By the late forties and the fifties, however, the times had changed, and American policy had changed with them.It was becoming more and more evident that, although no real revolution had as yet broken out, the "Pearl of the Antilles" was bound to Spain by compulsion rather than by love.In the United States there was a general feeling that the time had at last come to realize the vision of Jefferson and Adams and to annex Cuba.But the complications of the slavery question prevented immediate annexation.As a slave colony which might become a slave state, the South wanted Cuba, but the majority in the North did not.
After the Civil War in the United States was over, revolution at length flared forth in 1868, from end to end of the island.
Sympathy with the Cubans was widespread in the United States.The hand of the Government, however, was stayed by recent history.
Americans felt keenly the right of governments to exert their full strength to put down rebellion, for they themselves were prosecuting against Great Britain a case based on what they contended was her too lax enforcement of her obligations to the American Government and on the assistance which she had given to the South.The great issue determined the lesser, and for ten years the United States watched the Cuban revolution without taking part in it, but not, however, without protest and remonstrance.Claiming special rights as a close and necessarily interested neighbor, the United States constantly made suggestions as to the manner of the contest and its settlement.
Some of these Spain grudgingly allowed, and it was in part by American insistence that slavery was finally abolished in the island.Further internal reform, however, was not the wish and was perhaps beyond the power of Spain.Although the revolution was seemingly brought to a close in 1878, its embers continued to smolder for nearly a score of years until in 1895 they again burst into flame.
War in Cuba could not help affecting in a very intimate way the people of the United States.They bought much the greater part of the chief Cuban crops, sugar and tobacco.American capital had been invested in the island, particularly in plantations.For years Cubans of liberal tendencies had sent their sons to be educated in the United States, very many of whom had been naturalized before returning home.Cuba was but ninety miles from Florida, and much of our coastwise shipping passed in sight of the island.The people of the United States were aroused to sympathy and to a desire to be of assistance when they saw that the Cubans, so near geographically and so bound to them by many commercial ties, were engaged against a foreign monarchy in a struggle for freedom and a republican form of government.Ethan Allen headed a Cuban committee in New York and by his historic name associated the new revolution with the memory of the American struggle for freedom.The Cuban flag was displayed in the United States, Cuban bonds were sold, and volunteers and arms were sent to the aid of the insurgents.
Owing to the nature of the country and the character of the people, a Cuban revolution had its peculiarities.The island is a very long and rugged mountain chain surrounded by fertile, cultivated plains.The insurgents from their mountain refuges spied out the land, pounced upon unprotected spots, burned crops and sugar mills, and were off before troops could arrive.The portion of the population in revolt at any particular time was rarely large.Many were insurgents one week and peaceful citizens the next.The fact that the majority of the population sympathized with the insurgents enabled the latter to melt into the landscape without leaving a sign.A provisional government hurried on mule-back from place to place.The Spanish Government, contrary to custom, acted at this time with some energy: it put two hundred thousand soldiers into the island; it raised large levies of loyal Cubans; it was almost always victorious; yet the revolution would not down.Martinez Campos, the "Pacificator" of the first revolution, was this time unable to protect the plains.
In 1896 he was replaced by General Weyler, who undertook a new system.He started to corral the insurgents by a chain of blockhouses and barbed wire fences from ocean to sea--the first completely guarded cross-country line since the frontier walls of the Roman Empire in Europe and the Great Wall of China in Asia.
He then proceeded to starve out the insurgents by destroying all the food in the areas to which they were confined.As the revolutionists lived largely on the pillage of plantations in their neighborhood, this policy involved the destruction of the crops of the loyal as well as of the disloyal, of Americans as well as of Cubans.The population of the devastated plantations was gathered into reconcentrado camps where, penned promiscuously into small reservations, they were entirely dependent upon a Government which was poor in supplies and as careless of sanitation as it was of humanity.The camps became pest-holes, spreading contagion to all regions having intercourse with Cuba, and in vain the interned victims were crying aloud for succor.
This new policy of disregard for property and life deeply involved American interests and sensibilities.The State Department maintained that Spain was responsible for the destruction of American property by insurgents.This Spain denied, for, while she never officially recognized the insurgents as belligerents, the insurrection had passed beyond her control.
