The Admiral and the Ambassador Page 14

  The war was moving quickly. The first battle, for which Dewey received so much praise, came at Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. At the same time, US warships half a world away were establishing a blockade outside Cuban port cities. In early June, American ground troops landed at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba’s southeast coast, and then at nearby Daiquiri and Santiago de Cuba. With American forces—including Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders—seizing Cuban towns at the start of July, a half-dozen Spanish navy ships under Admiral Pascual Cervera tried to break through the blockade and leave the Santiago de Cuba harbor. A US naval squadron under Rear Admiral Winfield Scott Schley, with the USS Brooklyn as his flagship, cut them off and destroyed all six ships, including the Infanta María Teresa, which had been part of the 1897 Hudson River flotilla marking the dedication of Grant’s Tomb in Manhattan. The death toll was high: some 350 Spanish sailors were killed, with another 160 wounded and more than 1,700 men captured. As at Manila Bay, the US losses at Santiago de Cuba were minimal. Aboard Schley’s Brooklyn, which was hit by some twenty-five Spanish shells, one sailor was killed and one was wounded. Those were the only casualties on the American side, though two other ships were damaged in the fighting.

  Horace Porter received a wire in Paris with skeletal details about the destruction of the Spanish fleet at Santiago de Cuba. “Father, when he received the telegram, rushed into my room, took me in his arms and whirled me about, to the destruction of my hair, but what did I care when I heard him exclaiming with tears in his eyes that ‘It’s all gone, all destroyed, the fleet, Cervera’s I mean,’ this between whirls and kisses.” Later, during the open house party, “Father read it aloud, while the people cheered and shouted and the band played The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  Despite the war, the ambassadorial dinner parties went on. And Sophie Porter’s health worsened. As the mother took to her bed or off to the Alps for rest, Elsie spent more time as her father’s hostess, making a quick transition from teenage girl to young woman. Given the health problems and the war, Elsie’s social “coming out” dinner was a small affair hosted by a family friend instead of the grand ball one might expect for the daughter of a wealthy diplomat. “I was rather glad [the grand event] with a great ball, brass bands and trumpets at street corners [that was originally planned was canceled],” Elsie wrote. “It was a terrible nuisance, so Mrs. Winslow [the wife of Porter’s friend, General Winslow] gave me a beautiful dinner and dance and I managed to kill time in a most agreeable manner.” She also described in great detail the gown she wore that evening, the dancing, and the French suitor who came calling, the extent of her descriptions suggesting she really would have preferred the grand party.

  For Elsie, the war was shrouded in romance. She noted in her diary two men—suitors, actually—who were heading for battle. “Captain Horton2 is going, I wonder if he will ever come home again. His letters are studiously respectful and yet whenever he can he sends me presents. I mean little remembrances. I don’t see why he should care for me, I am certainly not very attractive because I’m such a young volcano.” Another man identified only as Elliott was also headed to the battlefields, and Elsie struck a tone of longing to taste battle herself. “How I wish I were there, yes, right in the war. It’s very dreadful, I know, but I want to see it all. I am not satisfied to read about it or to hear Father tell stories. I want to see it myself, the defeat and victory and all the awfulness of war. I want to feel all the sufferings and joys of life, the good and the bad. I don’t mean such things as dreadful suffering—but if it’s got to come, let it come. I always have such longings for all sorts of excitements and passions.”

  Elsie received letters sporadically from Horton, and it’s clear she began to develop some affection for him. He wrote little of himself in those letters but instead offered observations of others and some details of the battles he had been through. “When he writes of the most trivial things,” Elsie noted, “he is deep, deeper than I thought, and what a spirit. Passion and love are buried down in a noble heart.” When there was a gap of several weeks, she fretted to her father, who “scornfully replied” to her that she was being silly: “A man in as important position as he is, and in an exciting campaign, has not time to write letters to girls. He has other things to do and think about.” Elsie bet her father that “he will write me, and write me from the battlefield, if he isn’t ill or wounded.”

  Elsie knew her captain better than Porter did. Horton was writing, he just wasn’t mailing, and a packet of letters eventually arrived, including one written as his outfit was engaged in the battle of Santiago. He offered a few details of the campaign and confessed that he had indeed been ailing with malaria. Enclosed in the packet was a swath of the Spanish flag he told her had been cut down as the Stars and Stripes was hoisted above the Cuban city. But there the communications and the burgeoning romance ended, at least as recorded in Elsie’s diaries, until an enigmatic mention around her twenty-first birthday in December 1899, in which she wrote that she had treated him coldly despite her romantic interest in him and that distance seemed to have weakened the attraction. “My soldier boy is in the Philippines dead or alive, I don’t know…. It seems so long now since he has loved me…. It seems like my real life only began two years ago when on that never-forgotten Fourth of July, 1898, I woke up to the fact that he was all the world to me and a good deal more besides…. If he lives to [come] back from the Philippines and claims me as he says he will, how good I will be to him. These and nothing else, love to a man and thankfulness to God, are my birthday thoughts.” Records indicate Horton eventually returned to the States, not Paris, and married a woman from New Orleans.

  While the French government was toeing a neutral line, many of the top French newspapers were in full-throated support of Spain, something that US State Department officials worried about, fearing that a steady barrage of anti-American articles could build pressure on the French government to pick a side. Secretary Day wrote Porter asking whether the ambassador could find some way to counter or at least quell the voices. Porter replied that public opinion and the French press were volatile and hard to measure “because the conditions change rapidly even from day to day and it is difficult to write a circumstantial account which would be up to date when it reached Washington.”

  At the start of the war, Porter had made the rounds of top French government officials and “received assurances that everything would be done to preserve in all respects a strict and impartial neutrality,” even as he delivered a clear threat “that the action of certain elements here adverse to the United States” could affect trade between the two nations and leave the United States “fostering an alliance with their hereditary enemy, Great Britain.” The message to the French was clear: remain neutral or risk a diplomatic and financial backlash.3

  The French government had little sway with the French newspapers, a separation between government and the Fourth Estate that both the United States and France embraced. “They say with truth that the Paris press does not represent the government nor the mass of people,” Porter wrote, before dissecting the mood of the various French factions. Backing Spain were conservative aristocrats who “dislike the Republican Government of France and look with horror upon another Republic in Cuba” and who, in many cases, still pined for the days of the French monarchy. French bankers with investments in Spanish bonds opposed US intervention, fearing that a free Cuba would leave them with worthless investments. “The radical clericals make common cause to a large extent with Spain, the most prominent of Roman Catholic countries.” Porter assured Day that France had a silent majority of US sympathizers who couldn’t be heard over the din of the opposition that set the tone for public discourse. “These elements have a voice, while the great mass of the French people who are friendly, or at least not unfriendly to the United States, have no means of giving public expression to their feelings.” Porter said he was working to wedge pro-American viewpoints into the large papers and had been lobbying US newspaper correspondents “not t
o exaggerate the state of things and widen the breach, and they are now reporting that there is a change here for the better.” He also intimated that some of the pro-Spanish newspapers were being paid off by Spain; Porter said he did not have the budget for similar investments but arranged a pool of $5,000 to commission pro-American articles by French journalists.

  Porter was vigilant about defending the American line in France. In early June he learned of a cadet in the French school for the Infanterie de la Marine, “a corps corresponding to our Marines,” who pushed through a student body resolution “expressing their sympathy for Spain in the present war and sent it to Madrid.” Porter, peeved that future military men were contravening France’s official position of neutrality, complained to the French foreign affairs office and asked “that the cadets be disciplined…. The minister of foreign affairs, however, took the initiative of informing me that he had taken official notice of the incident and would see that the Cadets were properly reprimanded. He now informs me that this has been done. It was not much more than a boyish prank, but I deemed it worthy of some attention.”4

  Porter seemed to be itching to play a larger diplomatic role in the war. Before American troops began moving through Cuba, Porter had long, informal talks with Gabriel Hanotaux, France’s foreign minister and a noted historian, in which the French diplomat asked Porter to pass along to Washington his readiness to serve as an intermediary in talks with Spain aimed at ending the fighting. “His relations are very close with the Spanish Ambassador here, who is a man of ability, has always been desirous of peace, and possesses the confidence of his government,” Porter wrote to Washington on June 7. “Mr. Hanotaux is, I feel certain, the person whom Spain would trust rather than any other statesman in Europe to bring about negotiations for peace. His relations with me are so intimate that he talks with the utmost frankness upon every phase of the question.”5 It didn’t seem to occur to Porter that such intimacy was less a mark of personal cordiality than it was a practiced diplomat’s way of sending out feelers.

  Hanotaux’s concerns—and those of the French government he represented—came through clearly. He feared the war “might possibly start a conflict among the European nations. He sees that a continuance of hostilities will further depress Spanish bonds held by Frenchmen who have already lost enormously.” Money was a concern to the Spanish too. Government finance officials were making the rounds of European capitals and banks seeking to borrow 250 million francs, using as collateral Spain’s state tobacco company, which relied on the Cuban crops for much of its business. Porter and other American diplomats leaned on their counterparts in the European capitals to not invest in the company. “The Rothschilds have refused to take part in it, and it is very difficult to come to terms with any of the bankers,” Porter reported to Washington. “There is a rumor that an effort will now be made to obtain the money in Brussels. It is thought that eventually a part of the sum named may be obtained but upon ruinous terms. Active steps are being taken to show to bankers the insufficient and uncertain character of the security offered and the risks to which lenders would be liable.” In a mark of the delicacy of the diplomacy over Spain, French officials approached Porter wondering if the United States would object to the French national mint contracting with Spain to mint coins. A couple of days later Porter cabled to Washington that France had turned down the Spanish contract and that the coins would likely be minted at a private facility in Belgium.6

  After the long and frustrating run-up to the war, the United States wasn’t ready to talk peace. Hanotaux’s overture went nowhere as the American blockade of Cuba tightened and the troop count increased there and in the Philippines. Two weeks after that first offering, Hanotaux met with Porter again, this time as a private citizen—the Faure cabinet had resigned June 15 in a political shakeup sparked in part by the infamous Dreyfus affair, in which anti-Semitic French military officials had framed Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus for espionage. Dreyfus was eventually exonerated, but not until he had served nearly five years of a life sentence in the notorious Devil’s Island prison; the case exposed deep undercurrents of anti-Semitism in French society and government and in some ways presaged the collaboration between the Vichy government and the Nazis during the World War II German occupation of France.

  It’s unclear why Hanotaux continued to involve himself in diplomacy around the showdown between the Spanish and the Americans, especially since he was “tired of office,” in the eyes of New York Times London correspondent Harold Frederic. “He wants to write history, and instead is grinding at the thankless task of making it.” And while Hanotaux was a respected political figure and writer, he had lost credibility—along with the rest of the French government—over the handling of the Dreyfus affair. “His position has been rendered very unpleasant in the past two years by the fact that the entire diplomatic corps at Paris possesses complete knowledge of Dreyfus’s innocence,” Frederic wrote. “Hanotaux also knows he is innocent, but he must keep his lips sealed on the subject, with the result that diplomatic intercourse at the capital of the republic has been stiffened and embarrassed to a distressing extent.”7

  Still, Hanotaux called on Porter to convey a message from the Spanish ambassador in Paris that “he wishes to meet [with Porter] on the part of his government for the purpose of opening negotiations looking to a declaration of peace.” The Spanish ambassador, Leon y Castillo, had recently returned from Madrid, where the newspapers reported political gossip that Castillo was being considered for a larger role as Spain’s foreign minister. With the war progressing badly and with Spanish pride on the line, there was growing political pressure within Spain to make peace with the United States. The Spanish government decided that France would be the best place for any peace talks that might occur—and that Castillo would be Spain’s best representative at the table.

  Porter listened to Hanotaux’s message, but he demurred from signaling any intent on behalf of his government. He told Hanotaux that as an ambassador to a neutral country he felt it was outside his portfolio to meet with Spanish representatives. He told Hanotaux he would pass along to his superiors any formal overtures Spain wished to make through the French diplomat. “I hardly expect anything to come about very suddenly,” Porter wrote to Secretary Day after the meeting, “but it would seem the idea of peace is gaining ground in Spain.”8

  While Porter was listening to Hanotaux and reporting the French official’s overtures to Day back in Washington, President McKinley was quietly sending messages to Spain via Ambassador Hay in London. In early June, McKinley set the conditions for peace: Spain must give up Cuba and Puerto Rico but could retain the Philippines, though the United States would maintain control of an unspecified port, presumably to aid in its desires for a stronger presence with Asian trading markets. And he demanded Spain cede a port in the Marianas Islands as a coaling station, again to foster US trade with the Far East.

  The Spanish government balked, and the United States pressed forward, intent now on military victory rather than diplomacy. More American troops arrived in Cuba, where they fought in concert with Cuban rebels, as other American forces made their way to the Philippines, which was experiencing its own independence movement, led by Emilio Aguinaldo (who would soon become an enemy of the United States).

  Some two months after Dewey’s triumph, the Spanish were all but done, their troops surrendering across the war zones—including Puerto Rico and Guam—as Spanish diplomats asked the French to serve as intermediaries in negotiating the peace. McKinley amended his demands slightly, broadening the Philippines component to allow a future role for the insurgents led by Aguinaldo. Spain continued to drag out the process, offering counterarguments and proposals. McKinley, losing patience, sent word that he was done negotiating, and in early August the terms of the ceasefire were agreed to through the French ambassador in Washington, Jules Cambon. By mid-August, the “splendid little war,” as Ambassador Hay so famously described it, was over. Paris was set as the site for the fo
rmal peace conference, with the future of the Philippines hanging in the balance.9

  The negotiators began filtering into the City of Light in late September. The American delegation was led by Day, who had stepped down as secretary of state to direct the American negotiating team himself. Ambassador Hay was recalled from London to become McKinley’s new secretary of state. Porter was pleased with the shift, writing in a private letter to McKinley that “you remember in one of our conversations in Canton I advocated his original appointment to that place and I am very happy personally and officially to see that he is now to take the portfolio.”10 The rest of the American delegation included three US senators—William P. Frye of Maine, Cushman Kellogg Davis of Minnesota, and George Gray of Delaware—and the expansionist editor of the New York Tribune Whitelaw Reid, whom Porter had endorsed as the Republican’s 1892 vice presidential candidate. Porter and other embassy officials met the delegates at the train station as they arrived.

  The United States might have won the war, but they had yet to win the hearts of the French press, which intensified its cultural and political criticism of the Americans. “The French and Spanish papers, because they don’t dare say anything against our system of carrying out a war, are attacking our peace commissioners, saying they looked like Cooks Tourists” in town to visit the sites, Elsie Porter wrote in her diary on October 2. The commissioners did look like they were on holiday, with wives and entourages in tow as they checked into suites in the Continental, Paris’s premier hotel. The delegation, numbering thirty people in all, also rented out three connecting rooms for office space. “Our commissioners came in grand style with the secretaries and attaches,” Elsie wrote. “Each gentleman and family had his parlor and rooms, the ladies of course with maids.”