Home › The Crisis in Cuba › The Crisis in Cuba: Havana--and

The Crisis in Cuba: Havana--and

There is that which is fortunate in the appointment of General Lee to be consul-general at Havana--and more, the personal representative of the president and cabinet. He is not a stranger in Cuba, having visited Havana when governor of Virginia. There is one very important aspect in which it is well that he is a Southern man, and it is not that having once taken up arms against the country of which he is now the representative, he may not be expected to regard rebels with sentimental severity, even if there is something in that; but it is that as a man, raised in the presence and surrounded by the influences of African slavery, he has expert knowledge of colored people and their relations to the white people, and what he says of the relations and influence of that race in Cuba will have weight. No man of greater facilities, to judge from information and inherent understanding of racial diversities, contentions and disposition, could be found; and he will be able to testify with confidence that the Cuban revolt is not a negro insurrection, and to disabuse the American mind on that subject. James Creelman, the correspondent who denounced the butchery of the Chinese by victorious Japanese soldiers at the taking of Port Arthur, sends from Havana lists of the names of peaceable men who have been slaughtered by Spanish soldiers near Havana, and says the shock which cracked the massive walls of the palace was "the first answer of the Cuban nation to the Spanish campaign of massacre of unarmed, peaceable inhabitants of the interior." The report of wholesale murder is made upon personal investigation, and announced with the opinion that it is impossible General Weyler could be informed, and continues: "Everywhere the breadwinners of Cuba are fleeing in terror before the Spanish columns, and the ranks of life are being turned into ranks of death, for the Cuban who has seen his honest and harmless neighbors tied up and shot before his eyes, in order that some officer may get credit for a battle, takes his family to the nearest town or city for safety, and then goes out to strike a manly blow for his country." The witnesses of butcheries shrink and grow silent, and are dumb with fright when questioned, and if these stories are true, there never was a land of serpents and wild beasts and savages where death ever lurked so near. While the economic questions are being considered, Mr. Creelman says: "The insurgents are turning the Island into a waste of ashes, and the Spanish soldiers are slaughtering non-combatants." A responsible planter tells that within three weeks several laboring men have been shot by the roadside on his premises. This man is responsible in the sense of reliability--not that he would dare to tell the truth in public, for he would sacrifice his life if he did. The highway east of Havana is crowded with fugitives reporting murders--fourteen inoffensive men tied up and shot the other day near Guanabacoa and "the sentries on limits of the towns refuse to allow any outsider to go where he is likely to witness the work of the firing squad. Guanabacoa is packed with bewildered and half-starved country people. Many of them sleep in the streets."