The protracted continuance of this strife seriously affects the
interests of all commercial nations, but those of the United States
more than others, by reason of close proximity, its larger trade and
intercourse with Cuba, and the frequent and intimate personal and social
relations which have grown up between its citizens and those of the
island. Moreover, the property of our citizens in Cuba is large, and is
rendered insecure and depreciated in value and in capacity of production
by the continuance of the strife and the unnatural mode of its conduct.
The same is true, differing only in degree, with respect to the
interests and people of other nations; and the absence of any reasonable
assurance of a near termination of the conflict must of necessity soon
compel the States thus suffering to consider what the interests of their
own people and their duty toward themselves may demand.
I have hoped that Spain would be enabled to establish peace in her
colony, to afford security to the property and the interests of our
citizens, and allow legitimate scope to trade and commerce and the
natural productions of the island. Because of this hope, and from an
extreme reluctance to interfere in the most remote manner in the affairs
of another and a friendly nation, especially of one whose sympathy and
friendship in the struggling infancy of our own existence must ever be
remembered with gratitude, I have patiently and anxiously waited the
progress of events.
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