Much attention was meanwhile paid to Cuban affairs by the United States government, not only in trying to check filibustering but also in looking after the rights--and wrongs--of American citizens, and also in seeking an ending of a war which was commercially ruinous and humanely most distressing. Several joint resolutions were introduced in the Congress at Washington, for recognizing the Cubans as belligerents, for inquiry into the state and conditions of the war, for intervention, and for recognizing the independence of the Cuban Republic. There were finally adopted on April 6 resolutions favoring recognition of Cuban belligerency and the tender of good offices for the settlement of the war on the basis of Cuban independence. It was of course necessarily left to the discretion of the President to execute these designs. He did not deem it expedient to recognize Cuban belligerence, but he did promptly, on April 9, direct the American Minister at Madrid to make the tender of good offices for ending the war on the basis of reforms which would be satisfactory to the Cuban people. True, it had been made clear that the great mass of the Cuban people would accept nothing short of independence; but the American Secretary of State, Mr. Olney, believed that if a genuine measure of Home Rule were granted and put into effect, the Cubans and their friends in the United States would withdraw their support from the revolution and thus constrain the revolutionists to yield and accept the compromise. To this overture of the United States government Spain made no reply; nor did it to a similar suggestion offered by the Pope. But Tomas Estrada Palma, speaking for the Cuban Junta in New York and for Cubans and Cuban sympathizers throughout the United States, declared that they were not at all interested in any such scheme, and that they would consider nothing short of absolute independence. The Spanish government did, indeed, consider a scheme of so-called autonomy, somewhat resembling that of Senor Abarzuza at the beginning of the war; but in the speech from the throne at the opening of the Cortes on May 11 it was frankly recognized that the revolutionists would accept nothing short of independence, and that therefore it would be expedient to attempt any such reforms until the insurrection had been subdued by force of arms; which was, of course, General Weyler's policy.