The History of Cuba Volume III Part 7

_From Ireland_: Henry B. Metcalfe, George Metcalfe, James Porter, Thomas McDellans;

_From Cuba_: Bernardo Allen, Francisco Curbiay Garcia, Ramon J. Arnau, Jose Dovren, Manuel Martinez, Antonio Hernandez, Martin Milesimo;

_From Germany_: Johannes Sucit, Edward Wisse, Wilhelm Losner, Robert Seel.u.s.t, Ciriac Senelpi;

_From Matanzas_: Ramon Ignacio Amaso;

_From Hungary_: George Baptista;

_From New Granada_: Andres Gonzales;

_From Alquizar_: Francisco A. Leve;

_From Bayamo_: Manuel Diaz;

_From Navarre_: Antonio Romero;

_From Spain_: Francisco J. Zamaro;

_Nationality not Stated_: Antonio L. Alfonso, Manuel Aragon, Jose Bojanoti y Rubina, Joaquin Casanova, Miguel Guerra, William MacKinney, Dandrig Seay, Leonardo Sugliorti, J. D. Baker and Luis Bander.

In accordance with the Captain-General's proclamation, the execution of Lopez took place on the morning of September 1. The scaffold was erected on a platform ten feet high, in a flat s.p.a.ce opposite Morro. The garrote consists of a post, and a stool on which sits the prisoner, while a metal collar is pa.s.sed around his neck and fastens him securely to the post. A screw having long arms is attached to the post, by means of which, at one turn, metal points are thrust into the victim's neck, causing dislocation and death.

There were present on this occasion, three thousand infantry, two hundred cavalry and twenty thousand witnesses. Lopez presented a calm and dignified appearance. With his hands tightly bound he walked to the front of the platform and said in a strong, clear voice:

"I pray the persons who have compromised me to pardon me, as I pardon them. My death will not change the destinies of Cuba."

Then as the executioner bade him be quick, he exclaimed:

"Adieu, my comrades! Adieu, my beloved Cuba, adieu!"

Thus died a man, as brave in his last hours as he had been during all the strange fortunes and vicissitudes of his adventurous life, who had sacrificed everything for a principle which seemed to him dearer than all the material benefits which the world might have conferred upon him.

The Spanish leaders destroyed his body, but they could never destroy that far more precious thing, the spirit of freedom which he had instilled in the minds and the hearts of the Cubans, and which was to live after him and at last lead Cuba to victory.

CHAPTER VII

Lopez had failed. Such was the obvious judgment of the world. Upon the face of the matter, his expedition had ended in disaster and utter tragedy. The first serious attempt to achieve the separation of Cuba from Spain had come to naught. It had been completely suppressed and its promoters had been destroyed.

In a broader, deeper and more significant sense, however, the enterprise and sacrifice of Lopez and his comrades had splendidly succeeded. That valiant pioneer of Cuban liberation had indeed "builded better than he knew." For his enterprise marked an epoch in Cuban history; the most important since Columbus's discovery of the island. The abortive attempts at emanc.i.p.ation, which had been sporadically but feebly active since the days of the emulators of Bolivar, had by Lopez's efforts been marvelously and effectively resuscitated. The movement which had been nurtured by the "Soles de Bolivar," but which its members had been unable, because of smallness of numbers and lack of funds and of leaders.h.i.+p, to make much more than a cherished ideal--for the attempts at revolt had been still-born, choked almost on their conception--had under Lopez been imbued with l.u.s.ty life, and was never again to languish. A force had been set in operation which could not and did not cease its action until, though many weary years afterward, the end which Lopez had foreseen was attained, and Cuba was securely placed among the independent nations of the world. We say that Lopez "builded better than he knew." That was literally true because his plans were merely for the transfer of Cuban sovereignty from oppressive and reactionary Spain to liberal and progressive America; building upon the foundation thus outlined by him, subsequent bolder spirits constructed the triumphant edifice of complete independence of which he had not so much as dreamed.

The immediate results of the Lopez expedition were prodigious. It is not easy, at this time and distance, to appreciate fully the tremendous sensation which was caused, not only in Cuba and in Spain, but, to a considerable extent, throughout the world, or at least, throughout that most important portion of the world which had its frontage upon the Atlantic Ocean, and which possessed more or less direct interests in the countries of the Caribbean Sea. For a full appreciation of this, it is necessary to take into consideration certain circ.u.mstances which are now almost forgotten.

We must remember that down to this time the world at large had been profoundly ignorant of Cuba, save in the most general and external manner. Spain, as we have already indicated in these pages, had long pursued a persistent policy of secrecy and isolation. Cuba was not allowed to know much of the outside world, and the outside world was not allowed to know much of Cuba. A strict censors.h.i.+p was maintained over information both entering and leaving the island. Marked inhospitality was shown to travelers and visitors to discourage them from penetrating the island or acquainting themselves with the real condition of its affairs. Practically Cuba remained, so far as its social, economic and political conditions were concerned, a _terra incognita_. The world knew almost nothing of its natural wealth and its inestimable resources, its potentialities of greatness.

Now, in the baleful light of a great tragedy, the island was suddenly thrust forward into the world's most intense publicity. From being a minor colonial possession of a decadent power, it was transformed into one of the foremost international issues. The eyes of two continents were fixed upon it, while the hands of those continents involuntarily reached for sword hilts in preparation for a decisive conflict which might shake the foundations of the civilized world.

Let us consider first the interests and sentiments of Spain at this great crisis in her affairs. Hitherto she had regarded Cuba as a helpless province, politically negligible, although economically of immense value as the "milch cow of the Peninsula." The several insurrections which had occurred had indeed been annoying, and, at times, costly, but they had been suppressed with little difficulty, and there had never been a thought of their really menacing Spain's sovereignty over the island. Nor had there been any fear of losing the island through alien aggression or intervention. Spain's t.i.tle to Cuba had been repeatedly underwritten by the United States of America, at the hands of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and John Forsyth; as we have hitherto seen. For a full generation Spain had confidently depended upon both the purpose and the power of the United States to protect her in her owners.h.i.+p of Cuba. But now came a revolt which in itself was immeasurably more formidable than all the slave insurrections put together, and which was, most ominous of all, operated from the United States, with the obvious sympathy, if not with the actual aid, of the people of that country. This powerful protector of Spain in Cuba was a.s.suming the character of a possible conqueror. The troubles of Cuba were, therefore, no longer merely local, nor even national; they had risen to international proportions. They menaced not only the domestic tranquillity of Spain, but also her international relations with that power from which, of all in the world, she had cause most to fear.

No less marked was the effect of these events upon the Cubans. They were made to feel that at last "the die was cast." An irrevocable step had been taken. The dreamer had awakened; plans and conspiracies had been trans.m.u.ted into militant action. It is true that comparatively few of the Cubans had been directly concerned or, at least, could be proved to have been directly concerned in the undertakings of Lopez, but it was quite certain that thereafter they would all be regarded as having sympathized, and as being potential insurgents, with arms as well as with ideas. Nothing thereafter could ever be as it had been before. The Cuban people were vicariously committed to the policy of forcible separation from Spain. War was begun and it would be war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt.

In Cuba, the Spanish authorities realized this change in Cuban sentiment, and kept a sharp outlook for any signs of uprising. They also "made examples" of any and everyone who came under suspicion of having been in sympathy with Lopez, or of having any plans for starting a similar movement. Thus some boys, who were outspoken in their expressions of sympathy with the cause of freedom from Spain, were seized and summarily executed without trial. Feeling ran high; native born Cubans refused to a.s.sociate with those of Spanish birth, and in many cases even to speak of them. A carnival was about to be celebrated in Santiago de Cuba, but it was abandoned, and the city went into mourning.

To retaliate some Spaniards sent out invitations for a ball at the Filarmonia, the famous theatre in Santiago where, years afterward, Adelina Patti made her debut. This was resented as an insult by the native Cubans of the city. Some hot-blooded young men forced an entrance into the hall where the ball was being held, and rus.h.i.+ng forward destroyed a picture of Queen Isabella which hung at one end of the room.

Immediately everything was in an uproar, men were shouting and fighting, and women were fainting. In the melee the disturbers escaped, and the matter was hushed up, for the Spanish authorities feared that the trouble might be made the occasion of another uprising, and so made no attempt to secure the names of the culprits.

But this was just the prelude for worse disaster. A wealthy Cuban woman, with more money than judgment, decided to act as mediator and bring the enraged parties together. She took a strange means for accomplis.h.i.+ng her object, issuing invitations for a party to both prominent Spaniards and Cubans of the best families. When the ball took place it is difficult to say who were the more dismayed and astonished, the Cubans when they saw who had been invited to meet them, or the haughty Spanish grandees, who hated the Cubans. An even wilder scene than that at the Filarmonia took place. Women were thrown to the floor, their clothing torn, and their bodies trampled on. The chandeliers were torn from the ceiling, many windows were broken, men fought in hand to hand combat, and when it was all over the injured had been removed, the hall which had been intended for a scene of pleasure was wrecked and rent beyond description. Six people were killed on this occasion, including one Spanish woman of high rank, and over a hundred were more or less seriously injured. Arrests were promptly made, but it was the Cubans who suffered, for no Spaniards were apprehended. Several boys from the best Creole families were thrust without trial into the dungeons of Morro Castle, from whence they were transported to the Spanish penal inst.i.tution at Ceuta, and never again heard of. Those who were quick enough made their escape to the United States, and the woman who was so foolish as to give the party hastily left the island, without heralding her going.

The Cubans were thoroughly aroused against Spain, and more and more there began to grow within them the desire not for annexation to the United States but for complete independence, and a government of their own making. At last the people were finding themselves, and higher aspirations and new longings were stirring in their souls.

The Captain General, fearing new uprisings, began to get the island in better shape for defense from aggression from within. He strengthened the fortifications, and established a more central control over the army and navy, so that from headquarters all army posts and the movement of all vessels might be more easily governed. To further this end he built new roads, and improved old ones, and he took into his own hands as Captain-General a closer control and supervision of matters military.

Perhaps nothing could be more indicative of the Cuban feeling and of the conditions on the Island at this time than are contained in the following letter written by a prominent Cuban--a man of the highest intelligence and from one of the best known families--to a friend:

"The cause of the liberty of nations has always perished in its cradle because its defenders have never sought to deviate from legal paths,--because they have followed the principles sanctioned by the laws of nations, while despots, always the first to exact obedience to them when it suited their convenience, have been the first to infringe them when they came into collision with their interests.

"Their alliances to suppress liberty are called _holy_ and the crimes they commit by invading foreign territories and summoning foreign troops to their aid to oppress their own vessels, are sacred duties, compliances with secret compacts; and, if the congresses, parliaments and Cortes of other nations, raise the cry to Heaven, they answer, the government has protested--acts have been performed without their sanction--there is no remedy--they are acts accomplished.

"An act accomplished will shortly be the abolition of slavery in Cuba, and the tardy intervention of the United States will only have taken place when its brilliant constellation lights up the vast sepulchre which will cover the bodies of her sons, sacrificed to the black race as a regard for their sympathies with American inst.i.tutions, and the vast carnage it will cost to punish the African victors. What can be done today, without great sacrifice, to help the Cubans, tomorrow cannot be achieved without the effusion of rivers of blood, and when the few surviving Cubans will curse an intervention which, deaf to their cries, will only be produced by the cold calculations of egotism. Then the struggle will not be with the Spaniards alone. The latter will now accede to all the claims of the cabinet at Was.h.i.+ngton, by the advice of the amba.s.sadors of France and England, to advance, meanwhile, with surer step to the end--to give time for the solution of the Eastern question, and for France and England to send their squadrons into these waters.

Well may they deny the existence of secret treaties; this is very easy for such beings, as it will be when the case of the present treaty comes up, a.s.serting that the treaty was posterior to their negative, or refusing explanations as inconsistent with their dignity. But we witness the realization of our fears, we see the Spanish government imperturbably setting on foot plans which were thought to be the delirium of excited imaginations doing at once what promised to be gradual work; and hear it declared, by distinguished persons who possessed the confidence of General Pezuela, that the existence of the treaty is certain, and that the United States will be told that they should have accepted the offer made to become a party to it, in which case the other two powers could not have adopted the abolition scheme.

But supposing this treaty to have no existence, the fact of the abolition of slavery is no less certain. It is only necessary to read the proclamation of the Captain-General, if the last acts of the Government be not sufficiently convincing. The result to the Island of Cuba and the United States is the same, either way. If the latter do not hasten to avert the blow, they will soon find it impossible to remedy the evil. In the Island there is not a reflecting man--foreigner or native, Creole or European--who does not tremble for the future that awaits us, at a period certainly not far remote."

Thus did the Cubans look forward with hope to, and at the same time fear, the future. And meanwhile the tragedy of Lopez was having a wide-spread effect on the feeling of the people, and on political conditions in other countries.

In the United States a profound impression was produced of a triple character. There was, in the first place, the international point of view. It was realized that the United States was being brought uncomfortably near the possibility of a serious controversy, if not of actual war with Spain. The neutrality laws had been evaded, and there was every prospect that such evasions would thereafter be repeated. The whole question of American relations with Cuba was acutely reopened, and both those who favored and those who opposed the acquisition of that island by the United States were made to realize that a momentous decision might be called for at any moment.

There was, in the second place, the point of view of the pro-slavery states of the South, and their leaders, who were generally in control of the national government at Was.h.i.+ngton. The South strongly favored Cuban annexation, either voluntary or forcible. The island was wanted as Texas and other Mexican territories had been wanted, to provide for the extension of slave territory and for the addition of new slave states to the union to counter-balance the new free states which were about to seek admission at the north. There was also a pa.s.sionate desire to avoid the calamity of having Cuba made, as the other Spanish-American countries had been made, free soil, thus encircling the slave states with an unbroken ring of anti-slavery territory. Moreover, at this time the spirit of conquest and of expansion was very much abroad in the land. The l.u.s.t for territory which had prevailed in the Mexican War was by no means satisfied. Men still regarded it as the manifest destiny of the United States to "lick all creation." In the geography of the popular mind, the United States was, or was destined to be, "bounded on the north by the aurora borealis, on the south by the precession of the equinoxes, on the east by primeval chaos, and on the west by the day of judgment." Under such circ.u.mstances, the att.i.tude of the people of the United States south of Mason and Dixon's line was unmistakable.

There was also the point of view of the increasingly anti-slavery north.

During the Mexican war a strong aversion to territorial expansion by conquest for the sake of slave soil had been manifested, and this feeling was steadily increasing in extent and in influence. It manifested itself by opposition to Cuban annexation. At the same time, the commercial instinct was strong in the great cities of the north, and there was an earnest desire to do nothing which might interfere with the profitable trade which already existed between this country and Cuba, and which it was hoped greatly to expand.

The interest of Great Britain in Cuban affairs was scarcely less than that of Spain or the United States. That country had once, for a time, possessed Cuba, and had never forgotten that fact nor ceased to entertain the desire to renew that possession as a permanent state of affairs. That country also had very important colonial holdings in the West Indies, and on the adjacent mainland; being, indeed, an American power second only to the United States itself. It owned the Bahamas, Jamaica and other islands, and colonies on the South and Central American coast, which latter it was at that very time seeking greatly to extend. It was keenly desirous of enlarging its possessions and forming a great colonial empire in tropical America, and it realized that nothing could conduce to that end more than the acquisition of Cuba. In the prosecution of this policy, a certain "jingo" faction actually went so far as to pretend that upon the acquisition of Cuba depended Great Britain's retention of Canada, if not, indeed, of her entire American holdings. It was represented that if Great Britain did not intervene to prevent it, the slave-holding South was certain to annex Cuba, and that this would provoke the abolitionist North into seizing Canada, in order to provide in that direction free soil to counter-balance the slave soil of Cuba. Thus, with Canada gone, and Cuba in the hands of the United States, the remainder of the British holdings in the western hemisphere would be in deadly jeopardy. Such visions seem at this time fantastic, and it may be that they were then thus regarded by serious statesmen; yet they were cherished and were not without their influence.

Nor was France less deeply and directly interested in Cuba. She, too, had colonies in the West Indies and on the South American coast. She had never forgotten her former vast empire in North America, nor ceased to regret its loss. She was soon to enter upon a campaign of conquest in Mexico. She had at various times, both during and since the Napoleonic era, entertained designs upon peninsular Spain itself, and she had repeatedly made direct overtures for a protectorate over Cuba.

These circ.u.mstances caused international relations to be ominously strained in more than one direction, and as soon as news reached the United States of the execution of those companions of Lopez who were members of prominent families in the southern states, there arose a widespread and furious storm of wrath. The center of this was, naturally, at New Orleans, where the majority of Lopez's followers had been recruited and where their families resided, and in that city an infuriated mob stormed and destroyed the Spanish consulate, publicly defaced a portrait of the Spanish queen, and, in some respects worst of all, looted a number of shops owned by Spanish merchants. This was most unfortunate from more than one point of view. It was not only indefensible and inexcusable in itself, but it put the United States so much in the wrong as to deter it from taking any action, or indeed making any protest to Spain on account of the putting to death of the American prisoners.

The American Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, made, however, the best of an unfortunate situation. He took a straightforward course by immediately apologizing to the Spanish government for the New Orleans outrages, and recommended to Congress the voting of an adequate indemnity for the damage which had been done. Having done this, he was enabled to secure the release of some American members of Lopez's expedition who had not yet suffered the death penalty.

Despite this settlement, the Spanish government continued to cherish much resentment against the United States, partly for the partic.i.p.ation of so many of that country's citizens in the expeditions of Lopez, and partly because of the outrages in New Orleans, and its Cuban administration thereafter exhibited an increasing degree of animosity against Americans. Numerous harsh impositions were put upon American citizens, for which no redress could be had; and this caused resentment throughout the United States, in the commercial North as well as in the slaveholding and expansionist South, and relations between the two countries steadily drifted from bad to worse.

Candor compels the frank statement that there was much fault on both sides. Spain was tremendously at fault because of her misgovernment of Cuba, and indeed her whole policy in relation to that island, which was quite unworthy of a civilized power in an enlightened age. A generation before Spain had practically sacrificed her right to continued possession of Florida by her maladministration of that territory, which had made it an intolerable nuisance to the neighboring United States.

She was now making of Cuba a scarcely less international nuisance and scandal.

On the other hand, the United States, or some of its people, undoubtedly gave Spain cause for grievance. The intentions and the conduct of the United States government were beyond reproach. At the same time, they were entirely insufficient for the prevention of serious wrongs to Spain. Webster himself confessed that the United States government had no power to protect Spanish subjects from such outrages as those which had just been committed in New Orleans. There was no doubt that the intentions and conduct of a large portion of the American people were not only hostile to Spain, but were quite lawless in the manifestation of that feeling. Among the offenders, moreover, were some men who stood high in official life and who exerted much political influence. Nor could these things be so well understood in Spain as in the United States. Spain could scarcely be expected to distinguish between the case of a man in his private capacity as a citizen and in his public capacity as a member of Congress or other official of the government. When she saw public officials partic.i.p.ating in the organization and operations of the "Order of the Lone Star," the confessed purpose of which was to take Cuba from Spain by force, and without compensation, she very naturally a.s.sumed that such things were being done with the permission and sanction of the United States government, if not at its direct instigation.