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Updated: May 26, 2025
By March, 1897, according to conservative estimates from official Spanish sources, the mortality among the reconcentrados from starvation and the diseases thereto incident exceeded 50 per cent of their total number. No practical relief was accorded to the destitute. The overburdened towns, already suffering from the general dearth, could give no aid.
One journal secured a great number of photographs of scenes amid the starving reconcentrados, which, greatly enlarged, were publicly exhibited in all parts of the Union.
From these communications it appears that the destination of the steamship State of Texas, loaded with supplies for the starving reconcentrados in Cuba, is left, in a measure, to my judgment. At present I am acting under instructions from the Navy Department to blockade the coast of Cuba for the purpose of preventing, among other things, any food-supply from reaching the Spanish forces in Cuba.
Then followed the declaration of hostilities, the blockade, the fleets of war, and the stately, glistening white ships of relief that dotted the sea our navy after forty years of peace again doing service in its own waters and among them one inconspicuous, black-hulled sea-going craft, laden with food for the still famishing reconcentrados, when they could be reached.
It was the steamship State of Texas, of the Mallory line, chartered by the American National Red Cross to carry to Cuba supplies for the starving reconcentrados, and to serve as headquarters for its president, Miss Clara Barton, and her staff of trained surgeons, nurses, and field-officers.
Spain also intimated that the American war-ships, which had been designated to convey supplies to Cuba for the relief of the sufferers there, should be replaced by merchant vessels, in order to deprive the assistance sent to the reconcentrados of an official character.
Under these circumstances it seems to me unwise to let a ship-load of such supplies be sent to the reconcentrados, for, in my opinion, they would be distributed to the Spanish army. Until some point be occupied in Cuba by our forces, from which such distribution can be made to those for whom the supplies are intended, I am unwilling that they should be landed on Cuban soil.
No tangible relief was afforded the vast numbers of unhappy reconcentrados, despite the reiterated professions made in that regard and the amount appropriated by Spain to that end. The proffered expedient of zones of cultivation proved illusory.
Day after day, in its weary, waiting cruise, it watched out for an opening to that closed-in suffering island, till at length the thunder of the guns, Siboney, San Juan, opened the track, and the wounded troops of our own army, hungering on their own fields, were the reconcentrados of the hour. Tampa became the gathering-point of the army.
He was denounced at public banquets and accused by excited citizens all over the Union, except in his own State, of every depravity, from holding an unimaginable number of Spanish bonds to taking a ferocious pleasure in the sufferings of the reconcentrados. And in the face of this he must cast his vote for war.
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