Free The Admiral and the Ambassador by Scott Martelle Page B

be given a reasonable chance to realize her expectations and to prove the asserted efficacy of the new order of things to which she stands irrevocably committed,” McKinley said.
    Mixed in with this message of a clear desire to remain uninvolved in Cuba, McKinley added what could be read as an ultimatum to Spain, pressing the Europeans to effect meaningful change:
    The near future will demonstrate whether the indispensable condition of a righteous peace, just alike to the Cubans and to Spain as well as equitable to all our interests so intimately involved in the welfare of Cuba, is likely to be attained. If not, the exigency of further and other action by the United States will remain to be taken. When that time comes that action will be determined in the line of indisputable right and duty. It will be faced, without misgiving or hesitancy.
    Spain’s move toward more autonomy for Cuba backfired; the rebels saw it as affirmation that the rebellion was working, which hardened their resolve for full freedom. At the same time, McKinley ignored a request from Spain’s queen regent that the United States move against New York-based supporters of the rebellion, fearing that such action would be read as a tacit acknowledgement that the rebels were working from American soil. Yet he also renewed the American policy of courtesy visits by US warships to Cuba as a gesture of goodwill, in part to ensure the United States had a presence in case violence threatened American interests and civilians on the island. One of the US Navy’s newest ships, the twenty-four-gun battleship
Maine
under Captain Charles D. Sigsbee, was dispatched from Key West and anchored in Havana harbor on January 25, 1898. Sigsbee playedthe role of diplomat-without-portfolio, calling on local Spanish dignitaries and accepting social invitations in the capital.
    In February the subtleties of diplomacy disappeared in smoke. Cuban sympathizers got hold of a letter from Spanish ambassador Lôme, in Washington, to a friend in Havana. The letter included a rather undiplomatic passage about McKinley: “Besides the natural and inevitable coarseness with which he repeats all that the press and public opinion of Spain has said of Weyler, it shows once more what McKinley is: weak and catering to the rabble, and, besides, a low politician, who desires to leave a door open to me and to stand well with the jingoes of his party.”
    The letter was shared privately with US government officials, who were outraged and determined to demand Spain recall Lôme. Before they could act, William Randolph Hearst’s
New York Journal
published a translation of the letter, leading to a surge of anti-Spanish public opinion. In Madrid, a special guard was added to the house where Ambassador Woodford was staying.
    Six days later, a massive explosion ripped through the
Maine
as it lay at anchor off Havana, killing 266 men out of 354 aboard and within minutes sending the ship to the bottom of the harbor. Sigsbee suspected a mine; other naval officials thought it might have been caused by the
Maine’s
own magazine of explosives. The American public, spurred by sensationalized reports in the newspapers of Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, believed the ship had been attacked by Spanish forces. The demands for war reached a fever pitch, and the passions stretched all the way to Paris.

    Horace Porter didn’t leave diaries or a deep trail of intimate letters, but his daughter, Elsie, kept her own record of those days in Paris, a diary full of youthful innocence as it details the mood of the capital and of her father. Shock and suspicion dominated. “It seems a dreadful thing, not only the uselessness of wasting [so] many lives, but also that it should have occurred in the port held by Spain, who at present is quite hostile,” she wrote on February 21. A boiler explosion seemed unlikely, as did sabotage, and “it is very unlikely the Spaniards would dare do such a