had several times offered the Venezuelans. Although the actions of Olney and Cleveland may be regarded as extreme and belligerent, it is true that they compelled the British to admit the fact of the Monroe Doctrine, if not the theory. And, equally important, the peaceful settlement of what threatened for a time to be an angry, if not armed, conflict between the United States and Britain in the end worked to bring the two nations closer together. Events in Europe, Asia, and Africa accelerated this mutual attachment which has meant so much in more recent history, some of which will be noted in subsequent sections." 3. The Beginnings of Pan-Americanism

Thus far in this study American relations with the nations of Latin America have been dealt with in piecemeal fashion, largely as they occurred. In the second half of the 19th century a movement which became known as Pan-Americanism gained momentum. It is the purpose of this section to describe the beginnings of this movement. Between 1826 and 1882 the United States was generally reluctant to join with Latin American nations in mutual consultation and United States agreement, although it looked with avoids interest upon several actions deentanglements signed to link the American nations together. The Panama Congress of Latin America 1826, called by Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America, invited

in

the United States to participate. Henry Clay, Secretary of State, favored sending a delegation to the meeting. After lengthy debate, the Congress agreed to send two representatives. One of the delegates died en route to Panama, the other never reached there. The Panama Congress accomplished almost nothing, but it did mark the inauguration of an attempt to band together the American republics for mutual action.

The reluctance of the United States to take a leading part in the early Pan-American movement has been attributed to a number of factors. The policy of isolation caused Secretary Clay to instruct the prospective delegates to the Panama Congress to oppose any alliance, although it was known that the Congress would consider an alliance to sever Cuba from Spain. Moreover, Boli

See pp. 32, 48 and 74-75 below.

var was known to favor the admission of Great Britain into an American concert of powers. In addition, the United States, for domestic reasons, was opposed to the recognition of the Negro republic of Haiti, another item on the agenda of the Congress. And Clay, himself, while an ardent advocate of Pan-Americanism at the time, actually desired only mild cooperation on the part of the United States.

For the next fifty years the United States pursued a policy of unilateral, or one-sided, approach to the problems of Latin America. Several examples of such a policy have already been mentioned and others exist in the records of those years. Various reasons have been assigned to explain American action in these cases, but in the main, each instance had its own circumstances and the United States did not regard the time as propitious for a multilateral approach to the problem of the moment. The United States could have been mistaken in some of these instances, but in the atmosphere of the 19th century it is hard to see how the republics of Latin America and the United States could have stood for a common policy and a common effort. At any rate, the experiment was not tried.

Secretary Blaine's Latin American policy

In 1881, James G. Blaine, foremost Republican of his day, became President Garfield's Secretary of State. Like Henry Clay, Blaine had a deep interest in Latin America. There is evidence that his interest was partially economic in that the Latin American countries sold $100,000,000 more of goods to the United States than they bought from this country. Blaine figured that if this adverse trade balance could be reduced, at the expense principally of the British, by forming closer commercial ties with Latin America, the Latin American nations could be oriented more toward the United States. As a first move toward this end he attempted to arbitrate several Central American boundary disputes, but his efforts were fruitless. Then he tried to settle the War of the Pacific which raged from 1879 to 1884 between Chile on one side and Peru and Bolivia on the other. Here he was likewise unsuccessful. Another abortive attempt-this time to call an interAmerican conference to consider methods of pre

venting war-was dropped when Blaine resigned and his successor, Frederick Frelinghuysen, cancelled the invitations sent out by Blaine to the Latin American nations.

Blaine came back as Benjamin Harrison's Secretary of State in 1889. A year before, President Cleveland had revived Blaine's earlier idea of an inter-American conference. Blaine

Formation took office in time to preside at the first Pan-American conference which of the Pan-American met in Washington on October 2, Union

1889. Seventeen Latin American states were represented. The Conference set up the Pan-American Union, an organization to encourage cooperation and understanding among the independent nations of the Western hemisphere. Although Blaine failed to achieve his objectives of erecting an inter-American customs union and of establishing machinery for the arbitration of disputes, he did succeed in setting up a structure which serves to this day to better relations among the nations of the hemisphere. Upon the base of Blaine's Pan-Americanism has been built the good neighbor policy of the 1930's and the hemispheric defense pacts of recent years.

4. The Cuban Question and the War with Spain

were

Throughout the 19th century the problem of Cuba plagued the United States. The proximity of this potentially rich island and its perpetually unstable political situation United States twin threats to the Monroe Docopposes trine, as well as to the national transfer of security of the United States. When Cuba most of the other Latin American colonies gained independence from Spain, Cuba remained an unwilling possession of the Madrid government. Although the United States was not too pleased to have the island under the control of Spain, it opposed vigorously any intimations of the transfer of Cuba to another European power. In 1808 and 1810, the United States was against the possible transfer of Cuba to Great Britain. In 1828, the United States protested the presence in Cuban waters of strong French squadrons. In 1840, the United States assured Spain it would assist the Madrid government

against any power which attempted to conquer Cuba.

Later, as has been mentioned, the United States endeavored to purchase Cuba from Spain rather than see the island fall a possible prey to European aggression or internal revolt.10 During the 1850's relations between Spain and the United States grew increasingly strained over activities of filibustering parties which descended upon Cuba from American ports. The heat engendered by these events led to the Ostend Manifesto of 1854 which has already been discussed.11 The threatening clouds of the Civil War blotted out concern over Cuba for the next dozen years, in spite of the fact that President Buchanan, in three of his four annual messages between 1857 and 1860, urged the purchase of Cuba.

Cuba revolts against Spain

In October 1868 a rebellion against Spanish rule broke out in Cuba. President Grant favored recognition of the belligerent status of the insurgents, but Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, realizing the dangers of war with Spain, was able to sidetrack the President's plans. In 1873, Fish again steered the United States away from a possible war with Spain over the affair of the capture of the Virginius, a gunrunner illegally flying the American flag. The war in Cuba ended in 1878 with the Spaniards promising administrative reforms. These promises were only nominally kept and Cuba remained an unhappy colony through the 1880's.

The American tariff act of 1894 ended the 1891 reciprocity agreement with Spain, thereby instituting such high duties on sugar that the Cuban economy was practically wrecked. On February 24, 1895, the Cubans once more revolted against Spanish rule. In spite of much jingo, or interventionist, sentiment and the passage of a belligerency resolution by Congress in the spring of 1896, President Cleveland firmly opposed attempts to drag the United States into war with Spain over Cuba. He directed Secretary of State Richard Olney to offer mediation and Olney communicated the President's desires to Dupuy de Lóme, Spanish minister in Washington.

SECRETARY OLNEY'S OFFER TO DE LÓME, WASHINGTON, APRIL 4, 1896: . . That the

10 See pp. 8-9 above. 11 Ibid.

United States cannot contemplate with complacency another ten years of Cuban insurrection ... may certainly be taken for granted. . . The purpose [of the present communication] is .. to suggest whether a solution of present troubles cannot be found which will prevent all thought of intervention by rendering it unnecessary. What the United States desires to do, if the way can be pointed out, is to cooperate with Spain in the immediate pacification of the island on such a plan as, leaving Spain her rights of sovereignty, shall yet secure to the people of the island all such rights and powers of local self-government as they can reasonably ask. To that end, the United States offers and will use her good offices at such time and in such manner as may be deemed most advisable. . . . One result of the course of proceeding outlined would be sure to follow, namely, that the rebellion would lose largely, if not altogether, the moral countenance and support it now enjoys from the people of the United States. Spain declined the American offer and continued to fight the Cubans with intense brutality. General Valeriano Weyler, the Spanish commander, in order to separate the Cuban soldiery from attacks the civilians, ordered that the latSpanish policy ter be settled in reconcentration camps. This act brought a furor of excitement and indignation in the United States not unaided by the "yellow press," especially William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal.(21) Angered by the attacks on Weyler's reconcentrado policy, the Spanish government attempted a defense. The Duke de Tetuan, Spanish Minister of State, embodied the defense in a dispatch to de Lóme.

"Yellow Press"

DUKE DE TETUAN TO DE LÓME, MADRID, AUGUST 4, 1897: . . . All civilized countries which, like Spain at present, have found themselves under the harsh necessity of resorting to arms to crush rebellions, not always so evidently unjustifiable as that of Cuba, proceed and have proceeded in the same manner. In the United States itself, during the war of secession, recourse was had to concentrations of peaceable inhabitants, to seizures and confiscation of property, to the destruction of all agricultural and industrial property . . . in short, to the destruction of all the property of the adversary, to the abolition of constitutional rights by the total suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and to the development of a military and dictatorial system which, in the states opposed to the Union, lasted many years after the termination of the bloody contest. . . . The invincible General Sherman explained on various occasions the supreme justice of these acts. . . . "War is war," said this able general, “and the tremendous responsibility for civil wars rests upon their authors and

upon those who are their direct or indirect instru

ments.

Diplomatic efforts to prevent war

Americans turned from affairs in Cuba to the hotly contested presidential election of 1896. Shortly after the Republicans, under President McKinley, returned to power in Washington, a more liberal Spanish ministry recalled General Weyler, modified the reconcentration methods, and granted some measures of autonomy to the Cubans. The United States. consul general in Havana, Fitzhugh Lee, had suggested in 1896 that naval vessels be stationed at Key West, Florida, in case of need. When rioting took place in Havana in January 1898 the battleship Maine was ordered to the Cuban capital in spite of Lee's advice not to send any ship at that time. On February 15, 1898 an explosion sank the Maine in Havana harbor with the loss of 266 of her crew.

Sinking of the "Maine"

To this day it is not certain what caused the explosion. But to most of the Americans of 1898 the Spanish were to blame. Still, the possibility of war might be avoided if President McKinley, who was opposed to war, could restrain the hotheads. On March 26 and 27 the State Department sent messages to the American minister at Madrid, Stewart L. Woodford, asking him to learn if the Spaniards would grant an armistice in Cuba until October 1, 1898 and would immediately revoke the reconcentration order. "This," says Bailey, "was not an ultimatum; but it represented what the United States apparently regarded as indispensable concessions for keeping the peace."12 The Spanish government proposed submission of the Maine question to arbitration and agreed to grant an armistice only if the Cuban insurgents asked for it. On April 3, Woodford learned that the Spanish government, prompted by a request from the Pope, was about to grant an armistice. Woodford cabled McKinley to this effect and two days later gave the President added assurances of Spain's desire for peace.

MINISTER WOODFORD ΤΟ PRESIDENT MCKINLEY, MADRID, APRIL 5, 1898: Should the Queen proclaim the following before 12 o'clock noon of Wednesday, April 6, will you sustain the Queen, and can you prevent hostile action by Congress?

12 Bailey, op. cit., p. 504.

"At the request of the Holy Father, in this Passion Week and in the name of Christ, I proclaim immediate and unconditional suspension of hostilities in the island of Cuba. This suspension is to become immediately effective so soon as accepted by the insurgents in that island, and is to continue for the space of six months, to the 5th day of October, eighteen ninety-eight. I do this to give time for passions to cease, and in the sincere hope and belief that during this suspension permanent and honorable peace may be obtained. . . ." Please read this in the light of all my previous telegrams and letters. I believe that this means peace. . . . That same day, April 5, the Spanish minister in Washington informed the Secretary of State that

the Governor General of Cuba had Spanish efforts completely abolished reconcentratoward tion throughout Cuba. And on April settlement 9 the Spanish Foreign Minister notified Woodford that the military command in Cuba had been directed to grant an immediate, though indefinite, armistice to the insurgents. Practically everything the American government had asked had been given by the Spaniards, and peace had been maintained.

However, the war sentiment in Congress and in the country at large was too much for the President to resist. He had prepared a message to Congress on April 4, but delayed its delivery until American civilians could be evacuated from Cuba. When McKinley received news of the Spanish concessions be added a few sentences to the message and on April 11 sent the document to Congress.

WAR MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT MCKINLEY, WASHINGTON, APRIL 11, 1898: I ask the

Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between . . . Spain and . . . Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government, capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations, insuring peace and tranquillity and the security of its citizens as well as our own, and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary for these purposes. . . . Yesterday, and since the preparation of the foregoing message, official information was received by me that the latest decree of the Queen Regent of Spain directs General Blanco . . . to proclaim a suspension of hostilities, the duration and details of which have not yet been communicated to me. This fact with every other pertinent consideration will, I am sure, have your just and careful attention in the solemn deliberations upon which you are about to enter...

War resolution and the Teller amendment

Eight days later Congress passed a joint resolution which declared Cuba free, demanded the withdrawal of Spain from that island, directed the President to use armed force to achieve these purposes, and, in the Teller1 amendment to the resolution, disclaimed any intent by the United States to annex Cuba. The resolution was signed by the President on April 20 and a Congressional act of April 25 declared that war between the United States and Spain had existed since April 21, 1898.

During the Spanish-American War numerous currents affecting American foreign policy came to the surface. One was the friendship shown by Great Britain to the American cause. Another was the growing importance of the Far East. And a third was the emergence of the United States as a leading naval power. There were others of less significance, also, but these three had major importance.

Battle of Manila Bay

America's position in the Far East will be considered in a later section.14 However, it is pertinent to note here that few Americans knew at the time of the declaration of war that Spain possessed colonial territory in the Far East-the Philippines. Theodore Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was one American who did know about the Philippines.15 He instructed Admiral George Dewey, commander of the American Asiatic squadron, to attack the Spanish in the Philippines as soon as war was declared. Dewey quickly subdued the Spanish vessels at Manila on

13 Henry M. Teller, of Colorado, was U.S. Senator from that state 1876-82, and 1885-1909. He was Secretary of the Interior under President Arthur, 1882-85. Originally a Republican, he seceded from the party in the 1896 campaign and was elected as a Democrat in 1903.

14 See pp. 39-46 below.

15 Another was his good friend Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Republican of Massachusetts.

May 1, 1898 only to find himself unprepared to occupy the city. While he waited for troops from the United States, the Germans sent five war vessels to Manila to safeguard German interests in the island capital. The British had two vessels there for a like purpose. The British commander was friendly toward the Americans, but the German commander was uncooperative. It is now known that the German fleet was there in the hope that "if America chose to abandon the Philippines, in whole or in part, the presence of a strong fleet at Manila would buttress German claims to the archipelago."16 At any event, and with no major international incident, Admiral Dewey's units and American land forces captured Manila on August 13, 1898. The United States was in the Far East and fated to stay there.

Defeat of Spain

The war against Spain also demonstrated the growing naval might of the United States, although the Spanish navy provided very little test of the powers of American ships and sailors. Cuba, and later Puerto Rico,17 were invaded by the American army, and Spanish troops surrendered to the Americans after a few noisy battles. On August 12, 1898 a protocol was signed ending hostilities and setting forth terms of peace. Spain agreed to abandon Cuba, to cede Puerto Rico and an island in the Ladrones (Guam was the island ultimately ceded) to the United States, and to permit the United States to hold Manila and the bay until the peace treaty could determine the disposition of the Philippines.

In his instructions to the American peace commissioners, President McKinley told them to confirm the military occupation of Cuba and Puerto Rico by the United States and to stipulate the cession of Guam as a part of the treaty. The Americans were to forego asking the Spaniards for a financial indemnity, but, if the Spaniards put forward a claim for public property compensation, the Americans were to counter with a demand for indemnity to cover the cost of the war. The withdrawal of Spain from the Western hemisphere he said, was an imperative neces

sity. Then the President added instructions relative to the Philippines.

PRESIDENT MCKINLEY TO THE PEACE COMMISSION, WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 16, 1898: ... The Philippines stand upon a different basis. It is none the less true... that, without any thought of complete or even partial acquisition, the presence and success of our arms at Manila imposes upon us obligations which we can not disregard. The march of events rules and overrules human action. we can not be unmindful that, without any desire or design on our part, the war has brought us new duties and responsibilities which we must meet and discharge as becomes a great nation on whose growth and career from the beginning the Ruler of Nations has plainly written the high command and pledge of civilization. Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial opportunity to which American statesmanship can not be indifferent. It is just to use every legitimate means for the enlargement of American trade; but we seek no advantages in the Orient which are not common to all. Asking only the open door for ourselves, we are ready to accord the open door to others(22). In view of what has been stated, the United States can not accept less than the cession in full right and sovereignty of the island of Luzon. It is desirable... that the United States shall acquire the right of entry for vessels and merchandise belonging to citizens of the United States into such ports of the Philippines as are not ceded to the United States upon terms of equal favor with Spanish ships and merchandise. You are therefore instructed to

demand such concession.

The problem of Philippine annexation

...

President McKinley's instructions were based upon a fair assessment of American public opinion. The nation believed that we could not let the Philippines go back to Spanish rule and that to allow their cession to any other world power, such as Britain, Germany, France, or Japan, would be unthinkable. Nor could the Filipinos be entrusted with immediate independence. But doubts assailed many Americans as to the wisdom of taking the islands under our national wing. After several months of soulsearching discussion, McKinley reached the conclusion that there was no middle way either the United States must relinquish all claims on the islands or must accept the responsibilities of taking over the whole archipelago. In desperation he prayed to God for guidance. As later revealed, the President received his inspiration. In his own. words, this is what happened.