Other Cubans, including many who were still Spanish subjects, established themselves in American ports and furnished the insurgents with arms and supplies. On June 12, 1895, President Cleveland issued a proclamation calling attention to the Cuban insurrection and warning all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States against doing any of the acts prohibited by the American neutrality laws. Notwithstanding all the efforts of the administration, illegal expeditions were continually being fitted out in the United States, and while the great majority of them were stopped by port officials or intercepted by the navy, some of them succeeded in reaching the coasts of Cuba. President Cleveland's proclamation recognized insurgency as a status distinct from belligerency. It merely put into effect the neutrality laws of the United States. It did not recognize a state of belligerency and therefore did not bring into operation any of the rules of neutrality under international law. President Cleveland consistently refused to recognize the Cubans as belligerents. In February, 1896, Congress passed a joint resolution, by a vote of 64 to 6 in the Senate and 246 to 27 in the House, recognizing a state of war in Cuba, and offering Spain the good offices of the United States for the establishment of Cuban independence. Notwithstanding the overwhelming majority which this resolution had received, the President ignored it, for it is a well recognized principle that Congress has no right to force the hand of the President in a matter of this kind. It amounted merely to an expression of opinion by Congress. In April, 1896, Secretary Olney addressed a note to the Spanish minister in which the United States offered to mediate between Spain and the insurgents for the restoration of peace on the basis of autonomy. Spain rejected this offer, claiming that Cuba already enjoyed "one of the most liberal political systems in the world," and suggesting that the United States could contribute greatly to the pacification of the island by prosecuting "the unlawful expeditions of some of its citizens to Cuba with more vigor than in the past."[124] In his last annual message to Congress, President Cleveland reviewed the Cuban situation at length and, in conclusion, declared: When the inability of Spain to deal successfully with the insurgents has become manifest and it is demonstrated that her sovereignty is extinct in Cuba for all purposes of its rightful existence, and when a hopeless struggle for its reestablishment has degenerated into a strife which means nothing more than the useless sacrifice of human life and the utter destruction of the very subject-matter of the conflict, a situation will be presented in which our obligations to the sovereignty of Spain will be superseded by higher obligations, which we can hardly hesitate to recognize and discharge.