Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, while Acting Secretary of State, in writing to Mr. Sartiges, on the 22d of October, 1851, says:

The geographical position of the Island of Cuba, in the Gulf of Mexico, lying at no great distance from the mouth of the River Mississippi, and in the line of the greatest current of the commerce of the United States, would become, in the hands of any powerful European nation, an object of just jealousy and apprehension to the people of this country. A due regard to their own safety and interest must therefore make it a matter of importance to them who shall possess and hold dominion over that island. The Government of France and those of other European nations were long since officially apprised by this Government that the United States could not see without concern that island transferred by Spain to any other European state. Mr. Webster again, while Secretary of State, writing to Mr. Ballinger, on the 26th of November, 1851, says:

The colonies of Spain are near to our own shores. Our commerce with them is large and important, and the records of the diplomatic intercourse between the two countries will manifest to Her Catholic Majesty's Government how sincerely and how steadily the United States has manifested the hope that no political changes might lead to a transfer of these colonies from Her Majesty's Crown. If there is one among the existing governments of the civilized world which for a long course of years has diligently sought to maintain amicable relations with Spain, it is the Government of the United States. Not only does the correspondence between the two Governments show this, but the same truth is established by the history of the legislation of this country and the general course of the executive government. In this recent invasion Lopez and his fellow-subjects in the United States succeeded in deluding a few hundred men by a long-continued and systematic misrepresentation of the political condition of the island and of the wishes of its inhabitants. And it is not for the purpose of reviewing unpleasant recollections that Her Majesty's Government is reminded that it is not many years since the commerce of the United States suffered severely from armed boats and vessels which found refuge and shelter in the ports of the Spanish islands. These violators of the law, these authors of gross violence toward the citizens of this Republic, were finally suppressed, not by any effort of the Spanish authorities, but by the activity and vigilance of our Navy. This, however, was not accomplished but by the efforts of several years, nor until many valuable lives, as well as a vast amount of property, had been lost. Among others, Lieutenant Allen, a very valuable and distinguished officer in the naval service of the United States, was killed in an action with these banditti.

I now read from the third annual message of President Fillmore in 1852:

The affairs of Cuba formed a prominent topic in my last annual message. They remain in an uneasy condition, and a feeling of alarm and irritation on the part of the Cuban authorities appears to exist. This feeling has interfered with the regular commercial intercourse between the United States and the island, and led to some acts of which we have a right to complain. But the Captain-General of Cuba is clothed with no power to treat with foreign Governments, nor is he in any degree under the control of the Spanish minister at Washington. Any communication which he may hold with an agent of a foreign power is informal and a matter of courtesy.

Mr. Marcy, when Secretary of State, writing to Mr. Buchanan, on July 2, 1853, said:

Nothing will be done on our part to disturb its (Cuba's) present connection with Spain, unless the character of that connection should be so changed as to affect our present or prospective security. While the United States would resist at every hazard the transference of Cuba to any European nation, they would exceedingly regret to see Spain resorting to any power for assistance to uphold her rule over it. Such a dependence on foreign aid would in effect invest the auxiliary with the character of a protector and give it a pretext to interfere in our affairs, and also generally in those of the North American continent.

This review of the opinions and statements on these particular topics indicates a very firm and thoroughly understood attitude of the Government of the United States toward Spain in reference to the Island of Cuba. The subject of the acquisition of the Island of Cuba as one of our possessions, we see, was first brought in direct form to the attention of the people of the United States by President Adams, and he then took ground, which was stated as a

prophecy, that in fifty years from the time he wrote he expected that Cuba would be in the possession of this country as one of our States or Territories. This subject gained such a hold upon public attention that our ministers at foreign courts in the year 1854, Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Mason, and Mr. Soulé, were instructed by the President of the United States to meet at some place in Europe, and there confer upon the best method of acquiring Cuba as one of our possessions, and their meeting was called the Ostend Conference. They met at Ostend, and in Lawrence's Wheaton the result of their meeting is stated, which I will read:

In the summer of 1854 a conference was held by the ministers of the United States accredited at London, Paris, and Madrid, with a view to consult on the negotiations which it might be advisable to carry on simultaneously at these several courts for the satisfactory adjustment with Spain of the affairs connected with Cuba. The joint dispatch of Messrs. Buchanan, Mason, and Soulé to the Secretary of State, dated Aix-la-Chapelle, October 18, 1851, after remarking that the United States had never acquired a foot of territory, not even after a successful war with Mexico, except by purchase or by the voluntary application of the people, as in the case of Texas, thus proceeds: "Our past history forbids that we should acquire the Island of Cuba without the consent of Spain, unless justified by the great law of self-preservation. We must, in any event, preserve our own conscious rectitude and our self-respect. While pursuing this course, we can afford to disregard the censures of the world, to which we have been so often and so unjustly exposed. After we shall have offered Spain a price for Cuba far beyond its present value, and this shall have been refused, it will then be time to consider the question, Does Cuba, in the possession of Spain, seriously endanger our internal peace and the existence of our cherished Union? Should this question be answered in the affirmative, then by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain, if we possess the power; and this upon the very same principle that would justify an individual in tearing down the burning house of his neighbor if there were no other means of preventing the flames from destroying his own home. Under such circumstances, we ought neither to count the cost nor regard the odds which Spain might enlist against us. We forbear to enter into the question whether the present condition of the island would justify such a measure."

President Buchanan, in his second annual message, speaking on the subject of the Island of Cuba, says:

The Island of Cuba, from its geographical position, commands the mouth of the Mississippi and the immense and annually increasing trade, foreign and coastwise, from the valley of that noble river, now embracing half the Sovereign States of the Union. With that island under the dominion of a distant foreign power, this trade, of vital importance to these States, is exposed to the danger of being destroyed in time of war, and it has hitherto been subjected to perpetual injury and annoyance in time of peace. Our relations with Spain, which ought to be of the most friendly character, must always be placed in jeopardy whilst the existing colonial government over the island shall remain in its present condition.

And in his third annual message Mr. Buchanan said:

I need not repeat the arguments which I urged in my last annual message in favor of the acquisition of Cuba by fair purchase. My opinions on that measure remain unchanged. I therefore again invite the serious attention of Congress to this important subject. Without a recognition of this policy on their part it will be almost impossible to institute negotiations with any reasonable prospect of success.

General Grant, in his special message of June 13, 1870, to the Congress of the United States, seems to have encountered a development of feeling of hostility and jealousy on the part of Spain on account of our relations to Cuba, and possibly on account of all these utterances of our great and leading men, which gave him very deep concern and caused him to send a special message to the Congress of the United States, from which I will make a liberal extract, for the purpose of showing the progress of opinion and of sentiment in the United States, and in Spain also, upon

subjects which seem now to have driven us very wide apart. He said:

In my annual message to Congress, at the beginning of its present session, I referred to the contest which had then for more than a year existed in the Island of Cuba between a portion of its inhabitants and the Government of Spain, and the feelings and sympathies of the people and Government of the United States for the people of Cuba, as for all peoples struggling for liberty and self-government, and said that "the contest has at no time assumed the conditions which amount to war, in the sense of international law, or which would show the existence of a de facto political organization of the insurgents sufficient to justify a recognition of belligerency."

During the six months which have passed since the date of that message the condition of the insurgents has not improved; and the insurrection itself, although not subdued, exhibits no signs of advance, but seems to be confined to an irregular system of hostilities, carried on by small and illy-armed bands of men roaming, without concentration, through the woods and the sparsely populated regions of the island, attacking from ambush convoys and sinall bands of troops, burning plantations and the estates of those not sympathizing with their cause.

But if the insurrection has not gained ground, it is equally true that Spain has not suppressed it. Climate, disease, and the occasional bullet have worked destruction among the soldiers of Spain; and, although the Spanish authorities have possession of every seaport and every town on the island, they have not been able to subdue the hostile feeling which has driven a considerable number of the native inhabitants of the island to armed resistance against Spain, and still leads them to endure the dangers and the privations of a roaming life of guerrilla warfare.

On either side the contest has been conducted, and is still carried on, with a lamentable disregard of human life and of the rules and practices which modern civilization has prescribed in mitigation of the necessary horrors of war. The torch of Spaniard and of Cuban is alike busy in carrying devastation over fertile regions; murderous and revengeful decrees are issued and executed by both parties. Count Valmaseda and Colonel Boet, on the part of Spain, have each startled humanity and aroused the indignation of the civilized world by the execution, each, of a score of prisoners at a time, while General Quesada, the Cuban chief, coolly, and with apparent unconsciousness of aught else than a proper act, has admitted the slaughter, by his own deliberate order, in one day, of upward of 650 prisoners of war.

A summary trial, with few, if any, escapes from conviction, followed by immediate execution, is the fate of those arrested on either side on suspicion of infidelity to the cause of the party making the arrest.

Whatever may be the sympathies of the people or of the Government of the United States for the cause or objects for which a part of the people of Cuba are understood to have put themselves in armed resistance to the Government of Spain, there can be no just sympathy in a conflict carried on by both parties alike in such barbarous violation of the rules of civilized nations, and with such continued outrage upon the plainest principles of humanity. We can not discriminate in our censure of their mode of conducting their contest between the Spaniards and the Cubans; each commits the same atrocities and outrages alike the established rules of war.

The properties of many of our citizens have been destroyed or embargoedThat means confiscated

the lives of several have been sacrificed, and the liberty of others has been restrained. In every case that has come to the knowledge of the Government, an early and carnest demand for reparation and indemnity has been made, and most emphatic remonstrance has been presented against the manner in which the strife is conducted, and against the reckless disregard of human life, the wanton destruction of material wealth, and the cruel disregard of the established rules of civilized warfare.

That was in the message of June 13, 1870. Even at the end of the brief period which has passed since the delivery of that message by General Grant, one of the most heroic men who ever lived, inured to warfare, and understanding all about its effects and dire results, the people of the United States read this message now again, and reflect upon it, and they wonder how it ever happened that the Government of the United States could stand idly and indifferently by and permit such outrages to go on in the Island of Cuba as those perpetrated there. It was done, Mr. President, in the hope and in the expectation that the Crown of Spain would be enabled to subjugate what was then considered to be a riotous

a

mob, not amounting to a great army in the field, and would by re onciliation bring the people who were natives of this island back to the love of their flag and country, and would cause them to embrace the monarchy of Spain when it held out to them the gentle hand of promise and made the faithful pledge that in the future their political and personal situation should be better than it had ever been.

I will take occasion here to remark that those pledges were given by the Government of Spain to the people of Cuba, and in consequence of the fact that the Government of the United States at that time turned its back upon the slaughter of more than 600 prisoners by a general who ordered them to be shot down like cattle in a slaughter pen, those people, seeing that the circumstances of their situation were such that they could have no sympathy and comfort from the outside world, turned again to Spain and yielded to her their submission. What has been the result of it? The fruit of it, Mr. President, is now too obvious and distinct to admit of question. The persecutions were renewed because we did not force upon Spain a more humane policy. The promises thus made by Spain to procure the submission of the people of Cuba under the circumstances recited in the message of General Grant have been broken in every possible form, as the Cubans assert, and it has renewed the spirit of revolution, the desire for emancipation, and the love of liberty more potently than it has ever existed heretofore in the Island of Cuba. It may be very well said that our forbearance toward Spain and our omission to do a duty which even then turned our nerves almost into steel with anxiety to perform it have been one more inciting cause of the present lamentable condition of affairs in that island.

This war kept on during President Grant's two terms in office and then during the term of Mr. Hayes in office, and during a part of the term of Mr. Arthur in office, before it could be ended, and it was not until his Administration had proceeded for more than a year, I believe, that Mr. Arthur congratulated the Congress of the United States and the people of the United States on the termination of hostilities in Cuba, under circumstances which promised relief to those people from the oppressions which they had theretofore endured, through the firm, distinct promises of the Government of Spain, all of which Cubans insist have been broken and about which I think there can not be any possible doubt.

The Cubans allege that Spain has broken faith with her own people-that breach of faith which is treason to honor and cruelty added to deliberate deception. Vattel describes civil war and its incidents and results on pages 424 and 425, which I will not now stop to read, and on page 423 of his wonderful book he treats of the obligations of the sovereign to keep faith with the subjects whose submission he has obtained through promises. I refer to these pages for the purpose of getting the attention of Senators to the fundamental law which is laid down by that great writer on the subject of the duty of a government to keep faith with its own citizens when they have once risen in rebellion against that government and at the end of strife or war have yielded their submission to the government upon certain published and agreed conditions. When the submission of the people is obtained by promises of reform, or the conception of new guaranties of liberties to them, there can be no dispute about the justice of their resistance.

If the people of Cuba had been at war with the United States

and had surrendered to us, if you please, on a pledge given by treaty that we would grant to them certain rights and privileges, and afterwards we had wickedly and unjustly refused to comply with our promise, that would be a cause of complaint as between two nations which would be classed among that great, almost innumerable, category of causes of complaint which have so fre quently brought the nations of the earth into antagonism on battlefields. But in a case of that kind there would be no breach of moral faith toward men of your own blood and your own kindred who had a quarrel, admitted to be righteous and just, to a large extent, because of the reformation which was promised, which quarrel was settled by a submission on the grounds that they would return to all their duties to that government if the government would promise to secure them certain rights and privileges which were thereupon agreed to.

Such agreements between the subject and the crown, between the party who must submit to the superior force of his own government and the ruling authorities, are attended with a sanction that does not belong to any of the ordinary agreements between nation and nation. They are rested upon the supposition that the monarch has a friendship, a regard, and even a love for his subjects; that he is not their natural enemy; that he is not in office for the purpose of breaking faith with them and robbing them of privileges and rights which he has solemnly granted to them.

But, Mr. President, the history of Cuba from 1717 to the present time is almost a continuous record of complaints, riots, attempted revolutions by the natives on account of alleged oppressions of Spanish rulers and the breach of the promises with which they were compelled to buy their peace from time to time. The measures of repression by which those complaints were stifled and the insurrections were suppressed were extremely cruel and destructive. President Grant has recited some of those things in his message to the Congress of the United States, which I have just read, to which no tongue and no pen could add anything by way of emphasis or to darken the picture.

Twelve men were hanged by Captain-General Guazo in 1723, nearly two centuries ago, and a state of siege was then authorized to be declared throughout the island whenever the Captain-General wished it as a precautionary measure. The Island of Cuba from 1723 down to the present time has been left in an attitude where a captain-general at his will and pleasure at any moment of time can declare a state of siege and the existence of martial law. Now, it is impossible to conceive that any people in the world can be under a inore strenuous, disagreeable, and dangerous restraint and threat than that which results from the power of their ruler, without consulting anybody else at all, at any moment of time to declare a state of war.

Mr. FRYE. Has the Captain-General ever been a Cuban? Mr. MORGAN. Oh, no. That was never within the contemplation of the Government of Spain so far as I have ever heard. In 1851 fifty men of the Lopez expedition were shot in Habana. These are not referred to by General Grant except in general terms. In 1854 Pinto and his associates to the number of 100 men were shot or deported. Then followed the ten years' war from 1867 to 1878, during the progress of which these enormities occurred to which General Grant refers. Spain had more than 90,000 troops in the field in that war. In 1869 the Spanish troops committed atrocities that shocked the civilized world in the wholesale slaugh