The sophisticated and prosperous sugar industry in Cuba has long employed chattel slavery to produce 720,250 metric tons of sugar in 1868, more than forty percent of cane sugar reaching the world market that year.
Slavery had been maintained in Cuba, however, while abolition was underway elsewhere.
Independence from Spain had been the motive for the rebellion led by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a sugar planter, who had freed his slaves to fight with him for a free Cuba.
On December 27, 1868, he had issued a decree condemning slavery in theory but accepting it in practice and declaring free any slaves whose masters present them for military service.
The result of the rebellion has been a prolonged conflict known as the Ten Years' War.
The two thousand Cuban Chinese have joined the rebels.
The United States has declined to recognize the new Cuban government, although many European and Latin American nations have done so.
Following the end of the third Carlist civil war in 1876, Spain had dispatched additional troops to Cuba until they number more than two hundred and fifty thousand.
The impact of the Spanish measures on the liberation forces is severe.
Neither side in the war has been able to win a single concrete victory, let alone crush the opposing side to win the war.
After almost two years, General Arsenio Martínez Campos, in charge of applying the new policy, finally convinces most of the rebels to accept the Pact of Zanjón on February 10, 1878, signed by a negotiating committee.
The document contains most of the promises made by Spain, pledging various reforms throughout the island that will improve the financial situation of Cuba.
Perhaps the most significant is the pledge to free all slaves who had fought Spain.
A major conflict throughout the war has been the desire of both the rebels and the people loyal to Spain to abolish slavery.
The Maceo brothers refuse to sign the treaty and continue fighting until they take to exile to return later.
Calixto Garcia is released from Spanish prison.
