Free The Admiral and the Ambassador by Scott Martelle Page A

Cánovas was standing in a hallway on August 8 waiting for his wife to emerge from the baths so they could go to lunch. An Italian anarchist named Michele Angiolillo, who had been following Cánovas for a day or two, stepped into the hallway and fired three shots from a pistol, one hitting Cánovas in the chest and the other two striking him in the head. Cánovas lingered for two hours before succumbing to the wounds. 4 Angiolillo was himself executed two weeks later.
    Those three pulls of an anarchist’s trigger helped propel Spain and the United States to war. The killing of Cánovas, which was believed to have been in retaliation for his brutal repression of anarchists, upended the political balance in Spain as Cánovas was replaced as prime minister byliberal leader Práxedes Sagasta y Escolar, who favored limited autonomy for Cuba. In the midst of the confusion, Woodford delayed his arrival in Spain, fearing his sudden presence could give a rallying point for those in Spain who wanted to continue the current policies in Cuba. He finally moved on to Madrid in September to present his appointment papers to the queen regent, Maria Cristina.
    Porter reported to Sherman that before Cánovas’s assassination, Spanish diplomats had been working quietly to organize support for its position among the European powers, but with little effect. Their task became even harder after the murder of Cánovas, whom Porter described as “the only statesman Spain possessed…. There is never much disposition on the part of a nation to entangle itself with the affairs of a country which has neither statesmen nor money.” Thus France, he said, was unlikely to respond should the United States act to “put a stop to the disastrous Cuban war” between Spanish forces and the Cuban rebels. 5
    In November Sagasta’s new Spanish government issued a series of decrees granting more autonomy to Cuba and Puerto Rico, which was read by the United States as an attempt to both defuse the violence and to meet US demands that McKinley had delivered to the Spanish ambassador in Washington, Enrique Dupuy de Lôme. The president told the ambassador that he wanted Spain to withdraw General Valeriano Weyler, who was forcibly moving civilians from the countryside and small towns into cities; to take other unspecified steps to end the violence on the island; to adopt policies to relieve the suffering of the Cuban people; and to move toward some sort of home rule for Cuba, which inherently meant a lessening of Spanish control of the colony. Those communications were made quietly, through diplomatic channels. But McKinley would soon push the issue publicly. 6
    McKinley delivered his first presidential address to Congress on December 6, 1897, just weeks after the new Spanish proclamations, and he put the Cuban crisis at the top of the nation’s international affairs. The insurrection, McKinley said, was a testimony to Cubans’ drive to determine their own destiny, and the violence on the island was of concern to the United States. “The existing conditions cannot but fill this government and the American people with the gravest apprehension,” McKinley said. “There is no desire on the part of our people to profit by the misfortunesof Spain. We have only the desire to see the Cubans prosperous and contented, enjoying that measure of self-control which is the inalienable right of man, protected in their right to reap the benefit of the exhaustless treasures of their country.” McKinley condemned Spain’s policy of reconcentration as “not civilized warfare. It was extermination.” Still, the president rejected calls for American intervention and urged patience to see how the new Sagasta policies might change conditions in Cuba, particularly after Sagasta recalled the hated General Weyler. “It is honestly due to Spain and to our friendly relations with Spain that she [Cuba] should