ny partiality in Cuba,
it was for the black Creole. During the ten years' war, his cavalry
escort was composed entirely of colored men. Throughout his latest
reign in the island he kept black soldiers constantly on guard at the
gates of the government palace. While the illustrated papers of Spain
were caricaturing: the insurgents as coal-black demons with horns
and forked toe nails, burning canefields and butchering innocent
Spaniards, the Spanish General chose them for his bodyguards.
[Illustration: CUBAN WOMAN CAVALRY.]
ONE OF THE GREATEST GENERALS.
One of the greatest Generals of the day, considering the environment,
was Antonio Maceo, the Cuban mulatto hero, who, for two years, kept
the Spanish army at bay or led them a lively quickstep through the
western provinces to the very gates of Havana. As swift on the march
as Sheridan or Stonewall Jackson, as wary and prudent as Grant
himself, he had inspirations of military genius whenever a crisis
arose. It is not generally known that Martinez Campos, who owed his
final defeat at Colisea to Maceo, was a second cousin of this black
man. Maceo's mother, whose family name was Grinan, came from the town
of Mayari where all the people have Indian blood in their veins. Col.
Martinez del Campos, father of General Martinez Campos, was once
Military Governor of Mayari. While there he loved a beautiful girl of
Indian and Negro blood, who belonged to the Grinan family, and was
first cousin to Maceo's mother. Martinez Campos, Jr., the future
General and child of the Indian girl was born in Mayari. The Governor
could not marry his sweetheart, having a wife and children in Spain,
but when he returned to the mother country he took the boy along.
According to Spanish law, the town in which one is baptized is
recognized as his legal birthplace, so it was easy enough to
legitimatize the infant Campos. He grew up in Spain, and when sent to
Cuba as Captain-General, to his everlasting credit be it said, that
one of his first acts was to hunt up his mother. Having found her, old
and poor, he bought a fine house in Campo Florida, the aristocratic
suburb of Havana, established her there and cared for her tenderly
till she died. The cousins, though on opposite sides of the war,
befriended each other in many instances, and it is said that more
than once Captain-General Campos owed his life to his unacknowledged
relative.
HIS BROTHER CAPTURED.
The latter's half brother, Jose Maceo, was
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