out of Cuba for the annexation of the island to the
United States. I t was promoted in this country
chiefly by the slave power, whose advantage would
be increased thereby. A s far back as 1822, at the
time of the French invasion of Spain under the
Due d ’Angoul6me, there was a suspicion that
France might try to seize Cuba, or that Great
Britain might seek to frustrate the attempt by taking
possession herself; and a party in Havana,
alarmed at the prospect, made secret overtures to
President Monroe, which he did not entertain, for
securing the independence of the island and its subsequent
admission into the Union as a State, to be
ultimately divided into two States. This matter
was first made known by John Quincy Adams when
a member of the House of Representatives in 1836.
In 1848, President Polk made a serious proposition
to the Spanish Government, through the American
Minister at Madrid, for the purchase of Cuba for
$100,000,000; but this was rejected with little show
of diplomatic courtesy. It was the next year that
Narciso Lopez, a Venezuelan by birth, who had
served in the Spanish army, made his first unsuccessful
attempt to head a revolutionary movement in
Cuba. Escaping to New Y ork, he got up a filibustering
expedition with six hundred men and effected
a landing at Cardenas in 1850, but was forced to re-
embark, and was chased to K e y West by a Spanish
man-of-war. T he next year he got away from New
Orleans with another expedition of four hundred
and fifty men, with Colonel Crittenden of K en tu
ck y as second in command, and made a landing
on the coast thirty miles west of Havana. The
force was attacked by Spanish troops and divided,
and Colonel Crittenden and his associates were ruthlessly
shot. Shortly afterwards Lopez was captured,
and on the 1st of September, 1851, he was garrotted.
These filibustering attempts naturally excited a
hostile feeling against the United States on the part
of the Spaniards, and it was at that time that a
clumsy kind of retaliation was begun, which has
done much to produce enmity toward Spain in the
United States. T h e Black Warrior was a steamer
plying between New Y o rk and Mobile, which had
been accustomed to call at Havana to land and receive
mails and passengers without discharging or
taking freight. On that account, and with a perfect
understanding that she carried cargoes in her coasting
trade, she had long been allowed to enter and
clear at Havana, as “ in ballast,." and without e x hibiting
her manifest. T h e privilege had been accorded
by written order of the authorities, but
suddenly, in the early part of 1850, the Black Warrior
was seized for having an undeclared cargo on
board, the cargo was confiscated, and a fine of twice
its value was imposed upon the captain. T his he
refused to pay, and, leaving his vessel behind, he
made his way to the United States with his crew
and passengers as best he could, giving the owners
a chance to put in a claim for indemnity for $300,-
000. A fte r a delay of five years this was paid.
In 1852, an attempt was made on the other side
of the Atlantic to effect an agreement between
Great Britain, France, and the United States, that