The Politics of Intervention

160 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

Clara, once Gomez territory, and were uncommitted. Only
in Matanzas did the conservatives have a chance; to win
elections elsewhere they would need the potential alien vote.
Summarizing the situation, Captain Furlong believed the
Zayistas more stable than the "military" Liberals, but pictured
both groups as incurably radical and incapable of honest,
peaceful government.^43
To encourage a party differing with the Liberals, Magoon
turned to the wreckage of the Moderate party in an effort to
salvage a conservative opposition. The Moderates, however,
were finished as a unified party. The Moderates' immoderate
behavior in the 1905 elections and during September, 1906,
ended whatever popular appeal they once had. The Roosevelt
administration itself administered the coup de grace by pub­
lishing the diplomatic correspondence with Palma, Sleeper,
and Steinhart and the Taft-Bacon Report; both sets of
documents clearly put the onus of the intervention on the
Moderates.
44
Following the establishment of the Provisional Government,
the Moderate leaders met in Havana and formally dissolved
their party on November 3. As one Cuban wit observed, the
Moderates were simply disposing of "a corpse that has been
unburied for some time and exposed to the sun." At the
final Moderate meeting, however, General Juan Rius Rivera
proposed the formation of a new conservative party with a
far-reaching program. He advocated the redrafting of the
Constitution to include a six- or eight-year presidential term,
new procedural rules for the congress, the extension of the
suffrage to propertied foreigners, and greater central control
over provincial and municipal government. He also proposed
the creation of a five thousand man regular army.^45 Two
weeks later Rius Rivera abandoned his attempt for lack of
support. The American minister reported that the new party
had been obviously an alliance of sugar planters and cigar-
makers working for a protectorate, and the Cubans had
realized immediately that it was a facade.^46
Discouraged by the Moderate's failure to regroup, Magoon
called in a number of conservatives and assured them that