The History of Cuba, vol. 3

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

"VII. The slaves of the Palisades, who may present themselves to the Cuban authorities, shall at once be declared free, with a right either to live among us or to remain among the mountaineers.

"VIII. The isolated refugees who may be captured, or who may, without the consent of their masters, present themselves to the authorities or military chiefs, shall not be received without consulting their masters."

Now this first government, of which Cespedes was made the chief, was merely, after all, a temporary affair, organized to provide ways and means for creating a more permanent body. Accordingly, on October 30, 1868, less than a month after the Declaration of Independence, Cespedes issued a proclamation declaring that his election to office had been only to provide for the time being an acting head of the provisional government; that he believed that the organization should at once take on the character of permanency; that he had no thought of imposing his will upon Cuba; that he realized that he had not been elected to his place by the suffrage of the Cuban people, and that he had no assurance that, had they been given an opportunity to individually express themselves, he would have been their choice; and that, therefore, since it was practicable for all loyal Cubans to assemble in their respective communities and by their suffrage constitute a permanent government, he would gladly abide by their decision, and, if they desired, relinquish the power with which they had entrusted him.

In response to this patriotic utterance, a convention was called, on April 10, 1869, at Guaimaro. The leaders of this first representative body of the Cuban people were the following: Miguel Gutierrez, Eduardo Machado, Antonio Lorda, Tranquilino Valdez and Arcadio Garcia, representing Villa Clara; Honorato Castillo, representing Sancti Spiritus; José Maria Izaguirre, representing Jugari; Antonio Alcada and Jesus Rodriguez, representing Holguin; and Salvador Cisneros, Francisco Sanchez, Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz, Miguel Betancourt Guerra and Antonio Zambrana, representing Camaguey.

At this convention, Cespedes resigned his position as provisional head of the government and commander-in-chief of the army, in order that some one might be regularly elected in his place, and in doing so he addressed his colleagues in the following memorable terms:

"Now that the House of Representatives, gathered from all parts of the Island, has been happily inaugurated in Guaimaro, it becomes from the moment of its organization the supreme and only authority for all Cubans, because it constitutes the depository of the people's will, sovereign of the present and controller of the future. All temporary power and authority ceases to have a rightful voice in Cuba from the very moment in which the wise democratic system, laying its solid foundations beneath the gigantic shadow of the tree of liberty, has come to endow us—after suffering the most iniquitous rule—with the most beautiful and magnificent of human institutions—a republican government.

"Unfeigned gratitude I owe to the destiny which afforded me the glory of being the first in Yara to raise the standard of independence, and the still greater though less merited satisfaction, to see crowded around me my fellow-citizens in demand of liberty, thus sustaining my weak arm and stimulating my poor efforts by their confidence. But another glory was reserved for me, far more grateful by my sentiments and democratic convictions—that of also being the first to render homage to the popular sovereignty.

"This duty fulfilled, having given an account to the fatherland of its most genuine representation of the work which with the assistance of its own heroic sons I had the good fortune to have commenced, it still behooves me, fellow-citizens, to fulfill another, not less imperious to my heart, of addressing my gratitude to you—to you, without whom my humble, isolated efforts would not have produced other fruit than that of adding one patriot more to the number of preceding martyrs for independence—to you, who, recognizing in me the principle rather than the man, came to stimulate me by your recognition of myself as chief of the provisional government and the liberating army.

"Fellow citizens of the Eastern Department, your efforts as initiators of the struggle against tyranny, your constancy, your sufferings, your heroic sacrifices of all descriptions, your privations, the combat without quarters which you have sustained and continue to sustain against an enemy far superior in armament and discipline, and who displays, for want of the valor which a good cause inspires, all the ferocity which is the attitude of tyranny, have been witnessed by myself, and so will remain eternally present to my heart. You are the vanguard of the soldiers of our liberties. I commend you to the admiration and to the gratitude of the Cubans. Continue your abnegation of self, your discipline, your valor, and your enthusiasm, which will entitle you to that gratitude and that admiration.

"Fellow citizens of the Western Department, if it has not been your good fortune to be the first in grasping arms, neither were you among the last in listening to the voice of the fatherland that cried for revolution. Your moral aid and assistance responded from the very outset to the call of your brethren of the Eastern and Central Departments. Many of you hastened to the scene of revolution to share our colors. At this moment, despite the activity displayed by the Spanish Government in your districts, where its resources and the number of its hosts render more difficult the current of the revolution, that same Government trembles before your determined attitude, from the Las Villas to Havana, and from Havana to the western boundary, and your first deeds of arms were the presage to you and the brave and worthy sons of the Eastern and Central Departments of new and decisive triumphs.