Our minister was also authorized to state that if Spain insisted, our Government might guarantee the payment of the indemnity by Cuba. His attention was called particularly to the expression used in the instructions "the civil war now ravaging the island."

While this expression is not designed to grant any public recognition of belligerent rights to the insurgents, it is nevertheless used advisedly and in recognition of a state and condition of the contest which may not justify a much longer withholding of the concession to the revolutionary party of the recognized rights of belligerents. Should the expression, therefore, be commented upon you will admit what is above stated with reference to it, and may add, in case of a protracted discussion, or the prospect of a refusal by Spain to accept the proposed offer of the United States, that an early recognition of belligerent rights is the logical deduction from the present proposal, and will probably be deemed a necessity on the part of the United States unless the condition of the parties to the contest shall have changed very materially. Negotiations were at once entered upon by our minister with the Spanish Government and the proposition of the United States was submitted to General Prim, the president of the council of state, who was then at the head of Spanish affairs and practically dictator in Spain. Prim asked how much Cuba would give and it was suggested that $125,000,000 might be arranged. Prim intimated that autonomy to Cuba would be conceded as soon as hostilities ceased, but that Spain could not entertain the question of the independence of Cuba as long as the Cubans were in arms against the Government. He also declined to consider the Cubans as parties to be consulted in the negotiation. He was willing to assure Cuban independence, if, after laying down their arms, the Cubans should vote for a separation, although he would not insist upon the necessity of such a vote. That for his part, if he alone were consulted, he would say to the Cubans "go, if you will; make good the treasure you have cost us, and let us bring home our army in peace, and consolidate the liberties and resources of Spain." He added that he had no doubt that whatever might be the result of the conflict Cuba would eventually be free; that he recognized without hesitation the manifest course of events on the American continent, and the inevitable termination of all colonial relations in their autonomy as soon as they were prepared for independence; but he repeated that no consid eration would reconcile Spain to such a concession until hostilities ceased. His language was:

I do not flatter myself that Spain will retain possession of the island. I consider that the period of colonial autonomy has virtually arrived. However the present contest may end, whether in the suppression of the insurrection, or in the better way of an amicable arrangement through the assistance of the United States, it is equally clear to me that the time has come for Cuba to govern herself; and if we succeed in putting down the insurrection to-morrow, I shall regard the subject in the same light, that the child has attained its majority and should be allowed to direct its own affairs. We want nothing more than to get out of Cuba, but it must be done in a dignified and honorable manner.

Our Government saw the futility of accepting the conditions suggested by Spain. They recognized that nothing could be effected by a plebiscite and that the Cubans could not be induced to lay down their arms and trust the Spaniards to carry out their promises. Moreover, while the negotiations were in progress the public became informed of them. Immediately a great excitement arose, communicated by the press, which disinclined the Spanish administration to pursue the mat. ter, and our Government, finding itself unable to effect any good purpose, withdrew its offer of mediation.

Mr. Sickles wrote Mr. Fish that Spain deprecated the expression of the sympathy of the Government and people of the United States for the cause of the revolutionists, as well as the President's declaration of the right of the Government of the United States to determine when it may rightfully proclaim its neutrality in the conflict between a

S. Doc. 231, pt. 7-2

colony struggling for independence and the parent state. It is remarkable, was the comment of Mr. Sickles, that in all these discussions the fact is overlooked that Spain conceded the rights of belligerents to the Confederates without waiting for the outbreak of hostilities

The Queen's proclamation of June, 1861, is forgotten; and the large and profitable commerce carried on between Havana and the blockaded ports of the South in enemies' ships, which changed their flags in Cuban waters is quite ignored.

On the failure of negotiations, the logical result of our action was to recognize the Cubans as belligerents engaged in a "civil war." was said by Secretary Fish, the mere offer on our part to mediate as between the contending forces was in itself a concession of belligerency and a recognition of that condition. But for various reasons this argument was not pressed by our Government. Although from month to month the aggressiveness of the revolutionists increased and their power extended, our Government, speaking through the State Department and the President, continued to inform the country that the Cubans had not reached such a condition as entitled them to be recognized as belligerents, although the administration had already in instructions to our own minister to Spain recognized that condition at a time when the revolution had hardly attained any headway.

One of the reasons for this inconsistency was the expectation felt by our Government that Spain would voluntarily concede to the Cubans much that they were struggling for. Liberal ministries succeded one another in Spain, each of which was more liberal than its predecessor in promises of reform and recognition of the rights of the Cubans. Civil war broke out in Spain, and its Government became involved in such difficulties that ours was loath to press the subject of Cuba, or to insist upon a speedy solution of the question. Mr. Fish was irritated by the operations of the Cuban junta in this country, which at times infringed our neutrality laws. He thought they should have confined their activity to sending to the insurgents arms and munitions of war, which he says they might have done "consistently with our own statutes and with the law of nations." At home the Federal Administration had to deal with the pressing question of the reconstruction of the South. The negro problem in this country was of such importance that the Administration had no desire to add difficulties by undertaking to settle the negro question in Cuba.

The action of our Government was in striking contrast to that of Spain in recognizing the Confederates as belligerents. Mr. Fish refers to this in a letter to Senor Roberts, the Spanish minister, in 1869:

The civil war in Cuba has continued for a year; battle after battle has been fought; thousands of lives have been sacrificed, and the result is still in suspense. But the United States have hitherto resisted the considerations which in 1861 controlled the action of Spain and determined her to act upon the occurrence of a single bloodless conflict of arms and within sixty days from its date.

Six years later, in 1875, this Government was again on the point of intervening. In a dispatch from Mr. Fish, Secretary of State, to Mr. Cushing, then minister to Spain, the Secretary said that the condition of Cuba was the one great cause of perpetual solicitude in the foreign relations of the United States. He informed the minister that the President did not meditate the annexation of Cuba to the United States but its elevation as an independent republic

The desire of independence [the Secretary says] on the part of the Cubans is a natural and legitimate aspiration of theirs, because they are Americans. That the ultimate issue of events in Cuba will be its independence, however that issue may be produced, whether by means of negotiation, or as the result of military operations, or of one of those unexpected incidents which so frequently determine the fate of

nations, it is impossible to doubt. If there be one lesson in history more cogent in its teachings than any other, it is that no part of America large enough to constitute a self-sustaining state, can be permanently held in forced colonial subjection to Europe. Complete separation between the metropolis and its colony may be postponed by the former conceding to the latter a greater or less degree of local autonomy, nearly approaching to independence. But in all cases where a positive antagonism has come to exist between the mother country and its colonial subjects, where the sense of oppression is strongly felt by the latter, and especially where years of relentless warfare have alienated the parties one froin another more widely than they are sundered by the ocean itself, their political separation is inevitable. It is one of those conclusions which have been aptly called the inexorable logic of events.

Thus we have shown that already, in 1869, when the revolution of the preceding year had attained but inconsiderable proportions, Presi- . dent Grant expressed his firm conviction that the ultimate result of the struggle for independence would be to break the bonds which attached Cuba as a colony to Spain. President Grant announced the determination of our Government to intervene if the struggle in Cuba was not speedily terminated. It was pointed out that while the Spanish authorities insisted that a state of war did not exist in Cuba, and that no rights as belligerents should be accorded to the revolutionists, they at the same time demanded for themselves all the rights and privileges which flowed from actual and acknowledged war. That Cuba exhibited a chronic condition of turbulence and rebellion was due to the system pursued by Spain and the want of harmony between the inhabitants of the island and the governing class. That should it become necessary for this Government to intervene it would be moved by the necessity for a proper regard to its own protection and its own interests and the interests of humanity.

The inhuman manner in which the war was waged, and the shocking executions of natives and citizens of this country made an impression of horror on the world.

The nicest sense of international requirements can not fail to perceive that provocation from Spain was overlooked by our Government for a longer period and with greater patience than any other Government of equal power would have tolerated. A writer in the London Times, in 1875, reflecting upon the possibility of Spain's overcoming the then insurrection, and on the prospect of our interference, said:

Were Cuba as near to Cornwall as it is to Florida we should certainly look more sharply to matters of fact than to the niceties of international law. But everything, we repeat, depends upon these matters of fact. If Spain can suppress the insurrection and prevent Cuba from becoming a permanent source of mischief to neighboring countries, she has the fullest right to keep it. But she is on her trial, and that trial can not be long. When she is made to clearly understand that the tenure of her rule over Cuba depends upon her ability to make that rule a reality, she will not be slow to show what she can do, and the limits of her power will be the limits of her right.

In 1869 Gen. Martinez Campos, the greatest soldier Spain possessed, was sent to Cuba to make a final effort to bring hostilities there to a termination. He was not only a great soldier but was believed to be a great administrator, and had the respect of all parties on account of his patriotism and integrity. He was afforded all the aid in the way of men and money which Spain could furnish. In 1878 he succeeded in the so-called pacification, for which service he was raised to the highest pinnacle in Spain and made prime minister. He did not conquer the insurgents but induced them to lay down their arms on conditions of peace which, as the Spanish administrator, he undertook for his Government should be faithfully carried out. A treaty of peace was negotiated with the leaders of the revolution. In 1879 General Campos wrote a long dispatch to his Government from the seat of his triumph, which at this day is extremely interesting, owing to the fact that the

present war owes its origin to the same circumstances as caused the former outbreak. In this dispatch, stating the particulars of the paci fication, General Campos gave an extended review of the situation in Cuba, and of the terms of the treaty of peace and the negotiations which led thereto. This recital shows that General Campos believed, as was afterwards said by our minister, James Russell Lowell, that the reforms he stipulated were necessary if Cuba was to be retained as a dependency of Spain, and, Mr. Lowell remarked, all intelligent Spaniards admitted that the country could not afford another war. As a reason for according conditions to the Cubans General Campos sketched the motives of his policy:

Since the year 1869, when I landed on this island with the first reinforcements, I was preoccupied with the idea that the insurrection here, though acknowledging as its cause the hatred of Spain, yet this hatred was due to the causes that have separated our colonies from the mother country, augmented in the present case by the promises made to the Antillas at different times (1812, 1837, and 1845), promises which not only have not been fulfilled, but, as I understand, have not been permitted to be so by the Cortes when at different times their execution had been begun. While the island had no great development, its aspirations were confined by love of nationality and respect for authority; but when one day after another passed without hopes being satisfied, but, on the contrary, the greater freedom permitted now and then by a governor was more than canceled by his successor; when they were convinced that the colony went on in the same way; when bad officials and a worse administration of justice more and more aggravated difficulties; when the provincial governorships, continually growing worse, fell at last into the hands of men without training or education, petty tyrants who could practice their thefts and sometimes their oppressions, because of the distance at which they resided from the supreme authority, public opinion, until then restrained, began vehemently to desire those liberties which, if they bring much good, contain also some evil. The 10th of October, 1868, came to open men's eyes; the eruption of the volcano in which so many passions, so many hatreds, just and unjust, had been heaped up was terrible, and almost at the outset the independence of Cuba was proclaimed.

He showed the gains speedily made by the insurgents and the advantages they had by reason of the familiarity with the country, so that "they defeated large columns with hardly a battalion of men. They almost put us on the defensive, and as we had to guard an immense property the mission of the army became very difficult." He recounted his efforts to reestablish the principle of authority, but said that he had against him a "public spirit without life. Nobody had higher aspirations than to save his crop of sugar. In official regions the enemy was thought inferior, but the commanders generally believed it unsafe to operate with less than three battalions; there was no venturing beyond the highways." He said little was gained by beating the enemy. What he needed was to exterminate them and that he could not do. That had his responsibility been free of the Cortes and the Government he would in the beginning have ventured everything to secure peace-the disembargo of estates, a general pardon, the assimilation of Cuba with Spain, orders to treat prisoners well, and to show that this was not weakness but strength there was "the argument of his one hundred thousand bayonets." He finally related the terms by which he induced the Cubans to lay down their arms. All desired reforms were promised. Municipal law, the law of provincial assemblies, and representation in the Cortes should be established; the jurisdiction of the courts defined, tax laws settled, the form of contribution and assessments determined, schools established, the people to be consulted through their representative as to all these reforms and others, and they were not to be left to the will of the captain-general or the head of a department. This summary is sufficient to indicate what was stipulated between the parties. Said General Campos:

I do not wish to make a momentary peace; I desire that this peace be the beginning of a bond of common interest between Spain and her Cuban provinces, and

that this bond be drawn closer by the identity of aspirations and the good faith of both. Let not the Cubans be considered as pariahs or children, but put on an equality with other Spaniards in everything not inconsistent with their present condition. Perhaps [he concluded] the insurgents would have accepted promises less liberal and more vague than those set forth in this condition; but even had this been done, it would have been but a brief postponement, because those liberties are destined to come for the reasons already given, with the difference that Spain now shows herself magnanimous, satisfying just aspirations which she might deny, and a little later, probably very soon, would have been obliged to grant them, compelled by the force of ideas and of the age. Moreover, she has promised over and over again to enter on the path of assimilation, and if the promise were more vague, even though the fulfillment of this promise were begun, these people would have a right to doubt our good faith, and to show a distrust unfortunately warranted by the failings of human nature itself. The not adding another one hundred thousand to the one hundred thousand families that mourn their sons slain in this pitiless war, and the cry of peace that will resound in the hearts of the eighty thousand mothers who have sons in Cuba or liable to conscription, would be a full equivalent for the payment of a debt of justice.

This debt of justice has not yet been paid.

The highest Spanish authorities have been obliged to confess that the grievances of the Cubans are just and their aspirations for liberty legitimate.

Marshal Serrano, in his official report to the Spanish Government of the 10th of May, 1867, said:

We are forced to acknowledge that in the last years the treasury of Cuba has been used abusively, which is partly the cause of the crisis the islands go through now and of the exhaustion of its resources.

Castelar, in 1873, while president, endeavored to convince Spain of the necessity of making reforms demanded alike by "humanity and civilization," and he deplored making Cuba a "transatlantic Poland." In 1874 our minister to Spain informed our Government that the entire unwillingness of Spain to do anything toward the amelioration of Cuba was shown by the fact that all the governments since the breaking out of the revolution in 1868 had promised to reform the administration, but that the situation of the island was worse than ever. And Secretary Fish informed the Spanish Government that most of the evils of which Cuba was the scene were the necessary results of harsh treatment and of the maladministration of the colonial government.

In 1875 Mr. Cushing, then minister to Madrid, communicated to our Government a large amount of evidence from Spanish sources showing the demoralization existing in the administration in Cuba. The Spanish journals of that date openly informed the central government that war in Cuba could never be ended until the vices of the ultra-marine administration were corrected and its moral tone raised. Spain was exhorted to make one supreme effort for the pacification of Cuba and its moralization. "The journals of all shades of opinion speak of the official corruption," said Mr. Cushing, "and peculations of the public employees in Cuba as a feature of the situation not less calamitous than the insurrection." He remarked that the burden of taxation had become intolerable, aggravated as it was by the frauds and wastes committed by almost everybody connected with the collection or expenditure of the public moneys; that the abuses of administration, of which so much was being said at that time, were old, chronic, deep-rooted, and impossible of eradication under the colonial régime. "It would seem that each of the ephemeral parties on attaining power, with a crowd of eager partisans behind it like troops of howling wolves, shakes off as many as it can upon Cuba."

Notwithstanding that the public press did not cease to advise the Government that the immorality of the public administration of the