United States was in earnest, and that Cuba was indeed to have
independence, just as though she had won it without aid, there was
surprise amounting almost to stupefaction, there was unbounded
exultation, and there was, unhappily, division of the people into
antagonistic parties. Of these we shall hear more hereafter.

Thus was the issue joined. The great mass of the Cuban people was united
and harmonious in its determination at last to achieve that independence
of the island for which so many men during so many years had wished and
worked and suffered. The Spanish party was implacable; and the
Autonomists were largely unsympathetic--not all, for some in time joined
the revolution; but the Cuban Independence party, comprising the large
majority of the population, was resolute and irrepressible in its
course.

CHAPTER III

The war was on. Marti and his comrades had planned to have a
simultaneous uprising in all six provinces on February 24. In each a
leader was appointed, an organization was formed, and such supplies as
could be obtained were provided. But in only three provinces did an
actual insurrection occur. These were Oriente, or Santiago as it was
then called, Santa Clara, and Matanzas; the extreme eastern and the two
central provinces. In Oriente uprisings occurred at two points, under
Henry Brooks at Guantanamo, and at Los Negros under Guillermon Moncada.
In Matanzas there were also two uprisings; one at Aguacate, on the
Havana borderline, under Manuel Garcia, and one at Ybarra. In Santa
Clara the chief demonstration was near Cienfuegos, under General
Matagas. The uprising in Havana was to have been under the leadership of
Julio Sanguilly, but in some way never satisfactorily explained he was
betrayed and arrested and the outbreak did not occur. There were not a
few who at first suspected and even charged that Sanguilly himself had
betrayed the cause, for Spanish money, but his sentence to life
imprisonment by the Spanish authorities seemed abundantly to disprove
this charge.

The insurgents naturally made most headway at first in Oriente. There
were fewer Spanish troops in that province and there were more mountain
fastnesses for refuge in case of enforced retreat, than in the more
densely settled and populated central provinces. We have already seen
that a numerous company of patriots marched from Baire to Santiago to
present to the Spanish commander there, General Jose Lachambre, their
demands f