A Short History of the War with Spain

Chapter I

A Medallion of Spanish History — Relations with the United States between 1795 and 1895 — The Cuban Problem — Antonio Maceo — Policy of Campos, Weyler, and Blanco — The de Lome Letter. 1-35

Chapter II

Destruction of the " Maine " — Provision for the National Defence — Senator Proctor s Statement — Conditions in Cuba — Scenes in Cuba — Irresistible Appeal — Compromise Impossible — The "Maine" Inquiry Report — Cause of the Explosion — Mr. McKinley's Comments ..... 36-58

Chapter III

The Crisis — The President's Message — Recognition of Independence — Different Views of Americanism ........ 59-84.

Chapter IV

Speech from the Throne by the Queen Regent — The Two Capitals — The Call for Volunteers — Formal Declaration of War — Proclamation of Contents IV Pages 10 1 Neutrality— Sailing of the Cape Verde Squadron — Secret Missions to Cuba and Porto Rico . 85-

Chapter V

The Battle of Manila— A ugustin's Proclamation — First Accounts, and Absurd Exaggerations — Dewey's Story — The A merican Ships — Final Prep arations for Battle — Entering the Bay — Montojo 's Squadron — Riot and Disorder in Spain — Lord Salisbury s Address . . . _ . 102-120

Chapter VI

The Interest of the Period — Engagements at Cardenas and Cienfuegos — Bombardment of San Juan — Resignation of the Spanish Ministry — Mustering of Volunteers — New Call for Volunteers — Admiral Cervera at Santiago — Commodore Schley at Santiago ..... 121-136

Chapter VII

The Santiago Campaign — The Town — Duels of Fortress and War ship — Sinking the " Merri mac " — Counting Cervera ' s Ships — The Marines at Guantanamo — Sailing of the First Military Ex pedition to Santiago — Shafter s Forces — Arrival of the Army — Conference at Aserraderos — Cuban Leaders — Landing — Las Guasimas — The Red Cross — The Fighting at Caney and San Juan — Human Artillery — Our Friends, the Enemy — In spector-General's Comments — Suggestion of Re treat — The 71st New York under Fire — Where Contents V Pages -228 ■244 ■256 Credit is Due — General Wheeler's Account — Gen eral Shafter ' s Statement — Correspondence with General Toral — Situation on July 3d — Destruction of Cervera ' s Fleet — Admiral Sampson ' s Report — The Cruisers Beached — Plan of Blockade — ■ The "Oregon" and "Brooklyn" — As Seen from the "Brooklyn" — The Honours — Through Spanish Eyes — A board the " Teresa ' ' — Reinforcements and Refugees — A "Musical" Bombardment — The Garrison s Plight — Miles with Shafter — Terms of Surrender — Surrender . . . . 137

Chapter VIII

Other Events in the Progress of the War, between May 25th and July 17th — At Manila, Madrid, and Washington — The Capture of Guam — Westward and Eastward to Manila — The Subig Bay Affair 229

Chapter IX

Military Occupation of Santiago — Garcia 's Re sentment — Repatriation of Spanish and A mcrican Soldiers — The Philippine Dictator — The Army's Movements — Preparations for the Expeditions to Porto Rico — Landing at Puerto de Guanica, Porto Rico — Beginning of Negotiations for Peace . 24.5-

Chapter X

The Porto Rico Campaign — A Literary Oppor tunity — Amiable Capitulation — The Army at Ponce — Plan of Campaign — Appeal of Officers at Santiago — One Army to Montauk Point, the other Contents VI Pages to Galicia — General Merritt at Manila — Terms of Peace Suggested — The Protocol Signed — Orders to Suspend Hostilities — Last Fighting in the Antilles — The Fall of Manila .... 257-290 Comments on the Results of the War, National Expansion, etc. ..... 293-297 Synopsis of Events Subsequent to August 13th, 298-306 Why the " Merrimac " did not Close the Channel, 307, 308 Canovas ....... 309—315 The Hawaiian Islands ..... 316-322 Garcia's View of the Santiago Campaign . 323-331 Index 333-355 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WAR WITH SPAIN

Chapter I Introductory

A Medallion of Spanish History — Relations with the United States— The Cuban Problem I THE period in Spanish history that we realise most easily and most vividly illustrates the period that we may never have realised at all — the dim, the remote part of it, the dawn of it, the beginning of the whole story. We know very well what Spaniards of the sixteenth century thought of the Western Hemisphere : their land of mystery, enchantment, adventure, and, above all, their source of the precious metals. Well, three thousand years earlier, the nations inhabiting the eastern shores ot the Mediterranean entertained similar views in regard to Spain. It was the land of brightest colours and the most ardent land : the sun went down into it. A mortal man might visit the infernal regions, or be lifted to the gods, but no one could go farther westward than Tartessus, or Tarshish : even Hercules, when he had reached that "world's end," raised his mighty pillars to mark an ultimate achievement : and the adventurous Phœnicians who gave the name Tartessus to the region about the mouth of the Guadalquivir, found the natives so rich in silver that their pots could not call their kettles black — both being made ol the white metal ; and the Phœnicians got what treasure was in sight by giving coloured rags and beads in exchange ; and next they set the Spaniards of that day to work for them in dangerous mines, driving them to it and growing rich enough to be classed among millionaires at the time of the Trojan War.

The details are lacking. The point is that Spain was Mexico and Peru and Florida and Cuba to the Phœnicians; it knew of these things subjectively about three thousand years before it made the experience conspicuously objective. Instead of using the term " Iberian," or " Celtiberian, " it is simpler and better to call this people ' ' Spanish ' ' from the first, and thus to emphasise the fact that from the first until our own day the strain has held its own — -not by avoiding intermixture, but by an unexampled power of assimilation, itself persisting, unimpaired, through each new fusion. You may conquer Spaniards, but the only way to get rid of their influence would be to kill the last man and woman of them. They know this themselves : look at their policy in Cuba.1 1 We must bear in mind this persistent quality when reading such comment as the following, published in an evening paper of August 10, 1898 : "A writer in the Fortnightly, who signs himself ' A Spaniard,' and who evidently knows his country well, draws a gloomy picture of what will happen after peace.

The burden of taxation will be frightful. The public debt, swollen by the expenses of the war A thousand inglorious years ! Spain ceased to be a land of separate savage tribes, an easy prey to the first comer, only to become a province. The rich mines in its mountains and a certain warlike quality in its people tempted Hamilcar Barca to cross the Straits of Gibraltar in 237 B.C. Spain, he thought, might be made to furnish the men and the money for Carthaginian campaigns against Rome. Then for a score of years both Rome and Carthage clearly realised that possession by either of the peninsula of the setting sun would determine their contest for supremacy in the known world ; and the elder Afri canus brought it to pass that Spanish civilisation should be derived from Italy, rather than from the southern coasts of the Mediterranean, when he captured New Car thage, in 210 b.c. Yet almost two hundred years passed before the inevit able subjugation was completed — before the "hitherto unconquerable Cantabrian ' ' was Italicised, and the lanwill foot up more than $2, 000,000,000, the annual interest charge on which will amount to $140,000,000.

Yet the entire national revenue in prosperous years has not been much more than $150, 000,000. Repudiation or bankruptcy lies clearly in those figures. Then there will follow the destruction of those industries which the colonies have been made to support, turning thousands of operatives out of employment. More than 100,000 soldiers will likewise be set adrift, and 30,000 officers put on the retired list, where the pay for a captain (if he is lucky enough to get it at all) is about 60 cents a day. When all these helpless multitudes begin to feel the pinch of hunger, then, says this Spanish writer, the 'tocsin of the revolution ' will sound, and it will depend upon the army whether Spain shall be Carlist or Republican. In any case, he thinks it out of the power of any party ' to extricate my unfor tunate, much-beloved Spain from the abyss on the edge of which she is now tottering.' 'Spain makes her melancholy bow to the vast continent which her enterprise once opened up to the world, and exclaims : Moritura te saluto.' " guage, dress, architecture, and manners of Spain were all brought into faithful correspondence with the prevailing fashion of that day.

But at last it was seen that the very difficulty of the task had made the work the more thorough : Spain was more completely Romanised than any other province so far away from the metropolis, and at least one of its cities, counting more than a million polite inhabitants, was itself fairly metropolitan. And the literary genius of the people took this earliest opportunity to flower. Seneca, Martial, Eucan, Quintilian, and other great writers of the Silver Age, were Spaniards. II A Roman general was required to have a certain quality termed feliritas — a happy knack of winning battles, con quering provinces, extending and securing the Empire. Having that quality, he was the man for the Roman people ; without it, he might be a very excellent person — for any other nation that might care to give him em ployment.

A Spanish general named Trajan (about 53 117 a.d.) proved that he had felicitas : the Romans made him their Emperor. Now this Spanish Emperor of Rome is the man whose name is especially associated with the extension of the limes Germaniœ — the great ' ' trocha ' ' of the first century, — a barrier devised to restrain hostile tribes beyond the northern limits of the Empire, and to prevent their incur sions. With embankment, ditch, here and there a fortifi cation, a system of roads to aid in massing troops rapidly at any threatened point, the limes in Germany was the prototype of the eastern and western trochas in Cuba to day ; and Captain-General Weyler's plan was Trajan's. It was a very good plan in its day. Barriers, campaigns, concessions, postponed the inevitable. The barbarous Germans were held — not in order, but more or less in place — for three hundred years ; and the fact that con cerns us at present is, that during all this time a Roman peace was maintained in Spain, which prospered so ad mirably that it was then a finer land, and perhaps more populous, than it has ever been since.

But the last year of the long peace, the last year of wise government that the Peninsula has known, was the year 408. In 409, while Rome was being sacked by one German tribe, three other German tribes ravaged Spain : Vandals, Suevians, Alan ians in Spain ; West Goths in Italy. Five or six years later a West-Gothic host in Spain also ; and then a fine struggle among the four for the possession of delectable towns, treasures, women. The outcome is expressed in the proudest single Span ish word — hidalgo (that is, higo del Goda, or " son of the Goth"). The Goths prevailed, and descent from them became a patent of nobility. So then a Gothic (or, more strictly, a West-Gothic, or Visigothic) kingdom having been established in 418, en dured until it was overthrown by the Saracens, in 711 ; and in the course of these three centuries a new force in vaded the land, coming in the guise of a gentle religion, but establishing itself in the homes, in the fears, in the secrets of the people ; and then revealing itself as the most potent conqueror and constrainer — oh, far and away the mightiest force in the national life from that day to this, except only the national instincts to which I have referred.

First in importance, the persistent strain, that we may call Hispaniolism ; next in importance, Catholicism ; all other foreign influences comparatively nada. The contest for supremacy between Hispaniolism and Catholicism has by its fluctuations determined the history of Spain down to The War with Spain the present time, and I think that the future weal or woe of Spain will be not otherwise determined. Now, Catholicism entered in the latter part of the sixth century, when Recared was king. Both king and people were tainted with the heresy called Arianism, and when Recared was converted to the Roman form of belief it seemed to him that he had been miraculously cured of a mortal disease from which his subjects still suffered. Fumigation for the pestilent heresy ! and Arian books went up in smoke ; hospitals for the cure of souls ! and churches and monasteries were established ; expel the seeds of the disease — the germs of fatal unbelief ! and so came persecution of all who would not be cleansed by baptism ; no wholesome company but in the society of the Church, no safety elsewhere, no fashion or influence, no knowledge or preferment or licence elsewhere.

In one word, a second Romanising ; but Rome had changed. Ill Thus during seven centuries Spain had leaned upon Rome : through the four hundred peaceful years of its provincial life, and the three hundred years just characterised, of social and spiritual dependence. So when Tarik, with his five thousand brown athletic Saracens, came to raid the land, in the year 7 1 1 , he found a people that could not stand alone. He and his fellows (for the incalculable force of the new, still crescent, Mohammedanism was be hind him) remained to conquer almost as they pleased. A host under Roderick, ' ' last of the Goths, ' ' fell before them near Jerez ; they were presently masters of the en tire Peninsula, except the northern mountains ; and then for a score of years they tried to make equal gains beyond the Pyrenees.

It has been customary for historians to say, in regard to this period (about 715-732), that France, and with France the whole of western Europe, was threatened with sub jection to the successors of Mohammed ; but that view is not warranted by the facts. The easy conquest of Spain did not prove the Moors to be invincible ; it proved the Spaniards to be at that time wholly unprepared for resistance. In France, the monarchy was powerless enough, but among the great nobles were natural leaders, trained soldiers, of matchless vigour. That was the generation which begot the heroic personages of French history, or their sires — Charlemagne and his Paladins. Charles ' ' the Hammer," who smote the Moors in 732, was Charle magne's grandfather. Moorish defeat in France, Moorish victory in Spain, were equally inevitable.

It took the Spaniards more than seven centuries to re cover, first their lost valour, next their lost country. Withdrawn to the southern side of the great wall of mountains, soon after the middle of the century, the Spanish Moors by almost imperceptible degrees put off their restless desire of war and conquest. The arduous, strenuous period in their development gradually passed. For the Spaniards — or rather for the scattered bands oi refugees in the mountains — the arduous and strenuous period began. The kingdom of Oviedo was firmly established by an Alfonso called ' ' the Chaste ' ' who reigned until 842. Now Oviedo lay very near to the shores of the Bay of Biscay — that is to say, it was as remote as it well might be ; but presently we find a new capital, Leon, about fifty miles farther towards the south, and a kingdom of Eeon taking its name from the capital city ; and at the same time (we have now reached the early years of the tenth century) another new Christian kingdom called Navarre, founded by Sancho in the western Pyrenees.

The War with Spain The country lying between Leon and Navarre, and ex tending southward to the centre of the Peninsula, received the name Castile because so many castles had been built in it as a means of recovering the territory bit by bit from the Moslems. Another Sancho, called "the Great" (970-1035), secured the north-eastern portion of Castile by marriage and intrigue, conquered eastern Eeon, and an nexed Aragon, Sobrarbe, and Ribagorca. Thus in the year 1035, when Sancho died, his possessions formed a strip along the Bay of Biscay and the Pyrenees, reaching almost from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. During the lifetime of his sons, Aragon absorbed the eastern counties and made itself a strong kingdom in the north east ; Castile reduced Eeon to the condition of a province and became a strong kingdom in the north-west.

All the available strength in Christian Spain, during the latter half of the eleventh century, was gathered either in Castile or in Aragon, even the independence of Navarre being lost. Then Castile and Aragon, as the two great champions of Spain, from their strongholds in the north, faced the Moor, who held the centre and the south. Centre and south, it should be said, had been most wisely, most beneficently ruled by their infidel masters. By a scientific system of irrigation, vast tracts of waste land had been reclaimed. Europe had never seen such agriculture. Industries that could only be envied or imi tated in other countries grew easily from the quick wit of an ingenious race. In art and science Moorish Spain might well have been (and in a measure was) a school for the nations. The peace was kept even in remote districts.

Commercial and diplomatic relations were maintained with all the principal cities and courts of the world ; the navy was superb ; the army, in respect to discipline and organ isation, was unrivalled. Such is a fair characterisation of Moorish rule at its best, as it was exemplified by Abd-al- Rahman III. Yes, but the Christian states of Castile and Aragon had an infinite advantage, for their expansion, which is simply an irresistible force, was just beginning. Such a period occurs in the life of every nation : we saw it in France, when France turned back the Moors. Now the consciousness of strength, the mighty impulse to achieve, and the fervour of it all, were with the Spaniards in their hard-earned narrow northern strip of land. In the eighth century literally driven to the wall, it had taken them three centuries and a half to get fighting room.

So much they had won, and no more, when the two Christian states, like two gigantic armed figures, wheeled, and — the one with the Bay of Biscay behind it, the other with its back to the Pyrenees — threatetied the south. But it is not necessary to personify Castile and Aragon. The period, the epoch of young Hispaniolism, is perfectly expressed in the Spanish champion Ruy Diaz Campeador, "TheCid." ■ , IV The Moors were whipped and driven, like so many mere trespassers, from the land they had beautified ; one city after another being reconquered by the Spaniards, until even Valencia was taken in 1094. But then Mohamme danism justified the Christian dread of it — showed that it was indeed an ' ' incalculable ' ' force ; for such assistance came from Africa that in a few years south and centre were reunited under the King of Morocco.

The Cid died in 1099. Then, during almost four centuries, such gallant fighting ! with gallant infidel against gallant Christian : rivals in courtesy not less than in valour — with ebb and flow of conquest, torrent of the armed champions of Christ, re current flood of the armed champions of Mohammed : never before or since such demonstration of vitality, for it seemed that Spain was one great heart, with southward gains of the Christians, and northward gains of the in fidels, as its systole and diastole. This long period including the age of the Crusades, when Europe cared more to exchange blows with the Mohammedans in Palestine, the Spanish Christians received less assistance from beyond the Pyrenees than might have been expected. The " Crescent " was a geo graphical fact, then, with its eastern and western horns curving up along the eastern and western limits of the Mediterranean Sea ; a continental dilemma, of which the Crusaders most commonly chose the eastern horn.

Aud that was fortunate for Spain. She had more than her share of difficulty — precisely the thing she required and enjoyed. Res severa est verum gaudiurn : those strenuous times were best of all, and many a Spanish peasant even to-day will refuse to be delighted with stories of a later date. Then, too, it must be remembered that the civilisation of the Moors was so superior that even hostile con tacts were of inestimable advantage to the Spaniards. The western and eastern Crusades in the thirteenth cent ury did more than all the schools and universities for the civilisation of Europe. And, that no element of interest should be lacking, on both sides religious zeal was in tensified until it became a frenzy. Christians in Spain, when all the future in this world as in the world to come appeared to turn on a question of belief, became bigots, and their bigotry paved the way for the Inquisition ; Mo hammedans in Spain required a fresh draught of the in toxicating doctrine that their tounder had dispensed, and so a new Mohammed, an Arab calling himself b'Abdallah, and asserting that he was the expected Mahdi, formed the sect of the Almohades.

Soon after the middle of the fifteenth century only a few of the fairest provinces in the south were still held by the Moors. The final issue was no longer in doubt. The expulsion of the Moors, the submission of the several states to a strong central government, the assertion of the nation's energies in every wide field of enterprise, ad venture, exploration — such things were at hand. Hispaniolism was triumphant. V Now in a very brief section we are to pass from the triumph of Hispaniolism to the triumph of Catholicism. In 1469 Ferdinand of Aragon (under which designation we are to understand Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia) married Isabella of Castile. That was before the accession of either ; and when Isabella's brother Henry IV. of Cas tile died, in 1474, husband and wife were both claimants of the crown ; partisans of the former arguing that female succession was prohibited in Castile and that Ferdinand was, after his father, the nearest male heir.

The de termination of the dispute was admirable, the government being carried on in their joint names, foreign relations and military affairs becoming Ferdinand's especial care, while Isabella's unquestionable talent found ample scope and opportunity in domestic administration. Within thirty years the ordinary revenues had been multiplied by thirty — i. e., in 1474 the ordinary rents of the Castilian crown amounted to 885,000 reals ; in 1504 to 26,283,334 reals. Now single dates are chapters, volumes, whole libraries. In 1478 a bull of Sixtus IV. authorised the Spanish Inquisition. In 148 1 the final effort to drive the Moors from their last stronghold was begun, with the result that Granada fell in due time — as it happened, in 1492. Just before that consummation, a most important beginning : Inigo de Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, was born in 1491.

As though to set off a superb surprise against the foregone conclusion in Granada, Columbus won a new world for Castile by his discovery of the West Indies — though he did not reach the continent of South America until six years later (1498). Ponce de Leon discovered Florida in 1512; Balboa the Pacific Ocean in 1513. The last decade of the fifteenth century saw Spanish territory increased on the north at the expense of France ; in the first decade of the sixteenth century a more violent and more important transfer between the same nations gave Naples to Spain ; by 15 12 it was not merely true that the whole Peninsula was united (with the exception of Portugal which had already developed so strong a sense of separate nationality that it was destined never to be held by its great neighbour in a permanent union), but now Spain drew Italy to itselt, somewhat as Italy, fifteen centuries before, had attached Spain — and now the Peninsula of the setting sun had been declared, by the most authoritative voice in Italy, mistress of all the lands she had discovered or should discover in the fabulous West.

(There were the inexhaustible mines of gold and silver; there were adventures to be had, that should satisfy hunger for such new things in the stoutest heart ; some where, and yet to be discovered, was the fountain of im mortal youth.) The Inquisition began to prove, somewhat more than two years after the papal licence for its infinite harm had been received, that the splendid national opportunity could never be fully realised — just because of the institution itself, and the forces which underlay it, and its rank growth of abuses. In 1481 nearly three hundred persons were burnt alive in Seville alone, two thousand in the archbishopric of Seville and the bishopric of Cadiz. In cluding the last to suffer through this agency (a Jew and a Quaker schoolmaster, in 1826), there have been more than three hundred and forty-one thousand victims of the Inquisition, and one tenth of the whole number were burnt alive.

VI It seemed that the growth of Spain before Ferdinand's death was a matchless thing, but the personal fortune of the next king fairly outstripped it. Charles I. of Spain is known in European history as the Emperor Charles V. Succeeding to the Hapsburg territories in Germany on the death of Maximilian ; chosen to be king of the Romans by the German electors in 15 19 ; by favour and by force becoming land-owner and arbiter of the lives of men from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, in the fairest parts of Italy, and beyond the sea, in northern Africa ; Charles, as a simple matter of fact, had business of more importance to engage his attention than the conquest of Mexico by his Cortez or the conquest of Peru by his Pizarro. Span ish soldiers and Spanish money were the sinews of his European strength, yet he himself became only with re luctance and as a last resort a Spaniard by residence.

The second Hapsburg ruler, Philip II. , made Castile the centre of interest in Europe, merely by living at Madrid. With Spain itself, with Burgundy, with Milan, with a new world, and with an incomparable navy at his command — where Philip sat, ' ' there was the head of the table." It gives us a true idea of the greatness of his position to consider his losses : that he could indulge his bigotry even at the cost of a revolt in the Nether lands ; could lose an " invincible Armada " which he had sent against England, and yet almost up to the time of his death (in 1598) could contend for a preponderance of Spanish influence in France. Literature and art, whose due season is a little later than the full summer of material expansion, had already caught the impulse, and their finer products came during the reign of Philip III. and Philip IV.

Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon, Velasquez, and Murillo are the great names in the first half of the seventeenth century : these men aimed nobly and achieved greatly, and so had their part in the splendour of Spain. Such expression was easy then ; it has not been possible since that time. A golden flood had set from the shores of Central and South America to the south-western shore of Spain, during almost a century ; and Spanish financiers had thought that by controlling and directing this flood, as though it had been a well of water in a desert place, they could irri gate favoured provinces, and make them unspeakably rich. They required that the vessels bearing the gold should be entered at a certain port : Seville's Tower of Gold stands to-day in shabby mockery of their futile efforts.

Their policy cut channels, as it were, for the derivation of the golden stream into golden irrigating streamlets ; and at the end of the experiment it was found that the provinces thus favoured had not been enriched, but had been sterilised. Those portions of the Peninsula which, through Castilian disfavour, had been suffered to cultivate the arts and industries of peace, were more prosperous. Universal history does not furnish a more perfect demonstration of the fact that the mere accumulation of specie does not bring wealth, aud it was about as plain then as now that Spain would get no real advantage from her western colonies ; but the lesson was disregarded, nor has it yet been learned. Spain turned characteristically upon its instructor, and dealt Experience a blow in the face. The most valuable element in the manufacturing and agricultural population was still Moorish.