Treacherous destruction of the Maine.

The Maine entered the harbor of Havana at sunrise on the 25th of January and was anchored at a place indicated by the harbor-master.  Her arrival was marked with no special incident, except the exchange of customary salutes and ceremonial visits.  Three weeks from that night, at forty minutes past nine o’clock in the evening of the 15th of February, the Maine was destroyed by an explosion, by which the entire forward part of the ship was wrecked.  In this frightful catastrophe 264 of her crew and two officers perished, those who were not killed outright by the explosion being penned between decks by the tangle of wreckage and drowned by the immediate sinking of her hull.

In spite of the fact that the American public was urged to suspend judgment as to the causes of this disaster, and that the Spanish authorities in Havana and in Madrid expressed grief and sympathy, it, was impossible to subdue a general belief that in some way Spanish treachery was responsible for the calamity.  With the history of Spanish cruelty in Cuba before them, and the memory of Spanish barbarities through all their existence as a nation, the people could mot disabuse their minds of this suspicion.

One month later this popular judgment was verified by the finding of the naval court of inquiry which had made an exhaustive examination of the wreck, and had taken testimony from every available source.  With this confirmation and the aroused sentiment of the country concerning conditions in Cuba, the logic of events was irresistibly drawing the country toward war with Spain, and all efforts of diplomacy and expressions of polite regard exchanged between the governments of the two nations were unable to avert it.

For a few weeks, history was made rapidly.  Conservative and eminent American senators visited Cuba in order to obtain personal information of conditions there, and upon their return, gave to Congress and to the country, in eloquent speeches, the story of the sufferings they had found in that unhappy island.  The loss of the Maine had focused American attention upon the Cuban situation as it had never been before, and though there were no more reasons for sympathetic interference than there had been for many months, people began to realize as they had not before, the horrors that were being enacted at their thresholds.

The sailors who died with the Maine, even though they were not able to fight their country’s foes, have not died in vain, for it is their death that will be remembered as the culminating influence for American intervention and the salvation of scores of thousands of lives of starving Cuban women and children.  Vessels were loaded with supplies of provisions and clothing for the suffering and were sent to the harbors of Cuba, where distribution was made by Miss Clara Barton and her trusted associates in the American National Red Cross.  Some of these vessels were merchant steamers, but others were American cruisers, and Cubans were not permitted to forget that there was a flag which typified liberty, not far away.  The strain upon the national patience increased every day, and was nearing the breaking point.