"It was on the other hand impossible, according to my judgment and conscience, not to grant the first condition; not to do it was to postpone indefinitely the fulfilment of a promise made in our present constitution. It was not possible that this island, richer, more populous, and more advanced morally and materially than her sister, Porto Rico, should remain without the advantages and liberties long ago planted in the latter with good results; and the spirit of the age, and the decision of the country gradually to assimilate the colonies to the Peninsula, made it necessary to grant the promised reforms, which would have been already established, and surely more amply, if the abnormal state of things had not concentrated all the attention of government on the extirpation of the evil which was devouring this rich province.
"I did not make the last constitution; I had no part in the discussion of it. It is now the law, and as such I respect it, and as such endeavor to apply it. But there was in it something conditional, which I think a danger, a motive of distrust, and I have wished that it might disappear. Nothing assures me that the present ministry will continue in power, and I do not know whether that which replaces it would believe the fit moment to have arrived for fulfilling the precept of the constitution.
"I desire the peace of Spain, and this will not be firm while there is war or disturbance in the richest jewel of her crown. Perhaps the insurgents would have accepted promises less liberal and more vague than those set forth in this condition; but even had this been done it would have been but a brief postponement, because those liberties are destined to come for the reasons already given, with the difference that Spain now shows herself generous and magnanimous, satisfying just aspirations which she might deny, and a little later, probably very soon, would have been obliged to grant them, compelled by the force of ideas and of the age.
"Moreover, she has promised over and over again to enter on the path of assimilation, and if the promises were more vague, even though the fulfillment of this promise were begun, these people would have the right to doubt our good faith and to show a distrust unfortunately warranted by the failings of human nature itself.
"The not adding another one hundred thousand to the one hundred thousand families that mourn their sons slain in this pitiless war, and the cry of peace that will resound in the hearts of the eighty thousand mothers who have sons in Cuba who are liable to conscription, would be a full equivalent for the payment of a debt of justice."
February 21, 1878, saw the Cuban insurrection officially at an end. The Cubans laid down their arms and surrendered to the Spanish forces. On March 1, telegrams announcing this fact were received by the Cortes in Spain with the greatest rejoicing. On the next day a royal decree was published at Havana announcing that Cuba was to be accorded the same treatment which had been granted to Porto Rico; and many concessions were nominally made to the former insurgents. Cuba was to be allowed to have her own municipal government and city councils, and was to be granted representation in the Cortes, while a second decree was promulgated at Puerto Principe declaring the freedom of all slaves who had been born since the enactment of the measure of February 10, 1869, on the condition that within a month they presented themselves to the authorities for the proper legal procedure. Spain had so frequently gone on record, particularly in her efforts to enlist the sympathy of the United States Government, that she would, immediately on a determination of the war in her favor, declare the abolition of slavery, that she could not now very well give the lie to her assurances. The proclamation at Puerto Principe, however, contained the extremely unjust provision that all patriots who had taken part in the revolution would not receive compensation for the financial loss suffered in the freeing of their slaves, but that the loyal Spaniards would be indemnified. It is not difficult to picture how this provision must have impressed those patriots who had sacrificed everything in an effort to free themselves from that very rule which was now imposing such an unfair enactment upon them.
Official Spanish reports give the following table of their losses yearly during the Ten Years' War:
| Year | Force in Field | Total | Deaths |
| 1869 | 35,570 | 5,504 | |
| 1870 | 47,242 | 9,395 | |
| 1871 | 55,357 | 6,574 | |
| 1872 | 58,708 | 7,780 | |
| 1873 | 52,500 | 5,902 | |
| 1874 | 62,578 | 5,923 | |
| 1875 | 63,212 | 6,361 | |
| 1876 | 78,099 | 8,482 | |
| 1877 | 90,245 | 17,677 | |
| 1878 | 81,700 | 7,500 | |
| 81,098 |