Applying to the existing
condition of affairs in Cuba the tests recognized by publicists and
writers on international law, and which have been observed by nations
of dignity, honesty, and power when free from sensitive or selfish and
unworthy motives, I fail to find in the insurrection the existence of
such a substantial political organization, real, palpable, and manifest
to the world, having the forms and capable of the ordinary functions of
government coward its own people and to other states, with courts for
the administration of justice, with a local habitation, possessing such
organization of force, such material, such occupation of territory,
as to take the contest out of the category of a mere rebellious
insurrection or occasional skirmishes and place it on the terrible
footing of war, to which a recognition of belligerency would aim to
elevate it. The contest, moreover, is solely on land; the insurrection
has not possessed itself of a single seaport whence it may send forth
its flag, nor has it any means of communication with foreign powers
except through the military lines of its adversaries. No apprehension
of any of those sudden and difficult complications which a war upon
the ocean is apt to precipitate upon the vessels, both commercial and
national, and upon the consular officers of other powers calls for the
definition of their relations to the parties to the contest.
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