Within a few weeks Cespedes was at the head of 15,000 men, ill-prepared for war, so far as arms and equipment were concerned, but well provided with resolution, bravery and a just cause.  A civil government was organized, and a constitution drawn up, providing for an elective president and vice-president, a cabinet, and a single legislative chamber.  It also declared the immediate abolition of slavery.  This constitution was promulgated at Guaimaro in Central Cuba, on the 10th of April, 1869.  The legislature met soon after, and elected Cespedes president, and Francisco M. Aguilero vice-president.

This insurrection soon assumed formidable dimensions, and the following edict was issued by General Balmaceda: 

Inhabitants of the country!  The reinforcement of troops that I have been waiting for have arrived.  With them I shall give protection to the good, and punish promptly those that still remain in rebellion against the government of the metropolis.

You know that I have pardoned those who have fought us with arms; that your wives, mothers and sisters have found in me the unexpected protection that you have refused them.  You know, also, that many of those we have pardoned have turned against us again.  Before such ingratitude, such villainy, it is not possible for me to be the man I have been; there is no longer a place for a falsified neutrality; he that is not for me is against me; and that my soldiers may know how to distinguish, you hear the order they carry.

1st.  Every man, from the age of fifteen years upward, found away from his habitation (finca), and who does not prove a justified motive therefor, will be shot.

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

3rd.  Every habitation from which does not float a white flag, as a signal that its occupants desire peace, will be reduced to ashes.

Women that are not living in their own homes, or at the houses 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.

El Conde de Balmaceda.

Bayamo, April 4, 1869.

Even Weyler, the “Butcher,” has never succeeded in concocting a manifesto that surpassed this in malicious excuses for the ancient Spanish amusements of pillage, incendiarism and murder.

The cause A just one.

It is now conceded by high Spanish authorities that the insurgents had just grounds for this revolt, and Senor Dupuy de Lome, formerly the Spanish minister to the United States, admits in a letter to the New York Herald that a very large majority of the leading citizens of the island were in sympathy with the struggle for liberty.

The new government received the moral support of nearly all of the South American republics, but as many of them were troubled with internal dissensions, and uncertain of their own security, they were not in a condition to furnish assistance of a more practical nature, and the revolutionists were left to work out their own salvation.