The Story of a Spanish Exile [pp. 138-145]

THE STORY OF A SPANISH EXILE.
curse of Cuba. That island is one of
the last remnants of American soil upon
which the crime is tolerated.
My nativity, which occurred at Madrid
in the year of our Lord I845, gave to
Spain the power to claim me as her
subject. Alas! I never'felt that honest
pride which swells the heart of an American when he contemplates his native
land. To him, the recollection is a cause
of exultation and joy; to me, it brings
humiliation and vain regrets-for Spain
bequeaths to her children nothing but a
legacy of shame-nothing but memories
of violated faith-nothing but a sense
of individual and national inferiority.
The history of monarchy in the Spanish
peninsula is simply a calendar of crime.
The Spanish conscription, which followed quickly upon the heels of the
Cuban insurrection in i865, forced me
into the army. To my comrades and
myself it was a sentence of deportation
and expatriation. The ties of kindred
were pleaded against it in vain. Spain
is, at home, as she is abroad, merciless
and implacable. The assassin's argument, which sent Prim to his account,
is the only certain mode of redress that
haughty Spain has left to her unfortunate subjects. The character and policy of Spanish royalists are repugnant to
the idea of liberty; the nation rejects,
with contempt, the grand code, which
was declared in I776 by the thirteen
United States of America, "that all
men are created equal." And when the
insurrection was developed in Cuba,
the parent Government did not hesitate
to adopt severe measures toward the
rebels-to teach them, in fact, that they
had no share in the great proclamation
of manumission and emancipation which
President Lincoln thundered from the
American Capital. True, that proclamation embraced all the slaves in the
States and Territories of the American
Union, including the slaves in the peninsula of Florida, which is almost within
cannon - shot of the "ever-faithful isle;"
true, the tidings of freedom were borne,
by every breeze, from the American coast
to the bondsmen of Cuba, and they asked
themselves, why it was that liberty was
not illimitable: however, when, at last,
they learned that liberty, like any other beneficent thing, must be purchased
with a price, they sternly resolved to attain it, and raised the standard of revolt
-but their sad condition of servitude
ill- qualified them to measure arms with
the veteran soldiers of Spain.
The troop-ship, with the Spanish conscripts, misnamed volunteers, on board,
sailed from Cadiz, and reached Havana
after a stormy passage across the Atlantic. My position as a commissioned
officer in a Spanish regiment-of-foot
from which I was, subsequently, a deserter-necessarily made me a custodian
of the secrets of the revolting service to
which the army was assigned in Cuba.
I am enabled to give, from personal
knowledge and experience, an interior
view of the military status and social
condition of the island.
The following telegraphic dispatch was
received from Washington, December
iith, 1871, and published in the San
Francisco newspapers of the same day:
THE CUBAN OUTRAGES.- An effort will be made
in Congress, to. morrow, or some day this week, to
have some action taken to prevent the outrages
committed on Americans in Cuba. The orders
given to our fleet, recently, are all very well, but
do not reach the necessities of the case. A declaration by Congress, it is believed, would have some
effect. Dispatches to the Government confirm fully
the reports of the brutal conduct of the Cuban
Volunteers.
It would not become me, perhaps, to
enlarge upon the manifest obligation
which every Government owes to its
citizens to protect them from outrages
in foreign lands. I could make disclosures, in relation to the torture and
execution of American citizens by the
Spanish authorities in the island of
Cuba, which would send a thrill of horror throughout the civilized world.
I872.]
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