“General Weyler will never be allowed to land in Cuba again,” Woodford shot back. He emphasized that there was “no possible retreat” from the Liberal government’s chosen path. “Any weakness would now be fatal,” he warned.
“There will be no weakness,” replied Moret. But he reiterated the queen’s entreaty that McKinley stop the Junta and other rebel assistance from U.S. soil. The guerrillas would fight on unless subdued militarily. That’s why McKinley must quash the Junta.
Woodford promptly sent McKinley a long back-channel letter revealing the desperation of Maria Cristina and her ministry. He warned that the conversations themselves could bring down the Liberal government and perhaps even the dynasty if word leaked out that the two had “violated Spanish traditions and offended Spanish pride” with personal entreaties to a foreign power. The conversations revealed the vise that gripped the queen and her ministry. As long as there was a chance that Blanco’s military measures, combined with the autonomy offer, could secure peace, the ministry was probably safe. But McKinley had made clear that, if that policy faltered, America would intervene unless Spain surrendered Cuba. If the queen did that, however, a revolution likely would rend her nation and destroy her son’s dynasty.
“If they fail,” wrote Woodford, “and have to choose between war with us or the overthrow of the dynasty they will try to save the dynasty.” That’s why they so earnestly had beseeched Washington to stop the Junta—to enhance their ability to reach a Cuban accord and escape the vise.
But the vise already had tightened before Woodford’s conversations, when thousands of conservative Cubans, mostly Spanish born, stormed Havana newspapers that had criticized the Spanish Army in Cuba and its leaders. They smashed windows, destroyed printing presses, and filled the streets of Havana with chants of “Viva Spain!,” “Viva the king!,” “Viva Weyler!,” and “Down with autonomy!” Key figures in Prime Minister Sagasta’s government, including Moret, viewed the riots as part of a broader plot to unleash civic tensions in Madrid and force the queen to cast aside the Sagasta ministry. Some “Carlist” agitators even wanted to upend the dynasty altogether and replace it with a far more autocratic monarchy harking back to a competing family line.
The Havana agitation died down, but Fitzhugh Lee advised his government that the volatility there could ignite further disruptions, including anti-American riots. American relief efforts to help starving Cubans were arousing anger among Havana and Madrid conservatives who viewed the assistance as a “pretext . . . to interfere in Cuban affairs” and “widen the breach between the Cuban peasantry and the Spaniards,” as the Washington Post reported. But Lee also perceived a growing realization among Spanish Cubans, as he wrote to Judge Day, “that U.S. intermediation for peace is the only resort left.” He recommended that Washington step back and “let matters progress in that direction rather than for the U.S. to insist upon being heard at once.”
That fit McKinley’s inclination precisely. He had established America’s position, and Madrid had responded with a credible program. Now the burden rested upon the queen and her ministry to make it work. The president would watch and wait.
In the meantime McKinley became increasingly comfortable with the powers of his office. Particularly in the matter of patronage did he adopt a sharper tone than most people had seen before, reacting to petty disputes or rivalries in matters involving government jobs. “Those persons who have presumed that nothing could disturb the President’s fine poise,” reported the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, “have learned that he possesses the power to condemn unsparingly bickerings and spitefulness of contestants in his party.” The paper said the president had taken to dismissing from his presence those wishing to air grievances against others and that he insisted that state factions resolve patronage disputes before bringing requests to him.
But true to his strong sense of loyalty, McKinley sometimes suspended formalities when close friends were involved. When Russell Hastings sought consideration for a nephew, then struggling through the Naval Academy at Annapolis, the president sent the matter to Navy Secretary Long, who informed the president that young Hastings was among eleven midshipmen designated for dismissal. The president’s scruples didn’t preclude him from intervening in behalf of the lad. “I desire to thank you for the efforts in behalf of my nephew Russell,” wrote Hastings to McKinley, “which—through him—I am informed have come to a successful issue.”
The president accepted the complaint of Public Buildings Commissioner Theodore Bingham that White House receptions had become far too raucous and overcrowded, with so many gate-crashers squeezing into the mansion that comfort and social enjoyment were impossible. Bingham, a taut-faced fusspot with a meticulously waxed mustache, proposed a series of exclusive receptions, with guests carefully screened, beginning with a function on January 19. “For the first time in twenty years,” reported the Post, “the invited guests . . . were received and entertained in comfort, owing to the absence of the multitude which heretofore has . . . turned what is supposed to be a dignified and agreeable function into a most unpleasant and promiscuous crush.” But then the officious Bingham, in a memorandum to McKinley elaborating on his plans, described the interlopers of past receptions as “vulgar mobs” made up of “butchers, cabmen, market and grocery clerks, and the scum of the city.” McKinley immediately shut down Bingham’s program and returned to “vulgar mob” receptions. He would never be party to Bingham’s brand of snobbery.
As 1898 commenced, Ida’s health entered a period of stability, and she responded by placing a greater stamp upon White House life. She now had the stamina to frequently attend theatrical comedies from the presidential box at various Washington playhouses, and she delighted in the laughter they generated. “There is enough trouble in the world,” she once said, “without seeing sad plays and reading sad books.” In January she organized a debutante ball for her niece Mary Barber and the next month presided over an elaborate reception for the diplomatic corps. She set a precedent by inviting a stream of actors to the mansion for extended conversations about their craft, and she asked one performer to deliver a number of character monologues by playwrights Ian Maclaren and J. M. Barrie in the Blue Room. She still took pains to pace herself, however, by such methods as presenting herself in receiving lines while seated in a throne-like blue velvet chair.
It wasn’t clear what caused her physical improvement. One factor may have been the White House physician, Captain Leonard Wood, who sought to reduce Ida’s stress level through a kind of conversation therapy. While encouraging Ida to expand her White House activity, he also sought to soothe away anxieties caused by her fuller schedule. Wood’s friend Herman Hagedorn described it as an “elixir of ambition and assurance,” and Ida seemed to respond to what the New York Times later described as the doctor’s “tenderness toward his patient.” Meanwhile McKinley continued to provide Ida with medications prescribed by Dr. Bishop in New York; around this time he sent Bishop a $250 check for more bromides.
The president remained, as the New York Times put it, “not more devoted to his public duties than he was to the welfare of his wife.” But no less devoted, either, and he spent long days and many evenings poring over papers and engaging men of power on pressing matters of state. His aim was to render decisions with a deft sense of timing designed to exploit opportunities for action at moments of maximum leverage.
In late January 1898 the president traveled to New York to deliver a major address to the National Association of Manufacturers at the posh Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Speaking before 1,000 industrial and financial titans, he declared that all outstanding U.S. bonds should be paid in gold. The timing was significant as the Senate was about to vote on a resolution by Colorado’s Senator Teller, that staunch silver advocate, declaring that the payment of outstanding bonds in standard silver dollars would not violate the public faith or undermine the public credit. The president countered that view:
The money of the United States is and must forever
be unquestioned and unassailable. . . . Nothing should ever tempt us—nothing ever will tempt us—to scale down the sacred debt of the nation through a legal technicality. Whatever may be the language of the contract, the United States will discharge all of its obligations in the currency recognized as the best throughout the civilized world. . . . Nor will we ever consent that the wages of labor or its frugal savings shall be scaled down by permitting payment in dollars of less value than the dollars accepted as the best in every enlightened nation of the earth.
The president could not have been clearer: he was declaring his party to be the gold-standard party. His embrace of gold—and, perhaps more significant, the timing of it—offered a telling insight into his instinct for parsing the complexities of political challenges and wending his way through political thickets. Though he had flirted with modest soft-money concepts early in his career, he had bowed to Republican orthodoxy in time for his presidential run—while keeping a wary eye on the dangers represented by the free-silver craze. But then in his presidential bid he had crushed the free-silver candidacy of its most compelling advocate. Since then the promise of better economic times had blunted the silver movement, while the growing flow of gold into federal vaults provided much-needed liquidity. The timing was perfect for a bold leadership thrust on the issue, and the president seized it.
At the Nation, Godkin was delighted. For more than thirty years, he wrote, both parties had been “rent in the same manner” over the currency issue—split between hard-currency and soft-currency advocates. But now the Democrats, under William Jennings Bryan, had declared their colors. “The Democratic Party,” wrote Godkin, “now stands for nothing else under the sun than a depreciated currency.” And McKinley was placing the Republicans in clear opposition to that. “The main purpose,” Godkin explained, “is to bring the supporters of the gold standard and of the national honor upon a common platform, to arm them with a common purpose, to drive all cowards out of their skulking-places, and compel them to take one side or the other.” Now the division would be between the two parties, not within each.
* * *
IN EARLY JANUARY 1898, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Cushman K. Davis, Republican of Minnesota, announced plans to call up the president’s Hawaii annexation treaty in executive session and ask the Senate to debate it daily until it could be disposed of. To Davis, a senator since 1887 and his state’s governor before that, Hawaii represented more than just a commercial way station or even a crucial naval outpost. He agreed with Alfred Thayer Mahan that America must follow Britain’s example and attain global power through a “step-by-step” acquisition of key strategic points around the globe. He wanted the United States to join Britain in an Anglo-Saxon, world-dominating alliance, and Hawaii would be the first step toward that end.
It wasn’t clear that Davis had the sixty Senate votes needed for ratification. In the eighty-eight-seat chamber, Republicans held forty-seven seats to thirty-four for the Democrats, with Populists holding seven seats. It was assumed that nearly all Republicans, including silver Republicans, would vote aye, possibly excepting Justin Morrill of Vermont and certainly the cantankerous Richard Pettigrew of South Dakota. The Populists would split on annexation, and the Democrats would mostly oppose it. But Democratic leaders declined to make Hawaii a party issue, which likely meant some Democrats would straggle in as aye votes. Whether there would be enough remained unclear.
McKinley’s ratification hopes began to fade when three Republicans from beet sugar states—John Thurston of Nebraska, John Gear of Iowa, and John Spooner of Wisconsin—announced their opposition. Thurston argued that the islands, some 2,000 miles from U.S. shores, would constitute a national burden more than a strength. But insiders knew what really motivated the three: fears that U.S. acquisition of a vast sugar empire would thwart development of the nascent beet sugar industry in their states.
During the closed sessions, Davis issued a fervent call for ratification on both commercial and military grounds. It was evident, he said, “that the opening of the new century which is now so near, must mark the opening of a new condition of affairs in the far east.” Those vast markets were coveted by every European power, he said, and if America stood aside, those powers soon would control the entire Asian seaboard. Hawaii would give America leverage to compete with those countries commercially and to thwart their military ambitions. If America didn’t take the islands, they would fall under the sway of Britain, Japan, Germany, or Russia.
Delaware’s Democratic senator George Gray posed a question much on the minds of many senators—and reflecting the country’s prevailing racial and ethnic sentiments. “In case the islands should be annexed,” he asked, “is it the policy to have them admitted as a State of the Union with their present mixed population?”
“Such I do not believe to be the purpose of any one,” replied Davis. “I, myself, freely admit that the population of Hawaii is not such at the present time as would be desirable in an American State.”
As the closed-session debate continued, ratification chances dimmed further. The McKinley-Davis forces seemed stuck at fifty-six votes, and the Post reported that “the President has been appealed to in order that the influence of the administration may be exerted.” Of course another option would be to seek annexation through a joint resolution, which would require only a bare majority of both congressional houses. The problem there was the anti-imperialist House poo-bah, Speaker Reed, described by friends as implacably opposed to Hawaiian acquisition. It wasn’t clear how far he would go in trying to kill the legislation in his House fiefdom.
Then an important visitor arrived on American shores: Sanford B. Dole, president of Hawaii. He debarked in San Francisco in mid-January and became officially a guest of the United States upon reaching Chicago on January 22. The son of Hawaiian missionaries, the U.S.-educated Dole had become a lawyer in Boston and then practiced law in Honolulu before entering politics. Though not a planter, he was connected by blood to major figures in both sugar and pineapples. His gentle temperament was reflected in his soft eyes and placid face, accentuated by a billowy white beard that flowed to his chest. But behind that demeanor was a tendency toward occasional mood swings and emotional agitations. He had been a leader of the so-called Bayonet Revolution that created a new Hawaiian Constitution in 1887 and in the later rebellion that deposed Queen Liliuokalani in 1893. Like most Hawaiian whites, he fervently wanted to attach his island republic to the United States.
Arriving in Washington with his wife on January 26, Dole was greeted at the train depot by Secretary of State Sherman, who escorted the couple to the majestic Arlington Hotel for an afternoon rest. Later they received an official visit from McKinley. Ushered into Dole’s suite and announced by Hawaii’s minister Francis Hatch, the president stepped up to Dole and said, “I welcome you to the United States and to its Capital, and hope your stay in this country will be very pleasant.” After further pleasantries, the two men retreated to a corner of the room for an intimate fifteen-minute chat.
A week later the president and first lady honored President and Mrs. Dole with an elaborate state reception attended by nearly 3,000 guests, including most of the diplomatic corps, Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices, along with their wives, and many more who were uninvited but had “the position to awe their way in,” as the Washington Evening Star put it. It seems Commissioner Bingham’s plan for more stringent gatekeeping already had gone by the wayside. The elaborate decorations included a “profusion of ferns and palms [that] made a beautiful background for the handsomely gowned women and uniformed men,” reported the Post, which added that Ida wore “a very becoming gown of black velvet, with Duchess Lace garniture.”
Upon his return to Hawaii in early March, Dole publicly expressed confidence that the U.S. Congress would embrace annexation, most likely in a joint resolution. Asked about his impression of McKinley, he said it was “extremely favorable. I found him to be an unassuming, fra
nk, and sterling man. He seems to have heart and soul in the annexation treaty.”
Back in Washington, as it became clear that the votes weren’t there for treaty ratification, annexation supporters turned their attention to Thomas Reed and a plan to circumvent his opposition with a parliamentary maneuver. The idea was to attach the language to a Senate appropriations bill, thus forcing it onto the House floor through a kind of legislative back door. But on February 6, the speaker announced his support for annexation. Two weeks later pro-treaty Senate leaders decided to abandon the treaty and prepare a joint resolution. On March 16, Davis’s Foreign Relations Committee approved resolution language, along with an extensive written memorandum justifying the resolution approach, complete with an exhaustive description of the circumstances surrounding the 1845 Texas annexation through joint resolution. The process would take a bit longer, but chances of success seemed high.
McKinley watched all this from the White House with intense interest. “The President is anxious about Hawaii,” wrote presidential secretary George Cortelyou in his diary. He quoted McKinley as saying late one evening, “We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny.” In equating the Hawaiian acquisition with the country’s westward expansion across North America, McKinley identified himself as an overseas expansionist—in other words, an imperialist.
This was reflected in his interest in an American-dominated canal through Central America, most likely through Nicaragua. He initiated a quiet quest for information through his preferred data-gathering method, a special investigative commission. Under congressional authority granted to him in June 1897, he appointed a commission under the chairmanship of Rear Admiral John G. Walker. In January 1898 the commission traveled to Nicaragua and other Latin American countries to determine the canal’s feasibility and prospects for engaging with Central American governments on the matter. But there was a snag—the so-called Clayton-Bulwer Treaty between the United States and Britain, which committed both countries to joint control of any isthmian canal and precluded either from any unilateral construction project. The United States repeatedly had sought to revise the 1850 treaty, but Britain consistently had rejected the idea.
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