Insignificant as was the war with Spain in comparison with the great struggle of 1861–65, it is assuredly of historical consequence that the battles of Santiago de Cuba destroyed the last vestiges of a Spanish rule in the Western Hemisphere which had lasted nearly four hundred years. Out of this came freedom at last for Cuba, and its grave responsibilities. Earlier in the same year Dewey’s guns drove the Spanish flag from the Pacific, and gave us a not wholly welcome partnership in the vexed questions of the Orient.
Fortunately, our Temple of Janus is closed—let us trust, never to be reopened. But there are momentous lessons of patriotism and self-sacrifice to be read in these accounts of deeds which have preserved our country and helped to make it great. The eminent historians whose works have furnished these chapters have been moved by no desire to glorify war in itself—rather the reverse; but they have dealt with phases of history so vital and of such supreme interest that this story of these events will help general readers, old and young, to an ampler knowledge of our history.
DECISIVE BATTLES OF AMERICA
I
TERRITORIAL CONCEPTS
European Contests Affecting America, and a Summary of American Expansion
The settlers’ task of conquering the wilderness might have been simpler had they not spent so much energy in conquering one another; for side by side with the advance of the frontier goes a process of territorial rivalry of which the end is not yet. Along with a contest with the aborigines for the face of the country went a nominal subdivision of the continent among the occupying European powers, a process made more difficult by the slow development of knowledge about the interior: as late as 1660 people thought that the upper Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of California.
At the very beginning came an effort to settle the prime problem of European title by religious authority. Three papal bulls of 1493 attempted to draw a meridian through the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, west of which Spain should have the whole occupancy of newly discovered lands, and, east of it, Portugal.[1]
Spain was first to see the New World, first to coast the continents, first to explore the interior, first to conquer tribes of the natives, and first to set up organized colonies. Except in Brazil, which was east of the demarcation line, for a century after discovery Spain was the only American power. A war for the mastery of North America between the Anglo-Saxon and the Spaniard continued for more than two centuries. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English, in 1588, it became possible to break in upon the monopoly of American territory; as soon as the war with Spain was over, England gave the first charter, which resulted in the founding of a lasting English colony in America—the Virginia grant of 1606.
The claim of Spain would have been more effective had it not included the whole continent of North America, hardly an eighth of which was occupied by Spanish colonies. International law as to the occupation of new countries was in a formative state: everybody admitted that you might seize the territory of pagans, but how did you know when you had seized it? Was the state of which an accredited vessel first followed a coast thereby possessed of all the back country draining into that coast? Did actual exploration of the interior create presumptive title to the surrounding region? Was a trading-post proof that occupation was meant to be permanent? Did actual colonies of settlers, who expected to spend their lives there, make a complete evidence of rightful title?