On April 19, 1862, Fernández Cavada sketched enemy positions from Thaddeus Lowe's Constitution balloon during the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia.

On April 19, 1862, Fernández Cavada sketched enemy positions from Thaddeus Lowe's Constitution balloon during the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia.

[2] That year Fernández Cavada wrote a poem in which he said: "I have pulled through many a march, I have been in many a battle, I have seen the bomb-shell burst, I have heard the grapeshot rattle!

The gloomy and forbidding exterior of the prison, and the pale, emaciated faces starring vacantly at us through the bars were repulsive enough, but it was at least a haven of the rest from the weary fast-march, and from the goad of the urging bayonet.

Had we known that we were entering this loathsome prison-house not to leave it again for many, many weary days and months, more than one heart would have grown faint with a mournful presentiment, for there were among us some who were doomed never to recross its threshold as living men.

Fernández Cavada met and befriended General Thomas Jordan, who was chief of staff of the Cuban Liberation Army under the provincial government presided by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.

[6] The friendship inspired Fernández Cavada to resign his position as consul upon the Cuban insurrection against Spanish rule, a conflict that became known as Cuba's Ten Years' War (1868–78).

On January 5, 1869, Fernández Cavada established the "Logia Luz del Sur" (Southern Light Lodge) in Trinidad, which was used as an active recruiting center for insurgents.

[1] Fernández Cavada wrote an article about the beauty of the Caves of Bellamar, located near the town of Matanzas in the northern coast of Cuba.

At the present day no visitor to Cuba fails to repair to that wondrous subterranean palace, unrivalled, perhaps, in the grandeur of its stalactite masses and the exquisite detail of its starry decorations.

Easy of access from Havana by railway, and commodiously and safely prepared for the reception of visitors, it fully repays one for a day's absence from the busy scenes of the capital.

[2] In 1871, Fernández Cavada took charge of the military division in Camagüey and, together with fellow rebel Bernabé Varona, planned an armed invasion on the western coast of Cuba.

He traveled to "Cayo Cruz" in the northern coast of Camagüey to wait for his transportation; but he was captured by the Spanish gunboat Neptuno in 1871 and taken to Puerto Principe.

Generals George Gordon Meade, Daniel Sickles and Ulysses S. Grant, his military compatriots in the United States, attempted in vain to obtain his release.