"Article XXVIII. The House of Representatives shall not abridge the Freedom of Religion, nor of the Press, nor of Public Meetings, nor of Education, nor of Petition, nor any inalienable Right of the People.
"Article XXIX. The Constitution can be amended only by the unanimous concurrence of the House of Representatives."
The next day the Convention proceeded to the election of officers of the House of Representatives. Salvador Cisneros was elected President; Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz and Antonio Zambrana were elected Secretaries, and Miguel Betancourt and Eduardo Machado, Vice-Secretaries.
MANUEL QUESADA
Manuel Quesada, for a time military head of the Ten Years' War, was born in Camaguey in 1830. He was banished for political reasons and went to Mexico, where he fought under Benito Juarez. In 1868 he joined the patriot army and became one of its leaders; in 1870 being its commander in chief. Failing to carry the war into Pinar del Rio, he went on a trip to Venezuela, and trying to return was pursued by a Spanish cruiser and took refuge in Santo Domingo. On his final return to Cuba he was deposed from his command for being too ambitious and autocratic, whereupon he went to the United States and thence to Venezuela, where he died in 1886.
The seventh article of the Constitution was immediately put into practice, when the convention, constituting itself a House of Representatives, confirmed the confidence of the Cuban peoples in Cespedes, by appointing him President of the Republic of Cuba, while Manuel Quesada was made Commander-in-Chief of the Army. President Cespedes immediately assumed his office and issued this proclamation:
"To the People of Cuba:
"Compatriots: The establishment of a free government in Cuba, on the basis of democratic principles, was the most fervent wish of my heart. The effective realization of this wish was, therefore, enough to satisfy my aspirations and amply repay the services which, jointly with you, I may have been able to devote to the cause of Cuban independence. But the will of my compatriots has gone far beyond this, by investing me with the most honored of all duties, the supreme magistracy of the Republic.
"I am not blind to the great labors required in the exercise of the high functions which you have placed in my charge in these critical moments, notwithstanding the aid that may be derived from other powers of the state. I am not ignorant of the grave responsibility which I assume in accepting the Presidency of our new-born Republic. I know that my weak powers would be far from being equal to the demand if left to themselves alone. But this will not occur and that conviction fills me with faith in the future.