Among the Cubans—The Impending Downfall of Cuban Slavery.
The absence of certain officers compelled the officials of our party to
make a delay of nearly a week at Key West, which we improved by steaming
across to Cuba. Looking back now over the delightful days spent in the
“Ever Faithful Isle,” I recall, out of all the pleasant memories, one or
two only of which it seems needful here to speak. The bull fight in
Havana, with which the pious Spaniards closed their celebration of
Ascension Day; the witchery of dark-browned, liquid-eyed Senoritas; the
fashion and beauty of the evening fulldress display on the
volante-crowded drive around the Plaza del Armas, and to the
Captain-General’s country palace; the mysteries of shopping before
breakfast, with clerks bringing out the goods into the street to your
volante; the delicious absurdity of doing business in English or French
with a shopkeeper who knows nothing but Spanish; the tropical scenery of
the interior, the glorious palm groves, the lordly sugar plantations,
the miseries of the slaves and the profits of their masters—have not all
these been faithfully written down in every book about Cuba for the last
dozen years?
But, after a tour of many hundred miles among emancipated slaves, it was
a noteworthy sensation to be plunged again into the midst of a system of
slavery as bad as the worst form which our nation ever suffered. The
slaves seemed spiritless, where the emancipated negro had only been
purposeless. The one was without hope, where the other had been
disturbed only by the vague universality of his hopes. Both were polite,
for courtesy seems native to the African disposition; but the courtesy
of the freedman was cheerful, while that of the slave was only patient
and submissive.
In Charleston and Savannah, however, we found the negroes in their
churches. In Havana they were congregated, on a holiday, among the
whites at the bull fight, while the flag of “most christian” Spain
floated above this entertainment she had provided for her humble
subjects, and Spanish bayonets guarded the entrance and preserved order
throughout the assemblage. Our emancipated negroes had everywhere been
striving for school-houses, and eagerly seizing every opportunity for
learning to read, while the aspiration of every parent was that his
children, at least, might acquire ‘white folks’ larnin’; these Cuban
slaves knew so little about education that they seemed to have no
special desire for it.
* * * * *
And yet it was not easy to tell how much of this apathy was reality, and
how much of it was only cunning. Unless intelligent Cubans are greatly
deceived, and, indeed, unless the keen-scented Spanish police are
themselves at fault, many of the negroes are beginning to form secret
societies among themselves, with a view to organization for a struggle
for freedom. Their masters believe them to be well acquainted with the
essential facts in our own great conflict, and the whole slave community
is said to be fermenting with ideas engendered by American emancipation.
With slavery summarily wiped out over an extent of adjacent country
equal to a dozen Cubas, it is natural that they should begin to look for
their own day of jubilee.
Meanwhile, the elements of revolution exist among the people far more
conspicuously than in the days of Lopez and the “fillibusteros.” The
antagonism between the Creoles and the Spaniards is greater than ever,
and betrays itself in many unexpected ways. At Matanzas I was
expressing, to a vivacious Creole lady, my surprise at the numbers of
well-dressed and apparently respectable people who attended the bull
fight in Havana, and cheered the matadors in a frenzy of delight at the
brutal bloodshed. “You didn’t see a Cuban there,” she exclaimed,
“unless, perhaps, some ignorant negroes, who, of course, can not be
expected to be better than their masters. Such gloating over
cold-blooded barbarity doesn’t belong to the Creoles; you find it only
among the native-born Spaniards.”
The same aversion came out again and again. This municipal regulation
ought to be amended. “But our Spanish masters never learn anything.”
That institution is far behind similar ones in the United States. “But
how could you expect anything better while we have to import officers
from Old Spain to govern us?” The Custom House rules are needlessly
vexatious. “But we shall manage things better when Creoles control
Cuba.” An adjacent sugar planter wouldn’t make so bad a neighbor. “But
then, you know, he is a Spaniard.” A certain ball would be pleasant to
attend, but the Spaniards are to have the management of it; and sundry
young men are quietly “cut” by their fair Creole friends for presuming
to go.
Where a class, regarded with such feelings by the people, is held in
power by influences from without, and exerted at a distance of thousands
of miles, revolution is only a question of time. Some very intelligent
Creoles now profess to believe it comparatively near. The downfall of
our rebellion has given a fresh impulse to liberal ideas, and stimulated
the feeling of resistance to the Spanish authorities. The swarms of
secret societies among the Creoles have sprung up anew. Even on the
north coast they are said to be abundant; but it is among the wealthy
and isolated young planters of the south, removed from the
embarrassments of commerce, and with ample leisure for intrigues, that
they find their especial development. Here, the monotony of plantation
life is relieved by plots against the Spaniards; and the possibility of
growing sugar by free labor is set over against the necessity for the
present constant importation of negroes from Africa, in defiance of the
remonstrances and active efforts of Christendom.
Heretofore the Spanish authorities have had a short and simple method of
quieting the rumors of rebellion. Arms were deposited under guard at
various points throughout the island, and the significant declaration
was made, that Spain would rather lose slavery than lose Cuba. Visions
of armed negroes, drunk with their new-found liberty, and eager to
please those who had conferred it by butchering their enemies, have
crowded before the eyes of the Creoles and paralyzed their plans. But
they have even an army of nearly two hundred thousand slaves in the
United States, as orderly, as well disciplined, and, in the main, as
efficient as any other troops; and they have naturally concluded that
such allies are as available for their purposes as they were for ours.
Convinced that their hope of success lies, therefore, in a hearty
alliance with the slaves, they are said to be ready for the abolition of
slavery, and anxious to encourage and hold communication with the negro
secret societies.
Meantime the Spaniards, alive to the dangers which our success has
brought to all slaveholding countries, and fully aware of the wishes, if
not of the plottings of the Creoles, are themselves looking to the
slaves as allies for the coming struggle. The Captain-General, himself,
declared within the week of our visit, that the time could not now be
far distant when Spain would voluntarily decree the emancipation of her
slaves.
The negroes thus stand between two chances of freedom. An attempt at
revolution, therefore, is certain to insure their emancipation; and that
side will probably be successful, which secures their confidence, and
thus their aid. Whether a rising of the Creoles, such as many of them
now hope to bring about at some not very distant period, would or would
not be successful, may admit of doubt; but it would seem that in either
event, slavery in Cuba—the cruelest system of slavery now in
existence—is henceforth doomed. Our Proclamation of Emancipation bore
wider blessings than they knew who signed it. See appendix (D.)
* * * * *
All along the coast we had been hearing of the “Stonewall,” and, truth
to tell, there seemed to have been no small panic about her.[25] She had
recently been surrendered to the Spanish authorities, and was lying in
the harbor of Havanna. Our party went on board and inspected her.
Captain Merryman gave it as his opinion (and the Spanish naval
authorities agreed with him), that a single one of our first-class
wooden ships of war could have sunk her. The Rebel game of brag had been
played in her case, even more conspicuously than usual, and an abortion
of wood and iron that could neither sail, steam nor fight, and was only
fit for decoying unarmed and unsuspecting merchantmen under her guns,
had been magnified into an iron-clad, before which our whole
South-Atlantic squadron was to be swept away!
* * * * *
Blunders in foreign languages are the common entertainment of all
travelers; but one of our party at Matanzas achieved a success in this
line, which may fairly be considered uncommon. The Vice-Consul-General,
the Consul at Matanzas, and some Cuban ladies, together with our own
party, had gone out to the Valley of the Yumuri. Altogether we had six
or seven volantes. Returning in the evening, mine happened to be the
last in the procession. My companion had a theory of his own about the
Spanish language, to wit: that all you had to do to make a Spaniard
understand you was to add an “o” to every English word. Seeing one of
the gleaming bugs, which strangers put in little cages, and carry off as
curiosities, lit on the shoulder of our volante driver, he conceived
this a good opportunity, and straightway shouted, “_Catcho buggo_.” Some
word, faintly resembling one or the other of these, as we were afterward
told, means, in Spanish, “faster.” The poor Cuban, perched on the back
of the forward horse, eight or ten feet in front of us, looked around in
astonishment, only to be met by the renewed exclamation, “Buggo,
_buggo_, I say!” Ahead of him were six volantes, filling up the narrow
road; we were at the top of a steep, stony hill, nearly two miles long;
the road sides were precipitous, and even the track was filled with
obstructions; but behind was the savage looking “Americano,” shouting,
“Buggo, buggo.” So with a crack of the whip over the horse in the
thills, and a cruel plunge of the spur into the heaving flank of the
free one, away we went, past the nearest volante, and over the stones
down the hill; looking back to see how his passengers appreciated his
performance, the driver found one of them laughing immoderately, and the
other still screaming “Buggo, buggo.” Greatly encouraged he gave the
horses an extra lash, and whirled by the next volante, and the next, and
the next. The example was contagious, the rest whipped up, and meantime
we dashed ahead, careening over the sides of the hill, bounding off the
great stones in the track of the wheels, jolting and clattering along at
break-neck pace, past every volante; past amazed muleteers, coming in
with their burdens of forage; past groups of countrymen, lassoing their
young cattle; past the sword-bearing farmers, riding out from town to
their country homes; past astonished negroes, and stupidly staring
coolies on the roadside; across the bridge and into the narrow streets
of the town; nearly running over some of the stately Senoritas at the
Plaza del Armas, astounding the grave Spaniards, upsetting coolies that
loitered about the crossings, raising such a racket as apparently
Matanzas hadn’t seen for a twelve-month, and finally drawing up, seven
volantes in succession, with unprecedented clatter, and whirl of dust,
at the door of the “Leon d’ Oro.”
The moment we stopped, my persistent companion pounced upon the poor
volante-driver, exclaiming “Buggo, buggo, I say.”
Of late, the cave near Matanzas has been much talked of, and all
American tourists are urgently advised to visit it. They will find much
that is beautiful, and some lofty passages deserving to be called grand;
but whoever has seen our own great caves in the West will be apt to come
away from that of Matanzas disappointed.
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Footnote 25:
A panic which absolutely led to the extinguishment of the lights in
sundry light-houses along the South-Atlantic coast, to prevent the
dreaded pirate from running in and destroying our fleets.