In the negotiations for the treaty of 1795, Jefferson, then Secretary of State, put on record a principle which, with few exceptions, has ever since been observed. He declared that "we should have nothing to do with conquest," and that "we had with sincere and particular disposition courted and cultivated the friendship of Spain." The treaty was obtained, but friendship was severely strained by Spanish captures of American merchantmen, and by American claims to West Florida; not till 1821 was the danger of war finally relieved by the cession of the Floridas. From that time, notwithstanding the contrast in the habits and aims of the two nations, there has been but one serious cause of controversy with Spain -Cuba; and for many years the United States avoided an issue on that question by standing virtually as the guarantor of the Spanish dominion of the island against foreign powers, and even against the Cubans.

For instance, Clay, in 1825, gave formal notice that the United States, for themselves, desired no change in the political condition of Cuba." President Van Buren, in 1840, assured Spain that "in case of any attempt, from whatever quarter, to wrest from her this portion of her territory, she may securely depend upon the military and naval resources of the United States to aid in preserving or recovering it." Secretary Fish, in 1871, was justified in saying that "the United States have no other right to interpose than that growing out of the friendly relations which have always existed between them and Spain, and the good faith with which they have observed their duties and obligations."

The subversion of the Spanish monarchy by Napoleon in 1807, for the first time revealed to American statesmen their responsibility for Cuba. President Jefferson was a man of peace; Secretaryof State Madison thought well of human nature; Secretary-of-the-Treasury Gallatin was a hard-headed man, not frightened by bugaboos; but the three men united in the belief that France meant also to take Cuba. Hence, Jefferson, August 16, 1807, made the earliest recorded suggestion of annexation to the United States: "Probably

tion, in case of a war with Spain." In 1809 he prophesied the annexation of Cuba and Canada; "and we should have such an empire for Liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation; and I am persuaded that no constitution was ever before as well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government." But he qualified his empire by two limitations: "I would immediately erect a column on the southernmost limit of Cuba, and inscribe on it ne plus ultra as to us in that direction;" and: Cuba can be defended by us without a navy, and this develops a principle which ought to limit our views. Nothing should ever be accepted which would require a navy to defend it."

Another real danger was that England should wrest away some of the Spanish colonies; and in 1806 a British force, afterwards disavowed, captured Buenos Ayres. Gallatin feared British ascendency" in Cuba; and Madison, in 1811, thought that England will play some game with Cuba if the United States take possession of East Florida." The danger was averted when England became the ally of Spain in 1809; Wellington's troops virtually helped to save Cuba from France.

Meanwhile new dangers arose in three quarters at once. As the only remaining stronghold of Spanish power, Cuba became the military objective of Mexico and Colombia in their war with Spain; at the same time there was a rising in Porto Rico and much uneasiness in Cuba, where several attempts were made to raise a revolt; and there were hints that aid was to come from sympathizers in the United States. To crown all, from 1819 to 1823 rumors abounded that England was treating with Spain for Cuba. As the London Courier said, in 1825,

"Cuba is the Turkey of transatlantic politics, tottering to its fall, and kept from falling only by the struggles of those who contend for the right of catching her in her descent."

In the critical years of 1822-3 every policy was considered which has been suggested in the seventy-five years since: encouraging Cuban insurrection, filibustering, warning other American powers, warning European powers, good advice to Spain, joint guaranty, purchase, and forced annexation.

In the midst of this rumor and excitement there appeared in Washington, in 1822, one Sanchez, purporting to be a secret agent of an organization of Cubans who were ready to declare the island independent of Spain if Monroe would admit it as a State into the Union. This extraordinary overture was gravely discussed by the cabinet, and Monroe gave the man two letters-one refusing to take any step hostile to Spain, the other ask ing for more information. Sanchez thereupon disappears, and with him the first distinct scheme of annexation through independence.

We find the policy of the government summed up in an elaborate despatch by John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, April 28, 1823: "In looking forward to the probable course of events for the short period of half a century, it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our Federal republic will be indispensable to the continuance and the integrity of the Union itself.... The question both of our right and of our power to prevent.... the transfer of Cuba to Great Britain, if necessary by force, already obtrudes itself upon our councils."

Just at this time sprang up an idea -later of much importance-that Cuba could be made safe by a mutual disclaimer by England and the United States. President Monroe was pleased with the idea; Adams inclined to it; Gallatin, as minister to England, thought it the solution; but no joint declaration was made, and the United States escaped an "entangling alliance."

Nevertheless, it was thought expedient from time to time to renew a warning. Thus in 1840 President Van Buren warned Spain that the United States would "prevent at all hazards military occupation by England." Again, in 1843, Web

ster brought forward the argument that we might annex Cuba if necessary to prevent English annexation. At various times from 1845 to 1861 there were rumors of British designs in Cuba; but there was never serious danger from that quarter after 1823; for it was evident that for any European nation to take Cuba, with or without the consent of Spain, meant war with the United States.

The year 1823 is the dividing-line in Cuban diplomacy. Up to that time independence and even annexation seemed probable; after that time both were for twenty years discouraged by the American government. When Adams became President in 1825, he allowed the suggestion to the Spanish government that Cuba be deposited with the United States as a pledge for "a loan"; but this first attempt to buy Cuba had no success. ready a new force had begun to hold the nation back, alike from schemes of annexation and of Cuban independence. That force was slavery, and it affected even such Northern men as Adams, Van Buren, and Webster.

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The first evidence is an appeal to Russia in 1825 to move Spain to recognize the independence of Mexico and Colombia, so as to stop the war, and avert their project for invading Cuba and Porto Rico. The real trouble was that the new Latin American States, as James Buchanan put it, "always marched under the standard of universal emancipation," and might free the Cuban slaves. The demand of the slaveholders was more distinctly stated in 1826 by John M. Berrien, of Georgia: "If our interests and safety shall require us to say to these new republics, Cuba and Porto Rico must remain as they are,' we are free to say it, and, by the blessing of God and the strength of our arms, to enforce the declaration."

The protest of the United States was effectual. Mexico and Colombia forbore to attack their enemy Spain in her most vulnerable spot, and thus was lost the best opportunity of the century for getting Cuba out of the hands of Spain without any interference by the United States. The policy was continued for many years. Van Buren, in 1829, said it was "the interest of the Southern section of the Union that no attempt should be made in that island to throw off the yoke of Spanish

dependence"; and Webster, in 1843, feared that Cuban emancipation would "strike a death-blow at the existence of slavery in the United States."

The indifference of the United States to the acquisition of Cuba was, however, not wholly due to slavery. Van Buren praised "the wisdom which induced the Spanish government" to open Cuban ports to general commerce. As for new territory, the annexationists were directing all their energies to Texas, where slavery was in no danger; and beneath all sectional interests there lay a national unwillingness to get involved in Cuba.

In the history of the United States the policy of annexation has always grown by what it feeds on. After Louisiana came Oregon and the Floridas; after Texas came New Mexico and California; and before their status was settled in 1850, schemes had sprung up for annexing Yucatan, Hawaii, Central America, the Lobos Islands, and Cuba. By this time the country could choose any one of the three methods sanctioned by experience: it might buy Cuba as Louisiana had been bought; it might assist Cuban independence as a preliminary to later incorporation, as in Texas; or it might adopt the Roman method of seizing the coveted land as it had seized California. Each of these three methods was tried in turn, and each was unsuccessful.

The apostle of annexation from 1848 to 1861 was James Buchanan, Secretary of State, later minister to England, later still President. In 1848 he revived the plan of purchasing Cuba by offering $100,000,000 for the island. Undeterred by an of fended refusal, President Pierce, in 1853, desired to have a few millions put at his disposal; but the Spanish Secretary of Foreign Affairs declared that "to part with Cuba would be to part with national honor." Plans of purchase now languished, till Buchanan became President; his request for thirty millions "to acquire Cuba by honorable negotiation" could not stand against the insight of men like Ben Wade, who said that annexation at that time was a question of "giving niggers to the niggerless." Since 1861 there has been no official offer for Cuba.

Side by side with these schemes of purchase went the idea of annexation through Cuban independence. Presidents Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, and Pierce, for various

reasons, frowned on the expeditions organized in the United States from 1849 to 1854 to descend on Cuba; and the Cubans did not co-operate. Nevertheless, about two hundred Americans joined General Lopez in a landing in Cuba in August, 1851; he was defeated, and many of the surviving Americans were shot in cold blood after surrender. Though they had taken their lives in their own hands, they were prisoners of war, and the execution was a barbarity. Hence rioters attacked the house of the Spanish consul in New Orleans and tore a Spanish flag into fragments; eventually the United States made an indemnity to the consul, and the storm passed by.

Failing purchase or insurrection, annexation by force seemed the only possible method. To head off such a scheme England and France, in 1851, proposed、 that the United States should join in a tripartite declaration against exclusive control of Cuba by any of the three. Secretary Everett, in 1852, replied by asserting in round terms the truth that the United States had an interest in Cuba incomparably greater than that of any other power, and that, "under certain contingencies, it might be essential to our safety"; though the President "would consider its acquisition by force (except in a just war with Spain) as a disgrace to the civilization of the age." From Everett's despatch to 1895, Spain and the United States were left to settle their affairs face to face, with no aid from a European conclave.

When Pierce appointed so fiery an annexationist as Pierre Soulé minister to Spain in 1853 it did not seem likely that any reasonable offer of just war" would be declined. The occasion came February 28, 1854, by the seizure, on a technicality, of the cargo of the steamer Black Warrior, in Havana. Soulé blew the coals in Spain, and demanded indemnity within forty-eight hours by the Spanish secretary's clock. Calderon sternly replied that he was not accustomed to the harsh and imperious manner in which this matter has been expressed."

In this crisis the decisive influence was the Kansas-Nebraska bill, by which the President had already raised up a powerful and implacable opposition. He could not take a second aggressive step for slavery, and the reparation offered by Spain for the Black Warrior affair was accept

ed. One is tempted to wish that Pierce had defied the moral sentiment of the country consistently, and by unrequited annexation had spared us forty years of Cuban diplomacy. When the pirate Menas whispered to Pompey,

"These three world-sharers, these competitors,
Are in thy vessel: let me cut the cable,
And when we are put off, fall to their throats.
All there is thine,"

the conqueror could but reply,

"Ah, this thou shouldst have done, And not have spoken on't. In me, 'tis villany." Hardly had peace been assured, when it was endangered by the Ostend Manifesto, framed by Buchanan, Mason, and Soulé, the baldest and blackest plea that was ever made for the forcible annexation of Cuba: "If Cuba in the possession of Spain seriously endangers our internal peace and the existence of our 'cherished Union, then by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain." In essence the argument was nothing other than that Cuba must be annexed, in order to keep slavery alive in the United States. The rise of the controversy over secession, for the time being, left the Cuban question behind, a dead issue.

After the civil war attention was recalled to Cuba by several changes of circumstances. First, we had strenuously protested against the recognition of insurgent communities. Secondly, Secretary Seward attempted to inaugurate a new era of annexations; he got Alaska, and treated for St. Thomas and San Domingo, and we were thus confronted with a new West Indian policy. Thirdly, the extortions and aggressions of Spanish administration in Cuba were felt with more irritation every year. For instance, Spain claimed that the boundary of Cuba extended six miles out to sea instead of three miles; American negro seamen were not allowed ashore; men-of-war off Cuban ports were not to send in their boats; Americans were impressed, taxed, their property embargoed or confiscated in violation of the treaty of 1795. That the American citizens thus maltreated bore such names as Don Ramon Rivas y Lamar made no difference to the American government, which protected all naturalized citizens, however unpalatable they might be to the Cuban authorities. At the same time, the United States had now

become the advocate of freedom, and put a great pressure on Spain to emancipate the Cuban slaves.

The greatest change of all was the breaking out in 1868 of the first genuine spontaneous movement for Cuban independence. It was a favorable moment, for between September, 1868, and January, 1875, Spain passed through a Bourbon monarchy, a provisional government, an elective king, a republic, and the restoration of the Bourbon house. Under each of these régimes Cuba was impartially misgoverned. The Cubans had no port, had no regular combined army, and throve on guerilla operations. It was a dreadful warfare; and as has always happened in struggles between Spain and her colonists, it led to ferocity. Shooting prisoners and students, interruption of commerce, arbitrary government in Havana, destruction of property, and waste of human life-these were the incidents of the civil war in Cuba; yet the United States carefully held aloof from aid to the insurgents.

A crisis came in November, 1873. The steamer Virginius, registered as an American ship in the port of New York, was captured at sea by a Spanish vessel-ofwar, carried into a Cuban port, and there about fifty of her officers and crew were summarily shot. A double grievance was thus created: the seizure of an American vessel on the high seas and the killing of American citizens without civil trial. Spain could not govern her governors, for orders telegraphed from Spain had no effect; and the turn of President Grant's hand would have brought on war. The Spaniards, however, made out against the Virginius a clear case of fraud in getting her American register; and the President, a man whose courage was not to be questioned, accepted the surrender of the vessel, and an indemnity to the families of the murdered Americans; and thus he avoided the kindred issues of war and of annexation. ·

Meantime the Cuban insurrection dragged along, with a new crop of confiscations and exactions and forced loans, at the expense of American citizens. Claims for such grievances were adjusted under a convention of February, 1871; but in March, 1877, the Spanish government was still pleading to distribute the payment over a series of years. President Grant had in vain offered his media

tion "for the purpose of effecting by negotiation the peaceful separation of Cuba from Spain." Secretary Fish declared that "the ultimate issue of events in Cuba will be its independence." As the loss and misery of the war still continued, in December, 1875, President Grant intimated that "other nations will be compelled to assume the responsibility which devolves upon them, and to seriously consider the only remaining measures possible, mediation and intervention."

The word "intervention," in this sense of a joint protest, had hardly been heard since 1827; but the hint was sufficient to lead Spain to make concessions, which the Cubans accepted in 1877. President Grant's plan of foreign intervention was not invoked, and seems a serious departure from the century's policy that in Cuban diplomacy there are no other parties than Spain, the Cubans, and the United States.

Apparently a new period had come for Cuba; speedily relieved of slavery, trade less shackled, a good government promised, what was there to check its prosperity or to revive the difficulties with the United States? It was soon found that things fell back into their old rut; the Captain-General was still practically absolute; the island was saddled with the debt created to hold it in subjection; it was still exploited for the benefit of Spain, and the same wearisome impediments were laid on foreign traders. For example, in 1880 several vessels were fired upon by Spanish gunboats outside the jurisdiction of Cuba; in 1881 an American cattle-steamer, subject to a tax of $14 90, was taxed $387 40 because she had some lumber on board. In 1882 began a longdrawn-out correspondence on overcharges and illegal exactions by Spanish consuls over vexatious fines for small clerical errors, and over annoying passport regulations. The most serious trouble arose out of the refusal of the Spanish authorities to return estates confiscated during the war to American citizens of Cuban birth.

Meanwhile trade between the United States and Cuba was advancing by leaps and bounds. In 1850 the sum of the Cuban trade into and out of the United States was $20,000,000; in 1880, $76,000,000; in 1894, $105,000,000. American capital became engaged in sugar and other industries. The two countries tried to put their tariffs on a better footing by the

convention of 1884, for the mutual abandonment of discriminating duties; in 1893 Spain accepted reciprocity under the tariff of 1890; but the Cuban authorities evaded the privileges thus conferred, on the ground that they were governed by a special Spanish translation from the English version of the treaty, and not by the original Spanish version; and it was three years before the home government could straighten out this petty snarl.

In 1884-5 came some filibustering expeditions; the United States exerted itself to stop them, and there was no Cuban insurrection. On the whole, the years from 1879 to 1894 were freer from diplomatic controversy than any like period since 1845. Meanwhile the Cubans in the United States had accumulated a revolution fund of a million dollars.

Looking back over the century, we see how often Cuba has been a source of irritation, anxiety, and danger. Military, commercial, economic, ethical, and political reasons have combined to compel the United States to concern itself with the neighboring island. Nevertheless, from 1795 to 1895 there were but two cases of direct interference with the destinies of Cuba - by President John Quincy Adams in 1826, and by President Grant in 1875. We saw the Spanish Empire break up without stirring for Cuba; we saw filibusters in 1849-51, in 1854, in 1868-78, in 1884-5, and the administration never gave them aid or comfort; in 1854 and 1873 there came excuses for war, and they were not claimed. Among the advocates of the annexation of Cuba have been Presidents Jefferson, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Jackson, Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan, and it was not annexed.

Reviewing the whole period, it seems an historical truth that-so far from the Cuban policy of the United States having been one of aggression-few nations have shown more good temper toward a troublesome neighbor, more patience with diplomatic delays, or more self-restraint over a coveted possession. Even slavery, though it could prevent, could not procure, annexation. The Cuban controversy has not been sought by the United States: it arises out of the geographical and political conditions of America. As the French orator said in 1793: "I do not accuse the King; I do not accuse the nation; I do not accuse the people; I accuse the situation."