The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 22, 1896, Page 1

all " VOLUME LXXXI —NO. 22 SAN FRANCISCO, TUES DAY MORNING, DECEMBER 22, 1896. PRICE FIVE CENTS. CONGRESS MUST STRUGGLING CUBANS Report Favoring Recognition of Patriots Submitted to the Senate by Cameron. Mills and Morgan Back Up the Foreign Relations Committee With Some Pointed Facts and Precedents. ‘ Statesmen Boldly Declare That Spain Is Not the Mother Country of the Afflicted Island, but a Cruel Stepmother Whose Domination Has Caused Endless Robbery and Most WASHINGTON, D. C., Dec. 21.—The general anticipation of an exciting scene in the Senate Chamber over the Cameron resolution recognizing the independence of the republic of Cuba, and particularly over the defiant position taken by the Becretary of State, had not the effect of bringing a large crowd into the gallery this morning. There was no more than a fair number of spectators. The attendance of Senators, however, was quite large, including Sena- tors Sherman of Ohio, Davis of Minnesota and Cameron of Pennsyivania on the Re- publican side, and Senators Gray of Dela- ware, Hill of New York and Voorhees of Indiana on the Democratic side. At 12:20 p. M., Cameron rose and said that he was instructed by the Committee on Foreign ReMtions to report a joint resolution acknowledging the independ- ence of Cuba, with a written report | *hereon. He moved that the resolution | and report be laid on the table and | printed, and said that the resolution | wouid not be called up until aiter the | holidays. A tacit acquiescence was ex- | pressed. Inhuman Persecution. | having examined with care all the' in- stances which have occurred during this century of peoples claiming independence by right of revolt. The opening lines of the report read that Congress at its last session, after long and patient considera- tion, adopted with practical unanimity | the expressed sentiment that the time had come for resuming intervention with Spain for the independence of Cuba. Spain having declined to listen to any represen- tation founded on an understanding be- tween herself and the insurgents, and Congress having pledged itself to friendly in tervention, the only question that re- mains to be decided is the nature of the next step to be taken with proper regard to the customs and usages of nations. With little further preamble, the report then refers as its first instance, showing that the modern precedents of European intervention where independence was the issue involved began with Greece in the struggle which lasted from 1821 until 1827. The summary of events in .this strife where within a month the rebels got pos- session of all the open country and all the towns, except so far as they were beld by Vest (D.) of Missouri offered the follow- | ing resoliution: Eesolved, That the President is not vested by o consitution With the power io determine | when (he independence of s foreign people, ggling to establish a Government for emselves, shall be recognized by the United States; but this power is vested in Congress 2nd is to be exercised in conformity with sec- tion 75, article I, in the constitution. Senator Vest attempted to precipitate a debate on the Cuban question by declar- ing that Secretary O!nsy’s position was preposterous; that it was the first time a Cabinet officer bad communicated his views on a great public question through the public press. He said he was clear in h1s opinion that the framers of the consti- tution in committing to Congress the power of making war also included the | smaller question of the right to recognize governments. At this point Hale, who in the absence of Senator Allison is acting chairman of the Appropriation Committee, interposed an objection and the resolution went over till to-morrow. Hill (D.) of New York then came into the discussion for tne second time with a resolution recognizing belligerency in Cuba and vrocleiming the neutrality of the United States, the text of which is as follows: 1t is hereby declared thata state of war ex- ists in Cuba, and that the Cubans are entitled to and are hereby accorded belligerent rights in sccordance with the principies of interna- tional law, and the United States will observe & state of neutrality between the belligerents. This also went over until to-morrow. On behalf of himseif and Senator Mills Senator Morgan of Alabama submitted an elaborate report on the Cuban ques- tion. It takes pronounced grounds and indorses the action of the committee. Morgan submits as appendices to this report the report to the Senate made by Blidell in 1859; the speech of Senator Judah P. Benjamin on that report; the case of Cuba as submitted tothe State Department by Palma, and that part of President’s message relating to affairs in Cuba. Thereport was ordared to be printed with the Cameron report. Cuban resolutions were also offered and referred as follows: By Bacon (D.) of Georgia, that the ques- tion of the recognition by this Govern- ment of any people asa free and inde- pendent nation is one exclusively for the determination of Congress in its capacity as the law-making power; that this pre- rogative of sovereign power does not ap- pertain to the executive department of the Government except in.so far as the Presi- dent is under the constitution (by the ex- ercise of the veto power) made a part of the law-making power of the Government. By Chilton (D.) of Texas, that a con- dition of public war exists between the Government of Spain and the Government which has been maintained for some time by force of arms by the people of Cuba, end that the people of the United States shall maintain strict neutrality between the two powers, extending to each all rights as belligerents in the United States end Territories. e INTERVENTION 1S IN ORDER. Precedents Cited to Show the Cubans Should Be Recognizcd. WASHINGTON, D. C., Dec. 21.—The Teport from the Committee on Foreign Relations on the joint resolution acknowl- edging the inderendence of Cuba and offering the friendly offices of this Govern- ment with Spain to bring toa clase the war between Spain and the republic of Cuba was presented in the Senate to-day. 1t is a document of very great length and deals thoroughly, though briefly, in its opening with modern precedents of Eu- Topean intervention where independenee Was the issue involved, the committee Turkish garrisons, is told in a graphic manner. The Suitan called 8}l Mussul- mans to arms, the Greek patriarchs were hanged attne doors of their own churéhes |in Constantinople. ~ Beveral prominent | merchants were massacred, several Chris- | tians were killed and the Russian Embas- | sador insulted. It is shown that no Gov- { ernment in Europe sympathized with the | Greek rebeis. Instances of the struggle in | which the Greeks fougit for independ- ence were constantly pointed out, but not | until. the “Pope induced Turkey to | consent to allow her affairs to be discussed } in a general conference did Russia insist | that the Greek insurrection should be in- 1 cluded among the subjects of mediation.” | The Turkish Government declared in the | | most. energetic language that it would 1 never admit of such interference and would not make the affairs of Greece a | subject of negotiation with Russia. The | history of that struggle is carried on to the | date on which, the Sultan decliningto the | last to permit any mediation between himself and his devoted subjects, the | three powers of France, England and Rus- | sia, on the 5th of July, 1827, united in a formal treaty, signed in London, which committed them to intervention in case the Sultan shounld still reject their prof- fered mediation. | Following in regular order, then, in its details of circumstances in European na- | tions claimingindependence on the ground 1 | of the rightof revolution, the cases are mentioned of Belgium against the Netier- lands in 1830, when the King of Holland was coerced into acceptinz conditions im- posed by the powers upon ashow of armed hosulity; in November, 1832, by the Gov- ernments of France and England. The coincident rebellion in Poland, in which the Czar notified the Minister of the new French King, Louis Philippe, that he would tolerale no intervention in Poland is given attention. Then follows in the series of European nations claiming inde- pendence the recital of the deposal from the Hungarian throne of the Haps- burg dynasty, followed by the elec- tion of the patriot, Louis Koesuth, as pro- visional President and tbe intervention of Russia on the ground that if she did not so intervene Hungary would establish her independence. “This precedent,” continues the report, “tended to establish the right of every Gov- | ernment to intervene in the affair of for- eign States whenever the sitnation should tend to endanger its own safety or the peaceful equilibrium on iws frontfer.” As far as known every other Government in the world tacitly acquiesced 1n the estab- lishment of this precedent. If any Gov- ernment recorded a protest it was that of the United States, but then the United States protested only by inference from ! the acts and language of the President. | The Russian intervention brought the wars ‘quickly to an end; before Octo- ber all resistance was over, and when Con- | gress met early in December, 1849, Presi- | dent Taylor's annual message could only proclaim what would have been American policy. Interventions have occurred most con- spicuously in Spain by France in 1823, in Portugal by England in 1827, again in Spain and Portugal in 1816 by England “triple treaty,” and many instances of national interventions in the history of other States ave aliuded to, while in 1816 the intervention in the affairs of the Otto- man Empire have been so constant as to create a board of jurisprudence and a long series of treaties on which the existence of all political systems of Southeastern Europe seem now to be more or Iess en- tirely based, The precedents quoled, the committee considers, make it clear that Europe has invariably asserted and practiced the right to interfere, both collectively and and France under what was calied the | separately. amicably and forcibly, in every nstance, except in that of Poland, where a European people has resorted to insurrection to obtain independence. European intervention in affairs in Asia are briefly adverted to, as are the at- tempts made by France and England during the American Civil War; ‘then fol- lows a recital of events regarding the recognition of the independence of Texas and the action of the Government regard ing Mexico, all of which are graphically and lenethily detailed. In tbe question of the American policy it is pointed out that Lord Castlereagh, at the Congress of Aix la Chapelle, in Octo- ber, 1828, proposed to the four other powers to intervene in the war between Spain and her American colonies by ad- dressing offers of meaiation to the two belligerents. Russia rejected the scheme, not because it was intervention, but ap- parently because it was mediation and to that extent recognized right in the insur- gents. When President Monroe inter- posed his fiat that no interference could be countenanced by him except on the basis of independence he dictated in ad- vance the only mode of intervention which he meant to permit. After a delay of four years from the time when he began his revolt ‘I Burope and military sue- cessors of Bolivar and Iturbide in America gave the desired opportunity in America, and Monroe sent to. Congress his cele- brated message on March 8, 1822, recom- mending the recognition of all the re- | volted colonies of Spain—Mexico, Colom- oia, Chile and Buenos Ayres. Much space 18 given {o the effect of this act, which, this report says, proved the deepest sensation among European con- servatives and gave to the United States extraordinary consideration. Monroe’s creation of a “new system of interna- tional relations” is elaborately eulogized. In the case of Texas itis shown thatthe United States Government exercised the whole right of intervention against an American power. Graphically the report depicts the dangers from the intervention of France and Encgland that threatened America during the Civil War, and allu- sion js made to the French Minister urging his Government to recognize the Southern Confederacy. The reporc deals very thoroughly with the schemes ar- ranged by Russell and¢ Palmerstonand the Emparor Napoleon 1o intervene at the time of our Civil War from 1861 with rei- erence to the active operations of Napoleon in Mexico; the sending of 85,000 men to re-enforce the French army there and simuitaneously sending a formal invita- tion to England and Russiato intervenein the American Civil War. “These papers,”’ the report says, ‘have not been published, and we do not know the express grounds on which the invita- tion was offered or declined. “To the fact,” says the report, “that Russia was avowedly friendly and the two most powerful Prime Ministers of their time were outvoted in their own Cabinet America owed her escape from European aomination.” Toben with particular reference to Cuba the report declares the Government ot the United States has always regarded: Cuba as within the sphere of its most active and serious interest. As early as 1825, when the newly recognized States of Colombia and Mexico were.supposed to be preparing an expedition to revolutionize Cuba and Porto Rico, the United States interposed its friendly offices with those Governments to request their forbear- ance. The actual condition of Spain seemed to make her retention of Cuba impossible, in which case the United States would have been obliged, for her own safety, to prevent the 1slands from falling into the hands of a stronger power in Europe. That this emergency did not occur may have been partly due to the energetic Monroe announcing *‘our right and our power to preventit,” and his determina- tion to use all the means within his com- petency ‘‘to guard against and forfend it.”’ This right of intervention in matters re- lating to the external relations of Cuba asserted and exercised seventy years ago, has been asserted and exercised at every crises in which the island has been in- volved. 3 Reference is made to the action taken by Congress in the last session requesting the President to interpose his friendly of- fices with Spain for the recognition' of Cuba. “This action was,” the report de- clares, “taken on great consideration and just principles,”” on a right of interven- tion exercised twenty-seven years ago and after a patient delay unexampled in his- tory. The interval of nine months has proved the necessity of carrying it out to completion. % The report declares that there is con- clusive evidence, in the opinion of the committee, that ‘‘the inability of to aeal successfully with the insurrection OLNEY --- “Anything for Cuba?” GROVER--“Nit!” ; Wil has become manifest and that' it is dem- onstrated that her. sovereignty is extinct in Cuba for all purposes of its rightful ex- istence; and altlough the President seems to have a different conception from ours we believe this to be the actual situation in Cuba.” The regular organization of an insur- gent government, the introduction of a constitution and election of a President are alluded to; then military forde “sufficient to baffie the exertions. of 200,060 Spanish soldiers’ and their civil adminisiration is é:ol‘ey the Greek.| given consideration, and ithe committee e says: “The only question that properly remains for Congress to consider is the mode which should be adopted for the step which Congress is pledged next to take. The Government has none but friendly feelings for Spain, and there is no friendly offers which Spain could ask which the United States within the limits of their established principles and poticy would not be glad to extend. In the pres- ent instance they are actuated by an earnest wish to avoid the danger of seem- ing to provoke a conflict.”” The report ends with recommending the joint resolution recognizing the inde- pendence of Cuba and the offering of friendly offices to Spain in order to bring the war to a close. MILLS AND MORGAN VICIOUS, They Join 4n Scoring Spain and Speak- t ing in Behalf of Cuba. WASHINGTON, D. C., Dec. 21.—Sen- ators Mills of Texas and Morgan of Ala- bama of the Foreign Relations Committee join in making an additional repert on the Cameron resolution. While they give the majority report their unqualified ap- proval, concurring in all that is s2id in that report, they deem it well to present some additional reasons for agreeing to it and for the passage of the resolution. They quote the report of the Committee on Foreign Relationsin 1859 when that committee was considering the Senate bill making appropriations to facilitate the acquisition of Cuba by negotiations, and make this comment on that report: “That report covers a period of fifty-nine years and sets forth the political condi- tions and the disasirous effects of Spanish rule during’that time. = They are the same in their leading characteristics that .ex- isted at the beginning of the insurrection that was set on foot by the native popula- tion in 1868 'in ‘the outbreak at Yarra, whish was followed by ten years of inter- necine warfare attended with horrible batcheries. The causes that provoked the uprising of the native Cubans are the same that are stated in the report of the committee made ten years previously, in 1858, The summine up of that reportis quoted as follows: ‘‘There can be no doubt that an immense majority of the .people of Cuba are not only in favor of but ardently desire annexation to the United States. It would be strange indeed if they were not so, deprived of all influence even in the local affairs of the island, unrepre- sented in tbe Cortes, governed by suc- cessive hordes of hungry, officials sent from the mother country to acquire fortunes to be enjoyed at home, having no sympathy with the people, among whom they are mere sojourners and upon whom they look as inferiors, liable to be arrested at any moment on the most trifling charges; tried by military courts or submissive justices, removable at pleasure; punished at the discretion of the Captain-General—they would be less than men if they were contented with their yoke. Spain is a country of coup d’ etarand pronunciamento, The all-pow- erful Minister of War of to-day may be a fugitive to-morrow. With the forms of a representative government, it is in fact a despotism sustained by the bayonet, a depotism tempered only by frequent, vio- lent and bloody revolutions. Her financial condition is ome of extreme embarra: ment.” i : $ ““Senators Morgan and Mills continue: “Spain is not-the ‘mother country’ of Cuba, even in the sense of having sup- plied that isiand with a large ‘part of tne ancestors of the present population. Nhe is a cruel stepmother ‘whose introduction into the Cuban family has been the im. mediate cause of the robbery of the step- children of their inheritance and their cruel persecution to keep down revolt. The committee were engaged in 1858 in providing for the purchase of Cuba by negotiating with Bpain, and were as gen- tle in their description of Spanish rule in Cuba as a decent respect for the world’s knowledge of the truth of the actual situ- ‘ation of the people there would permit. It is dark enowgh without the iltumina. tion of the fires of devastation that suc- oeeding years bave interposed in Cuba” . After guoting the speech made ‘in the Senate on Febroary 11, 1858, by Judah P. Benjamin, which they consider a more complete statement of the condi- tion: of the people of Cuba and the methods of the Spanish Government in that island then than is stated in the re- port of the committee in 1859, they con- tinue: “The relations of Spain and the United States were not then strained by the disturbance of actual insurrection in Cuba as they were afterward from 1868 to 1878, and have been almost ever since and are now, by excessive and inhu- man abuses of power in Cuba, to which no limit can be anticipated, either as to the time when they will end or the in- creased cruelty which is now a settled feature of the present Spanish war of ex- termination. The President recognizes the fact that the present war is for inde- pendence on the vart of the Cubans, and not for the gratification of personal ambi- tion or alope for the redress of personal or political grievances with which the painful history of their suffering is crowded. For the sake of liberty and the independence of their country they are willing to forget the recompens* that is due them for their individual sufferings. “%Hon. T. Estrada Palma was duly ac- redited as diplomatic delegate plenipo- tentiary to the United States, under an appointment by the Constitutional As- sembly of the Republic of Cuba. He ap- pears to have been received informally, for the purpose of presenting the cause of Cnba to our Government, on December 9, 1895. 'He addressed a note to the Secre- tary of State, accompanied by a statement of facts, in which the case of Cuba is set forth officially. ‘That document has been vrinted by the order of the Senate, and is appended,- In the papers accompanying this note the delegate stated the causes of the revolution in Cuba; that it had reached that stage in which the issue be- tween the contending parties ‘is in peace or extermination.”” | “The recent message of the President is clear on the point that he has been forced to 'the same conclusion. The delegate then stated the facts showing the prelimi- nary oreanization of the revolt, the up- rising; the battles and campaign that had already been fought, including the great and victorious campaign of Gomez against Captain-General Campos, which caused him to be ‘recalled to Spain and be sup- planted by Captain-General Weyler; the military organization of the Cubans; their civil government; their treatment of pris- oners; that the government here repre- sented is not a negro government; the character of the war; the protests of resi- dent citizens of the United States in Cuba against their cruel treatment by the Span- ish forces, that tneir lives and preperty be placed under the special protection of the Cuban Government, and that they are exempt from taxes and contributions by the constitution of the Republic of Cuba W that Government is recognized by their respective governments. The letter of the Cuban delegate, thus addressed to our Secretary of State, has appended to it several papers which set forth fully the grievances complained of by the Cuban people. “In its pature it is a declaration of the independence of the island of Cuba, stat- ing the grounds of their united action. That declaration is in keeping with the historical narrative given by Mr. Benja- mrin in his speech, herewith presented, and with the report of the committee on foreign relations in 1859, and with the message of President Grant and President Hayes and the letters of Mr. Bickles and Mr. Cushing as Ministers to Spain, and of Mr. Fish and Mr. Evarts as Secretaries of State. All the papers are uniform in their statements of the wrongs and grievances of the Cuban people and of the wrongful and tyrannical cause of Spain toward them. In none of them isany bad pur- pose imputed. No one has contradicied these statements or any material part of them on the authority of the Spanish Government or upon any official or other credible authority. ““Phe tenor of the message of the Presi- dent to this session of Congress is a re- "affirmation of all this history, stated in all these papers. In the part of the message relating to Cuba he bas laid them before -Congress without any special recommend- ation and has left to Congress the duty of making provision for the security of the rights, the property and the lives of our citizens residing in Cuba and of enforcing the right of indemnity on behalf of the legal successors of those who have been killed there. ‘He has intimated tbat delay is the wi-est policy, but he has refrained from saying that delay is required by our National honor or by the interests of hu- manity. A comparison of this message will show that 1t agrees with the state- ments of every President who has alluded to the subject, and it further shows that the same spirit of tyrannical domination now prevails in Cuba that has kept the people of that island in despairing servi- tude during the entire century. “The message of Mr. Cleveland, who has no aversion to Spanish rule in Cuba, con- firms in all important statements the truth of the charges made and communicated by Estrada Paima against Spain in the expo- sition of the case of Cuba, which he pre- sented to our Secretary of State. The only difference in tie situation in Cuba and as it is described 1n the report of the Senate committee in 1859 and as it'is described in the President’s message in 189%6—thirty-six years later—is that as time has progressed the wrongs of Cuba have been aggravated and the means of repression employed by Spain have grown into a war against hu- manity, a war of extermination of the na- tive population. If the firm purpose of our predecessors to put an end to this con- dition of affairs in Cuba in the compara- tively mild form of tyranny that existed fifty years ago has degenerated * into doubts and misgiving as to our daty to our own people and the demands of Christian tian civilization, let the responsibility for this lapse from the true spirit ‘of the American liberty and our love of hom§ rule and independence rest where it justly belongs and not upon the people, through the indifference to their will on the part of their repressntatives in Congress.”” “CUBA LIBRE” THEIR CRY. Patriotic New Yorkers Demand , the Recognition of the Insurgents. g NEW YORK, N. Y., Dec. 21.—Two great demonstrations in favor of Cuba took place here to-night. One was a street parade of the organization called the *‘Friends of Cuba.” The other wasa mass- meeting at Cooper Union, ealled by the Cuban League of the United States. Bev- eral thousand men took part in the street parade and many thousand more lined the sidewalks and cheered all along the line of march. The procession formed on East Eighty- sixth and Eighty-seventh - streets and marched by way of Third and Lex- ington avenues and Broadway to Cooper Union. Franz Meyer, president of the organization, was grand marshal. The column was divided into ten battalions. The American flag was carried at the head of each battalion with two Cuban soldiers as escort. A large number of transparencies were carried illustrating Spanish massacres. One showing the killing of Maceo, bore the title: ‘“‘Spain’s Latest Triumph in Murdering Under the Fiag of Truce.”” Other inscriptions were: --Let Congress Act, the People Will Uphola Congress”; “Americans for Liberty and Facts”; Re- rember Washington® and’ Lafayette'’; “Uphold the Monroe Doctrine”; *“An- other Star to the Constellation of Repub- lics” ; “For God’s Sake Stop the Murder in Cuval” ‘“We Die, but No Surrender’’; “Vive Cuba Libre”; ‘“Join the American Friends of Cuba, Our Object Is to Assist the Down-trodden Cubans and Keep Spain (Broce From Committing Further Assassina tions.” Cooper Union was packed to the doors, while the meeting was called to order by its president, Ethan Allen, descendant of the general of the same name of revolu- tionary fame. Mr. Allen said; “This immense and enthusiastic audi- ence is proof that the heart of our citizens still throbs in harmony for any people struggling to be free. Further than this, it _is proof that the American people do not breathe the air of cowards, although some of the Government may. We are assembled to-night to uphold in other lands the cause for which Washington and his compatriots contended in this. If we are not willing to make sacrifices to extend the heritage of liberty bequeathed to us from the storms of battle, we are un- worthy to hold and enjoy it ourselves. “*Cuba is now for the second time in the death grapple with her savage foe. She is determined to be free; and we are here to-night to say she shall. The curse of Spanish rule is no longer to be tolerated. It isthe government that admits of nore- ciprocity between the King and subject; one plays the partof tyrant and all the rest are slaves. Our people revolt against this wherever it may exist, and especially when so near our own shores. “Spain by her revolting cruelties has forfeited the good opinion of mankind and is no longer to be regarded as a factor among civilized nations. *We assemble here to-night as Ameri- cans to declare that the independence of Cuba shall be recognized now. To delay is to ‘mske ourselves responsible for the further ruin and slaughter whicn will fol- low.. Cukba has resolved upon freedom or extermination, and, applauding her heroic energy, it is our duty tostay the assassin’s hand. - With Spain we have tried argu- ment long enough. She is not enabled to reason, so we must vesort to some other force. The time has come to stop our ‘talking and to load our guns. We are amimated with the hope that a brighter day is to dawn upon these struggling heroes of the Antilles. “The Cuban League, which is here in- augurated, .will labor on till from the Mount Sinai of our own invinecible repub- licanism we may thunder our command s0; that Spain shall hear, and hearing shall obey, ‘Let those Cubans go.” ”’ . General Bradley T. Johnson, the next speaker, criticized the attitude of Presi- dent Cleveland. . Becretary Dr. de Sayas read letters from Senators Henry Cabot Lodge, John Gor- don, Wilkinson Call, R. Q. Mills, Cullom, Thomas Dixon Jr. and Governor Morton. All regretted their inability to be present and speak for Cuba’s cause. In most part the letters roundly cons demned the butchery being conducted by the Spanish soldiers under Weyler. Secretary de Sayas read a number of let~ ters from prominent people giving finan- cial aid to the cause. Among them was one from W. E. D. Stokes donating $1000. Mr. Btokes spoke briefly, declaring that our representative in Washington, Olney, NEW TO-DAY. - e Wy (hristmas ) 227 POST ST 217 BUSH SL