These facts present a strong argument for the theory of accommodation. But Spain had not gone far enough toward peace, and President McKinley had gone too far toward war. The reports from Lee in Cuba showed that there was no abatement of the reconcentrado horror. The discretion given to General Blanco to terminate the proposed armistice at his pleasure seemed to render the grant nugatory. On the other hand, McKinley had decided, after the rejection of his ultimatum at the end of March, to throw the responsibility for peace or war upon Congress. He intended to send in his message on April 6, but delayed because Lee asked for more time to place the Americans in Havana in safety. Meanwhile, the pressure from the war party was growing stronger day by day. On April 11 the President sent his message advocating forcible interference as the only means of bringing to an end the inhuman war in Cuba. "The issue is now with Congress," he wrote; "I have exhausted every effort to relieve the intolerable condition of affairs which is at our doors. Prepared to execute every obligation imposed upon me by the Constitution and the law, I await your action." At the end of his message he took the following cursory notice of the latest effort of Spain to escape a war which her rulers knew would be a vain sacrifice of life and treasure: "Yesterday, and since the preparation of the foregoing message, official information was received by me that the latest decree of the Queen Regent of Spain directs General Blanco, in order to prepare and formulate peace, to proclaim a suspension of hostilities, the duration and details of which have not yet been communicated to me."2

Both Houses by large majorities (324 to 19 and 67 to 21) passed resolutions directing the President to employ the military and naval forces of the United States to compel Spain to relin

1 Congressman Boutelle of Maine said on March 30, "Every congressman has two or three newspapers in his district, most of them printed in red ink and shouting for blood."

2 For a bitter criticism of McKinley for dismissing this communication of the Spanish ministry in such cavalier fashion and surrendering to the warlike Congress, instead of tearing up his message and rewriting it in the light of Spain's offer, see the New York Nation, Vol. LXXIII, p. 4.

quish her authority in Cuba. Because the Senate resolution embodied the report of the minority of the Committee on Foreign Relations, recognizing the actual insurgent government of Cuba as "the true and lawful government of that island," to which the House disagreed, there was some delay before the final vote was reached. But the Senate receded from its position; and on April 19, the anniversary of Lexington and Concord, Congress voted its virtual declaration of war against the ancient monarchy of Spain. The resolution contained four paragraphs: (1) the declaration of the independence of Cuba, (2) the demand for Spain's withdrawal from the island, (3) the authorization of the employment of the land and naval forces of the United States to enforce this demand, and (4) the declaration that the United States would assert "no sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island, except for the pacification thereof," and that when that end was accomplished she would "leave the government and control of the island to its people." The Spanish minister at Washington, Señor Polo, was handed his passports, and the next day General Woodford was dismissed from Madrid. On the twenty-fourth of April Spain formally declared war on the United States.

At the outbreak of the war the Atlantic fleet was composed of three units. A northern patrol squadron, consisting of the protected cruiser San Francisco and four auxiliary cruisers, under the command of Commodore John A. Howard, guarded the coasts of New England and New York, where there was considerable fear of the bombardment of the large cities by the Spanish fleet. The people of New York had seen the formidablelooking cruiser Vizcaya in the harbor, but they did not know that her bottom was foul, her boilers weak, her guns defective, and her general condition such as to cause the Spanish admiral to call her "a boil on the body of the fleet." At Hampton Roads, Virginia, Commodore W. S. Schley was stationed with a "flying squadron," consisting of the fast armored cruiser Brooklyn (his flagship), the battleships Massachusetts and Texas, and three protected cruisers, ready to coöperate in the attack or the block1 The last point was the so-called Teller Resolution.

ade as his orders should direct. The main unit of the fleet, composed of the armored ships Iowa, Indiana, and New York, with about twenty-five cruisers, monitors, gunboats, torpedo boats, and armed tugs, was gathered at Key West, our naval base and coaling station. On April 21 dispatches came from the Secretary of the Navy, John D. Long, to Captain W. T. Sampson of the Iowa, promoting him over the heads of seventeen ranking officers to the command of the entire Atlantic fleet, with the rank of rear admiral, and ordering him to blockade the coast of Cuba from Cárdenas to Bahia Honda, eighty-five miles east and fifty-five miles west of Havana respectively. Sampson, who, as senior member of the board of investigation on the destruction of the Maine, was familiar with the defenses of Havana, favored a bombardment of the city, and he was supported by Captains Taylor of the Indiana, Evans of the Iowa, and Chadwick of the New York. But the Navy Department discountenanced the plan, first, because we should have no troops ready to occupy Havana or any other captured stronghold for six months and, second, because it was deemed unwise to expose our ships to the fire of the land batteries "before the capture or destruction of Spain's most formidable vessels." Aside, therefore, from a few shots fired to break up the work on new fortifications on the heights above the city, there was no attack made upon Havana or any other port of the northern shore of Cuba.

The first blow in the war which was destined to shatter the colonial power of Spain was not delivered in the West Indies, where the trouble arose, but in the distant islands of the Pacific. Commodore George Dewey was at Hongkong when the war resolution was passed, in command of the Asiatic squadron, which consisted of the protected cruisers Olympia (flagship), Boston, and Raleigh, the unprotected cruisers Concord and Petrel, and the revenue cutter McCulloch. On April 22 he was joined by the protected cruiser Baltimore from Honolulu, carrying a large cargo of ammunition, which, with the foresight characteristic of the Navy Department, had been shipped from San Francisco early in March. Upon the declaration of war by Spain, Dewey was informed by the British authorities at Hong

kong that he must leave the neutral port within twenty-four hours. He proceeded to Mirs Bay, thirty miles up the Chinese coast, where on the next day he received the following dispatch from Secretary Long: "War has commenced between the United States and Spain. Proceed at once to the Philippine Islands. Commence operations at once against the Spanish fleet. You must capture vessels or destroy. Use utmost endeavor." On the twenty-seventh Dewey's squadron set out on the six-hundredand-twenty-eight-mile voyage from Mirs Bay to the harbor of Manila in Luzon, the chief island of the Philippine group, which had for more than three centuries been a colonial possession of the crown of Spain.1

The entrance to the harbor of Manila, twenty miles below the city, was guarded by forts and reported to be sown with mines. But Dewey had served with Admiral Farragut in the Civil War, and had learned his tactics from the old hero who had run the forts below New Orleans and "damned" the torpedoes in Mobile Bay. Arriving at the narrows late on the evening of April 30, he steamed through the Boca Grande ("Large Mouth") uninjured by the fitful fire from the shore batteries, and during the early morning hours proceeded slowly up the bay to within three miles of the sea walls of Manila. The governor-general, preferring disaster to the Spanish fleet to danger to the inhabitants of the city, had refused to allow Admiral Montojo to take a position near Manila, where he could be aided by the fire of the

1 As the fleet set out to sea the crews were heartened (and entertained) by the reading of a bombastic proclamation by the governor-general of the Philippines, which contained the following sentences: "The North American people, constituted of all the social excrescences, have exhausted our patience and have provoked war with their perfidious machinations, with their acts of treachery, with their outrages against the law of nations. The struggle will be short and decisive. The God of Victory will give us one as brilliant and complete as the righteousness of our cause demands. . . . A squadron manned by foreigners possessing neither instruction nor discipline is preparing to come to this archipelago with the ruffianly intention of robbing us of life and liberty. . . . Vain imaginings! Ridiculous boastings! The aggressors shall not profane the tombs of your fathers, they shall not gratify their lustful passions at the cost of your wives' and daughters' honor, or appropriate the property your industry has acquired as a provision for your old age."