The History of Cuba, vol. 3

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

"When the iniquity of the government has not been able to find any ostensible grounds for persecution, it has had recourse to cowardly arts and snares to tempt its victims into some offence. Thus were various individuals of Matanzas entrapped into an ambuscade of the soldiery, by the pretext of selling them some arms, under circumstances which made them believe those arms were necessary for self-defence, against threatened attacks from the Peninsulars. Thus have sergeants and even officers been seen to mingle among the country people, and pass themselves off as enemies of the government, for the purpose of betraying them into avowals of their sentiments to the ruin of many persons so informed against as well as to the disgrace of military honor on the part of those who have lent themselves to so villainous a service.

"If the sons of Cuba, moved by the dread of greater evils, have ever determined to employ legitimate means of imposing some law, or some restraint upon the unbridled excesses of their rulers, these latter have always found the way to distort such acts into attempts at rebellion.

"For having dared to give utterances to principles and opinions, which, to other nations, constitute the foundation of their moral progress and glory, the Cubans most distinguished for their virtues and talents have found themselves wanderers and exiles. For the offence of having exhibited their opposition to the unlawful and perilous slave trade, from which the avarice of General O'Donnell promised itself so rich a harvest of lucre, the latter satiated his resentment with the monstrous vengeance of involving them in a charge of conspiracy with the free colored people and the slaves of the estates; endeavoring, as the last outrage that an immoral government could offer to law, to reason, or to nature, to prove the object of that conspiracy, in which they implicated whites of the most eminent virtue, knowledge, and patriotism, to have been no other than the destruction of their own race.

"All the laws of society and nature trampled under foot—all races and conditions confounded together—the island of Cuba then presented to the civilized world a spectacle worthy of the rejoicings of hell. The wretched slaves saw their flesh torn from them under the lash, and bespattered with blood the faces of their executioners, who did not cease exacting from their tortures denunciation against accomplices. Others were shot in platoons without form of trial, and without even coming to understand the pretext under which they were massacred. The free colored people, after having been first lacerated by the lash, were then hurried to the scaffold and those only escaped with life who had gold enough to appease the fury of their executioners. And nevertheless, when the government or its followers has come to fear some rising of the Cubans their first threat has been that of arming the colored people against them for their extermination. We abstain for very shame from repeating the senseless pretences to which they have had recourse to terrify the timid wretches! How have they been able to image that the victims of their fury, with whom the whites of Cuba had shared in common the horrors of misery and persecution, will turn against their own friends at the call of the very tyrant who has torn them in pieces? If the free colored people, who know their interests as well as the whites, take any part in the movement of Cuba, it certainly will not be to the injury of the mother who shelters them in her bosom, nor of those other sons of hers who have never made them feel the difference of their race and condition, and who, far from plundering them, have taken pride in being their defenders and in meriting the title of their benefactors.

"The world would refuse to believe the history of the horrid crimes which have been perpetrated in Cuba, and would reasonably consider that if there have been monsters to commit, it is inconceivable that there could so long have been men to endure them. But if there are few able to penetrate to the truth of particular facts, through all the means employed by the government to obscure and distort them, no one will resist the evidence of public and official facts.

"Publicly and with arms in his hands, did General Tacon despoil Cuba of the constitution of Spain, proclaimed by all the powers of the monarchy, and sent to be sworn to in Cuba, as the fundamental law of the whole kingdom.

"Publicly and by legislative act, was Cuba declared to be deprived of all the rights enjoyed by all Spaniards, and conceded by nature and the laws of nations the least advanced in civilization.

"Publicly have the sons of Cuba been cut off from all admission to the commands and lucrative employments of the State.

"Publicly are unlimited powers of every description granted to the Captains-General of Cuba who can refuse to those whom they condemn even the right of a trial and the privilege of being sentenced by a tribunal.

"Public and permanent in the island of Cuba, are those courts martial which the laws permit only in extraordinary cases of war, for offences against the State.