Spanish American War – The Pull Of The Land

True Patriotism

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 Richard Barnes

(A speech delivered at the Men’s Club of the Prospect Street Congregational Church in Cambridge, Mass., June 7, 1898, less than two months after the United States’ Congress had declared war against Spain. Despite his “progressive” credentials, Professor Norton’s remarks reflect a cautionary and even conservative temperament. His speech deserves careful reading today. Thanks to the Mises Institute which reprinted the speech in 1999.)

There are moments in every man’s life, in the life of every nation, when, under the excitement of passion, the simple truths which in common times are the foundation upon which the right order and conduct of life depend are apt to be forgotten and disregarded. I shall venture tonight to recall to you some of these commonplace truths, which in these days of war need more than ever to be kept in mind.

There never was a land that better deserved the love of her people than America, for there never was a mother-country kinder to her children. She has given to them all that she could give. Her boundless resources have lain open to them, to use at their will. And the consequence has been that never in the history of man has there been so splendid a spectacle of widely diffused and steadily increasing material welfare as America has displayed during the last hundred years.

Millions upon millions of men have lived here with more comfort, with less fear, than any such numbers elsewhere in any age have lived. Countless multitudes, whose forefathers from the beginning of human life on earth have spent weary lives in unrewarded toil, in anxiety, in helplessness, in ignorance, have risen here, in the course of even a single generation, to the full and secure enjoyment of the fruits of their labor, to confident hope, to intelligent possession of their own faculties. Is not the land to be dearly loved in which this has been possible, in which this has been achieved?

But there is a deeper source of love of country than the material advantages and benefits it may afford. It is in the character of its people, in their moral life, in the type of civilization which they exhibit. The elements of human nature are indeed so fixed that favorable or unfavorable circumstances have little effect upon its essential constitution, but prosperity or the reverse brings different traits into prominence. The conditions which have prevailed in America have, if broadly considered, tended steadily and strongly to certain good results in the national character; not, indeed, to unmixed good, but to a preponderance of good.

The institutions established for self-government have been founded with intent to secure justice and independence for all. The social relations among the whole body of the people, are humane and simple. The general spirit of the people is liberal, is kindly, is considerate. The ideals for the realization of which in private and public conduct there is more or less steady and consistent effort, are as high and as worthy as any which men have pursued. Every genuine American holds to the ideal of justice for all men, of independence, including free speech and free action within the limits of law, of obedience to law, of universal education, of material well-being for all the well-behaving and industrious, of peace and good-will among men. These, however far short the nation may fall in expressing them in its actual life, are, no one will deny it, the ideals of our American democracy.

And it is because America represents these ideals that the deepest love for his country glows in the heart of the American, and inspires him with that patriotism which counts no cost, which esteems no sacrifice too great to maintain and to increase the influence of these principles which embody themselves in the fair shape of his native land, and have their expressive symbol in her flag. The spirit of his patriotism is not an intermittent impulse; it is an abiding principle; it is the strongest motive of his life; it is his religion.

And because it is so, and just in proportion to his love of the ideals for which his country stands, is his hatred of whatever is opposed to them in private conduct or public policy. Against injustice, against dishonesty, against lawlessness, against whatever may make for war instead of peace, the good citizen is always in arms.

No thoughtful American can have watched the course of affairs among us during the last thirty years without grave anxiety from the apparent decline in power to control the direction of public and private conduct, of the principles upon regard for which the permanent and progressive welfare of America depends; and especially the course of events during the last few months and the actual condition of the country today, should bring home to every man the question whether or not the nation is true to one of the chief of the ideals to which it has professed allegiance.

A generation has grown up that has known nothing of war. The blessings of peace have been poured out upon us. We have congratulated ourselves that we were free from the misery and the burdens that war and standing armies have brought upon the nations of the Old World. “Their fires” — I cite a fine phrase of Sir Philip Sidney in a letter to Queen Elizabeth — “Their fires have given us light to see our own quietness.”

And now of a sudden, without cool deliberation, without prudent preparation, the nation is hurried into war, and America, she who more than any other land was pledged to peace and good-will on earth, unsheathes her sword, compels a weak and unwilling nation to a fight, rejecting without due consideration her earnest and repeated offers to meet every legitimate demand of the United States. It is a bitter disappointment to the lover of his country; it is a turning-back from the path of civilization to that of barbarism.

“There never was a good war,” said Franklin. There have indeed been many wars in which a good man must take part, and take part with grave gladness to defend the cause of justice, to die for it if need be, a willing sacrifice, thankful to give life for what is dearer than life, and happy that even by death in war he is serving the cause of peace. But if a war be undertaken for the most righteous end, before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense; it is a national crime. And however right, however unavoidable a war may be, and those of us who are old enough to remember the war for the Union know that war may be right and unavoidable, yet, I repeat the words of Franklin, “There never was a good war.”

It is evil in itself, it is evil in its never-ending train of consequences. No man has known the nature of war better than General Sherman, and in his immortal phrase he has condensed its description — “War is hell.” “From the earliest dawnings of policy to this day,” said Edmund Burke, more than a hundred years ago, “the invention of men has been sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude essays of clubs and stones to the present perfection of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all these species of artificial, learned and refined cruelty in which we are now so expert, and which make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is our principal glory.”

And it is now, at the end of this century, the century in which beyond any other in history knowledge has increased and the arts of peace have advanced, that America has been brought by politicians and writers for the press, faithless to her noble ideals, against the will of every right-minded citizen, to resort to these cruel arts, these arts of violence, these arts which rouse the passions of the beast in man, before the resources of peace had been fairly tested and proved insufficient to secure the professed ends, which, however humane and desirable, afford no sufficient justification for resorting to the dread arbitrament of arms.

There are, indeed, many among us who find justification of the present war in the plea that its motive is to give independence to the people of Cuba, long burdened by the oppressive and corrupt rule of Spain, and especially to relieve the suffering of multitudes deprived of their homes and of means of subsistence by the cruel policy of the general who exercised for a time a practical dictatorship over the island. The plea so far as it is genuine deserves the respect due to every humane sentiment. But independence secured for Cuba by forcible overthrow of the Spanish rule means either practical anarchy or the substitution of the authority of the United States for that of Spain. Either alternative might well give us pause. And as for the relief of suffering, surely it is a strange procedure to begin by inflicting worse suffering still. It is fighting the devil with his own arms. That the end justifies the means is a dangerous doctrine, and no wise man will advise doing evil for the sake of an uncertain good. But the plea that the better government of Cuba and the relief of the reconcentrados could only be secured by war is the plea either of ignorance or of hypocrisy.

But the war is declared; and on all hands we hear the cry that he is no patriot who fails to shout for it, and to urge the youth of the country to enlist, and to rejoice that they are called to the service of their native land. The sober counsels that were appropriate before the war was entered upon must give way to blind enthusiasm, and the voice of condemnation must be silenced by the thunders of the guns and the hurrahs of the crowd.

Stop! A declaration of war does not change the moral law. “The ten commandments will not budge” at a joint resolve of Congress. Was James Russell Lowell aught but a good patriot when during the Mexican war he sent the stinging shafts of his matchless satire at the heart of the monstrous iniquity, or when, years afterward, he declared, that he thought at the time and that he still thought the Mexican war was a national crime? Did John Bright ever render greater service to his country than when, during the Crimean war, he denounced the Administration which had plunged England into it, and employed his magnificent power of earnest and incisive speech in the endeavor to repress the evil spirit which it evoked in the heart of the nation?

No! the voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent, in spite of obloquy, misrepresentation, and abuse, to insist on being heard, and with sober counsel to maintain the everlasting validity of the principles of the moral law.

So confused are men by false teaching in regard to national honor and the duty of the citizen that it is easy to fall into the error of holding a declaration of war, however brought about, as a sacred decision of the national will, and to fancy that a call to arms from the Administration has the force of a call from the lips of the country, of the America to whom all her sons are ready to pay the full measure of devotion. This is indeed a natural and for many a youth not a discreditable error. But if the nominal, though authorized, representatives of the country have brought us into a war that might and should have been avoided, and which consequently is an unrighteous war, then, so long as the safety of the State is not at risk, the duty of the good citizen is plain.

He is to help to provide the Administration responsible for the conduct of the war with every means that may serve to bring it to the speediest end. He is to do this alike that the immediate evils of the war may be as brief and as few as possible, and also that its miserable train of after evils may be diminished and the vicious passions excited by it be the sooner allayed. Men, money, must be abundantly supplied. But must he himself enlist or quicken the ardent youth to enter service in such a cause? The need is not yet. The country is in no peril.

My friends, America has been compelled against the will of all her wisest and best to enter into a path of darkness and peril. Against their will she has been forced to turn back from the way of civilization to the way of barbarism, to renounce for the time her own ideals. With grief, with anxiety must the lover of his country regard the present aspect and the future prospect of the nation’s life. With serious purpose, with utter self-devotion he should prepare himself for the untried and difficult service to which it is plain he is to be called in the quick-coming years.

Two months ago America stood at the parting of the ways. Her first step is irretrievable. It depends on the virtue, on the enlightened patriotism of her children whether her future steps shall be upward to the light or downward to the darkness.

[A week after Norton’s speech, on June 15th, the New England anti-imperialists met at Boston’s Faneuil Hall…. This meeting resulted in the formation of the Anti-Imperialist Committee of Correspondence, which bloomed into the Anti-Imperialist League that November. Norton was one of the original eighteen honorary vice presidents of the League (along with Charles Francis Adams and Grover Cleveland).]

Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908)

Yellow Fever and Juragua Iron Mines vs The United States: Trust the Experts

October 30, 2020October 30, 2020 Richard Barnes

The prior post (The 1964 World Series) alluded to how baseball was “watched” in the mining camp in Cuba in the early 20th century.

Few might know that the American camp had been completely burned by order of General Nelson A. Miles in 1898.

This destruction became a court case between the Bethlehem Steel Company, represented by her subsidiary, Juragua Iron Mines, and the United States Government. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court and was decided in 1909.

The Spanish American War was one of the more momentous events in United States history. At the end of this conflict, the United States found itself with a far flung empire, albeit nothing approaching the extent or the depth of the British. Nonetheless, we now not only had protectorates in the Caribbean, we also had temporary sovereignty over the Philippines, comprised of some 7,000 islands in the Pacific. Granted: these were all temporary arrangements. However, whether pro or con, we would be less than honest if we did not admit that we as a country have not looked back since.

So, despite the war’s short duration, April to August, 1898, it was epoch-making.

In late June, American forces landed in Daiquirí and Siboney, towns situated about 2 miles apart on Cuba’s southern shores. The intent was to launch an attack on the major city of Santiago, about 14 miles east. The landing was not well executed as is suggested by a soldier’s journal:

“The horses and mules were jumped overboard from a half to a quarter mile off shore — depending upon the skipper’s digestion or his judgment — and then swam. Horses by the hundred were drowned.”

Some of the battles and campaigns were heroic, with gallantry shown on both sides.

For example, on July 1, the Americans attacked El Caney, on the outskirts of Santiago. Up to that battle, their opinion of Spanish gallantry and courage was not high, to put it charitably. They expected the Spaniards to hightail it off the hill and scamper into Santiago.

But they did not count on Spanish Brigadier General Joaquín Vara de Rey. His duty was to hold El Caney. He had no artillery, and was outnumbered 12:1. But with his 550 men, including 2 of his sons, he defended El Caney for 10 hours against the U. S. Army of 12,000 men who were far better armed. The battle raged on even after Vara de Rey was mortally wounded. His sons were already dead. The fighting was not over until 5:00 P.M. The Spanish force retreated only when it had been reduced to 84 men.

This battle proved that if properly led, the Spanish were no pushovers. Vara de Rey achieved his objective: he kept the Americans from taking Santiago, at least in his lifetime. The U. S. troops were so impressed that they buried Vara de Rey with full military honors. Spain awarded him posthumously her highest honor, the Laureate Cross of Saint Ferdinand.

But our focus today is not on the history of the war itself, but rather on one of its events which directly related to the Bethlehem Steel Company.

To better understand the event and its sequel, we need to review, briefly, one of earth’s more frightening plagues.

Yellow fever was one of the world’s great tropical endemics. For centuries it was not known why it was prevalent in the tropical but not in the north or south temperate zones, although it sometimes flared in some of those areas as well.

As was learned in the 20th century, yellow fever is caused by a flavivirus, which infects humans, monkeys, and some other small mammals. The virus is transmitted from animals to humans and among humans by several species of mosquitoes. The course of the disease is frightening: sudden fever, headache, backache, nausea, vomiting, and death — in up to 20% of the cases. The liver is attacked resulting in jaundice which causes the skin and eyes to appear yellow.

Although there have not been any vast outbreaks as had been seen in the 19th and earlier centuries, several areas in the late 20th century did experience yellow fever bouts, mostly due to carelessness in mosquito control, especially in areas with large monkey populations, which act as “vast natural reservoirs” holding the virus.

But none of this was known at the outbreak of the Spanish American War, although Americans were well aware of the devastation caused by the fever. In the 1790’s the fever shut down the federal government in Philadelphia, the country’s capital at the time. Nearly 10% of the city’s population died.

That would be the equivalent of 150,000 people in today’s Philadelphia.

The deadliest outbreak hit the country in 1878, killing up to 20,000 Americans in the lower Mississippi Valley, including major cities like St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans. Memphis lost about 5,000 people out of a population of 48,000, or over 10% of its inhabitants.

That would be the equivalent of about 65,000 deaths in Memphis today.

For perspective, that’s twice the number of COVID deaths in the state of New York, the state with the highest number of such deaths, most of which were elderly with comorbidities or in nursing homes. Yellow fever attacks and kills all ages, with or without comorbidities.

As a side note: until very recently, the traditional definitions of endemic, pandemic, and epidemic, included enormous numbers of, or widespread, “deaths”. That has been removed from the more recent definitions. Now, a disease can be called a pandemic merely if many people are “affected”, however that may be defined. I am sure the reader has noticed that, with the current virus, where the world shut down based on frightening estimates of millions and millions of deaths, including 2.2 million deaths in the United States alone, we are now all focused on “cases“. We now seem to be in a “casedemic” as opposed to a pandemic.

But back to our story.

No one could explain the cause of yellow fever or how it spread.

By the time Walter Reed came on the medical scene, most medical researchers believed yellow fever was caused by bacteria in fomites, or objects that are likely to carry infection, in particular things which may have been soiled with human blood and/or excrement. But despite decades of research, no evidence supported this theory. Some thought the fever resulted from drinking river water. However, Reed disproved this hypothesis by demonstrating that enlisted men and civilians near the Potomac River did not contract the fever when they drank the water.

However, he did note that men who had a habit of walking through swampy trails at night did get infected, while those who did not take those walks escaped the disease.

About the time of the war, Reed had been reading the papers of the distinguished Cuban physician, Carlos Finlay, written some 20 years earlier. Dr. Finlay had theorized the transmission of yellow fever by insect bite, but had been unable to prove his hypothesis. He was roundly ridiculed by all the right people. But Reed was intrigued. He travelled to Cuba at the end of the war, in 1898, commissioned to study diseases in the U. S. Army encampments during the war, typhoid fever in particular. He and his colleagues proved that contact with fecal matter and food or drink contaminated by flies caused that epidemic. The disease was quickly controlled by the implementation of sanitary measures.

In 1900, he returned to Cuba to examine tropical diseases, including yellow fever. It was during this assignment that he and his colleagues proved and confirmed the transmission by mosquitoes. This was done using volunteers who were fully informed of the risks. One of the primary researchers, Dr. Jesse William Lazear, infected himself purposefully and did not survive. The isolation camp set up to continue the research was named Camp Lazear.

The confirmation of Dr. Finlay’s theory was a great advancement in medicine and towards the prevention of yellow fever around the world, saving thousands of lives every year. A few years later, from 1903 onwards, this knowledge served to greatly reduce the incidence of yellow fever in Panama during the American construction of the canal. Prior to this, about 10% of the workforce had died each year from malaria and yellow fever. And a quarter century earlier, the French had resigned from building it, having lost thousands of lives due to mosquito-borne illnesses.

True to form, the Washington Post ridiculed Reed’s presentation of his findings thusly in 1900:

“Of all the silly and nonsensical rigmarole about yellow fever that has yet found its way into print — and there has been enough of it to load a fleet — the silliest beyond compare is to be found in the arguments and theories engendered by the mosquito hypothesis.”

The Post mocked that which differed from the reigning Zeitgeist. At least they reported it.

Reed was nevertheless allowed to keep pressing his case and eventually prevailed. Although he received much of the credit, he was always up front and vocal in crediting Carlos Finlay with the discovery of the vector. Reed often cited Finlay’s papers in his own articles and speeches and his personal correspondence.

In November, 1902, Reed’s appendix ruptured. He died on November 22 of that year at age 51.

Now, with that background, we return to Siboney and Daiquirí in July, 1898, a mere two years before Reed’s work. American soldiers were succumbing to yellow fever. The army’s public health expert determined that the source of the fever was in “the buildings occupied as hospitals, dwellings, and offices in Siboney.”

The Cuban physicians who were assisting the Americans were adamant that the source was not in the buildings. But the Americans would not accept that assurance even though it came from people on the ground who had dealt with this disease far longer than they.

It was at this point that General Miles made his fateful decree: the destruction of the town of Siboney. “In thus destroying this dirty little town, we were, at least, sure of limiting the number of new cases about us ….” The buildings were burned or otherwise destroyed on the 12th of July, including property belonging to the American company, Juragua Iron Mines.

Of course, deaths did not decrease but rather increased as the fever continued to develop rapidly and overwhelm the medical resources.

Juragua sued the United States government for damages in the form of the cost of rebuilding their destroyed property.

In 1909, the United States Supreme Court ruled against the company because Cuba was technically the enemy, regardless of the fact that many Cubans fought alongside the Americans, not to mention that Juragua was an American company and their buildings, occupied by Americans. They were deemed to be enemies as well given that they were in enemy territory: “…. all persons residing in Cuba … were to be deemed enemies … including citizens of the United States there … doing business.”

Citing another case from 1887, the court declared, in a statement that would have appalled Patrick Henry, “The safety of the state in such cases overrides all consideration of private loss.” We had come a long way from 1776.

This ruling overruled the fact that the actions by the United States Army, obeying the order by General Miles, did not reduce the yellow fever decimating its forces. In fact, with eerily familiar language, the ruling stated that this was done “…. for the purpose of protecting health and lives ….” and “…. deemed necessary by the officers in command … to protect the health … and to prevent the spread of disease ….”

It did no such thing, of course. In reading the ruling, it becomes clear that the government, at least in this case, will not admit wrong, even in 1909, years after the discovery of the true vector of that epidemic. Even with testimony noting that the local physicians insisted this was not necessary nor would it work. And they were proved right.

So if other doctors disagree with the “correct” doctors, the other doctors must be considered wrong, even though they are right.

Some things never change.