apologist, its statesman and corrector, through sixty long years of incessant labour.
For the first thirty years (1733–1762) his work was mainly devoted to the superintendence and organization of the extensive missionary enterprises of the body in Germany, England, Denmark, Holland, Surinam, Georgia and elsewhere. It was on an island off Savannah that Spangenberg startled John Wesley with his questions and profoundly influenced his future career. One special endeavour of Spangenberg in Pennsylvania was to bring over the scattered Schwenkfeldians to his faith. In 1741–1742 he was in England collecting for his mission and obtaining the sanction of the archbishop of Canterbury. During the second half of this missionary period of his life he superintended as bishop the churches of Pennsylvania, defended the Moravian colonies against the Indians at the time of war between France and England, became the apologist of his body against the attacks of the Lutherans and the Pietists, and did much to moderate the mystical extravagances of Zinzendorf, with which his simple, practical and healthy nature was out of sympathy. The second thirty years of his work (1762–1792) were devoted to the consolidation of the German Moravian Church. Zinzendorf’s death (1760) had left room and need for his labours at home. At Herrnhut there were conflicting tendencies, doctrinal and practical extravagances, and the organization of the brethren was very defective. In 1777 Spangenberg was commissioned to draw up an idea fidei fratrum, or compendium of the Christian faith of the United Brethren, which became the accepted declaration of the Moravian belief. As compared with Zinzendorf’s own writings, this book exhibits the finer balance and greater moderation of Spangenberg’s nature, while those offensive descriptions of the relation of the sinner to Christ in which the Moravians at first indulged are almost absent from it. In his last years Spangenberg devoted special attention to the education of the young, in which the Moravians have since been so successful. He died at Berthelsdorf, on the 18th of September 1792. In addition to the Idea fidei fratrum, Spangenberg wrote, besides other apologetic books, a Declaration über die seither gegen uns ausgegangenen Beschuldigungen sonderlich die Person unseres Ordinarius (Zinzendorf) betreffend (Leipzig, 1751), an Apologetische Schlussschrift (1752), Leben des Grafen Zinzendorf (1772–1775); and his hymns are well known beyond the Moravian circle.
In addition to his autobiography (Selbstbiographie), see J. Risler, Leben Spangenbergs (Barby, 1794); K. F. Ledderhose, Das Leben Spangenbergs (Heidelberg, 1846); Otto Frick, Beiträge zur Lebensgeschichte A. G. Spangenbergs (Halle, 1884); Gerhard Reichel’s article in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie (ed. 1906), s.v. “Spangenberg”; the article by Ledderhose, in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie; also Moravian Brethren.
SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR OF 1898. For the causes leading up to the war see Cuba and United States: History. On the 15th of February 1898 the U.S. battleship “Maine,” which had been sent to Havana on the 25th of January, was destroyed in Havana harbour by an explosion, with a loss of 266 lives. An American board of inquiry, of which Captain W. T. Sampson was president, made an extensive examination of the wreck,
and reported to the navy department on the 21st of March that the explosion was caused by an exterior mine, the principal reason for this decision being the upheaval of the ship’s bottom.[1] On the 20th of April President McKinley approved a resolution demanding the withdrawal of Spain from Cuba and setting noon of the 23rd of April as the latest date for a reply to the demand. Before this could be delivered by the American minister in Madrid, the Spanish government sent him his passports. On the 22nd the president declared a blockade of Cuban ports; on the 24th the Spanish government declared war; and on the 25th the United States Congress declared that war had existed since the 21st.
The American government had begun to prepare for war as early as January: ships on several foreign stations had been drawn nearer home, and those in Chinese waters were collected at Hong-Kong; the North Atlantic squadron, the only powerful one, had been sent from Hampton Roads into the waters of Florida for manoeuvres; after the destruction of the “Maine” the chief part of the ships in the Atlantic were concentrated at Key West ; the battleship “Oregon” was ordered east from the Pacific; $50,000,000 was voted (March 9) “for the national defence”; steps were taken to purchase auxiliary cruisers, yachts and tugs, which were rapidly equipped; large supplies of ammunition were ordered, and Key West became an active base of preparation; Captain Sampson, senior officer of the North Atlantic squadron, was appointed its commander-in-chief with rank of acting rear- admiral; and a “flying squadron” composed of the armoured cruiser “Brooklyn” (flag), the battleships “Texas” and “Massachusetts,” and the fast cruisers “Minneapolis” and “Columbia,” with Commodore W. S. Schley in command, was stationed at Hampton Roads.
There was a great preponderance of large ships on the side of the United States; only in torpedo craft and small gunboats was Spain superior. The- American ships were highly efficient; in Spain everything was unready; Admiral Cervera felt that to send a Spanish squadron across the Atlantic was to send it to destruction, and when he had collected his squadron (including two cruisers from Havana) at the Cape Verde Islands in March, he renewed his expostulations, in which he was supported by a council of war. But on the 24th of April he was peremptorily ordered to leave for Porto Rico, without definite instructions or plan of campaign.
The American flying squadron was held at Hampton Roads, so great was the fear of attack by Spanish ships; and armed auxiliaries and fast cruisers were employed in patrolling the coast east of New York; these could have rendered good service else- where, but would have been of no use in repelling an attack by Cervera’s squadron had it come that way.
The joint resolution of Congress of the 20th of April had declared that the relinquishment by Spain of authority in Cuba was the object of American action; the struggle thus naturally centred about the island. All operations were thus near at hand, Havana, the real objective in Cuba, being only about 100 m. from Key West. A political reason for confining action to the western Atlantic was that an immediate attack upon the coasts of Spain might have aroused the strongly pro-Spanish sympathy of continental Europe into greater activity. The regular United States army, the only available force until wax was declared and a volunteer force was authorized, had been assembled at Tampa, Florida, New Orleans and Chickamauga, Georgia, but until the control of the sea was decided, the army could not prudently be moved across the Strait of Florida. Cervera’s fleet was thus the real objective of the navy, and had to be settled with before any military action could be undertaken.
Rear-Admiral Sampson left Key West early on the 22nd, and began the blockade of Havana and the north coast of Cuba as far as Cardenas, 80 m. east, and Bahia Honda, 50 m. west. His North Atlantic squadron of 28 vessels of all kinds, of which the armoured cruiser “New York” (flag), the battleships “Iowa” and “Indiana,” and the monitors “Puritan,” “Terror” and “Amphitrite,” were the most important, and which included six torpedo-boats, was increased to 124 vessels by the 1st of July, chiefly by the addition of extemporized cruisers, converted yachts, &c.
In the Pacific, the American squadron—the protected cruisers “Olympia” (flagship of Commodore George Dewey), “Baltimore,” “Raleigh” and “Boston,” the small unprotected cruiser “Concord,” the gunboat “Petrel,” the armed revenue cutter “Hugh M‘Culloen,” with a purchased collier “Nanshan” and a purchased supply ship “Zafiro”— left Hong-Kong at the request of the governor and went to Mirs Bay, some miles east
- ↑ The Spanish authorities made an examination, but did not inspect the interior, the chief diver reporting that “the bilge and keel of the vessel throughout its entire extent were buried in the mud, but did not appear to have suffered any damage.” It has been suggested that the explosion was the work of Cuban “sympathizers who thus planned to secure American assistance against Spain. It was not until 1910 that Congress made an appropriation (and an inadequate one then) for raising the “Maine.”
