Produced by Roberta Staehlin, David Garcia, Charlene Taylor, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) AN AMERICAN BY BELLE WILLEY GUE BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY BELLE WILLEY GUE All Rights Reserved Made in the United States of America The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. TO THE MEMORY OF HIM WHOM WE ALL DELIGHT TO HONOR AS FIRST IN PEACE ... FIRST IN WAR ... AND FIRST IN THE HEARTS OF HIS COUNTRYMEN ... GEORGE WASHINGTON AN AMERICAN INTRODUCTION There are many characteristics that are essential to true Americanism; among these, none is more prominent than an inborn desire, not only to obtain personal liberty, but, also, to see justice done to others. We, as Americans, say, with loving pride, that we are citizens of that _one fair land whose single boast has always been that it was free_. Oppression of the weak and ignorant, by those who are wiser and stronger than they, has, always, aroused in us pronounced, and, often, openly expressed, indignation. More than once, have we, as a nation, arrayed ourselves upon the side of the down-trodden and pitiful, and, in every such instance, we have greatly increased and enhanced the well-being of those whose cause we have espoused. We have never gone out of our way to look for trouble, being more inclined to attend to our own affairs than to oversee those of our neighbors, and, yet, when, repeatedly, gross acts of injustice and cruelty have been forced under our observation, we have, at times, been aroused to a state of what we have honestly believed to be righteous indignation, and, in these circumstances, we have conducted ourselves in accordance with our ability and the fervor of our convictions. Prior to the evening of February fifteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, our relations with the government of Spain were amicable; while we, as a people, sympathized, to some extent, with the uprisings of native Cubans, yet, those who were at the head of our national affairs did not, in any instance, uphold or palliate the unlawful acts of the insurrectionists; but, during the hours of darkness of that never-to-be-forgotten night, a dastardly and totally inexcusable deed, in spite of the recent renewal of our friendly intercourse with the Spanish government, made of that nation a foe to be contended against with all the might that was in us.