The History of Cuba, vol. 4

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Title: The History of Cuba, vol. 4

Author: Willis Fletcher Johnson

Release Date: October 8, 2010 [EBook #33848]

Language: English

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JOSÉ MARTÍ

The first great apostle and martyr of the Cuban War of Independence, José Martí, was born in Havana on January 28, 1853, and fell in battle at Dos Rios on May 19, 1895. He was a Professor of Literature, Doctor of Laws, economist, philosopher, essayist, journalist, poet, historian, statesman, tribune of the people, organizer of the final and triumphant cause of Cuban freedom. He suffered imprisonment in Spain and exile in Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States, doing his crowning work in the last-named country as the vitalizing and energizing head of the Cuban Junta in New York. His fame must be lasting as the nation which he founded, wide as the world which he adorned.

THE

HISTORY OF CUBA

BY

WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON

A.M., L.H.D.

Author of A Century of Expansion, "Four Centuries of

the Panama Canal, America's Foreign Relations"

Honorary Professor of the History of American Foreign

Relations in New York University

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME FOUR

NEW YORK

B. F. BUCK & COMPANY, INC.

156 FIFTH AVENUE

1920

Copyright, 1920,

BY CENTURY HISTORY CO.

All rights reserved

ENTERED AT STATIONERS HALL

LONDON, ENGLAND.

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

{iii}

CONTENTS

{viii}

{ix}

ILLUSTRATIONS

{Page 1}

THE HISTORY OF CUBA

CHAPTER I

Cuba for Cuba must be the grateful theme of the present volume. We have seen the identification of the Queen of the Antilles with the Spanish discovery and conquest of America. We have traced the development of widespread international interests in that island, especially implicating the vital attention of at least four great powers. We have reviewed the origin and development of a peculiar relationship, frequently troubled but ultimately beneficent to both, between Cuba and the United States of America. Now, in the briefest of the four major epochs into which Cuban history is naturally divided, we shall have the welcome record of the achievement of Cuba's secure establishment among the sovereign nations of the world.

The time for the War of Independence was well chosen. That conflict was, indeed, a necessary and inevitable sequel to the Ten Years' War and its appendix, the Little War; under the same flag, with the same principles and issues, and with some of the same leaders. Indeed we may rightly claim that the organization of the Cuban Republic remained continuous and unbroken, if not in Cuba itself, at least in the United States, where, in New York, the Cuban Junta was ever active and resolute. The Treaty of Zanjon ended field operations for the time. It did not for one moment or in the least degree quench or diminish the impassioned and resolute determination of the Cuban people to become a nation.{2}

We have said that the War of Independence was inevitable. That was manifestly so because of the determination of the Cubans to become independent. It was also because of the failure of the Spanish government to fulfil the terms and stipulations of the Treaty of Zanjon, concerning which we have hitherto spoken. It must remain a matter of speculation whether that government ever intended to fulfil them. It is certain that few thoughtful Cubans, capable of judging the probabilities of the future by the actualities of the past, expected that it would do so. We may also regard it as certain that even a scrupulous fulfilment of those terms, while it might have postponed it, would not and could not permanently have defeated the assertion of Cuban independence.

RICARDO DEL MONTE

Journalist, critic, poet and patriot, Ricardo del Monte was born at Cimorrones in 1830, and was educated in the United States and Europe. In Rome he was attached to the Spanish embassy. In Spain he was a journalist with liberal and democratic tendencies. He returned to Cuba in 1847 and edited several papers in Havana, including, after the Ten Years War, El Triunfo and El Pais, the organ of the Autonomists. He was a writer in prose and verse of singular power and grace, his works ranking in style with the best of modern Spanish literature. He died in 1908.

The Cuban Revolutionary Party, which as we have said never went out of existence, was reorganized for renewed activity in New York in April, 1892; from which time we may properly date the beginning of the War of Independence. Its leader was Jose Marti, of whom we shall have much more to say hereafter; but he did not accept the official headship of the Junta.{3} That place was taken by Tomas Estrada Palma, the honored veteran of the Ten Years' War, who at this time was the principal of an excellent boys' school at Central Valley, New York. He was the President of the Junta. The Secretary was Gonzalo de Quesada, worthy bearer of an honored name; a fervent patriot and an eloquent orator. The Treasurer was Benjamin Guerra, an approved patriot, and the General Counsel was Horatio Rubens. This New York Junta, meeting at No. 56 New Street, New York City, was the real head of the whole movement. But it was supplemented by many other Cuban clubs elsewhere. There were ten in New York, 61 at Key West, Florida; 15 at Tampa, two at Ocala, two in Philadelphia, and one each at New Orleans, Jacksonville, Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, and St. Augustine. There were also six in the island of Jamaica, two in Mexico, and one in Hayti.

The multiplication of these organizations and their increasing activity did not escape the observation of the Spanish government, which realized that revolution was in the air, and that it behooved it to do something to counteract it if it was to avoid losing the last remains of its once vast American empire. Accordingly early in 1893 the Cortes at Madrid enacted a bill extending the electoral franchise in Cuba to all men paying each as much as five pesos tax yearly. The Autonomist party at first regarded this concession with doubt and suspicion, but finally decided to give it a trial and participated in the elections held under the new law. But the result was unsatisfactory; owing, it was openly charged, to gross intimidation and frauds by the Government. The sequel was increased activity of the revolutionary organizations.

The Spanish government was vigilant and strenuous.{4} It sent more troops to Cuba, and it sent a large part of its navy to American waters, to patrol the Cuban coast, to cruise off the Florida coast, and to guard the waters between the two, in order to prevent the sending of filibustering expeditions or cargoes of supplies from the United States to Cuba. These efforts were so efficient that no important expeditions got through. But in spite of that fact an insurrection was started in Cuba in the spring of 1893.

The leaders were two brothers, Manuel and Ricardo Sartorius, of Santiago de Cuba. On April 24 they put themselves at the head of a band of twenty men and, at Puernio, near Holguin, they proclaimed a revolution. The next day they were joined by eighteen more, and by the time they had marched to Milas, on the north coast, the band was increased to 300, while other bands, in sympathy with them, were formed at Holguin, Manzanillo, Guantanamo, and Las Tunas. This movement, however, was purely a private enterprise of the Sartorius Brothers; in which they presumably expected to be supported by a general uprising of the Cuban people. As a matter of fact there was no such uprising. The people seemed indifferent to it. The juntas and clubs in New York and elsewhere knew nothing about it. The Executive Committee of the Autonomist Party in Cuba adopted resolutions condemning it and giving moral support to the Spanish government, and the Cuban Senators and Deputies in the Cortes at Madrid took like action.

Meantime the Spanish authorities in the island acted promptly and with vigor. The Captain-General summoned a council of war on April 27, and sent troops to the scene of revolt, and directed the fleet to exercise renewed vigilance to prevent aid from reaching the insurgents from the United States. The next day martial{5} law was proclaimed throughout the province of Santiago de Cuba, and four thousand troops, divided into seven columns, were in hot pursuit of the revolutionists. The numbers of the latter rapidly dwindled through desertions and in a couple of days all had vanished save the two brothers and 29 of their followers. On May 2 these all surrendered, on promise of complete pardon, a promise which was fulfilled, and on May 9 martial law was withdrawn and the abortive revolt was ended.

This occurrence moved the Spanish government, however, to further efforts to placate the Cubans, and in 1894 the Minister for the Colonies, Senor Maura, proposed a bill for the reorganization of the insular government. The six provincial councils were to be merged into a single legislature. With this was to be combined an Executive Council, or Board of Administration, to administer the laws; consisting of the Governor-General as President, various high civil and military functionaries, and nine additional members named by Royal decree. This arrangement was strongly opposed and finally defeated, whereupon Senor Maura resigned. Later in the same year the Cabinet was reorganized with him as Minister of Justice and with Senor Abarzuza, a follower of Emilio Castelar, the Spanish Republican leader, as Minister for the Colonies. The Prime Minister was Praxedes Sagasta, the leader of the Spanish Liberals, and a statesman of consummate ability. There was much complaint by Conservatives that the Captain-General in Cuba, Emilio Calleja, favored the native Autonomists over the Loyalists or Spanish party. Despite this, Senor Abarzuza, after taking much counsel with the Prime Minister and others, planned radical action in behalf of Cuban autonomy, hoping to establish a new regime which, he fondly hoped, would allay discontent, abate{6} disaffection, and confirm Cuba in her traditional status of the Ever Faithful Isle. Accordingly he entered into long and earnest consultation with the leaders of the various political parties in Spain, including the Carlists and Radical Republicans, and also with representative Loyalists and Home Rulers—otherwise Spaniards and Autonomists—of Cuba. Never, indeed, was a more thorough attempt made to secure the judgment of all parties and thus to frame a measure that would be satisfactory to all. Moreover, an exceptionally reasonable and conciliatory spirit was shown by all the leading politicians, of all shades of opinion, so that it seemed for a time that the resulting bill, framed by Senors Sagasta and Abarzuza, would be accepted with scarcely a word of criticism and would mark the opening of a new era in colonial affairs.

JULIAN DEL CASAL

During his brief life, from 1863 to October 21, 1891, Julian del Casal, invalid and misanthrope though he was, made a brilliant record in the world of letters, and gave to Cuban poetry its greatest modern impulse. Most of his life was spent in penury, on the meagre earnings of a hack journalist, but his memory is cherished as that of one of the foremost men of letters of his time.

The bill was drafted. It was in purport a West Indies Home Rule bill. Its salient feature was the establishment in Cuba of an Insular Council, which would be the local governing body of the colony. Of it the Spanish Viceroy, or Captain General, would be the President; and of course he would continue to be appointed by the Crown. Of the members of the Council, one half would be appointed by the Crown, from among certain{7} specified classes of the inhabitants of Cuba; and the other half would be elected by the suffrages of the Cuban people. This body would have, subject only to the veto of the Captain-General, control of all insular affairs, including supervision of provincial and municipal councils. It would also, subject to the approval of the Madrid government, legislate for the regulation of immigration, commerce, posts and telegraphs, revenue, and similar matters. On the face of it the measure promised great improvement in the government of the island, and the investing of the people of Cuba with a very large measure of self-government, both legislative and executive. It was the last and probably the best voluntary attempt ever made by Spain to give Cuba self-government.

Unfortunately for Spain there were two fatal flaws in the scheme; one subjective, one objective. The former was the fact that the appointment of half the members of the Council by the Crown would assure in that body a constant majority devoted to and subservient to the Crown, and that circumstance, together with the veto power, would prevent the possibility of any legislation not entirely pleasing to Madrid. That made the thing quite unacceptable to all Cubans whose aim was the independence of the island or even genuine autonomy and home rule. The other flaw was the fact that while Cuban Loyalists and Autonomists were called into consultation over the bill, and gave it their approval, Cuban advocates of Independence were not called; they would not have entered into conference; and they were irrevocably committed against any scheme that did not provide for the complete separation of the island from Spain and the creation of an entirely independent government. The bill was adopted by the Spanish Chamber of Deputies by a practically unanimous vote, on February 14, 1895, and{8} was likewise adopted by the Senate. In Cuba it was regarded by the Autonomists as not satisfactory, in that it retained too much power for the Crown. As for the party of Cuban Independence, it looked upon it as unworthy of serious consideration. Ten days after its passage by the Chamber of Deputies, the Cuban Revolution was proclaimed.

The reproachful comment has been made by some writers that the Cuban leaders started the revolution at that date, February 24, 1895, in order to defeat the beneficent designs of Spain in granting autonomy to the island, and that if they had not done so, the Abarzuza law would have been generally accepted and successfully applied, and Cuba would have remained a colony of Spain, contented, loyal and prosperous. For this strange theory there is no good foundation. It had been made perfectly clear for more than two years preceding that no such arrangement—indeed, that nothing short of complete separation from Spain—would satisfy the Cuban people. Moreover, preparations had been copiously made for the revolution, long before the passage of this measure. Cubans in the United States, of whom there were many, had contributed freely of their means for the purchase of arms and ammunition. There were considerable stocks of arms in Cuba which had remained concealed since the Ten Years' War, and these had been added to by surreptitious shipments from the United States. It is a matter of record that considerable quantities of first rate Mauser rifles were obtained from the arsenals of the Spanish government, being secretly purchased from custodians who were either corrupt or in sympathy with the revolutionists. Efforts were also made to land expeditions from the United States. One{9} formidable party was to have sailed from Fernandina, Florida, a month before the passage of the Abarzuza law, but it was checked and disbanded by the United States authorities.

The year 1895 was not inappropriate for the beginning of a war which should annihilate the Spanish colonial empire and should add a new member to the world's community of sovereign nations. In almost every quarter of the globe great things were happening. At the antipodes Japan was completing her crushing defeat of China and was thus bringing herself forward as one of the great military and naval powers. The ancient empire of Siam was establishing an enlightened constitutional and parliamentary system of government. In Africa the epochal conflict between Boer and Briton was developing inexorably, and France was about to achieve the conquest of Madagascar. In Europe, Nicholas II was newly seated upon the throne of the Czars, and the strange resignation of the Presidency by Casimir-Perier threw France into such a crisis as she had scarcely known before since the foundation of the Republic. Nearer home, Peru and Ecuador were convulsed with revolution, and the controversy between Venezuela and British Guiana began to loom acute and ominous. In such a setting was the War of Cuban Independence staged.

The foremost director of that war, its organizer and inspirer, was José Marti; one of those rare geniuses who have appeared occasionally in the history of the world to be the incarnation of great ideals of justice and human right. He was indeed many times a genius: Organizer, economist, historian, poet, statesman, tribune of the people, apostle of freedom, above all, Man. In himself he united the virtues, the enthusiasm and the energising vitality{10} which his countrymen needed to have aroused in themselves. To his disorganized and disheartened country he brought a magic personality which won all hearts and inspired them all with his own irrepressible and indestructible ideal, National Independence.

Marti was a native Cuban, born in Havana on January 28, 1853. In his mere boyhood he became an eloquent and inspiring advocate of the ideal to which he devoted his life and which he did so much to realize; and at the outbreak of the Ten Years' War, when he was scarcely yet sixteen years old, the Spanish government recognized in him one of its most formidable foes and one of the most efficient propagandists of Cuban independence. For that reason, before he had a chance to enter the ranks of the patriot army, he was deported from the island and doomed to exile. He made his way to Mexico, thence to Guatemala, and there, a lad still in his teens, became Professor of Literature in the National University of that country—a striking testimonial to his erudition and culture. After the Treaty of Zanjon he was permitted to return to Cuba, but he was one of those whom the Spanish government most feared, and he was therefore kept under the closest of surveillance by the police. It was not in his nature to dissemble, or to be afraid. He quickly came before the public in a series of memorable orations, memorable alike for their sonorous eloquence, their cultured erudition, and their intense patriotism; in which he set forth the deplorable state in which Cuba still lay, after her ten years' struggle for better things, and the need that the work which had been so bravely undertaken by Cespedes and his associates should be again undertaken and pressed to a successful conclusion. His orations seemed to have the effect attributed to Demosthenes in his Philippics: They made{11} his hearers want to take up arms and fight against their oppressors.

This of course brought upon him the wrath of Spain. He was arrested, and since he was altogether too dangerous a person to be set free in exile, he was carried a close prisoner to Spain. But he quickly made his escape and found asylum in the United States of America; and there his greatest work for Cuba was achieved. Porfirio Diaz had invited him to make his home in Mexico, where he might have risen to almost any eminence in the state, but he declined. I must go, he said, to the country where I can accomplish most for the freedom of Cuba from Spain. I am going to the United States. In New York City, where he made his home, he engaged in literary work, and was for some time a member of the staff of the New York Sun. But above all he devoted his time, thought, strength and means to organizing the Cuban revolution.

He gathered together in the Cuban Revolutionary Party all the surviving veterans of the Ten Years' War, Cuban political exiles—like himself—the remnants of Merchan's old Laborers' Associations, and welded them into a harmonious and resolute whole. He also traveled about the United States, in Mexico and Central America, and in Jamaica and Santo Domingo, wherever Cubans were to be found, rousing them to patriotic zeal and organizing them into clubs tributary to the central Junta in New York. In Cuba itself many such clubs were organized, in secret, which maintained surreptitious correspondence with the New York headquarters.

We have already mentioned some of those with whom he surrounded himself: Tomas Estrada Palma, the President of the Junta; Gonzalo de Quesada, its Secretary, who lived to see the Republic established and to become{12} its Minister to Germany, where he died; Benjamin F. Guerra, its Treasurer; and Horatio Rubens, its Counsel, who had been trained in the law office of Elihu Root. Others of that memorable and devoted company were General Emilio Nunez, afterward Vice-President of the Cuban Republic; and Dr. Joaquin Castillo Duany, formerly an eminent physician in the United States Navy, who had distinguished himself in the relief of the famous Jeannette Arctic expedition. These two had charge of the filibustering or supply expeditions which were surreptitiously dispatched from the United States to Cuba. At first General Nunez had charge of all, but when Dr. Duany came from Cuba the work was divided, and the former devoted himself to the coast from Norfolk to the Rio Grande, while the latter supervised that from Norfolk to Eastport, Maine. Dr. Duany and his brother had been prominent citizens and officials in Santiago de Cuba. As soon as the War of Independence began they joined the patriot forces, and Dr. Duany was made Assistant Secretary of War in the Provisional Government. As such, he ran the Spanish blockade of the island, in company with Mr. George Reno, another ardent patriot, and bore to New York authority from the Provisional Government for the issuing of $3,000,000 of Cuban bonds. He also carried with him in a little satchel $90,000 in cash, which had been contributed by various patriotic residents of Cuba.

Another of Marti's associates in New York was Dr. Lincoln de Zayas, a brilliant orator, afterward Secretary of Public Instruction of the Cuban Republic; a man greatly loved by all who knew him. Dr. Enrique Agramonte, brother of that gallant Ignacio Agramonte who was a leader in the Ten Years' War and was killed in that conflict, was a member of the Junta in New York,{13} who inspected and selected all the men who were to go on filibustering expeditions; a keen judge of the physical, mental and moral fitness of all the candidates who presented themselves before him. Colonel José Ramon Villalon was also active in the Junta; and he has since been Secretary of Public Works at Havana under President Mario G. Menocal. Nor must Ponce de Leon, a publisher and bookseller, of No. 32 Broadway, New York, be forgotten. His office was frequently the meeting place of the conspirators, if so we may call the patriots, and he and his two sons—one a physician, the other in charge of the archives of the Cuban government—were among the most earnest and efficient workers for the cause of independence.

JOSE RAMON VILLALON

José Ramon Villalon, Secretary of Public Works, was born at Santiago in 1864. He was sent to Barcelona to be educated and later studied at the Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa., where he graduated as civil engineer in 1899. On the outbreak of the war he accompanied General Antonio Maceo on his famous raid in Pinar del Rio province, and was present at the engagements of Artemisa, Ceja del Negro, Montezuelo, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel of engineers. While serving under Maceo he designed and constructed the first field dynamite gun, now in the National Museum in Havana. After the war he was made Secretary of Public Works under the military government of General Leonard Wood. Col. Villalon is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Mining Engineers, the Academy of Sciences (Havana), and the Cuban Society of Engineers.

The ideal of Marti and these associates was unequivocally that of Cuban independence. They had no thought of accepting or even considering mere autonomy under Spanish sovereignty, or any promises of reforms in the insular government. They might not have been inexorably opposed to annexation to the United States, had opportunity for that been offered. They might have accepted{14} it, in fact, for the sake of getting entirely away from Spain; for that would at least have meant independence from Spain. But as a matter of fact, annexation was not considered. It was never discussed. It formed no part of the programme, not even as an alternative.

Although a poet and a seer, Marti was one of the most practical of men. He realized with Cicero that endless money forms the sinews of war. One of his first cares, therefore, was to finance the revolution. To that end he made a direct appeal to Cuban workmen—and women, too—wherever he could get into contact with them, to give one tenth of their weekly wages to the cause of Cuban independence. Probably never before or since in the world's wars has such a system of voluntary tithing been so successfully conducted. It seemed as though every Cuban in the United States responded. Wealthy men gave one tenth of their large incomes, and Cuban girls in cigar factories gave one tenth of their small wages. In many cases they did more, giving one day's wages each week. Indeed, this is said to have been the general rule in the cigar and cigarette factories of the United States. Next to Marti himself, Lincoln de Zayas was perhaps the most successful money raiser. Numerous speakers and canvassers went to all parts of the country where Cubans might be found, soliciting