President Grant's Cold War With Spain: Cuba and the Virginius Affair

The surrender of the Virginius, captured by a Spanish warship near Cuba in October 1873. Harper's Weekly; Library of Congress.

Avoiding war with Europe

President Ulysses S. Grant (1869–77) was determined to keep the United States out of war with any European power. The likeliest foes were Britain and Spain.

• Britain: the Treaty of Washington, ratified in 1871, settled the "Alabama Claims" — U.S. demands over Confederate raiders built in British yards, which had preyed on Union shipping — and improved relations.
• Spain was harder.

Cuba's revolt

In October 1868, Cubans rose against Spanish rule after years of unanswered grievances. The revolt lasted through Grant's presidency. The rebels wanted independence, democratic reform and the abolition of slavery — ideals many Americans shared. Americans raised money and supplies for them, and some even joined the fight, a practice called filibustering, though the United States was at peace with Spain.

Grant's cabinet split.

• For aiding the rebels: Interior Secretary Jacob Cox, Postmaster General John A. J. Creswell, and most strongly War Secretary John A. Rawlins — who, it emerged after his death in 1869, had a financial stake in the rebel cause.
• For restraint: Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, busy with the Alabama Claims. Backing Cuban rebels while demanding damages from Britain for aiding the Confederacy would have been hypocritical and would have weakened his hand.

Grant had Fish issue a proclamation of neutrality. But Spain's harsh measures, including executing some captured Americans, inflamed opinion, and even Grant grew exasperated. Spain, he wrote, had every right to wage war on its own soil by civilized rules — but its troops had so "wantonly invaded" Americans' rights that it took "all our vigilance" to stop citizens from giving the rebels material aid.

The Virginius Affair

The Virginius, a former Confederate blockade runner, was American-owned and running weapons, supplies and men to the rebels. Most of its crew were inexperienced, and many apparently didn't know the ship's real purpose.

• In October 1873 a Spanish warship captured it off Cuba. The entire crew was taken to Cuba to be tried as pirates.
• Rebel leader Manuel de Quesada petitioned Grant to intervene: the prisoners were "sons, brothers, husbands and near relatives" of people in the United States.
• It failed. Spain executed fifty-three men, including the captain, Joseph Fry, at Santiago de Cuba. The killings stopped only when a British warship in the harbor threatened to bombard the city.

Americans were outraged. Leading newspapers called for war; even the usually moderate Fish denounced "butchery and murder," and former Confederate cavalry leader John Mosby offered to fight Spain.

Grant kept a level head. In a message to Congress on January 5, 1874, he set out his demands: "the restoration of the vessel, the return of the survivors to the protection of the United States, for a salute to the flag, and for the punishment of the offending parties." Because the Spanish had torn down the ship's U.S. flag, he also wanted assurance that no insult to the flag had been intended. Spain met most of the terms, returning the survivors and paying an indemnity of $80,000 — "an arrangement," Grant said, "which was moderate and just."

Afterward

There was no war over Cuba under Grant, though there were close calls, and Americans' wish to see Cuba free did not fade while Spain kept up its harsh rule. The United States went to war with Spain in 1898, and Cuba won its independence — thirteen years after Grant's death.

Further reading: Paul Kahan, The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant (2018); John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, volumes 19, 24 and 25.

Sources

Based on "President Grant's Cold War with Spain," Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Grant's, Fish's and Quesada's words are quoted from nineteenth-century documents; the article's quotations from a modern history are paraphrased. The original spells the war secretary "Rawlings"; he was John A. Rawlins.