The History of Cuba, vol. 4

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

At the beginning of American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence, Theodore Roosevelt resigned the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, which he had filled with distinction and to the great profit of the country, in order to organize from among the cowboys and frontiersmen of the West his famous regiment of "Rough Riders." But he would not himself accept the supreme command of it. His unerring judgment of men led him to select Leonard Wood for the Colonelcy, under whom he was himself glad to serve as Lieutenant-Colonel. So it was that Wood first went to Cuba, as Colonel of the First Regiment of United States Cavalry Volunteers. There soon followed the achievements at Guasimas and at San Juan Hill, to which reference has already been made, in recognition of his services in which on July 8, 1898, he was promoted to be Brigadier General, and on December 7 following to be Major General of Volunteers. It may be added that he was promoted to these same ranks in the regular army respectively on February 4, 1901 and August 8, 1903.

With these antecedents, on September 24 he entered upon the task of governing Santiago and the Province of Oriente. It was a position of unique responsibility and[{142}] power. The President's order made it incumbent upon him to administer the existing municipal laws so far as in his own judgment they were properly applicable to the new state of affairs. That was all. Otherwise he was thrown absolutely upon his own resources, with no treaty obligations or government promises to bind him. He was simply a "benevolent despot," intent upon tranquillizing and rehabilitating that vast eastern province of Cuba by methods of his own devising. It was a region at once the most unruly and the most impoverished in Cuba, and it had for its capital a plague-smitten city. For six months he labored there, and in that short period he so far advanced the work of reconstruction that thereafter Oriente served as an example and a model for all the other provinces of Cuba. Sympathetic, alert, untiring, frank, without vanity or ostentation, resolute, diplomatic, and always supremely just, General Wood's personality stood to the people of Cuba for qualities seldom if ever before associated with the occupant of the governor's palace, while his energy in fighting disease, relieving distress, reviving industry and maintaining order revealed to them as the Spanish régime never had done the beneficence of enlightened government. It would be impossible to estimate too highly the value of his services during those few months at Santiago, in commending to Cubans the benevolent purposes and attitude of the Americans toward them and in disclosing to them the vast material and moral benefits which would accrue to them through self-government wisely administered.

He began his work at Santiago in gruesome circumstances. An epidemic of smallpox and yellow fever was raging, and clouds of smoke hung over the city from the funeral pyres where were being burned many of the bodies for which burial was impossible. The city was reeking[{143}] with filth. Half the people were threatened with starvation. Lawlessness and complaints of grievances were rife. He had to be at once sanitarian, steward and judge. He labored heroically at all three tasks, and performed them so well that in a few weeks Santiago seemed like a new city. Of course there was much to do in other places in the province. In Holguin there were three thousand cases of smallpox, of which he treated 1,200 in hospitals. He sent thither as nurses 600 thoroughly vaccinated immunes, not one of whom contracted the disease. Hundreds of infected buildings, of flimsy construction, were burned, while all others were thoroughly disinfected, and the epidemic was conquered.

Early the next year General Wood sought a well earned rest in a brief visit to his former home in Boston, leaving, as he thought, affairs in Santiago in a securely satisfactory condition. But he was compelled to hasten back in July, 1899, to deal with another outbreak of disease. On his arrival he found both the city and his own army camp in the grip of malignant yellow fever. It was a time for heroic action, and that was what he performed. In a day he removed his troops to healthful places on the adjacent hills, and then subjected the city to such a cleansing and scientific sanitation as neither it nor any other Cuban city had ever known. The island and the world looked on with interest, to see if thus he could cope with and suppress the epidemic.

He succeeded. Not yet had the theory of Dr. Carlos J. Finlay, that mosquitoes were the sole propagators of the disease, been practically tested and applied, though it had been propounded by that eminent Cuban physician many years before. That immortal achievement was postponed for Messrs. Reed, Carroll, Agramonte and Lazear to effect, under General Wood's subsequent administration[{144}] at Havana. But even without it, by means of strenuous sanitation, the epidemic of July, 1899, was conquered, and Santiago was made clean and sound.

Another achievement of General Wood's at Santiago in the latter part of 1898 proved highly successful and was soon afterward extended to the other provinces of the island. This was the organization of the Rural Guards, a force which became invaluable for the policing of the rural portions of the island; just as Pennsylvania and some others of the United States are cared for by State Police. General Wood selected for this service officers and soldiers of the Cuban Army in the War of Independence who were recommended for their good character and efficiency. By the end of the year 1898 he had about 300 of these troopers patrolling the roads of Oriente, in the districts where such guardianship was most needed, with admirable results. The value of this service was observed and appreciated by the officers of the other provinces, and at the beginning of 1899 the system was introduced into all the provinces excepting Matanzas, where the same purpose was served by a mounted police force maintained by the larger municipalities. In the city of Havana the Military Governor, General Ludlow, held a conference with General Mario G. Menocal, of the Cuban Army, who had been invited to become Chief of Police in that city under the American administration, and with him worked out the details of the organization of Rural Guards in the suburbs of the capital and the rural portions of Havana Province. They formed a force of 350 men for service there, and thus quickly made all that region, even in the more or less disturbed period immediately following the war, noteworthy for its security and orderliness. When at the end of the American occupation the Rural Guards were transferred to the Cuban[{145}] Government, they comprised 15 bodies, numbering 1,605 officers and men, stationed at 247 different posts.

Meantime American occupation and administration were established throughout the island. Immediately upon the transfer of sovereignty on January 1, 1899, John R. Brooke, Major General commanding the Division of Cuba, and Military Governor, issued a proclamation to the people of the island. He told them that he came as the representative of the President, to give protection to the people and security to persons and property, to restore confidence, to build up waste plantations, to resume commercial traffic, and to afford full protection in the exercise of all civil and religious rights. To the attainment of those ends, all the efforts of the United States would be directed, in the interest and for the benefit of all the people of Cuba. The legal codes of the Spanish sovereignty were to be retained in force, with such changes and modifications as might from time to time be found necessary in the interest of good government. The people of Cuba, without regard to previous affiliations, were invited and urged to cooperate in these objects by the exercise of moderation, conciliation and good-will toward one another.

The island was divided for administrative purposes into seven departments, corresponding with the provinces and with the city of Havana forming the seventh. The commanders of these departments, under General Brooke, were: Havana City, Gen. William Ludlow; Havana Province, Gen. Fitzhugh Lee; Pinar del Rio, Gen. George W. Davis; Matanzas, Gen. James H. Wilson; Santa Clara, Gen. John C. Bates; Camaguey, Gen. L. H. Carpenter; Oriente, Gen. Leonard Wood. A civil government was organized on January 12, by the appointment of the following Cubans as Ministers of State: Secretary[{146}] of the Department of State and Government, Domingo Mendez Capote; Secretary of Finance, Pablo Desvernine; Secretary of Justice and Public Instruction, Jose Antonio Gonzalez Lanuza; Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce, Industries and Public Works, Adolfo Saenz Yanez. Later in the spring of that year the provinces of Havana and Pinar del Rio were united in one department, as were Matanzas and Santa Clara, and Camaguey and Oriente.

GONZALEZ LANUZA