On June 8, Calhoun returned from Cuba and promptly reported to Judge Day and the president. On the Ruiz matter, Calhoun said the precise cause of the dentist’s demise probably would never be learned, but Spanish authorities had detained him illegally and therefore were responsible for his death. In an extensive memorandum, Calhoun explored all aspects of the war, including its devastating effect on U.S. trade and investment, the havoc unleashed by General Valeriano Weyler’s pitiless reconcentrados policy, and prospects for a palatable outcome. Traveling from Havana to Matanzas, Calhoun had encountered areas of total destruction. “Every house had been burned,” he wrote, “banana trees cut down, cane fields swept with fire, and everything in the shape of food destroyed.” He saw “children with swollen limbs and extended abdomens,” caused, he was told, “by a want of sufficient food.” The entire island was “wrapped in the stillness of death and the silence of desolation.”
Calhoun bolstered McKinley’s suspicion that the insurgents likely wouldn’t accept anything less than full independence and that Weyler couldn’t produce a military victory. But the propertied classes, fearing a dire fate if the masses upended the traditional power structure, would fight independence with relentless ferocity. It wasn’t clear precisely what outcome McKinley wanted, but he now embraced fully the idea that Spain had to end the war as quickly as possible and that America was justified, based on national interest and humanitarian principles, in pressuring Spain to change policy and negotiate a settlement with the rebels. He issued a diplomatic note, delivered to Spain’s U.S. ambassador, Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, protesting Weyler’s “uncivilized and inhumane” policies “in the name of the American people and . . . common humanity” and demanding that Spain conduct its war under “military codes of civilization.”
The president then turned his attention to two crucial personnel matters: what to do about Cleveland’s consul to Havana, Fitzhugh Lee, and whom to send to Madrid as U.S. minister to Spain. Lee, a plainspoken former Confederate brigadier whose bloodlines connected him to the famous Lees of Virginia, made little effort to hide his pro-insurgent views. Madrid harbored a strong antipathy to the man that exceeded only barely the antipathy felt by President Cleveland, who viewed his reports as dogmatic and slanted. A rotund figure who habituated Havana boulevards and salons in white linen suits and Panama hats, Lee relished his role in the thick of an unstable diplomatic situation. Cleveland urged McKinley to fire the consul, but the new president feared Madrid would interpret such a move as weakness. Besides, unlike Cleveland, he appreciated Lee’s blunt assessments from the war-torn island.
Selecting a minister proved more daunting. “What am I going to do about the Spanish mission?” the president asked during a March conversation with John Hay and Henry White, an experienced diplomat who had served at U.S. legations in Vienna and London. Extending his hands outward in frustration, he declared, “I must have a trained diplomatist there.” The president asked White to take the post, but he declined, citing personal reasons. Former secretary of state John Foster also declined.
The president faced a deadline in formulating his policy toward Spain, which meant he needed his own minister in place relatively soon. He told his friend Seth Low, president of Columbia University, that he was “desirous to adopt every possible measure to bring about a change” in Spanish-American relations before the December start of the next congressional session, when lawmakers would demand a coherent and aggressive strategy on Cuba. He urged the Madrid portfolio upon Low, but he demurred. So did prominent lawyers Elihu Root of New York and Jacob Cox of Ohio. The president even considered Whitelaw Reid, whose selection would enrage Tom Platt. But Reid wasn’t interested.
The president finally settled upon Stewart Woodford, sixty-one, of New York, the man he previously rejected when Platt put forth his name for a Cabinet post. But Woodford seemed a good fit for the Madrid mission. He had maintained amicable relations with all New York factions through a career that had included brief stints as a U.S. congressman and his state’s lieutenant governor, as well as a six-year tenure as a U.S. attorney. Conscientious and well-spoken, the bald-headed Woodford cut a notable figure, with bushy white eyebrows and droopy white whiskers that gave him a kindly but sad-eyed appearance. McKinley found him to be competent in executing his delicate portfolio but also a bit defensive in needing constantly to clarify his actions at length. On June 16 Woodford wired his response to McKinley’s job offer: “You have done me great honor. I accept and will try to justify your choice.” Hurrying to Washington, he received detailed instructions from McKinley, along with a request that he send the president intermittent back-channel missives to keep him well apprised of unfolding developments. Recognizing the extreme difficulty of his mission, Woodford wrote to the president on his way to Madrid, “I remember your personal injunctions to be patient, courteous, kind and firm. I will try to carry out your wishes. But I cannot too deeply impress upon your mind my serious apprehension that my efforts will fail.”
He arrived in Spain on September 1 to find civic chaos, accentuated by the August 8 assassination of Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. Though the assassin was an anarchist with no apparent tie to the Cuban conflagration, his act deepened the country’s sense of crisis. Spain was governed by an oligarchy of wealth that dominated local governments, the legislative Cortes, and the ruling cabinet. Atop that structure sat the monarch, Austrian-born Maria Cristina, the Hapsburg widow of King Alfonso XII. She served as queen regent, occupying the throne until her son, Alfonso XIII, reached the age of sixteen in 1902. In the meantime the queen regent sought to maintain peace between the governing Conservatives, strong-willed nationalists who viewed victory in Cuba as a matter of Spanish honor, and the reform-minded Liberals, more inclined to seek a negotiated settlement through some kind of autonomy. Prime Minister Cánovas had shown no intention of softening his bellicose approach after installing the brutal General Weyler as head of the Cuban effort and fostering the cruel tactics that had caused so much anguish and anger in America. Cánovas’s inflexibility was reflected in a brusque response to McKinley’s diplomatic note, issued just four days before his assassination.
The queen regent favored the Conservatives in hopes they would bring about a military victory—and also with the knowledge that her aroused public was in no mood to give up the fight or bow to American pressure. Indeed a show of weakness in the face of adversity could stir the proud nation to revolution and even upend the monarchy. Maria Cristina tied her government’s fate, and her son’s, to the cause of war. She installed Cánovas’s war secretary, General Marcelo Azcárraga Palermo, as the new prime minister and kept the Liberals at bay. Hannis Taylor, Woodford’s predecessor in Madrid, told his replacement that “popular feeling [throughout the country] is very bitter against the United States” and that the queen regent struggled with “the quandary of not wishing to offend us and yet trying to keep in touch with the local popular feeling.”
Woodford perceived her quandary when he presented his credentials to the queen on September 13. “I read it in her face and manner,” he wrote to the president, adding that she carried herself with a “pleasant and agreeable” demeanor. Five days later Woodford spent three hours with Spain’s foreign minister, Carlos Manuel O’Donnell y Abreu, the duke of Tetuan. The minister read aloud to the duke extensive passages from his letter of instruction, crafted by McKinley himself before Woodford’s Washington departure. Immediately the foreign minister could see that his country now faced a new and more threatening United States.
In friendly but firm tones, the McKinley document outlined America’s dark concern about a nearby conflict that brought to the United States “a degree of injury and suffering which can not longer be ignored.” Thus Spain must seek an end to the war as quickly as practicable by crafting “proposals of settlement honorable to herself and just to her Cuban colony and to mankind.” The president issued a veiled threat by suggesting that, if his efforts to foster peace proved fruitless, he would
face “an early decision as to the course of action which the time and the transcendent emergency may demand.” That could mean, at the least, U.S. recognition of the insurgency’s belligerency rights. Woodford told Tetuan that McKinley wanted a response and evidence of Spanish compliance by November 1.
The minister reported to Washington that the duke was “courteous and temperate” in the discussion and afterward demonstrated unfailing cordiality toward him. But the man seemed “deceived” about the likely success of Weyler’s Cuban offensive and Dupuy de Lôme’s Washington diplomacy. Woodford wrote to the president, “I felt compelled to assure him, frankly and so plainly that there could be no misunderstanding, that my government could not stand idly by during any further indefinite time, but that Spain must convince us . . . that she could and would put the war in the way of prompt and certain settlement or devise some way by which the good offices of the United States could be exerted to that end.”
Studying the meaning of McKinley’s statement, Spanish officials took heart in the fact that the president had made no financial demands to indemnify Americans harmed by the war, not even Ricardo Ruiz’s family. (Woodford wisely had chosen not to complicate his diplomacy at that point with such demands.) The Americans had couched their position in courteous language and had refrained from any stark ultimatum. A government consensus emerged that Spain could keep America at bay without sacrificing national honor—and buy time for military success—if it could fashion a minimally acquiescent response.
In the meantime Woodford concluded he could soothe the diplomatic situation and place his country in a favorable light by releasing the essence of the McKinley statement to the press. He was taken aback when both McKinley and Tetuan rejected the idea, particularly since he already had provided a summary to a New York Journal reporter who had been dogging him. McKinley wasn’t pleased, as he wanted to preserve his freedom of action if Spain rejected his diplomatic formula. Spanish officials were so nettled by the leak they threatened to expel the Journal reporter from the country. Silenced publicly, Woodford provided private briefings to Western diplomats in Madrid in an effort to fend off any anxiety in major capitals over U.S.-Spanish tensions. In long conversations with the ministers from Britain, Russia, Germany, and France, he outlined the American position in extensive detail, emphasizing that America had no interest in acquiring Cuba. Then he listed the health hazards posed to Americans, particularly of yellow fever, by the unsanitary conditions in war-torn Cuba; described the consequences of the sugar trade interruption and other commercial blockages; and detailed the enormous losses suffered by U.S. citizens “in their persons and property,” amounting to “very great sums.”
He pointed out that Cuba, with a population of less than 1.8 million, had fielded an insurgency force of probably fewer than 40,000 men, and yet Spain couldn’t suppress the rebellion with an army of more than 200,000 trained soldiers and an expenditure of some $300 million. Thus, he argued, Spain “cannot crush the rebellion within any reasonable time.” He carefully avoided any detailed suggestion of how peace should be restored but emphasized that America stood ready to extend its good offices toward a true system of autonomy (akin to Canada in the British Commonwealth) or, failing that, Cuban independence.
Woodford’s disquisitions contributed to a growing feeling in Europe that Cuba’s fate belonged to Spain and the United States. On September 23 the Washington Post reported that, among European capitals, only Vienna would oppose U.S. intervention in Cuba (presumably because of the queen regent’s Hapsburg heritage). “Spain,” contended the Post, “has little to hope from European powers if the United States should interfere in behalf of Cuba.” Hay reported from London that British prime minister Lord Salisbury asserted no British interests in Cuba “except commercial ones, and . . . he would look with favor on any policy that would restore tranquility and some measure of prosperity to Cuba.”
In late September came a powerful development: the queen regent boldly responded to the American pressure by asking Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, leader of the Liberals, to form a government. This meant a new policy based on a June 24 Liberal manifesto advocating a division between the counterinsurgency campaign and efforts to fashion a new Cuban government under a substantial grant of autonomy. “Senor Sagasta is a very shrewd politician,” Woodford informed Washington. “I . . . think that he has really come to believe that civilized methods of warfare and quite liberal autonomy are the only possible methods by which Spain can retain . . . a hold on Cuba.”
Sagasta installed as minister of colonies a prominent Liberal figure named Segismundo Moret y Prendergast, an England-educated foreign policy expert—“honest and earnest,” as Woodford described him—who had advocated Cuban autonomy since 1891. Had Spain embraced his reform proposals before the war’s outbreak, claimed the manifesto, the country “would have averted the disasters and prevented the horrors of the present insurrection.” Woodford attributed the change to McKinley’s carefully calibrated actions. “I have reason to know,” he wrote the president, “that the Queen Regent was told [by European leaders] that the demands of our Government were so moderate and our cause so just that the public opinion of Europe would hardly justify continuance of the policy and methods of the warfare in Cuba.”
Wasting no time in recalling Weyler, Sagasta replaced him with General Ramón Blanco y Erenas, a veteran military man whose star had dimmed after his unsuccessful efforts to put down a separate insurrection in the Philippines. But Blanco’s mandate in Cuba was not to quash the rebellion, as Weyler had failed to do, but to soften the military effort in ways designed to bolster the pursuit of autonomy. On October 6 Sagasta committed his government to pursuing such a system even as the military effort continued. McKinley endorsed the new policy by sending to Madrid a private cable saying, “President McKinley will endeavor to induce the insurgents to accept autonomy, and if they refuse he will do his utmost to put an end to agitations, and to prevent filibustering, as he believes now that Capt. Gen. Weyler is recalled, Congress will support this policy.”
But Sagasta and Maria Cristina were walking a treacherous path, caught between the rising American power and crosscurrents of nationalist opposition in both Spain and Cuba. As the Washington Post editorialized, “Senor Sagasta . . . must be controlled by the prevailing sentiment in Spain. This is anti-American to the last degree.” The paper described the Spanish as “a hot-blooded, sensitive race” who believed the United States had “given aid and comfort to the insurgents, and that any efforts which we may now put forth to end the war are purely in the interest of the Cubans.” In Cuba, meanwhile, the Spanish elite—the creditor class of some 350,000 islanders, which owned nine-tenths of Cuban property—feared that under autonomy it would be swept away by the island’s 1.15 million non-Spanish Cubans, many of them abjectly poor and uneducated. “They believe,” reported the Post, “that they will have to struggle for the maintenance of society and civilization, and the prospect appalls and maddens them.” Riots in the streets of Havana and attacks on Liberal newspapers gave testament to these fears.
In mid-October, the Cuban insurgents rejected autonomy, which enraged Spain’s Conservative elements. One newspaper urged “energetic action to crush the rebellion by force of arms.” But the Liberal government pressed on in hopes that its system of autonomy, when finally crafted and announced, would gain majority support. Later that month Sagasta’s ministry replied to the McKinley communication with a 1,000-word statement, expressed in gracious language, that accepted the friendly U.S. offices in the effort to end the Cuban war, cited Weyler’s recall as evidence of good faith, and promised a complete home-rule government in Cuba. But the statement turned the tables a bit in urging the United States to step up its antifilibustering efforts as a demonstration of its own good faith. Woodford, writing to McKinley, called the response “a great moral victory” obtained through the president’s “firmness and courage.” In a subsequent note, the minister expressed satisfaction that the Spanish ministry h
ad acted quickly enough that McKinley could incorporate these positive developments into his Annual Message to Congress in early December.
But as details of the Sagasta plan emerged, it stirred discontent in both Spain and Cuba. In a series of letters to the president, Woodford reported that Spanish public opinion had settled into “acquiescent, but not enthusiastic, approval”; then that it had become “still acquiescent, but even less cordial than last week”; and then that it seemed “to grow less and less cordial toward the United States.” Austria’s ambassador to Madrid described Sagasta’s government as precarious and said “elements now in opposition would be strong if they could be consolidated.”
Nevertheless Sagasta and the queen regent continued their push for amicable relations with the United States. Woodford reported that in receiving him and his wife, Maria Cristina had asked anxiously about McKinley’s view of her reforms. “She then added,” wrote Woodford, “that she hoped my President would be pleased.” He continued, “I believe that she is sensible and is honestly trying to do the best she can under most difficult circumstances.”
Meanwhile Fitzhugh Lee reported from Havana that opposition to Sagasta’s reforms had congealed into a local defense organization composed of businessmen and the managerial classes. “Not an autonomist in their ranks,” wrote Lee, “and with the firemen, who are armed too, number some 25,000 men.” He added, “I am not certain whether they can be kept under control of the Palace authorities.” Suggesting this civic anger soon could be turned against vulnerable U.S. citizens and diplomats, Lee recommended that McKinley send a warship or two to Havana to protect Americans if necessary. “My scouts . . . report,” he wrote the following week, “that nothing would result from the presence of our ships, and that they would be received in the spirit they were sent, viz., as messenger of peace and protection to life and property.”
President McKinley Page 26