As an incident of this controversy, in the closing days of August, the Liberal press of Havana conducted a campaign of vilification against Hugh S. Gibson, the American Chargé d'Affaires in Cuba, which culminated in a personal assault upon that gentleman by Enrique Maza, a member of the staff of one of the papers. This outrage provoked a sharp protest from the Washington government, in terms which implied a menace of action if reparation were not made. This alarmed President Gomez, and caused him to make at least a show of punishing the offender, and to write a long message of apology and pleading to President Taft, in which he promised to deal with Maza and with the newspapers which had been slandering Mr. Gibson, to the full extent of the law, and begged for a reassuring statement of friendship from the United States government. Ultimately Maza was punished by imprisonment, and the penalty of the law was also applied to Senor Soto, the responsible editor of one of the papers which had most libelled the American Charge d'Affaires. The Cienfuegos claim was also paid; but because of it an attempt was made to enact a law excluding all foreign contractors from participation in Cuban public works! The Presidential election occurred on November 1, and resulted, as we shall hereafter see, in assurance that the Liberal party would be retired from power in May of the following year, and that the government of the island would be confided to the hands of those who had striven to uphold the wise and patriotic administration of Estrada Palma. In the few remaining months of his administration President Gomez pursued substantially the same policy that had marked the preceding years. In March, 1913, Congress enacted an Amnesty bill which would have meant a general jail delivery throughout the Island, and which President Gomez was strongly inclined to sign. He was restrained at the last moment from doing so, however, by the energetic protests of the United States government, which indeed were tantamount to an ultimatum; and instead returned the measure to Congress with his veto, and with a recommendation that it be revised so as to avoid the objections of the United States--though he did not directly mention the United States--and then repassed. This was done and the modified bill became a law at the middle of April.