United States (1783-1898). page 4

The later history of the United States includes the election, as Presidents, of Mr, Grover Cleveland (1885-1889), Mr. Harrison (1889-1893), of Mr. Cleveland again (1893-1897); and, lastly, of Mr. McKinley, the famous author of the "Tariff Bill," in the way of greater "protection" against foreign goods. The national debt had been reduced, in June, 1897, from nearly 600,000,000 pounds sterling, in 1866, to less than 200,000,000 pounds. There are nearly 14,500,000 children in the "State Common Schools," in addition to about 1,250,000 in private elementary schools, and about 250,000 children and adult students in various other institutions. A new navy has been recently created, and is now (1898) engaged, in the cause of humanity and civilisation, against the forts and fleet of the Spanish monarchy. The war between the United States and Spain which arose in April, 1898, was mainly due to the intense horror and disgust caused by the existence, close to the shores of the Republic, of an Inferno of cruelty and anarchy in Cuba, arising from inveterate and incurable misrule. In this matter, long, real, and terrible provocation had been endured by the United States. Her people had seen, in the presence of freedom and civilisation in their most advanced forms, as exhibited in the States and in the Canadian Dominion, and side by side with republics, in Central and South America, which long ago won liberty from Spanish domination, a kind of mediaeval rule, in Cuba, displaying one of the most hideous disgraces of the 19th century. In that magnificent and fertile island, the chief functionaries, as in the Turkish empire, had ever attained their positions by bribery and repaid themselves by extortion. Oppression had forced rebellion on maddened natives - whites and blacks alike - and rebellion had been, from time to time, during half a century, crushed with revolting cruelty, with a disregard for human life which even the Sultan might envy amidst the horrors of Armenia. During the first five years of one revolt the Spaniards admitted that they shot 43,500 prisoners. In that rebellion, lasting from 1868 to 1878, under the sanguinary rule of a governor named Valmaceda, 80,000 men died fighting, and during the struggle of the years from 1895 to 1898 over 100,000 had perished. For fifty years the United States had been compelled to watch the coast of Florida in order to prevent "filibustering" expeditions to the Cuban shores, and during that period her government and people had been troubled by a state of disorder which became at last intolerable. The government of the States therefore practically ordered Spain to "get out of Cuba," and the Spaniards, naturally resenting this dictation, accepted war as the alternative. We may conclude this brief record of the United States by an allusion to some of the social movements due to the influence of her people on European civilisation. The great Republic of the West was the source of the claim for "Women's Rights." It was in New York State that a very able and energetic lady, Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, a native of the English town of Bristol, became, in 1849, the first medical graduate in the States, practising for many years, with much success, in New York city, and returning to her native country in 1869 to become a zealous lecturer and writer in behalf of social reform and of an improved position for her sex. The country which invented the lock-stitch sewing-machine, one of the most ingenious of devices for saving human toil, due to Elias Howe of Massachusetts, was the country that led the way in bestowing municipal and other suffrages upon women, and in opening to them university degrees and many kinds of occupation in the public and other services. The same humane feeling which prompted intervention in Cuba caused the States to set Great Britain the example of founding societies for the prevention of cruelty to children, and, in another great path of reform, we find our kinsmen beyond the Atlantic to have been foremost in opposing the abuse of alcoholic liquors.