ence. The Cuban Commissioners protested against and resisted this settlement, but finally yielded when they saw all the soldiers accepting it. They continued for some time, however, to manifest disaffection and distrust toward the United States, and to propagate doubt whether that country would ever fulfill its promise to make Cuba independent. Some agitators went so far as to try to provoke insurrections against the American administration. But all such things met with no encouragement from General Gomez or from any of the real leaders of the Cuban people, who expressed the fullest confidence in the good faith of the United States and did their utmost to lead the nation to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunity which had been placed before it. Day by day the magnitude of that opportunity became more apparent, as did the practical beneficence of the American administration.

CHAPTER IX

AMERICAN Occupation of Cuba, formal and complete, did not begin, as we have seen, until January 1, 1899, when the ceremonial transfer of sovereignty was effected at Havana. But nearly six months before that epochal date actual occupation and administration was begun on an extensive scale and in a most auspicious manner. With singular appropriateness this was effected at that city which nearly four centuries before had been the first capital and metropolis of the island, and in that Province which had been the scene of the first Spanish settlements in Cuba and which had been more perhaps than all the rest of the island the scene and the base of operations of the revolution for independence.

The surrender of Santiago by General Toral on July 17, 1898, made the American army master of that city and practically of the Province of Oriente. Having the power and authority of government, the Americans had necessarily to assume the full responsibility of it; and this was promptly done. Even in advance of the date named, on July 13, the day after negotiations for the capitulation began, in anticipation of what was to occur President McKinley decreed that, pending further orders, existing Spanish laws should be maintained in the occupied territory. As soon as the protocol was signed on August 12, General Henry W. Lawton was appointed Military Governor of the Province of Oriente and commander in chief of the American forces. This was an honor due to that gallant officer, because of his leadership in the act of in

vasion and conquest. But Lawton was a soldier rather than an administrator, and his services were indispensable in the field. Accordingly, after brief but most honorable occupancy of the governorship, he was succeeded on September 24 by a man who combined the qualities of soldier and administrator in a uniquely successful and triumphant degree, and whose advent in Cuba was auspicious of inestimable advantage to that country and to its relations with the United States and with the world. Indeed, though the fact was unrecognized at the time, it is not too much to say that Leonard Wood bore in his hand and mind and heart the destinies of Cuba. There might, it is true, have been found some other man who as a soldier would have pacified the island and would have held it firmly in the grasp of peace. There might have been found a sanitarian and physician who would free the island of pestilence. There were financiers who might have placed its fiscal interests upon a sound basis. There were jurists who could have revised its laws. There were statesmen who could have supervised and directed its general governmental affairs, both domestic and foreign. But there was need that all these qualities should be combined in and all these activities should be performed by

one man.

Leonard Wood was at this time still a young man, scarcely thirty-eight years of age. Born at Winchester, New Hampshire, the son of an eminent physician and a descendant of a Mayflower Pilgrim, he had in boyhood engaged in seafaring pursuits, and then had been thoroughly trained for the medical profession at Harvard University. Obeying the promptings of patriotism, perhaps with some unrecognized pre-intimation of the vast services which he was destined to render to his country and to the world, he turned away from prospects of pro

fessional preferment and profit to undertake the arduous and often thankless tasks of an army surgeon. He was appointed to that duty from the state of Massachusetts on January 5, 1886, as an Assistant Surgeon, and five years later was promoted to the rank of Captain. The nominal rank is, however, a slight indication of the merit of his services, for in the very first year of his army life he was credited with "distinguished conduct in campaign against Apache Indians while serving as medical and line officer of Captain Lawton's expedition"; for which he was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. At the beginning of American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence, Theodore Roosevelt resigned the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, which he had filled with distinction and to the great profit of the country, in order to organize from among the cowboys and frontiersmen of the West his famous regiment of "Rough Riders." But he would not himself accept the supreme command of it. His unerring judgment of men led him to select Leonard Wood for the Colonelcy, under whom he was himself glad to serve as Lieutenant-Colonel. So it was that Wood first went to Cuba, as Colonel of the First Regiment of United States Cavalry Volunteers. There soon followed the achievements at Guasimas and at San Juan Hill, to which reference has already been made, in recognition of his services in which on July 8, 1898, he was promoted to be Brigadier General, and on December 7 following to be Major General of Volunteers. It may be added that he was promoted to these same ranks in the regular army respectively on February 4, 1901 and August 8, 1903.

With these antecedents, on September 24 he entered upon the task of governing Santiago and the Province of Oriente. It was a position of unique responsibility and

power. The President's order made it incumbent upon him to administer the existing municipal laws so far as in his own judgment they were properly applicable to the new state of affairs. That was all. Otherwise he was thrown absolutely upon his own resources, with no treaty obligations or government promises to bind him. He was simply a "benevolent despot," intent upon tranquillizing and rehabilitating that vast eastern province of Cuba by methods of his own devising. It was a region at once the most unruly and the most impoverished in Cuba, and it had for its capital a plague-smitten city. For six months he labored there, and in that short period he so far advanced the work of reconstruction that thereafter Oriente served as an example and a model for all the other provinces of Cuba. Sympathetic, alert, untiring, frank, without vanity or ostentation, resolute, diplomatic, and always supremely just, General Wood's personality stood to the people of Cuba for qualities seldom if ever before associated with the occupant of the governor's palace, while his energy in fighting disease, relieving distress, reviving industry and maintaining order revealed to them as the Spanish régime never had done the beneficence of enlightened government. It would be impossible to estimate too highly the value of his services during those few months at Santiago, in commending to Cubans the benevolent purposes and attitude of the Americans toward them and in disclosing to them the vast material and moral benefits which would accrue to them through self-government wisely administered.

He began his work at Santiago in gruesome circumstances. An epidemic of smallpox and yellow fever was raging, and clouds of smoke hung over the city from the funeral pyres where were being burned many of the bodies for which burial was impossible. The city was reeking