Caleb Cushing to José Calderón y Collantes, April 12, 1876

Mr. Cushing to Mr. Calderon y Collantes.

Sir: I have received with lively satisfaction your excellency’s note of the 11th instant, informing me of the decisive step adopted in the affair of Santiago de Cuba, and have lost no time in communicating the same to my Government, which will not fail to see in this act proof of the good faith and sense of justice of His Majesty’s government.

Your excellency’s communication to the ministry of war sets forth in language unanswerable the considerations of national honor which induce the present action. I cannot permit myself to doubt that not those weighty considerations only, but the sentiment of public duty as well, for which his excellency the minister of war is so highly distinguished, will impel him to give immediate effect to this explicit instance of the King’s government in the premises. Will your excellency permit roe to add some pertinent suggestions?

The government of His Majesty has thus far been eminently one of national reparation, of political reconstitution, of social re-organization for much-afflicted Spain. It has victoriously subdued armed rebellion in Valencia, Cataluña, Navarra, and the Basque provinces. It has maintained domestic order in the residue of Spain. It has resolutely encountered that greatest of all other dangers for Spain in modern times, the convocation of the Cortes and the discussion of a new written constitution. It sincerely aims to accomplish the great and difficult object of reconciling freedom with order, tolerance with religion. It desires that, without ceasing to cultivate manifestations of high intelligence, eloquence, literature, science, the fine arts, Spaniards should learn also to cultivate material interests in common with the other great peoples of Europe. It labors to counteract the hereditary predisposition of Spaniards to revolts, to insurrections, to civil war, and to persuade them to believe that

Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.

In fine, His Majesty’s government would fain lead Spain onward and upward to her merited seat in the grand concert of the civilized nations of the world, through the “golden gate” of dignity, honor, and self-respect; to do which it needs that she shall at all hazards acquire stability of domestic government; that she shall cease to squander her resources in sterile civil wars; in fine, that she shall possess herself in order that her voice may again be as potential, if not as it was in the heroic days of the Catholic kings and of Charles I, yet at least as much so as in the hardly less glorious ones of Charles III.

Are not such the lofty and patriotic aspirations of His Majesty and of his government? I know they are. And hence it is that, to-day, Spain receives from all the foreign powers of Europe and America, monarchical and republican alike, testimonies of reawakening confidence, such as she has not heretofore enjoyed since the commencement of her public disasters in the flagitious invasion of her by foreign armies in the execution of the semi-insane projects of ambition of the Emperor Napoleon.

Will Spain succeed in this mighty effort to at length repossess herself, and so to convert the hopes of other nations respecting her into assured faith? I sincerely trust that she will; and this last act of His Majesty’s government encourages me in this respect. For permit me to say, not the United States only, but other powers also, have been waiting for more than two years in solicitous expectation of some government in Spain, having will and strength to execute international conventions involving the possible censure of an officer of the Spanish army.

The United States, Great Britain, Germany, do not hesitate to try, to cashier, and if need be to execute an officer of the army or navy guilty of dereliction of duty, especially if the act be injurious to foreign powers.

We, of the United States, republic as we are, have done this repeatedly, and in signal cases, at the instance of Spain. And shall regenerated Spain fail in this respect? No, says my Government; no, say other governments, not if she has in truth entered on the path of regeneration.

I touch, and but touch, on a point of the domestic policy of Spain, because it is or the essence of the pending question between the two governments.

It may be that the considerations adduced in this note are outside of the cold and stiff commonplaces of ordinary diplomatic discussion. Be it so. But those considerations do but present the true arguments on which the pending question turns. And must the discussion between two friendly governments be so restricted by vain diplomatic forms as to be forced to pretermit all arguments of reality and truth? No; a thousand times no; provided the two governments sincerely desire, as we do, to maintain good understanding.

In other fields of discussion we make use of the arguments which the conditions of the question require and which we deem the best fitted to express our own conviction and to produce similar conviction in the minds of others. Why, in the most important of all discussions, diplomatic argument between sovereign states, involving, of course, possible issues of peace and war, should we be deprived of the full use of reason?

Thus to sacrifice substance to supposed exigencies of mere form would be, according to one of the current proverbs of my country, to represent the drama of “The Prince of Denmark” with the part of Hamlet omitted; or, localizing the illustration, to give “La vida es sueño,” leaving out the prince.

I venture, therefore, with reservation at the same time of all possible intention of respect for His Majesty’s government and for your excellency, to put forward what, in my opinion, is the impressive aspect of the present subject, and which it would be insincere in me not to express in plain words, in a conjuncture where distinct perception of the truth is of equal moment to both governments.

Meantime I assume that the ministry of war will promptly respond to the incitation addressed to it by your excellency, and that thus an apparently limited, but really grave, question will cease to encumber the relations of our respective governments.

I augur still more good from this manly act, namely, that His Majesty’s government will now, relieved as it is of its enormous burden of civil war in the Peninsula, incline itself to adopt wise measures for the termination of the deplorable contest in Cuba, which, while pre-eminently calamitous for Spain, is likewise, although in a less degree, a calamity for the United States.

I avail myself, &c.,