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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Rescue Cuba now / Gerrit Smith, 1873

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

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Call number: Smith 575

"Rescue Cuba Now."

GERRIT SMITH

1873.

LET CRUSHED CUBA ARISE.

Substance of the Speech Delivered in Syracuse,
July 4th, 1873.

In our FOURTH of JULY celebrations there are two events, which, far above all other events, we come together to celebrate. One of these is the deliverance of our country, nearly a century ago, from political despotism, and the other is the practical recognition by our nation, a few years since, of the grand doctrine that "all men are created equal." I might rather say its practical recognition of this grand doctrine wrought out into the grander fact of the deliverance of four millions of our countrymen from the yoke of slavery.

But how can we best prove to the world that we celebrate these two events in our hearts as well as with our lips? I answer that we can best prove it by showing that we sympathize with those peoples amongst whom this twofold bondage, from which we have escaped, still exists. There are still many such peoples on the earth - many who still suffer from political slavery or domestic slavery or from both. One of these peoples is very near to our country - and this day will not be in vain either to them or to us if we shall use it in kindling our pity and our prayers for them.

The island of Cuba is less than a hundred miles from us. Look at her on the map. She lies at the feet of this great nation ; and lies there as it were imploring our mercy. She is, probably, at once the most fertile and beautiful island on the globe. God has dealt very bountifully with her but man has dealt very cruelly with her. Her vast aboriginal population melted rapidly away under new diseases and under the heavy tasks, which Spanish greed of gain imposed upon it. History says that in the year 1853 not one Indian was left upon the island. Some had escaped to Florida ; some had committed suicide. But the most of them had disappeared before wasting toil and sweeping disease. Poor Africa, the prey of Christendom for centuries, was taxed to supply the place of the Indians. Negro slavery succeeded to Indian slavery. With the exception of the few brief and small footholds which England and France acquired in Cuba, she has, from the time of her discovery, been ruled by Spain, and invariably by a rod of iron. From year to year, Spain has, under the terrors and tortures of the lash and under other terrors and tortures, drawn from poor Cuba all that she could possibly be made to yield. Spanish hunger has never ceased to

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feed on Cuban fatness. But it is only in the last five years that the sufferings and sorrows of Cuba have reached their climax. During this period Spain has sent some seventy thousand soldiers to Cuba. These, along with some thirty thousand Spaniards on the island, she has employed to rivet the chains of slavery upon four hundred thousand negroes and to slaughter all, both whites and blacks, who should dare to resist her authority. Cuban diseases and Cuban valor account for the destruction of nearly the whole of these seventy thousand soldiers. Very few of them have lived to return to Spain. On the other hand quite as many of the insurgents have fallen. Spain spares none of her Cuban prisoners ; and even women and children do not always escape her murderous rage.

Now, why, in the light of these facts, should we not sympathize with Cuba, and make this Fourth of July beautiful and blessed by expressing our sympathy with her? Does the objector say : "Charity begins at home, and that there are enough objects just around us to exhaust our beneficence ?" But if charity begins at home, it nevertheless does not end at home. For my own part, I welcome the idea that charity has no home but is ever on the wing in quest of objects needing her relief and comfort. Say not that the Cuban is not our countryman. The good Samaritan, so far from confining his charity to his countrymen, extended it to those of even a hostile country. By the way, Cuba, by force of geographical position and indissoluble commercial ties, is a part of our country. Is it said that international law forbids our helping the Cuban ? If it does, then away with international law. If international law thus wars upon our nature and demands the suppression of its righteous sympathies, then accursed be international law. That is law, which harmonizes with nature. That is no law, which does violence to nature. Strictly speaking, the world has not, as yet, international law. Each nation decides for herself how she shall deal with other nations. But let me here say that I believe there will be, and that too at no distant day, a real international law - one that shall express the joint and just and fraternal sense of all the leading nations.

A few years ago, our Government, whilst sternly denying all favor to Cuba, allowed Spain to build in the harbor of New York and suppl with munitions of war thirty gunboats. That they were to be used in carrying on her infernal war against the poor Cubans was as plain as day. Now, if we have laws for this wickedness still in force, then we should hasten to repent of them and to repeal them. But we have not such laws ; and, in showing this favor to Spain and this disfavor to Cuba, we went in the face of our laws, and went back upon our better days.

It is true that by our Congressional Statute of 1794 Spain would not be prohibited from fitting out vessels in our waters to be used in subduing her insurgent colony. But in the year 1817 another and very different law on the subject of neutrality was enacted by Congress. The law of 1794 does not mention a colony. But the law of 1817 forbids the fitting out in our waters of vessels to be used against any state or any colony with which we are at peace.

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This law puts a colony on the same footing with a state. It no more allows our waters to be used in a war against a colony with which we are at peace than against an independent state or nation with which we are at peace. The law is perfectly plain. Nevertheless, plain as it is, there are learned gentlemen who seem to insist that it was enacted solely in the interest of the independent state or nation. But the law, not only does not read as they say it does, but the circumstances attending its enactment forbid such a reading of it. What were these circumstances ? At the time the law was enacted, the Spanish colonies in America were struggling to cast off the yoke of Spain and to become free and independent states. Moreover, the government and people of our country were warmly in sympathy with these struggling colonists. How strange, if in these circumstances we should have enacted laws against, instead of in favor of, the colonies ! One thing more in this connexion - no other man was so earnest, eloquent and efficient an advocate of the cause of these Spanish colonies as Henry Clay. He has the credit of having carried through this law. Suppose you that he thought it to be a law discriminating against the colonies ? Preposterous supposition ! It is true that this law was, by its own limitation, to expire in two years. But so well pleased were the American people with its provisions in question, that in one year they were re-enacted in a permanent law, which has neither been repealed nor modified.

Now, why is it that our Government has not lived up to the requirements of its own law? Why is it that it has suffered vessels of war to go from our shipyards against the Cubans, and, this too, whilst sparing no pains to shut out all pity and all succor from these oppressed and outraged brethren ? I hope it is for some worthier reason than to propitiate a nation by helping her to sacrifice her colony. Nevertheless, what good reason can we plead for helping Spain to prolong slavery in Cuba and to carry on wholesale murder there ?

Why has not our Government accorded belligerent rights to the Cuban Because, as say some of our statesmen, the insurgents have amounted to no more than a mob. Surely, they are more than a mob, who have carried on a tear for nearly five years against a strong and warlike nation, and this, too, with steadily increasing prospects of ultimate success. Surely, a cause which has enlisted the sympathies of all but a mere handful of the native Cuban population - a cause which, during all these years, has maintained a constitutional form of government, and which, at the very beginning of its existence, was honored by a sincere and solemn decree of the abolition of slavery, should not be spoken of as the movement of a mob. And some of our statesmen belittle the progress of the Cubans, and excuse the apathy of our Government toward them, by the cry that the insurgents have no ports. It is true that, although they hold a great part of the island, they have no ports. The Spanish fleet, recruited to our shame from our shipyards, controls all the ports. Nevertheless, may not the insurgents be recognized as carrying on a war ? Our southern brethren carried on a war,

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yes and a very effective war, against us, although they had no ports - not so much as one port into which to bring a prize. The three or four ports they so bravely and persistingly contended for were so closely blockaded as to be of little or no value to them. In our revolutionary war our fathers had literally no ports. Nevertheless, though England was mistress of the seas, we won from her our liberties. Thus a people, determined and brave, can not only carry on a war without ports, but even a conquering war. A people, more determined and brave than the Cuban warriors, there never were - nor, alas, a people more heartlessly forsaken by a calculating christendom. The nations of Europe recognized the belligerent rights of our revolutionary fathers. Even Spain came to their help - and, this too, though, like the Cubans, they had no ports. Years ago, our Government should have admitted not only the belligerent rights of the Cubans, but their national independence also.

I close with saying that, in this very strange and very sad default of our Government, the people must take the Cuban matter into their own hands. President Grant has repeatedly spoken right words regarding this abominable war of Spain upon Cuba. From every part of the land must come up the cry of the people for right action to follow these right words. Moreover, our whole people should incessantly cry in the ears of thrice guilty, thrice barbarous, thrice bloody Spain, the words of Jehovah to Pharaoh :"LET MY PEOPLE GO! LET MY PEOPLE GO!! "We of Syracuse and its surroundings, who, for half a century, have, quite as much as any other communities, been taught to welcome the solidarity of the human race and the doctrine that every man whatever his clime or color, and be he Cuban or American, is our brother, are emphatically bound to call every people my people. Never, until they reached success, did our old abolitionists cease to ring in the ears of the American slaveholder : "Let my people go ! Let my people go ! ! "And never until the Spanish despot and Spanish slaveholder have yielded, should we cease to ring in their ears : "Let my people go! Let my people go ! !"

At the close of Mr. Smith's Speech, Alderman Gardner offered the following Resolution:

"Resolved, That we deeply sympathize with the oppressed and outraged Cubans, and that we call on our Government to delay no longer to acknowledge their belligerency, if not indeed their independence also."

Mayor Wallace, the President of the day, then put the Resolution to vote. It passed unanimously. From the vast assembly there came not up one dissenting voice.

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SPAIN - CUBA.

In a speech, made in February, 1861 in the Capitol at Albany and printed in the New York Tribune, the position was taken that France and England and the other nations were bound to intervene and put an end to American slavery. The argument, which issued in this position, was that mankind being a unit, and the whole world being charged with the care of the whole world, every part of the human family is responsible for the huge and persistent wrongs suffered in any part of it. The conventional arrangement which divides the people of the earth into nations, and leaves to each of them the ordinary government of itself, was admitted to be necessary. Nevertheless it was held that this arrangement does not authorize a moment's abdication of the world's government of the world, nor a moment's neglect on the part of that wide and universal government to supervise the workings of the subordinate or national governments. The great sacred principal, which lies at the base of this all-comprehensive government, and out of which such government grows, is that by Divine appointment every man is the brother and keeper of every other mail. The argument admitted that it is not for this universal government to take cognizance of all wrongs - of such as are temporary and of such as are comparatively small. It must look to the national governments to correct these; and it must always be patient, even generously patient, with those governments. But in the presence of such gigantic crimes as slavery, the inquisition, the thuggee and other monstrous outbreaks against human rights, this world government must act promptly and effectually, or justly be held responsible for them.

This position taken in the speech referred to was, of course, disapproved by many as unpatriotic and even traitorous. It was, however, true and called for. Better was it thus to testify against a wicked nation, even though it be our own, that had imbruted and worse than murdered many millions and that was determined to imbrute and worse than murder many more millions, than to be disloyal to humanity and heaven. But if intervention was right in the case of these high crimes in our own country, with all possible emphasis is it allowable, yes demanded, in the case of the higher, more heinous and more persistent crimes in Cuba. For Cuba is of all the earth the land of slavery and slaughter. One of our eloquent men has well said that the record of Spain in that unhappy island is a river of blood with a border of gold. She has, indeed, sought gold there at the cost of a never-ceasing flow of blood.

When I ascribe to Cuba the pre-eminence in crimes and horrors, I make no account of such comparatively little things as the summary and murderous disposition of scores of the crew and passengers of the Virginius, the murder of the school boys for playing in the cemetery of Havana or the murder of Speakman and Wyeth. These were but some of Spain's mere

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sips of blood. This pre-eminence consists in that broad and deep current of her cruelties, which, in its sweep through nearly four centuries, has left of the vast number of natives she found upon the island and of all their descendants not so much as one individual. Las Casas' history of these unparalleled cruelties gives but a few specimens or small sections of them. This pre-eminence consists, too, in her enslaving of Africans, many millions of whom have gone tip from that blood-soaked island to testify at the bar of God against the cruellest type of slavery the world ever saw. What further justifies the ascription of this pre-eminence is the fact that Spain still holds in Cuba several hundred thousand slaves, and holds them, too, not only in defiance of the well-nigh universal sentiment of Christendom but of that decree of the Revolutionary government of the island, which, five years ago, abolished all the slavery existing upon it. By the way, how cruel and causeless the suspicion still entertained by some honorable men of the honesty of this decree ! There is not one fact to impeach, but there are innumerable facts to attest, the perfect sincerity of its authors. Right here let me say that nothing can be more absurb than to look to Spain for good faith in the matter of slavery. She is the nation, that was so base as to give her promise to Great Britian to abandon the slavetrade and that, after being paid much money for the lying promise, did nothing whatever toward fulfilling it. And what still further entitles Spain to this pre-eminence in wickedness in her destroying, within the last five years, the lives of nearly a hundred thousand native Cubans, who had to resist her because they could no longer bear her heavy iron yoke. This destruction of life is so great, because Spain, whatever she may do elsewhere, spares the life of no prisoner in Cuba.

Surely, surely, if there were ever a case where the nations are bound to intervene for the rescue of a most cruelly crushed people, the poor peeled and persecuted Cubans present such a case. Amongst the many reasons for it are the following :

First. At the rate the population and wealth of this exceedingly fertile and beautiful island are wasting away, she would, ere long, become a thinly peopled desert.

Second. Scarcely more does Cuba need to get rid of Spain than Spain to get rid of Cuba. Spain is fast wasting her men and money in her attempt to re-subjugate the native Cubans; and the attempt is not more expensive than vain ! She can never overcome the revolutionists. For five years she has put forth her frantic and infernal efforts to this end, and has yet been continually getting further and further from it. The revolutionists possess, or at least control, more than half the territory of the island ; and of the hundred thousand soldiers she has sent to subdue them, very few (thanks to the Cuban climate as well as to Cuban valor !) have lived to return. The revolutionists can never be at peace with Spain. They can never forgive nor forget the matchless wrongs that goaded them into revolution. It is, in a word, for the life of Spain as well as for the life

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of Cuba, that the nations insist on her abdicating the government of Cuba. Her merciless and greedy rule of Cuba has for ages been the great clog to the prosperity of Spain - especially to her advancement in all that invests a nation with dignity and moral grandeur.

Third. This intervention and rescue would be such an upward step in the history of mankind as would effectually warn the wicked in every part of the world not to trample upon any portion of mankind. It would serve mightily to make human nature sacred and glorious in the eyes of all. Heaven forbid that the most favorable opportunity there has ever been for this universal or world-government to make a signal and impressive manifestation of its care for all the children of men, and to assert its supremacy nations, may not be allowed to pass away unimproved! Now is the time to bless the whole earth by an example which will tell upon the whole earth. Rescue Cuba now, and therein will a warning to the wicked go down through all the ages. Rescue Cuba now, and there will probably never be such another land of sufferings and sorrows to rescue. On the other hand there will but too probably be in any another such land, if the appeal which wronged and wretched Cuba makes to the nations shall be ignored by them.

Fourth. This proposed action would be pleasing to the Great Father of us all because it would be an emphatic and sublime recognition of the human brotherhood, and of the equal rights of all His children.

Fifth. Cavillers may stigmatize this intervention and rescue as war. But it would be a war of fraternity and love, in which a selfish war, instead of finding countenance, would find but rebuke and shame. The spirit of hell has much to do with ordinary wars.In this war would be the spirit of heaven. It may be added in this connexion that but little blood would be shed in this truly "holy war." If only Spain were held back, Cuba with her fifteen hundred thousand well united people, including of course all her slaves, would quickly free herself from the thirty or forty thousand Spanish butchers in her island.

Let then Great Britian or America or both, or some other nation or nations to whom it might be as convenient, go forth in the name of the nations and the God of the nations to deliver poor bleeding Cuba from her cruel thraldom ; and let there be no delay in this work of wisdom and love - a work whose blessed effect will be to bring man nearer to man and earth nearer to heaven. I would here say that it is all important for such effect that this work be and be seen of all men to be entirely and sublimely disinterested. To this end, whatever nation shall have a part in delivering Cuba should pledge itself in advance not to annex her to itself nor to suffer such annexation, unless Cuba shall, after a period of say some five or ten years, insist upon such annexation. No ulterior object should accompany - the undertaking to make Cuba absolutely free and independent.

Idle and worse than idle - even very wicked - is all this talk about settling the Virginius matter with Spain and then letting Cuba remain in

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the hands of her torturer and murderer. What she would hereafter do with Cuba is but too plain in the light of what she has heretofore done with her.

Nor is there an wisdom in the advice to delay decisive action regarding Cuba until the Spanish Republic is consolidated. The probability of such consolidation is exceedingly slight. No nation has poorer materials for a Republic than has Spain. I see that some of our prominent old abolitionists look to the Spanish Republic and especially to the influence of that admirable and eloquent republican, Castelar, for the abolition of Cuban slavery. But what if Spain should become an established Republic, would the abolition of Cuban slavery necessarily follow? By no means. Republicanism no less than monarchy accommodates itself to slave holding. We were a Republic when we held so tenaciously to the enslavement of many millions. The Garrisons and the Phillipses of America, no less wise and eloquent than the Castelars of Spain, long plied the public conscience with the sins and miseries of slavery all in vain however to effect its abolition.

But for the timely advent of John Brown of that grand old hero, whose "soul goes marching on" - slavery would have been as vigorous upon our soil today as it ever was. God grant that this dear old soul may keep marching on until, not only in Cuba but in all the broad earth, the Sun shall not rise upon a slaveholder not set upon a slave !

PETERBORO, Dec. 1st, 1873.

(Call for the First Madison County Cuban Meeting.)

Let us help poor Cuba!

To the friends of justice and liberty

IN THE COUNTY OF MADISON, N. Y.,

The people of the United States are everywhere asleep to the unequalled horror in Cuba; and until there is a waking up to them, their Government will do nothing toward bringing these horrors to an end.

People of Madison County, will not you be the first to wake up to the fact that greedy, barbarous, bloody Spain has made Cuba above all other lands the land of slavery and slaughter? - that there hundreds of thousands are under the cruellest form of slavery, and that there within the last five years little if any less than a hundred thousand persons have been slain because they refuse to wear the yoke of slavery or the yoke of Spanish authority?

The type of our abolished slavery was mild compared with that with which Spain crushes Cuba. Nevertheless, though you are unmoved by Spanish slavery, you did what you could to overthrow our own slavery. You held meetings; felt the inspiration of speeches, and contributed moneys to pay lecturers and printers. Do the like now in the cause of Cuba, and your reward will be as sure as it was then. It is true that the Cuban is not of your own nation. But human sympathy leaps over national boundaries. It is true that though the Cuban is an American, he is not such in our more common use of the word. Nevertheless, he is more than an American - for he is your brother, and child with yourselves of the one Great Father.

It is proposed that the first Madison County Cuban Meeting be held in PETERBORO at half-past 1 P. M. SATURDAY, JUNE 21st, 1873. Our countryman, General Jordan, who was for a time in command of the Cuban forces, and Miguel de Aldama, an eminent exiled Cuban gentleman, have promised to attend it. We hope that they will be accompanied by Hon. Charles A. Dana, formerly editor of the N. Y. Tribune and now editor of the N. Y. Sun. Let us come together in great numbers to hear what they will say; and then let us organize a County Society, and go to work systematically for the salvation of oppressed and outraged Cuba.

June 16th, 1873.

GERRIT SMITH.

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