after the appearance of vessels bearing the flags of the insurrectionary governments appeared in our ports. During the Cuban insurrection of 1868-78, President Grant, in his message of June 13, 1870, gave the following reason for his refusal to recognize the Cuban insurgents as belligerents, and these reasons were the more quoted and urged by opponents of belligerency in 1896, because, in 1869, Cespedes, the then President of the Cuban Republic, had declared in an address to President Grant, that he had an army of 10,000 men, which occupied three-fourths of the island and that a navy was in process of construction. It would seem also as if the new government were actually further on in 1869 than in 1896, for it had been recognized as independent by Peru, and as a belligerent by Chile, Bolivia and Mexico. It had also sent a duly accredited minister to the United States, and had organized a government at a stated capital, had passed laws, issued money, and done what regular governments are authorized to do.

President Grant evidently regarded the above statements respecting the Cuban situation as exaggerated, for in his message he said:

"The question of belligerency is one of fact, not to be decided by sympathies with or prejudices against either party. The relations between the parent state and the insurgents must amount, in fact, to war in the sense of international law. Fighting, though fierce and protracted, does not alone constitute war; there must be military forces acting in accordance with the rules and customs of war-flags of truce, cartels, exchange of prisoners, etc.,and to justify a recognition of belligerency there must be, above all, a de facto political organization of the insurgents sufficient in character and resources to constitute it, if left to itself, a State among nations capable of discharging the

duties of a State, and of meeting the just responsibilities it may incur as such toward other powers in the discharge of its national duties.

"Applying the best information which I have been enabled to gather, whether from official or unofficial sources, including the very exaggerated statements which each. party gives of all that may prejudice the opposite or give credit to its own side of the question, I am unable to see, in the present condition of the contest in Cuba, those elements which are requisite to constitute war in the sense of international law.

"The insurgents hold no town or city; have no established seat of government; they have no prize courts; no organization for the receiving and collecting of revenue; no seaport to which a prize may be carried, or through which access can be had by a foreign power to the limited interior territory and mountain fastnesses which they occupy. The existence of a legislature representing any popular constituency is more than doubtful.

"In the uncertainty that hangs around the entire insurrection there is no palpable evidence of an election, of any delegated authority, or of any government outside the limits of the camps occupied from day to day by the roving companies of insurgent troops. There is no commerce; no trade, either internal or foreign; no manufactures."

Again in his message of December 7, 1875, he declared that the United States should carefully avoid the "false lights which might lead it into mazes of doubtful law and of questionable propriety, and adhere rigidly and sternly to the rule which has been its guide of doing only that which is right and honest and of good report"; and, adverting to the fact that the conflict still continued to be on land, and that the insurrection had no seaport whence

it might send forth its flag, "nor any means of communication with foreign powers except through the military lines of its adversaries," he pointed out that no apprehension of any of the sudden and difficult complications which a war upon the ocean was apt to precipitate called for a definition by foreign powers of their relation to the conflict.

As is well known, there was much excitement in this country over the attitude assumed by President Grant, and in a sudden outburst of sympathy for the Cuban patriots Mr. Sherman introduced a resolution in the Senate in favor of recognizing the belligerency of Cuba, sustaining it with an able speech. The excitement gradually died out, and the President's course was seen to be right, in view of the fact that an old treaty of 1795 between this country and Spain was found to be in existence, which in case of belligerency would have given Spain an undoubted right to search suspected American vessels, a measure sure to provoke international complications and lead to war.

The argument drawn from the fact that Spain had recognized the belligerency of the Confederate States with. in sixty days from the firing on Fort Sumter, and without other knowledge of the real status of the rebellion, was met by the statement that long preceding that event, South Carolina had adopted an ordinance of secession, that by May, 1861, ten other States had followed, the Constitution for the Confederate States was formed in February 1861, officers elected, and steps taken toward forming an army, that custom houses, forts, arsenals, and ports had been seized, that Sumter had been fired upon April 12, 1861; that President Lincoln had issued a proclamation for troops, that in April a blockade of the ports. of the seceded States had been declared. The reasoning

from this state of facts was, that a large portion of the people of the United States were actually maintaining a government, collecting customs at seaports, and exercising dominion over a vast extent of territory. That the Federal Government in calling out troops and declaring the blockade recognized the condition to be one of "public war." That this condition was so accepted by the nations which granted belligerent rights to the Confederates. In this connection they quoted the opinion of Judge Grier, of the United States Supreme Court, in the Prize Cases: "This greatest of civil wars was not gradually developed by popular commotion, tumultuous assembles, or local unorganized insurrections. However long may have been its previous conception, it nevertheless sprang forth suddenly from the parent brain, a Minerva in the full. panoply of war. . . . The proclamation of blockade is it

self official and conclusive evidence that a state of war existed which demanded and authorized a recourse to such a measure, under the circumstances peculiar to the case. In organizing this rebellion, they have acted as States claiming to be sovereign over all persons and property within their respective limits, and asserting a right to absolve their citizens from their allegiance to the Federal Government. . . . Their right to do so is now being decided by wager of battle. The ports and territory of each of these States are held in hostility to the General Government. It is no loose, unorganized insurrection, having no defined boundary or possession. It has a boundary marked by lines of bayonets, and which can be crossed only by force,-south of this line is enemies' territory, because it is claimed and held in possession by an organized, hostile and belligerent power.

The final argument of the opponents of Cuban belliger

ency was that it could be no possible benefit to the struggling patriots. It could in no wise alter their relations to Spain, who could still regard them as rebels worthy of death or banishment if she saw fit. On the contrary it might prove of great detriment to the Cuban cause, for if Spain chose to exercise her rights of search under the treaty of 1795, that would put an end to the transportation of munitions of war for the insurgents.

In the discussion in Congress upon the passage of the resolution advising the grant of belligerency, quite a sentiment cropped out in favor of direct intervention by the United States under certain conditions. One of the strongest exponents of this sentiment was Senator Mills, who proposed in his speech that if the Government of Spain should deny a request of the United States upon her to grant to Cubans the power of local self-government, then the United States should take possession of the island and hold it until its inhabitants can institute such government as they may wish, and organize and arm such forces as may be necessary to support it.

As to the other means of dealing with the Cuban question-the purchase of the island outright by the United States, and its annexation as a State of the Union, it had never entered so fully into public discussion nor taken so serious a hold on public sentiment as in 1854, during a period of violent agitation in favor of annexation. During that exciting period Mr. Buchanan, our Minister at London, Mr. Mason, Minister at Paris, and Mr. Soulé, Minister at Madrid, met at Ostend to consider the question of Cuban annexation. The result was a report to Wm. L. Marcy, then Secretary of State, which became know as the "Ostend Manifesto. " It contained this extraordinarily bold and defiant language :