The Spanish–American War (1898) in real time

LEGACION DE ESPAÑA.
WASHINGTON.

His Excellency
Don José Canalejas.

My distinguished and dear friend:

You have no reason to ask my excuses for not having written to me, I ought also to have written to you but I have put off doing so because overwhelmed with work and nous sommes quittes.

The situation here remains the same. Everything depends on the political and military outcome in Cuba. The prologue of all this, in this second stage (phase) of the war, will end the day when the colonial cabinet shall be appointed and we shall be relieved in the eyes of this country of a part of the responsibility for what is happening in Cuba while the Cubans, whom these people think so immaculate, will have to assume it.

Until then, nothing can be clearly seen, and I regard it as a waste of time and progress, by a wrong road, to be sending emissaries to the rebel camp, or to negotiate with the autonomists who have as yet no legal standing, or to try to ascertain the intentions and plans of this government. The (Cuban) refugees will keep on returning one by one and as they do so will make their way into the sheep-fold, while the leaders in the field will gradually come back. Neither the one nor the other class had the courage to leave in a body and they will not be brave enough to return in a body.

The Message has been a disillusionment to the insurgents who expected something different; but I regard it as bad (for us).

Besides the ingrained and inevitable bluntness (grosería) with which is repeated all that the press and public opinion in Spain have said about Weyler, it once more shows what McKinley is, weak and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd besides being a would-be politician (politicastro) who tries to leave a door open behind himself while keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party.

Nevertheless, whether the practical results of it (the Message) are to be injurious and adverse depends only upon ourselves.

I am entirely of your opinions; without a military end of the matter nothing will be accomplished in Cuba, and without a military and political settlement there will always be the danger of encouragement being give to the insurgents, buy a part of the public opinion if not by the government.

I do not think sufficient attention has been paid to the part England is playing.

Nearly all the newspaper rabble that swarms in your hotels are Englishmen, and while writing for the Journal they are also correspondents of the most influential journals and reviews of London. It has been so ever since this thing began.

As I look at it, England’s only object is that the Americans should amuse themselves with us and leave her alone, and if there should be a war, that would the better stave off the conflict which she dreads but which will never come about.

It would be very advantageous to take up, even if only for effect, the question of commercial relations and to have a man of some prominence sent hither, in order that I may make use of him here to carry on a propaganda among the seantors and others in opposition to the Junta and to try to win over the refugees.

So, Amblard is coming. I think he devotes himself too much to petty politics, and we have got to do something very big or we shall fail.

Adela returns your greeting, and we all trust that next year you may be a messenger of peace and take it as a Christmas gift to poor Spain.

Ever your attached friend and servant,

ENRIQUE DUPUY de LÔME.

The Spanish-American War: The Cuban Perspective
Gregory Aydt

History graduate student Greg Aydt wrote this article, winner of the Hamand History Graduate Writing Award, for Dr. Beck's seminar on Imperialism. Like the previous article, it attempts an alternative perspective to an often-viewed historical problem. Greg presented a paper at the Southern Illinois Regional Phi Alpha Theta Conference and is writing a thesis on Montana lynchings.

The traditional view of the Spanish-American War begins with the infamous explosion of the U.S. battleship Maine, and proceeds through convincing American army and navy victories. This narrative however, lacks one crucial item: the views of the Cuban people themselves. Even the very name assigned to the war itself seems to ignore this major participant, who was involved from the very beginning. The fight against Spain which the United States joined in 1898 already had been carried on by the Cuban people for several years. Traditionally, historians have viewed the entrance of the United States into the Cuban Revolution as a prerequisite for the defeat of Spain on the island. From the Cuban perspective, this interpretation is open to debate, as is the American motivation for entering the conflict.

Cuba's Second War for Independence began late in February of 1895. A previous attempt to overthrow the Spanish rulers of Cuba had been defeated in 1878, but the intervening years had not seen much improvement in the status of the Cuban people. While the use of the terms Cuban and Spanish may imply that the two sides were of different ethnic backgrounds, this is not necessarily the case. The Indian population of the island had essentially been eliminated when colonization first occurred, and no foreign immigration was allowed. Consequently, about four out of every five Cubans were actually Spaniards, or of second, third or fourth generation Spanish descent. The remainder, about one out of every five Cubans, were Creole mulattos and descendants of former slaves from Africa. This meant that, for the most part, the Cuban Revolution was actually a civil war between republicans from Cuba and monarchists from Spain.(1)

(Obviously the author ignores the massive importation of slaves in the 1840s and is incompetently noncognizant of Spanish and American immigration of the 1870s and 1880s. M.)

A Cuban patriot named José Martí organized the revolution from his base of operations in the United States. For years, Martí had been working among the Cuban emigrés, both in the United States and in nations throughout Latin America, attempting to plan a revolt against the Spanish government in Cuba. The revolutionary heartland was Florida, where there were sixty-one clubs devoted to Cuban independence. These clubs, known as juntas, asked their members to donate one tenth of their earnings to the independence movement. Many members also joined the newly formed Cuban Revolutionary Party during 1892. This party served as the political movement behind the revolution. While the juntas were most numerous in Florida, there was also an important independence group in New York. They contributed, not monetarily, but by obtaining the support of two key groups: the labor unions and the newspapers.(2)

By 1894, Martí decided to launch the revolution. One of the primary reasons for his decision to launch the attack at this time was his fear that a growing imperialist movement in the United States might prompt annexation before independence. Martí had good reason to believe this, as U.S. Secretary of State James G. Blaine was a proponent of expansion. In fact, as early as 1881 Blaine had written, "f ever ceasing to be Spanish, Cuba must necessarily become American and not fall under any other European domination." Martí also observed the attempt by the United States to annex Hawaii in 1893. Though the attempt did not succeed, it caused him to believe that Cuba might be the next target of American expansion. As Blaine wrote in 1881, "Hawaii ...holds in the western sea much the same position as Cuba in the Atlantic. It is the key to the maritime dominion of the Pacific States as Cuba is the key to the Gulf trade."(3)

(Aydt again is incompetent in the history at least as regards Hawaii. The planter revolution in Hawaii in 1893 was successful. It was Grover Cleveland who refused to allow annexation after it was maneuvered into Congress. A strange man of principle and a rare man was Grover Cleveland. He only delayed the outcome. M.)

The similarities between Cuba and Hawaii were more than geographic. Hawaii's economy subsisted on a single crop; ninety-nine percent of the island's exports in 1890 consisted of sugar bound for the United States. When the United States began giving American growers a bounty of two cents per pound, Hawaiian sugar cane growers were devastated. Obviously, owners of sugar cane plantations would find annexation to be beneficial for their pocketbooks. Cuba's situation was almost identical. For this reason, Martí knew that if the United States attempted to bring Cuba into the Union, some wealthy Cubans would support the move. In spite of their small numbers, these people presented a formidable threat to Martí because of their economic power.(4)

(This is backwards. The planters supported Marti, because through him, they saw a path toward economic integration with the U.S. under the "fiction" of an "independent Cuba". M.)

A more immediate threat than the economic pressure caused even greater concern. Some Cubans advocated asking the United States to help a potential revolution by sending American troops to support the rebels in the field. From Martí's point of view, however, this was the last thing a Cuban revolution needed. He bitterly opposed seeking any military intervention by United States troops. Martí told why he opposed this in a letter to his friend and fellow patriot Gonzalo de Quesada. He wrote, "I don't want the principle established of putting our fortunes into a body where, because of its influence as a major country, the United States is to exercise the principal part." He expressed his fears less diplomatically, but perhaps more succinctly, when he wrote "[o]nce the United States is in Cuba, who will get her out?"(5)

(This at least is true. Marti, the rotten scoundrel and con man, was no friend of the United States. M.)

In 1894, the United States levied a 40 percent tariff on imported sugar.(6) This led to an economic depression in Cuba, causing Cuban sugar producers to begin looking for a way to retain the United States as a possible outlet for excess sugar production. Martí knew that talk of annexation would soon be occurring, both in Havana and Washington. He had already decided that if Cuba was going to experience "the reality of independence," then she must win that independence of her own accord and retain her sovereignty throughout the revolution.(7) With the threat of annexation in mind, Martí stated just before the revolution began, "Cuba must be free from Spain and the United States." After the revolt had begun, he described his reason for launching the attack so quickly. "The Cuban war has broken out in America in time to prevent ...the annexation of Cuba to the United States."
José Martí's words drive home the point that he was concerned about both Spanish and American imperialism.(8)

(I wish that were so, but Marti had ulterior motives for Cuba always, much like Aguinaldo had in the Philippine Islands. When one looks at how the taxes and contributions each man collected, went to create his own personal wealth, before the one was Spanish killed and the Americans caught and imprisoned Aguinaldo, it becomes clear that "patriotism" had a "special meaning" that a Simon Bolivar would not recognize in those two examples. M.)

Martí recruited other military leaders to command the revolutionary forces in battle. He chose Máximo Gómez to act as the Commander-in-Chief of his army, and he also obtained the services of Antonio Maceo to lead a portion of the Cuban revolutionaries. Both of these men had been heroes of the earlier war against the Spanish in Cuba, so they would provide the insurrection with instant legitimacy for most of the Cuban people. Gómez personified the spirit of the revolution in the eyes of Cubans, and his dream was to become the George Washington of a newly liberated Cuban nation. General Maceo also served as an inspiration to many Cubans. As a mulatto, his participation in the rebellion convinced the mulattos and former slaves living in Cuba that they too would benefit from the revolution's success.(9)

While these men led the military battle in Cuba, another important battle raged in the United States. This fight was based in New York, where the local junta was filled with several powerful Cuban emigrés. The leader of this organization of unnaturalized Cubans and their supporters was Tomás Estrada Palma, a former schoolteacher now trying to free Cuba using his connections in New York. The goal of the junta was to spread news from the revolution among New York's influential newspaper reporters. Another key player in the United States was Martí's close friend and associate Gonzalo de Quesada. De Quesada, although he referred to himself as the Cuban Revolutionary Chargé d'Affairés, did not actually hold an official diplomatic post. Nonetheless, this did not prevent him from lobbying for the Cuban cause in Washington. Unlike Martí, the New York junta and de Quesada wanted United States intervention to quickly win the revolution for Cuba.(10)

(Guess who owned a sugar plantation? M.)

On May 19, 1895, the Spanish killed José Martí in battle. Not only had the Cuban Revolution lost the man who had painstakingly planned and organized the insurrection, but they had also lost the strongest voice against American intervention. To the very end, Martí warned his fellow revolutionaries to guard against possible United States' intervention. The day before he was killed, Martí began a letter to one of his many friends. The letter, though never finished, again expressed Martí's apprehensions about the course of the revolution. "It is my duty," he wrote, "to prevent, by the independence of Cuba, the United States from spreading over the West Indies and falling, with that added weight, upon other lands of our America." Certainly, Martí was aware of a danger that others either did not see, or chose to ignore; however, even Martí was not optimistic about his chances of accomplishing his goal. He concluded his statement by noting "I have lived inside the monster and know its insides-and my weapon is only the
slingshot of David."(11)

(As one can see in that letter; and in Marti... "Our America" ... refers to his vision of Latin America. One will see it again... in Fidel Castro, the bastard who wanted to incite Russia to attack the United States with atomic weapons. Dangerous fanatics have a "vision" that causes sane men to blanche. M.)

Traditionally, U.S. historians have viewed American intervention in Cuba in 1898 as saving the Cuban revolution from impending defeat. A close examination casts considerable doubt on this perspective. In February 1898, the Spanish general Ramón Blanco ordered a large army into battle against General Gómez, intending to destroy Gómez's troops. The attack failed dismally. By March 1, Gómez reported that "[t]he enemy is crushed and in complete retreat from here, and the time which favored their operation passes without their doing anything." These are definitely not the words of a Commander-in Chief whose army is on the verge of collapse. In fact, by 1898 it was Spain, not the Cuban revolutionaries, who was on the ropes. While the Spanish generally controlled the populated areas of the island, their armies could not defeat the Cuban rebels in battle.(12)

(Again; incompetent Aydt does not understand what was happening on the ground. Since 1895, the Cuban insurrectos had burned out about 70% of the sugar plantations, destroyed half of the Cuban subsistence agriculture and contributed to the massacre of 10% of the general Cuban population. The whole island was bandit country. The Spanish military in the meantime was garrisoned in the cities and patrolling the rail lines and the few roads of the interior. About 100,000 of those 220,000 troops were garrisoned in Havana in the Cubano, in expectations that the Americans would stage a landing near Havana soon to invade the island. It was logical to suspend lesser operations to meet the greater threat. Gomez, when later called upon to do his part at Santiago de Cuba, was less than nothing to Shafter and actually proved militarily incompetent and an acute embarrassment to the Americans. Valesquez ran rings around the utter fool. General Escario pushed his relief column right through that bungling idiot's lines with relatively little trouble. M.)

Not only did the Cubans think they were winning the revolution, so did the American government. Also on March 1, 1898, the U.S. State Department described the status of the military situation on the island for the American Minister to Spain. The State Department noted that "the Spanish armies have not achieved any success over the Cubans in more than two months." The note also pointed out that General Blanco had "failed absolutely" in his attack on Gómez. Furthermore, it stated that "the Cubans continue to dominate the Eastern half of the island, and its columns are operating in the Western provinces without the Spaniards being able to stop them." Finally, it expressed the Department's view of Spain's desperate attempt to pacify the Cubans by offering them autonomy. This it called "an utter and complete failure." The report summed up the status of Cuba by commenting that "the social and economic situation of the country is worse than ever, and the national rehabilitation work appears more than the forces of the autonomous regime can cope with." If the United States government really thought the revolution was in danger of failure, they hid it well.

(See my previous comments on this science fiction. It should be noted that William McKinley who was a timid man when it came to decisive action in the case of John Alger and the Beef Scandal, fired the complete idiot who made that disastrously wrong assessment, William R. Day. The reason Day got the ax was that he completely bungled the Treaty of Paris negotiations and let the Germans outwit him. M.)

The revolution's military leaders did not feel that their armies needed direct assistance from the United States either. Martí may have been dead, but his policy was continued by Generals Maceo and Gómez. Maceo wanted the United States to recognize the belligerency of the Cuban Republic in a Congressional declaration. By doing this, the U.S. could then provide military equipment to the poorly supplied Cuban rebels. Maceo also knew the declaration would give the revolution a greater sense of moral legitimacy. His opinion on direct military intervention was clear, however. The New York World quoted Maceo saying "I should not want our neighbors to have to shed their blood for our cause. We can do that for ourselves." In a letter to the New York junta's leader, Maceo left no doubt what he wanted, as well as what he did not want, from the United States: "Do you really want to cut the war down? Bring Cuba 25,000 to 35,000 rifles and a million bullets.… We Cubans do not need any other help."(14)

(Maceo's generalship can be estimated here. At Santiago de Cuba, General Linares area command of 15,000 assorted troops expended about 1,000,000 bullets and some 2,000 shells against an American V Corps of similar size who shot at them about the same amount. The Spaniards lost because they ran out of supplies. Gomez was equipped to the tune of some 8,000 rifles and plenty of ammunition for them and was soundly thumped inside his own set of trench lines by the previously mentioned Escario's column of 1,500 haggard and poorly equipped Spanish Tercios who pushed through him to reach Santiago. The insurrectos were actually garbage troops against Spanish regulars. The Americans were not doing all that well, either, but at least they could siege them out. M.)

Further, in yet another letter, Maceo proudly announced, "Cuba is winning its independence by the arms and hearts of its sons. She will be free in a short time without needing any other help." He also feared the end result of U.S. assistance. "Neither do I expect anything from the Americans. We must all depend on our own efforts. It is better to rise or fall without help than to contract debts of gratitude to a neighbor so powerful." In his final note on the topic, Maceo held his ground while acknowledging that many Cubans did not share his opinion: "Nor is American intervention so advantageous to the future of Cuba as most of our compatriots think."(15)

(The smart Cubans did not share Maceo's opinion. Neither did the "smart" Americans. Joe Wheeler, Unreconstructed Confederate, and head of Shafter's cavalry, called the insurrectos, he called them a word we no longer use or accept, and said more politely, they were; "contemptible trash unfit for service". Now to be sure, Wheeler was a piece of contemptible work, himself, but when it came to estimating how much soldier was in a man, he was about as good a judge of soldiers as Nelson Miles or Henry Ware Lawton. M.)

General Gómez was even harsher in his critique of those Cubans who wanted the United States to step in militarily. Those Cubans who disregarded "the North American Republic's absorbing aspirations," in Gómez's opinion, were "morally" on the side of the Spanish. In his mind, to be for U.S. intervention meant to be against the success of the revolution. According to Gómez, "Cuba must not be beholden for its independence in any way, to foreign good graces."(16) American newspaper writer Ambrose Bierce summarized Gómez's opinion in an apocryphal conversation he published on October 3, 1898. Responding to an American general, Bierce imagines Gómez saying, "n other words, Cuba is to have no army of her own, but is to rely altogether upon you. You offer us the independence of a dependency."(17)

(Note the key word, "imagines". Bierce never met Gomez. Bierce came to regard Gomez, later, as a bandit. M.)

The question of whether or not American intervention was necessary for Cuban independence has been debated, even within Cuba, since the Spanish-American War. Initially, most Cuban historians agreed with the consensus of American historians in the belief that American military intervention was indeed critical to the defeat of Spain and the success of the revolution. Gradually, however, Cuban historians began to change their views. By the time the Ninth Historical Congress of Cuba met in 1950, they could unequivocally declare that "Cuba does not owe its independence to the United States of North America, but to the efforts of its own people." The statement proceeds to say that Cuba "brought about even before the intervention of the United States in the Cuban-Spanish conflict the complete exhaustion of Spain's 'last man and last peseta'." Although individual historians retained the traditional view, most determined that American assistance had been unnecessary and unwarranted.(18)

(It must be noted, that in the cases of which I am most familiar, Vietnam and Iraq, the nations were unable to withstand foreign imperialism without outside foreign assistance and intervention. In the case of Vietnam, Russia was successful in supplying the material and expert technical assistance. The Vietnamese, however, were the quality strategists and fighters, but could not fight to win successfully without that MASSIVE aid. In Iraq, Russia FAILED. The Iraqis were garbage soldiers in the service of a garbage regime. They would have needed outsiders to do their fighting for them. Sound recently familiar? M.)

In 1966, several Cuban historians expressed their opinions on the Cuban revolution and American intervention. They admitted their findings were only preliminary and more research needed to be done in Spanish and Cuban archives, but they generally agreed that while the U.S. invasion of Cuba caused the war to end more quickly than it would have otherwise, the end result was not really in doubt by early in 1898. The Spanish were going to be defeated; only the length of the war remained to be determined. As historian Sergio Aguirre of the University of Havana wrote, "[t]here is no doubt that the United States hastened the final decision, introducing into the struggle the 'knockout' punch. But victory for the Cubans would have come in the end." Aguirre based his opinions on the fact that the Spanish had no comparable response to the invasion of Western Cuba by the revolutionary armies. As he said, "[w]hy presume that this counter-strike would have been able to appear in 1898 or after?"(19)

(Simple. BLOCKADE was the difference. Without it, the Spanish could continue to finance and supply their garrisons. M.)

A more recent historian of Cuban history went one step further. Louis Pérez argued that the United States intervened in Cuba not because they wanted to help the Cubans defeat the Spanish, but because they saw their opportunity to obtain Cuba slipping away in a successful revolution. The U.S. government was well aware that Spain was about to lose Cuba. In 1898 William R. Day, the American Assistant Secretary of State, wrote a confidential memorandum stating that "it is now evident that Spain's struggle in Cuba has become absolutely hopeless." In Pérez's opinion, the U.S. intervened because "[t]he success of Cuban arms ...challenged, too, pretensions of colonial replacement." In other words, the United States could not allow Cuba to become an independent nation, because this would take away the possibility of relatively easy annexation. The United States had tried to annex Hawaii and failed. They wanted a better pretense to annex Cuba. Saving Cubans from the Spanish was an opportunity to assert control in Cuba,
but this opportunity was about to disappear in a Spanish defeat.(20)

(Considering that I have already commented on Aydt's garbage history, to find that he cites a couple of discredited Marxists Castroistas and quotes Secretary Day again to bolster his fallacy comes as a surprise? M.)

The force of this argument is supported by President William McKinley's war message to Congress in April 1898. While McKinley requested the authority to intervene militarily in Cuba, he did not state that the U.S. was acting in defense of Cuban independence. In fact, the concept of independence for Cuba was not mentioned at all. The U.S. was entering Cuba to implement a "forcible intervention …as a neutral to stop the war." This would entail "hostile constraint upon both the parties to the contest." Far from aiding the Cubans, the Americans were simply going to prevent either side from winning. Furthermore, the United States intended "to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government, capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations." The President's message, however, made no mention of whether this government would be an independent Cubangovernment, or whether it would be under U.S. control. Congress would eventually force McKinley to accept the Teller Amendment, renouncing permanent control of the island, but Cuban independence was still not recognized as part of the compromise.(21)

To the Congress of the United States:

Obedient to that precept of the Constitution which commands the President to give from time to time to the Congress information of the state of the Union and to recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient, it becomes my duty to now address your body with regard to the grave crisis that has arisen in the relations of the United States to Spain by reason of the warfare that for more than three years has raged in the neighboring island of Cuba. I do so because of the intimate connection of the Cuban question with the state of our own Union and the grave relation the course which it is now incumbent upon the nation to adopt must needs bear to the traditional policy of our Government if it is to accord with the precepts laid down by the founders of the Republic and religiously observed by succeeding Administrations to the present day.

The present revolution is but the successor of other similar insurrections which have occurred in Cuba against the dominion of Spain, extending over a period of nearly half a century, each of which during its progress has subjected the United States to great effort and expense in enforcing its neutrality laws, caused enormous losses to American trade and commerce, caused irritation, annoyance, and disturbance among our citizens, and, by the exercise of cruel, barbarous, and uncivilized practices of warfare, shocked the sensibilities and offended the humane
sympathies of our people.

Since the present revolution begin, in February, 1895, this country has been the fertile domain at our threshold ravaged by fire and sword in the course of a struggle unequaled in the history of the island and rarely paralleled as to the numbers of the combatants and the bitterness of the contest by any revolution of modern times where a dependent people striving to be free have been opposed by the power of the sovereign state.

Our people have beheld a once prosperous community reduced to comparative want, its lucrative commerce virtually paralyzed, its exceptional productiveness diminished, its fields laid waste, its mills in ruins, and its people perishing by tens of thousands from hunger and destitution. We have found ourselves constrained, in the observance of that strict neutrality which our laws enjoin and which the law of nations commands, to police our own waters and watch our own seaports in prevention of any unlawful act in aid of the Cubans.

Our trade has suffered, the capital invested by our citizens in Cuba has been largely lost, and the temper and forbearance of our people have been so sorely tried as to beget a perilous unrest among our own citizens, which has inevitably found its expression from time to time in the National Legislature, so that issues wholly external to our own body politic engross attention and stand in the way of that close devotion to domestic advancement that becomes a self-contained commonwealth whose primal maxim has been the avoidance of all foreign entanglements. All this must needs awaken, and has, indeed, aroused, the utmost concern on the part of this Government, as well during my predecessor’s term as in my own.

In April, 1896, the evils from which our country suffered through the Cuban war became so onerous that my predecessor made an effort to bring about a peace through the mediation of this Government in any way that might tend to an honorable adjustment of the contest between Spain and her revolted colony, on the basis of some effective scheme of self-government for Cuba under the flag and sovereignty of Spain. It failed through the refusal of the Spanish government then in power to consider any form or mediation or, indeed, any plan of settlement which did not begin with the actual submission of the insurgents to the mother country, and then only on such terms as Spain herself might see fit to grant. The war continued unabated. The resistance of the insurgents was in no wise diminished.

The efforts of Spain were increased both by the dispatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition to the horrors of the strife of a new and inhuman phase happily unprecedented in the modern history of civilized Christian peoples. The policy of devastation and concentration, inaugurated by the Captain-General’s bandoof October 21, 1896, in the Province of Pinar del Rio was thence extended to embrace all of the island to which the power of the Spanish arms was able to reach by occupation or by military operations. The peasantry, including all dwelling in the open agricultural interior, were driven into the garrison towns or isolated places held by the troops.

The raising and movement of provisions of all kinds were interdicted. The fields were laid waste, dwellings unroofed and fired, mills destroyed, and, in short, everything that could desolate the land and render it unfit for human habitation or support was commanded by one or the other of the contending parties and executed by all the powers at their disposal.

By the time the present Administration took office, a year ago, re-concentration (so called) had been made effective over the better part of the four central and western provinces—Santa Clara, Matanzas, Havana, and Pinar del Rio. The agricultural population to the estimated number of 300,000 or more was herded within the towns and their immediate vicinage, deprived of the means of support, rendered destitute of shelter, left poorly clad, and exposed to the most unsanitary conditions.

As the scarcity of food increased with the devastation of the depopulated areas of production, destitution and want became misery and starvation. Month by month the death rate increased in an alarming ratio. By March, 1897, according to conservative estimates from official Spanish sources, the mortality among the reconcentrados from starvation and the diseases thereto incident exceeded 50 per cent of their total number.

No practical relief was accorded to the destitute. The overburdened towns, already suffering from the general dearth, could give no aid. So called “zones of cultivation” established within the immediate areas of effective military control about the cities and fortified camps proved illusory as a remedy for the suffering. The unfortunates, being for the most part women and children, with aged and helpless men, enfeebled by disease and hunger, could not have tilled the soil without tools, seed, or shelter for their own support or for the supply of the cities. Re-concentration, adopted
avowedly as a war measure in order to cut off the resources of the insurgents, worked its predestined result. As I said in my message of last December, it was not civilized warfare; it was extermination. The only peace it could beget was that of the wilderness and the grave.

Meanwhile the military situation in the island had undergone a noticeable change. The extraordinary activity that characterized the second year of the war, when the insurgents invaded even the thitherto unharmed fields of Pinar del Rio and carried havoc and destruction up to the walls of the city of Havana itself, had relapsed into a dogged struggle in the central and eastern provinces. The Spanish arms regained a measure of control in Pinar del Rio and parts of Havana, but, under the existing conditions of the rural country, without immediate improvement of their productive
situation. Even thus partially restricted, the revolutionists held their own, and their conquest and submission, put forward by Spain as the essential and sole basis of peace, seemed as far distant as at the outset.

In this state of affairs my Administration found itself confronted with the grave problem of its duty. My message of last December reviewed the situation and narrated the steps taken with a view to relieving its acuteness and opening the way to some form of honorable settlement. The assassination of the prime minister, Canovas, led to a change of government in Spain. The former administration, pledged to subjugation without concession, gave place to that of a more liberal party, committed long in advance to a policy of reform involving the wider principle of home rule for Cuba and Puerto Rico.

The overtures of this Government made through its new envoy, General Woodford, and looking to an immediate and effective amelioration of the condition of the island, although not accepted to the extent of admitted mediation in any shape, were met by assurances that home rule in an advanced phase would be forthwith offered to Cuba, without waiting for the war to end, and that more humane methods should thenceforth prevail in the conduct
of hostilities. Coincidentally with these declarations the new government of Spain continued and completed the policy, already begun by its predecessor, of testifying friendly regard for this nation by releasing American citizens held under one charge or another connected with the insurrection, so that by the end of November not a single person entitled in any way to our national protection remained in a Spanish prison.

While these negotiations were in progress the increasing destitution of the unfortunate reconcentrados and the alarming mortality among them claimed earnest attention. The success which had attended the limited measure of relief extended to the suffering American citizens among them by the judicious expenditure through the consular agencies of the money appropriated expressly for their succor by the joint resolution approved May 24, 1897, prompted the humane extension of a similar scheme of aid to the great body of sufferers. A suggestion to this end was acquiesced in by the Spanish authorities.

On the 24th of December last I caused to be issued an appeal to the American people inviting contributions in money or in kind for the succor of the starving sufferers in Cuba, following this on the 8th of January by a similar public announcement of the formation of a central Cuban relief committee, with headquarters in New York City, composed of three members representing the American National Red Cross and the religious and business elements of the community.

The efforts of that committee have been untiring and have accomplished much. Arrangements for free transportation to Cuba have greatly aided the charitable work. The president of the American Red Cross and representatives of other contributory organizations have generously visited Cuba and cooperated with the consul-general and the local authorities to make effective distribution of the relief collected through the efforts of the central committee. Nearly $200,000 in money and supplies has already reached the sufferers, and more is forthcoming. The supplies are admitted duty free, and transportation to the interior has been arranged, so that the relief, at first necessarily confined to Havana and the larger cities, is now extended through most, if not all, of the towns where suffering exists.

Thousands of lives have already been saved. The necessity for a change in the condition of the reconcentrados is recognized by the Spanish Government. Within a few days past the orders of General Weyler have been revoked. The reconcentrados, it is said, are to be permitted to return to their homes and aided to resume the self-supporting pursuits of peace. Public works have been ordered to give them employment and a sum of $600,000 has been appropriated for their relief.

The war in Cuba is of such a nature that, short of subjugation or extermination, a final military victory for either side seems impracticable. The alternative lies in the physical exhaustion of the one or the other party, or perhaps of both—a condition which in effect ended the ten years’ war by the truce of Zanjon. The prospect of such a protraction and conclusion of the present strife is a contingency hardly to be contemplated with equanimity by the civilized world, and least of all by the United States, affected and injured as we are, deeply and intimately, by its very existence.

Realizing this, it appeared to be my duty, in a spirit of true friendliness, no less to Spain than to the Cubans, who have so much to lose by the prolongation of the struggle, to seek to bring about an immediate termination of the war. To this end I submitted on the 27th ultimo, as a result of much representation and correspondence, through the United States minister at Madrid, propositions to the Spanish Government looking to an armistice until October 1 for the negotiation of peace with the good offices of the President.

In addition I asked the immediate revocation of the order of re-concentration, so as to permit the people to return to their farms and the needy to be relieved with provisions and supplies from the United States, cooperating with the Spanish authorities, so as to afford full relief.

The reply of the Spanish cabinet was received on the night of the 31st ultimo. It offered, as the means to bring about peace in Cuba, to confide the preparation thereof to the insular parliament, inasmuch as the concurrence of that body would be necessary to reach a final result, it being, however, understood that the powers reserved by the constitution to the central Government are not lessened or diminished. As the Cuban parliament does not meet until the 4th of May next, the Spanish Government would not object for its part to accept at once a suspension of hostilities if asked for by the insurgents from the general in chief, to whom it would pertain in such case to determine the duration and conditions of the armistice.

The propositions submitted by General Woodford and the reply of the Spanish Government were both in the form of brief memoranda, the texts of which are before me and are substantially in the language above given. The function of the Cuban parliament in the matter of “preparing” peace and the manner of its doing so are not expressed in the Spanish memorandum, but from General Woodford’s explanatory reports of preliminary discussions preceding the final conference it is understood that the Spanish Government stands ready to give the insular congress full powers to settle the terms of peace with the insurgents, whether by direct negotiation or indirectly by means of legislation does not appear. With this last overture in the direction of immediate peace, and its disappointing reception by Spain, the Executive is brought to the end of his effort.

In my annual message of December last I said: Of the untried measures there remain only: Recognition of the insurgents as belligerents; recognition of the independence of Cuba; neutral intervention to end the war by imposing a rational compromise between the contestants, and intervention in favor of one or the other party. I speak not of forcible annexation, for that can not be thought of. That, by our code of morality, would be criminal aggression.

Thereupon I reviewed these alternatives in the light of President Grant’s measured words, uttered in 1875, when, after seven years of sanguinary, destructive, and cruel hostilities in Cuba, he reached the conclusion that the recognition of the independence of Cuba was impracticable and indefensible and that the recognition of belligerence was not warranted by the facts according to the tests of public law. I commented especially upon the latter aspect of the question, pointing out the inconveniences and positive dangers of a recognition of belligerence, which, while adding to the already onerous burdens of neutrality within our own jurisdiction, could not in any way extend our influence or effective offices in the territory of hostilities.

Nothing has since occurred to change my view in this regard, and I recognize as fully now as then that the issuance of a proclamation of neutrality, by which process the so-called recognition of belligerents is published, could of itself and unattended by other action accomplish nothing toward the one end for which we labor—the instant pacification of Cuba and the cessation of the misery that afflicts the island.

Turning to the question of recognizing at this time the independence of the present insurgent government in Cuba, we find safe precedents in our history from an early day. They are well summed up in President Jackson’s message to Congress, December 21, 1836, on the subject of the recognition of the independence of Texas. He said:
Thereupon Andrew Jackson proceeded to consider the risk that there might be imputed to the United States motives of selfish interest in view of the former claim on our part to the territory of Texas and of the avowed purpose of the Texans in seeking recognition of independence as an incident to the incorporation of Texas in the Union, concluding thus:

These are the words of the resolute and patriotic Jackson. They are evidence that the United States, in addition to the test imposed by public law as the condition of the recognition of independence by a neutral state (to wit, that the revolted state shall “constitute in fact a body politic, having a government in substance as well as in name, possessed of the elements of stability,” and forming de facto, “if left to itself, a state among the nations, reasonably capable of discharging the duties of a state”), has imposed for its own governance in dealing with cases like these the further condition that recognition of independent statehood is not due to a revolted dependency until the danger of its being again subjugated by the
parent state has entirely passed away.

This extreme test was, in fact, applied in the case of Texas. The Congress to whom President Jackson referred the question as one “probably leading to war,” and therefore a proper subject for “a previous understanding with that body by whom war can alone be declared and by whom all the provisions for sustaining its perils must be furnished,” left the matter of the recognition of Texas to the discretion of the Executive, providing merely for the sending of a diplomatic agent when the President should be satisfied that the Republic of Texas had become” an independent state.” It was so recognized by President Van Buren, who commissioned a charge d’affaires March 7, 1837, after Mexico had abandoned an attempt to reconquer the Texan territory, and when there was at the time no bona fide contest going on between the insurgent province and its former sovereign.

I said in my message of December last:

With such a conflict waged for years in an island so near us and with which our people have such trade and business relations; when the lives and liberty of our citizens are in constant danger and their property destroyed and themselves ruined; where our trading vessels are liable to seizure and are seized at our very door by war ships of a foreign nation; the expeditions of filibustering that we are powerless to prevent altogether, and the irritating questions and entanglements thus arising—all these and others that I need not mention, with the resulting strained relations, are a constant menace to our peace and compel us to keep on a semi war footing with a nation with which we are at peace.

These elements of danger and disorder already pointed out have been strikingly illustrated by a tragic event which has deeply and justly moved the American people. I have already transmitted to Congress the report of the naval court of inquiry on the destruction of the battleship Maine in the harbor of Havana during the night of the 15th of February. The destruction of that noble vessel has filled the national heart with inexpressible horror. Two hundred and fifty-eight brave sailors and marines and two officers of our Navy, reposing in the fancied security of a friendly harbor, have been hurled to death, grief and want brought to their homes and sorrow to the nation.

The naval court of inquiry, which, it is needless to say, commands the unqualified confidence of the Government, was unanimous in its conclusion that the destruction of the Maine was caused by an exterior explosion—that of a submarine mine. It did not assume to place the responsibility. That remains to be fixed.

In any event, the destruction of the Maine, by whatever exterior cause, is a patent and impressive proof of a state of things in Cuba that is intolerable. That condition is thus shown to be such that the Spanish Government cannot assure safety and security to a vessel of the American Navy in the harbor of Havana on a mission of peace, and rightfully there.

Further referring in this connection to recent diplomatic correspondence, a dispatch from our minister to Spain of the 26th ultimo contained the statement that the Spanish minister for foreign affairs assured him positively that Spain will do all that the highest honor and justice require in the matter of the Maine. The reply above referred to, of the 31st ultimo, also contained an expression of the readiness of Spain to submit to an arbitration all the differences which can arise in this matter, which is subsequently explained by the note of the Spanish minister at Washington of the 10th instant, as follows:


To this I have made no reply.

President Grant, in 1875, after discussing the phases of the contest as it then appeared and its hopeless and apparent indefinite prolongation, said:


In the last annual message of my immediate predecessor, during the pending struggle, it was said:

In my annual message to Congress December last, speaking to this question, I said:



In view of these facts and of these considerations I ask the Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the Government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government, capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations, insuring peace and tranquility and the security of its citizens as well as our own, and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary for these purposes.

And in the interest of humanity and to aid in preserving the lives of the starving people of the island I recommend that the distribution of food and supplies be continued and that an appropriation be made out of the public Treasury to supplement the charity of our citizens. The issue is now with the Congress. It is a solemn responsibility. I have exhausted every effort to relieve the intolerable condition of affairs which is at our doors. Prepared to execute every obligation imposed upon me by the Constitution and the law, I await your action.

Yesterday, and since the preparation of the foregoing message, official information was received by me that the latest decree of the Queen Regent of Spain directs General Blanco, in order to prepare and facilitate peace, to proclaim a suspension of hostilities, the duration and details of which have not yet been communicated to me.

This fact, with every other pertinent consideration, will, I am sure, have your just and careful attention in the solemn deliberations upon which you are about to enter. If this measure attains a successful result, then our aspirations as a Christian, peace-loving people will be realized. If it fails, it will be only another justification for our contemplated action.

While the typical American historian interprets the sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine as an accidental factor which caused a great public outcry in the U.S., and ultimately the war with Spain, Pérez has a different interpretation. He believes that the United States government seized on the opportunity which the sinking of the Maine provided them. The Maine accident was used "as a contrived pretext for war rather than a chance precipitant." The public outcry "was not so much a spontaneous response to the destruction of the Maine as it was the result of deliberate and cynical manipulation by pro-war elements, principally the yellow press and expansionist politicians, who seized the occasion to advance larger
policy goals." Rather than being swept along against their will with the rising tide of public opinion in favor of war, the President and Congress are seen as taking advantage of the accident to obtain what they already desired: war with Spain for control of Cuba.(22)

(I have answered this manure. A Marxist Castroista cannot be relied as an unbiased source. Neither can a fool who quotes him as an objective authority. M.)

There are Cuban historians who believe the American intervention was both necessary and beneficial for Cuba. In 1972, Guillermo de Zéndegui wrote an article in which he praised the United States for entering the Spanish-American War. He admitted that the Cuban patriots and the United States politicians occasionally did not see eye-to-eye on various matters, but he stated that "[t]he foreseeable risks in help from a nascent expansionist power, which at times appeared as serious as they were certain, were worth facing." This was because the U.S. was "the only nation in the Hemisphere at that time capable of standing up to Spain with force and, if it came to it, imposing a solution satisfactory to the Cuban cause." He was also quite supportive of the Congressional Joint Resolution of April 13, 1898, which amounted to a declaration of war against Spain. He referred to it as "without doubt one of the grandest, most noble, and spontaneous acts in the history of inter-American relations." Similarly, he calls this
entire period of American intervention in Cuba "an exemplary chapter" in U.S. history.(23)

(I would not go that far to plonk a halo on the McKinley administration or to beatify Theordore Roosevelt. The spaghettification of motives and desires by all the parties involved in this very complex, messy and international war, (Spain, Cuba, the Philippine Republic, the UK, the Kaiser Wilhelm II bandit regime, Qing China, Japan, the United States...) makes the Anglo-Egyptian imperialist colonialist aggression in the Sudan that is comtemporary seem like a simple noodle slurp of pure honest criminality by comparison. M.)

He argued that Cuban patriots responded enthusiastically to the announcement that the U.S. was going to intervene in Cuba. As an example, he provided the story of the Spanish General Blanco's attempt to convince General Gómez to enter negotiations before the Americans actually entered Cuba. Blanco warned Gómez that the Yankees were ambitious foreigners anxious to annex the Cuban island. Gómez turned down the offer, informing the Spanish general that, "until now I have had only feelings of admiration for the United States. I have written to President McKinley and to General Miles thanking them for the American intervention in Cuba. I do not see the danger of our being exterminated by the United States, to which you refer in your letter. If that should happen, history will judge them." De Zendegui considered this to be "irrefutable proof of the true feelings of the patriots at that time."

Whether Gómez was speaking honestly, or just diplomatically, is difficult to judge. Based on Gómez's previous statements, it appears that he was simply unwilling to admit his true feelings about U.S. intervention in a diplomatic note to his bitter enemy. Nonetheless, De Zéndegui is an example of a Cuban historian who favored U.S. intervention.(24)

(Maybe. In the context of the situation, when Gomez needed more Yankee guns and bullets (sic) for his bandits... er soldiers to continue to burn and loot his rivals' sugar plantations it may be that he was being "practical". M.)

The debate over the purposes and goals of U.S. intervention in Cuba provides an interesting example of the way in which different perspectives can lead to completely different interpretations of the same event. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. By learning the Cuban viewpoint of the Spanish American War, however, I believe the overall picture of what really happened is made clearer. Cubans and Americans should both benefit from the continuing exchange of ideas and dialogue between historians from these two viewpoints.

(As long as they are competent and unbiased, that may be so. In this case, we have neither condition evident. M.)

1. Guillermo de Zéndegui, "The Welcome Intervention," Americas 24 (June-July 1972): 3.
2. David F. Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 (Lincoln, 1996), 2.
3. Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War: the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895-1902 (New York,
1972), xxviii-xxix.
4. Ibid., xxix-xxx.
5. Ibid., xxx.
6. Trask, War with Spain, 1.
7. Foner, Spanish-Cuban-American War, xxx.
8. Ibid., xxxiv.
9. John Tebbel, America's Great Patriotic War with Spain: Mixed Motives, Lies and Racism in Cuba and the
Philippines, 1898-1915 (Manchester Center, VT, 1996), 7.
10. Ibid., 6-7.
11. Foner, Spanish-Cuban-American War, 13.
12. Ibid., 136-7.
13. Ibid., 136.
14. Ibid., 144-5.
15. Ibid., 145-6.
16. Ibid.,147.
17. Ambrose Bierce, Skepticism and Dissent: Selected Journalism, 1898-1901, ed. Lawrence I. Berkove (Ann
Arbor, 1986), 113.
18. Foner, Spanish-Cuban-American War, 140-1.
19. Ibid., 141-2.
20. Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York, 1995), 176-7.
21. Ibid., 177-8.
22. Louis A. Pérez, Jr., "The Meaning of the Maine: Causation and the Historiography of the Spanish-American
War," Pacific Historical Review 58 (1989): 311.
23. De Zéndegui, "Welcome Intervention," 5-10.
24. Ibid., 8.