The United States Government retained a certain supervision over some of the acts of the Cuban Government. Thus, as hitherto stated, in March, 1913, an amnesty bill had been passed at the instance of the Gomez administration, which would have set at liberty several hundred political and other prisoners, but it was objected to by Mr. Bryan, the Secretary of State of the United States, and was accordingly vetoed. It was again posed in a modified form on April 25, and was again similarly vetoed. In November, 1913, it was once more taken up and revised so as to extend the pardon to those who had participated in the negro insurrection, and to some former officeholders of the Gomez administration who had been indicted. It was also intended that it should extend amnesty to General Ernesto Asbert, Governor of the Province of Havana, to Senator Vidal Morales, and to Representative Arias, who had been indicted for the murder of the Chief of Police of Havana, General Armando Riva; a tragedy which occurred during a police raid on a club, on the evening of July 7. This attempt to extend amnesty to these men caused an acute and prolonged controversy. But on December 9, 1914, the bill was finally passed in a form which granted amnesty to General Asbert, but not to Senator Arias. In this form the United States Government sanctioned its enactment because of the belief that the real burden of guilt rested upon the latter rather than upon the former. This controversy over amnesty to General Asbert meanwhile had serious political effects in Cuba. For a time the so-called Asbert faction of the Liberal party allied itself with the Conservatives in Congress in support of President Menocal and thus gave him a majority in that body. But in the summer of 1914 this faction became reunited with the rest of the Liberal party, and Conservative control of Congress was lost. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senor Gonzales Lanuza, a Conservative, resigned and was succeeded by Senor Urquiaga, a Liberal, on August 31. When at last in February, 1915, the act of amnesty for General Asbert was completed, and he was released and fully rehabilitated, there was a great popular celebration of the event in the City of Havana. The first attempt at insurrection in President Menocal's administration occurred on November 9, 1913, when Crecencio Garcia, a mulatto, undertook to lead a revolt in the province of Santa Clara. It was promptly suppressed by the Rural Guard in a manner which augured well for the promise which the President had made, that there would be no revolutions during his administration; and there were no more such attempts until the great treason of ex-President Gomez. CHAPTER XVIII