We have said that there was no consideration of annexation to the United
States, on the part of the organizers and directors of the Cuban War of
Independence. Neither was there much if any thought of intervention by
the United States in Cuba's behalf; though that was what ultimately
occurred. No doubt, if ever a fleeting thought of that passed through a
Cuban patriot's mind, he esteemed it "a consummation devoutly to be
wished." But it was not reckoned to be within the limits of reasonable
possibility. Certainly it was never discussed, and it may be said with
even more positiveness that there was never any attempt to bring it
about by surreptitious means. The charge was occasionally made, in
quarters unfriendly to the Cuban cause, that the Junta was endeavoring
to embroil the United States in a war with Spain. That was absolutely
untrue. No such effort was ever made by any responsible or authoritative
Cuban.
It might rather be said that the Junta was solicitous to avoid so far as
possible danger of complications between the United States and Spain.
For example, it did not encourage Americans to enter the Cuban army, but
discouraged them from so doing and often rejected them outright. An
expert ex-Pinkerton detective was employed by the Junta to serve
constantly in its New York office. His duties were in part to detect if
possible any spies or Spanish agents who might come in and want to
enlist with, of course, the intention of betraying the cause. But he
also did his best to dissuade all but Cubans from enlisting. He was
under directions from the Junta to warn all American applicants, of whom
there were many, that they had better not enter the Cuban service:
First, because they did not realize the formidable and desperate
character of the undertaking in which they were seeking to participate;
second, because the Junta could give them no assurance of pay, or even
of food; and third, because they were sure soon to grow tired of the
arduous discouraging, up-hill campaign which was before them. The only
men who were wanted, and the only men who were generally accepted were
Cubans, whose patriotic interest in the island would enable them to
endure cheerfully what would be intolerable to an alien. They were
believed by the Junta to be the only men who would permanently stand the
test.
As a matter of fact only a very few Americans were accepted; probably
not more than forty or fifty all told. They were accepted partly because
they were so insistent and persistent in their desires and demands, and
partly because of some qualifications which made them of special value.
They were chiefly sharpshooters who had formerly served in the United
States army. When they were accepted they were reminded that they were
forfeiting all claim upon the United States government for protection or
rescue, no matter what might befall them. Thus if they were killed or
captured and ill treated in any way by the Spanish they would be
debarred from appealing to the United States, and there would be no
danger of any friction between the United States and Spain on their
account.
The only way in which the Junta deliberately incurred the risk of
causing international trouble was in the organization and dispatching of
filibustering and supply expeditions from the United States to Cuba. Of
course, all such performances were illegal. Spain protested and raged
against them, and the United States government sincerely and
indefatigably strove to prevent them. But it was to no avail. The
expeditions kept going. For two years there was an average of one a
month, carrying men, arms and ammunition, and other supplies.
[Illustration: GEORGE RENO]
Another important traffic between Cuba and the United States was that in
information between the patriots in the island and the Junta in New
York. The chief agent in this perilous but essential work was Mr. George
Reno, who has since served in important capacities under the civil
government of the Cuban Republic. It was his duty periodically to run
the blockade between the little town of Guanaja and Nassau. The former
was a little place of a few hundred inhabitants on the Bay of Sabinal,
on the northern coast of Camaguey; and the latter was the capital of New
Providence Island in the British Bahamas, the favorite resort of
blockade runners during the Civil War in the United States, and since
then the terminus of a cable line running to Jupiter, on the Florida
coast. At Nassau Dr. Indalacio Salas, a Cuban physician, who had lived
there many years, represented the Junta and acted as a sort of Cuban
postmaster; receiving letters and messages from Cuba and forwarding them
to the United States, and vice versa.
This contraband messenger service between Cuba and Nassau was one of the
romantic features of the campaign of which the public knew nothing. The
trips were made in a little sloop-rigged yacht, carrying three or four
men, and while they afforded no spectacle to the public eye and did not
figure in the news as did various filibustering expeditions, they were
often of vital importance to the patriot cause, and they were fraught
with much peril. The passage of several hundred miles was made across
the Great Bahama Bank and the Tongue of Ocean; perilous waters dotted
with reefs and rocks and subject to violent storms, and closely watched
at the south by Spanish cruisers. The portion of the trip nearest the
Cuban coast was generally made at night, to avoid the Spaniards, but the
darkness added to the peril in other respects.
This service was the chief though not the sole means of communication
between the Cuban patriots and the rest of the world. Some
correspondence was smuggled out of Havana on American steamers, but that
was perilous work and was seldom attempted. Some was carried by a Cuban
sailor in a little cat-rigged boat, with which he made trips when
occasion offered between some point on the southern coast of Oriente and
the island of Jamaica. On these trips, both from Nassau and Jamaica,
were carried not only letters and communications of all sorts but also
important supplies of medicines, surgical instruments, and other small
articles which were often of indispensable value. The service was
therefore of the greatest possible value to the Cubans, and it was
arduous and perilous to those who rendered it. It was performed,
however, without remuneration or compensation of any kind, save the
satisfaction of aiding the patriot cause. The Cuban revolution had no
money with which to pay salaries, but all men served for the sake of
Cuba Libre.
The attitude of the people of Cuba toward the revolution, so far as at
this early date they knew what was going on, was varied according to
their occupations, interests and relationships. The professional
classes, the lawyers, physicians, educators, men of letters and others,
for the most part wished for complete separation from Spain, and aided
the cause of independence with their money and their influence. There
were, however, some of them, including not a few of the most estimable
and most patriotic men on the island, whose faith was not able to
forecast victory. They saw on the side of the Cubans lack of money, lack
of arms and ammunition, and lack of that direct connection with the
outer world which was indispensable for support; and on the side of
Spain plenty of money, equipment and communications, and an army of
200,000 trained soldiers thrown into a territory about the size of the
State of Pennsylvania, together with an inflexible resolution never to
surrender the island but to suppress every insurrection at no matter
what cost. It was surely not strange that they regarded such odds as too
formidable to be overcome, by even the most ardent and self-sacrificing
patriotism, and therefore thought that the course of greater wisdom
would be to persuade, compel or otherwise prevail upon Spain to bestow
upon the island a genuine and satisfactory measure of autonomy.
The merchants and commercial classes very largely consisted of
Spaniards, a fact which sufficiently indicates their attitude. They were
not only resolutely committed against the revolution, and indeed against
autonomy, but they were almost incredibly bitter against the Cuban
Independence party. It was from those classes that the notorious "Cuban
Volunteers" had been recruited in the Ten Years' war, men who, though
living in Cuba and enriching themselves from her resources, were "more
Spanish than Spain." They corresponded with the Tories of the American
Revolution, and not merely the Tories who sat in their chairs and railed
against the Revolution, but rather those who took up arms in the
British cause, and who allied themselves with the Red Indians with
tomahawk and scalping knife. The animus of these Spaniards in Cuba was
not, generally speaking, love of Spain, nor yet hatred of the Cubans,
but rather greed of gain. They were not patriotic, but simply sordid.
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.
The attitude of another important though less numerous and less
demonstrative class, the manufacturers of sugar and tobacco, varied
greatly according to the individual. Some were Spaniards; and they, like
the merchants, were inflexibly opposed to the revolution, for similar
reasons. Some were Autonomists, and they inclined toward compromise.
They did not want their lands to be ravaged and their cane fields and
buildings to be burned in war; not because they would hesitate at any
necessary sacrifice for the welfare of Cuba but because they regarded
such sacrifices as unnecessary. 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 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. They
were Marta Abreu, who became the wife of the Vice-President of the Cuban
Republic, and who died in France, and Rosalie Abreu, whose home is
preeminently the "show place" of Cuba and is perhaps the most beautiful
residence in all the tropical regions of the world. These women gave
large sums of money for the revolution and made many sacrifices for it,
beside running great risks of utter disaster to their fortunes. They
were both in Paris when news came of the death of Antonio Maceo, the
brilliant and daring commander who had carried the war westward into
Havana and Pinar del Rio and who fell in battle in the former province.
His death was a disaster well calculated to shake the fortitude of the
patriots, if not to strike them with despair. But immediately upon
hearing the news Marta Abreu sent a cable dispatch to Benjamin Guerra,
the Treasurer of the Junta, urging him not to be discouraged but to
"keep the good work going," and adding that she and her sister were each
mailing him a check for $50,000. Such a spirit was indomitable.
The small farmers of the island, or "guajiros," the peasantry and rural
workingmen, were strongly in favor of the revolution, although it meant
unspeakable hardships to them. They sent their families up into the
mountains, where they would be comparatively safe from the actual
fighting, and where the old men, the women and the children could
cultivate little patches of ground, planted with sweet potatoes, yucca
and other food plants, which would supply them with nourishment and also
contribute to the feeding of the patriot army. Then the men joined the
ranks of the revolutionary army. It should be added that among the most
eager recruits were many sons of Autonomists. Their fathers deprecated
the war, but the sons realized its necessity. There were even some sons
of Spanish Loyalists in the patriot army, who fought faithfully for the
Cuban cause against their own fathers.
The priesthood of the island was absolutely against the revolution and
in favor of maintaining the sovereignty of the Spanish crown in Cuba.
There may have been a few exceptions, of priests who not only favored
independence but who actually went into the field with the patriot army
and fought for it. But apart from them the Church was solidly for Spain.
The great majority of the priests had come from Spain, and remained
Spaniards at heart and in political sympathy. They preached from their
pulpits against the revolution, and undoubtedly exerted considerable
influence in that direction. That fact was not forgotten after the war,
and it explained the very general antipathy toward or at least lack of
sympathy with the Church which then and thereafter prevailed among the
men of Cuba. The women, even the most patriotic, largely remained
faithful to the Church and subject to its spiritual influence, but the
men renounced it because of what they regarded as its unfaithfulness to
the cause of Free Cuba.
There were at this time happily no racial nor partisan differences among
the patriots of Cuba. There were white men, there were negroes, and
there were those of mixed blood. But the same spirit of independence
animated them all, and they fought side by side in the field, and sat
side by side in council, with never a thought of prejudice. Antonio
Maceo, one of the most honored and trusted patriot generals, was a
mulatto, but he was regarded as the peer of any of the white commanders,
white men gladly served under him, and we have already seen how his
death was regarded by the Abreu sisters, who were aristocrats of the
purest Creole blood. It was only in later years, after Cuban
independence had been attained, that so much as an attempt was made at
the raising of race issues in Cuba, and then only through the exercise
of the most sinister and unworthy influences for sordid ends.
Nor were there partisan differences. Indeed at this time the Cuban
Independence Party was a harmonious unity. There were no symptoms of any
factional division. The rise of partisanship did not occur until after
the war of independence had been won and, if we may for a moment
anticipate the course of events, until it was realized that the United
States really meant to keep its word and make Cuba an independent
Republic. For, truth to tell, when the United States intervened in the
conflict between Cuba and Spain, in the spring of 1898, while there was
assured confidence throughout the island that the end of Spanish rule
was at hand, there was also a general belief that annexation to the
United States was inevitable. The great majority of the Cuban people
probably did not know of the pledge which was appended to the
Declaration of War, that the United States would withdraw and leave Cuba
to self-government, and they assumed that American intervention meant
American conquest and annexation. The comparatively few who did know
about it had little expectation that it would ever be fulfilled. Even if
the United States made the promise in good faith, something would happen
to prevent its being carried out. When at last it was found that the
United States was in earnest, and that Cuba was indeed to have
independence, just as though she had won it without aid, there was
surprise amounting almost to stupefaction, there was unbounded
exultation, and there was, unhappily, division of the people into
antagonistic parties. Of these we shall hear more hereafter.
Thus was the issue joined. The great mass of the Cuban people was united
and harmonious in its determination at last to achieve that independence
of the island for which so many men during so many years had wished and
worked and suffered. The Spanish party was implacable; and the
Autonomists were largely unsympathetic--not all, for some in time joined
the revolution; but the Cuban Independence party, comprising the large
majority of the population, was resolute and irrepressible in its
course.