Home › Origin and Conduct of Cuban Wars › Origin and Conduct of Cuban Wars: Bayamo

Origin and Conduct of Cuban Wars: Bayamo

Women that are not living at their own homes, or at the house of their relatives, will collect in the town of Jiguani, or Bayamo, where maintenance will be provided. Those who do not present themselves will be conducted forcibly.

The foregoing determinations will commence to take effect on the 14th of the present month.

Bayamo, April 4, 1869.

EL CONDE DE VALMASEDA.

Secretary Fish, in a letter to Mr. Hale, Minister to Spain, May 11, 1869, protested "against the infamous proclamation of General, the Count of Valmaseda." Diacio de la Mariana of Havana is quoted as saying, May 9th: "Said proclamation does not even reach what is required by the necessities of war in the most civilized nations."

There has been much bitter denunciation of Spain in the conduct of the Cuban wars, that has not had the vitality of the terrible preface of the "Book of Blood," because that which gives power to the volume is the astonishing array of specifications--names, dates, circumstances--furnished in many cases by Spanish authorities.

The Edinburg Review of January, 1873, contains an elaborate statement of the grievances and hostilities in Cuba, throwing light on the long war, which is the pivot on which the histories of Cuban sorrows turn. The Review says: The revolution in the mother--country in September, 1868, which drove the Bourbon dynasty from the throne, seems to have precipitated the insurrection in Cuba. It was natural that it should have stirred men's minds in the colony at a time, especially when all were looking forward eagerly to the inauguration of political reforms, or to an attempt to shake off the pressing weight of Spanish rule. The first hope seems to have been that the new government would ameliorate the condition of the colony, in which still a not unimportant party clung to the desire for such reforms as would enable them to remain connected with the country of which they had so long formed a part. This hope was disappointed, and the insurgents did not wait long before they took action.