The History of Cuba, vol. 4

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

This contraband messenger service between Cuba and Nassau was one of the romantic features of the campaign of which the public knew nothing. The trips were made[{22}] in a little sloop-rigged yacht, carrying three or four men, and while they afforded no spectacle to the public eye and did not figure in the news as did various filibustering expeditions, they were often of vital importance to the patriot cause, and they were fraught with much peril. The passage of several hundred miles was made across the Great Bahama Bank and the Tongue of Ocean; perilous waters dotted with reefs and rocks and subject to violent storms, and closely watched at the south by Spanish cruisers. The portion of the trip nearest the Cuban coast was generally made at night, to avoid the Spaniards, but the darkness added to the peril in other respects.

This service was the chief though not the sole means of communication between the Cuban patriots and the rest of the world. Some correspondence was smuggled out of Havana on American steamers, but that was perilous work and was seldom attempted. Some was carried by a Cuban sailor in a little cat-rigged boat, with which he made trips when occasion offered between some point on the southern coast of Oriente and the island of Jamaica. On these trips, both from Nassau and Jamaica, were carried not only letters and communications of all sorts but also important supplies of medicines, surgical instruments, and other small articles which were often of indispensable value. The service was therefore of the greatest possible value to the Cubans, and it was arduous and perilous to those who rendered it. It was performed, however, without remuneration or compensation of any kind, save the satisfaction of aiding the patriot cause. The Cuban revolution had no money with which to pay salaries, but all men served for the sake of Cuba Libre.

The attitude of the people of Cuba toward the revolution, so far as at this early date they knew what was going on, was varied according to their occupations, interests[{23}] and relationships. The professional classes, the lawyers, physicians, educators, men of letters and others, for the most part wished for complete separation from Spain, and aided the cause of independence with their money and their influence. There were, however, some of them, including not a few of the most estimable and most patriotic men on the island, whose faith was not able to forecast victory. They saw on the side of the Cubans lack of money, lack of arms and ammunition, and lack of that direct connection with the outer world which was indispensable for support; and on the side of Spain plenty of money, equipment and communications, and an army of 200,000 trained soldiers thrown into a territory about the size of the State of Pennsylvania, together with an inflexible resolution never to surrender the island but to suppress every insurrection at no matter what cost. It was surely not strange that they regarded such odds as too formidable to be overcome, by even the most ardent and self-sacrificing patriotism, and therefore thought that the course of greater wisdom would be to persuade, compel or otherwise prevail upon Spain to bestow upon the island a genuine and satisfactory measure of autonomy.

The merchants and commercial classes very largely consisted of Spaniards, a fact which sufficiently indicates their attitude. They were not only resolutely committed against the revolution, and indeed against autonomy, but they were almost incredibly bitter against the Cuban Independence party. It was from those classes that the notorious "Cuban Volunteers" had been recruited in the Ten Years' war, men who, though living in Cuba and enriching themselves from her resources, were "more Spanish than Spain." They corresponded with the Tories of the American Revolution, and not merely the Tories who sat in their chairs and railed against the Revolution,[{24}] but rather those who took up arms in the British cause, and who allied themselves with the Red Indians with tomahawk and scalping knife. The animus of these Spaniards in Cuba was not, generally speaking, love of Spain, nor yet hatred of the Cubans, but rather greed of gain. They were not patriotic, but simply sordid. With Cuba under Spanish domination, they were enabled to amass great wealth, and they wanted such conditions and such opportunities of enrichment continued. That was not an exalted attitude, and it was naturally odious to the Cuban patriots who were serving without pay and sacrificing their all for the independence of the island and for the attainment of a degree of material prosperity as well as of civic and spiritual enfranchisement immeasurably beyond the sordid conceptions of these selfish time-servers.

The attitude of another important though less numerous and less demonstrative class, the manufacturers of sugar and tobacco, varied greatly according to the individual. Some were Spaniards; and they, like the merchants, were inflexibly opposed to the revolution, for similar reasons. Some were Autonomists, and they inclined toward compromise. They did not want their lands to be ravaged and their cane fields and buildings to be burned in war; not because they would hesitate at any necessary sacrifice for the welfare of Cuba but because they regarded such sacrifices as unnecessary. Some were members of the Cuban Independence party, and they cordially and eagerly supported the revolution; saying: "Let our fields and buildings be burned. If it is necessary in order to free the island that our property shall be ruined, let it be ruined!"

This patriotic attitude of some of the great property-owners, who had most to lose through the ravages of war[{25}] but who were ready to risk all, was finely displayed in the very midst of the conflict. There were in the Province of Santa Clara two very wealthy Cuban women, sisters. They were Marta Abreu, who became the wife of the Vice-President of the Cuban Republic, and who died in France, and Rosalie Abreu, whose home is preeminently the "show place" of Cuba and is perhaps the most beautiful residence in all the tropical regions of the world. These women gave large sums of money for the revolution and made many sacrifices for it, beside running great risks of utter disaster to their fortunes. They were both in Paris when news came of the death of Antonio Maceo, the brilliant and daring commander who had carried the war westward into Havana and Pinar del Rio and who fell in battle in the former province. His death was a disaster well calculated to shake the fortitude of the patriots, if not to strike them with despair. But immediately upon hearing the news Marta Abreu sent a cable dispatch to Benjamin Guerra, the Treasurer of the Junta, urging him not to be discouraged but to "keep the good work going," and adding that she and her sister were each mailing him a check for $50,000. Such a spirit was indomitable.

The small farmers of the island, or "guajiros," the peasantry and rural workingmen, were strongly in favor of the revolution, although it meant unspeakable hardships to them. They sent their families up into the mountains, where they would be comparatively safe from the actual fighting, and where the old men, the women and the children could cultivate little patches of ground, planted with sweet potatoes, yucca and other food plants, which would supply them with nourishment and also contribute to the feeding of the patriot army. Then the men joined the ranks of the revolutionary army. It should[{26}] be added that among the most eager recruits were many sons of Autonomists. Their fathers deprecated the war, but the sons realized its necessity. There were even some sons of Spanish Loyalists in the patriot army, who fought faithfully for the Cuban cause against their own fathers.

The priesthood of the island was absolutely against the revolution and in favor of maintaining the sovereignty of the Spanish crown in Cuba. There may have been a few exceptions, of priests who not only favored independence but who actually went into the field with the patriot army and fought for it. But apart from them the Church was solidly for Spain. The great majority of the priests had come from Spain, and remained Spaniards at heart and in political sympathy. They preached from their pulpits against the revolution, and undoubtedly exerted considerable influence in that direction. That fact was not forgotten after the war, and it explained the very general antipathy toward or at least lack of sympathy with the Church which then and thereafter prevailed among the men of Cuba. The women, even the most patriotic, largely remained faithful to the Church and subject to its spiritual influence, but the men renounced it because of what they regarded as its unfaithfulness to the cause of Free Cuba.

There were at this time happily no racial nor partisan differences among the patriots of Cuba. There were white men, there were negroes, and there were those of mixed blood. But the same spirit of independence animated them all, and they fought side by side in the field, and sat side by side in council, with never a thought of prejudice. Antonio Maceo, one of the most honored and trusted patriot generals, was a mulatto, but he was regarded as the peer of any of the white commanders, white men gladly served under him, and we have already seen[{27}] how his death was regarded by the Abreu sisters, who were aristocrats of the purest Creole blood. It was only in later years, after Cuban independence had been attained, that so much as an attempt was made at the raising of race issues in Cuba, and then only through the exercise of the most sinister and unworthy influences for sordid ends.

Nor were there partisan differences. Indeed at this time the Cuban Independence Party was a harmonious unity. There were no symptoms of any factional division. The rise of partisanship did not occur until after the war of independence had been won and, if we may for a moment anticipate the course of events, until it was realized that the United States really meant to keep its word and make Cuba an independent Republic. For, truth to tell, when the United States intervened in the conflict between Cuba and Spain, in the spring of 1898, while there was assured confidence throughout the island that the end of Spanish rule was at hand, there was also a general belief that annexation to the United States was inevitable. The great majority of the Cuban people probably did not know of the pledge which was appended to the Declaration of War, that the United States would withdraw and leave Cuba to self-government, and they assumed that American intervention meant American conquest and annexation. The comparatively few who did know about it had little expectation that it would ever be fulfilled. Even if the United States made the promise in good faith, something would happen to prevent its being carried out. When at last it was found that the United States was in earnest, and that Cuba was indeed to have independence, just as though she had won it without aid, there was surprise amounting almost to stupefaction, there was unbounded exultation, and there was,[{28}] unhappily, division of the people into antagonistic parties. Of these we shall hear more hereafter.