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 1,400 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 assistants.  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 a 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 statesmanship 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 assurances of highest regard, I am, Admiral,

Very respectfully yours,

[Signed] Clara Barton.

At the time when the above letter was written, the American 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. Flagship New York, First Rate, Key West, Fla., 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 at 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 S. S. State of Texas, loaded with supplies for the starving reconcentrados in Cuba, is left, in a measure, to my judgment.