For a full vindication of General Jackson's action, see Mr. J. Q. Adams's instruction to Mr. Erving, of Nov. 28, 1818, quoted in part at the beginning of this section. In 6 Br. & For. State Papers (1818-19), 326, will be found the correspondence with Great Britain relative to the war with the Seminole Indians, in which the proceedings against Arbuthnot and Ambrister are reviewed. The extracts include (inter alia) the instructions of Mr. Adams, Sec. of State, to Mr. Erving, Nov. 18 and Dec. 2, 1818, General Jackson's letter to the governor of Pensacola, together with full notes of the trial of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, letters from Arbuthnot, and subsequent correspondence with General Jackson and General Gaines. 10. QUESTION AS TO CONCENTRATION. § 1126. See supra, § 1038. "The civilized code of war has been disregarded, no less so by the Spaniards than by the Cubans. The cruel policy of concentration was initiated February 16, 1896. The productive districts controlled by the Spanish armies were depopulated. The agricultural inhabitants were herded in and about the garrison towns, their lands laid waste and their dwellings destroyed. This policy the late cabinet of Spain justified as a necessary measure of war and as a means of cutting off supplies from the insurgents. It has utterly failed as a war measure. It was not civilized warfare. It was extermination. Against this abuse of the rights of war I have felt constrained on repeated occasions to enter the firm and earnest protest of this Government." President McKinley, annual message, Dec. 6, 1897, For. Rel. 1897, xii. "Referring to the conversation which the Assistant Secretary, Mr. Day, had the honor to have with you on the 8th instant, it now becomes my duty, obeying the direction of the President, to invite through your representation the urgent attention of the Government of Spain to the manner of conducting operations in the neighboring Island of Cuba. "By successive orders and proclamations of the captain-general of the Island of Cuba, some of which have been promulgated while others are known only by their effects, a policy of devastation and interference with the most elementary rights of human existence has been established in that territory tending to inflict suffering on innocent noncombatants, to destroy the value of legitimate investments. and to extinguish the natural resources of the country in the apparent hope of crippling the insurgents and restoring Spanish rule in the island. No incident has so deeply affected the sensibilities of the American people or so painfully impressed their Government as the proclamations of General Weyler, ordering the burning or unroofing of dwellings, the destruction of growing crops, the suspension of tillage, the devastation of fields, and the removal of the rural population from their homes to suffer privation and disease in the overcrowded and ill-supplied garrison towns. The latter aspect of this campaign of devastation has especially attracted the attention of this Government, inasmuch as several hundreds of American citizens among the thousands of concentrados of the central and eastern provinces of Cuba were ascertained to be destitute of the necessaries of life to a degree demanding immediate relief through the agencies of the United States, to save them from death by sheer starvation and from the ravages of pestilence. “From all parts of the productive zones of the island, where the enterprise and capital of Americans have established mills and farms, worked in large part by citizens of the United States, comes the same story of interference with the operations of tillage and manufacture, due to the systematic enforcement of a policy aptly described in General Weyler's bando of May 27 last as the concentration of the inhabitants of the rural country and the destruction of resources in all places where the instructions given are not carried into effect.' Meanwhile the burden of contribution remains, arrears of taxation necessarily keep pace with the deprivation of the means of paying taxes, to say nothing of the destruction of the ordinary means of livelihood, and the relief held out by another bando of the same date is illusory, for the resumption of industrial pursuits in limited areas is made conditional upon the payment of all arrears of taxation and the maintenance of a protecting garrison. Such relief can not obviously reach the numerous class of concentrados, the women and children deported from their ruined homes and desolated farms to the garrison towns. For the larger industrial ventures, capital may find its remedy, sooner or later, at the bar of international justice, but for the labor dependent upon the slow rehabilitation of capital there appears to be intended only the doom of privation and distress. "Against these phases of the conflict, against this deliberate inflio tion of suffering on innocent noncombatants, against such resort to instrumentalities condemned by the voice of humane civilization, against the cruel employment of fire and famine to accomplish by uncertain indirection what the military arm seems powerless to directly accomplish, the President is constrained to protest, in the name of the American people and in the name of common humanity. The inclusion of a thousand or more of our own citizens among the victims of this policy, the wanton destruction of the legitimate investments of Americans to the amount of millions of dollars, and the stoppage of avenues of normal trade-all these give the President the right of specific remonstrance; but in the just fulfillment of his duty. he can not limit himself to these formal grounds of complaint. He is bound by the higher obligations of his representative office to protest against the uncivilized and inhumane conduct of the campaign in the island of Cuba. He conceives that he has a right to demand that a war, conducted almost within sight of our shores and grievously affecting American citizens and their interests throughout the length and breadth of the land, shall at least be conducted according to the military codes of civilization. "It is the President's hope that this earnest representation will be received in the same kindly spirit in which it is intended. The history of the recent thirteen years of warfare in Cuba, divided between two protracted periods of strife, has shown the desire of the United States that the contest be conducted and ended in ways alike honorable to both parties and promising a stable settlement. If the friendly attitude of this Government is to bear fruit it can only be when supplemented by Spain's own conduct of the war in a manner responsive to the precepts of ordinary humanity and calculated to invite as well the expectant forbearance of this Government as the confidence of the Cuban people in the beneficence of Spanish control.” Mr. Sherman, Sec. of State, to Mr. Dupuy de Lôme, Spanish min., June 26, 1897, For. Rel. 1897, 507. 66 In another note to Mr. Dupuy de Lôme, of Aug. 24, 1897, Mr. Sherman stated that the mortality among the concentrated" citizens of the United States who were receiving relief in Sagua la Grande and Santa Clara amounted in two months to the normal rate for a whole year. (For Rel. 1897, 508.) In yet another note of Nov. 6, 1897, Mr. Sherman, after representing that a conservative estimate placed the number of deaths in the province of Matanzas, outside the city of that name, at more than 22,000 since the reconcentration began, said: “The local authorities are represented to be powerless to cope with the situation. The cities and towns are virtually bankrupt, and can give no appreciable relief to the starving thousands forced upon them. These facts but substantiate the representations which reach this Government from other quarters of the island. They abundantly justify the earnest representations which this Government has felt constrained to make in the common cause of humanity and justice. It is no merely sentimental or interested consideration which moves this Government to raise its voice in earnest remonstrance against so harsh and so futile a policy as this, which, to the inevitable hardships and woes of war, superadds extermination by starvation. The situation bears no analogy to the case heretofore suggested by you of the sufferings caused in a besieged town. These innocent agriculturists, their wives and children, have been herded by the act of the military commanders within towns unbesieged and wholly within Spanish control, without provision for their wants and without any apparent effort to alleviate the inevitable consequences of destitution, lack of shelter, and disease." (For. Rel. 1897, 509.) Mr. Dupuy de Lôme, in a note of Nov. 10, 1897, stated that General Blanco, who had succeeded General Weyler as governor-general of Cuba, had adopted measures for the organization of extensive zones of cultivation, for furnishing food and work, and for the formation of provincial protective boards, while a decree had been promulgated which not only permitted agricultural operations, but counseled them and offered civil and military protection therein, thus changing the policy of General Weyler. (For. Rel. 1897, 510.) An arrangement was subsequently made under which charitable contributions from the United States for the relief of the reconcentrados were admitted into Cuba free of duty. (For. Rel. 1897, 511–514.) VII. PRISONERS OF WAR. 1. WHO ARE, AND WHO ARE NOT. § 1127. "49. A prisoner of war is a public enemy armed or attached to the hostile army for active aid, who has fallen into the hands of the captor, either fighting or wounded, on the field or in the hospital, by individual surrender or by capitulation. "All soldiers, of whatever species of arms; all men who belong to the rising en masse of the hostile country; all those who are attached to the army for its efficiency and promote directly the object of the war, except such as are hereinafter provided for; all disabled men or officers on the field or elsewhere, if captured; all enemies who have thrown away their arms and ask for quarter, are prisoners of war, and as such exposed to the inconveniences as well as entitled to the privileges of a prisoner of war. 50. Moreover, citizens who accompany an army for whatever purpose, such as sutlers, editors, or reporters of journals, or contractors, if captured, may be made prisoners of war, and be detained as such. The monarch and members of the hostile reigning family, male or female, the chief, and chief officers of the hostile government, its diplomatic agents, and all persons who are of particular and singular use and benefit to the hostile army or its government, are, if captured on belligerent ground, and if unprovided with a safe-conduct granted by the captor's government, prisoners of war. 51. If the people of that portion of an invaded country which is not yet occupied by the enemy, or of the whole country, at the approach of a hostile army, rise, under a duly authorized levy, en masse to resist the invader, they are now treated as public enemies, and, if captured, are prisoners of war. 53. The enemy's chaplains, officers of the medical staff, apothecaries, hospital nurses, and servants, if they fall into the hands of the American Army, are not prisoners of war, unless the commander has reasons to retain them. In this latter case, or if, at their own desire, H. Doc. 551-vol 7-15 they are allowed to remain with their captured companions, they are treated as prisoners of war, and may be exchanged if the commander sees fit." Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the "ARTICLE XIII. Individuals who follow an army without directly belonging to it, such as newspaper correspondents and reporters, sutlers, contractors, who fall into the enemy's hands, and whom the latter think fit to detain, have a right to be treated as prisoners of war, provided they can produce a certificate from the military authorities of the army they were accompanying." Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Hague, In May, 1898, two American newspaper men named Thrall and Jones, one a correspondent and the other an artist, were arrested in Havana on a charge of being spies. The Secretary of the Navy sent a dispatch boat to Havana under flag of truce to propose the exchange of Spanish officers for the men. Mr. Adee, Second Assist. Sec. of State, to Sir Julian Pauncefote, British ambass. (unofficial), May 15, 1898, MS. Notes to British Leg. XXIV. 189. "99. A messenger carrying written dispatches or verbal messages from one portion of the army or from a besieged place to another portion of the same army, or its government, if armed, and in the uniform of his army, and if captured while doing so in the territory occupied by the enemy, is treated by the captor as a prisoner of war. If not in uniform nor a soldier, the circumstances connected with his capture must determine the disposition that shall be made of him. "100. A messenger or agent who attempts to steal through the territory occupied by the enemy to further in any manner the interests of the enemy, if captured, is not entitled to the privileges of the prisoner of war, and may be dealt with according to the circumstances of the case." Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the A subject of a foreign power, acting under a commission from the hostile government, should be treated as an enemy, and confined as a prisoner of war. War prisoners. Lee, At. Gen., 1798, 1 Op. 84. |