The one great doctrine that the Evening Post has maintained as insistently as its low-tariff stand is its opposition to any artificial extension of American sovereignty. From Coleman’s protests against Jackson’s high-handed invasion of the Floridas to Mr. Ogden’s protest against the purchase of the Danish West Indies, this position has been unfalteringly sustained. Bryant was among the first to oppose the annexation of Texas, denounced Walker’s filibusterers as “desperadoes” and “pirates,” and could not condemn too fiercely the Southern projects for acquiring Cuba in the fifties. When Seward purchased Alaska, he opposed that act; for, as he said, many Congressmen advocated it not because they felt they were getting anything of value, but because it was a blow at the prestige of Great Britain and a precaution against the growth of her Pacific power. The basis of the Evening Post’s scathing attacks on President Grant’s effort to annex Santo Domingo was its belief that the Anglo-Saxon rule of a Latin and negro people would be contrary to all traditions of the republic, and a complete evil for both countries.
The attitude of the paper toward conquest and military adventure was the same no matter what country was involved. Bryant could never see anything in the Crimean War but a useless and inexcusable sea of blood and misery. When the threat of the Franco-Prussian War first appeared, the Evening Post held that if the ambition of the French to dictate boundaries and sovereigns to Europe was to go on retarding civilization till it met an effectual check, now was the time to check it. Like every other American newspaper, the Post had been embittered against Napoleon III by his interference in Mexico and other acts of hostility toward the United States. The receipt of the news of Sedan was the signal for an impromptu celebration in the editorial rooms. Nevertheless, Bryant and his sub-editors warned Germany against annexation as a “barbarous custom,” saying that she should let Napoleon III be the last European ruler who aspired to govern by force an unwilling and subjugated people. They also warned her against militarism, which had been the curse of France. “It is for united Germany to say that this wrong shall no longer continue; and the way to say it is to disband, as soon as peace is won, those huge armies which have done such mighty deeds, and thus declare to the world that Germany, like America, means peace; and has no fear, because it intends no wrong.”
But if Bryant was always vigorous in denouncing armed aggression, Godkin was always savage. His hatred of national truculence colored his earliest public utterances. It inspired his indignant letters to the London Daily News upon the Trent Affair in 1861, when the tone of the British press and Foreign Office seemed to him needlessly offensive. The attitude he took in the Nation toward Dominican annexation and the designs of many Americans upon Cuba in the seventies was one of trenchant hostility. When he became editor of the Evening Post, not a year passed without fresh criticism of this spirit. His attacks upon British military adventures were as freely expressed. When Gordon was killed at Khartum, he wrote with the utmost bitterness of the whole Sudan tragedy—the British Jingo demand for destruction of the Mahdi, its collision with the really admirable spirit of Arab nationalism, the waste of hundreds of millions, the death of hundreds of brave Britons and thousands of brave Arabs. “There is a powerful passage in De Maistre, apropos of war,” he concluded, “describing the loathing and disgust which would be excited in the human breast by the spectacle of tens of thousands of cats meeting in a great plain, and scratching and biting each other till half their number were dead and mangled. To beings superior to man, conflicts like this in the Sudan must have much the same look of grotesque horror.”
By 1894 Mr. Godkin was convinced that the spirit of jingoism was growing more and more rampant the world over. The Continent was divided between the Dual and Triple Alliances. The desire to grab territory had infected even Italy. That country had emerged from the struggle for unification one of the poorest in Europe, with taxation at the last limit of endurance. She badly needed reforms in education, administration, and communication. Yet she hastened to establish an army of 600,000, and a navy of a dozen battleships, and to hunt up some African natives to subjugate like other nations. The result of her efforts to assume a protectorate over Abyssinia was a series of defeats, heavy loss in men, the overthrow of the Crispi Ministry, and reduction to the verge of bankruptcy. “It is no longer sufficient for a people to be happy, peaceful, industrious, well-educated, lightly taxed,” tauntingly wrote Godkin. “It must have somebody afraid of it. What does a nation amount to if nobody is afraid of it? Not a fico secco, as King Humbert would say.” England was clearly headed for war in South Africa. But what grieved Mr. Godkin most was the evident desire of many Americans, the Hearsts and Lodges leading them, to fight somebody. In February, 1896, he wrote upon this phenomenon under the title “National Insanity,” comparing it to the recurrent disposition of some men to get drunk in spite of reason.
After the Venezuela Affair, the eagerness of these jingoes for a war turned toward Spain as an object. The Cubans had renewed their revolt in February, 1895, and fought so well that by the end of the next year they controlled three-fourths of the inland country. The cruelty of the struggle shocked Americans, while our heavy Cuban investments and trade gave us a pecuniary interest in the island. When it was proposed in Congress that the Cubans be recognized as belligerents (March, 1896), Godkin regarded this as evidence that Cleveland’s Venezuela message had turned the thoughts of Congressmen toward baiting other nations. “He suggested to a body of idle, ignorant, lazy, and not very scrupulous men an exciting game, which involved no labor and promised lots of fun, and would be likely to furnish them with the means of annoying and embarrassing him.” Recognition was out of the question, for the Cubans had no capital, no government, and no army but guerrilla bands. These facts A. G. Sedgwick demonstrated in “A Cuban Catechism.” However, a number of incidents showed that American feeling was really growing. Princeton students that spring hanged the boy heir to the Spanish throne in effigy, miners in Leadville burnt a Spanish flag in the street, and Senator Morgan of Alabama tried in June to lash Congress into excitement over the American citizens who had been roughly treated by the Spanish authorities in Cuba.
At no time did the Evening Post conceal the fact that American interference might become necessary. Civil war in Cuba could not continue indefinitely; if the island were not pacified within a reasonable period, the United States would be justified in demanding a new policy on the part of Spain. Nor did it at any time conceal its indignation at Weyler’s inhumane policy of herding the Cuban peasantry into the Spanish lines, and at other Spanish mistakes. Late in 1897 Spain offered Cuba a form of autonomy, but on careful examination, the Post pronounced it a hollow cheat. The great essentials of government were kept in Spanish hands, and only a pretty plaything was extended. When Weyler was replaced by Blanco, who was sent out to pursue conciliation, the paper predicted that he would fail as generations before Alexander of Parma had failed when sent by Philip II to replace the bloody Alva in the low countries. No man, it said, could rule Cuba with a sword in one hand and an olive branch in the other. On Sept. 18, 1897, our Minister at Madrid tendered the friendly offices of the United States, and hinted that if the rebellion continued, President McKinley would take serious action. The Post spoke approvingly:
This, it is important to recall, is the historic American position, and is the only rational and justifiable way of dealing with an affair which, in any aspect, is deplorable and thick with embarrassments. No longer ago than President Cleveland’s message of Dec. 7, 1896, interference on the lines indicated was distinctly foreshadowed, and he was but taking his stand where President Grant had taken his in 1874 and 1875. With our foreign affairs then in the careful hands of Hamilton Fish, interference with Spain on the ground of the prolonged rebellion in Cuba was yet distinctly intimated. In his annual message of Dec. 7, 1874, Gen. Grant referred to the continuance of the “deplorable strife in Cuba,” then of six years’ duration, and said that “positive steps on the part of other Powers” might become “a matter of self-necessity.”
But the Evening Post believed such interference should be peaceful. As the year 1898 opened, it was confident that war could be avoided. It knew that the Cubans would keep on fighting, and that Spain, nearly bankrupt, her soldiers dispirited, could not suppress the rebellion. But it thought that patient, friendly pressure by the United States upon Spain would force her to recognize the facts and give the Cubans a government that would satisfy them. When in February the Journal published a letter by the Spanish Minister, Dupuy de Lome, calling McKinley a cheap politician and caterer to the rabble, Godkin credited most Americans with taking the incident good-naturedly—with finding De Lome’s mortification and immediate resignation a source of amusement rather than anger. A few days later (Feb. 15) the destruction of the Maine, with the loss of 226 lives, caused a wave of horror and indignation, unparalleled since Fort Sumter, to sweep the country. Even yet, however, the Post could point with gratification to the steadiness of the general public, and its willingness to suspend judgment till an inquiry was made. The attitude of both Capt. Sigsbee of the Maine and President McKinley it pronounced admirable, as it did that of many important newspapers:
The danger was that something rash would be done in the first confused moments. When once we began to think quietly about the affair, the rest was easy. It was at once evident that the chances were enormously in favor of the theory that the blowing up of the Maine was due to accident. But suppose it were shown that she was destroyed by foul play ... what would that prove? That we should instantly declare war against Spain? By no means. It is simply inconceivable that the Spanish authorities in Cuba, high or low, could have countenanced any plot to destroy the Maine. Make them out as wicked as you please, they are not lunatics....
The first effect, then, of this shocking calamity upon the nation has been salutary. It has discovered in us a reserve of sanity, of calmness, of poise, and weight, which is worth more than all our navy. If we are able to display these qualities throughout, the world will think better of us and our self-respect will be heightened; and, despite the Jingoes, it is better to have foreign nations admire us than dread us, better to be conscious of strength of character than of strength of muscle.
One exception to this steadiness of opinion was furnished by a large Congressional group. When early in March Congress debated resolutions declaring Cuba a belligerent, Mr. Godkin characterized the debate as one that Americans could not read without humiliation. Many Republican Congressmen frankly looked to war for partisan advantage. Representative Grosvenor of Ohio said that it would be a Republican war, and that it offered the most brilliant opportunity that any Administration had seen since Lincoln “to establish itself and its party in the praise and honor and glory of a mighty people.” Senator Hale echoed him. Senator Platt said there would be one great compensation for the loss of life and treasure—“it would prevent the Democratic party from going into the next Presidential campaign with ‘Free Cuba’ and ‘Free Silver’ emblazoned on its banner.” Until war was declared on April 25, the Post consistently praised President McKinley in one column, and assailed Congress in the next.