Expense to united states.

It will thus be seen that the fact that Spain had not been able to govern Cuba peaceably has caused the United States great expense and irritation for a much longer period than is usually taken into consideration in these days.  It is not the fault of the United States that its citizens have been stirred to sympathy with the victims of the Spanish policy of government by robbery and murder.  It is not the fault of the United States that this country has been the refuge of men who have been outlawed from the country of their birth because their presence there meant the irrepressible working in them of a desire for freedom, a desire intolerable to Spanish institutions.

It is not the fault of the United States that these refugees, living in the land of civil liberty, should desire to return to their native country and drive out those who made it miserable.  But it would have been the fault of the United States, under international law, if these exiled Cubans were permitted to carry out their very natural and laudable desire in concert with the Americans whose sympathy had been stirred by the story of Spanish wrongs.  To ferret out the plans for expeditions conceived with such determination and perseverance was not only a task requiring tremendous expenditure of money and energy, but it was a miserably disagreeable and unpopular work for the government to engage in.

On the 31st of May, 1854, President Pierce issued a proclamation instructing citizens of the United States as to their duties in refraining from encouragement, aid, or participation in connection with the Cuban insurrections.

The uprising in 1868.

In the fall of 1868, after scattering uprisings and several battles during the preceding year, plans for a concerted insurrection were arranged.  The plan was discovered and the insurrection was started prematurely.  There followed a campaign in which Spanish forces, amounting to 110,000 men, were unable to hold in check the Cuban force of about 26,000.  In May the filibustering expeditions, that were to prove such an immense expense and annoyance to the United States, began again.  The Spanish navy co-operated with the United States government in the efforts to suppress these expeditions, but many of them eluded the authorities, and aided the insurgents with arms and provisions.

This was irritating to Spain and the United States alike, because it cost just as much to keep up an unsuccessful anti-filibustering patrol as it did actually to catch filibusters, and, moreover, every successful expedition weakened the authority of the Federal government.  That authority in the Southern States just after the war was none too strong, and it was not a good thing that the spectacle of defiance to the United States should be flaunted along the Southern coast.