The History of Cuba Volume III Part 9

This left the United States with its prestige immeasurably enhanced and free to pay such attention as might be necessary to the affairs of Cuba, the only part of the western hemisphere in which European despotism was still maintained.

The policy of the United States Government, and the sentiment of the people of that country toward Cuba, had been materially modified by the Civil War and its results. There was, of course, no longer any thought of acquiring Cuba for the sake of expanding and fortifying the slave power, but on the contrary, American influence was now exerted, so far as it could properly be, toward prevailing upon the Spanish Government to abolish slavery in Cuba. The Cuban revolutionists were almost without exception in favor of such emanc.i.p.ation of the negroes, and that fact caused them to be regarded with increased favor in the United States, both officially and popularly. American influence was also exerted toward the persuasion of Spain to give Cuba a more liberal and beneficent government and to improve the commercial relations between that island and the United States, for the benefit of both parties.

There was some expectation in both Cuba and the United States--a very plausible belief--that the revolutionary movement in Spain, liberal and democratic in character, and aiming at the establishment of a republic in place of the Bourbon monarchy, would be accompanied by the grant of liberal inst.i.tutions and democratic freedom to Cuba; but such was not the case.

During the Civil War, because of the suspension of the sugar industry in the southern part of the United States, there had been a vast and immensely profitable development of the sugar industry in Cuba, and this seemed to be dependent for its success upon the continuance of slave labor. These conditions strengthened the Spanish party in Cuba, which was equally devoted to the maintenance of slavery and to Spanish domination in the Island.

The Spanish party in Cuba, at this time, as we have seen, was known as the "Peninsulars," and it comprised a great majority of the office holders and wealthy planters and slave-holders. It was well organized throughout the Island for the a.s.sertion of political influence, and for the suppression of insurgent movements. Its central authority was in a wealthy club at Havana, called the "Casino Espagnol," and similar clubs on a more modest scale, existed in other cities and important towns throughout Cuba, and from these, and under their control, there arose a body known as the "Volunteers." This was ostensibly a military organization to whose battalions all white men in the Island were eligible, but as a matter of fact, members.h.i.+p in the Volunteers was substantially confined to conservatives, loyalists and Spanish sympathizers. The Volunteers, except in a few special cases, did not go into the field, but left the actual fighting with insurgents to be done by regular Spanish troops. They gave their own attention chiefly to the overawing of the inhabitants of the cities and towns, and to restraining them from joining the revolutions. They also acted as spies, discovering and reporting to the Spanish Government the doings of Cuban patriots. The leaders of the organization formed a "Council of Colonels," meeting at the Casino Espagnol, and forming a sort of _imperium in imperio_.

During the progress of the Ten Years' War, however, the Volunteers were organized and placed under the command of General Lersuno, and thereafter exerted a much more militant power than ever before. They were not under the direct orders of the Captain-General, but enjoyed an independent authority, and yet they were presently entrusted with the garrisoning of forts and cities, so that the regular Spanish troops could go into the field. They exercised far more military, naval and civil authority than the Captain-General and other royal officials. They actually compelled the retirement of General Dulce from the Captain-Generals.h.i.+p because they regarded him as too kindly disposed toward the Cubans. They similarly drove Caballero de Rodas from office, and they gave Valmaseda and Ceballos, who followed, to understand that the success of their administration depended upon their compliance with the demands and policies of the Volunteers.

It was due to their opposition that the so-called Moret law, which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in Cuba, remained a dead letter, and was not even published in the Island for several years after the outside world had supposed it to be in force. The Volunteers were also responsible for the numerous cases of violence against the patriot party, the most flagrant of which was the execution of eight Cuban students of the University of Havana.

There is no reason to suppose that there was any complicity or cooperation between the revolution in Spain and the outbreak of the Ten Years' War in Cuba. Nevertheless, the former practically gave the signal, for the result of the Spanish revolution was indeed regarded by Cuban patriots with much satisfaction and enthusiasm. Cries of "Hurrah for Prim!" "Hurrah for Serrano!" and "Hurrah for the Spanish Revolution!" were mingled with cries of "Viva Cuba Libre!" and it did not take long for the disappointed realization to dawn upon Cuba that liberalism in Spain did not necessarily imply the granting of freedom to Cuba, but that on the contrary the "Peninsular" revolutionists were scarcely less intent that the Bourbons had been upon retaining Cuba as an appanage, and especially as a source of revenue for Spain.

CHAPTER X

Cuban independence was proclaimed on October 10, 1868, at the Yara plantation. That was the natal date and that was the natal place of the Republic of Cuba. The event was made known to the world in a Declaration of Independence, which was issued at Manzanillo, and which was as follows:

"In arming ourselves against the tyrannical Government of Spain we must, according to precedent in all civilized countries, proclaim before the world the cause that impels us to take this step, which though liable to entail considerable disturbances upon the present, will insure the happiness of the future.

"It is well known that Spain governs the Island of Cuba with an iron and blood-stained hand. The former holds the latter deprived of political, civil, and religious liberty. Hence, the unfortunate Cubans being illegally prosecuted and thrown into exile or executed by military commissions in times of peace. Hence, their being kept from public meetings, and forbidden to speak or write on affairs of state; hence, their remonstrances against the evils that afflict them being looked upon as the proceedings of rebels, from the fact that they are bound to keep silence and obey. Hence, the never-ending plague of hungry officials from Spain to devour the product of their industry and labor.

Hence, their exclusion from public stations and want of opportunity to skill themselves in the art of government. Hence, the restrictions to which public instructions with them is subjected, in order to keep them so ignorant as not to be able to know and enforce their rights in any shape or form whatever. Hence, the navy and standing army, which are kept upon their country at an enormous expenditure from their own wealth to make them bend their knees and submit their necks to the iron yoke that disgraces them. Hence, the grinding taxation under which they labor, and which would make them all perish in misery but for the marvelous fertility of the soil.

"On the other hand, Cuba cannot prosper as she ought to, because white immigration that suits her best is artfully kept from her sh.o.r.es by the Spanish Government, and as Spain has many a time promised us Cubans to respect our rights without having hitherto fulfilled her promise, as she continues to tax us heavily and by so doing is likely to destroy our wealth; as we are in danger of losing our property, our lives, and our honor under further Spanish domination; as we have reached a depth of degradation utterly revolting to manhood; as great nations have sprung from revolt against a similar disgrace, after exhausted pleadings for relief, as we despair of justice from Spain through reasoning and cannot longer live deprived of the rights which other people enjoy, we are constrained to appeal to arms and to a.s.sert our rights in the battle-field, cheris.h.i.+ng the hope that our grievances will be a sufficient excuse for this last resort to redress them and to secure our future welfare.

"To the G.o.d of our conscience, and to all civilized nations, we submit the sincerity of our purpose. Vengeance does not mislead us, not is ambition our guide. We only want to be free and to see all men with us equally free, as the Creator intended all mankind to be. Our earnest belief is that all men are brethren. Hence our love of toleration, order and justice in every respect. We desire the gradual abolition of slavery, with indemnification; we admire universal suffrage, as it insures the sovereignty of the people; we demand a religious regard for the inalienable rights of men as the basis of freedom and nation greatness."

Following the Declaration of Independence, the provisional government of the Republic of Cuba was organized at Bayamo. The most prominent figure in the organization of the Cuban revolutionists and the first really constructive leader of the Cuban insurrection was Carlos Manuel Cespedes, a native of Bayamo. At this time he was in the prime of life, being forty nine years of age, a man of brilliant intellect and of fine culture, for he had been educated at the University of Havana, and had, in 1842, received his degree and license in law from the University of Barcelona, in Spain.

Cespedes's openly expressed zeal for the emanc.i.p.ation of the oppressed Cubans, and the earnest efforts which he had long exerted in their behalf, had won for him such widespread recognition as a patriot that he was, without a dissenting voice, chosen for the head of the provisional government. By nature and training he was admirably suited for the position, for from boyhood he had been not only enthusiastically devoted to the cause of Cuban independence, but he had more than once, under circ.u.mstances where his outspoken advocacy of his principles actually placed his life in jeopardy, proved himself a worthy champion of freedom, not only for his fellow citizens, but for Spanish subjects wherever they were being trodden beneath the iron heel of Spanish oppression. His love of liberty was not a mere enthusiasm, something superficial and acquired, but it was inborn, a fundamental part of his character, firmly knit into the very fibre of his life and its activities.

While a student in Spain, he had joined the forces of General Prim, during the latter's first attempt to establish a republic in that country, and because of his complicity in that revolt, Cespedes had been banished from Spain. Returning to Cuba, in 1844, he settled at Bayamo, and took up the practice of law, where his skill as an advocate soon won him recognition as one of the foremost lawyers of the Island. But again his hatred of tyranny thrust him forth from the peaceful occupation of ama.s.sing a fortune in the pursuit of jurisprudence. He could not tranquilly pursue his daily course when he saw injustice and misrule rampant around him, and so, in 1852, he made a speech, fervidly denouncing Spain, and calling on high Heaven to aid the independence of Cuba, which was considered by the authorities to be so incendiary that he was arrested as a dangerous character, and subsequently suffered a five months' imprisonment in Morro Castle, at Havana.

Opportunity soon came to Cespedes to give actual proof that his principles were not abstract but concrete. The acid test was to be applied and he was not to be found wanting, for immediately upon the declaration by the Cuban republic of its principles of freedom and equal rights for all men, he voluntarily exemplified their operation, so far as lay in his individual power, by emanc.i.p.ating all the slaves on his own estate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARLOS MANUEL DE CESPEDES

The supreme chieftain of the Cuban patriots in the Ten Years' War was Carlos Manuel de Cespedes y Borges, who before becoming a soldier was eminent as an advocate, poet, and man of letters. He was born at Bayamo on April 18, 1819, and completed his education at the University of Barcelona, Spain. Then he settled in Madrid, became a.s.sociated with General Prim, and was implicated in his first attempt at revolution. For that he was banished to France, and later he was imprisoned for his Liberal utterances. Returning to Cuba, he personally started the Ten Years' War, with the story of which as elsewhere related he was inseparably identified as President of the Cuban Republic. On February 27, 1874, he was betrayed to the Spaniards by a servant who thus sought to save his own life, and after desperate resistance was wounded, captured, and put to death.]

The first decree of the provisional government was issued by General Cespedes on December 27. It was a proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation, as follows:

"The revolution of Cuba, while proclaiming this independence of the country, has proclaimed with it all the liberties, and could not well commit the great inconsistency, to restrict them to only one part of the population of the country. Free Cuba is incompatible with slave Cuba, and the abolition of the Spanish inst.i.tutions must include, and by necessity and by reason of the greatest justice does include, the abolition of slavery as the most odious of all. Abolition of slavery has, therefore, been maintained among the principles proclaimed in the first manifesto issued by the revolution, and in the opinion of all Cubans, truly liberal, its entire realization must be the first of the acts for which the country employs its conquered rights. But as a general measure it can only be fully effected when the country in the full use of its conquered rights can, by means of universal suffrage, make the most suitable provision for carrying it through to real advantage, both for the old and the new citizens. The subject of the present measure is not, nor can it be, the abrogation of a right which those who are at present directing the operations of the revolution are far from believing themselves ent.i.tled to invade; thus partic.i.p.ating the solution of so difficult a question. On the other hand, however, the provisional government could not in its turn oppose the use of a right which our slaveholders possess in virtue of our laws, and which many of them wish to exercise, namely, to emanc.i.p.ate their slaves at once. It also sees how desirable it is to employ at once in the service of the country the freedmen, and how necessary to make haste to prevent the evils which they and the country might receive from a failure to employ them immediately. The government, therefore, urges the adoption of provisional dispositions, which are to serve as a rule for the military chiefs in the several districts of this department, in order to solve the questions presented to them. Therefore, availing myself of the faculties with which I am invested, I have now resolved that the following articles be observed.

"I. Free are the slaves whom their masters at once present to the military chief for this purpose, the owners reserving, if they choose, a claim to the indemnification which the nation may decree.

"II. The freedom shall, for the present, be employed in the service of the country in such a manner as may be agreed upon.

"III. To this end a committee shall be appointed to find for them employment, in accordance with regulations to be issued.

"IV. In other cases, the slaves of loyal Cubans and of neutral Spaniards and foreigners shall continue to work, in accordance with the principle of respect for property proclaimed by the revolution.

"V. The slaves of those who have been convicted of being enemies of the country and openly hostile to the revolution, shall be confiscated with their other property and declared free without a right to indemnity, utilizing them in the service of the country.

"VI. The owners who shall place their slaves in the service of the revolution without freeing them for the present, shall preserve their right as long as the slaving question in general is not decided.

"VII. The slaves of the Palisades, who may present themselves to the Cuban authorities, shall at once be declared free, with a right either to live among us or to remain among the mountaineers.

"VIII. The isolated refugees who may be captured, or who may, without the consent of their masters, present themselves to the authorities or military chiefs, shall not be received without consulting their masters."

Now this first government, of which Cespedes was made the chief, was merely, after all, a temporary affair, organized to provide ways and means for creating a more permanent body. Accordingly, on October 30, 1868, less than a month after the Declaration of Independence, Cespedes issued a proclamation declaring that his election to office had been only to provide for the time being an acting head of the provisional government; that he believed that the organization should at once take on the character of permanency; that he had no thought of imposing his will upon Cuba; that he realized that he had not been elected to his place by the suffrage of the Cuban people, and that he had no a.s.surance that, had they been given an opportunity to individually express themselves, he would have been their choice; and that, therefore, since it was practicable for all loyal Cubans to a.s.semble in their respective communities and by their suffrage const.i.tute a permanent government, he would gladly abide by their decision, and, if they desired, relinquish the power with which they had entrusted him.

In response to this patriotic utterance, a convention was called, on April 10, 1869, at Guaimaro. The leaders of this first representative body of the Cuban people were the following: Miguel Gutierrez, Eduardo Machado, Antonio Lorda, Tranquilino Valdez and Arcadio Garcia, representing Villa Clara; Honorato Castillo, representing Sancti Spiritus; Jose Maria Izaguirre, representing Jugari; Antonio Alcada and Jesus Rodriguez, representing Holguin; and Salvador Cisneros, Francisco Sanchez, Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz, Miguel Betancourt Guerra and Antonio Zambrana, representing Camaguey.

At this convention, Cespedes resigned his position as provisional head of the government and commander-in-chief of the army, in order that some one might be regularly elected in his place, and in doing so he addressed his colleagues in the following memorable terms:

"Now that the House of Representatives, gathered from all parts of the Island, has been happily inaugurated in Guaimaro, it becomes from the moment of its organization the supreme and only authority for all Cubans, because it const.i.tutes the depository of the people's will, sovereign of the present and controller of the future. All temporary power and authority ceases to have a rightful voice in Cuba from the very moment in which the wise democratic system, laying its solid foundations beneath the gigantic shadow of the tree of liberty, has come to endow us--after suffering the most iniquitous rule--with the most beautiful and magnificent of human inst.i.tutions--a republican government.

"Unfeigned grat.i.tude I owe to the destiny which afforded me the glory of being the first in Yara to raise the standard of independence, and the still greater though less merited satisfaction, to see crowded around me my fellow-citizens in demand of liberty, thus sustaining my weak arm and stimulating my poor efforts by their confidence. But another glory was reserved for me, far more grateful by my sentiments and democratic convictions--that of also being the first to render homage to the popular sovereignty.

"This duty fulfilled, having given an account to the fatherland of its most genuine representation of the work which with the a.s.sistance of its own heroic sons I had the good fortune to have commenced, it still behooves me, fellow-citizens, to fulfill another, not less imperious to my heart, of addressing my grat.i.tude to you--to you, without whom my humble, isolated efforts would not have produced other fruit than that of adding one patriot more to the number of preceding martyrs for independence--to you, who, recognizing in me the principle rather than the man, came to stimulate me by your recognition of myself as chief of the provisional government and the liberating army.

"Fellow citizens of the Eastern Department, your efforts as initiators of the struggle against tyranny, your constancy, your sufferings, your heroic sacrifices of all descriptions, your privations, the combat without quarters which you have sustained and continue to sustain against an enemy far superior in armament and discipline, and who displays, for want of the valor which a good cause inspires, all the ferocity which is the att.i.tude of tyranny, have been witnessed by myself, and so will remain eternally present to my heart. You are the vanguard of the soldiers of our liberties. I commend you to the admiration and to the grat.i.tude of the Cubans. Continue your abnegation of self, your discipline, your valor, and your enthusiasm, which will ent.i.tle you to that grat.i.tude and that admiration.

"Fellow citizens of the Western Department, if it has not been your good fortune to be the first in grasping arms, neither were you among the last in listening to the voice of the fatherland that cried for revolution. Your moral aid and a.s.sistance responded from the very outset to the call of your brethren of the Eastern and Central Departments.

Many of you hastened to the scene of revolution to share our colors. At this moment, despite the activity displayed by the Spanish Government in your districts, where its resources and the number of its hosts render more difficult the current of the revolution, that same Government trembles before your determined att.i.tude, from the Las Villas to Havana, and from Havana to the western boundary, and your first deeds of arms were the presage to you and the brave and worthy sons of the Eastern and Central Departments of new and decisive triumphs.

"Fellow citizens of all the Island: The blood of the patriots who have fallen during the first onset of the struggle has consecrated our aspirations with a glorious baptism. At this moment, when destiny has been pleased to close the mission of him who was your first leader, swear with him by that generous blood, that in order to render fruitful that great sacrifice you will shed your own, to the very last drop, in furtherance of the consummation of our independence, proclaimed in Yara.

Swear with me to give up our lives a thousand times over in sustaining the republic proclaimed in Guaimaro.

"Fellow citizens, long live our independence. Long live the popular sovereignty! Long live the Cuban Republic! Patria and liberty!"

The convention before proceeding to the election of officers of the Republic, drafted and adopted the first Const.i.tution of Free Cuba, as follows:

"Article I. The legislative power shall be vested in a House of Representatives.

"Article II. To this body shall be delegated an equal representation from each of the four states into which the Island of Cuba shall be divided.

"Article III. These states are Oriente, Camaguey, Las Villas and Occidente.

"Article IV. No one shall be eligible as representatives of any of these states except a citizen of the Republic, who is upward of 20 years of age.

"Article V. No representative of any state shall hold any other official position during his representative term.

"Article VI. Whenever a vacancy occurs in the representation of any state, the executive thereof shall have power to fill such vacancy until the ensuing election.