to Establish the University of the United States, on Pacific Railroads and Transportation to the Seaboard, in the fifty-fifth Congress; in the fifty-sixth Congress he was chairman of the committee on Pacific Islands and Porto Rico, and continued on the committees on which he served in the fifty-fifth Congress. In the fifty-seventh and fifty-eighth Congresses he was chairman of the committee on Pacific Islands and Porto Rico, and a member of the committees on Foreign Relations, Civil Service, Interstate Commerce, Military Affairs, District of Columbia, and Privileges and Elections. His important services in the senate cannot be noted in detail, but special mention should be made of his prominence in matters relating to what are now our insular possessions. During the critical period preceding our war with Spain, when the atrocities of General Weyler in Cuba, and the fearful sufferings which the people had so long endured at the hands of the Spanish Government, thoroughly aroused the American people, he came to the front as a leader. Though he supported the general policy of President McKinley, he believed that we should go farther than the president had recommended in his message to congress and should at once recognize the independence of the people of the island. He claimed that it was our duty not only to intervene, but to make our intervention not neutral in character but hostile to Spain. He held that there could be no permanent reform and no enduring peace in Cuba until the Spanish government was expelled. In accordance with this view he introduced in the senate resolutions of intervention which, with some modifications, were adopted by the committee on Foreign Relations and presented to congress. In the debate which followed. Senator Foraker made a powerful speech on "The Cuban Question," which had a marked effect on public sentiment and did much to bring about prompt and decisive action by the government.
When peace was declared, Senator Foraker was as prompt, energetic, and influential in his efforts to obtain a stable government for our new possessions, and to safeguard the rights of their inhabitants, as he had been in securing their deliverance from Spanish misrule. He was the author of the bill for the establishment of civil government for the island of Porto Rico, and to provide revenue for its maintenance, which became a law, since sustained by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Senator Foraker was married October 4, 1870, to Julia, daughter of the Honorable H. S. Bundy, of Jackson county, Ohio.
