The threat of war conveyed in the Message drove silver from the public mind. Business was aghast, and judicious publicists either questioned the value of the Monroe Doctrine or denied the propriety of its application. The general public supported the President without question, but many of his closest advisers turned against him. His political enemies charged him with raising a foreign issue to reunite his party, or with creating a scare to help his speculations in stocks. Great Britain blustered in her press, but opened her archives to the American Venezuelan Commission. In 1897 she allowed an arbitration to take place, and the affair passed over.

Whatever Cleveland's motive in the Venezuela Message, it did not establish more than a transient calm in either party. His own was doubly split by silver and the tariff, while Republican plans for 1896 had become badly deranged. That party had organized to play upon protection, but found interest in its chosen subject silenced for the time.

In spite of its defeats in 1890 and 1892, the Republican organization had kept up its fight for protection. Quay had in 1888 completed the partnership between the manufacturers who had a cash interest in the tariff and the Republican voters. In manufacturing communities the doctrine had been accepted that prosperity and protection went together. Ruin was prophesied if the Democrats should win. The panic of 1893 seemed to prove this, and when the Democrats passed the Wilson Bill the Republicans asserted that the fear of this had caused the panic. In private, the leaders agreed with the president of the Home Market Club, who wrote in his memoirs, "The bill ... was much less destructive than there was reason to fear." "Our business was not unprofitable during these lean years, but much less profitable than it had been and ought to have been." Prosperity was clearly lacking and to be desired, and among the candidates for the nomination in 1896 was the author of the McKinley Bill, in whom an Ohio cartoonist had discovered the "Advance Agent of Prosperity."

Associated with the name of William McKinley, of Canton, Ohio, was that of Marcus Alonzo Hanna, a citizen of Cleveland who had acted on the borderland between business and politics since 1880. Hanna had been among the earliest to see the financial interest of the manufacturers in the tariff and to capitalize it for political purposes. For several years he had collected money in Ohio for campaign funds, assessing the manufacturers according to their interests and impressing upon them the duty of paying on demand. It had been a business transaction. Hanna had no extraordinary stake in the result, but combined a genuine interest in politics with business standards of the prevailing type. About 1890 he became a friend of the Ohio protectionist and worked steadily thereafter for his election to the Presidency.

McKinley was a tactful and successful Congressman. He believed in the tariff, spoke convincingly in its favor, had few enemies and many warm friends, and was widely advertised by the Tariff Bill of 1890. In public places after 1893 he was repeatedly hailed as the next candidate, but as the silver issue rose it appeared that there might be great difficulty in adapting his record to the new problem. He had favored bimetallism and free coinage in so many debates that the East, where lay the strongholds of the party, distrusted his soundness on the currency question. Yet if he abandoned free silver it was doubtful if he could hold the West. For months his friends, steered by Hanna, who spent his own money freely, endeavored to keep the tariff in the foreground, while the candidate preserved a discreet and exasperating silence upon the dominant issue of free silver.

The most important rivals of McKinley for the nomination were Harrison and Reed, but neither of these possessed a manager as shrewd and resourceful as Hanna. McKinley was nominated on the first ballot at St. Louis, with Garrett P. Hobart, of New Jersey, a corporation lawyer who believed in the gold standard, as his associate.

The nature of the Republican platform had been in debate throughout the spring of 1896. The organization was reluctant to take up the silver issue and the predetermined candidate was uncertain upon it. In the Platform Committee there was a contest involving the opportunists, who wanted to continue the policy of evasion; the Westerners, who felt that silver meant more to them than the party; and the representatives of the populous commercial East, who were devoted to the gold standard. Bimetallists had progressed in their education until most of them saw that bimetallism must be international if it could be at all. Various committeemen later assumed the credit for the plank that was finally adopted. After castigating the Democrats for producing the panic and renewing the pledge for protection, the party denounced the debasement of currency or credit. It opposed the free coinage of silver, asserted that all money must be kept at a "parity with gold," and pledged itself to work for an international agreement for bimetallism.

The fight for free silver was carried by the silver state delegations to the floor of the convention, where it was defeated by a vote of 818-1/2 to 105-1/2. At this point, led by Senators from Colorado and Utah, thirty-four members withdrew from the convention in protest. Even the Prohibition party had already been broken by the new issue. The humorous weekly, Life, spoke seriously when it declared that "The two great parties in the country at this writing are the Gold party and the Silver party. The old parties are in temporary eclipse." Few were satisfied with the Republican result, for while the platform pointed one way and the candidate's career pointed the other on free silver, the real interest of the party, protection, aroused no enthusiasm.

No Democrat was the predetermined candidate of his party when it met at Chicago in July, 1896. Cleveland, least of all, was not given even the scanty notice of a commendatory plank. He stood alone as no other President had done, at issue with the Republicans on their major policy, yet without followers in his own organization. Slow, patient, courageous, stubborn, he had twice held his party to its promise, and he had refused to be carried away by the transitory demand of the West for dangerous finance. He had guided the National Administration through eight years of expansion and reorganization, and had been a devoted servant of civil service reform. In May, 1896, he had aggravated his offenses in the eyes of the politicians by issuing new rules that extended the classified service to include some 31,000 new employees, making a total of 86,000 out of 178,000 federal employees. He passed out of party politics at least two years before his term expired, and in 1897 he took up his final abode in Princeton. From Princeton he wrote and spoke for eleven years, and before he died in 1908 the animosities of 1896 were forgotten, and he looked large in the American mind as a statesman whose independence and sincerity were beyond reproach.

Forces beyond the control of politicians carried the Democrats toward an alliance with Populism and free silver. As two minority parties they had felt in 1892 a tendency to fuse against the Republicans. By conviction they were both obliged to fight the party of Hanna and McKinley, in which the forces of business, finance, and manufacture were assembled in the joint cause of protection and the gold standard. It was convenient to make this fight in close alliance, the more so because the Populist doctrine of free silver had permeated the Democratic organization in the West and South. In the conventions of 1896 more than thirty States, as Nebraska had done in 1894, asked for immediate free coinage, and a majority of the Democratic delegates were pledged to this before they came to Chicago. They gained control of the convention on the first vote, determined contests in their own favor, and offered a plank demanding "the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation."

The debate on the silver plank was long and bitter, although its passage was certain. It was closed by the leader of the Nebraska delegation, William Jennings Bryan, who had been a former Congressman, and who later said, "An opportunity to close such a debate had never come to me before, and I doubt if as good an opportunity had ever come to any other person during this generation." He took advantage of the moment, in a tired convention that had been wrangling in bitterness for several days, that had deserted the old politicians, and that had no candidate. He was only thirty-six years old, his face was unfamiliar, and his name had rarely been heard outside his State, but he had been preaching free silver with religious intensity and oratorical skill. His speech had grown through repeated speaking, and reached its climax as he pleaded for free silver: "If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for the gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." Swept off its feet by the enthusiasm for silver, and having no other candidate in view, the convention nominated Bryan on the fifth ballot, selecting Arthur Sewall, of Maine, as his companion.

The Populists met in St. Louis on July 22. "If we fuse, we are sunk," complained one of the most devoted leaders; "if we don't fuse, all the silver men will leave us for the more powerful Democrats." Fusion controlled the convention, voting down the "Middle-of-the-Road" group that adhered to independence. Bryan was nominated, although Sewall was rejected for Thomas E. Watson, of Georgia. The organization of the People's Party continued after 1896, but its vitality was gone forever.

The campaign of 1896 was an orgy of education, emotion, and panic. McKinley was driven by the opposition to defend the gold standard with increasing intensity. Protection ceased to arouse interest and other issues were forgotten. The Bryan party attracted to itself the silver wings of the Republicans and Prohibitionists, and absorbed the Populists. The gold Democrats, after several weeks of indecision as to tactics, became bolters, held a convention at Indianapolis in September, and nominated John M. Palmer and Simon Buckner. To this ticket, Cleveland and his Cabinet gave their support. Up and down the land Bryan traveled, preaching his new gospel, which millions regarded as "the first great protest of the American people against monopoly—the first great struggle of the masses in our country against the privileged classes." "Probably no man in civil life," said the Nation at the end of the fight, "has succeeded in inspiring so much terror without taking life."

As chairman of the National Committee, Marcus A. Hanna directed the Republican campaign. He encouraged the belief that Bryan was waging a "campaign against the Ten Commandments." He drew his sinews of war from the manufacturers, who were used to such demands, and from a wide range of panic-stricken contributors who feared repudiation. Insurance companies and national banks were assessed and paid with alacrity. The funds went into the broadest campaign of education that the United States had seen.

In contrast to the activity of Bryan, McKinley stayed at home through the summer, and delegations from afar were brought up to his veranda at Canton, Ohio. To these he spoke briefly and with dignity, gaining an assurance that grew with the campaign. His arguments were taken over the country by a horde of speakers whom Hanna organized, who reached and educated every voter whose mind was open on the silver question. In the closing days of the campaign panic struck the conservative classes and produced for Hanna campaign funds such as had never been seen, and cries of corruption met the charges of repudiation.

An English visitor in New York wrote on the Sunday before election: "Of course nothing can be done till Wednesday. All America is aflame with excitement—and New York itself is at fever heat. I have never seen such a sight as yesterday. The whole city was a mass of flags and innumerable Republican and Democratic insignia—with the streets thronged with over two million people. The whole business quarter made a gigantic parade that took seven hours in its passage—and the business men alone amounted to over 100,000. Every one—as, indeed, not only America, but Great Britain and all Europe—is now looking eagerly for the final word on Tuesday night. The larger issues are now clearer: not merely that the Bryanite fifty-cent dollar (instead of the standard hundred-cent) would have far-reaching disastrous effects, but that the whole struggle is one of the anarchic and destructive against the organic and constructive forces."

The vote was taken in forty-five States, Utah having been admitted early in 1896, and no election had evoked a larger proportion of the possible vote. Bryan received 6,500,000 votes, nearly a million more than any elected President had ever received, but he ran 600,000 votes behind McKinley. The Republican list included every State north of Virginia and Tennessee, and east of the Missouri River, except Missouri and South Dakota. The solid South was confronted by a solid North and East, while the West was divided. McKinley received 271 electoral votes; Bryan, 176.

Education played a large part in the result, and economic opinion believes that the better cause prevailed. But cool analysis had less effect than emotion and self-interest at the time. The lowest point of depression had been reached during 1894, while the harvests of 1895 and 1896 were larger and more profitable than had been known for several years. Free silver was a hard-times movement that weakened in the face of better crops. "Give us good times," said Reed to Richard Watson Gilder, "and all will come out right." Inflation was not to be desired by the citizen who had in hand the funds to pay his debts. When he became solvent he could understand the theories of sound finance. It is probable that nature as well as gold was a potent aid to Hanna in procuring the result.

William McKinley was advertised as the "Advance Agent of Prosperity," and before he was inaugurated in March, 1897, prosperity was in sight. His election had destroyed all fear that the currency would be upset by legislative act, while the liquidation after the panic of 1893 had nearly run its course. Business was reviving, crops were improving, and the luckless farmers of the Western plains had abandoned their farms or learned how to use them. After 1896 the financial danger was not silver but gold inflation. In that year great mines were opened in Alaska, drawing heavy immigration to the valley of the Yukon and, a little later, to the beach at Nome. Other discoveries increased the gold output and flooded the world with the more precious metal. By 1900 prices were rising instead of falling, and public interest was turned upon the high cost of living rather than the low prices of the previous period. The average annual output of gold for the fifteen years ending in 1896 was $132,000,000. For the fifteen years beginning in 1896, it was $337,000,000. The election of McKinley was in name a victory for the Republican party, but was in reality one for sound money. The organization upon which he stood was an amalgamation of creditors and manufacturers, reenforced by gold-standard men of all parties. Without the aid of the last element he could hardly have been elected, on this or any other issue. When he took office the Republican party had control in both houses of Congress, had been elected on a money issue, but had a permanent organization based upon the tariff propaganda. Before his inauguration, Hanna declared that the election was a mandate for a new protective tariff, and one of McKinley's earliest official acts was to summon Congress to meet in special session, to fulfill that mandate, on March 15, 1897.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The most popular document in the free-silver propaganda was W.H. Harvey, Coin's Financial School (c. 1894). This was replied to by Horace White, Coin's Financial Fool; or the Artful Dodger Exposed (c. 1896); and the same author, in Money and Banking (4th ed., 1911), discusses the economics of free silver. The best economic arguments for free silver came from the pens of Francis A. Walker and E. Benjamin Andrews. The Reports of the International Monetary Conferences (at Paris, 1867 and 1881, and at Brussels, 1892) are useful upon the attempt to establish a currency ratio by international agreement. There is no good biography of William McKinley, although the external facts of his career may be obtained in the Annual Cyclopaedia, and in Who's Who in America (a biennial publication which, since its first issue in 1899-1900, has been the standard source of biographical data concerning living Americans). These may be strengthened by D. Magie, Life of Garrett A. Hobart (1910). The best biography of the period is H. Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna (1912), which gives an illuminating survey of Republican politics, although based on only the public printed materials and personal recollections. The opposition may be studied in W.J. Bryan, The First Battle (1896). The platforms, as always, are in Stanwood, and there are useful narratives in Dewey, Latane, Andrews, and Peck. From this period the Outlook (January, 1897), and the Independent (July, 1898), take on a modern magazine form and are to be added to the list of valuable newspaper files, while the Literary Digest begins to play the part carried by Niles's Register in the early part of the century. They may generally be trusted as intelligent, honest, and reasonably independent. The Venezuelan affair, besides stimulating diplomatic correspondence (q.v., in Foreign Relations Reports), led to the writing of W.F. Reddaway, The Monroe Doctrine (1898), which is still one of the most judicious discussions of the topic. J.B. Henderson, American Diplomatic Questions (1901), is useful also.



CHAPTER XV

THE "COUNTER-REFORMATION"

The mission of Populism did not end when free silver had been driven like a wedge into all the parties. Its more fundamental reforms outlasted both the hard times and the recovery from them. Although obscured by the shadow of the larger controversy, the reforms had been stated with conviction. The Populist party was not permitted to bring the reformation that it promised, but it stimulated within the parties in power a "counter-reformation," that was already under way. This counter-reformation was largely within the Republican ranks because that party dominated in every branch of the National Government for fourteen years after 1897, but it was essentially non-partisan. It derived its advocates from the generation that had been educated since the Civil War, and many of its leaders bore the imprint of democratic higher education. It derived its materials from historical, economic, and sociological study of the forces of American society.

Practical politics in America was at its lowest level in the thirty years after the Civil War. The United States was politically fatigued after the years of contest and turned eagerly to the business speculations that opened in every direction. Offices were left to those who chose to run them, while public scrutiny of public acts was materially reduced. The men in charge, unwatched in their business, used it often for personal advantage, and were aided in this by the character of both the electoral machinery and the electorate. A multitude of offices had to be kept filled in every State and city by voters who could know little of the candidates and who accepted the recommendation implied in the party name. Control of the nominations meant control of the elections, and was within reach of those who were persistent in attending caucuses and conventions and were not too scrupulous in manipulating them. The laws against bribery at the polls did not touch corruption at the primaries. The cities, rapidly growing through manufactures and immigration, were full of voters who could be trained to support the "bosses" who befriended them.

The American "boss" made his appearance in the cities about 1870. His power was based upon his personal influence with voters of the lower and more numerous class. Gaining control of party machinery he dictated nominations and policies, and used the government, as the exposures of the Tweed Ring showed, to enrich his friends and to perpetuate his power. Caring little for party principle, he made a close alliance with the new business that continually needed new laws,—building laws, transportation laws, terminal rights, or franchises. From these allies came the funds for managing elections, and, too often, for direct bribery, although this last was necessary only rarely.

Exposures of the evil of boss government were frequent after 1870, and in most cities occasional revolts of outraged citizens overturned the machines, but in the long run the citizen was no match for the professional politician. In the unequal contest city government became steadily worse in America at a time when European city government was rapidly improving. States, too, were afflicted with machine politics, and before 1890 it appeared that the dominant national party derived its most valuable support from organized business that profited by the partnership.

A minority of Americans fought continually for better and cleaner government as the evils of boss rule became more visible. One of them, Bishop Potter, of New York, gained wide hearing through a sermon preached at the centennial of the Constitution, in 1887, in which he turned from the usual patriotic congratulation to discuss actual government. The keenest interest in the subject was aroused by the American Commonwealth of James Bryce.

Not since Alexis de Tocqueville published his Democracy in America, in 1835, had any foreign observer made an equally intimate study of American life, until James Bryce, a young English historian, began a series of visits to the United States in the early seventies. For nearly twenty years Bryce repeated his visits, living at home a full life in his Oxford professorate, in the House of Commons, and in the Ministry. In America he knew every one worth knowing, and he saw the remoter regions of the West as well as the older society of the East. In 1888 he brought out the result of his studies in two volumes that were filled with admiration for the United States and with disheartening observation upon its practices. One of its chapters cut so close that its victim brought suit for libel, but American opinion accepted the book as a friendly picture and regarded attacks upon it as further evidence of its inherent truth. Probably no book in a generation so profoundly influenced American thought and so specifically directed the course of American reform. It became a textbook at once, teaching the truth that corruption and misgovernment were non-partisan, and until the Populists took them up the movements for reform were non-partisan as well.

The power of the boss lay largely in the structure of American governmental machinery, and though some preached the need for a reform in spirit, others saw that only mechanical improvements could accomplish results. A corruptible electorate, such as had long confused British and American politics, was one defect most easily improved. The prevailing system for conducting elections made it easy for the purchaser of votes to see that he got value for his money. The State provided the polling-place, but the candidate or the party provided the printed ballot. Party agents distributed these at the polls, and the voters who received them could be watched until the votes were cast. Intimidation of employees or direct bribery were easy and common, while secret deals were not unknown. The loyal party voter deposited the ballots provided for him; the boss could have these arranged to suit his needs. It was commonly supposed that in 1888, through an agreement between the Democratic and Republican bosses of New York, Hill and Platt, many Republicans were made to vote for Hill as Governor, while Democrats voted for Harrison as President.

A secret ballot was so reasonable a reform that once it had been suggested it spread rapidly over the United States. In 1888 Massachusetts adopted a system based upon the Australian Ballot Law, while New York advertised its value in the same year when Governor Hill vetoed a bill to establish it. Before the next presidential election came in 1892, open bribery or intimidation of voters was rapidly becoming a thing of the past, for thirty-three States had adopted the Australian ballot, provided by public authority and voted in secrecy. "Quay and Platt and Clarkson may find in this fact a fresh explanation of President Harrison's willingness to divest himself of their services," wrote Godkin in a caustic paragraph in 1892.

The Australian ballot enabled the honest citizen to vote in secrecy and safety, but it failed to touch the fact that the nominations were still outside the law. "To find the honest men," Bryce wrote, "and having found them, to put them in office and keep them there, is the great problem of American politics." So long as a boss could direct the nomination he could tolerate an honest election. The movement to legalize the party primaries was just beginning when the ballot reform was accomplished. The most extreme of the primary reformers saw the need for a preliminary election conducted within each party, but under all the safeguards of law, to the end that the voters might themselves determine their candidates. Direct primaries were discussed by the younger men, who were often ambitious, but helpless because of the rigor with which the bosses selected their own candidates. In 1897 a young ex-Congressman, Robert M. LaFollette, worked out a complete system of local and national primaries, and found wide and sympathetic hearing for it. The movement had to face the bitter opposition of the machine politicians because it struck directly at their power, but it progressed slowly. In 1901 it won in Minnesota; a little later it won in Wisconsin; and in the next ten years it became a central feature in reform platforms.

The reforms of the primary and the ballot were designed to improve the quality of public officers, and were supplemented by a demand for direct legislation which would check up the result. In Switzerland a scheme had been devised by which the people, by petition, could initiate new laws or obtain a vote upon existing laws. The idea of submitting special measures to popular vote, or referendum, was old in the United States, for in this way state constitutions and constitutional amendments were habitually adopted, and matters of city charters, loans and franchises often determined. The initiative, however, was new, and appealed to the reformer who resented the refusal of the legislature to pass desired laws as well as the unwillingness to pass worthy ones. The Populists, in 1892, recommended that the system of direct legislation be investigated, and they favored its adoption in 1896. A journal for the promotion of the reform appeared in 1894. In 1898 the first State, South Dakota, adopted the principle of initiative and referendum in a constitutional amendment. To those who attacked the device as only mechanical it was answered: "Direct legislation is not a panacea for all national ills. In fact it is not a panacea at all. It is merely a spoon with which the panacea can be administered. Specific legislation is the panacea for political ills."

The West was more ready than the East to break from existing practice and take up the new reforms. It had always been the liberal section of the United States. Between 1800 and 1830 it had led in the enlargement of the franchise and in the removal of qualifications of wealth and religion. It now approached the one remaining qualification of sex. With the admission of Wyoming in 1890, full woman suffrage appeared among the States. Colorado adopted an amendment establishing it in 1893. Utah, in the words of the women, "completing the trinity of true Republics at the summit of the Rockies," became the third suffrage State in January, 1896, while Idaho adopted woman suffrage in the same year. It was fifteen years before a fifth State was added to the list, but the women's movement was advancing in all directions. A General Federation of Women's Clubs was organized in 1890 as a clearing-house for the activities of the women, and through organizations like the Consumers' League, the movement fell into line with the general course of reform. A clearer vision of the defects in governmental machinery and of the needs of society was spreading rapidly. Hull House, opened in 1889 by Jane Addams, had a host of imitators in the cities, and enabled social workers to study the results of industrial progress upon the laboring class.

The new reforms, mechanical and otherwise, established themselves about 1890, and were taken up by the Populist party between 1892 and 1896. Neither great party noticed the reforms before 1896, but in each party the younger workers saw their point. As non-partisan movements they gained adherents before the Populist party died out, and were pressed more and more seriously upon reluctant organizations. As a whole they were an attempt to make government more truly representative of the voters, and to take the control of affairs from the hands of men who might and often did use them for private aggrandizement. They were overshadowed in 1896 by the paramount issue of free silver, and were deferred in their fulfilment for a decade by accidents which drove them from the public mind. The Spanish War, reviving prosperity, and the renewal of tariff legislation, did not check the activities of the reformers, but did divert the attention of the public.

William McKinley was inaugurated on March 4, 1897. He had served in five Congresses and had been three times governor of Ohio. He "knew the legislative body thoroughly, its composition, its methods, its habits of thought," said John Hay. "He had the profoundest respect for its authority and an inflexible belief in the ultimate rectitude of its purposes." He was not likely to embarrass business through bluntness or inexperience. He had risen through a kindly disposition, a recognition of the political value of tact, and an unusual skill as a moderator of variant opinions. He believed that his function was to represent the popular will as rapidly as it expressed itself, differing fundamentally in this from Cleveland, who thought himself bound to act in the interest of the people as he saw it. His Cabinet reflected the interests that secured his election.

The trend of issues had made the Republican party, by 1897, the party of organized business. For twelve years the alliance had grown steadily closer. Marcus A. Hanna was its spokesman. The burlesque of his sincere and kindly face, drawn by a caricaturist, Davenport, for Eastern papers, created for the popular eye the type of commercialized magnate, but it did him great injustice. Self-respecting and direct, he believed it to be the first function of government to protect property, and that property should organize for this purpose. Without malevolence, he conducted business for the sake of its profits, and regarded government as an adjunct to it. He possessed great capacity for winning popularity, and after his entry into public life in 1897 gained reputation as an effective speaker. He destroyed, before his death, much of the offensive notoriety that had been thrust upon him during the campaign of 1896, but he remained the best representative of the generation that believed government to be only a business asset. He did not enter the Cabinet of McKinley, but was appointed Senator from Ohio when John Sherman vacated his seat.

The pledge of the Republicans for international bimetallism created a need for a financial Secretary of State, and John Sherman, though old and infirm, was persuaded to undertake the office. The routine of the department was assigned to an assistant secretary, William R. Day, an old friend of the President. A magnate of the match trust, Russell A. Alger, of Michigan, received the War Department. The president of the First National Bank of Chicago, Lyman J. Gage, received the Treasury. The other secretaries, too, were men of solidity, generally self-made, and likely to inspire confidence in the world of business.

The new Senators who appeared at this time represented the same alliance of trade and politics. Hanna, in Ohio, and Thomas C. Platt, president of the United States Express Company, in New York, were the most striking instances. In Pennsylvania Quay was able to nominate his colleague in spite of the opposition of his old associate, John Wanamaker, and selected Boies Penrose. Only with the aid of the silver Senators could a Republican majority be procured in the Senate. This made currency legislation impossible, but the managers hoped that there would be a majority for a protective tariff when Congress met in special session, two weeks after the inauguration.

Preparations for a revision of the tariff had been made long before Cleveland left office. Reed was certain to be reelected as Speaker by a large majority. Nelson Dingley, of Maine, was equally certain to be chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and began to hold tariff hearings early in 1897. A rampant spirit for protection was revealed as the manufacturers stated their wishes to the committee. It was often told how the low rates of the Wilson Bill had caused the panic of 1893, and a New York maker of "Oriental rugs" created amusement by asking to be protected from the competition, not of the Orient, but of the German manufacturers. Since 1890 the strength of the Republican organization had been directed toward this revision, and the leaders had held back the silver issue lest it should derange their plans. Now, though returned to power only on the issue of the currency, they held themselves empowered to act as though the tariff had been dominant in 1896. The call stated the need for tariff legislation, and Reed held the House to its task by refusing to appoint the committees without which other business could not be undertaken.

The Dingley Bill passed the House of Representatives after a perfunctory debate which every one regarded as only preliminary to the real struggle in Senate and Conference Committee. In the Senate it became a new measure at the hands of the Finance Committee, whose secretary, S.N.D. North, was also secretary of the Wool Manufacturers' Association. Revenue was everywhere subordinated to protection, until the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, Worthington C. Ford, declared that the act would prolong the deficit which it was designed to cure. On its final passage, the Democratic Senator, McEnery, of Louisiana, left his party to vote for protection to sugar. He was welcomed home in August, in spite of his "treason," by a reception committee with four hundred vice-presidents. The silver Senators, headed by Jones, of Nevada, were induced to support the bill. They had procured the Sherman Silver Bill in 1890 by the same tactics, and now, holding the balance of power, secured a group of amendments for themselves, covering hides, wool, and ore. The measure passed the Senate early in July and became a law July 24, 1897. Senator William B. Allison, of Iowa, was largely responsible for its final passage, although the law continued to bear the name of its forgotten originator, Dingley.

The Republican party was in no condition in 1897 to become the vehicle of the non-partisan reforms that the Populists advocated and that many young Republicans had taken up. The interest in tariff legislation drove everything else from the national organization, while returning prosperity destroyed the mental attitude in which reforms had flourished. Political introspection was less easy in 1897 and 1898 than it had been in the years of confusion and enforced economy since 1890. The civil service and ballot reforms had been started on the upward course, but party machines continued in control of each great organization.

The conduct of the Senate discouraged many of the reformers in the spring of 1897. Cleveland had left in its hands a treaty of arbitration with Great Britain, but no action had been taken upon it when he left office. Arbitration had been a common international tool between Great Britain and the United States. Boundaries, fisheries, and claims had repeatedly been submitted to courts or commissions of varying structure, and even the claims affecting the honor of Great Britain had been settled by arbitration at Geneva. After the Venezuela excitement friends of peace gathered in a convention at Lake Mohonk to discuss the extension of the method of arbitration. When Great Britain had accepted the principle in the case of Venezuela, Cleveland entered into a general arbitration treaty, which was signed at Washington in February, 1897. Public opinion received it cordially, but the Senate was slow to take it up. Late in the spring it was ratified with amendments that destroyed its force and showed the reluctance of Senators to accept the principle of arbitration. International peace was thus postponed, while the rising insurrection in Cuba drove it as well as general reform from the center of public interest.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The American Commonwealth of James Bryce (1888) is the starting-point for the study of political conditions of the nineties, and is to be reinforced by W. Wilson, Congressional Government (1885), T. Roosevelt, Essays on Practical Politics (1888), and P.L. Ford, The Honorable Peter Stirling (1894). Among the personal narratives the most useful are T. Roosevelt, Fifty Years of My Life (1913); R.M. LaFollette, A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences (1913; also published serially in the American Magazine, 1911, as "Autobiography"); Tom L. Johnson's My Story (1911; edited by E.J. Hauser); C. Lloyd, Henry Demarest Lloyd (2 vols., 1912); Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt (1910; edited by L.J. Lang, and highly unreliable); and Jane Addams, Twenty Years of Hull House (1910). Much light is thrown upon the mechanics of tariff legislation by I.M. Tarbell, The Tariff in Our Times (1911), and by the lobby investigations conducted by committees of Congress in 1913, and by the campaign fund investigations conducted by similar committees in 1912. The progress of the Australian ballot reform must be traced through the periodicals, as it has no good history. E.C. Meyer, Nominating Systems: Direct Primaries versus Conventions in the United States (1902), is standard in its field, as are E.P. Oberholtzer, The Referendum in America (1893), and E.C. Stanton, S.B. Anthony, and M.J. Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, 1848-1900(4 vols., 1881-1902). The Annual Reports of the Lake Mohonk Conferences on International Arbitration are a useful aid in tracing the principles of arbitration.



CHAPTER XVI

THE SPANISH WAR

Cuba broke out in one of her numerous insurrections in 1895. The island had been nominally quiet since the close of the Ten Years' War, in 1878, but had always been an object of American interest. More than once it had entered into American diplomacy to bring out reiterations of different phases of the Monroe Doctrine. Its purchase by the United States had been desired to extend the slave area, or to control the Caribbean, or to enlarge the fruit and sugar plantation area. The free trade in sugar, which the McKinley Bill had allowed, ended in 1894, and almost immediately thereafter the native population demanded independence.

The revolt of 1895 was defended and justified by a recital of the faults of Spanish colonial government. Caste and monopoly played a large part in Cuban life. The Spanish-born held the offices, enjoyed the profits, and owned or managed the commercial privileges. The western end of the island, most thickly settled and most under the influence of Spain, gave least support to the uprising, but in the east, where the Cubans and negroes raised and ground cane, or grazed their herds, discontent at the system of favoritism and race discrimination was an important political force. Here the insurgents soon gained a foothold in the provinces of Santiago, Puerto Principe, and Santa Clara. From the jungle or the mountains they sent bands of guerrillas against the sugar mills and plantations of the ruling class, and when pursued their troops hid their weapons and became, ostensibly, peaceful farmers. A revolutionary government, sitting safely in New York, directed the revolt, raised money by playing on the American love of freedom, and sent cargoes of arms, munitions, and volunteers to the seat of war. Avoiding pitched battles and living off the country, the patriot forces compelled Spain to put some 200,000 troops in Cuba and to garrison every place that she retained.



Through 1895 and 1896 the war dragged on with no prospect of victory for the authorities and with growing interest on the part of the United States. Public sympathy was with the Cubans, and news from the front was so much desired that enterprising papers sent their correspondents to the scene of action. The reports of these, almost without exception, magnified the character and promise of the native leaders and attacked the policy of the Spanish forces of repression.

The insurgents began, in 1895, a policy of terror, destroying the cane in the fields of loyalists and burning their sugar mills. To protect the loyalists and repress the rebels the Queen Regent sent General Valeriano Weyler to the island in 1896, with orders to end the war. Weyler replied to devastation with concentration. Unable to separate the loyal natives from the disloyal, or to prevent the latter from aiding the rebels, he gathered the suspected population into huge concentration camps, fortified his towns and villages with sentinels and barbed-wire fences, and endeavored to depopulate the area outside his lines. American public opinion, unused for a generation to the sight of war, was shocked by the suffering in the camps and was aroused in moral protest. Sympathy with the insurgents grew in 1896 and 1897, as exaggerated tales of hardship and brutality were circulated by the "yellow" newspapers. The evidence was one-sided and incomplete, and often dishonest, but it was effective in steering a rising public opinion toward ultimate intervention.

The nearness of the contest brought the trouble to the United States Government through the enforcement of the neutrality laws. There was no public war, and Spain was thus unable to seize or examine American vessels until they entered actual Cuban waters. It was easy to run the Spanish blockade and take supplies to the rebel forces, which was a permissible trade. It was easy, too, to organize and send out filibustering parties, which were highly illegal, and which the United States tried to stop. Out of seventy-one known attempts, the United States broke up thirty-three, while other Powers, including Spain, caught only eleven. Enough landed to be a material aid to the natives and to embitter Spain in her criticism of the United States. Cleveland issued proclamations against the unfriendly acts of citizens, and enforced the law as well as he could in a population and with juries sympathizing with the law-breakers. Even in Congress he found little sympathy in his attempt to maintain a sincere neutrality.

Congress felt the popular sympathy with the Cubans and responded to it, as well as to the demands of Americans with investments in Cuba. In the spring of 1896 both houses joined in a resolution favoring the recognition of Cuban belligerency. This Cleveland ignored. In December, 1896, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations reported a resolution for the recognition of Cuban independence, and individual members of Congress often read from the newspapers accounts of horror, and made impassioned speeches for recognition and intervention. But Cleveland kept his control over the situation until he left office, as Grant had done during the Ten Years' War and the excitement over the Virginius affair. He left the determination of the time and manner of ultimate intervention to his successor.

Among the planks of the Republican platform of 1896 was one asserting the duty of the United States to "use its influence and good offices to restore peace and give independence to Cuba," but there is no evidence that President McKinley contemplated a forcible intervention when he organized his Cabinet. John Sherman had, as Senator, spoken freely in sympathy with Cuba. As Secretary of State he recalled Hannis Taylor from Madrid and sent out General Stewart L. Woodford, with instructions looking toward a peaceful mediation. Not until the autumn of 1897 was it possible to press the Cuban matter, for Spain suffered two changes of Ministry and the murder of a Prime Minister. But by the end of September Spain had been notified that McKinley hoped to be able to give positive assurances of peace to Congress when it met in December.

A Liberal Government, headed by Sagasta, took office in Spain in October, 1897. It declined mediation by the United States, retorting that if the United States were to enforce the law of neutrality the war would soon cease. It recalled Weyler, however, sent out a new and milder governor-general, modified the reconcentrado orders that had so enraged the United States, and issued, on November 25, a proclamation establishing a sort of home rule, or autonomy, for Cuba. In the winter of 1897 the Spanish Government was endeavoring to give no excuse for American intervention, and at the same time, by moderate means, to restore peace in Cuba. The Spanish population of Cuba opposed autonomy and made the establishment of autonomous governments a farce. In January there were riots in Havana among the loyal subjects. Outside the Spanish lines the rebels laughed at autonomy, for they were determined to have independence or nothing. Woodford, in touch with the Spanish Government, believed that in the long run the Spanish people would let the Queen Regent go beyond autonomy to independence, and that with patience Cuba might be relieved of Spanish control.

There was no positive news for Congress in December, 1897, but by February the conditions in Cuba had become the most interesting current problem. The New York Journal obtained and published a private letter written by the Spanish Minister, De Lome, in which McKinley was characterized as a temporizing politician. The Minister had no sooner been recalled than the Maine, a warship that had been detached from the North Atlantic Squadron, and sent to Cuba to safeguard American citizens there, was destroyed by an explosion in the harbor of Havana, on February 15, 1898. There was no evidence connecting the destruction of the Maine with any person, but unscrupulous newspapers made capital out of it, using the catch-phrase, "Remember the Maine," to inflame a public mind already aroused by sympathy and indignation. After February, only a determined courage could have withstood the demand for intervention and a Spanish war.

The negotiations with Spain continued rapidly in the two months after the loss of the Maine. McKinley avoided an arbitral inquiry into the accident, urged by Spain, but pressed increasingly for an end of concentration, for relief for the suffering population, and for full self-government. He did not ask independence for Cuba, and every demand that he made was assented to by Spain. Notwithstanding this, on April 11, 1898, he sent the Cuban correspondence to Congress, urged an intervention, and turned the control of the situation over to a body that had for two years been clamoring for forcible interference. Nine days later Congress resolved, "That the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent." On April 21 the Spanish War began.

The administrative branches of the Government had made some preparations for war before the declaration. The navy was small but modern. It dated from the early eighties, when Congress was roused to a realization that the old Civil War navy was obsolete and began to authorize the construction of modern fighting ships. The "White Squadron" took shape in the years after 1893. Only two armored cruisers were in commission when Harrison left office, but the number increased rapidly until McKinley had available for use the second-class battleships Maine and Texas, the armored cruiser Brooklyn, and the first-class battleships Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Oregon. From the beginning of the McKinley Administration these, as well as the lesser vessels of all grades, were diligently drilled and organized. The new Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, had foreseen and hoped for war. He spent the contingent funds on target practice, and had the naval machine at its highest efficiency when the Maine was lost. On March 9, 1898, Congress, in a few hours, put $50,000,000 at the disposal of the President for national defense, and the navy spent its share of this for new vessels, transports, and equipment. The vessels in the Orient were mobilized at Hongkong under the command of Commodore George Dewey; the Oregon, on station in the Pacific, was ordered home by the long route around the Horn; the ships in the Atlantic were assembled off the Chesapeake. Part of the latter were organized as a flying squadron, for patrol, under Commodore Winfield Scott Schley, while toward the end of March Captain William T. Sampson was promoted over the heads of many ranking officers and given command of the whole North Atlantic Squadron, including the fleet of Schley.

Congress debated a new army bill while the navy was being prepared for war. Not until April 22 did it permit the enlargement of the little regular army of 25,000. Until war had begun the volunteers, of whom some 216,000 were taken into the service, could not be called out or made ready for the field. Some preparations were made within the War Department, but the little staff of clerks, used to the small routine of the peace basis, and having no plan of enlargement or mobilization worked out, made little headway. The navy was ready to strike the day war was declared, but the army had yet to be planned, recruited, clothed, drilled, and transported to the front. The men of the navy knew their duty and were ready for it; in the army thousands of civilians had to blunder through the duties of strange offices. William J. Bryan accepted the colonelcy in a Nebraska regiment. Theodore Roosevelt resigned his office in the Navy Department to raise a regiment of volunteer cavalry. Politicians struggled for commissions for themselves and friends. Civil War veterans fought for reappointment, and enough soldiers of the Confederacy put on the blue uniforms, or sent their sons, to show that the breach had been healed between the North and South. It was an enthusiastic rather than an effective army that was brought together in the two months after the war began.

Cuba, the cause of the war and its objective, was the center of the scheme of strategy. The navy was called upon to protect the Atlantic seaboard from the fleet of Spain, which was reputed to be superior to that of the United States. It had also to maintain a blockade of Cuba and prevent the landing of reinforcements until the army could be prepared to invade the island. Dewey's fleet in the Pacific was ordered to destroy the Spanish naval force in the Philippine Islands, and moved immediately upon Manila when Great Britain issued her proclamation of neutrality and made it impossible to remain longer in her waters at Hongkong.

On the morning of May 1 Dewey led his squadron past the forts, over the submerged mines, and up the channel of Manila Bay. The Spanish forces in the islands, already contending with a native insurrection, were helpless before evening, having lost the whole fleet. Dewey was left in a position to take the city when he chose, and sent home word to that effect. He waited in the harbor until an army of occupation had been got ready, hurried to the transports at San Francisco, and sent out under General Wesley Merritt. He brought the native leader Aguinaldo back to the islands, whence he had been expelled, to foment insurrection. The first American reinforcements arrived at Manila by the end of June. On August 13 they took the city.

Before the news of the surprising victory at Manila reached the United States there was nervousness along the Atlantic Coast because of the uncertain plans of the main Spanish fleet, which had left the Cape Verde Islands, under Admiral Cervera, on April 29, and which might appear off New York or Boston at any time. The naval strategists knew it must be headed for the West Indies, but seaboard Congressmen begged excitedly for protection, and the sensational newspapers pictured the coast in ruins after bombardment.

To Sampson and Schley was assigned the task of guarding the coast, keeping up the blockade, and finding Cervera's fleet before it reached a harbor in American waters. San Juan, Santiago de Cuba, Cienfuegos, and Havana were the only probable destinations. Sampson watched the north side of Cuba and Porto Rico, while Schley and the flying squadron moved to Key West, and on May 19 started around the west end of Cuba to patrol the southern shore. On that same day, entirely unobserved, Cervera slipped into the port of Santiago, at the eastern extremity of Cuba. When the rumor of his arrival reached Sampson at Key West, Schley was already well on his way and firm in his belief that Cervera was heading for Cienfuegos.

The flying squadron, impeded by its colliers and its tenders, moved deliberately around Cuba to Cienfuegos, outside of whose harbor it remained for two days. Here Sampson's orders to proceed immediately to Santiago reached it. On May 26 the fleet was off the entrance to Santiago Harbor, and in this vicinity it stayed for two more days. Schley could get no news that Cervera was here; he feared that his coal would give out and that heavy seas would prevent his getting what coal he had out of his colliers. He decided, in spite of orders, to go back to Key West; he started a retrograde movement, reconsidered it, and was again on blockade when, early on Sunday morning, May 29, he discovered the Spanish fleet at anchor in the channel, where it had been for the last nine days.

The blockade of Santiago was strengthened on June 1 by the arrival of Sampson, who had rushed thither on hearing that Schley had decided to leave the post. The two fleets were merged, and Schley, outranked by Sampson, became a passenger on his flagship Brooklyn. By day, the warships, ranged in a great half-circle, watched the narrow outlet of the harbor. By night they took turns standing close in, with searchlights playing on the entrance. For five weeks they kept this up, not entering the harbor because of their positive orders not to risk the loss of any fighting units, and waited for the arrival of an army to cooperate with them against the land defenses of Santiago.

Sampson asked for military aid early in June, and on June 7 the War Department ordered the army that had been mobilized at Tampa to go to his assistance. General Nelson A. Miles, in command of the army, was not allowed to head the expedition, but was kept at home while General William R. Shafter directed the field work. At Tampa there was almost hopeless confusion. The single track railway that supplied the camp was unable to move promptly either men or munitions, the Quartermaster's Department sent down whole trainloads of supplies without bills of lading, and when the troops were at last on board the fleet of transports they were kept in the river for a week before they were allowed to start for Santiago. Sixteen thousand men, mostly regulars, with nearly one thousand officers and two hundred war correspondents, sailed on June 14, and were in conference with Sampson six days later.

A misunderstanding as to strategy arose in this conference. Sampson left it believing that the army would land and move directly along the shore against the batteries that covered the entrance to the harbor. Shafter, however, though he issued no general order to that effect, was determined to march inland upon the city of Santiago itself. On June 22 and 23 the army was landed by the navy, for it had neither boats nor lighters of its own. The first troops, climbing ashore at the railway pier at Daquiri, marched west along the coast to Siboney, and then plunged inland, each regiment for itself, along the narrow jungle trail leading to Santiago. Shafter himself, corpulent and sick, followed as he could. Before he established his control over the army on land the head of the column had engaged the enemy at Las Guasimas, nine miles from Santiago, on June 24. The First Volunteer Cavalry, under the command of Colonel Leonard M. Wood, with Theodore Roosevelt as lieutenant-colonel, had marched most of the night in order to be in the first fighting. After a sharp engagement the Spanish retired and the American advance upon Santiago continued in a more orderly fashion.

The narrow trail between Siboney, on the shore, and Santiago, was some twelve miles long. There were dense forests on both sides. Along this the American army stretched itself at the end of June. There were few ambulances or wagons, and they could not have been used if they had been more numerous. Rations for the front were packed on mules or horses. The troops, hurried to the tropics in the heavy, dark, winter clothing of the regular army, suffered from heat, rain, and irregular rations. Before them the San Juan River crossed the trail at right angles. Beyond this were low hills carrying the fortifications, trenches, and wire fences of Santiago, behind which the Spanish force could fight with every advantage in its favor. Some five miles to the right of the line of advance was the Spanish left, in a blockhouse at El Caney. On the night before July 1, the American army moved on a concerted plan against the whole Spanish line.

Lawton, with a right wing, moved against El Caney, with the idea of demolishing it and crumpling up the Spanish left. The main column followed the trail, crossed the San Juan River, and stormed the hills beyond. The fight lasted all day on July 1, leaving the American forces to sleep in the Spanish trenches, and to re-face them the next day. There was more fighting on July 2 and 3, after which Santiago was besieged by land, as it had been by sea since June 1.

Cervera watched the invading army with growing desperation. He knew the inefficiency of his fleet, that it had left Spain unprepared because public opinion demanded immediate action, that its guns were lacking and its morale low, that if it stayed at anchor in the harbor it would be taken by the army, and that if it went to sea it would be annihilated by Sampson. His only chance was to rush out, scatter in flight, and trust to luck. On Sunday, July 3, he led his ships out of the harbor in single file, turned west against the Brooklyn, which guarded the American left, and endeavored to escape.

Sampson had already issued orders for battle in case Cervera should come out. He had himself started with his flagship, the New York, for a conference with Shafter, and was some seven miles east of the entrance to the harbor when the fleet appeared and the battle began. He turned at once to the long chase that pursued the Spanish vessels along the Cuban shore. The Brooklyn, at which Cervera had headed, instead of closing, circled to the right, and nearly rammed her neighbor, the Texas, before she regained her place at the head of the pursuit. Schley was the ranking officer in the battle, but no one needed or heeded the orders that he signaled to the other ships. Before sundown the Spanish fleet was completely destroyed.

The land and naval battles at Santiago brought the Spanish War to an end. For several weeks the army kept up the investment, with health and morale steadily deteriorating. On July 17 the Spanish army at Santiago was surrendered. On July 27 an invasion of Porto Rico under General Miles took place, and on August 12 the preliminaries of peace were signed on behalf of Spain by the French Minister at Washington. Manila fell the next day, and the war closed with the American army in possession of the most valuable of Spain's remaining colonies.

The Spanish and American peace commissioners met in Paris in October to fix a basis for settlement. An American demand that Cuba should be set free, without debt, and left to the tutelage of the United States, and that Porto Rico should become an American possession, was formulated early in the autumn. There was less certainty about the retention of the Philippines, for here the desire for expansion was checked by a conservative opposition to the adoption of foreign colonies. The evil effects of imperialism were already being pictured by those who had opposed the war. The difficulties of returning the islands to Spain were greater than those involved in their retention, and McKinley finally determined that the cession must include the Philippine Archipelago, and the island of Guam in the Ladrones. The chief of the American commissioners was William R. Day, who had become Secretary of State early in the war, and who was succeeded in that post by John Hay. Under his direction the Treaty of Paris was signed December 10, 1898.

The war and the conquest of the Philippines hastened another though peaceful expansion. The Hawaiian Islands had been a matter of interest to the United States since the American missionaries had begun to work there in the thirties. A growing, American, sugar-raising population had long hoped for annexation and had carried out a successful revolution shortly before 1893. Harrison had concluded a treaty of annexation with the provisional government, but Cleveland had refused to approve it. On July 7, 1898, however, the Newlands Resolution accomplished the annexation of the republic, and in 1900 a regular territorial government was provided for the group of islands. The spectacular journey of the Oregon around Cape Horn revived the demand for an isthmian canal. Expansion suddenly took possession of the American mind, and a new idea of duty, summed up by Rudyard Kipling in The White Man's Burden, filled a large portion of the press.

The United States had suddenly passed from internal debate over free silver to war and conquest. At the end of 1898 the War Department, that had proved its inadequacy in nearly every phase of the war, was forced to develop a colonial policy for Porto Rico and the Philippines and to guide Cuba to independence. It was still under the direction of General Russell A. Alger, but was torn by dissension and criticism upon the conduct of the war. Not until Alger was asked to retire, in 1899, and Elihu Root, of New York, succeeded him, was the War Department made equal to its task.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The best account of the war with Spain is F.E. Chadwick, Relations of the United States and Spain: Diplomacy (1909), and Relations of the United States and Spain: The Spanish American War (2 vols., 1911). These works have in large measure superseded the earlier studies; J.M. Callahan, Cuba and International Relations (1899); J.H. Latane, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States and Spanish America (1900:—so far as it relates to Cuba); H.E. Flack, Spanish-American Diplomatic Relations preceding the war of 1898 (in Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. XXIV); and E.J. Benton, International Law and Diplomacy of the Spanish-American War (1908). Useful narratives relating to the army are R.A. Alger, The Spanish-American War (1901); H.H. Sargent, The Campaign of Santiago de Cuba (3 vols., 1907); J. Wheeler, The Santiago Campaign (1899); J.D. Miley, In Cuba with Shafter (1899); and T. Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (1899). The navy may be followed in J.D. Long, The New American Navy (2 vols., 1903); E.S. Maclay, History of the United States Navy (3 vols., 1901, the third volume containing allegations that precipitated the Schley-Sampson controversy); G.E. Graham, Schley and Santiago (1902); W.S. Schley, Forty-five Years under the Flag (1904); W.A.M. Goode, With Sampson through the War (1899). The public documents of the war are easily accessible, especially in the Annual Reports for 1898 of the Secretaries of War and Navy, and in the Foreign Relations volume for that year. The controversies after the war illuminated many details, particularly the Schley Inquiry (57th Congress, 1st Session, House Document, no. 485, Serial nos. 4370, 4371), and the Miles-Eagan Inquiry (56th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document, no. 270, Serial nos. 3870-3872).



CHAPTER XVII

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Out of the humiliating debates upon the war, on the capacity of Alger and Shafter, on the management of the commissary and the field hospitals, on the failure of Sampson and Shafter to cooperate, on the tactics and the alleged weakness of Schley, and on the diplomatic sincerity of McKinley, only one name caught the public ear. The only career that placed a soldier in line for political promotion was that of Theodore Roosevelt, who was still under forty years of age, although he had lived a keen, aggressive, and public life for nearly twenty years. Just out of Harvard in 1880, Roosevelt entered the rough and tumble of New York politics. He was a reform legislator when Cleveland was governor, and an opponent of the nomination of Blaine in 1884. He did not fight the ticket or turn Mugwump, for he had already formed a political philosophy, that only those who stayed within the party could be efficient in reform; but he dropped out of the ranks and took up ranch life in the West. Harrison made him a Civil Service Commissioner and supported him in a stern administration of the merit system. Before he left this office in 1895, to become Police Commissioner of New York City, the breezy and vigorous assaults of Roosevelt upon political corruption had already marked him as a reformer of a new type, who remained an active politician and a party man without losing his interest in reform. As police commissioner he gained new fame and more admirers. In 1897 he took the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy and prepared for war. He had already found time to write many books on the West, reform, naval history, and outdoor life. He resigned his post in April, 1898, on the eve of war, raised a regiment of volunteers, which the public speedily named the "Rough Riders," kept his men in the center of the stage while there was fighting, risked and violated all theories of discipline to attack the sanitary policy of the Administration in the autumn, and in October received the nomination of his party for Governor of New York, over the ill-concealed opposition of Thomas Collier Platt.

During the campaign of 1898 Roosevelt carried his candidacy to the voter in every part of the State. He spoke from rear platforms day after day. Rough Riders, in uniform, accompanied his party and reinforced his appeal to mixed motives of good government and patriotic fervor. He was elected in November, and on the same day the Republican control of Congress was assured. It was made possible for the party to fulfill the last of the obligations laid upon it by the election of 1896.

A currency act, passed in March, 1900, was the result of Republican success. It established the gold dollar by law as the standard of value, legalized the gold reserve at $150,000,000, and made it the duty of the Treasury to keep at a parity with gold the $313,000,000 of Civil War greenbacks, the $550,000,000 of silver and silver certificates, the $75,000,000 of Sherman Act treasury notes, as well as the national bank notes, which aggregated $300,000,000 in 1900. The law left the currency far from satisfactory in that it made it dependent upon redemption, and hence liable to sudden changes in value, but it silenced the fear of free-silver coinage.

In the spring of 1900 Congress was forced to consider the basis of colonial government. Governments similar to those of the Territories were provided for Hawaii and Porto Rico, but a troublesome revolt prevented such treatment of the Philippine Islands. There had been a native insurrection in these islands before the Spanish War began, and the aid of the rebels had made it easier for the United States to overthrow the power of Spain. Instead of receiving a pledge of independence, as Cuba did, the islands became a territorial possession of the United States. In February, 1899, under the native leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, insurrection broke out against the United States and received the sympathy of large numbers of Americans. The spectacle of the United States subduing a spirit of independence in the Philippines aroused and stimulated the movement of anti-imperialism that had fought against the acquisition of the islands. The incompatibility of republican institutions and foreign colonies, the demoralizing influence of ruling on the ruling class, the lesson of the fall of Rome, were held up before the public. Carl Schurz was one of the leaders in the protest, and his followers included many whose names were already well known in the advocacy of tariff and civil service reform. In 1901 the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of expansion and imperial control. The people had already decided in their favor in 1900.

There was no contest for either nomination in the campaign of 1900. Bryan had established his right to the leadership that had come to him by chance in 1896. Although conservative Democrats still distrusted him, their voices were drowned by the popular approval of his honesty and humanity. "Four years ago," said Altgeld, in the Democratic Convention at Kansas City, "we quit trimming, we quit using language that has a double meaning.... We went forth armed with that strength that comes from candor and sincerity and we fought the greatest campaign ever waged on the American continent.... [For] the first time in the history of this Republic the Democracy of America have risen up in favor of one man." On a platform that repeated the currency demands of 1896 and denounced imperialism, Bryan was unanimously renominated, with Adlai E. Stevenson for the Vice-Presidency.

The emphatic denunciation of imperialism brought to Bryan and Stevenson the support of a group of independents,—the "hold-your-nose-and-vote" group, as the Republican press called them,—who were strong for the gold standard, but believed that currency was less fundamental than imperialism. The Republican party had accepted and approved the war and the benevolent intentions of the United States, and had renominated McKinley at Philadelphia, without a dissenting voice. Vice-President Hobart had died in office, or the original ticket might have been continued. As a substitute, rumor had attacked the name of Governor Roosevelt, while Senator Platt, preferring not to have him reelected Governor of New York, had encouraged his boom for the Vice-Presidency. Repeatedly, in the spring of 1900, Roosevelt declared that he would not seek or accept the Vice-Presidency. Hanna and McKinley did not desire him on the ticket, but at the convention the delegates broke down all resistance and forced him to accept the nomination.

The policy of dignity, which McKinley had assumed in 1896, was continued by him in 1900, but the vice-presidential candidate proved the equal of Bryan as a campaigner. In hundreds of speeches, reaching nearly every State, they carried their personality to the voters. The two issues, imperialism and free silver, divided the voters along different lines, but the Administration had an economic basis for support in the recovery of business on every hand. The Republicans took credit for the general and abundant prosperity, and their cartoonists emphasized the idea of the "full dinner pail" as a reason for continued support. A smaller percentage of citizens voted than in 1896, for the issue was less clear than it had been then. Many who were discontented with both candidates voted with the Prohibitionists or Socialists. The Republican ticket was elected, with 292 electoral votes, as against 155 received by Bryan and Stevenson. A continuance of the Republican control of Congress was assured at the same time.

William McKinley was the first President after Grant to receive a second consecutive term. He made few changes in his Cabinet in 1901. Elihu Root remained in the War Department, for the sake of which he had refused to consider the Vice-Presidency, and strove for order in the Philippines, in Cuba, and in the United States Army itself. John Hay, as Secretary of State, continued his correspondence with the Powers over the Chinese revolt, without a break.

Only Seward and John Quincy Adams can rival John Hay as successful American Ministers of Foreign Affairs. Born in the Middle West in 1838, Hay served in Lincoln's household as a private secretary throughout the Civil War. He held minor appointments after this and alternated diplomatic experience with literary production. The monumental Life of Abraham Lincoln was partly his work. His graceful verse gained for him a wide reading. His anonymous novel, The Breadwinners, was an important document in the early labor movement. McKinley sent him to London as Ambassador in 1897, following the tradition that only the best in the United States may go to the Court of St. James, and had recalled him to be Secretary of State in the fall of 1898. The Boxer outbreak in China in 1900 gave the first opening to the new diplomacy of the United States, broadened out of its insularity by the Spanish War and interested in the attainment of international ideas. Hay led in the adjustment which settled the Chinese claims, opened the door of China to the commerce of the world, and prevented her dismemberment. He was still engaged in this correspondence when President McKinley was murdered by an anarchist, and Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States, September 14, 1901.

In the hurried inaugural ceremony held in the Buffalo residence in which McKinley died, Roosevelt declared his intention to continue the term as his predecessor had begun it. He insisted that all the members of the Cabinet should remain with him, as they did for considerable periods. He took up the work where it had been dropped, and for some months it was not apparent that a change had been made from a party administration to a personal administration. The suave and cordial tolerance of McKinley was succeeded by the aggressive certainty of his successor. Through John Hay's skillful hand this new tone made a deeper impression on the politics of the world than had that of any President since Washington gave forth the doctrine of neutrality.

Cuba was a pending problem. The American army, under General Leonard Wood, had cleaned up the island. The medical service had learned to isolate the mosquito, and had expelled the scourge of yellow fever. The natives formed a constitution which became effective on May 20, 1902. On this day the United States withdrew from the new Republic, leaving it to manage its own affairs, subject only to a pledge that it would forever maintain its independence, that it would incur no debt without providing the means for settling it, and that the United States might lawfully intervene to protect its independence or maintain responsible government. In the winter of 1901-02 Roosevelt urged Congress to adopt a policy of commercial reciprocity with Cuba. He was supported in this by opinion in Cuba, and by officials of the American Sugar Trust, but was opposed in the Senate by a combination of beet-sugar Republicans and cane-sugar Democrats. The measure failed in 1902, creating bad feeling between President and Congress, but a treaty of modified reciprocity was ratified in 1903.

In 1902 the United States became the first suitor to test the efficacy of the new court of arbitration at The Hague. In 1898 the Czar of Russia had invited the countries represented at St. Petersburg to join in a conference upon disarmament. His motives were questioned and derided, but the conference met the next summer at Huis ten Bosch, the summer palace of the Queen of the Netherlands, at The Hague. Here the plan of disarmament proved futile, but a great treaty for the settlement of international disputes was accepted by the countries present. It seemed probable that the Hague Court, thus created, would die of neglect, but President Roosevelt, appealed to by an advocate of peace, produced a trifling case and submitted it to arbitration. The Pious Fund dispute, with Mexico and the United States as suitors, involved the control of church funds in California. The suit was won by the United States, but derived its chief importance from being the first Hague settlement.

The pledge of the United States for Cuban independence had hardly been fulfilled when another Latin Republic became involved in trouble. Venezuela, torn by war, had incurred obligations to European creditors, and had defaulted in the payments upon them. In December, 1902, Great Britain and Germany announced a blockade of the Venezuelan ports in retaliation, and they were soon joined by other Powers with similar claims. Disclaiming intent to protect Venezuela in defaulting, Roosevelt urged the European claimants to abandon force for arbitration. Under his leadership joint commissions were finally established, and in 1903 the legal technicalities involved were sent to The Hague. The episode involved a new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, making it clear that unless the United States wished to protect the South American Republics in the evasion of their debts it must assume some responsibility for the honest settlement of them.

The boundary of Alaska next became a subject for arbitration. Since the valley of the Yukon had attracted its first great migration in the summer of 1897 the mining-camps had steadily increased in importance. Many of these were on the Canadian side of the meridian of 141 deg., and all were reached either by the river steamers or the trails from the south. The most important ports of entry were Dyea and Skaguay, at the head of the Lynn Canal, a long fiord projecting some ninety miles into the continent. From these ports the prospector plunged inland, climbed the Chilkoot or the Chilkat Pass, and followed one of several overland trails to the Upper Yukon.

The importance given to Dyea and Skaguay revived the question of their ownership and with this the boundary of Alaska. When Seward bought Alaska for the United States in 1867 he received it with the boundaries agreed upon at St. Petersburg between England and Russia in 1825. These followed the meridian of 141 deg. from Mount St. Elias to the Arctic Ocean, and followed the irregularities of the shore-line southeast from that mountain to the Pacific at 54 deg. 40', North Latitude. The narrow coast strip was described as following the windings (sinuosites) of the shore, bounded by the shore mountains if possible, but in no case to be more than thirty miles wide. The narrow Lynn Canal pierces the thirty-mile strip, and the dispute turned chiefly upon interpretation: whether the canal should be regarded as a sinuosite of the shore, around which the boundary must go, or as a stream which it might properly cross.

For thirty years after 1867 the British and Canadian government maps treated the Lynn Canal and other similar fiords as American, but it became convenient for Canada, after 1897, to urge that the boundary should cross the canal and leave Dyea and Skaguay on British soil. A Canadian and American Joint High Commission, meeting in 1898, had been unable to adjust the controversy. In 1903 it was submitted to a tribunal, three to a side, which sat in London. It was doubtful whether the three American adjudicators, Root, Lodge, and Turner, were all "jurists of repute," as the treaty provided, but the arguments of the American counsel convinced Lord Chief Justice Alverstone, one of the British adjudicators, and his vote, added to the American three, gave a verdict that sustained most of the claims of the United States.

In Cuba and Venezuela, at The Hague, and in the Alaskan matter, Roosevelt and Hay showed at once a firmness and a reasonableness that attracted European attention to American diplomacy as never before. The subject of American diplomacy became a common study in American universities. England and Germany appeared to be desirous of conciliating the United States. The German Emperor bought a steam yacht in the United States, sent his brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, to attend the launching, and sent as Ambassador a German nobleman who had long been a personal friend of the President. The reputation for firmness was enhanced, but that for fairness was lessened by the next episode, which involved the Colombian State of Panama.

The dangerous voyage of the Oregon in 1898 completed the conviction of the United States that an isthmian canal must be constructed, and that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was no longer adequate. The activity of De Lesseps and his French company at Panama had raised the question about 1880, but nothing had been done to weaken the treaty that obstructed American construction and control until Hay undertook a negotiation under the direction of McKinley in the fall of 1899. Congress was in the midst of a debate over a Nicaragua canal scheme when it was announced that on February 5, 1900, Hay and Lord Pauncefote had signed a treaty opening the canal to American construction, but providing for its neutralization. The treaty forbade the fortification of the canal or its use as an instrument of war. It was killed by amendment in the Senate, but on November 18, 1901, Lord Pauncefote signed a second treaty, by which Great Britain waived all her old rights save that of equal treatment for all users of the canal, and left the future waterway to the discretion of the United States. With the way thus opened,—for the Senate promptly confirmed this treaty,—a new study of routes and methods was hurried to completion.

An Isthmian Commission, created by the United States in 1899, was ready to report upon a route when the second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty was concluded. The practicable routes had been reduced in number to two, at Panama, and through Nicaragua. The former was under the control of the French company, which placed so high a price upon its concession that the commission recommended the Nicaragua route as, on the whole, more available. In Congress there was a strong predisposition in favor of this same route, but during 1902 this was weakened. Senator Hanna preferred the Panama route and worked effectively for it. The French Panama Company, frightened by the popularity of the Nicaragua route, reduced its price. The earthquake and volcanic eruption on the Island of Martinique reminded the world that Nicaragua was nearer the zone of active volcanic life, and hence more exposed to danger, than Panama. In June Congress empowered the President to select the route and build a canal at once.

Negotiations with Colombia for the right to build at Panama dragged on through 1902 and 1903. Weakened by continuous revolution, that Republic realized that the isthmian right of way was its most valuable asset. Only after prolonged discussion did its Government authorize its Minister at Washington to sign a treaty reserving Colombian sovereignty over the strip, but giving to the United States the canal concession in return for $10,000,000 in cash and an annuity of $250,000. This treaty was signed in Washington in January, 1903, and was received as a triumph for the diplomacy of Hay and Roosevelt. It was ratified in March by the Senate, in spite of a last filibuster by the friends of Nicaragua, but the Colombian Congress rejected the treaty and adjourned.

By the autumn of 1903 Roosevelt had determined upon the route at Panama, the French company had become eager to sell, and the Colombians living on the Isthmus were anxious to have the negotiations ended and the digging begun. In October the President wrote to an intimate friend hoping that there might be a revolt of the Isthmus against Colombia, though disclaiming any intent to provoke one. The friend made the wish public over his own name, but before it appeared in print the revolt had taken place. It was known in advance to the State Department, which telegraphed on November 3, 1903, asking when it was to be precipitated. It took place later on this day, the independence of the Republic of Panama was proclaimed, the United States prevented Colombia from repressing it by force, recognized the new Republic by cable, and on November 18 signed at Washington a treaty with Panama granting the canal concession. "I took Panama," boasted President Roosevelt some years later, when critics denounced his policy as a robbery of a weak neighbor.