Guantánamo

  32 Keeler’s move to Boston seems to have been driven more by wanderlust than by lack of opportunity in Bangor, which, despite the long, cyclical economic depression at the end of the nineteenth century, was successfully diversifying from an economy based solely on lumber to one of pulp and paper manufacturing, communications, and transportation. See Sara K. Martin, “The Little City in Itself: Middle-Class Aspiration in Bangor, Maine, 1880–1920,” M.A. thesis, University of Maine, 2001, chap. 1.

  33 Frank Keeler, The Journal of Frank Keeler, ed. Carolyn A. Tyson (Quantico, Va.: Marine Corps Papers Series, 1968), 3.

  34 Boston Morning Journal, March 25, 1898, 1.

  35 Ibid.

  36 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 3.

  37 Robert Huntington Sr. to Robert Huntington Jr., May 4, 1898, Huntington Papers, U.S. Marine Corps Library, Quantico, Va.

  38 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 4.

  39 Huntington Sr. to Huntington Jr., May 4, 1898; Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 4; Annual Reports of the Navy Department for the Year [hereafter ARND] 1898 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1898), 441; and Charles L. McCawley, “The Guantánamo Campaign of 1898,” The Marine Corps Gazette 1, 3 (Sept. 1916): 223.

  40 A large-animal veterinarian assures me that “horses don’t vomit,” but one wonders if he has ever been off Cape Hatteras in heavy weather on a boat with a horse.

  41 Huntington Sr. to Huntington Jr., May 4, 1898.

  42 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 25.

  43 Jack Cameron Dierks, A Leap to Arms: The Cuban Campaign of 1898 (Philadelphia: Lippincott Company, 1970), 49.

  44 Ibid., 49–50.

  45 Robert Huntington, Sr., to Robert Huntington, Jr., May 27, 1898, Huntington Papers, U.S. Marine Corps Library, Quantico, Va.

  46 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 5.

  47 Herbert H. Sargent, The Campaign of Santiago de Cuba (Chicago: A. C. McClure & Co., 1907), 2:47 and 1:47, 83.

  48 French Ensor Chadwick, The Relations of the United States and Spain: The Spanish American War, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 318; ARND, 448.

  49 Sargent, The Campaign, 1:83, 100, 2:102; Dierks, A Leap to Arms, 182.

  50 ARND, 392.

  51 C. F. Goodrich to William T. Sampson, May 19, 1898, ARND, 210–11.

  52 Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1897), 26.

  53 ARND, 210–11.

  54 ARND, 397.

  55 ARND, 399.

  56 ARND, 489; Sargent, The Campaign, 1: 228–29; Chadwick, Spanish-American War, 1:356; Henry B. Russell, History of Our War with Spain Including the Story of Cuba (Hartford, Conn.: A.D. Worthington & Co., 1898), 63.

  57 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 7.

  58 Ibid., 37.

  59 Ibid., 7.

  60 Ibid., 9.

  61 McCawley, “The Guantánamo Campaign,” 229; Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 11.

  62 Robert Huntington, Sr., to Robert Huntington, Jr., June 19, 1898, Huntington Papers, 3.

  63 Ibid.

  64 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 13; McCawley, “The Guantánamo Campaign,” 229–30.

  65 J. F. Holden-Rhodes, “The Marines Would Stay,” Marine Corps Gazette, November 1982, 69–70.

  66 McCawley, “The Guantánamo Campaign,” 232; Holden-Rhodes, “Marines Would Stay,” 70.

  67 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 13.

  68 McCawley, “The Guantánamo Campaign,” 232; Stephen Crane, “War Memories,” in R. W. Stallman and E. R. Hagemann, eds., The War Dispatches of Stephen Crane (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 269. Crane seems to get the day of this activity wrong, implying here that this happened on June 13, where generally more credible sources such as McCawley and Keeler give the date for the arrival of journalists and new guns as the twelfth.

  69 Arthur J. Burks, “Recall in Cuba,” Leatherneck 30, no. 12 (Dec. 1947): 58.

  70 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 13; Burks, “Recall in Cuba,” 58–59.

  71 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 14–17.

  72 Felix Pareja to Arsenio Linares y Pombo, June 10, 1898, ARND, 450 (letter captured by the Cubans en route to Santiago).

  73 Ibid.

  74 ARND, 447, 453, 502.

  75 See Captain McCalla’s report of Feb. 11, 1902, in Chadwick, Spanish American War, 1:376–77.

  76 Sargent, The Campaign, 99–100; Reynolds, “Guantánamo Bay,” 125–27.

  77 “Spanish Soldiers Starving,” New York Times, July 9, 1898, 2.

  78 Excerpt from the diary of José Muller y Tejeiro, ARND, 566.

  79 Chadwick, Spanish American War, 1:312–13.

  80 Sampson to Long, July 28, ARND, 614–15.

  81 ARND, 449–50.

  82 Robert Huntington Sr. to Robert Huntington Jr., July 29, 1898, Huntington Papers, 1.

  83 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 38.

  84 Ibid., 39; Robert Huntington Sr. to Robert Huntington Jr., June 19, 1898, Huntington Papers, 3.

  85 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 13. See also the respectful firsthand description of Enrique Tomas y Tomas, the Cuban colonel in charge of the Cuban contingent, in Burks, “Recall in Cuba,” 58–59.

  86 New York Times, June 19, 1898, 1.

  87 For evidence to the contrary, see Foner, Spanish- Cuban-American War, 1:359–68.

  88 Sargent, The Campaign, 2:165–66.

  89 Crane, Dispatches, 141–42.

  90 Ibid., 146.

  91 Ibid., 147.

  92 Ibid.

  93 New York Times, June 13, 1898.

  94 Keeler, Journal of Frank Keeler, 20–21.

  4 A CRUEL AND AWFUL TRUTH

  1 New York Herald interview with Máximo Gómez, Dec. 31, 1897, 1; García quoted in Philip S. Foner, The Spanish- Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, vol. 2 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), 355.

  2 Carlos García Vélez, “Cuba Against Spain,” in The American-Spanish War: A History by the War Leaders (Norwich, Conn.: Chas. C. Haskell and Son, 1899), 88–89.

  3 Calixto García to William Shafter, July 17, 1898, quoted in Foner, Spanish-Cuban-American War, vol. 2, 369–70.

  4 Elihu B. Root, “The Principles of Colonial Policy,” in Robert Bacon and James Brown Scott, eds., The Military and Colonial Policy of the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1916), 161–62.

  5 Walter L. Williams, “United States Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippine Annexation: Implications for the Origins of American Imperialism,” Journal of American History 66, no. 4 (March 1980): 811–12.

  6 Máximo Gómez, Diary, Jan. 8, 1899, at www.historyofcuba.com/history/gomez.htm.

  7 Charles Emory Smith, “The War for Humanity,” in Robert I. Fulton and Thomas C. Trueblood, eds., Patriotic Eloquence Relating to the Spanish-American War and Its Issues (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900), 290.

  8 Ibid., 292.

  9 Walter Hines Page, “The War with Spain, and After,” Atlantic Monthly 81 (June 1898): 488.

  10 John Henry Barrows, “The National Peace Jubilee,” in Fulton and Trueblood, eds., Patriotic Eloquence, 14–17.

  11 Franklin MacVeagh, “Not Mere Land Expansion,” in Fulton and Trueblood, eds., Patriotic Eloquence, 240–42.

  12 John Ireland, “America a World Power,” in Fulton and Trueblood, eds., Patriotic Eloquence, 171–73.

  13 Albert J. Beveridge, “March of the Flag,” in Fulton and Trueblood, eds., Patriotic Eloquence, 27.

  14 Ibid., 28–29.

  15 William Jennings Bryan, “George Washington,” in Fulton and Trueblood, eds., Patriotic Eloquence, 48–53.

  16 Woodrow Wilson, “Education and Democracy,” delivered at Columbia University, May 4, 1907, in Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 17, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966–1994), 135.

  17 Herbert Pelham Williams, “The Outlook in Cuba,” Atlantic Monthly 83, no. 500 (June 1899)
: 827.

  18 Ibid., 829.

  19 Alfred Russel Wallace, “America, Cuba, and the Philippines,” Daily Chronicle (London), Jan. 19, 1899, 3.

  20 Williams, “The Outlook in Cuba,” 830.

  21 Ibid., 832–36.

  22 Ibid., 833.

  23 Leonard Wood, “The Existing Conditions and Need in Cuba,” North American Review 168, no. 510 (May 1899): 594.

  24 Ibid., 594–95.

  25 Ibid., 595.

  26 Ibid., 597.

  27 Ibid., 601.

  28 Leonard Wood, “The Present Situation in Cuba,” Century Magazine 58, no. 4 (August 1899): 639–40.

  29 Horatio S. Rubens, “The Insurgent Government in Cuba,” North American Review 166, no. 498 (May 1898): 562.

  30 Ibid., 563.

  31 Ibid.

  32 Ibid., 564.

  33 Ibid., 566–67.

  34 Ibid., 569.

  35 Máximo Gómez, Diary, Jan. 1899.

  36 “Cubans Turn Bandits,” Evening News (San Jose, Calif.), Oct. 5, 1898, 1.

  37 “Cuba’s General Resigns,” New York Journal, Oct. 13, 1898, 3.

  38 “General Wood Visits Guantánamo,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 1898, 4.

  39 “Guantánamo’s Robinhood,” Idaho Daily Statesman (Boise), Dec. 26, 1898, 1.

  40 “Furnished Arms to Cubans,” Colorado Springs Gazette, Dec. 26, 1898, 1; “Guantánamo Commission’s Report,” New York Times, Jan. 2, 1899, 2; “Investigation at Guantánamo,” New York Times, Dec. 28, 1898, 3.

  41 “Cubans Are Wrathy,” Morning Oregonian (Portland), Jan. 25, 1899, 2.

  42 Frances J. Higginson to Leonard Wood, Feb. 17, 1902, Leonard Wood Papers, Subject File: Cuba [1898–1902], Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as LWP).

  43 Ibid.

  44 Albert G. Robinson, “The Work of the Cuban Convention,” Forum 31, no. 4 (June 1901): 401. Wood’s over-optimistic reports of Cuban opinion were the subject of close scrutiny by American journalists, and seem to have caught Secretary of War Root and some members of Congress by surprise. See “Serious Situation in Cuba,” Springfield Daily Republican, March 9, 1901, 6; Foner, Spanish-Cuban-American War, vol. 2.

  45 Leonard Wood, Civil Report on Cuba, U.S. War Department, Washington, D.C., 1901, 21.

  46 Order number 301, Military Governor of Cuba, July 25, 1900, Foreign Relations of the United States, series available at digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS, 1900, 358–59 (hereafter cited as FRUS).

  47 Robinson, “Work of the Cuban Convention,” 401.

  48 Order number 455, Military Governor of Cuba, Nov. 9, 1900, in FRUS, 359–60.

  49 The text of the Teller Amendment is available at www.etsu.edu/cas/history/docs/teller.htm.

  50 Elihu Root to Albert Shaw, Feb. 23, 1901, in LWP.

  51 “Cuban Problem Again Acute,” Pawtucket (R.I.) Times, Jan. 29, 1901, 7.

  52 Ibid.

  53 Leonard Wood to Elihu Root, Jan. 4, 1901, in LWP.

  54 “Cuban Problem Again Acute,” 7.

  55 Leonard Wood to Elihu Root, Feb. 27, 1901, in LWP.

  56 Robinson, “The Work of the Cuban Convention,” 401.

  57 “Report on the Relations Which Should Exist Between Cuba and the United States,” Feb. 26, 1901, in Foreign Relations of the United States (trans.), 1902, 361.

  58 Ibid., 362.

  59 Ibid., 362–63.

  60 The New York Times cites a February 1 editorial from La Nación in support of liberal terms of U.S.-Cuban relations, which includes the lease of two coaling stations; New York Times, Feb. 15, 1901, 6; Root to Wood, Feb. 9, 1901, in LWP.

  61 Wood to Root, March 4, 1901, in LWP. “Serious Situation in Cuba,” Springfield (Mass.) Daily Republican, March 9, 1901, quotes the radical Cuban daily La Patria describing how Wood’s misinformation on Cuban political sentiment swayed the administration and Congress into adopting Platt.

  62 Wood to Root, Feb. 27, 1901, in LWP.

  63 “Aspects of the Cuban Situation,” Springfield (Mass.) Daily Republican, April 5, 1901.

  64 “The Deed Is Done,” The State, March 1, 1901, 4.

  65 “The Sovereignty of Cuba,” New York Times, Feb. 11, 1901, 6.

  66 Ibid.

  67 “A Stable Government in Cuba,” New York Times, Feb. 18, 1901, 6.

  68 Ibid.

  69 “Meeting Not Harmonious,” Columbus Daily Inquirer, March 29, 1901, 1.

  70 Foner, Spanish-Cuban-American War, 2:603–11.

  71 “Ponencia del Sr. Juan Gualberto Gómez, miembro de la comisión designada para proponer la respuesta a la comunicación del gobernador militar de Cuba,” March 26, 1901, Apéndice H, in Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, Historia de la Enmienda Platt (1961), 235–37.

  72 Ibid., 240–41.

  73 Ibid., 242–43.

  74 Ibid.

  75 Ibid.

  76 Root’s response quoted in Wood to Domingo Méndez Capote, April 3, 1901, in LWP.

  77 Informe de la Comisión Designada para Avistarse con el Gobierno de los Estados Unidos, Dando Cuenta del Resultado de sus Gestiones, May 7, 1901, in Leuchsenring, Historia de la Enmienda Platt, 251–52.

  78 Ibid., 254–55.

  79 Adición al Informe Presentado por la Comisión Nombrada el Día de Abril Úl-timo, in Ibid., 263.

  80 Comunicación del Gobernador Militar de Cuba, Trasladando el Informe del Secretario de la Guerra de los Estados Unidos, sobre Aceptación de la Enmienda Platt, June 8, 1901, in Leuchsenring, Historia de la Enmienda Platt, 271.

  81 Wood to Roosevelt, Oct. 28, 1901, in LWP.

  5 GUANTÁNAMO BLUES

  1 Herbert Corey, “Across the Equator with the American Navy,” National Geographic, 39, no. 6 (June 1921): 590.

  2 Ibid., 591.

  3 Ibid., 577.

  4 Ibid., 580.

  5 Ibid., 590.

  6 Ibid., 591.

  7 Ibid., 592–93.

  8 The fullest account of this is Louis A. Pérez Jr., On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (New York: Ecco Press, 1999), chap. 2. See also Robert B. Hoernel, “Sugar and Social Change in Oriente, Cuba, 1898–1946,” Journal of Latin American Studies 8, no. 2 (Nov. 1976): 220; Carmen Diana Deere, “Here Come the Yankees! The Rise and Decline of the United States Colonies in Cuba,” Hispanic American Historical Review 78, no. 4 (Nov. 1998), 733, 738–39; as well as Louis Pérez, Jr., “Politics, Peasants, and People of Color: The 1912 Race War in Cuba Reconsidered,” Hispanic American Historical Review 66, no. 3 (Aug. 1986): 509–39.

  9 Hoernel, “Sugar and Social Change,” 221–22, 225–29; Deere, “Here Come the Yankees!” 735–38; Pérez, On Becoming Cuban, 221–24; Pérez, “Politics, Peasants, and People of Color,” 509–12.

  10 Hoernel, “Sugar and Social Change,” 229–39.

  11 Secretary Long cited in Bradley M. Reynolds, “Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: The History of an American Naval Base and Its Relationship to the Formulation of U.S. Foreign Policy and Military Strategy Toward the Caribbean,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1982, 155.

  12 Henry Cabot Lodge, “Our Blundering Foreign Policy,” Forum (March 1895): 8. See also Richard Olney, “International Isolation of the United States,” Atlantic Monthly 81, no. 487 (May 1898): 577–88.

  13 Naval War Board to John D. Long, Aug. 1898, in Robert Seager II and Doris D. Maguire, eds., Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan, vol. 2, 1890–1901 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1975), 581–86.

  14 Naval War Board to John D. Long, Aug. 15–20, 1898, in Seager and Maguire, Letters and Papers, 588.

  15 Reynolds, “Guantánamo Bay,” 229.

  16 Ibid., 319, 355.

  17 New York Times, “Revolt of Cuban Negroes Spreading,” May 21, 1912, 5.

  18 Wood quoted in Alejandro de la Fuente, “Myths of Racial Democracy: Cuba 1900–1912,” Latin American Research Review 34, no. 3 (1999): 53; Pérez, “Politics, Peasants, and People of Color,” 509–511.