This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[234]
to aid the insurgents.
Grant at first leaned very strongly to the views of Rawlins, and there were many of the President's friends and advisers who concurred with the Secretary of War.
At one time the issue was almost decided in favor of Rawlins, but the development of the English question gave Fish a powerful argument.
He urged that with trouble on our hands with Spain, we could not possibly deal frankly and fearlessly with England; that the claims against England were the result of our own war and should be settled definitely before we turned to the acquisition of further territory at the price that Cuba would at that time inevitably cost.
This view was one that would be apt to affect Grant, and Fish thought that it convinced him, as it certainly did one or two of the Cabinet; and just when the cogency of the argument was felt by the President, Rawlins died.
His mantle as the friend of Cuba fell on no Elisha.
The insurgents never found another friend so powerful or earnest; the insurrection languished without the aid of America, and Spain remained firm in her seat on the unhappy island.
The St. Domingo scheme shared the fate of the Cuban enterprise, although the former was accepted as an Administration measure.
There was a great outcry at the time that improper motives instigated the urgency of the President and his friends for the acquisition of St. Domingo.
I fancy no one now believes that Grant was corrupt in his earnestness, and I have never known any proof that others were; but Cuban bonds were certainly distributed with a lavish hand among those who it was thought could aid the purpose of the Patriots.
Men high in position and public estimation accepted these bonds and afterward advocated the recognition of Cuban independence.
Even a foreign Minister was at one time the custodian and dispenser of four million dollars' worth of them, and the fact came to the knowledge of the Government.
The Minister was summoned and informed that the Administration was
S. S. Scranton and Co., Hartford, 1887.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.