Our War with Spain for Cuba's Freedom

by Trumbull White

CHAPTER XLVII.

PROGRESS OF HOSTILITIES.

Eagerness to Fight—Matanzas Bombarded—Weyler's Brother-in-law a
Prisoner of War—The Situation in Havana—Blanco Makes a Personal
Appeal to Gomez—The Reply of a Patriot—"One Race, Mankind"—The
Momentum of War—Our Position Among Nations.

The striking peculiarity at the commencement of the war was the general eagerness to fight. There have been wars in which there was much maneuvering and blustering, but no coming to blows. There have been campaigns on sea and land in which commanders exhausted the devices of strategy to keep out of each other's way, but in this war the Americans strained strategy, evaded rules, and sought excuses to get at the Spaniards.

Given a Spanish fortified town and an American fleet, and there was a bombardment on short notice. Given a Spanish fort and a Yankee gunboat, and there was a fight. There were no "all-quiet-on-the-Potomac" or "nothing-new-before-Paris" refrains. The Americans knew they were right, and they went ahead.

MATANZAS BOMBARDED.

The first actual bombardment of Cuban forts took place on April 27th at Matanzas, when three ships of Admiral Sampson's fleet, the flagship New York, the monitor Puritan, and the cruiser Cincinnati, opened fire upon the fortifications. The Spaniards had been actively at work on the fortifications at Punta Gorda, and it was the knowledge of this fact that led Admiral Sampson to shell the place, the purpose being to prevent their completion.

A small battery on the eastern side of the bay opened fire on the New York, and the flagship quickly responded with her heavy guns. Probably twenty-five eight-inch shells were sent from the battery at our ships, but all of them fell short. A few blank shells were also fired from the incomplete battery.

One or two of those whizzed over Admiral Sampson's flagship. After completing their work the ships put out to the open sea, the flagship returning to its post off Havana, while the Cincinnati and the Puritan remained on guard off Matanzas. While the flagship New York, her sister cruiser, the Cincinnati, and the monitor Puritan were locating the defenses of Matanzas harbor the batteries guarding the entrance opened fire on the New York. Their answer was a broadside from Admiral Sampson's flagship, the first fire being from the forward eight-inch gun on the port side. The monitor attacked the Point Maya fortification, the flagship went in close and shelled Rubalcaya Point, while the Cincinnati was soon at work shelling the fortification on the west side of the bay. In less than twenty minutes Admiral Sampson's warships had silenced the Spanish batteries.

The explosive shells from the forts fell wide of the ships. The last one fired from the shore was from Point Rubalcaya. The monitor Puritan let go with a shot from one of her twelve-inch guns, and its effect was seen when a part of the fortification went into the air. The battery at Maya was the stronger of the two and its fire more constant, but all its shells failed to hit our ships.

The target practice of the flagship was an inspiring sight. At every shot from her batteries, clouds of dust and big pieces of stone showed where the Spanish forts were suffering. The New York, after reducing the range from over six thousand to three thousand yards, fired shells at the rate of three a minute into the enemy's forts, each one creating havoc. The Puritan took equally good care of Point Maya. When she succeeded in getting the range, her gunners landed a shell inside the works at every shot.

When permission was given to the Cincinnati to take part in the first battle between Yankee and Spanish forces, the cruiser came up to within 2,000 yards of the shore, and almost immediately her guns were at work. Cadet Boone on the flagship fired the first gun in answer to the Spanish batteries.

The Spanish mail steamer Argonauta, Captain Lage, was convoyed into Key West harbor by the United States cruiser Marblehead on May 3. Colonel Vicente De Cortijo of the Third Spanish cavalry, who, with nineteen other army officers, was taken on the prize, is a brother-in-law of Lieutenant General Valeriano Weyler. Colonel De Cortijo and the other officers were transferred to the Guido and the privates to the Ambrosio Bolivar, two other trophies of the first week of the war.

The Argonauta herself was no mean prize, being of 1,000 tons burden, but the value of the capture was mainly in the prisoners of war and the mail matter going to General Blanco. Her cargo was general merchandise, with a large quantity of ammunition and supplies for the Spanish troops in Cuba.

THE SITUATION IN HAVANA.

A correspondent wrote from Havana, on the 3d of May, as follows:

"The dispatch boat succeeded again to-day in opening communication with Havana, and your correspondent brought away with him the morning papers of yesterday.

"The City of Havana is a sad sight. There are still a few of the reconcentrados about the streets now, but starvation has ended the misery of most of them, and their bones have been thrown into the trenches outside of the city.

"Starvation now faces the Spanish citizens themselves. Havana is a graveyard. Two-thirds of the inhabitants have fled. The other third is beginning to feel the pangs of hunger.

"The prices rival those of Klondike. Beefsteak is $1 a pound. Chickens are $1 each. Flour is $50 a barrel. Everything is being confiscated for Blanco's army. Sleek, well-fed persons are daily threatened with death to make them divulge the whereabouts of their hidden stores of provisions.

"Several provision stores in the side streets have been broken into and looted. General Blanco is being strongly urged to sink artesian wells to provide water in the event of a siege, as a joint attack by the Cuban and American forces would destroy the aqueduct. It is not thought that Blanco will attempt this, as he will not have sufficient time.

"A bulletin posted on the wall of the palace this morning announced that the mail steamship Aviles from Nuevitasa and the Cosme Herra from Sagua arrived last night. It is also stated that the Spanish brig Vigilante arrived at Matanzas from Montevideo with food supplies for the government.

"The palace of the Captain General is practically deserted since the blockade began. Blanco has personally taken command of Mariena battery, and is directing the erection of new sand batteries all along the water front west of the entrance to Havana Bay. Lieutenant General Perrado is making Guanabacoa his headquarters, and is planting new batteries and strengthening the fortifications as much as possible. Over 300 draymen are engaged in the hauling of sand from the mouth of Almandres for use in the construction of the earthworks along the coast, and in the city suburbs all draymen have been ordered to report for volunteer duty with their drays. The streets are riotous with half-drunken Spanish volunteers crying for American and Cuban blood.

"At night the city is wrapped in darkness, all gas and electric lights being shut off by order of Blanco. Spanish soldiers are taking advantage of this to commit shocking outrages upon unprotected Cuban families. In spite of these direful circumstances Blanco has ordered the decoration of the city, hoping to incite the patriotism of the populace."

BLANCO MAKES A PERSONAL APPEAL TO GOMEZ.

On May 4 General Blanco made a supreme effort to win over the
Cuban forces, writing a letter to General Gomez. A copy of this
letter and the answer of General Gomez were found upon Commander
Lima, who was picked up by the Tecumseh fifteen miles from Havana.
The letter of General Blanco was as follows:

General Maximo Gomez, Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary
Forces:

Sir—It cannot be concealed from you that the Cuban problem has radically changed. We Spaniards and Cubans find ourselves facing a foreign people of different race, of a naturally absorbent tendency, and with intentions not only to deprive Spain of her flag over the Cuban soil, but also to exterminate the Cuban people, due to its having Spanish blood.

The supreme moment has, therefore, arrived in which we should forget our past misunderstandings, and in which, united by the interests of our own defense, we, Spaniards and Cubans, must repel the invader.

General, due to these reasons, I propose to make alliance of both armies in the City of Santa Clara. The Cubans will receive the arms of the Spanish army, and with the cry of "Viva Espana!" and "Viva Cuba!" we shall repel the invader and free from a foreign yoke the descendants of the same people.

Your obedient servant,

RAMON BLANCO.

To this General Gomez replied as follows:

Sir—I wonder how you dare to write me again about terms of peace when you know that Cubans and Spaniards can never be at peace on the soil of Cuba. You represent on this continent an old and discredited monarchy. We are fighting for an American principle, the same as that of Bolivar and Washington.

You say we belong to the same race and invite me to fight against a foreign invader, but you are mistaken again, for there are no differences of races and blood. I only believe in one race, mankind, and for me there are but good and bad nations, Spain so far having been a bad one and the United States performing in these movements toward Cuba a duty of humanity and civilization.

From the wild, tawny Indian to the refined, blond Englishman, a man for me is worthy of respect according to his honesty and feelings, no matter to what country or race he belongs or what religion he professes.

So are nations for me, and up to the present I have had only reasons for admiring the United States. I have written to President McKinley and General Miles thanking them for American intervention in Cuba. I don't see the danger of our extermination by the United States, to which you refer in your letter. If it be so, history will judge. For the present I have to repeat that it is too late for any understanding between my army and yours.

Your obedient servant,

MAXIMO GOMEZ.

ONE RACE—MANKIND.

The reply of Gomez to Blanco will live in history. Blanco's strange appeal to the Cuban general was characteristic of a Spaniard. It would seem that an intelligent man would not have made such an appeal, well knowing that it would be useless. For three years Gomez had waged what to many seemed to be a hopeless fight. After these years of sacrifice he obtained the United States as an ally, an acquisition that assured him of final success. Under these circumstances Blanco, the representative of the forces against which Gomez had been contending, appealed to Gomez to join with him in an effort to repel the United States forces. Such an appeal under the circumstances, in view of the fact that Blanco was regarded as an intelligent man, showed the Spaniard to be incapable of appreciating the sentiments which prompted a people to maintain a struggle for liberty.

General Blanco based his appeal upon the claim that the Cuban and the Spaniard belonged to the same race and worshiped at the same shrine. He sought to stir up within Gomez' breast racial and religious prejudices, and went so far as to suggest that in the event Gomez united his forces with those of Blanco, Spain would give liberty to Cuba, and would "open her arms to another new daughter of the nations of the new world who speak her language, profess her religion and feel in their veins the noble Spanish blood."

Gomez' letter was interesting for several reasons. To those who had pictured him as a coarse, illiterate man this letter was a revelation. It was not, however, a surprise to those who had carefully studied Gomez' career and who understand that he was a scholarly man as well as a thorough soldier.

"I only believe in one race, mankind," said Gomez, and that sentence will occupy a conspicuous place in the history of this continent.

"From the wild, tawny Indian to the refined, blond Englishman," said Gomez, "a man for me is respectful according to his honesty and feelings, no matter to what country or race he belongs or what religion he professes. So are nations for me." Such excellent sentiments were doubtless wasted on the Spaniard, but men of all civilized nations, even we of the United States, may find great value in these splendid expressions by the Cuban general.

The man who believes that there is but one race to whom we owe allegiance, that that race is mankind, and that to that race he owes all allegiance, must have his heart in the right place. The man who discards the consideration of accident of birth and, apart from patriotic affairs, applies the term "comrade" to all of God's creatures, that man has not studied in vain the purposes of creation. The man who forms his estimate of individuals according to the manhood displayed by the individual, banishing from his mind all racial and religious prejudices, must certainly have studied the lesson of life to good advantage.

"I only believe in one race, mankind." That is a sentiment that the religious instructors and the sages have endeavored to impress upon us. But the combined efforts of all the instructors and all the sages in teaching of the brotherhood of man have not been so impressive as was the simple statement of this splendid patriot wherein he repelled the temptation to racial and religious prejudice.

Mankind is the race, and the honest man's the man, no matter to what country he belongs or what religion he professes. That was a sentiment of Maximo Gomez, the Cuban patriot, the clean-cut American, a sentiment to which the intelligence of the world will subscribe and in the light of which prejudice must finally fade away.

THE MOMENTUM OF WAR.

As far as the American people were concerned, the destruction of the Maine was the beginning of hostilities. The Nation dropped, on the instant, the slow-going habits of peace, and caught step to the intense and swift impulse of war. Great events crowded one another to such an extent that we made more history in sixty days than in the preceding thirty years. The movement was not a wild drifting, but was as straight, swift, and resistless as that of a cannon ball. There was an object in view, and the government and the people went straight at it.

When the Maine was destroyed our navy was scattered, our army was at thirty different posts in as many States, there were no volunteers in the field, no purpose of war in the minds of the people. The Spanish hold on Cuba seemed secure; no one thought of Spain's yielding Puerto Rico or the Philippine islands. The people could not be brought to serious consideration of the Cuban question, and they were indifferent to the fate of Hawaii. They held back when any one talked of our rights in the Pacific, and had little enthusiasm in the plans to strengthen our navy and our coast defenses. All these questions were urgent, but the people hesitated and Congress hesitated with them.

The explosion that destroyed our battleship and slaughtered our seamen cut every rope that bound us to inaction. In a week the navy was massed for offensive movement. In three weeks $50,000,000 had been placed at the disposal of the President to forward the preparations for national defense. In a month new war vessels had been purchased, the old monitors had been repaired and put in commission, the American liners had been transferred to the navy. In two months war had been declared, the reorganized North Atlantic squadron had blockaded Cuban ports, and the regular army was moving hurriedly to rendezvous in the South. In another week 125,000 volunteers were crowding the State capitals.

Under the momentum of war we swept forward in a few weeks to the most commanding position we had ever occupied among nations. Without bluster or boast we impressed the world with our strength, and made clear the righteousness of our cause. We proved that a republic wedded to peace can prepare quickly for war, and that a popular government is as quick and powerful as a monarchy to avenge insult or wrong.