“I order and command:
First—All the inhabitants of the country now outside of the line of fortifications of the towns shall within the period of eight days concentrate themselves in the towns so occupied by the troops. Any individual who after the expiration of this period is found in the uninhabited parts will be considered a rebel and tried as such.”
At the time when the order was issued there was living within the western province a population of four hundred thousand men, women and children. The result of the order was to sweep them from their homes and fields and confine them in open-air prisons. No food whatever was supplied to them. As a result more than half of them died.
The indignation aroused became widespread. Weyler was recalled. At the time, especially in Havana among the officials who had been his adherents and who resented his recall, there was an expressed hatred of the United States. That hatred it is generally understood resulted, on the night of February 15, 1898, in the blowing up of the “Maine.”
The dispatch of this vessel to Cuban waters was a friendly act arranged by our government and that of Spain as one of a series of visits to be paid by the ironclads of the two countries to each other’s harbors. While the “Viscaya” was en route for New York the “Maine” went to Havana. The harbor there was subsequently shown to have been sown with explosives.
The findings of the Court of Inquiry, which was then held, as embodied in the report of the Foreign Relations Committee, set forth that the destruction of the “Maine” was either compassed by the official act of the Spanish authorities, or was made possible by negligence on their part so willful and gross as to be equivalent to criminal culpability.
The line of argument is as follows: It is established that the “Maine” was destroyed by the explosion of a submarine mine in position under her in a Spanish harbor, at a place where she had been moored to a buoy by the express direction and guidance of the Spanish authorities.
The report of the Spanish board of inquiry, which reported, after the most inadequate examination, that the explosion was due to the fault of the officers of the “Maine,” and took place within the vessel itself, was declared to be manifestly false, and calculated to induce public opinion to prejudge the question. Taking this together with the fact of the duplicity, treachery, and cruelty of the Spanish character, the Senate concluded that the Spanish authorities must be held responsible for the crime, either as its direct authors or as contributors thereto by willful and gross negligence.
Spain offered to refer the question as to the cause of the loss of the “Maine” and their responsibility for the catastrophe to arbitration. The President made no reply.
On April 11, anterior circumstances already sufficiently recited, joined to the findings of the American Commissioners, resulted in the President sending a message to Congress, in which he said: