The History of Cuba, vol. 3

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

"Publicly has the Spanish press hurled against Cuba the threat converting the island into ruin and ashes by liberating the slaves and unchaining against her the hordes of barbarian Africans.

"Publicly are impediments and difficulties imposed upon every individual, to restrain him from moving from place to place, and from exercising any branch of industry—no one being safe from arrest and fine, for some deficiency of authority or license, at every step he may take.

"Public are the taxes which have wasted away the substance of the island and the project of other new ones, which threaten to abolish all the products of its riches—nothing being left for the opinions and interests of the country.

"Outrages so great and so frequent, reasons so many and so strong, suffice not merely to justify, but to sanctify, in the eyes of the whole world, the cause of the independence of Cuba, and any effort of her people, by their own exertions, or with friendly aid from abroad, to put an end to the evils they suffer, and secure the rights with which God and nature have invested man.

"Who will in Cuba oppose this indefeasible instinct, this imperative necessity of defending our property, and of seeking in the institutions of a just, free and regulated government conditions on which alone civilized society can exist?

"The Peninsulars (natives of Spain) perhaps, who have come to Cuba to marry our daughters, who have here their children, their affections and their property, will they disregard the laws of nature to range themselves on the side of a government which oppresses them as it oppresses us, and which will neither thank them for the service nor be able, with all their help, to prevent the triumph of the independence of Cuba?

"Are not they as intimately bound up with happiness and interest of Cuba as those blood-natives of her soil, who will never be able to deny the name of their fathers, and who, in rising up today against the despotism of the government would wish to count upon their co-operation as the best guaranty of their new social organization and the strongest proof of the justice of their cause?

"Have they not fought in the Peninsula itself, for their national independence, for the support of the same principles for which we, the sons of Cuba proclaim, and which, being the same for men in all countries, cannot be admitted in one and rejected in another without doing treason to nature and to the light of reason, from which they spring?

"No, no—it cannot be that they should carry submissiveness to the point of preferring their own ruin, and the spilling of the blood of their sons and brothers, to be triumph of the holiest cause ever embraced by man—a cause which aims to promote their own happiness and to protect their rights and properties. The Peninsulars who adorn and enrich our soil, and to whom the title of labor gives as high a right as our own to its preservation, know very well that the sons of Cuba regard them with personal affection—have never failed to recognize the interest and reciprocal wants which unite the two—nor have ever held them responsible for the perversenesses of the few, and for the iniquities of a government whose infernal policy alone has labored to separate them, on the tyrant's familiar maxim—to divide and conquer.

"We, who proceed in good faith and with the noble ambition of earning the applause of the world for the justice of our acts—we surely cannot aim at the destruction of our brothers, nor at the usurpation of their properties; and far from meriting that vile calumny which the government will endeavor to fasten upon us, we do not hesitate to swear in the sight of God and of man that nothing would better accord with the wishes of our hearts, or with the glory and happiness of our country, than the co-operation of the Peninsulars, in the sacred work of liberation. United with them, we could realize that idea of entire independence which is a pleasing one to our minds; but if they present themselves in our way as enemies, we shall not be able to answer for the security of their persons and properties, nor when adventuring all for the main object of the liberty of Cuba, shall we be able to renounce any means of effecting it.