Home › First Events and Early Influences › First Events and Early Influences: Cubans

First Events and Early Influences: Cubans

He knew not what he had done, but had scanned the northern coast of the southern continent, and Cuba remained the most superb land he personally found in the New World he gave Spain; and it is more deeply identified with his memory than anything else he revealed to mankind, and richer than Cipango itself, as the tropics are richer than the temperate zones. The first three centuries of Cuban history did not, in a marked degree, develop the elements of discord between Spain and her richest colony, that in the latter half of her fourth century have proven so irrepressible and disastrous. The story of the Island for the earlier centuries would have been tedious had it not been for the incidents of external contention by which she was interested and influenced.

A volume appeared in New York, in 1850, that is regarded by the Cuban revolutionists as correctly defining their cause as it was at that time; and the argument of this work, "Cuba and the Cubans," was that the Island had been under martial law for a quarter of a century; the captain--general having been, in 1825, invested "with the whole extent of power granted to the Governors of besieged towns." This has been the state of the Island for nearly three quarters of a century, and it is the phrase of felicitation among the insurgents that now after one year's war they "besiege all the towns"--that is by land--the Spaniards holding only the soil of the country they cover with troops, and the cities commanded by their fleets. It is the Cuban boast, therefore, that they have "limited" the territory of the operation of martial law.

In the stories of Cuba after her first three hundred years, the importance of the United States, the great power close at hand, is continually manifest. This passage, from "Cuba and the Cubans," page 52, is an example: During the second period of democratic, or what was called constitutional government, which commenced in 1820, the Masonic societies came into vogue as they did in the mother country. They adopted different plausible pretexts--though to speak the truth, they were little more than clubs for amusement and revelry. One of them, called the "Soles de Bolivar," went so far as to discuss whether, in case of a Columbian invasion, it would be more expedient to avoid a collision in the presence of the slaves, by giving way peaceably before the invading army. Happily for Cuba, and certainly in consequence of the judicious interference of the United States, which foresaw in the preservation of its tranquility the advantages of a fruitful commerce, the invasion did not take place. And if the Island has since had to lament the gradual encroachments of the executive, in all the several branches of its politics and administration, it has also been preserved from the sanguinary results which the premature establishment of ultra free institutions has produced in all the numerous countries which once formed the dominion of Spain in America. For the difficulty of annexation, from the lesser influence the United States then possessed among nations, and the controlling importance of the shipping interest in that country.