CHAPTER XV

"Cuba; America: America; Cuba. The two names are inseparable." So we said at the beginning of our history of the "Pearl of the Antilles." So we must say at the beginning of a new era, the third, in these annals. At the beginning the connection was between Cuba and America as a whole--the continents of the western hemisphere. In this second case it is between Cuba and America in the more restricted meaning of the United States. There was a significant and to some degree influential forecast of this relationship in the preceding era, in which Cuba was in contact with England and with the rising British power in the New World. For what was afterward to become the United States was then a group of British colonies, and it was inevitable that relations begun in Colonial times should be inherited by the independent nation which succeeded. Moreover, Cuba was in those days brought to the attention of the future United States in a peculiarly forcible manner by the very important participation of Colonial troops, particularly from Connecticut and New Jersey, in that British conquest of Havana which we have recorded in preceding chapters.

It was nearly half a century, however, after the establishment of American independence that any practical interest began to be taken in Cuba by the great continental republic at the north. The purchase of the Louisiana territory and the opening to unrestrained American commerce of that Mississippi River which a former Governor of Cuba had discovered and partially explored, had greatly increased American interest in the Gulf of Mexico and had created some commercial interest in the great Island which forms its southern boundary. Later the acquisition of Florida called attention acutely to the passing away of Spain's American Empire and to the concern which the United States might well feel in the disposition of its remaining fragments. Already, in the case of Florida in 1811 the United States Government had enunciated the principle that it could not permit the transfer of an adjacent colony from one European power to another. It will be pertinent to this narrative to recall that action in fuller detail. The time was in the later Napoleonic wars, when Spain was almost at the mercy of any despoiler. There was imminent danger that Spain would transfer Florida to some other power, as she had done a few years before with the Louisiana territory, or that it would be taken from her. In these circumstances the Congress of the United States on January 15, 1811, adopted a joint resolution in these terms:

"Taking into view the peculiar situation of Spain, and of her American provinces; and considering the influence which the destiny of the territory adjoining the southern border of the United States may have upon their security, tranquility and commerce,

"Be it Resolved: That the United States, under the peculiar circumstances of the existing crisis, cannot without serious inquietude see any part of the said territory pass into the hands of any foreign power; and that a due regard for their own safety compels them to provide under certain contingencies for the temporary occupation of the said territory; they at the same time declaring that the said territory shall, in their hands, remain subject to future negotiations."

Then the same Congress enacted a law authorizing the President to take possession of Florida or of any part of it, in case of any attempt of a European power other than Spain herself to occupy it, and to use to that end the Army and Navy of the United States. Nothing of the sort needed to be done at that time, though a little later, during the War of 1812, Florida was invaded by a British force and immediately thereafter was occupied by an American army.

The enunciation of this principle by Congress marked an epoch in American foreign policy, leading directly to the Monroe Doctrine a dozen years later. It also marked an epoch in the history of Cuba, especially so far as the relations of the Island with the United States were concerned. For while this declaration by Congress applied only to Florida, because Florida abutted directly upon the United States, the logic of events presently compelled it to be extended to Cuba. This was done a little more than a dozen years after the declaration concerning Florida. By this time Florida had been annexed to the United States and Mexico, Central America and South America had revolted against Spain and declared their independence. Only the "Ever Faithful Isle," as Cuba then began to be called, and Porto Rico remained to Spain of an empire which once nominally comprised the entire western hemisphere. Cuba was not like Florida geographically, abutting upon the United States. But it lay almost within sight from the coast of Florida and commanded the southern side of the Florida channel through which all American commerce from the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean must pass, and thus it was invested with peculiar importance to the United States. Nor was it lacking in importance to Great Britain and France. Those powers possessed extensive and valuable holdings in the West Indies and they were rivals for the reversionary title to these remaining Spanish Islands, Cuba and Porto Rico. Each of them realized that whichever of them should secure those two great Islands would, by virtue of that circumstance, become the dominant power in the West Indies. Moreover they both felt sure that Spain would soon have to relinquish her hold upon them. This latter belief prevailed widely also in the United States, and was by no means absent from Cuba itself. Indeed a party was organized in Cuba in the spring of 1822, for the express purpose of seeking annexation to the United States, and in September of that year did make direct overtures to that end to the American Government. The President of the United States, James Monroe, received these overtures in a cautious and non-committal manner. He sent a confidential agent to Cuba to examine into conditions there and to report upon them, but gave no direct encouragement to the annexation movement.

At about this time the direction of the foreign affairs of Great Britain came into the hands of George Canning, a statesman of exceptional vision and aggressive patriotism, and one specially concerned with the welfare of British interests in the New World. He was well aware of the condition and trend of affairs in Cuba, and felt that the transfer of that Island from Spain to any other power would be unfortunate for British interests in the West Indies. When he learned of the Cuban overtures for annexation to the United States, therefore, in December, 1822, he brought the matter to the careful consideration of the British Cabinet and suggested to his colleagues that such annexation of Cuba by the United States would be a very serious detriment to the British Empire in the western hemisphere. He made no diplomatic representation upon the subject either to Spain or to the United States, but he did send a considerable naval force to the coastal waters of Cuba and Porto Rico, apparently with the purpose of preventing, if necessary, any such change in the sovereignty and occupancy of those Islands.

In this Canning was probably over-anxious, since there is no indication whatever that the American Government contemplated any such step or that it would have attempted to take possession of Cuba if the Island had been left unguarded. On the other hand, this action of Canning's very naturally aroused American concern and provoked the suspicion that England was planning the seizure or purchase of the Island. The result was the formal application to Cuba of the principle which had already been enunciated by Congress in respect to Florida. It was the legislative branch of the United States Government that took that action toward Florida. It was the executive and diplomatic branch which took the action toward Cuba. This was done in a memorable state document which formed a land-mark in the history of American foreign policy.

The American Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, on April 28, 1823, wrote an official letter to Hugh Nelson, who at the beginning of that year had become American minister to Spain. This letter contained official instructions to Nelson concerning his conduct in the war which was impending between Spain and France, because of the latter power's intervention in Spanish affairs in behalf of King Ferdinand VII. It then turned to the subject of Cuba and continued as follows:

"Whatever may be the issue of this war, it may be taken for granted that the dominion of Spain upon the American continents, north and south, is irrevocably gone. But the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico still remain nominally, and so far really, dependent upon her, that she yet possesses the power of transferring her own dominion over them, together with the possession of them, to others. These islands are natural appendages to the North American continent, and one of them almost in sight of our shores, from a multitude of considerations has become an object of transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union. Its commanding position with reference to the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indian seas, its situation midway between our southern coast and the island of San Domingo, its safe and capacious harbor of the Havana, fronting a long line of our shores destitute of the same advantages, the nature of its production and of its wants, furnishing the supplies and needing the returns of a commerce immensely profitable and mutually beneficial give it an importance in the sum of our national interests with which that of no other foreign territory can be compared, and little inferior to that which binds the different members of this Union together. Such indeed are, between the interests of that island and of this country, the geographical, commercial, moral and political relations formed by nature, gathering in the process of time, and even now verging to maturity, that in looking forward to the probable course of events for the short period of half a century, it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our Federal Republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself.... There are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation. And if an apple, severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot choose but to fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only toward the North American Union, which, by the same law of nature cannot cast her off from her bosom. The transfer of Cuba to Great Britain would be an event unpropitious to the interests of this Union.... The question both of our right and of our power to prevent it, if necessary, by force, already obtrudes itself upon our councils, and the Administration is called upon, in the performance of its duties to the nation, at least, to use all the means within its competency to guard against and forefend it."

That was the beginning of the policy of the United States toward Cuba. In making that declaration Adams had general support and little or no opposition. A few weeks afterward the ex-President, Thomas Jefferson, writing to Monroe, expressed in part the same view, though he coupled it with the suggestion of an alliance with Great Britain. He wrote:

"Cuba alone seems at present to hold up a speck of war to us. Its possession by Great Britain would indeed be a great calamity to us. Could we induce her to join us in guaranteeing its independence against all the world, except Spain, it would be nearly as valuable as if it were our own. But should she take it, I would not immediately go to war for it; because the first war on other accounts will give it to us, or the island will give herself to us when able to do so."

Two years later, in 1825, Henry Clay, then Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President John Quincy Adams, instructed the American ministers at the chief European capitals to make it known that the United States for itself desired no change in the political condition of Cuba; that it was satisfied to have it remain open to American commerce; but that it "could not with indifference see it passing from Spain to any other European power." A little later he added, referring to Cuba and Porto Rico, that "we could not consent to the occupation of those islands by any other European power than Spain, under any contingency whatever."

This attitude of the American Government was sufficient to accomplish the purpose desired. Although the power of Spain continued to decline, no attempt was made by either France or England to acquire possession of Cuba by either conquest or purchase. But in August, 1825, the British Government laid before the American minister in London a proposal that the United States should unite with Great Britain and France in a tripartite agreement for the protection of Spain in her possession of Cuba to the effect that none of the three would take Cuba for itself or would acquiesce in the taking of it by either of the others. The American minister reported this to the President, who promptly and emphatically declined it. It was then that Henry Clay made the pronouncement already quoted, that the United States could not consent to the occupation of Cuba by any other European power than Spain, under any contingency whatever.

A little later in the same year American interest in Cuba was again appealed to from another source. Several of the former Spanish colonies which had declared their independence, particularly Mexico and Colombia, expressed much dissatisfaction that Cuba and Porto Rico should remain in the possession of Spain. They desired to see the Spanish power entirely expelled from the western hemisphere. They therefore began intriguing for revolutions in those islands, and failing that prepared themselves to take forcible possession of them. These plans encountered the serious disapproval of the United States government, and on December 20, 1825, Henry Clay wrote to the representatives of the Mexican and Colombian governments urgently requesting them to refrain from sending the military expeditions to Cuba which were being prepared; a request with which they complied, Colombia readily but Mexico more reluctantly. Those two countries had been specially moved to their proposed action by the declaration of the famous Panama Congress, then in session, in favor of "the freeing of the islands of Porto Rico and Cuba from the Spanish yoke." It is interesting to recall, too, that in his instructions to the United States delegates to that Congress, who unfortunately did not arrive in time to participate in its deliberations, Clay declared that "even Spain has not such a deep interest in the future fate of Cuba as the United States."

Justice requires us, unfortunately, in concluding our consideration of this early phase of Cuban-American relations, to confess that the motives of the United States were not at that time altogether of the highest character. To put it very plainly, there was much opposition to the extension of Mexican or Colombian influence to Cuba because that would have meant the abolition of human slavery in the island, and that would have been offensive to the slave states of the southern United States. Also some of the earliest movements in the United States toward the annexation of Cuba were inspired by the wish to maintain the institution of slavery in that island and to add it to the slave holding area of the United States. It was on such ground that Senator Hayne and others declared in the American Congress that the United States "would not permit Mexico or Colombia to take or to revolutionize Cuba." James Buchanan declared that under the control of one of those countries Cuba would become a dangerous explosive magazine for the southern slave States because Mexico and Colombia were free countries and "always conquered by proclaiming liberty to the slave."

We have recalled these facts and circumstances in this place somewhat in advance of their strict chronological order, by way of introduction to the history of Cuba in the Nineteenth Century, because they really dominate in spirit the whole story. It will be necessary to recur to them again, briefly, in their proper place. But it is essential to bear them in mind from the beginning, even through this anticipatory review of them. Every page and line and letter of Cuban history in the Nineteenth Century is colored by the Declaration of Independence of 1776, by the fact that the United States of America had arisen as the foremost power in the Western Hemisphere. Through the inspiration which it gave to the French Revolution, the United States was chiefly responsible, as an alien force, for the complete collapse of Spain as a great European power. Through its example and potential influence as a protector it was responsible for the revolt and independence of the Spanish colonies in Central and South America. Then through its assertion of special interests in Cuba, because of propinquity, and through the tangible influence of commercial and social intercourse, together with a constantly increasing and formidable, though generally concealed, political sway, it determined the future destinies of the Queen of the Antilles.