1785 
 C975 
 iopy * 
 
 THE CUBAN QUESTION. 
 
 f 
 
 The President, in that part of his Message referring to the Cuban Ques- 
 tion, says : 
 
 " The principle is maintained, however, that this nation is its own judge 
 " when to accord the rights of belligerency, either to a people struggling to 
 "free themselves from a government they believe to be oppressive, or to inde- 
 pendent nations at war with each other." 
 
 This principle, though not in this instance very felicitously expressed, is 
 undoubtedly correct ; and, being so, of course every other nation is also clearly 
 the sole judge of the propriety and opportunity of its action in similar cases; 
 but the'n, what becomes of Mr. Sumner's argument against England, endorsed 
 in substance by the President, which is based on what he is pleased to consider 
 a 'premature recognition of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 According to the principle maintained by the President, and which I hold 
 to be true, we, in common with every other nation, have the right to acknowl- 
 edge a belligerent whenever we see fit. The status of the several contending 
 parties can, therefore, have nothing to do with the question; for, if as argued 
 by Mr. Sumner, a belligerent must have acquired a certain status before he can 
 be legally recognized as such, then the principle stated is not true ; because a na T 
 tion clearly cannot be said to be the sole judge of the opportunity of its action 
 in the matter, if it be bound to consult the status of the belligerents before it 
 acts. And, if a knowledge of that status be necessary to warrant action, how 
 is it to be obtained? It is not, I presume, to be supposed that the information 
 possessed by the Administration in regard to the present status of the Cuban 
 rebellion, though derived from its official agents in the Island; can be any 
 more exact than that which England and France obtained through their official 
 agents in this country during the progress of our civil war; and,- it is well 
 known to every one who was in Europe at the time, that the universal opinion, 
 based on official information, was, up to the very eve of Lee's surrender, that 
 the North could not by any possibility succeed. As regards the Cuban struggle, 
 there is at least one fact which stares us in the face, and which no official report 
 can controvert ; and that is, that the struggle, initiated by a people totally un- 
 prepared and unprovided with the means of resistance to a purely military 
 government, has been prolonged for more than a year; that Spain, after rein- 
 forcing her already large army in Cuba with 40,000 men, and a large naval 
 
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 C9f. 
 
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 force, to furnish which would have been entirely beyond her power but for our 
 pusillanimous connivance with her, has made no impression whatever upon the 
 rebellion, which is absolutely stronger to-day. in numbers, in material of war, 
 and the extent of territory held, than it has been at any time since it com- 
 menced. And yet, this self-evident fact is, forsooth, to be placed in doubt, 
 because the official government agents, who are not only subjected to the same 
 potent influence of Spanish diplomacy which has been so effective here; who 
 are absolutely unable to obtain any information, other than that to be derived 
 at second hand from Spanish officials, notorious slave dealers, and foreign mer- 
 chants (including unfortunately many Americans), whose interests are dependent 
 upon the perpetuation of slavery; happen to give it as the : r opinion that the 
 rebellion will undoubtedly be crashed, and therefore does not merit, I will not 
 say our sympathy or co-operatior. , but not even the impartial observance of our 
 neutrality laws. 
 
 The recognition of belligerent rights, especially in cases of rebellion of 
 colonies or provinces, no matter under ivhat circumstances it may be granted, 
 cannot fail of being an unfriendly act towards one of the contending parties, 
 and would always, without regard to its opportunity, be regarded as such, and 
 made a "casus belli," when the aggrieved party felt itself strong enough to de- 
 fend its rights. 
 
 Thus, for instance, if the Fenians were to rise in Ireland, take possession 
 of all the chief cities and ports, establish a " defacto" government, fulfill all 
 the requirements of international law, and we should thereupon recognize them as 
 belligerents, England would, nevertheless, declare war against us, and it would 
 be in vain that we should urge that, we had only exercised our undoubted right. 
 In acknowledging the belligerent rights of the confederacy, England was fully 
 justified by the very principle maintained by the President, and cannot, on any 
 legal grounds, be held responsible except for the material damages arising from 
 the breach of that neutrality which she was bound to observe. 
 
 True, it was an unfriendly act, but it would have been equally so at any 
 time and under any circumstances. But what right had we to expect friend- 
 ship from England ? Had she not many old grudges to pay? Was it not for 
 her interest to break up our Union, and to do all in her power to weaken and 
 destroy her most dreaded rival ? To look for frendship from England under 
 such circumstances, was strangely to ignore the motives by which both indi- 
 viduals and nations are governed. Had it been in our power we should un- 
 doubtedly have made her action a " casus belli." That we did not do so at the 
 time, was possibly good policy, but it by no means adds to our reputation as a 
 nation, jealous of its rights and resolved to maintain them at all hazards. In 
 this respect we compare very unfavorably with Spain, who, in the midst of a 
 revolution at home, and of a formidable revolt in her principal Colony, boldly 
 
 /t-Jl5U>Z 
 
^declares than an acknowledgment of Cuban belligerency would at once lead to 
 K _- a declaration of war; and the antecedents of Spain's history warrant the be- 
 - lief that such would really be the case, for no nation has ever carried to such 
 an extreme, the disregard of expediency, and that chivalric spirit, which we 
 are pleased to call " quixotism," but which, after all, is the only basis of true 
 nobility, either individual or national. Where mere expediency becomes the 
 rule, all question of right, honor and justice, must be abandoned. 
 
 The truth is, that the so-called international law, is merely a series of pre- 
 cedents established by force, the validity of which depends entirely upon the 
 relative strength of the several members of the community of nations; they 
 are always interpreted according to the caprice, or the interest of the stronger 
 party, and have all been repeatedly infringed at the call of expediency, or at 
 the will of the superior force. 
 
 Not to go too far back for proof of this assertion, I will merely hint 
 at the action of Great Britain and the United States in regard to the former 
 Colonies of Spain in America : of all Europe and America in regard to Greece, 
 and pass on to much more recent events. Only some six or seven years ago, 
 the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was one of the sovereign nations of the world. 
 Though its subjects were the victims of the most terrible tyranny, they were 
 evidently entirely incapable of emancipating themselves without foreign aid, 
 and the country apparently enjoyed profound peace. In the language of 
 despots " order prevailed" throughout the realm. 
 
 Suddenly a revolution, notoriously instigated by foreign emissaries, broke 
 out, which, if left to itself, would soon have succumbed to the power of the 
 government ; but which, through the assistance of an expedition from Genoa, 
 under the command of Garribaldi (in reality fitted out with the connivance of 
 the Sardinian Government, though it made a show of an endeavor to prevent 
 it) became in a few weeks triumphant, and the Two Sicilies were made an in- 
 tegral part of the Kindorn of Italy. The tyranny under which that people 
 had suffered bore no comparison to that to which the natives of Cuba have 
 been subjected. The Sicilian rebels could not have maintained for a single 
 week without foreign aid, that struggle which *the Cubans unaided, have main- 
 tained for more than a year. They held no cities or ports, but they had neigh- 
 bors whom a just appreciation of the blessings of liberty, or, it may well be, 
 a true sense of expediency and of their own interest, made willing to aid them 
 to attain that liberty. No matter what, however, may have been the motives 
 of the Sardinian sympathisers, their action was a plain and wanton infraction of 
 international law, and yet the result has been acknowledged by all Europe and 
 the United States, and universally hailed as a forward step towards the eman- 
 cipation of the world. It is to be noted, however, that Sardinia had for Secre- 
 tary-of State a Count de Cavour. who moulded even a Napoleon to his will as 
 
.he 'would a child; while we, alas! have a man, no doubt honorable in the ex- 
 treme, but who has been less careful of his honor than was Caesar of his wife's 
 reputation, and strangely wanting in that delicate perception of the dignity of 
 his office which should have led him to perceive the impropriety, to say the 
 least of it, of allowing a near relative to act as the extravagantly paid advo- 
 cate of a cause in which he was to act as judge. 
 
 Now if such things can happen, is it not, I ask, the height of absurdity to 
 argue the validity and the obligation of what is called international law? If 
 the community of nations, the only tribunal which could enforce its execution, 
 or any member thereof strong enough to do its will, is at liberty to interpret 
 that law, and to sanction or punish its infringment, according to its caprice, to 
 the. dictates' of expediency, or of its own interest, and is not bound to enforce 
 it according to its spirit and its letter; international law is but a farce, another 
 of the many forms which force assumes to tyrannize and enslave mankind. 
 
 Every step in the progress of" human liberty has been taken in direct con- 
 travention of pre-existing international law, and, indeed, progress would be 
 altogether impossible if its precepts were always to be blindly obeyed. But 
 international law being as it is, the mere arbitrary dictate of superior force, 
 whatever may be its validity-, it assuredly cannot be greater than that of the 
 constitution and laws to which, as a nation, we have voluntarily submitted our- 
 selves ; and it is certainly a curious phenomenon to find such a man as Mr. 
 Sumner, boasting of his strict adherence to international law, and urging the 
 necessity of its- observance, when he has been always one of the most strenous 
 advocates of that " higher law" which, where human liberty and the equality 
 of mankind are concerned, is above all human laws, and should be obeyed 
 ■without regard to consequences. There is apparently in Mr. Sumner's mind not 
 only a difference between white and black, but between Spanish and Ameri- 
 can, and the whites and the Spanish are placed in the same category. The 
 white- American and Spanish negro, have apparently " no rights which he is 
 bound to respect." 
 
 On the 2d inst., anniversary of the execution of John Brown, he delivered 
 at the Plymouth Church, his lecture upon ''Caste," the whole argument of 
 which, by the way, is based upon the controlling supremacy of that moral law 
 which is-written in every man's soul ; and he prefaced the lecture by an eulogy 
 of the said Brown, holding him up as a hero and the martyr of a righteous 
 cause ; which I am not at all disposed to dispute. But, either John Brown was 
 justly punished for an open and scandalous breach of his country's laws, or 
 Mr. Sumner is not justified in excusing his connivance with Spain to perpetu- 
 ate Slavery in Cuba, by an appeal to the exigences of international law. The 
 cause is the same. The flowing of the Gulf stream between Cuba and the 
 United States can make no difference in the principle. The color is the same, 
 
and if John Brown was right, a hero and a martyr, Mr. Sumner is wrong, will 
 certainly never be a hero, and evidently does not intend to be a martyr. 
 
 Mr. Sumner argues that the Cubans have not liberated their slaves, and 
 that if they do so it will be only as a last resource to gain their own freedom. 
 This in the first place is false ; for whatever may have been the wishes of the 
 Cubans, they from the first foresaw that the emancipation of the negro, must 
 go hand in hand with their own, and in the second place, they have solemnly 
 decreed that emancipation. 
 
 No one will have forgotten the indignation caused in this country by the 
 fact that England, after having sacrified her own colonies for the emancipation 
 of the slaves, and who had spared no efforts to bring about emancipation in 
 this country, should take sides with the South. But England said to us, as 
 Mr. Sumner says to the Cubans, "You are fighting for empire — not for the 
 "freedom of the slave." And Mr. Sumner must not forget that such was the 
 fact, as regards ourselves, for Mr. Lincoln was obliged to justify his proclama- 
 tion of emancipation as a war measure ; and, whatever Mr. Sumner's ideas on 
 the subject may have been, the country, in reality, fought for the preservation 
 of the Union, and not for the abolition pf slavery. Whatever may have been 
 the intentions of the Cubans, however, it was in the power of Mr. Sumner, by 
 making the emancipation of their slaves a condition of recognition, to have se- 
 cured the liberation of half a million of blacks, to say nothing of an equal 
 number of whites, from the most galling tyranny the world has ever known. 
 
 But, for Mr. Sumner, there is a law still higher than the "higher law." 
 Mr. Sumner made an absurd claim upon England, and, rather than acknowl- 
 edge that he was wrong, slavery in Cuba, both of whites and blacks, may, for 
 what he cares, be perpetuated "ad infinitum." He may, however, live long 
 enough to discover that by sacrificing the eternal principles of justice to his 
 own " amour propre," he has not less effectually damaged his well-earned fame 
 as the friend of liberty, than he has prejudiced the permanent interests and 
 true honor of his country. 
 
 But, whatever may be our obligations under international law, we are un- 
 doubtedly bound to fulfill our own neutrality laios. These laws, as originally 
 enacted, obliged us to observe strict neutrality between belligerent nations. 
 During the conflict between Spain and her former colonies, the law was so 
 modified as to extend our neutral obligations to " colonies and peoples ," and 
 this was done at the instigation of Spain, to prevent our affording aid to her 
 rebellious colonies. Now, if such modification was necessary in order to ren- 
 der such aid illegal, it is very clear that it was legal before the modification. 
 It that modification made it illegal to give aid to the rebellious colonies, it 
 made it equally so to give aid to Spain. To argue that the modification was in- 
 tended to provide for cases in which a colony might be at war with a foreign 
 
nation not its sovereign, is simply an absurdity, for no colony could be at war 
 with a foreign country without creating a state of war between that country 
 and its sovereign, in which, case the neutrality law, as originally worded, was 
 amply sufficient. Equally absurd is it to argue that the " peoples'' mentioned 
 in the modification means peoples acknowledged as such by other nations, or 
 ourselves — for the original law fully covered the case of peoples already ac- 
 knowledged. 
 
 There is no getting rid of the fact that the modifications in the neutrality 
 law, made in 1818, were made to provide for cases exactly similar, in every re- 
 spect, to that presented by the revolution in Cuba. Those modifications bound 
 us then to strict neutrality between Spain and her colonies, and they bind us 
 now ; and the release of the Spanish Grunboats is a clear infraction of our own 
 neutrality laws, and a disgrace to our country. 
 
 Our reward will be, that Spain will boast that a mere threat of war has 
 forced us to consent to an infraction of our own laws ; and England will reply 
 to our claims, that her action was not only justified on the principle maintained 
 by the President, but that, in our eagerness to prove that she was wrong, we 
 have overshot the mark, and, through motives of expediency, allowed our 
 neutrality laws to be infringed — not by individuals, but by the Executive 
 itself. 
 
 While it is, without doubt, exclusively the province of the legislative and 
 executive branches of the Government to decide when to acknowledge belliger- 
 ency, it is no less exclusively the province of the judicial branch to interpret 
 the laws. The question at issue, in the present instance, is not so much 
 whether we ought to acknowledge Cuban belligerency, as whether ive are bound 
 by the modifications of 1818 to observe strict neutrality between Spain and her 
 colony, notwithstanding that we have not acknowledged the belligerency of the latter. 
 If the modification of 1818 does not impose this obligation of neutrality 
 previous to acknowledgment, it was, as I have already shown, both unneces- 
 sary and absurd, for acknowledgment could not fail to bring with it the neu- 
 tral obligation, and the original law fully covered every case of acknowledged 
 belligerency. The assumption by the Executive of a right to interpret the 
 law, is a plain and dangerous usurpation of the exclusive functions of the ju- 
 diciary ; and it is amusing to find the Democratic organ of the Spanish Minis- 
 ter, in one editorial accusing Congress of a design to deprive the Supreme 
 Court of its undoubted right of interpreting the Constitution and the laws, 
 arid in another applauding the Executive for actually doing the very same 
 thing. 
 
 In conclusion, I would observe that it is not only the liberty of Cuba that 
 is imperilled by the inexplicable course of the Administration. If the Execu- 
 tive can, with impunity, assume judicial functions, and not only determine 
 
(: per se et ante se," under pretext of the necessities of Slate policy, what are 
 and what are not infractions of the law, bat dictate to the competent judicial 
 authority what complaints of infractions they shall entertain, and what they 
 shall not, I say that our own liberties are not only in danger, but that they are 
 already practically destroyed. 
 
 An old English writer says, most truly : " He that would usurp an abso- 
 " lute lordship and tyranny over any people, need not put himself to the trou- 
 " ble and difficulty of abrogating and annulling the laws made to maintain the 
 " common liberty ; for he may frustrate their intent, and compass his own de- 
 " sign as well, if he can get the power and authority to interpret them as he 
 " pleases, and add to them what he pleases, and to have his interpretations 
 ; ' stand as laws; if he can rule his people by his laws, and his laws by his 
 " lawyers." 
 
 Greatly does it behoove us all, fellow-citizens, to bear these words in 
 mind, and to take heed lest, by acquiescing, without protest, in Executive 
 usurpation, because it merely affects the rights and liberties of our neigh- 
 bors, we be not, in reality, consenting to a precedent which may warrant the 
 destruction of our own. 
 
 New York, December 15, 1869. 
 
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