Cuba? overboard The acquisition of San Domingo is desirable because of its geographical position. It commands the entrance to the Caribbean Sea and the Isthmus transit of commerce. It possesses the richest soil, best and most capacious harbors, most salubrious climate, and the most valuable products of the forests, mine, and soil of any of the West India Islands. Its possession by us will in a few years build up a coastwise commerce of immense_magnitude, which will go far toward restoring to us our lost merchant marine. It will give to us those articles which we consume so largely and do not produce, thus equalizing our exports and imports. In case of foreign war it will give us command of all the islands referred to, and thus prevent an enemy from ever again possessing himself of rendezvous upon our very coast. At present our coast trade between the States bordering on the Atlantic and those bordering on the Gulf of Mexico is cut into by the Bahamas and the Antilles. Twice we must, as it were, pass through foreign countries to get by sea from Georgia to the west coast of Florida. San Domingo, with a stable government, under which her immense resources can be developed, will give remunerative wages to tens of thousands of laborers not now on the island. This labor will take advantage of every available means of transportation to abandon the adjacent islands and seek the blessings of freedom and its sequence-each inhabitant receiving the reward of his own labor. ||Porto Rico and Cuba will have to abolish slavery, as a measure of selfpreservation to retain their laborers. San Domingo will become a large consumer of the products of Northern farms and manufactories. The cheap rate at which her citizens can be furnished with food, tools, and machinery will make it necessary that the contiguous islands should have the same advantages in order to compete in the production of sugar, coffee, tobacco, tropical fruits, etc. This will open to us a still wider market for our products. The production of our own supply of these articles will cut off more than one hundred millions of our annual imports, besides largely increasing our exports. With such a picture it is easy to see how our large debt abroad is ultimately to be extinguished. With a balance of trade against us (including interest on bonds held by foreigners and money spent by our citizens traveling in foreign lands) equal to the entire yield of the precious metals in this country, it is not so easy to see how this result is to be otherwise accomplished. The acquisition of San Domingo is an adherence to the "Monroe doctrine;" it is a measure of national protection; it is asserting our just claim to a controlling influence over the great commercial traffic soon to flow from east to west by the way of the Isthmus of Darien; it is to build up our merchant marine; it is to furnish new markets for the products of our farms, shops, and manufactories; it is to make slavery insupportable in Cuba and Porto Rico at once and ultimately so in Brazil; it is to settle the unhappy condition of Cuba, and end an exterminating conflict; it is to provide honest means of paying our honest debts, withoat overtaxing the people; it is to furnish our citizens with the necessaries of everyday life at cheaper rates than ever before; and it is, in fine, a rapid stride toward that greatness which the intelligence, industry, and enterprise of the citizens of the United States entitle this country to assume among nations. U. S. GRANT. To the Senate of the United States: EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, D. C., June 2, 1870 In reply to your resolution of the 1st instant, requesting, "in condence," any information in possession of the President "touching any proposition, offer, or design of any foreign power to purchase or obtain any part of the territory of San Domingo or any right to the Bay of Samana," I transmit herewith a copy of a letter, dated 27th of April, 1870, addressed to "Colonel J. W. Fabens, Dominican minister, Washington," by "E. Herzberg Hartmount, Dominican consul-general in London." U. S. GRANT. To the Senate of the United States: WASHINGTON, June 3, 1870. I transmit to the Senate, in answer to their resolution of the 18th ultimo, a report from the Secretary of State, with an accompanying paper.* U. S. GRANT. To the Senate of the United States: WASHINGTON, June 3, 1870. I transmit to the Senate, for consideration with a view to its ratification, an additional convention to the treaty of the 7th of April, 1862, for the suppression of the African slave trade, which additional convention was signed on this day in the city of Washington by the plenipotentiaries of the high contracting parties. U. S. GRANT. To the Senate of the United States: WASHINGTON, June 6, 1870. I transmit to the Senate, in answer to their resolution of the 3d instant, the accompanying report † from the Secretary of State. U. S. GRANT. *Communication from George Bancroft, United States minister at Berlin, relative to political questions in Germany. Stating that he has received no official information relative to a reported persecution and massacre of Israelites in Roumania, EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 13, 1870. To the Senate and House of Representatives. In my annual message to Congress at the beginning of its present session I referred to the contest which had then for more than a year existed in the island of Cuba between a portion of its inhabitants and the Government of Spain, and the feelings and sympathies of the people and Government of the United States for the people of Cuba, as for all peoples struggling for liberty and self-government, and said that "the contest has at no time assumed the conditions which amount to war in the sense of international law, or which would show the existence of a de facto political organization of the insurgents sufficient to justify a recognition of belligerency." During the six months which have passed since the date of that mes sage the condition of the insurgents has not improved, and the insurrection itself, although not subdued, exhibits no signs of advance, but seems to be confined to an irregular system of hostilities, carried on by small and illy armed bands of men, roaming without concentration through the woods and the sparsely populated regions of the island, attacking from ambush convoys and small bands of troops, burning plantations and the estates of those not sympathizing with their cause. But if the insurrection has not gained ground, it is equally true that Spain has not suppressed it. Climate, disease, and the occasional bullet have worked destruction among the soldiers of Spain; and although the Spanish authorities have possession of every seaport and every town on the island, they have not been able to subdue the hostile feeling which has driven a considerable number of the native inhabitants of the island to armed resistance against Spain, and still leads them to endure the dangers and the privations of a roaming life of guerrilla warfare. On either side the contest has been conducted, and is still carried on, with a lamentable disregard of human life and of the rules and practices which modern civilization has prescribed in mitigation of the necessary horrors of war. The torch of Spaniard and of Cuban is alike busy in carrying devastation over fertile regions; murderous and revengeful decrees are issued and executed by both parties. Count Valmaseda and Colonel Boet, on the part of Spain, have each startled humanity and aroused the indignation of the civilized world by the execution, each, of a score of prisoners at a time, while General Quesada, the Cuban chief, coolly and with apparent unconsciousness of aught else than a proper 11 act, has admitted the slaughter, by his own deliberate order, in one day, of upward of 650 prisoners of war. A summary trial, with few, if any, escapes from conviction, foliowed by immediate execution, is the fate of those arrested on either side on suspicion of infidelity to the cause of the party making the arrest. Whatever may be the sympathies of the people or of the Government THE PERPETUAL CUBAN REVOLUTION Cuba has played a large and interesting part in our history from the very earliest days. The article "Cuba," in the index (volume eleven), succinctly presents the salient facts regarding her natural resources, her history and her present condition. She was a bone of contention in our domestic politics. The South, represented by the Democratic party, was bent on annexing her; proffers were made of money to insolvent Spain, only to be spurned; if gold will not buy, force of arms must conquer, was the motto. With the encouragement of the South, filibustering expeditions were fitted out, and with the connivance of traitorous Southern agents of the Federal Government, escaped the vigilance of our cruisers only to be snapped up by the watchful Spaniards. Such violations of our treaties were likely to bring on war; far from dreading such a result, the South would have welcomed it with glee, for then the doctrine of "manifest destiny" with which they sought to palliate our unjust war on Mexico, would cloak the robbing of Cuba from Spain. Why did the South want Cuba? Simply because if annexed two or three new slave states could be created, four or six new slave Senators be elected, and their vanishing domination in Congress be restored. The illustrations are contemporary and truthful representations of scenes in the Cuban insurrection of 1868-1877. The post-bellum view of Cuban affairs will be found by consulting the discussions of the matter by the Presidents from Grant to McKinley, on the pages cited by the index under the heading "Cuba." On page 2701 President Fillmore states the reasons against annexation, and on page 3041 President Buchanan recommends it. EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 13, 1870. To the Senate and House of Representatives. In my annual message to Congress at the beginning of its present session I referred to the contest which had then for more than a year existed in the island of Cuba between a portion of its inhabitants and the Government of Spain, and the feelings and sympathies of the people and Government of the United States for the people of Cuba, as for all peoples struggling for liberty and self-government, and said that "the contest has at no time assumed the conditions which amount to war in the sense of international law, or which would show the existence of a de facto political organization of the insurgents sufficient to justify a recognition of belligerency." During the six months which have passed since the date of that mes sage the condition of the insurgents has not improved, and the insurrec tion itself, although not subdued, exhibits no signs of advance, but seems to be confined to an irregular system of hostilities, carried on by small and illy armed bands of men, roaming without concentration through the woods and the sparsely populated regions of the island, attacking from ambush convoys and small bands of troops, burning plantations and the estates of those not sympathizing with their cause. But if the insurrection has not gained ground, it is equally true that Spain has not suppressed it. Climate, disease, and the occasional bullet have worked destruction among the soldiers of Spain; and although the Spanish authorities have possession of every seaport and every town on the island, they have not been able to subdue the hostile feeling which has driven a considerable number of the native inhabitants of the island to armed resistance against Spain, and still leads them to endure the dangers and the privations of a roaming life of guerrilla warfare. On either side the contest has been conducted, and is still carried on, with a lamentable disregard of human life and of the rules and practices which modern civilization has prescribed in mitigation of the necessary horrors of war. The torch of Spaniard and of Cuban is alike busy in carrying devastation over fertile regions; murderous and revengeful decrees are issued and executed by both parties. Count Valmaseda and Colonel Boet, on the part of Spain, have each startled humanity and aroused the indignation of the civilized world by the execution, each, of a score of prisoners at a time, while General Quesada, the Cuban chief, coolly and with apparent unconsciousness of aught else than a proper act, has admitted the slaughter, by his own deliberate order, in one day, of upward of 650 prisoners of war. A summary trial, with few, if any, escapes from conviction, foliowed by immediate execution, is the fate of those arrested on either side on suspicion of infidelity to the cause of the party making the arrest. Whatever may be the sympathies of the people or of the Government |