“4. That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island, except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people.”
This resolution was approved by the Executive on the next day, April 20. A copy was at once communicated to the Spanish Minister at this capital, who forthwith announced that his continuance in Washington had thereby become impossible, and asked for his passports, which were given him. He thereupon withdrew from Washington, leaving the protection of Spanish interests in the United States to the French Ambassador and the Austro-Hungarian Minister.
Simultaneously with its communication to the Spanish Minister, General Woodford, the American Minister at Madrid, was telegraphed confirmation of the text of the joint resolution, and directed to communicate it to the Government of Spain, with the formal demand that it at once relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba, and withdraw its forces therefrom, coupling this demand with announcements of the intentions of this government as to the future of the island, in conformity with the fourth clause of the resolution, and giving Spain until noon of April 23d to reply.
The demand, although, as above shown, officially made known to the Spanish Envoy here, was not delivered at Madrid. After the instruction reached General Woodford on the morning of April 21st, but before he could present it, the Spanish Minister of State notified him that upon the President’s approval of the joint resolution the Madrid Government, regarding the act as “equivalent to an evident declaration of war,” had ordered its Minister in Washington to withdraw, thereby breaking off diplomatic relations between the two countries, and ceasing all official communication between their respective representatives. General Woodford thereupon demanded his passports and quitted Madrid the same day.
FORMAL DECLARATION OF WAR.
Spain having thus denied the demand of the United States and initiated that complete form of rupture of relations which attends a state of war, the executive powers authorized by the resolution were at once used by me to meet the enlarged contingency of actual war between Spain and the United States.
On April 22d I proclaimed a blockade of the northern coast of Cuba, including ports on said coast between Cardenas and Bahia Honda, and the port of Cienfuegos on the south coast of Cuba, and on the 23d I called for volunteers to execute the purpose of the resolution.
By my message of April 25th the Congress was informed of the situation, and I recommended formal declaration of the existence of a state of war between the United States and Spain. The Congress accordingly voted on the same day the act approved April 25, 1898, declaring the existence of such war, from and including the 21st day of April, and re-enacted the provisions of the resolution of April 20th, directing the President to use all the armed forces of the nation to carry that act into effect.
Due notification of the existence of war as aforesaid was given April 25th by telegraph to all the governments with which the United States maintain relations, in order that their neutrality might be assured during the war.
The various governments responded with proclamations of neutrality, each after its own methods. It is not among the least gratifying incidents of the struggle that the obligations of neutrality were impartially discharged by all, often under delicate and difficult circumstances.