This decision was communicated to the Spanish authorities and, according to the agreement, the salute to the United States flag was dispensed with, and on January 3, 1874, the Spanish minister, on behalf of his government, expressed a disclaimer of an intent of indignity to the flag of the United States. Spain later paid indemnities to Great Britain and the United States for the families of those who had been executed. Meanwhile General Sickles offered his resignation by cable in consequence of certain reports that his conduct had been disapproved. Mr. Fish replied that such reports were unauthorized, that no dissatisfaction had been expressed or intimated and that it was deemed important that he remain at his post. Ten days later, General Sickles requested that the telegram tendering his resignation and the reply be published. Mr. Fish declined to do so, as the resignation was hypothetical. On December 20, General Sickles again tendered his resignation and it was accepted. After the settlement of the _Virginius_ affair the government of the United States addressed itself once more to the task of forcing a settlement of the Cuban question in general. In his instructions to Mr. Cushing, who succeeded General Sickles, Secretary Fish expressed the policy of the administration at considerable length. After reviewing the main facts of the insurrection which had then lasted more than five years, with little or no change in the military situation, and after referring to the rejection by Spain of the offers of mediation made by the United States at an early day of the trouble, he said: In these circumstances, the question what decision the United States shall take is a serious and difficult one, not to be determined without careful consideration of its complex elements of domestic and foreign policy, but the determination of which may at any moment be forced upon us by occurrences either in Spain or in Cuba. Withal the President cannot but regard independence, and emancipation, of course, as the only certain, and even the necessary, solution of the question of Cuba. And, in his mind, all incidental questions are quite subordinate to those, the larger objects of the United States in this respect. It requires to be borne in mind that, in so far as we may contribute to the solution of these questions, this government is not actuated by any selfish or interested motive. The President does not meditate or desire the annexation of Cuba to the United States, but its elevation into an independent republic of freemen, in harmony with ourselves and with the other republics of America.[118]