Jun 21, 2016 - Sale 2420

Sale 2420 - Lot 342

Price Realized: $ 1,125
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(CUBA.) Cisneros, Francisco Javier; et al. Volume of correspondence on the Ten Years' War. 70 manuscript pages, 11 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches, disbound; toned, minor wear. New York and Colombia, August to November 1870
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Additional Details

Francisco Javier Cisneros (1836-1898) was a Cuban engineer and reformer who edited the periodical El País. At the outset of the Ten Years' War, he moved to New York and helped organize the struggle from abroad. He spent much of 1870 organizing a unit of volunteers from Colombia to aid the struggle--hence the title of this manuscript, "Mision á Colombia." Contained here are manuscript transcripts of 21 letters, 10 of them between Cisneros and Miguel Aldama, agent of the Republic of Cuba, and the others mostly from Cisneros to various parties. The content of the letters is dramatic. Cisneros reports that a thousand men have been assembled in Colombia, and offers long and detailed lists of the military and medical supplies they will require for the invasion. He also discusses Cuban exiles in New Orleans who have promised to support the cause, as well as allies in Mexico, Jamaica, and El Salvador. Efforts to free Puerto Rico are also discussed in an 8 November letter to Martin Sierra, one of the officers chosen to lead the expedition (page 42). In a final letter to Aldama on 16 November, Cisneros assures that the American people still support the project despite recent discouraging comments by President Grant (page 66).
It is unclear if this volume functioned as the personal correspondence log for Cisneros, or if it was transcribed in a later hand, but some of the Cisneros letters are heavily edited. The letters are apparently unpublished, and represent an important source on a bloody but ultimately unsuccessful revolution.