Part 1 (2/2)
_Admiral W. T. Sampson, U. S. N., Commanding Fleet before Havana._
ADMIRAL: But for the introduction kindly proffered by our mutual acquaintance Captain Harrington, I should scarcely presume to address you. He will have made known to you the subject which I desire to bring to your gracious consideration.
Papers forwarded by direction of our government will have shown the charge intrusted to me, viz., to get food to the starving people of Cuba. I have with me a cargo of fourteen hundred tons, under the flag of the Red Cross, the one international emblem of neutrality and humanity known to civilization. Spain knows and regards it.
Fourteen months ago the entire Spanish government at Madrid cabled me permission to take and distribute food to the suffering people in Cuba. This official permission was broadly published. If read by our people, no response was made and no action taken until two months ago, when, under the humane and gracious call of our honored President, I did go and distribute food, unmolested anywhere on the island, until arrangements were made by our government for all American citizens to leave Cuba. Persons must now be dying there by hundreds, if not thousands, daily, for want of the food we are shutting out. Will not the world hold us accountable? Will history write us blameless? Will it not be said of us that we completed the scheme of extermination commenced by Weyler?
Fortunately, I know the Spanish authorities in Cuba, Captain-General Blanco and his a.s.sistants. We parted with perfect friendliness. They do not regard me as an American merely, but as the national representative of an international treaty to which they themselves are signatory and under which they act. I believe they would receive and confer with me if such a thing were made possible.
I should like to ask Spanish permission and protection to land and distribute food now on the _State of Texas_. Could I be permitted to ask to see them under flag of truce? If we make the effort and are refused, the blame rests with them; if we fail to make it, it rests with us. I hold it good statesmans.h.i.+p at least to divide the responsibility. I am told that some days must elapse before our troops can be in position to reach and feed these starving people.
Our food and our forces are here, ready to commence at once.
With a.s.surances of highest regard,
I am, Admiral, very respectfully yours,
[Signed] CLARA BARTON.
At the time when the above letter was written, the American National Red Cross was acting under the advice and direction of the State and Navy departments, the War Department having no force in the field.
Admiral Sampson replied as follows:
U. S. FLAGs.h.i.+P ”NEW YORK,” FIRST-RATE, KEY WEST, FLORIDA, May 2, 1898.
_Miss Clara Barton, President American National Red Cross:_
1. I have received through the senior naval officer present a copy of a letter from the State Department to the Secretary of the Navy; a copy of a letter from the Secretary of the Navy to the commander-in-chief of the naval force on this station; and also a copy of a letter from the Secretary of the Navy to the commandant of the naval station at Key West.
2. From these communications it appears that the destination of the steams.h.i.+p _State of Texas_, loaded with supplies for the starving reconcentrados in Cuba, is left, in a measure, to my judgment.
3. At present I am acting under instructions from the Navy Department to blockade the coast of Cuba for the purpose of preventing, among other things, any food-supply from reaching the Spanish forces in Cuba. Under these circ.u.mstances it seems to me unwise to let a s.h.i.+p-load of such supplies be sent to the reconcentrados, for, in my opinion, they would be distributed to the Spanish army. Until some point be occupied in Cuba by our forces, from which such distribution can be made to those for whom the supplies are intended, I am unwilling that they should be landed on Cuban soil.
Yours very respectfully,
[Signed] W. T. SAMPSON, Rear-Admiral U. S. N.,
Commander-in-Chief U. S. Naval Force, North Atlantic Station.
After this exchange of letters Miss Barton had a conference with Admiral Sampson, in the course of which the latter explained more fully his reasons for declining to allow the _State of Texas_ to enter any Cuban port until such port had been occupied by American troops.
On May 3 Miss Barton sent the following telegram to Stephen E. Barton, chairman of the Central Cuban Relief Committee in New York:
KEY WEST, May 3, 1898.
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