at last come to realize the vision of Jefferson and Adams and to annex
Cuba. But the complications of the slavery question prevented immediate
annexation. As a slave colony which might become a slave state, the
South wanted Cuba, but the majority in the North did not.

After the Civil War in the United States was over, revolution at length
flared forth in 1868, from end to end of the island. Sympathy with the
Cubans was widespread in the United States. The hand of the Government,
however, was stayed by recent history. Americans felt keenly the right
of governments to exert their full strength to put down rebellion, for
they themselves were prosecuting against Great Britain a case based on
what they contended was her too lax enforcement of her obligations to
the American Government and on the assistance which she had given to
the South. The great issue determined the lesser, and for ten years the
United States watched the Cuban revolution without taking part in it,
but not, however, without protest and remonstrance. Claiming special
rights as a close and necessarily interested neighbor, the United States
constantly made suggestions as to the manner of the contest and its
settlement. Some of these Spain grudgingly allowed, and it was in part
by American insistence that slavery was finally abolished in the island.
Further internal reform, however, was not the wish and was perhaps
beyond the power of Spain. Although the revolution was seemingly brought
to a close in 1878, its embers continued to smolder for nearly a score
of years until in 1895 they again burst into flame.

War in Cuba could not help affecting in a very intimate way the people
of the United States. They bought much the greater part of the chief
Cuban crops, sugar and tobacco. American capital had been invested in
the island, particularly in plantations. For years Cubans of liberal
tendencies had sent their sons to be educated in the United States, very
many of whom had been naturalized before returning home. Cuba was but
ninety miles from Florida, and much of our coastwise shipping passed
in sight of the island. The people of the United States were aroused
to sympathy and to a desire to be of assistance when they saw that the
Cubans, so near geographically and so bound to them by many commercial
ties, were engaged against a foreign monarchy in a struggle for
freedom and a republican form of government. Ethan Allen headed a
Cuban committee in New York and