McKinley, for they feared that a crisis would upset
the economy, which was just beginning to pick up
after the depression. In Cuba General Weyler made
some progress toward stifling rebel resistance.
American expansionists, however, continued to
demand intervention, and the press, especially Joseph
Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph
Hearst’s New York Journal, competing fiercely to
increase circulation, kept resentment alive with tales
of Spanish atrocities. McKinley remained adamant.
Although he warned Spain that Cuba must be paci-
fied, and soon, his tone was friendly and he issued no
ultimatum. A new government in Spain relieved the
situation by recalling Weyler and promising partial
self-government to the Cubans. In a message to
Congress in December 1897, McKinley urged that
Spain be given “a reasonable chance to realize her
expectations” in the island. McKinley was not insensi-
ble to Cuba’s plight—while far from being a rich
man, he made an anonymous contribution of $5,000
to the Red Cross Cuban relief fund—but he gen-
uinely desired to avoid intervention.
His hopes were doomed, primarily because Spain
failed to “realize her expectations.” The fighting in
Cuba continued. When riots broke out in Havana
in January 1898, McKinley ordered the battleship
Maineto Havana harbor to protect American citizens.
Shortly thereafter Hearst’s New York Journal
printed a letter written to a friend in Cuba by the
Spanish minister in Washington, Dupuy de Lôme. The
letter had been stolen by a spy. De Lôme, an experi-
enced but arrogant diplomat, failed to appreciate
McKinley’s efforts to avoid intervening in Cuba. In the
letter he characterized the president as apoliticastro,or
“small-time politician,” which was a gross error, and a
“bidder for the admiration of the crowd,” which was
equally insulting though somewhat closer to the truth.
Americans were outraged, and de Lôme’s hasty resig-
nation did little to soothe their feelings.
Then, on February 15, theMaineexploded and
sank in Havana harbor, 260 of the crew perishing in the
disaster. Interventionists in the United States accused
Spain of having destroyed the ship and clamored for
war. The willingness of Americans to blame Spain indi-
cates the extent of anti-Spanish opinion in the United
States by 1898. No one has ever discovered what actu-
ally happened. A naval court of inquiry decided that
the vessel had been sunk by a submarine mine, but it
now seems more likely that an internal explosion
destroyed theMaine.The Spanish government could
hardly have been foolish enough to commit an act that
would probably bring American troops into Cuba.
With admirable courage, McKinley refused to
panic; but he could not resist the wishes of millions of
citizens that something be done to stop the fightingThe Cuban Revolution 591governor of Cuba. His assignment to this post was
occasioned by the guerrilla warfare that Cuban nation-
alist rebels had been waging for almost a year. Weyler,
a tough and ruthless soldier, set out to administer
Cuba with “a salutary rigor.” He began herding the
rural population into wretched “reconcentration”
campsto deprive the rebels of food and recruits.
Resistance in Cuba hardened.
The United States had been interested in Cuba
since the time of John Quincy Adams and, were it
not for Northern opposition to adding more slave
territory, might well have obtained the island one
way or another before 1860. When the Cubans
revolted against Spain in 1868, considerable support
for intervening on their behalf developed. Hamilton
Fish, Grant’s secretary of state, resisted this senti-
ment, and Spain managed to pacify the rebels in
1878 by promising reforms. But change was slow in
coming—slavery was not abolished until 1886. The
worldwide depression of the 1890s hit the Cuban
economy hard, and when an American tariff act in
1894 jacked up the rate on Cuban sugar by 40 per-
cent, thus cutting off Cuban growers from the
American market, the resulting distress precipitated
another revolt.
Public sympathy in the United States went to the
Cubans, who seemed to be fighting for liberty and
democracy against an autocratic Old World power.
Most newspapers supported the rebels; labor unions,
veterans’ organizations, many Protestant clergymen,
a great majority of American blacks, and important
politicians in both major parties demanded that the
United States aid their cause. Rapidly increasing
American investments in Cuban sugar plantations,
now approaching $50 million, were endangered by
the fighting and by the social chaos sweeping across
the island.
Cuban propagandists in the United States played
on American sentiments cleverly. When reports,
often exaggerated, of the cruelty of “Butcher”
Weyler and the horrors of his reconcentration camps
filtered into America, the cry for action intensified.
In April 1896 Congress adopted a resolution sug-
gesting that the revolutionaries be granted the rights
of belligerents. Since this would have been akin to
formal recognition, Cleveland would not go that far,
but he did exert diplomatic pressure on Spain to
remove the causes of the rebels’ complaints, and he
offered the services of his government as mediator.
The Spanish rejected the suggestion. For a time the
issue subsided. The election of 1896 deflected
American attention from Cuba, and then McKinley
refused to take any action that might disturb
Spanish-American relations. Business interests—
except those with holdings in Cuba—backed