Cuban War of Independence

“ Some were members of the Cuban Independence party, and they cordially and eagerly supported the revolution; saying: "Let our fields and buildings be burned. If it is necessary in order to free the island that our property shall be ruined, let it be ruined!"
This patriotic attitude of some of the great property-owners, who had most to lose through the ravages of war{25} but who were ready to risk all, was finely displayed in the very midst of the conflict. There were in the Province of Santa Clara two very wealthy Cuban women, sisters. ”

“ During the year which followed, 1877, more and more the Cuban methods of warfare merited the description which Spain had given of them. It became a war of extermination, rather than battle for independence. Cespedes, Quesada, Agramonte, and many other of the original leaders had died in battle, or had been captured and murdered by the enemy. Foreigners, who knew nothing of early ideals, and indeed little of early struggles, had largely replaced the great Cuban patriots, and their idea was not so much separation from Spain and conquest of the enemy as plunder. ”

“ In the world-shaking revolution year of 1848, after O'Donnell has drowned the Cuban slave revolts in blood, and when Narciso Lopez was just preparing for his descents upon the island, Luz y Caballero opened in Cuba a high school for boys. It was not a political school; certainly not seditious, unless truth and virtue were seditious. Hundreds of Cuban patriots, including many of the leaders in the Ten Years' War and the War of Independence, have testified that it was his teaching that made them the aggressive, resolute, militant patriots that they were. ”

“ There was no recognition by this government of Cuban independence; no recommendation that we wrest the island from the moribund nation that has so long misgoverned it; but a semi-official expression of concern for men striving to achieve their liberty afforded Europe a pretext to "get together" and work off on a distant people that war spirit, so long suppressed at home, lest it disturb the balance of power. ”

“ Patriots who had been timidly balancing themselves in outward neutrality, were so aroused with indignation that they began boldly to plunge into the maelstrom of civil war. On February 9, 1869, the entire district of Las Tunas revolted and cast its lot with the insurgents. Each new act of injustice emanating from the Spaniards was like removing the supports of a dam behind which had been restrained the waters of patriotism. The Spaniards had killed one Cuban patriot in cold blood; the cause of revolutions had gained thousands, each fired with enthusiasm. ”

“ Spain must know by this time that while there is a single living Cuban with dignity—and there are many thousands of them—there will not be peace in Cuba, nor even hope of it.
"All good causes must finally triumph, and ours is a good cause. It is the cause of justice treated with contempt, of right suppressed by force, and of the dignity of a people offended to the last degree.
"We Cubans have a thousandfold more reason in our endeavors to free ourselves from the Spanish yoke than the people of the thirteen colonies had when in 1776 they rose in arms against the British government. ”

“ We no longer desire the annexation of Cuba. The present war is a holy war. It has been entered into wholly and entirely from motives of philanthropy, to give to a suffering and downtrodden people the blessings of freedom which we ourselves enjoy.
Moreover, the manifesto clearly shows that the causes of Cuban uprising are of no recent date; and that, before the United States rose in its wrath, it was patient and long-suffering. ”

“ The government of the United States does not busy itself nor can it with the Cuban Insurrection. Look at Article 16 of the Treaty of 1797 and you will learn that they cannot favor the Cubans in the least efficacious way without failing in national dignity and exposing themselves to a coalition against themselves. That government is too polished and financially shrewd to compromise itself in a war that would entail serious mischief upon its commerce ”

“ America is relieved of the need of vaunting herself upon it. It would, however, be of a great error and a great injustice to assume that the intervention of the United States in April, 1898, was indispensable to the achievement of Cuban independence, or indeed that it was the United States that set Cuba free from Spain. ”

“ That country had already and repeatedly guaranteed the Spanish possession of Cuba as against the aggressions of any other power, but it had not guaranteed and would not guarantee her possession of Cuba against the self-assertion of the Cuban people. It recognized the right of revolution. It knew that the Cubans were dissatisfied, and that with good reason, with Spanish rule, and that sooner or later they would successfully revolt and establish their independence, and it had no thought of making itself the accomplice of Spain in repressing their aspirations for liberty. ”

“ But they were no more in error than were the immortal American Autonomists of the beginning of the American Revolution.
Similarly it was necessary that Cuba should not only be entirely separated from Spain but also should be made independent, and not be annexed to the United States. On that point, too, many good men were in error. As we shall see, the first important Cuban revolutionist—although not himself a native Cuban—had in view not independence but annexation to the United States, and so did many another sterling patriot after him. ”

“ Well, then, knowing as I do that the country does not want war, and that it continues therein under the pressure of the Cuban government in the one hand and on the others out of fear of the punishment which the Spanish government might inflict, knowing as I do that nothing is to be expected from the United States as it was attempted to make the people believe; knowing that since the beginning of the Insurrection, 40,000 men have come from Spain, and that many more will come—a fact generally unknown in this country; aware, as I am, that over 100,000 men are under arms ”

“ After reviewing the story of the Cuban revolution and the condition into which it had plunged the island, he said: "The war in Cuba is of such a nature that, short of subjugation or extermination, a military victory for either side seems impracticable." Then, recounting the efforts of the United States to effect a just settlement by negotiation, he added: "The only hope of relief and repose from a condition which can no longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. ”

“ The nation was, however, led into war simply to liberate Cuba from the iniquitous and cruel yoke of Spain, and to save thousands of impoverished Cubans from death by starvation. Great care was taken not to recognize the Cuban government in any form, and it seemed to be understood that we were to do the fighting both with our navy and our army, the Cubans being invited to co-operate with us, rather than that we should co-operate with them. We were to be the liberators and saviors of a people crushed to the very gates of death. ”

“ All attempts at a hermaphroditical government here must also fail, as it has everywhere. It must be all American or all Cuban. The Spaniards here, though they predominate in the principal cities, do not yet count as a factor, although they are for annexation; this to save their estates and for personal safety. Any attempts to build up a Cuban government by the use of a few Cubans and Spaniards in Havana and other cities, no matter what their character for intelligence and peaceableness may be, must end in disaster, and a little later, in a wild repetition of war and bloodshed. ”

“ If Cuba were within a hundred miles of the coast of one of our populous States, and near one of our great ports, periods of acute interest in its condition would doubtless have come earlier and oftener, and we should long ago have had to deal with a crisis by warlike measures. Or if the insurgents had commanded respect instead of mere pity, we should have paid heed to their struggle sooner; for it is almost an American maxim that a people cannot govern itself till it can win its own independence. ”

“ We watch with deep and abiding interest the heroic battle of the Cuban patriots against cruelty and oppression, and our best hopes go out for the full success of their determined contest for liberty. The Government of Spain, having lost control of Cuba, and being unable to protect the property or lives of resident American citizens, or to comply with its treaty obligations, we believe that the Government of the United States should actively use its influence and good offices to restore peace and give independence to the island. ”

“ This at first would have been easy, even now possible, to be brought about, but we are fast drifting away from annexation or a peaceful solution of the great and scandalous Cuban problem confronting us.
"The Cuban people are not to be despised; they are a mixed race it is true, but they have talked of and fought for freedom too many years not to know something of the sweet fruits of individual liberty. They are polite and affable, but yet suspicious, as all people are who have been oppressed. ”

“ She has fettered the energies of the people, while she has fattened upon their industry. She smiled but to smite, and embraced but to crush. She has disheartened exertion, disqualified merit, and destroyed patience and forbearance, by supporting in riotous luxury a horde of foreign officials at the expense of native industry and frugality.
"Irritated into resistance, the Cubans are now the intended victims of increased injustice. But the inhuman design will fail of accomplishment. Cuban patriotism develops with the growth of oppression. ”

“ Under its rule there will be nothing for our people but oppression and misery. For years and years the Cuban people have patiently suffered, and in the interests of the colony, as well as in the interests of the metropolis, have earnestly prayed for reforms. Spain has not only turned a deaf ear to the prayers, but instead of reforming the most glaring abuses, has allowed them to increase and flourish, until such a point has been reached that the continuation of Spanish rule means for the Cuban people utter destruction. ”

“ They are not yet satisfied with the rivers of human blood with which in times past they inundated the fields of Italy, of the Low Countries, of our continent of America, and only a few years ago, of Cuba itself. The Spanish newspaper of Havana, 'El Pueblo,' urges the Spanish soldiers to give no quarter, to spare no one, to kill all, all without exception, until they shall have torrents of Cuban blood in which to bathe themselves. It is well. The Cubans accept the challenge, but they will not imitate their tyrants and cover themselves with infamy by waging a savage war. ”

“ Those who are at the head of the Cuban government and guide the revolution believe their triumph possible; they think their ideas are correct and their way a good one. Very well; but not believing as they do, I move aside from that government, whose pressure and arbitrariness are such, that it will not even admit neutrality in others. I will not wage war against you; I will not take up arms against you except in personal defence; but I separate from men who wish to impose their own notions on others through force. ”

“ It is time for the Cuban people to satisfy their just desire for a place among the free nations of the world and let them not be accused if to accomplish their noble purpose they are obliged to reduce to ashes the Cuban land. ”

“ With Cuba under Spanish domination, they were enabled to amass great wealth, and they wanted such conditions and such opportunities of enrichment continued. That was not an exalted attitude, and it was naturally odious to the Cuban patriots who were serving without pay and sacrificing their all for the independence of the island and for the attainment of a degree of material prosperity as well as of civic and spiritual enfranchisement immeasurably beyond the sordid conceptions of these selfish time-servers. ”

“ He stated that Cuba would prefer to remain as she was rather than to change masters—jump from Scylla to Charybdis, as it were—and that if any change must come she desired independence; that she realized that unaided she could not maintain herself a separate nation, but that she hoped for the support of the United States or of Mexico, or both, to help her to maintain her freedom. Cuba had a secret fear that should she seek independence, the turbulent blacks would try to seize the government, and of course that would mean ruin. ”

“ More harrowing still: think of the brave men from this country, men who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the freedom of Cuba, dying in battle and from disease, in a war waged for the purpose of conquering a people who are fighting as the Cubans fought against Spanish tyranny and misrule. There is not a feature of the whole miserable business that a patriotic American citizen, one who loves to read of the brave deeds of the American colonists in the splendid struggle for American independence, can look upon with complacency, much less with pride. ”

“ It was arranged that uprisings should take place simultaneously in several of the Cuban cities, but the plans became known to the government and the intended revolution was nipped in the bud, all the leaders being arrested and imprisoned the very day on which it had been arranged to declare independence.
In 1826 Cuban refugees in Mexico and in some of the South American republics planned an invasion of Cuba to be led by Simon Bolivar, the great liberator of Colombia, but it came to nothing, owing to the impossibility of securing adequate support both of men and money. ”