three years of insurrection there was as yet no Cuban government in existence entitled to even de facto recognition. The people of Cuba were recognized as entitled to freedom, which Congress pledged itself to bring about, disclaiming "any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for the pacification thereof"; and the President was directed to this end to make immediate demands on Spain for withdrawal from Cuba, and to follow refusal of withdrawal by armed intervention. The final passage of the resolutions on the 20th of April was accepted by Spain as an act of war. The Spanish. Minister in Washington at once demanded and received his passports, and an ultimatum cabled to Woodford for delivery at Madrid was never presented because of his dismissal by the Spanish Government. By a subsequent resolution Congress declared that a state of war began on April 21; a blockade of Cuba was ordered on April 22, and on the same day Congress followed its usual course in military preparation by enacting a law for the creation of an army after the war had been declared.

Three days after the beginning of the war, on April 24, a British proclamation of neutrality made it impossible for Dewey at Dewey to continue at Hongkong the outfitting of Manila his fleet. The war itself had brought into operation the orders he had received from Secretary Roosevelt. On the 25th he withdrew from Hongkong for a near-by harbor, and a few hours later on his flagship the Olympia started for Manila Bay. Williams, the former consul at Manila, came upon the flagship on the 27th, the day on which Matanzas, on the Cuban coast, was bombarded by vessels from the Atlantic squadron, with resulting casualties, if one may trust the Spanish governor, of a single mule. On the early morning of May 1, the Olympia led the American squadron in through the capes at the mouth of Manila Bay, passing over anchored mines that ought to have destroyed it, and under guns on shore emplacements that ought to have controlled the entrance. It found the Spanish fleet drawn up along the water-front of Manila and in leisurely

fashion, against only an unexpectedly perfunctory defense, destroyed the fleet and placed Manila at the mercy of the American commander whenever he should receive military forces with which to occupy it.

The date of victory at Manila marks the entry of the United States against its will upon an imperial course. It marks by chance another entry toward a similar destiny, less unintended. While Dewey was battering the Spanish ships, off Manila, Prince William of Wied, at a meeting at the Hotel Bristol, in the city of Berlin, was laying the foundations of the German Navy League whose function was to be to show the German Empire the pathway to a new glory. The seizure of Kiau-chau had already established Germany in a promising field of Asiatic expansion whose fertility the accidental arrival of the United States most gravely threatened.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Diplomatic correspondence preceding the war with Spain is in the volumes of U.S. Foreign Relations, 1895-98, and has been summarized in three important studies: H. E. Flack, Spanish-American Diplomatic Relations preceding the War of 1898 (1906); E. J. Benton, International Law and Diplomacy of the Spanish-American War (1908); and F. E. Chadwick, The Relations of the United States and Spain: Diplomacy (1909). J. M. Callahan, Cuba and International Relations (1899), is valuable. C. S. Olcott, William McKinley (1916), is the best work available on its subject, but needs to be supplemented by Henry Cabot Lodge, The War with Spain (1899), and John D. Long, The New American Navy (1903). There are biographies or autobiographies of George Dewey, Winfield Scott Schley, Alfred T. Mahan, Charles D. Sigsbee.

CHAPTER XXV

THE INVASION OF CUBA

THE immediate consequence of Dewey's victory at Manila was a need for an occupying army. The Spanish fleet had been destroyed and Manila was within reach, but the Spanish land forces still occupied Luzon and the adjacent islands, and there were no troops at Dewey's disposal for grasping the fruits of victory. The Spanish forces were already engaged, in the Philippines as in Cuba, in putting down a native revolt. A prominent native leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, whom the war found in exile in China, was brought back to the islands by Dewey for the purpose of keeping the revolt alive. The first specific demand upon the War Department was for an expeditionary force, which was speedily assembled in San Francisco under General Wesley Merritt, and which on August 13, 1898, occupied the city of Manila by assault.

The Philippines and Hawaii

As in the case of the voyage of the Oregon, the operations in the Philippines brought an old movement to final fruition. The Oregon constituted an object-lesson whose teachings made the Panama Canal imperative. The possession of Manila revealed the strategic importance of the Hawaiian Islands. A movement for the annexation of these islands, arising locally in their American population, had been encouraged by President Harrison and snubbed by Cleveland. President McKinley negotiated a treaty for its consummation in 1897, but the Senate failed to ratify it. On July 7, 1898, Congress took the project out of the hands of the Senate, and passed a joint resolution as a consequence of which the Republic of Hawaii was annexed to the United States. On June 14, 1900, it was given status as a Territory of the United States.

Congress had begun its debate upon the formation of an army during the concluding weeks of the diplomatic dis

lation

cussion with Spain. It was conceded that the basis must be the regular army, which on April 1 comprised Army legis2143 officers and 26,040 enlisted men, the organized National Guard of the States, and volunteers. The regular army was on April 26 authorized to be raised in strength to 62,597. The volunteer army was authorized four days earlier, and upon April 23 President McKinley issued a call for 125,000 volunteers apportioned among the States. By August, when mobilization was complete, the volunteer army comprised 8785 officers and 207,244 men.

The volunteer law authorized the President to accept three volunteer regiments of cavalry. Of these the most important was raised by Leonard Wood, a captain in the Medical Corps, who was to be "advanced within a few months from attending surgeon to major-general of volunteers," and who was actively supported by his friend, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt. The regiment was recruited among the outdoor men who perpetuated the tradition of the frontier marksman whom Roosevelt described in his Winning of the West. Under the nickname of the "Rough Riders" it became the most widely known single unit in the war.

Not until after the passage of the army bills in April did the War Department hold itself at liberty to begin specific preparations for war. The regular army was as usual diffused on duty throughout the country. The Secretary of War, General Russell A. Alger, of Michigan, had been chosen because of his political importance to the HannaMcKinley organization. His Civil War record had been so dubious that McKinley had deferred appointment until Senator Julius C. Burrows, of Michigan, had personally investigated and underwritten it. The army itself was under command of General Nelson A. Miles, senior major-general with long years of Indian police experience on the plains and the recollection of a lad's gallant services in the Civil War. The administrative bureaus of the War Department were in command of elderly officers whose business routine had been unbroken for years. The line officers of the army

and the enlisted men were well trained and effective in their work, but no general plans for any war existed in the department, nor was there a planning agency fit to execute them. The normal consequence of an army under command of its senior officers, with the rule of seniority generally applied, was an army under the command of its least flexible and most irascible leaders, whose careers were already behind them.

One of the statutes passed by Congress in anticipation of war was an appropriation of fifty million dollars, on March 9 "for national defense and for each and every purpose connected therewith, to be expended at the discretion of the President." This fund was expended largely in guarding the coast and strengthening the navy. It was ruled, said Secretary Alger, that the accumulation of military supplies by the army was offensive rather than defensive, and his establishment accordingly watched the approach of the crisis without funds or authority to prepare to meet it. The passage of the army bills and the calls for volunteers precipitated immediate action and expansion that strained the administrative capacity of the War Department's bureaus. General Merritt's expeditionary force was got ready first, and then units of the regular army were mobilized at Tampa to constitute the nucleus of an army for Cuban invasion, while the volunteer forces were mostly assembled in training camp at Chickamauga.

The First Volunteer Cavalry selected San Antonio as its mobilizing point, and proceeded thence to join the regulars at Tampa. Its senior officers were thoroughly familiar with the channels which led to action in the departments, and secured for their volunteer force the greatest of military opportunities. General William R. Shafter, from Michigan, as were Secretary Alger and Senator Burrows, was given command of the invading army, which was about 17,000 strong by the first of June. His camp at Tampa lay at the end of a single-track railroad, and was a rising winter resort of the Florida west coast. Hither trainloads of troops and supplies were shipped sometimes without orders or bills of