returned Máximo Gómez to his command. Gradually a new generation of skilled battle-tested Cuban commanders rose from the ranks, including Antonio Maceo Grajales, José Maceo, Calixto García, Vicente Garcia González and Federico Fernández Cavada. Raised in the United States and with an American mother, Fernández Cavada had served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. His brother Adolfo Fernández Cavada also joined the Cuban fighting for independence. On 4 April 1870, the senior Federico Fernández Cavada was named Commander-in-Chief of all the Cuban forces. Other war leaders of note fighting on the Cuban Mambí side included Donato Mármol, Luis Marcano-Alvarez, Carlos Roloff, Enrique Loret de Mola, Julio Sanguily, Domingo Goicuría, Guillermo Moncada, Quentin Bandera, Benjamín Ramirez, and Julio Grave de Peralta. Because of the escalating violence, after the first year of the war, around 100,000 Cubans fled the country. Generally speaking, those rich enough settled in Europe or else in northern cities in America like New York, Philadelphia, or Boston. Meanwhile, the poorer workers moved to south Florida, first settling in Key West, and then in Tampa. Constitutional assembly On 10 April 1869, a constitutional assembly took place in the town of Guáimaro (Camagüey). It was intended to provide the revolution with greater organizational and juridical unity, with representatives from the areas that had joined the uprising. The assembly discussed whether a centralized leadership should be in charge of both military and civilian affairs, or if there should be a separation between civilian government and military leadership, the latter being subordinate to the first. The overwhelming majority voted for the separation option. Céspedes was elected president of this assembly; and General Ignacio Agramonte y Loynáz and Antonio Zambrana, principal authors of the proposed Constitution, were elected secretaries. After completing its work, the Assembly reconstituted itself as the House of Representatives and the state's supreme power. They elected Salvador Cisneros Betancourt as president, Miguel Gerónimo Gutiérrez as vice-president, and Agramonte and Zambrana as secretaries. Céspedes was elected on 12 April 1869, as the first president of the Republic in Arms and General Manuel de Quesada (who had fought in Mexico under Benito Juárez during the French invasion of that country), as Chief of the Armed Forces. Spanish repressions By early 1869, the Spanish colonial government had failed to reach an agreement with the insurrection forces; they opened a war of extermination. The colonial government passed several