Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T08:36:16.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thinking about Empire: The Administration of Ulysses S. Grant, Spanish Colonialism and the Ten Years' War in Cuba

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2013

ANDREW PRIEST
ANDREW PRIEST*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Essex. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the attitudes of leading policymakers in the United States toward the Spanish Empire in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868–78). It suggests that while many in the US objected to Spanish imperial practices, concerns about trade alongside ideological predispositions regarding nonintervention and race led the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, under the direction of Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, to develop a series of policies that in effect supported colonialism in Cuba while attempting to ensure that the US would benefit from any change in rule there. The article argues that despite an apparent desire for the US to remain neutral during the conflict, the Grant administration in fact formulated its responses based on a narrow conception of Spanish colonial control that demonstrated an increasing sense of moral superiority over both colonizer and colonized.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 541 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Latané, John H., “Intervention of the United States in Cuba,” North American Review, 166, 496 (March 1898), 351Google Scholar.

2 On the United States and the Ten Years' War see especially Sexton, Jay, “The United States, the Cuban Rebellion, and the Multilateral Initiative of 1875,” Diplomatic History, 30 (2006), 335–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Langley, Lester D., The Cuban Policy of the United States: A Brief History (New York: Wiley, 1968), 53–81Google Scholar; Chapin, James B, “Hamilton Fish and the Lessons of the Ten Year's War,” in David, Jules, ed., Perspectives on American Diplomacy (New York: Arno, 1976), 131–63Google Scholar.

3 See Sexton, Jay, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Hill & Wang, 2011).Google Scholar

4 See Ninkovich, Frank, Global Dawn: The Cultural Foundation of American Internationalism, 1865–1890 (Cambridge, MA and London, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Ninkovich, Frank, The United States and Imperialism (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1991), 262Google Scholar.

6 Twain, Mark, Following the Equator and Anti-imperialist Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; London, Jack, Tales of the Pacific (London: Penguin, 1989)Google Scholar.

7 Stoler, Ann Laura, “Intimidations of Empire: Predicaments of the Tactile and the Unseen,” in , Stoler, ed., Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Hendrickson, David C., Union, Nation, or Empire: The American Debate over International Relations, 1789–1941 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009), 13–22Google Scholar.

9 Polyné, Millery, From Douglass to Duvalier: U. S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2010), esp. 25–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Cooper, Frederick, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 12Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 154.

12 See Pérez, Louis A. Jr., On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 25–26Google Scholar; , Pérez, Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy, 3rd edn (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2003), 35Google Scholar.

13 John Patrick Leary, “Cuba in the American Imaginary: Literature and National Culture in Cuba and the United States, 1848–1958,” unpublished PhD dissertation, New York University, 2009; May, Robert E., The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; May, Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

14 Murphy, Martin F., Dominican Sugar Plantations: Production and Foreign Labor Integration (New York: Praeger, 1991), 11–13Google Scholar.

15 Plummer, Brenda Gayle, Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1992), esp. 57–60Google Scholar.

16 Pérez, Cuba and the United States, 49–50.

17 Cortada, James W., Two Nations over Time: Spain and the United States, 1776–1977 (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood, 1978), 17Google Scholar.

18 DeGuzmán, María, Spain's Long Shadow: The Black Legend, Off-Whiteness, and Anglo-American Empire (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005)Google Scholar. See also Leary, 1–60.

19 For an overview of Fish's tenure see Fuller, Joseph V., “Hamilton Fish,” in Bemis, Samuel Flagg, ed., The American Secretaries of States and Their Diplomacy, Volume IV (New York: Cooper Square, 1963), 123–214Google Scholar. For generally positive perspectives, see, for example, Nevins, Allan, Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1936)Google Scholar; Libby, Justin, “Hamilton Fish and the Origins of Anglo-American Solidarity,” Mid-America, 76 (1994), 205–26Google Scholar; Haury, Clifford W., “Hamilton Fish and the Conservative Tradition” in Graebner, Norman A., Traditions and Values: American Diplomacy, 1865–1945 (Lanham, MD, and London: University Press of America, 1985), 1–27Google Scholar. A more negative portrayal can be found in Chapin, James B., “Hamilton Fish and American Expansion,” in Merli, Frank J. and Wilson, Theodore A., eds., Makers of American Diplomacy: From Benjamin Franklin to Alfred Thayer Mahan (New York: Scribner, 1974), 223–51Google Scholar.

20 Fish to Sickles, 29 June 1869, Records of the Department of State, Record Group (RG) 59, Diplomatic Instructions, Spain, 16, Roll 144, 2, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD. Hereafter cited as NARA.

21 Love, Eric T. L., Race over Empire: Racism and U. S. Imperialism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 39Google Scholar.

22 Fish to Alexander Hamilton Jr., 13 March 1870, quoted in Chapin, “Hamilton Fish and American Expansion,” 245; Jayes, Janice Lee, The Illusion of Ignorance: Constructing the American Encounter with Mexico, 1877–1920 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2011), 222Google Scholar.

23 See, for example, Guyatt, Nicholas, “America's Conservatory: Race, Reconstruction, and the Santo Domingo Debate,” Journal of American History, 97 (2011), 974–1000CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hidalgo, Dennis, “Charles Sumner and the Annexation of the Dominican Republic,” Itinerario, 21 (1997), 51–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Diary of Hamilton Fish (hereafter cited as Fish Diary), 6 April 1869, Papers of Hamilton Fish, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as Fish Papers, LOC).

25 Ferrer, Ada, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 8Google Scholar.

26 Fish Dairy, 13 Dec. 1869, Fish Papers, LOC.

27 Fish Diary, 8 Nov. 1873, Fish Papers, LOC.

28 Cushing to Fish, 24 May 1876, RG 59, M31, Roll 77, NARA.

29 Cushing to Fish, 3 June 1876, RG 59, M31, Roll 78, NARA.

30 See Sickles to Fish, 11 July 1872, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington, DC: US Govt. Printing Office, 1871–75) (hereafter cited as FRUS), 1872, 561; Fish to Sickles, 29 Oct. 1872, FRUS, 1872, 580–84.

31 Bradford, Richard H., The Virginius Affair (Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, 1980), 131–33Google Scholar.

32 Quoted in Guterl, Matthew Pratt, American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2008), 101Google Scholar.

33 See, for example, Fish to Roberts, 13 Oct. 1869, Fish Papers, Diplomatic Drafts, Box 224, LOC; “Gen. Grant Said to Be in Favor of Cuban Independence,” New York Times, 18 Jan. 1869.

34 Henry R. de La Reintre to Grant, 26 Feb. 1869, and 13 March 1869, in Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon, 31 vols. (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967–2009), Volume XIX, 351–52. Hereafter cited as Grant Papers.

35 Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 41st Congress, 1st Session, 18–21.

36 See, for example, “Cuban Independence, Immense Mass Meeting at Steinway Hall,” New York Times, 26 March 1869; “Cuba Independence, Large Meeting at Cooper Institute Last Evening,” New York Times, 5 May 1869; “The South Carolina Legislature – Cuban Recognition,” New York Times, 30 Nov. 1869; “Cuba. Action Asked by Congress,” New York Times, 3 Dec. 1869.

37 William G. Eliot to Grant, 2 Jan. 1873, in Grant Papers, Volume XXIII, 301–2.

38 Fish to Roberts, 17 April 1869, Fish Papers, Diplomatic Drafts, Box 224, LOC.

39 See Fish to Lopez Robert, 28 Dec. 1870, FRUS, 1871, 785–91.

40 “The Demand for Cuban Recognition,” New York Times, 16 April 1869.

41 Sumner to Fish, Julia Kean, 29 Sept. 1869, in Selected Letters of Charles Sumner, ed. Palmer, Beverly Wilson, 2 vols. (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1990), Volume II, 491Google Scholar.

42 Sumner to Howe, 16 March 1870, in Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, ed. Edward L. Pierce, 4 vols. (Boston, MA: Roberts Brothers, 1877–93), Volume IV, 426.

43 Donald, David Herbert, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York: Knopf, 1996), 416–17Google Scholar.

44 Smith, Theodore Clarke, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield, 2 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1925), Volume I, 487Google Scholar.

45 First Annual Message, 6 Dec. 1869, in Richardson, James D., ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897, 10 vols. (Washington, DC: US Govt. Printing Office, 1898), Volume VII, 31–32Google Scholar, emphasis added.

46 Fish to Sickles, 29 June 1869, RG 59, Diplomatic Instructions, Spain, 16, Roll 144, 2, NARA.

47 For example, Sickles to Fish, 12 July 1870, RG 59, M31, Roll 49, NARA.

48 See Scott, Rebecca J., Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 101–2Google Scholar; Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba, 60–67.

49 See Fish to Sickles, 19 April 1872 in Grant Papers, Volume XXIII, 73.

50 See esp. Fish to Sickles, 23 April 1873, Fish Papers, Instructions, Spain, Box 238, LOC; Fish to Sickles, 24 April 1873, ibid.; Fish to Sickles, 27 Aug. 1873, FRUS, 1873, 1032–33.

51 Fish to Sickles, 31 Aug. 1872, Fish Papers, Diplomatic Drafts, Box 229, LOC.

52 See Sexton, “Multilateral Initiative of 1875,” 351–53.

53 Cushing to Fish, 23 Nov. 1874, RG 59, M31, Roll 64, NARA.

54 Fish Diary, 5 Nov. 1875, Fish Papers, LOC.

55 Scott, Rebecca J., Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860–1899 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar. See also Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher, Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011), esp. 147–50Google Scholar.

56 Cushing to Fish, 4 Nov. 1874; Cushing to Fish, 23 Nov. 1874, RG 59, M31, Roll 64, NARA.

57 Seventh Annual Message, 7 Dec. 1875, in Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume VII, 336–8.

58 See, for example, Cushing to Fish, 2 Jan. 1876, RG 59, M31, Roll 75, NARA.

59 See Fish to Sickles, 26 Jan. 1870, RG 59, Diplomatic Instructions, Spain, 16: Roll 144, 26, NARA.

60 Foner, Philip S., A History of Cuba and Its Relations with the United States, 2 vols. (New York: International Publisher's, 1962), Volume II, 214–15Google Scholar.

61 For Fish's summary of this incident see Fish to Admiral Polo de Bernabé, 18 April 1874, FRUS, 1875, 1205.

62 Fish Diary, 12 July 1872 and 20 July 1872, Fish Papers, LOC; Grant to James H. Coggeshall, 24 July 1872; New York Tribune, 29 July 1872, all in Grant Papers, Volume XXIII, 209–10; Nevins, Hamilton Fish, 623.

63 Fish to Admiral Polo de Bernabé, 18 April 1874, FRUS, 1875, 2, 1180.

64 Chapin, “Hamilton Fish and the Lessons of the Ten Year's War,” 146.

65 Stoler, “Intimidations of Empire,” 9.

66 Pagden, Anthony, “Empire and Its Anxieties,” American Historical Review, 117 (2012), 141–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 147.

67 See Grandin, Greg, “The Liberal Tradition in the Americas: Rights, Sovereignty, and the Origins of Liberal Multilateralism,” American Historical Review, 117 (2012), 68–91, 81–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.