CHAPTER VI

CONDITIONS ON JAN. 1, 1899

AMERICAN authority was established in the eastern end of the Island in July, 1898. During the closing months of the year, much was accomplished in the way of reconstruction and establishment along special lines. Two forces contributed to this end. The influence of one of these has been emphasized in official and newspaper reports, with an undue minimizing or ignoring of the other which was quite as potent and equally important. The distribution of American troops throughout the district did much for the restoration of law and order. The personal advice and aid of local commanders were of vast importance in the adjustment of the chaotic conditions which prevailed. Too much cannot be said in commendation of the individual efforts of officers of the American army. Too little has been said regarding the contributory work of the Cubans themselves. As it became possible for them to do so, these people returned to the site of their former homes, and, as best they could, took up the round of quiet and peaceful life. Thou'sands of them were utterly destitute, without a 100f to cover them; without food to eat; and without cattle or farming tools with which to produce the necessary sustenance for themselves and their families.

The American people were greatly interested in knowing what was being done by their representatives were little or not at all interested in what the Cubans were

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doing for themselves. This neglect of the Cuban end of the question did much to establish an opinion that the Cubans did nothing, and were incapable of doing anything, in their own behalf. For a time, the distribution of food supplies was imperative, and this was done with a liberal hand. Paid employment was furnished to many in general repairs and some new construction, in the department of sanitation and street cleaning, and in the various processes of municipal administration. As the conditions established by the presence of the military forces made it possible, operations were resumed on the wrecked plantations, and the suspended mining enterprises were set in motion by the mine owners. Gradually and steadily the life of the section resumed its normal conditions, and the 1st of January, 1899, saw a large part of the people of Cuba's eastern province orderly, peaceable, and self-maintaining. For this, credit is due to both officers and men of the American army. But credit is also due, though rarely given, to those who were so largely left to work out, with such feeble resources as they possessed, their own economic salvation.

The condition of the larger portion of the Island at the time of the American occupation, on Jan. 1, 1899, was not dissimilar to that of Santiago six months earlier. Nominally, until 12 o'clock, noon, of that date, Spanish authority continued. But the duties of government were either neglected or were performed in a wholly perfunctory manner. Many, probably most of the various municipal and provincial authorities, being Spaniards or of Spanish affiliation, had resigned or deserted their positions. Their power was gone, and it was useless to maintain the semblance of it. was also a feeling of personal insecurity and a fear of Cuban reprisals.

There

On Nov. 26, 1898, Gen. Ramon Blanco resigned his post

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as Governor General of Cuba, and returned to Spain. General Castellanos succeeded him and remained the nominal official head of affairs until the transfer to the American authorities. On December 1, President McKinley allotted from available funds the sum of $50,000 for expenditure in the greatly needed cleansing of the city of Havana. Throughout the month, detachments of the army of occupation reported for duty on the Island, and were assigned to camps in different parts of the country, though the main body of the army, consisting of the Seventh Army Corps, U. S. V., under command of Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, with two regiments, the 8th and the 10th, of the regular army, and a force of regular artillery, was centred in and around Havana. So far as routine processes were concerned, the closing days of December saw everything in readiness for the event which was to mark the opening of the new year.

The official transfer was a brief and simple proceeding. At 12 o'clock noon, the Spanish flag was hauled down, and the American flag hoisted in its stead. The official representatives of Spain and the United States met in the Hall of State in the Governor's Palace, in Havana, where General Castellanos, acting for his government, with a sad and bitter heart and trembling hand, signed the paper which transferred the sovereignty of Cuba to the American authorities, as trustees for the Cuban people.

It is doubtful if any nation of the world ever assumed a similar responsibility. So far as the American people in general were concerned, and so far as individual authorities were concerned, the purposes of the Government of Intervention were straightforward and generous. Their object was expressed in the terms of the Joint Resolution, that the United States should occupy the Island until it was

pacified. When that was accomplished, American government would terminate, and all control be turned over to the Cuban people.

While this was sufficiently definite, as an announcement of the American intention, it was also sufficiently vague to shelter a considerable group of American citizens whose opinions were voiced by a distinguished American senator who pointed to an American flag, as it floated over a Cuban fortress, and said, "That flag will never come down in this Island."

It is eminently unfortunate that, at the time of our assumption of control of the destinies of the Island of Cuba, so little was really known by the American people of Cuba's special needs and of the special characteristics of the Cubans. It is also unfortunate that it seemed obligatory to place the immediate administration of affairs in the hands of men who, though of marked ability along the line of their special training and experience, had no adequate knowledge of civil administration, and none whatever of that Spanish law, both civil and criminal, the establishment of which was the first act of American occupation. With the exception of Gen. James H. Wilson and Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, department commanders in Matanzas and Havana provinces, all of the designated officials were distinctly military men. All stood high in their profession, and all were of known and tried personal integrity. Some had had wide experience in dealing with Indian questions on our western frontier, but the Cubans were not Indians.

For a time military methods were imperative, and military channels were those through which certain phases of the work could best be accomplished. In the maintenance of peace and order; in the distribution of food to the starving, and medicine and relief to the sick and the suffering;

in sanitary regulations; and along various other lines, the directness and the promptness of military methods were indispensable. The special misfortune of this time lay in American failure to obtain a broad grasp of such important features as the economic, the political, and the judicial. It was work for broad statesmanship, and a competent attention to those features would have averted many of the ills which have followed and whose end is not yet.

Jan. 1, 1899, saw three armies in Cuba - the American, the Spanish, and the Cuban. The army of occupation numbered more than 40,000 men. Spain's troops were in process of withdrawal for return to the Peninsula, and the Cuban army had been only partially disbanded. As the Spanish troops withdrew from the interior towns and cities, their place was taken by the Cuban forces who maintained order and repressed disturbance, in highly creditable manner, until they, in their turn, were supplanted by the soldiers of the army of occupation. The last of the Havana contingent of the Spanish army went on board transports lying in the harbor of that city, on the morning of January 1. The Matanzas contingent left that city on January 12, and the Cienfuegos detachment completed the Spanish evacuation of the Island on February 6. A part of the Cuban army remained in the field until its general disbandment during the early summer months.

The condition of the greater portion of the Island, at the time of the American occupation, was little short of appalling. Notwithstanding General Blanco's revocation of the order of reconcentration, and the relief work which was afterward carried on, the Island was, on Jan. 1, 1899, a hospital and a poor-farm. Hunger stalked abroad and the dying lay in many homes and in all public institutions. Hundreds of children wandered homeless, unclothed, living