The court which sat in judgment at Puerto Principe tried the leader of the revolutionists, and brave Joaquin Aguero was condemned to die by the garrote. The same sentence was imposed on José Thomas Betancourt, Fernando de Zayas and Miguel Benavides; while Miguel Castellanos and Adolfo Pierre Aguero were sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, which sentences were all decreed to take effect on August 12.
It was impossible, even with the strict censorship which the Spanish Captain-General maintained over the island, to keep reports of the stirring events which were taking place from leaking forth into the outer world. Of course, Lopez and the junta at New York learned of them through the channels known only to themselves, and the news, spreading to all parts of the United States, caused tremendous excitement. Great interest was manifested, particularly in the southern states, and in New York City, where the members of the Cuban junta had begun to stir up a considerable amount of interest in and sympathy for the Cubans. The New York papers dispatched correspondents to obtain the true story of the rebellion, but the reporters had difficulty in getting into the country, and encountered still greater obstacles in dispatching what news they could gather to their respective sheets. They were hampered in their efforts by Spanish officials and Spanish spies were always at their heels.
While the main uprising had been in the vicinity of Puerto Principe, incipient rebellions and sympathetic insurrections occurred in other parts of the island, which were quickly quelled by overwhelming forces of Spaniards, and the news of which was confined as much as possible to the immediate vicinity of the uprisings. At Trinidad a mob assembled on horseback, crying vengeance on the Spanish oppressors, but they were soon driven from the city and obliged to take to cover on a densely wooded hill, where their movements were so hampered by underbrush that they were perforce compelled to abandon their mounts, and soon surrendered to superior numbers. It was suspected that the inhabitants of Havana, or rather the revolutionary sympathizers in that place, were about to revolt, but the guard was redoubled, the crowd was overawed by numbers of well armed troops, and the movement, if it ever had been contemplated, never materialized. However, many of the wealthy inhabitants, fearing that they might be seized on suspicion of complicity with the revolutionists, hastily fled to their estates in the country.