Caleb Cushing to Hamilton Fish, October 20, 1875
No. 287. Mr. Cushing to Mr. Fish.
No. 614.]
Sir: I annex hereto copy and translation of a note just received from the minister of state in reference to the investigation of Burriel, and the other implicated authorities of Santiago de Cuba, and copy of my reply.
The Conde de Casa-Valencia, you perceive, states that the preliminary formalities in the matter have been fulfilled, that is—as I understood the matter in the light of what Mr. Castro said to me on the subject— the administrative examination of the subject by the council of state to the conclusion of recommending legal process. The ministers of war and marine are now to act respectively as to the officers of the army and those of the navy.
I will at an early day transmit to you legal details regarding the whole procedure.
You will observe that the minister of state, in reference to the previous notes of mine recapitulated in my note to him of the 4th instant, says: “and to which replied successively Messrs. Ulloa and Castro.” This phrase appeared to me to go a little beyond the mark, and to imply (contrary to the fact) that my notes to Mr. Ulloa of June 27, 1874, and of September 24, 1874, had all received contestation.
And, as the parallel between the massacres of Santiago de Cuba and those of Olot, Cuenca, and Estella, drawn in my note of the 24th of September, 1874, had not been disputed at the time it was presented, it seemed to me out of season on the part of the Conde de Casa-Valencia to raise the issue now, incidentally, in response to the simple retrospective allusion to the point contained in my note of the 4th inst.
Hence the observations on the subject contained in my last note.
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Complaining bitterly, as Madrid does, at every act of military execution on the part of the Carlists, which acts have never done the least good to the cause of D. Carlos either as retaliation or as terror, it might be really beneficial to right-minded Spaniards to be compelled to see that neither have similar acts of passionate violence of theirs in Cuba done the least good to their cause either as retaliation or terror, while involving Spain in a series of perilous controversies with Great Britain, France, and the United States.
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I have, &c.,