Part 7 (2/2)
Naturally there was developed in the people at large the most complete unification and subjection. Individualism gave place almost entirely to the common weal, and the spectacle was presented of a nation with no political questions. Maccaulay maintains that human nature is such that aggregations of men will always show the two principles of radicalism and conservatism, and that two parties will exist in consequence, one composed of those who are ever looking to a brighter future, the other of those who are ever seeking to restore a delightful past; but no such phenomena appear in the ascending period of Spain's history. The whole nation moved as an organized army, steadily forward, until its zenith was reached. This solidity was a marked element of its strength.
Mr. Buckle recognizes this, and accounts for the harmonious movements of the nation by the influence of two leading principles, which he is pleased to call superst.i.tion and loyalty. The Arab invasion had pressed upon the Christians with such force that it was only by the strictest discipline that the latter had managed to survive. To secure such discipline, and at the same time supply the people with the steady enthusiasm necessary to support a war from century to century, all the terrors and all the glories that could be derived from religion were employed. The church and the state, the prince and the priest, became as one, and loyalty and religion, devotion to the standard and to the cross, were but different names for the same principles and actions. Hence Spain emerged to greatness without the least dream of liberty of either person, conscience or thought. Her rallying cry was: For the Prince and the Church; not, For G.o.d and Liberty. She went up to greatness the most loyal and the most religious of nations; but Liberty, Justice and Truth were not upon her banners.
Look over the territory settled and conquered by her, and what do we see? Columbus, sailing under Spain, names the first land he discovers San Salvador; the first settlement made in this country is St.
Augustine; the second, Sante Fe. Look down over the southern half of our continent and such names as Espirito Santo, Corpus Christi, San Diego, San Juan, San Jose, San Domingo attest the religious zeal of the conquerors. They were missionaries of the Cross, robbing the people of their gold and paying them off with religion.
Steadfast in the faith and st.u.r.dy in her loyalty, Spain resisted all innovations with respect to her religious beliefs, and all insurrections against her government. Her Alva and her Torquemada but ill.u.s.trated how strong was her conservatism, while her Isabella and her Philip II show how grand and comprehensive and how persistent was her aggressiveness, under the idea of spreading and upholding the true faith. She not only meant to hold all she had of wealth and power, but she aspired to universal dominion; already chief, she desired to be sole, and this in the interest and name of the Holy Church.
The Reformation did not disturb Spain; it was crushed out within twenty years. The spirit of liberty that had been growing in England since Bosworth's Field, and that was manifesting itself in Germany and the Netherlands, and that had begun to quiver even in France, did not dare stir itself in Spain. Spain was united, or rather, was solidity itself, and this solidity was both its strength and its death. England was not so united, and England went steadily onward and upward; but Spain's unity destroyed her, because it practically destroyed individualism and presented the strange paradox of a strong nation of weak men.
As a machine Spain in the sixteenth century was a marvel of power; as an aggregation of thinking men, it was even then contemptible.
Ferdinand, Charles V and Philip II were able and ill.u.s.trious rulers, and they appeared at a time when their several characters could tell on the immediate fortunes of Spain. They were warriors, and the nation was entirely warlike. During this period the Spaniard overran the earth, not that he might till the soil, but that he might rob the man who did. With one hand he was raking in the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru; with the other confiscating the profits of the trade and manufactures of the Low Countries--and all in the name of the Great G.o.d and Saints!
How was Spain overthrown? The answer is a short one. Spain, under Philip II staked her all upon a religious war against the awakening age. She met the Reformation within her own borders and extinguished it; but thought had broken loose from its chains and was abroad in the earth. England had turned Protestant, and Elizabeth was on the throne; Denmark, Norway and Sweden, indeed all countries except Spain and Italy had heard the echoes from Luther's trumpet blast. Italy furnished the religion, and Spain the powder, in this unequal fight between the Old and the New. Spain was not merely the representative of the old, she WAS the old, and she armed her whole strength in its behalf.
Here was a religion separated from all moral principle and devoid of all softening sentiment--its most appropriate formula being, death to all heretics. Death--not to tyrants, not to oppressors, not to robbers and men-stealers--but death to _heretics_. It was this that equipped her Armada.
The people were too loyal and too pious to THINK, and so were hurled in a solid ma.s.s against the armed thought of the coming age, and a mighty nation crumbled as in a day. With the destruction of her Armada her warlike ascendancy pa.s.sed and she had nothing to put in its place.
She had not tillers of the soil, mechanics or skilled merchants.
Business was taking the place of war all over the world, but Spain knew only religion and war, hence worsted in her only field, she was doomed.
From the days of Philip II her decline was rapid. Her territory slipped from her as rapidly as it had been acquired. Her great domains on our soil are now the seat of thriving communities of English-speaking people. The whole continent of South America has thrown off her yoke, though still retaining her language, and our troops now embarked from Port Tampa are destined to wrest from her the two only remaining colonies subject to her sway in the Western World,--Cuba and Porto Rico. With all her losses. .h.i.therto, Spain has not learned wisdom. Antagonistic to truth and liberty, she seems to sit in the shadow of death, hugging the delusions that have betrayed her, while all other people of earth are pressing onward toward light and liberty.
The struggle in Cuba had been going on for years, and in that colony of less than two millions of inhabitants, many of whom were Spaniards, there was now an army four times as large as the standing army of the United States. Against this army and against the Government of Spain a revolt had been carried on previous to the present outbreak for a period of ten years, and which had been settled by concessions on the part of the home government. The present revolt was of two years'
standing when our government decided to interfere. The Cubans had maintained disorder, if they had not carried on war; and they had declined to be pacified. In their army they experienced no color difficulties. Gomez, Maceo and Quintin Banderas were generals honored and loved, Maceo especially coming to be the hero and idol of the insurgents of all cla.s.ses. And it can truthfully be said that no man in either the Cuban or Spanish army, in all the Cuban struggle previous to our intervention, has earned a loftier fame as patriot, soldier and man of n.o.ble mould than ANTONIO MACEO.
Cuba, by far the most advanced of all the West Indian colonies; Cuba, essentially Spanish, was destined to be the battle ground between our troops and the veterans of Spain. The question to be settled was that of Spain's sovereignty. Spain's right to rule over the colonies of Cuba and Porto Rico was disputed by the United States, and this question, and this alone, is to be settled by force of arms. Further than this, the issue does not go. The dictum of America is: Spain shall not rule. The questions of Annexation, Expansion and Imperialism were not before us as we launched our forces to drive Spain out of the West Indies. The Cuban flag was closely a.s.sociated with our own standard popularly, and ”Cuba Libre” was a wide-spread sentiment in June, 1898. ”We are ready to help the Cubans gain their liberty” was the honest expression of thousands who felt they were going forward in a war for others.
CHAPTER V.
Pa.s.sAGE, LANDING, AND FIRST BATTLE IN CUBA.
The Tenth Cavalry at Guasimas--The ”Rescue of the Rough Riders”--Was There an Ambush?--Notes.
”The pa.s.sage to Santiago was generally smooth and uneventful,” says General Shafter in his official report. But when the fact is called to mind that the men had been on board a week before sailing, and were a week more on the pa.s.sage, and that ”the conveniences on many of the transports in the nature of sleeping accommodations, s.p.a.ce for exercise, closet accommodations, etc., were not all that could have been desired,” and that the opinion was general throughout the army that the travel ration was faulty, it cannot be doubted that the trip was a sore trial to the enlisted men at least. The monotonous days pa.s.sed in the harbor at Port Tampa, while waiting for orders to sail, were unusually trying to the men. They were relieved somewhat by bathing, swimming, gaming and chatting on the coming events. A soldier who was in one of the colored regiments describes the inside life of one of the transports as follows: ”After some miles of railroad travel and much hustling we were put on board the transport. I say _on board_, but it is simply because we cannot use the terms _under board_. We were huddled together below two other regiments and under the water line, in the dirtiest, closest, most sickening place imaginable. For about fifteen days we were on the water in this dirty hole, but being soldiers we were compelled to accept this without a murmur. We ate corn beef and canned tomatoes with our hard bread until we were anything but half way pleased. In the fifth or sixth day out to sea the water furnished us became muddy or dirty and well flavored with salt, and remained so during the rest of the journey.
Then, the s.h.i.+p's cooks, knowing well our condition made it convenient to themselves to sell us a gla.s.s of clean ice water and a small piece of bread and tainted meat for the sum of seventy-five cents, or one dollar, as the case might be.”
A pa.s.sage from Port Tampa, around the eastern end of Cuba, through the Windward Pa.s.sage, even in June, is ordinarily pleasant. On the deck of a clean steamer, protected from the sun's rays by a friendly awning, it may be put down as nearly an ideal pleasure trip; but crowded into freight s.h.i.+ps as these men were, many of them clad in thick and uncomfortable clothing, reduced to the uninviting travel ration, compelled to spend most of the time below decks, occupied with thoughts of home and friends, and beset with forebodings of coming events, it was very far from being to them a pastime. Of the thousands who are going to Cuba to magnify the American flag, not all will return. Occasionally the gay music of the bands would relieve the dull routine and cause the spirits to rise under the effects of some enlivening waltz or stirring patriotic air; or entering a school of flying fish the men would be entertained to see these broad-finned creatures dart from the waves like arrows from the bow, and after a graceful flight of perhaps near two hundred yards drop again into the sea; but taken altogether it was a voyage that furnishes little for the historian.
The transports were so arranged as to present an interesting and picturesque spectacle as they departed from our sh.o.r.es on their ocean march. Forming in three columns, with a distance of about 1,000 yards between the columns, and the vessels in the columns being distanced from one another about 400 yards, the fleet was convoyed from Port Tampa by small naval vessels until it reached a point between the Dry Tortugas and Key West. Here it was met by the n.o.ble battles.h.i.+p Indiana and nine other war vessels, thus making a convoy altogether of fifteen fighting craft. Transports and convoy now made an armada of more than forty s.h.i.+ps, armed and manned by the audacious modern republic whose flag waved from every masthead. Thus spreading out over miles of smooth sea, moving quietly along by steam, carrying in its arms the flower of the American army, every man of which was an athlete, this fleet announced to the world the grim purpose of a nation aroused.
<script>