UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



741 



forces rapidly. The Spanish cruisers " Vizcaya " and 

 "Almirante Oquendo " left Havana on April 1 for 

 the purpose of meeting the torpedo fleet that was 

 about to be dispatched from the Canary Islands, 

 and they afterward remained at Puerto Rico, while 

 a squadron consisting of the armored cruisers " Em- 

 perador Carlos V " and " Infanta Maria Teresa," 

 the protected cruiser "Alfonso XIII," the torpedo 

 gunboat " Cristobal Colon," and the flotilla of de- 

 stroyers and torpedo boats assembled at the Cape 

 Verd Islands. 



In the United States troops were hurried to 

 the Atlantic seaboard from distant outposts. On 

 April 14 the army order was issued directing 8 

 regiments of the regular infantry to go to New 

 Orleans, 7 to Mobile, and 7 to Tampa, while 6 

 regiments of cavalry and all the light batteries 

 and artillery regiment s,except the Sixth and Seventh, 

 recently organized to man the new guns mounted 

 in the coast fortifications at New York and other 

 points, were ordered to Chickamauga. The coast 

 fortifications were strengthened and provided with 

 their still lacking guns as rapidly as these could be 

 be finished and mounted. Submarine mines were 

 planted in New York and other harbors. Nine new 

 war ships were added to the navy. The fleets at 

 Key West and Hampton Roads were stripped for 

 war. 



The Spaniards, though much behindhand in their 

 naval preparations, pushed forward their coast 

 fortifications at Havana, San Juan, and other West- 

 Indian ports, mounting mortars and heavy guns 

 with feverish haste. The volunteers and military 

 were put through daily drills. Havana already ex- 

 perienced the hardships of a siege, for commerce 

 was stopped and rice and other common articles of 

 1'ood rose to double the ordinary prices. The coast 

 line at Havana was heavily armed from Cojimar to 

 Morro Castle, and westward to the Chossera river, 

 with 16-inch Ordonez and many 12-inch and 10-inch 

 guns and lighter pieces at all available points. The 

 garrison was increased to 60,000 regulars and 40,000 

 volunteers. 



Marshal Blanco called on the volunteer officers to 

 complete their organizations and bring their men 

 up to the highest state of efficiency. These volun- 

 teers, of whom 45,000 were then on the rolls, and 

 who in a short time numbered more than 100,000, 

 were recruited exclusively from the Spanish resi- 

 dents of Cuba, who obtained exemption from all 

 other military service by remaining ten years in a 

 volunteer regiment. The armistice was not ob- 

 served by the Spanish troops any more than by the 

 rebels, who refused to recognize it or take advantage 

 of it in any form. The troops continued to act 

 against the insurgents in all the provinces, and in 

 Pinar del Rio some spirited engagements took place. 



The President's Message. On April 11 the 

 President sent his message to Congress. The con- 

 ditions of the Cuban struggle and its relation to 

 the state of the Union were thus reviewed : 



" The present revolution is but the successor of 

 similar insurrections which have occurred in Cuba 

 against the dominion of Spain, extending over a 

 period of nearly half a century, each of which, dur- 

 ing its progress, has subjected the United States to 

 great effort and expense in enforcing its neutrality 

 laws, caused enormous losses to American trade and 

 commerce, caused irritation, annoyance, and dis- 

 turbance among our citizens, and by the exercise of 

 cruel, barbarous, and uncivilized practices of war- 

 fare shocked the sensibilities and offended the hu- 

 mane sympathies of our people. Since the present 

 revolution began in February, 1895, this country 

 has seen the fertile domain at our threshold ravaged 

 by fire and sword in the course of a struggle un- 

 equaled in the history of the island, and rarely 



paralleled as to. the number of combatants and 

 the bitterness of the contest by revolution of modern 

 times where a dependent people, striving to be free, 

 have been opposed by the power of the sovereign 

 state. Our people have beheld a once prosperous 

 community reduced to comparative want, its lucra- 

 tive commerce virtually paralyzed, its exceptional 

 productiveness diminished, its fields laid waste, its 

 mills in ruins, and its people perishing by tens of 

 thousands from hunger and destitution. We have 

 found ourselves constrained, in the observance of 

 that strict neutrality which our laws enjoin, and 

 which the law of nations commands, to police our 

 own waters and watch our own seaports in preven- 

 tion of any unlawful act in aid of the Cubans. Our 

 trade suffered, the capital invested by our citizens 

 in Cuba has been largely lost, and the temper and 

 forbearance of our people have been so sorely tried 

 as to beget a perilous unrest among our own citizens, 

 which has inevitably found its expression from time 

 to time in the national Legislature, so that issues 

 wholly external to our own body politic engross at- 

 tention and stand in the way of that close devotion to 

 domestic advancement that becomes a self-contained 

 commonwealth whose primal maxim has been the 

 avoidance of foreign entanglements. All this must 

 needs awaken,and has indeed aroused,the utmost con- 

 cern on the part of this Government, as well during 

 my predecessor's term as in my own. In April, 1896, 

 the evils from which our country suffered through 

 the Cuban war became so onerous that my prede- 

 cessor made an effort to bring about a peace through 

 the mediation of this Government in any way that 

 might tend to an honorable adjustment of the con- 

 test between Spain and her revolted colony on the 

 basis of some effective scheme of self-government 

 for Cuba under the flag and sovereignty of Spain. 

 It failed through the refusal of the Sp'anish Gov- 

 ernment then in power to consider any form of 

 mediation or indeed any plan of settlement which 

 did not begin with the actual submission of the in- 

 surgents to the mother country, and then only on 

 such terms as Spain herself might see fit to grant. 

 The war continued unabated. The resistance of the 

 insurgents was in no wise diminished. The efforts 

 of Spain were increased both by the dispatch of 

 fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition to the hor- 

 rors of the strife of a new and inhuman phase, hap- 

 pily unprecedented in the modern history of civi- 

 lized Christian peoples. The policy of devastation 

 and concentration inaugurated by the Captain Gen- 

 eral's bando of Oct. 21, 1896, in the province of 

 Pinar del Rio was thence extended to embrace all 

 of the island to which the power of the Spanish 

 arms was able to reach by occupation or by military 

 operations. The peasantry, including all dwelling 

 in the open agricultural interior, were driven into 

 the garrison towns or isolated places held by the 

 troops. The raising and movement of provisions of 

 all kinds were interdicted. The fields were laid 

 waste, dwellings unroofed and fired, mills destroyed, 

 and in short everything that could desolate the 

 land and render it unfit for human habitation or 

 support was commanded by one or the other of the 

 contending parties and executed by all the powers 

 at their disposal. 



"By the time the present Administration took 

 office, a year ago, reconcentration so called had 

 been made effective over the better part of the four 

 central and western provinces,SantaClara, Matanzas, 

 Havana, and Pinar del Rio. The agricultural popu- 

 lation, to the estimated number of 300,000 or more, 

 was herded within the towns and their immediate 

 vicinage, deprived of the meansof support, rendered 

 destitute of shelter, left poorly clad, and exposed to 

 the most unsanitary conditions. As the scarcity of 

 food increased with the devastation of the depopu- 



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