REMEMBER THE MAINE

(CUBA.) REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, UNITED STATES SENATE, RELATIVE TO AFFAIRS IN CUBA. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1898. 8vo. Contemporary half morocco. xxiii, 636, 8 pages. Five photographic plates of the wreckage of the U. S. S. Maine, one folding map of the Havana harbor and two folding plans of the Maine. Outer joints cracked but sound, slight wear to extremities, minor adhesion damage to one plate. Very good.

FIRST EDITION of the report of the Congressional inquiry into Cuban independence and the sinking of the battleship U. S. S. Maine in the Havana harbor, issued on the eve of the Spanish-American War. The American public was sympathetic to the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain, and the Maine ostensibly had been sent to Havana to protect U. S. citizens and property after anti-Spanish rioting there. Although the exact cause of the destruction of the Maine on February 15, 1898 was never determined by the Court of Inquiry convened to investigate it, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations concluded that "the Maine was destroyed by the explosion of a submarine mine, in position under her in a Spanish harbor, at a place where she had been moored to a buoy by the express direction and guidance of the Spanish authorities" (p. vi). The Committee also proposed joint Congressional resolutions that Cuba had the right to independence, that Spain should relinquish its authority and withdraw its military forces from the island, and that the President was "empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States . . . to such extent as may be necessary to carry these resolutions into effect" (p. xxii).

The sinking of the Maine was the last in a series of incidents that precipitated U. S. intervention in Cuba and the end of Spanish colonial rule on the island. The Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations . . . Relative to Affairs in Cuba was ordered to be printed on April 13, 1898. The United States declared war on Spain less than two weeks later. BT000041.

$250

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