year of the war.  The accuracy of this information, however, has been questioned.  Prior to the establishment of the so-called Republic, the affairs of the insurrection were in the hands of an Assembly of Representatives.  On February 26, this body issued a decree proclaiming the abolition of slavery throughout the island, and calling upon those who thus received their freedom to “contribute their efforts to the independence of Cuba.”  During the opening days of April, 1869, the Assembly met at Guiamaro.  On the tenth of that month a government was organized, with a president, vice-president, general-in-chief of the army, secretaries of departments, and a parliament or congress.  Carlos Manuel Cespedes was chosen as President, and Manuel de Quesada as General-in-Chief.  A Constitution was adopted.  Senor Morales Lemus was appointed as minister to the United States, to represent the new Republic, and to ask official recognition by the American Government.  The government which the United States was asked to recognize was a somewhat vague institution.  The insurrection, or revolution, if it may be so called, at this time consisted of a nominal central government, chiefly self-organized and self-elected, and various roving bands, probably numbering some thousands in their aggregate, of men rudely and incompetently armed, and showing little or nothing of military organization or method.

Like all Cuban-Spanish wars and warfare, the destruction of property was a common procedure.  Some of the methods employed for the suppression of the insurrection were not unlike those adopted by General Weyler in the later war.  At Bayamo, on April 4, 1869, Count Valmaseda, the Spanish Commandant of that district, issued the following proclamation: 

1.  Every man, from the age of fifteen years upward, found away from his place of habitation, who does not prove a justified reason therefor, will be shot.

2.  Every unoccupied habitation will be burned by the troops.

3.  Every habitation from which no white flag floats, as a signal that its occupants desire peace, will be reduced to ashes.

In the summer of 1869, the United States essayed a reconciliation and an adjustment of the differences between the contestants.  To this Spain replied that the mediation of any nation in a purely domestic question was wholly incompatible with the honor of Spain, and that the independence of Cuba was inadmissible as a basis of negotiation.  Heavy reinforcements were sent from Spain, and the strife continued.  The commerce of the island was not greatly disturbed, for the reason that the great producing and commercial centres lay to the westward, and the military activities were confined, almost exclusively, to the eastern and central areas.  In April, 1874, Mr. Fish, then Secretary of State, reported that “it is now more than five years since the uprising (in Cuba) and it has been announced with apparent authority, that Spain has lost upward of 80,000 men, and has