o
serve as a nucleus for their force. Believing that the Cuban population
would aid them, American adventurers enlisted and were ruined. They found
no aid. Not a Cuban joined them. They were treated as pirates and robbers
from the first moment of their landing. Nor could they expect any other
treatment in case of failure. They ceased to be American citizens the
moment they set out, as invaders, for the shores of Cuba."

[Illustration: A SPANISH BLOCK HOUSE]

The excitement of the Lopez incident was passing when it was revived,
in 1854, by the _Black Warrior_ experience, to which reference is made
elsewhere. Another invasion was projected by exuberant and adventurous
Americans. It was to sail from New Orleans under command of General
Quitman, a former Governor of the State of Mississippi. No secret was
made of the expedition, and Quitman openly boasted of his purposes, in
Washington. The reports having reached the White House, President Pierce
issued a proclamation warning "all persons, citizens of the United States
and others residing therein" that the General Government would not fail to
prosecute with due energy all those who presumed to disregard the laws of
the land and our treaty obligations. He charged all officers of the United
States to exert all their lawful power to maintain the authority and
preserve the peace of the country. Quitman was arrested, and put under
bonds to respect the neutrality laws. There was a limited uprising in
Puerto Principe, in 1851, and a conspiracy was revealed, in Pinar del Rio,
in 1852. A few years later the Liberal Club in Havana and the Cuban Junta
in New York were reported as raising money and organizing expeditions. Some
sailed, but they accomplished little, except as the activities appear as a
manifestation of the persistent opposition on the part of what was probably
only a small minority of the Cuban people. For several years, the unrest
and the agitation continued. Spain's blindness to the situation is
puzzling. In his _Cuba and International Relations_, Mr. Callahan says:
"Spain, after squandering a continent, had still clung tenaciously to Cuba;
and the changing governments which had been born (in Spain) only to be
strangled, held her with a taxing hand. While England had allowed her
colonies to rule themselves, Spain had persisted in keeping Cuba in the
same state of tutelage that existed when she was the greatest power in
the world, and when the idea of colonial rights ha