enemy in a barbarous age, looking upon their fatal work as the well-merited spoliation of their despoilers. There are naturally in the dregs of this revolution anarchistic tendencies which, if it is unsuccessful, will become more apparent in the future. Meanwhile, with over 200,000 men (including the volunteers), the Government seems utterly unable, for the present, to put any check to this destruction.

Spain's rule is being weighed in its own unbalanced scales, measured with its own false, unequal measures, and found most lamentably wanting. Longdelayed retribution has come at last with red-handed avengers, Spain's own begetting, falling alike upon the just and the unjust and the innocent and the guilty-"Mene, tekel, upharsin," is being written in letters of fire from Cape San Antonio to Point Maisi, upon the black clouds of smoke from Cuba's blazing crops and villages, and the end is not. The fertile plains of the brightest jewel of the Spanish crown are once again being devastated by fire and sword; her rich soil is once again being fructified by human blood, while her verdant hills, silent witnesses of all the long, eventful story of sardonic nepotism, injustice, and misrule, seem to echo back the old war cry of the crusaders, "It is the will of God; it is the will of God."

Mr. MORGAN. If I had had this letter read in the beginning of my remarks I would not have needed to say much else; but it is due to the committee, whose action I am endeavoring to justify, that I should present to the Senate this and other authentic evidence upon which its action is based.

The committee have made no mistake in declaring that—

A condition of public war exists between the Government of Spain and the government proclaimed, and for some time maintained by force of arms, by the people of Cuba.

This Cuban government rests upon the civil power of the people who support it and recognizes, as we do, that the military power is subordinate to the civil power. The government of the Republic of Cuba, through its accredited agent, has sent to our Government a statement of their claims for recognition as belligerents, in which there is no apparent misrepresentation as to existing facts and conditions in Cuba.

I will hereafter lay before the Senate so much of that document as relates to the organization, constitution, and some general laws of the Republic of Cuba.

These papers are carefully prepared and bear witness to a remarkable aptitude and ability in the organization of a new republic, born in the throes and travail of internecine war.

We find, then, the actual existence of an open civil war for independence, waged by a great number of the people of Cuba who sanction it and give to it their support through the powers of civil government, and support it also with large, well-organized, and brave armies in the field, which have already overrun and are in control of more than half the territory of Cuba.

This situation fully justifies the United States in giving recognition to the Cuban Republic as a belligerent power and to the people of Cuba our recognition of their rights under the laws of civilized warfare.

If this resolution is adopted, it will impose upon the United States certain duties to which we must give careful consideration.

1. What is the attitude of the United States toward Spain if the belligerent rights of Cuba are recognized?

It is an attitude of peace and friendship, without either the intent to give offense or to challenge or dispute the sovereignty of Spain over the Island of Cuba. Spain did not offend the United States when she recognized the Confederate States as belligerents, nor do we offend Spain by recognizing the Cuban Republic or the Cuban people as belligerents in an open public war.

We do not conceal the earnest sympathy of our people with the

people of Cuba in their struggle for independence, but until we are compelled we will not raise a hand to assist them.

General Grant in his special message to the Congress of the United States on the subject of recognizing the belligerency of Cuba in the then existing war with Spain, on the 13th of June, 1870, says as follows:

The question of belligerency is one of fact not to be decided by sympathies for or prejudices against either party. The relations between the parent state and the insurgents must amount, in fact, to war in the sense of international law. Fighting, though fierce and protracted, does not alone constitute war; there must be military forces acting in accordance with the rules and customs of war-flags of truce, cartels, exchange of prisoners, etc.-and to justify a recognition of belligerency there must be, above all, a de facto political organization of the insurgents sufficient in character and resources to constitute it, if left to itself, a state among nations capable of discharging the duties of a state, and of meeting the just responsibilities it may incur as such toward other powers in the discharge of its national duties.

That was a statement made by General Grant in his message, upon which he predicated a refusal to recognize the belligerent rights of Cuba in the preceding war. The present situation in Cuba has brought those people entirely within the strictest construction of all the doctrines and principles stated in the message of General Grant. I deem it unnecessary to read any further from the great number of authorities, many of them American, in which this same doctrine is stated, oftentimes with greater liberality, in favor of according belligerent rights than it is here stated by General Grant.

If we act in good faith and from proper motives in recognizing the belligerent rights of the Cubans and of the government they set up, Spain has no claim upon us, by treaty or otherwise, that forbids us to give this recognition.

The question on which our rights hinge in this matter is a question of fact which we must decide for ourselves.

I quote from a statement of Mr. Webster, made on the 5th of April, 1842, in a paper which he addressed to Mr. Thompson:

If citizens of the United States, enlisted in the service of an insurgent power whom the United States acknowledges as belligerent, but which is not so acknowledged by the parent State, should be treated when captured by the parent State otherwise than as prisoners of war, and their release, when demanded by the United States, should be refused, consequences of the most serious character would certainly ensue."

Mr. Cass says on the same subject:

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I am not aware that in this country any solemn proceeding, either legisla tive or executive, has been adopted for the purpose of declaring the status of an insurrectionary movement abroad, and whether it is entitled to the attributes of civil war, unless, indeed, in the formal recognition of a portion of an empire seeking to establish its independence, which, in fact, does not so much admit its existence as it announces its result, at least so far as regards the nation thus proclaiming its decision. But that is the case of the admission of a new member into the family of nations.

Mr. Cass refers to "the case of the admission of a new member into the family of nations," as to which it must be observed that there is a very marked distinction. We have had three recent illustrations of the action of the Government of the United States in the admission of republican forms of government to succeed monarchies, one in France, one in Spain, and one in Brazil, in all of which, having ministers recognized by the Government which had previously existed, when the change took place from monarchy to republicanism, our Government was in haste to recognize the republics, and in the case of France, and of Spain also, authorized the recognition of the new republics by cablegram.

When, however, a country is divided asunder, some of its provinces or parts falling off from the others and claiming independence, particularly when that country is one of contiguous territory, as in the case of Texas, the recognition must be made by some other power than the President of the United States, because that fact brings a new nation into the family of nations and the political existence of that nation as one of the family of nations must be established in this country by law. Thereafter, when it is thus established and thus recognized by law, the President of the United States, as the Chief Executive, and as the constitutional conductor of our diplomatic relations, has the right to recognize the person who may preside in that Government as being entitled to exercise the functions of his office. General Cass draws, inferentially, the distinction between the two cases in the remarks that I have just read.

Mr. Fish, in a letter to Mr. Motley dated the 25th of September, 1869, says:

The President does not deny, on the contrary he maintains, that every sovereign power decides for itself, on its responsibility, tho question whether or not it will, at a given time, accord the status of belligerency to the insurgent subjects of another power, as also the larger question of the independence of such subjects and their accession to the family of sovereign states.

Thus we see that the right to recognize a foreign government as being a belligerent power is one that the Government of the United States asserts upon its own responsibility, and, I will add, with reference only to the rights and sympathies of its own people. It does not stop to consider whether or not it has a justification in the eyes of the country within whose limits an insurrection has arisen which has grown into the proportions of public war and a declaration of independence. It does not stop to consider the merits or justice of the case as between the insurgents and the mother country.

It does not stop to weigh with fine nicety of distinction what may be the appropriate moral sentiment of the mother country in refusing to give up the portion of her territory thus claiming independence. What the United States Government does and must do in a case of that kind is to follow the line of the interests and rights of her own people and the duties and obligations she owes to them.

I will admit that in acting in this way she may have very slight justification or no justification, and the motives of her action may be attributed to some jealousy of the mother country, to some ancient pique, or grudge, or revenge. If this was true, the Government of the United States could be held morally responsible in the sense of the laws of nations for having interfered without just cause or necessity in the affairs of another country. But when, as we have seen in the statements that I have brought to the attention of the Senate, commencing as far back as 1823, there is a continuous purpose on the part of the Government of the United States to see that no inhuman persecutions shall be visited upon the Cuban people because they felt the aspirations of liberty burning in their hearts, when we have pursued during all of this period of time the most guarded and conservative course toward Spain, when we have placed, as I remarked last Thursday, statutes upon our books of the severest character to prevent our people from availing themselves of the ordinary privileges of the laws of nations in cases like this, nothing can be imputed to us except that we are driven by the power of facts, for which we are not in the

slightest degree responsible, to that serious attitude in which we are bound to acknowledge, in deference to the rights and feelings of our own people, that the people of Cuba are lawful belligerents under the laws of nations.

The reasons why the Government of the United States has this peculiar right under these peculiar circumstances are various and numerous. I will undertake to cite a very few of them. First, the nearness of the strife to our own borders. Mr. Fish, Secretary of State, writing to Mr. Motley, 25th of September, 1869, announces this doctrine:

Or actual hostility might have continued to rage in the theater of insurgent war, combat after combat might have been fought for such a period of time, a mass of men may have engaged in actual war until they should have acquired the consistency of military power, to repeat the idea of Mr. Canning, so as evidently to constitute the fact of belligerency, and to justify the recognition by the neutral. Or the nearness of the seat of hostilities to the neutral may compel the latter to act; it might be his sovereign duty to act, however inconvenient such action should be to the legitimate government. President Grant, in his annual message in 1875, says:

The question of according or withholding rights of belligerency must be judged in every case in view of the particular attending facts. *** This conflict must be one which will be recognized in the sense of international law as war. Belligerency, too, is a fact. The mere existence of contending armed bodies and their occasional conflicts do not constitute war in the sense referred to.

A civil war

said Judge Grier, giving the opinion of the Supreme Court in the Prize Cases (2 Black, 667)—

is never solemnly declared; it becomes such by its accidents-the number, power, and organization of the persons who originate and carry it on. When the party in rebellion occupy and hold in a hostile manner a certain portion of territory; have declared their independence; have cast off their allegiance; have organized armies; have commenced hostilities against their former sovereign, the world acknowledges them as belligerents and the contest a war. I now read from Woolsey on International Law, App. 111, note 19: There may be a difficulty in ascertaining when the fact of war begins, and this difficulty is the greater in cases of insurrection or revolt, where many of the antecedents and premonitory tokens of war are wanting, where an insurrection may be of little account and easily suppressed, and where war bursts out full-blown, it may be, at once. Our Government has more than once professed to govern its action by the following criteria expressed in Mr. Monroe's words relating to the Spanish South American revolts: "As soon as the movement assumes such a steady and consistent form as to make the success of the provinces probable, the rights to which they were entitled by the law of nations, as equal parties to a civil war, have been extended to them." But this rule breaks down in several places. The probability is a creature of the mind, something merely subjective, and ought not to enter into a definition of what a nation ought to do. Again, the success does not depend on steadiness and consistency of form only, but on relative strength of the parties. If you make probability of success the criterion of right in the case, you have to weigh other circumstances before being able to judge which is most probable, success or defeat. Would you, if you conceded belligerent rights, withdraw the concession whenever success ceased to be probable? And, still further, such provinces in revolt are not entitled by the faw of nations to rights as equal parties to a civil war. They have properly no rights, and the concession of belligerency is not made on their account, but on account of considerations of policy on the part of the state itself which declares them such, or on grounds of humanity.

The writer then goes on to cite a number of instances which I will not undertake to detain the Senate by reading.

The time of this recognition is appropriate. I cite again, in support of this doctrine, Woolsey's International Law:

The true time for issuing such a declaration, if it is best to issue it at all, is when a revolt has its organized government prepared by law for war on either element or on both, and when some act, involving the open intention and the fact of war, has been performed by one or both of the parties. Here

are two facts, the one political, the other pertaining to the acts of a political body. The fact of war is either a declaration of war or some other implying it, like a proclamation of blockade, or, it may be, actual armed contest.

In the wars that have occurred in Cuba many occasions have presented when our withholding a declaration of belligerency and neutrality has been unjust to our national character, until, indeed, our forbearance has been counted to us by other powers as proof of our weakness as a government.

Our experiences in Cuba demand that no war shall exist there without our especial supervision as to the treatment of our people who are engaged in it, or are resident there, and if it is necessary for us to treat both parties as belligerents, we must do so in order to assert against them and impose upon each the duties and obligations of civilized warfare and of respect for the rights of our people.

With insurrections occurring in Cuba frequently, and almost with a regularity proportioned to the time needed to recover from one war before another is begun, and every struggle made disastrous to the property of our people in Cuba and horrible with the sacrifice of lives and other outrages on humanity, we have the right to interpose our recognition that a state of war exists and to maintain an armed neutrality, if need be, through which we shall separate between these warring parties, and hold the Government that is guilty of wrong to our citizens to its responsibility for such conduct.

If we consent to stand by and witness these Spanish methods of dealing with our people until these long struggles are ended, and then to seek the price of their blood through the protracted delays of Spanish diplomacy, the respect we shall thus exhibit for the sensibilities of a cruel monarchy will in the end destroy our selfrespect.

I prefer now, in anticipation of what is about to occur-and we know will surely occur, as it has in each of these bloody wars-to act upon the declaration of our rights made in President Jackson's seventh annual message, in 1835, from which I will read:

Unfortunately, many of the nations of this hemisphere are still self-tortured by domestic dissensions. Revolution succeeds revolution; injuries are committed upon foreigners engaged in lawful pursuits. Much time elapses before a government sufficiently stable is erected to justify expectation of redress. Ministers are sent and received, and before the discussions of past injuries are fairly begun, fresh troubles arise; but too frequently new injuries are added to the old, to be discussed together with the existing government, after it has proved its ability to sustain the assaults made upon it, or with its successor, if overthrown. If this unhappy condition of things continue much longer, other nations will be under the painful necessity of deciding whether justice to their suffering citizens does not require a prompt redress of injuries by their own power, without waiting for the establishment of a government competent and enduring enough to discuss and make satisfaction for them.

That was a doctrine which was evoked by the fact of our being near to nations which were constantly afflicted with these spasms of turbulence and revolution. President Jackson, after his usual style, met it with a declaration that is American through and through, and just through and through, and it is upon that ground we stand to-day as firmly as we stand upon any other that affects our honor, or peace, or the safety of our people, when we demand that Spain, in the conduct of its war against Cuba, shall accord to her the attitude of a belligerent, so that if she achieves her independence we can hold her responsible for the wrongs done to our people. When Spain has succeeded in suppressing these revolts against her sovereignty in Cuba, her wars have left to us the