Our War with Spain for Cuba's Freedom

by Trumbull White

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 began, in February, 1895, this country has seen 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 number 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 oppressed 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 waters and watch our own seaports in prevention of any unlawful act in aid of the Cubans.

LOSS OF AMERICAN TRADE.

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 seriously 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 stand in the way of that close devotion to domestic advancement that becomes's 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 of 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 despatch 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 by the Captain-General's bando of October, 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 moving 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, reconcentration—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.

TERRIBLE INCREASE IN THE DEATH RATE.

Month by month the death rate increased in an alarming ratio. By March, 1897, according to conservative estimate from official Spanish sources, the mortality among the reconcentrados, from starvation and the diseases thereto incident, exceeded 50 per centum 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.

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.