But the young Secretary had to act with circumspection. In the
first place the policy of the Department was formulated by
Secretary Long. In the next place the Navy could not come into
action until President McKinley and the Department of State gave
the word. The President, desiring to keep the peace up to the
very end, would not countenance any move which might seem to the
Spaniards either a threat or an insult. As the open speeding-up
of naval preparations would be construed as both, nothing must be
done to excite alarm. In the autumn of 1897, however, some of the
Spaniards at Havana treated the American residents there with so
much surliness that the American Government took the precaution
to send a battleship to the Havana Harbor as a warning to the
menacing Spaniards, and as a protection, in case of outbreak, to
American citizens and their property.
But what was meant for a precaution proved to be the immediate
cause of war. Early in the evening of February 15??, 1898, the
battleship Maine, peaceably riding at her moorings in the harbor,
was blown up.
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