July—Agitation of the Dreyfus case in France followed by anti-Semitic riots.
July 26—Spanish government, through French Ambassador Cambon, asked for terms of peace.
July 30—Prince Otto Leopold von Bismarck died at Friedrichsruh. He had been chancellor of the German Empire and for thirty years was the greatest figure in European politics. He was born in 1815.
August 12—Peace protocol signed and armistice proclaimed. Cuban blockade raised.
September 18—Miss Winnie Davis, daughter of Jefferson Davis and known as the “Daughter of the Confederacy,” died at Narragansett Pier, R. I. She was born in Richmond, Va., in 1864. Her efforts to cement the union between the North and the South in recent years received high praise.
October 17—University of Chicago conferred the degree of LL. D. on President McKinley.
October 18—United States takes formal possession of Porto Rico.
December 10—Peace treaty signed at Paris.
The year 1899 witnessed the closing acts of the Spanish war proper, but in the meantime the troops left in the Philippine Islands came in conflict with Aguinaldo’s forces, and the friction soon lead to the Filipino outbreak. Hostilities were opened February 4, when the American lines just without Manila were attacked by 20,000 insurgents. The attack was repulsed with great loss, and the American troops under General Otis then took the aggressive. Several fierce engagements resulted, in which the Americans were invariably victorious.
In Europe the Dreyfus trial attracted great attention during July and August. Later the South African trouble came up and overshadowed all other subjects. The war was the final outcome of the Jameson raid of 1895, by which a party of Englishmen hoped to overthrow the Transvaal Republic under President Kruger, and establish a province under the protection of England.