Freemen of America! In an age when the despotisms of the Old World are fast crumbling to the ground, in spite of the myriads of bayonets by which they are vainly propped, it cannot be that one of the most oppressive and corrupt of them all should continue any longer to maintain an unnatural dominion over a land almost in sight of your free and happy shores.

Two years ago 1 sought your ever open hospitality, in consequence of the premature discovery, by the Spanish Government, of a then projected insurrection in Cuba, under my command. Not in vain did I and my companions in exile rely upon your sympathy and succor, in such a cause; and a chivalrous band of choicest spirits from among yourselves, ardent with the same noble enthusiasm that warmed the hearts and nerved the arms of Lafayette and Kosciusko, have now followed me, to unfurl the flag of freedom on the fairest and noblest island of the globe; in no sense as invaders, but as brethren appealed to by brethren; as a generous friend, invoked by a suffering people; in the name of that liberty so sacred and so dear to every American heart; to afford the requisite nucleus around which will gladly rally the long impatient patriotism of Cuba herself.

Its notoriety supersedes any need of proving the truth which might be attested by clouds of witnesses, that tyranny was never more hateful in itself, no more hated by its victims, than that which now afflicts the land where rest the ashes of Columbus. A weight of taxation such as has never before in any age or country, borne down the energies of an equal population, is the least of our evils; though we are made to behold it employed in riveting our own chains, in pampering the luxurious vice of a foreign court, and in fattening insatiate swarms of proud and corrupt officials of every grade, sent us from across the ocean, destitute alike of sympathy with our people, of interest in our country, and of care for any thing but the maintenance, of their dominion and the increase of their extortion. For the benefit of an agriculture three thousand miles distant, our very bread is made a dear luxury, by a duty of ten dollars a barrel upon your flour. The Cuban, indeed, has neither country, guaranties nor rights. He holds his property, his personal liberty, his very existence on his native soil, at the mere pleasure of a master whose absolutism is more than Oriental. He can scarcely journey out of sight of his home, extend his hospitality for a night to a friend, assemble his acquaintance for the most innocent purpose of entertainment, without the servile necessity of first obtaining a paid permission from some neighboring petty functionary of the all-pervading despotism. All the yearly millions of his money which go to Madrid, do not suffice to purchase him the right of a single representative there; nor can he with impunity even utter aloud, whether in the form of complaint under suffering, or of petition for redress a syllable tending to attack the corrupt interest of his tyrants, or to expose any of the abominations of their system.

His sons have no career possible to any degree of talent, enterprise or ambition. His daughters are not safe from insult and persecution at the caprice of an insolent governor. He knows only a press, fettered into utter servility by the severest censorship; a religion fatally tainted in its ministry, through the influence of corrupting association with a government so corrupt; and a justice notoriously venal, while infallibly ruinous if it can entangle him within its grasp. As a general rule, no office in Cuba is humble enough to be accessible to the Cuban; bribery and extreme sub-serviency affording the only explanation of its rare exceptions., On a soil capable of sustaining ten millions of prosperous inhabitants, he beholds, in a diminishing population, the surest proof of misgovernment; and while that whole system, thus reeking with corruption through all the ramifications of an utterly demoralized administration, from highest to lowest, is enforced by the visible presence of the soldier at every turn, and the visible omnipresence of the spy, it is rendered doubly odious by an habitual insolence on the part of his official masters, as a national caste arrogating an affected superiority over the subject degradation of the Creole, or Cuban-born, which is in itself a moral outrage, felt by all and perceptible in every society, a hundred fold more intolerable then the aggregate of all our other countless material wrongs.

It is not merely the cannon and the bayonet, but an atrocious police more potent than either, which have alone, thus far, freemen of America, sustained the tyranny thus briefly sketched, against the general indignation of the people of Cuba. Spain has hitherto succeeded in paralysing her suffering victim, not alone by a system of severe and vigilant military police, rendering it scarcely possible to commence the requisite organization for insurrection, but chiefly by means of the perpetual threat of another and bloodiest San Domingo, if she should dare to stir. In pursuance of this truly infernal calculation, while she has studiously excluded the immigration of white labor, and prevented the organization of local militia, or the arming of the white population, she has kept pouring upon our shores, alike against our wishes, the moral sense of mankind, and the faith of her own treaties, a constant importation of African savages, (her very royal family participating largely in the unhallowed traffic), to whom she has pointed as ever ready, on the outbreak of a revolution for independence, to be converted into the instruments of a farewell vengeance at which the human race should shudder.

While England has proclaimed her purpose (a purpose now manifestly fast ripening to its fulfillment) of leaving Canada free to go in peace whenever the mass of its population should desire the severance of the colonial relation, the brutal barbarism of our tyrants has, on the contrary, in many forms of expression, proclaimed that, if driven from Cuba, they would leave the land behind them a crimsoned waste, and that the island should cease to be Spanish only to become African.

But in spite of this menace, the success of which Heaven is too just, and you are too near, to permit, the hour has arrived when Cuba can and will no longer endure the burthen of her chains; and acting in sympathy and concert with the indignant and impatient patriotism of the island, we go to carry into effect the revolution planned and commenced among the sons of the soil, and to give the long desired signal for the overthrow of the worst form of colonial despotism now existing on the face of the earth; to substitute a noble flag of Cuba's own for the disgraced banner once renowned, whose twin colors now symbolize to us only the blood of cruelty and the gold of corruption. The flag is beautiful with the three colors of Liberty, and shines with a Star of kindred lustre to the constellation of your own. We give it to the winds in the same holy cause, in the strength of the same sacred principles, in the same resolved spirit, and in firm trust in the same protecting Providence, the supreme arbiter of national right, as when your fathers, too, first raised the banner which now sweeps every sea, and committed to the Heaven blessed sword of Washington the high mission of its defence and its triumph.

We need not invoke your sympathies and your prayers to follow the career of that flag. They have never been wanting to the side of human rights, on every battle-field between freedom and despotism, whether in Greece, in Poland, in Colombia, in Hungary, or in once more glorious Rome, ever since the God of Nations has entrusted to your young giant strength the ark of the sacred cause. This Is no distant struggle, freemen of America, for transatlantic liberty or nationality; scarcely can it be called a foreign one. We are your close neighbors as well as friends and brethren. Our shore is almost visible from your own. Cuba is the well-known key of your Gulf of Mexico, across which it blocks and guards the outlet of your whole Mississippi Valley, like a watchdog stretched across the threshold of your door. No European Monarchy ought to hold a position which would be made one of fatal evil by alliance with, or subjection to, any great naval power hostile to you. Our institutions have to a great extent identified our necessary destinies Thousands of your fellow-citizens, and many millions of your property, are already established among us; and your contiguity, and a constant intercourse which all the restraints of Spanish jealousy could only discourage but could not wholly prevent, have made irrepressible the noble aspirations we have learned from you, and are now obeying.

We want and we ask no aid against the fair force of the tyrants themselves. Cuba has nothing to fear in a struggle on the principles of civilized warfare with Spain alone. We invoke your assistance solely for the purpose of making it sure, prompt, and as bloodless as possible, that achievement of our independence on which we are now resolved -to supply our own deficiency of arms- to anticipate, the succors which our enemy may seek from kindred monarchies alike hostile to you and to all national aspirations for freedom - and for the prevention or repression of that servile insurrection with which our tyrants have threatened to ruin where they can no longer rule. We ask you to place at once the high sovereign veto which it is yours, and yours alone, to exercise in fitting case, on your side of the broad Atlantic, upon that atrocious menace of an equally weak and cruel despotism, which, however sure the failure of any attempt to exercise it, could not even be defeated without most deplorable consequences.

We invite you, therefore, to come, Freemen of America, in your own modes , with your own gallant heart and trusty arms, to the shores where your brethren will rejoice to, welcome, honor and reward you. The flag of the Republic of Cuba once unfurled, and her Provisional Government once established in the Island, I am assured by eminent jurists and statesmen of your own, that no laws forbid your thus coming, in such a cause and for such an object; while the supreme law, alike of humanity and self-protection, against menaced evils whose fulfillment would react directly upon yourselves, speaks through my voice in thus inviting you in the name of Cuba. Coming as emigrants, without military organization within the limits of the United States, you will neither violate any law, nor in any respect implicate or compromise the peace of your own country. The rule of right in regard to kindred people struggling for freedom, which needed indeed no authorities on the "Law of Nations" to commend it either to your hearts or judgment, is thus declared by Vattel: "When a people, for good reasons, take up arms against an oppressor, justice and generosity -require that brave men should be assisted in the defence of their liberty. Whenever, therefore, a civil war is kindled in a State, foreign powers may assist that party which appears to then to have justice on their side.

The Republic of Cuba offers her citizenship to all engaging in her service who may desire to avail themselves of it. The American portion of the Liberating Army will be commanded by officers whose names, already ennobled on the fields of Mexico, will afford the best guarantees to all who will come to follow them to fresh glories, and to rewards worthy of your services, of Cuba's gratitude, and of the vast wealth yearly teaming from the bosom of the lovely land you will have aided to redeem. From almost any point at which you may land, along our 2,000 miles of coast, not under the very guns of any of the citadels of tyranny, there will be little -difficulty in proceeding to the districts occupied by the Liberating Army. Cuba, with all the urgent claims upon your sympathies above referred to, invokes at your hands that same succor which in the crisis of your revolutionary struggle a friendly people brought to you, and invites you, through this appeal, to hasten to shore a brief and brilliant campaign for liberty, humanity and glory.

Narciso Lopez, Commander-in-Chief of the Liberating Expedition of Cuba.