President McKinley

by Robert W. Merry

  This bland approach proved highly provocative. With 266 patriotic servicemen in their graves or lost forever in the waters of Havana, most Americans wanted something more stirring. Beyond that, many disdained the notion of a president ceding leadership to Congress on what probably constituted the nation’s most severe crisis since the Civil War. “It is to speak moderately,” suggested the New York Times, “to say that the general tone of comment on the message was one of disappointment.” In the House, Minority Leader Joseph Bailey of Texas introduced a resolution recognizing Cuban independence. Democrats rallied solidly behind the measure, and it appeared that a scattering of Republican mavericks might join them to hand McKinley a devastating political defeat. In the end, with Speaker Reed’s parliamentary dexterity and a promise from McKinley of a major new Cuban policy, disaster was averted.

  In the Senate, that Democratic hawk John Morgan of Alabama introduced a resolution declaring war on Spain based on “the succession of events which have occurred in the Island of Cuba, notably the starving and imprisonment of American citizens.” The Maine disaster didn’t even have to figure into it, he said. Vice President Hobart, on an afternoon ride with McKinley, warned the president that he was losing his influence over the Republican-controlled Senate. The president seemed stunned. “Say no more,” he said, and fell silent.

  Two days later—a day of “grave anxiety,” in Cortelyou’s words—Woodford reported Madrid’s response to McKinley’s proposal. Prime Minister Sagasta said he would submit the Maine issue to arbitration, fully revoke the reconcentrado policy, and set aside a large sum of money for a Cuban relief program. He also would submit future peace discussions to Cuba’s insular parliament and would cease hostilities until the parliament convened on May 4. But to preserve its national pride Spain would accept a cease-fire only if the rebels asked for it. Without an armistice through October 1, as McKinley had proposed, there would be no prospect to arbitrate a solution in the fall. The response, Woodford told the president, “was a sorrow to me for I have worked hard for peace.” In typical fashion, Sagasta didn’t reject McKinley’s armistice proposal outright. He suggested further negotiations pending the return of his legislative Cortes in a few weeks. As the Washington Post put it, “Spain’s only hope now lies in delay.”

  McKinley couldn’t afford delay. He found himself caught between congressional agitation and Spanish intransigence. With his cherished incrementalism in decision making lying in shambles, he risked losing control of his own government. It was time for the kind of boldness he normally sought to avoid. Even before Madrid’s disappointing response, McKinley called to the White House a stream of influential Republican legislators and promised a new direction, though he remained vague on the details. As the Washington Post explained, “Anxiety for prompt action, while ill-concealed, is curbed in the belief that the President will . . . announce that he has decided to delay no longer, and make recommendations upon which Congress can act.” Congress continued to percolate with expressions of bellicosity toward Spain and irritation toward McKinley, but Republican leaders of both houses managed to curb any threatening legislative action.

  The president did enjoy scattered support around the country. The Louisville Courier-Journal said the president had “risen above politics in his treatment of the Cuban question.” And the Baltimore Sun appreciated his effort to lead “a patient and forbearing nation keeping its temper under control in spite of sore provocation.” But plenty of public sentiment matched the anger of a group of Richmond, Virginia, agitators who drew a large crowd by hanging and burning the president in effigy—and adding an effigy of Mark Hanna for good measure.

  The problem facing McKinley, even after he managed to subdue congressional restlessness with his promise of a new direction, was a psychological difficulty relinquishing his hope of getting Spain out of Cuba without war. From the beginning, he had known precisely what he wanted to accomplish, and he never veered from that goal or slackened the ponderous resolve he brought to it. But perhaps he had been naïve in thinking war threats could intimidate Spain into abandoning its cherished Cuban colony before his own constituency forced him into an actual war. In any event, now he was stuck with the results of that ploy, and he was having difficulty coming to terms with it.

  The president’s self-promoting friend, Herman Kohlsaat, described an incident at the White House during this time of struggle. At an evening piano recital in the Blue Room, the president asked Kohlsaat to join him in the Red Room. The president sat down on a large crimson-brocade lounge, rested his head on his hands, with his elbows on his knees, and poured out his heart at Ida’s recent decline of health and his own tribulations with a Congress bent on war. “The Spanish fleet is in Cuban waters,” sighed the president, “and we haven’t enough ammunition on the Atlantic seacoast to fire a salute.” Secretary Long also perceived the effects of stress and lack of sleep. The president, he wrote in his diary, “has shown a good deal of weariness and nervous strain.”

  But the logic of the situation was pointing the way. He would ask Congress for authority to intervene militarily to end the war and effect Cuban independence. He set about drafting his message—while also maintaining hopes that new developments might block the path to war. Sagasta played on McKinley’s hopes by accepting an initiative from Germany to have Pope Leo XIII serve as a mediator between Spain and the United States. When the pope proposed an armistice during the coming rainy season, to prepare the way for Cuban independence in the autumn, Madrid evinced interest. Woodford, whose initial pessimism about prospects for peace long since had given way to starry visions of diplomatic success, waxed enthusiastic in his correspondence with the president. “If conditions at Washington will enable you to give me the necessary time,” he wrote, “I am sure that before next October I will get peace in Cuba.”

  But Judge Day smelled a rat. The proposal crafted by Spain in response to the pope’s entreaty, he wrote to Woodford, “is not armistice.” It was merely an invitation to the insurgents to lay down their arms while the autonomy government in Havana determined “what expansion if any of the decreed home rule scheme is needed or practicable.” Embracing Day’s interpretation, McKinley set April 6 as the day for sending his message to Congress. As that day dawned, expectations ran high in Washington. A crowd of 10,000 gathered at the Capitol in hopes of catching a glimpse of history. Cortelyou wrote in his diary, “History is being made at a rapid rate.”

  But around noon a dispatch arrived at the White House from Consul Lee, who requested a delay so he could get vulnerable Americans out of Cuba before the president’s message inflamed anti-U.S. passions in Havana. Present in the Cabinet Room when Lee’s dispatch arrived were McKinley’s new attorney general, John Griggs (Joseph McKenna had gone to the Supreme Court), Alger, Long, and Day. The president sent for three top members from both House and Senate so he could inform them of his dilemma. They came promptly, but in the interim Secretary Long suggested that the president probably should send the message despite Lee’s concerns, lest the delay send a false signal of presidential irresolution. McKinley raised his hand.

  “I will not do it,” he announced. “. . . I will not do such a thing if it will endanger the life of an American citizen in Cuba.” When the members arrived, the president told them he would deliver his message five days later, on Monday, April 11.

  Not surprisingly, news of the delay generated great disappointment throughout Washington, along with some skepticism. The always impatient Roosevelt privately suggested the president’s backbone was “as soft as a chocolate éclair.” When the Senate went into executive session to hear from Minnesota’s Cushman Davis, Foreign Relations Committee chairman William Chandler of New Hampshire questioned him closely: “Does the Senator from Minnesota know that a message has really been prepared?”

  “Yes,” replied Davis.

  “Did the Senator see the message?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the Senator read the message?”

  �
��Yes.”

  “And is the message one for which we can afford to wait?”

  “Yes.”

  That satisfied Chandler and his colleagues, and official Washington settled in for the wait.

  On April 6, McKinley received a communication from the ambassadors of six European nations appealing for a peaceful settlement of differences between the United States and Spain. The president replied diplomatically that Washington recognized “the good will which has prompted the friendly communication” and anticipated that the European powers likewise would appreciate America’s resolve “to fulfill a duty to humanity by ending a situation, the indefinite prolongation of which has become insufferable.”

  As the time for McKinley’s congressional message neared, Madrid grew increasingly desperate. The queen regent on April 9 invited the ambassadors of the major European powers to offer their counsel on Spain’s course. When they advocated an armistice she pounced on it as cover for another effort to placate the menacing Americans with an armistice plan. For good measure, her government informed Pope Leo of her action in order to solicit his good offices, and he obligingly praised the decision. But like nearly all Spanish actions, the armistice was hedged, designed to give General Banco leeway to place conditions on its terms and duration.

  McKinley had had enough. When Spain’s new minister to Washington, Luis Polo de Bernabé, sought American acceptance of the armistice plan and a further postponement of the president’s message, the president and his Cabinet agreed there could be no delay. McKinley decided to simply append the final Spanish concessions and requests to his message in order that Congress could consider them as it desired. The Cabinet drew up a memorandum to this effect, which Day read to Polo later in the afternoon.

  On April 9 Fitzhugh Lee left Havana, along with some 300 other Americans eager to be out of danger. Two days later McKinley sent to Congress a 7,000-word “war message,” laying out Cuba’s recent tangled history, clarifying his own actions in light of that history, and reiterating his views of the matter as outlined in his December Annual Message, including his rationale for opposing recognition of either Cuban belligerency rights or “any particular government in Cuba.” He identified two modes of intervention: as an impartial neutral or as the active ally of one party or the other. He opted for the first intervention mode.

  He justified “neutral intervention” on four grounds: first, to serve the cause of humanity in stopping the “barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries” that blighted the island; second, to protect and indemnify American citizens beset by the chaos of the Cuban war; third, to stop the war’s devastation to U.S. commerce; and, fourth, to terminate the violence and instability so close to U.S. shores that posed a constant threat to the country’s well-being, prosperity, and tranquility. The Maine explosion, he said, represented a distilled example of this constant threat. He saw no prospect of Spain’s bringing peace to the island: “I ask the Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations, insuring peace and tranquility and the security of its citizens as well as our own, and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary for these purposes.”

  Typically the president’s message contained no soaring rhetoric, and Secretary Long considered its conclusion to be “somewhat indefinite and hardly a sequitur from the argument which precedes it.” For members of Congress who wanted stirring patriotic language and recognition of Cuban independence, it generated waves of anger. “The message has caused great discontent in Congress,” reported the New York Times. Ben Foraker told the paper, “I have no patience with the message,” and Missouri’s Democratic representative Alexander Dockery called it “anemic.”

  Even as McKinley set his country upon a one-way path to war, he couldn’t bring himself to embrace the idiom of war. As he had told Carl Schurz, he didn’t want any “jingo nonsense” in his administration. But many wondered if his incremental leadership style and rhetorical blandness were equal to the kind of enveloping challenge he now faced. The question unsettled many in Washington, but McKinley showed no inclination to alter his course. He would manage events and developments as they came his way with a conviction that his judgment and maneuverability would carry him through. But the barrage of criticism often pained him. The day after the war message was sent up, Cortelyou entered the Cabinet Room with a passel of letters and telegrams.

  “Mr. President,” he said, “I have some communications for you bearing upon the message. Here is a particularly good one from Ex-Attorney General Garland.” Augustus Garland, an old friend of the president’s, was a Democrat, and McKinley seemed prepared for an expression of disapproval. A look of “deep concern and sorrow” spread across the president’s face.

  “Is he for us?” he asked. Upon reading it, he discovered Garland agreed completely with his course. His face brightened. “That is a beautiful letter of congratulations,” he said, “and I appreciate it deeply.”

  Despite the many expressions of opprobrium he received, the president continued his practice of reading large numbers of the letters addressed to him as a means of assessing public opinion.

  Once the dust settled and Congress took up the issue, McKinley was back in a more comfortable political mode, working with congressional members in a long series of small, behind-the-scenes actions designed to nudge events in his direction. In the House on April 13, Democrats pushed a resolution to recognize the Cuban Republic, but Republicans beat it back on a vote of 150 to 190. The chamber then gave lopsided approval to a resolution McKinley fancied, authorizing and directing him to intervene to end the war and foster a stable and independent Cuban government, using U.S. military force as needed. It demanded that Spain “at once relinquish its authority and government in the island of Cuba and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters.”

  The Senate proved more troublesome, as some eleven Republicans, including Foraker, joined Democrats in approving an amendment from Indiana’s David Turpie recognizing the Cuban Republic “as the true and lawful government of that island.” Another amendment, by Colorado’s Senator Teller, disavowed any U.S. domination of Cuba following hostilities. When the Senate approved its resolution with both amendments, McKinley accepted Teller’s language but hinted he might veto the final conference report if it contained the Turpie amendment. After much legislative arm-twisting and some private McKinley cajolery, the House stripped out Turpie. On April 19, McKinley’s favored version also passed the Senate.

  Employing listless rhetoric and subtle persuasion, the president had got what he wanted. And now, as he no doubt knew, he also would get a war. On Wednesday, April 20, McKinley signed the resolution, and John Sherman sent an ultimatum to the Spanish government, to be delivered through Luis Polo in Washington and Woodford in Madrid. The Spanish minister promptly requested his passport and departed for home. As McKinley was about to sign the resolution, with Cabinet and congressional dignitaries standing by, Maine’s Republican senator William Frye asked how much time the ultimatum allowed before a reply was required.

  “Until Saturday,” replied the president, looking up from his parchment and fixing his gaze upon the strongly anti-Spain senator. “. . . I suppose you would like to give them only fifteen minutes.” The senator nodded with a smile. Senator Stephen Elkins of West Virginia mused, “This is a historic occasion; you are virtually signing the declaration of War, Mr. President.”

  Indeed, he was. When word of the ultimatum reached Madrid the next day, Spain broke off diplomatic relations with the United States and informed Woodford of the action before he could deliver his official communication. Woodford left the same day. On April 25 McKinley asked Congress for a formal declaration of war. Then he sought to take a nap but was unable to sleep in
the quiet of the house. He wandered down the hall in his dressing gown and discovered houseguests Russell Hastings and Webb Hayes, son of the former president, in the state bedchamber. He stretched out on a sofa as they chatted and soon drifted off to sleep. At around four he was awakened by the White House doorkeeper with news that Congress had passed its resolution, which declared that the war actually had begun with Spain’s actions of April 21. It now was back for his signature. McKinley sent for Attorney General Griggs and had Hayes arrange a table. Vice President Hobart and Hayes provided pens, Hayes adding an inkwell. Sitting in a bedroom in his dressing gown, the president signed his first name with one pen, then his last name with the other. He gave Hayes one of the pens and the inkwell as souvenirs. William McKinley, through his ponderous, step-by-step leadership, had become a war president.

  — 18 —

  Victory at Sea

  THE EMERGENCE OF SERENDIPITOUS IMPERIALISM

  President McKinley didn’t wait for Congress to declare war on Spain before setting in motion critical elements of his military strategy. On April 22 he ordered a blockade of Cuba by the Atlantic squadron under Commodore William Sampson. And on April 24 he authorized Navy Secretary Long to wire an order to Commodore George Dewey, commander of the navy’s Asiatic fleet at Hong Kong. Dewey, sixty, had been preparing for this war since his arrival in Asia the previous December; in fact he had been waiting throughout most of his forty-year career for an opportunity to demonstrate his mettle as a high-level combat officer. Thus he was ready for Long’s cable, which the New York Times described as “remarkable for terseness, conciseness, and comprehensiveness.” It read: “Dewey, Hongkong, China: War has commenced between the United States and Spain. Proceed at once to Philippine Islands. Commence operations at once, particularly against the Spanish fleet. You must capture vessels or destroy. Use utmost endeavors. LONG.”