anent treaty with the
United States.

Hall of sessions, June twelfth, nineteen hundred and one.

CHAPTER XIII

After the Constitution, the Government. On October 14, 1901, General
Wood as Military Governor of Cuba issued an order for the holding of a
general election throughout the island on December 31, that day to be a
legal holiday. At that election there were to be chosen Presidential and
Senatorial Electors, Members of the House of Representatives, Governors
of Provinces or Departments, and members of Provincial Assemblies or
Councils. At the same time it was announced that the election of
President, Vice-President and Senators, by the electoral colleges, would
take place on February 24, 1902. A provisional election law was also
promulgated at that time.

This order brought acutely to the fore the question of Presidential
candidates. There were several of them, but none of them could be
regarded as a party candidate for the reason that there were then
practically no parties. The three which had existed had gradually
dissolved, merged into each other, and left the Cuban people free to
follow purely individual leaders again.

Maximo Gomez was naturally looked to as the foremost candidate for the
Presidency, and despite the bitterness of some politicians against him
there is little doubt that if he had consented to be a candidate he
would have stood alone and been elected practically without opposition.
No man deserved the honor more than he. But it was more than an honor.
It was a tremendously serious responsibility. Now Gomez was not the man
to shirk responsibility. But he was not a man, either, to accept it
rashly. He knew his own limitations. He knew, too, the requirements of
the place. There was needed a scholar and statesman, rather than a
"rough and ready" bushwhacking soldier. So he would not even consider
the offer of the nomination. "I was never intended," he said, "to become
the President of any country. I think too much of Cuba to become her
President."

Calixto Garcia, who after the death of Antonio Maceo stood second to
Gomez as a commander, and who was General-in-Chief of the eastern half
of the island, had won a splendid reputation for efficient work in
Oriente and Camaguey, and was a man of great force and ability, and of
much popularity among the Cuban people. But he died at Washington of
pneumonia soon after the close of the war.

With these two great chieftains of Cuba's wars thus