People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1897 — 400 Years of Murder. [ARTICLE]

400 Years of Murder.

It is an insult to the Cuban patriots for this coed try to even suggest, as Olney is doing, the possibility of anything less than absolute independence. Oh, for the spirit of Patrick Henry to burn those immortal words across the star Set canopyof heaven, “Independence or Death.” Of all the nations which God has permitted to despoil the weaker peoples of earth, the most damnable is Spain. Sines the day that Columbus returned from his historic voyage, the Spanish name has been a badge of shame. Her boasted maritime powers was but a reign of pirates; the conquests of her armies in America in the name Christianity, was tut -the march of brigands against peace loving, defeneless people. The butcheries of Cortez and Pizarro, were too revolting for anyone to excuse, and the whole history of Spanish rule in America is but a continuation of the same inhuman, blood-stained vandalism, and it is perpetuated to-day by Weyler in Cuba as ferociously as it was begun four hundred years ago. With the cross at their head they pillaged the temples of the civilized people of Mexico, Yucatan and Peru, races far more highly civiized than themselveß, in all the impulses of the heart, truer in all their virtous aspirations, intellectual, of a far finer culture, unselfish boyond the comprehension of modern teachers of the Great Doetrin of unselfishness. The Creator Himself could not forgive the black deeds of Costile and this displeasure seems to have followed them for a hundred years from the height of power and splendor and vanity to the very depth of national weakness, poverty and degradation. Coleny after colony has driven her legions of tax gathering tyrants onto and into the sea; her rich possession, that odco girded the earth and enslaved millions of wretched mortals, are all gone but Cuban aad the Phillippenos and they are beyond her control or ] ower to recover. Think of America hesitating to lend her moral support to the bleeding patriots at her very ‘ shores, when by every precedent of our own history wo should send our soldiers and ships to right a wrong that has offended decency on earth and shocked the Merciful Presence above. It is the same Spain that burned the libraries of Yucatan, that destroyed the priceless parchments preserved in the archives of the Mayans for i)000 years, that sacked the towns of unopposing, trusting butdecieved people, that carried torch and sword into the homes of welcoming natives, that violated unprotected virtue, that carried countless thousands of innocent captives into slavery in foreign lands to die of torture indescribable. It is'Spain, composed of the same robber Spaniards, the same wanton despoilers of happy homes and peaceful governments; the same destroyers of civil zation, the same greed cursed nation. Thank heaven there are men in this country. Men who feel the blood of free ancestors coursing through their veins, and who know the duty they owe humanity and posterity. They are noblemen indeed, who at this hour dare defy the cringing serfs of capital who are trying to smother the patriotic response . of Columbia’s free sons to the cry for justice by oppressed Cuba. On! brothers, on! Response to your hearts honest impulse i 6 the divine call to action. If the great nation fails to do its duty, do not hesitate as to your individual responsibility, Remember the deeds of Kossiusko, Lafayette and the thousands of other liberty loving spirits who crossed the broad Atlantic to follow the Stars and Stripes. The way is open for you to cross the narrow channel that separates Cuba from Floriaa and fight under the banner of Free Cuba. The absurdity of Spanish threats of war against the United States is conceded by all. President Cleveland’s position as regards Cuba can be somewhat accounted for by the fact that Caban bonds are largely held by the Wall street element to whose interests he has so ably devoted himself.. Cuban independence would mean depreciation if not repudiation of theae stocks.