In the months that followed, the United States and Spain each declared an embargo against the other.
Although American and Spanish goods overlapped heavily, and the distance between them meant there had never been much trade to begin with, they still had to put on a show of force.
The two sides traded harsh words, stretching the initial three months to half a year, then from half a year to one year, all the way up to ten years in an escalating spiral.
The troops America dispatched to Cuba Island also grew from four regiments to eight. Ferdinand II was equally unwilling to yield; although the Spanish Army was sizable, fighting a war across the ocean was no simple matter.
Taking logistics, supplies, and the number of warships into account, he could only dispatch an expeditionary force of ten thousand men.
The Spanish Navy was already weak to begin with, and after having just gone through a civil war, its forces were stretched even thinner.
But the clever Ferdinand II came up with a solution. He hired several cargo ships from Britain, France, Russia, the Austrian Empire, Prussia, Naples, and the Duchy of Aumale (Algeria) to transport soldiers and supplies.
The Spanish Navy had only a little over fifty wooden sailing warships, and the Americans had roughly the same. Yet both sides possessed only a very small number of ships of the line; most were small and medium-sized frigates.
Most of those so-called sailing ships of the line could only serve as a deterrent. These hulking vessels had fallen into such disrepair that, never mind sailing out to fight, they might well sink in their own naval harbors one day.
But America did possess the advantage of fighting on home ground, and the US Navy was far stronger than the