKinley avoided an arbitral inquiry into the accident, urged by Spain, but pressed increasingly for an end of concentration, for relief for the suffering population, and for full self-government. He did not ask independence for Cuba, and every demand that he made was assented to by Spain. Notwithstanding this, on April 11, 1898, he sent the Cuban correspondence to Congress, urged an intervention, and turned the control of the situation over to a body that had for two years been clamoring for forcible interference. Nine days later Congress resolved, "That the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent." On April 21 the Spanish War began.

The administrative branches of the Government had made some preparations for war before the declaration. The navy was small but modern. It dated from the early eighties, when Congress was roused to a realization that the old Civil War navy was obsolete and began to authorize the construction of modern fighting ships. The "White Squadron" took shape in the years after 1893. Only two armored cruisers were in commission when Harrison left office, but the number increased rapidly until McKinley had available for use the second-class battleships Maine and Texas, the armored cruiser Brooklyn, and the first-class battleships Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Oregon. From the beginning of the McKinley Administration these, as well as the lesser vessels of all grades, were diligently drilled and organized. The new Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, had foreseen and hoped for war. He spent the contingent funds on target practice, and had the naval machine at its highest efficiency when the Maine was lost. On March 9, 1898, Congress, in a few hours, put $50,000,000 at the disposal of the President for national defense, and the navy spent its share of this for new vessels, transports, and equipment. The vessels in the Orient were mobilized at Hongkong under the command of Commodore George Dewey; the Oregon, on station in the Pacific, was ordered home by the long route around the Horn; the ships in the Atlantic were assembled off the Chesapeake. Part of the latter were organized as a flying squadron, for patrol, under Commodore Winfield Scott Schley, while toward the end of March Captain William T. Sampson was promoted over the heads of many ranking officers and given command of the whole North Atlantic Squadron, including the fleet of Schley.

Congress debated a new army bill while the navy was being prepared for war. Not until April 22 did it permit the enlargement of the little regular army of 25,000. Until war had begun the volunteers, of whom some 216,000 were taken into the service, could not be called out or made ready for the field. Some preparations were made within the War Department, but the little staff of clerks, used to the small routine of the peace basis, and having no plan of enlargement or mobilization worked out, made little headway. The navy was ready to strike the day war was declared, but the army had yet to be planned, recruited, clothed, drilled, and transported to the front. The men of the navy knew their duty and were ready for it; in the army thousands of civilians had to blunder through the duties of strange offices. William J. Bryan accepted the colonelcy in a Nebraska regiment. Theodore Roosevelt resigned his office in the Navy Department to raise a regiment of volunteer cavalry. Politicians struggled for commissions for themselves and friends. Civil War veterans fought for reappointment, and enough soldiers of the Confederacy put on the blue uniforms, or sent their sons, to show that the breach had been healed between the North and South. It was an enthusiastic rather than an effective army that was brought together in the two months after the war began.

Cuba, the cause of the war and its objective, was the center of the scheme of strategy. The navy was called upon to protect the Atlantic seaboard from the fleet of Spain, which was reputed to be superior to that of the United States. It had also to maintain a blockade of Cuba and prevent the landing of reinforcements until the army could be prepared to invade the island. Dewey's fleet in the Pacific was ordered to destroy the Spanish naval force in the Philippine Islands, and moved immediately upon Manila when Great Britain issued her proclamation of neutrality and made it impossible to remain longer in her waters at Hongkong.

On the morning of May 1 Dewey led his squadron past the forts, over the submerged mines, and up the channel of Manila Bay. The Spanish forces in the islands, already contending with a native insurrection, were helpless before evening, having lost the whole fleet. Dewey was left in a position to take the city when he chose, and sent home word to that effect. He waited in the harbor until an army of occupation had been got ready, hurried to the transports at San Francisco, and sent out under General Wesley Merritt. He brought the native leader Aguinaldo back to the islands, whence he had been expelled, to foment insurrection. The first American reinforcements arrived at Manila by the end of June. On August 13 they took the city.

Before the news of the surprising victory at Manila reached the United States there was nervousness along the Atlantic Coast because of the uncertain plans of the main Spanish fleet, which had left the Cape Verde Islands, under Admiral Cervera, on April 29, and which might appear off New York or Boston at any time. The naval strategists knew it must be headed for the West Indies, but seaboard Congressmen begged excitedly for protection, and the sensational newspapers pictured the coast in ruins after bombardment.

To Sampson and Schley was assigned the task of guarding the coast, keeping up the blockade, and finding Cervera's fleet before it reached a harbor in American waters. San Juan, Santiago de Cuba, Cienfuegos, and Havana were the only probable destinations. Sampson watched the north side of Cuba and Porto Rico, while Schley and the flying squadron moved to Key West, and on May 19 started around the west end of Cuba to patrol the southern shore. On that same day, entirely unobserved, Cervera slipped into the port of Santiago, at the eastern extremity of Cuba. When the rumor of his arrival reached Sampson at Key West, Schley was already well on his way and firm in his belief that Cervera was heading for Cienfuegos.

The flying squadron, impeded by its colliers and its tenders, moved deliberately around Cuba to Cienfuegos, outside of whose harbor it remained for two days. Here Sampson's orders to proceed immediately to Santiago reached it. On May 26 the fleet was off the entrance to Santiago Harbor, and in this vicinity it stayed for two more days. Schley could get no news that Cervera was here; he feared that his coal would give out and that heavy seas would prevent his getting what coal he had out of his colliers. He decided, in spite of orders, to go back to Key West; he started a retrograde movement, reconsidered it, and was again on blockade when, early on Sunday morning, May 29, he discovered the Spanish fleet at anchor in the channel, where it had been for the last nine days.

The blockade of Santiago was strengthened on June 1 by the arrival of Sampson, who had rushed thither on hearing that Schley had decided to leave the post. The two fleets were merged, and Schley, outranked by Sampson, became a passenger on his flagship Brooklyn. By day, the warships, ranged in a great half-circle, watched the narrow outlet of the harbor. By night they took turns standing close in, with searchlights playing on the entrance. For five weeks they kept this up, not entering the harbor because of their positive orders not to risk the loss of any fighting units, and waited for the arrival of an army to coÖperate with them against the land defenses of Santiago.

Sampson asked for military aid early in June, and on June 7 the War Department ordered the army that had been mobilized at Tampa to go to his assistance. General Nelson A. Miles, in command of the army, was not allowed to head the expedition, but was kept at home while General William R. Shafter directed the field work. At Tampa there was almost hopeless confusion. The single track railway that supplied the camp was unable to move promptly either men or munitions, the Quartermaster's Department sent down whole trainloads of supplies without bills of lading, and when the troops were at last on board the fleet of transports they were kept in the river for a week before they were allowed to start for Santiago. Sixteen thousand men, mostly regulars, with nearly one thousand officers and two hundred war correspondents, sailed on June 14, and were in conference with Sampson six days later.

A misunderstanding as to strategy arose in this conference. Sampson left it believing that the army would land and move directly along the shore against the batteries that covered the entrance to the harbor. Shafter, however, though he issued no general order to that effect, was determined to march inland upon the city of Santiago itself. On June 22 and 23 the army was landed by the navy, for it had neither boats nor lighters of its own. The first troops, climbing ashore at the railway pier at Daquiri, marched west along the coast to Siboney, and then plunged inland, each regiment for itself, along the narrow jungle trail leading to Santiago. Shafter himself, corpulent and sick, followed as he could. Before he established his control over the army on land the head of the column had engaged the enemy at Las Guasimas, nine miles from Santiago, on June 24. The First Volunteer Cavalry, under the command of Colonel Leonard M. Wood, with Theodore Roosevelt as lieutenant-colonel, had marched most of the night in order to be in the first fighting. After a sharp engagement the Spanish retired and the American advance upon Santiago continued in a more orderly fashion.

The narrow trail between Siboney, on the shore, and Santiago, was some twelve miles long. There were dense forests on both sides. Along this the American army stretched itself at the end of June. There were few ambulances or wagons, and they could not have been used if they had been more numerous. Rations for the front were packed on mules or horses. The troops, hurried to the tropics in the heavy, dark, winter clothing of the regular army, suffered from heat, rain, and irregular rations. Before them the San Juan River crossed the trail at right angles. Beyond this were low hills carrying the fortifications, trenches, and wire fences of Santiago, behind which the Spanish force could fight with every advantage in its favor. Some five miles to the right of the line of advance was the Spanish left, in a blockhouse at El Caney. On the night before July 1, the American army moved on a concerted plan against the whole Spanish line.

Lawton, with a right wing, moved against El Caney, with the idea of demolishing it and crumpling up the Spanish left. The main column followed the trail, crossed the San Juan River, and stormed the hills beyond. The fight lasted all day on July 1, leaving the American forces to sleep in the Spanish trenches, and to re-face them the next day. There was more fighting on July 2 and 3, after which Santiago was besieged by land, as it had been by sea since June 1.

Cervera watched the invading army with growing desperation. He knew the inefficiency of his fleet, that it had left Spain unprepared because public opinion demanded immediate action, that its guns were lacking and its morale low, that if it stayed at anchor in the harbor it would be taken by the army, and that if it went to sea it would be annihilated by Sampson. His only chance was to rush out, scatter in flight, and trust to luck. On Sunday, July 3, he led his ships out of the harbor in single file, turned west against the Brooklyn, which guarded the American left, and endeavored to escape.

Sampson had already issued orders for battle in case Cervera should come out. He had himself started with his flagship, the New York, for a conference with Shafter, and was some seven miles east of the entrance to the harbor when the fleet appeared and the battle began. He turned at once to the long chase that pursued the Spanish vessels along the Cuban shore. The Brooklyn, at which Cervera had headed, instead of closing, circled to the right, and nearly rammed her neighbor, the Texas, before she regained her place at the head of the pursuit. Schley was the ranking officer in the battle, but no one needed or heeded the orders that he signaled to the other ships. Before sundown the Spanish fleet was completely destroyed.

The land and naval battles at Santiago brought the Spanish War to an end. For several weeks the army kept up the investment, with health and morale steadily deteriorating. On July 17 the Spanish army at Santiago was surrendered. On July 27 an invasion of Porto Rico under General Miles took place, and on August 12 the preliminaries of peace were signed on behalf of Spain by the French Minister at Washington. Manila fell the next day, and the war closed with the American army in possession of the most valuable of Spain's remaining colonies.

The Spanish and American peace commissioners met in Paris in October to fix a basis for settlement. An American demand that Cuba should be set free, without debt, and left to the tutelage of the United States, and that Porto Rico should become an American possession, was formulated early in the autumn. There was less certainty about the retention of the Philippines, for here the desire for expansion was checked by a conservative opposition to the adoption of foreign colonies. The evil effects of imperialism were already being pictured by those who had opposed the war. The difficulties of returning the islands to Spain were greater than those involved in their retention, and McKinley finally determined that the cession must include the Philippine Archipelago, and the island of Guam in the Ladrones. The chief of the American commissioners was William R. Day, who had become Secretary of State early in the war, and who was succeeded in that post by John Hay. Under his direction the Treaty of Paris was signed December 10, 1898.

The war and the conquest of the Philippines hastened another though peaceful expansion. The Hawaiian Islands had been a matter of interest to the United States since the American missionaries had begun to work there in the thirties. A growing, American, sugar-raising population had long hoped for annexation and had carried out a successful revolution shortly before 1893. Harrison had concluded a treaty of annexation with the provisional government, but Cleveland had refused to approve it. On July 7, 1898, however, the Newlands Resolution accomplished the annexation of the republic, and in 1900 a regular territorial government was provided for the group of islands. The spectacular journey of the Oregon around Cape Horn revived the demand for an isthmian canal. Expansion suddenly took possession of the American mind, and a new idea of duty, summed up by Rudyard Kipling in The White Man's Burden, filled a large portion of the press.

The United States had suddenly passed from internal debate over free silver to war and conquest. At the end of 1898 the War Department, that had proved its inadequacy in nearly every phase of the war, was forced to develop a colonial policy for Porto Rico and the Philippines and to guide Cuba to independence. It was still under the direction of General Russell A. Alger, but was torn by dissension and criticism upon the conduct of the war. Not until Alger was asked to retire, in 1899, and Elihu Root, of New York, succeeded him, was the War Department made equal to its task.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The best account of the war with Spain is F.E. Chadwick, Relations of the United States and Spain: Diplomacy (1909), and Relations of the United States and Spain: The Spanish American War (2 vols., 1911). These works have in large measure superseded the earlier studies; J.M. Callahan, Cuba and International Relations (1899); J.H. LatanÉ, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States and Spanish America (1900:—so far as it relates to Cuba); H.E. Flack, Spanish-American Diplomatic Relations preceding the war of 1898 (in Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. XXIV); and E.J. Benton, International Law and Diplomacy of the Spanish-American War (1908). Useful narratives relating to the army are R.A. Alger, The Spanish-American War (1901); H.H. Sargent, The Campaign of Santiago de Cuba (3 vols., 1907); J. Wheeler, The Santiago Campaign (1899); J.D. Miley, In Cuba with Shafter (1899); and T. Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (1899). The navy may be followed in J.D. Long, The New American Navy (2 vols., 1903); E.S. Maclay, History of the United States Navy (3 vols., 1901, the third volume containing allegations that precipitated the Schley-Sampson controversy); G.E. Graham, Schley and Santiago (1902); W.S. Schley, Forty-five Years under the Flag (1904); W.A.M. Goode, With Sampson through the War (1899). The public documents of the war are easily accessible, especially in the Annual Reports for 1898 of the Secretaries of War and Navy, and in the Foreign Relations volume for that year. The controversies after the war illuminated many details, particularly the Schley Inquiry (57th Congress, 1st Session, House Document, no. 485, Serial nos. 4370, 4371), and the Miles-Eagan Inquiry (56th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document, no. 270, Serial nos. 3870-3872).