A Three Stooges' Version of War in 1850
Filibusters were led to their doom by a flamboyant later-day Don Quixote. Twice.
(“Filibusters” is from a Dutch word meaning “freebooter” or “soldier of fortune”)
In the spring of 1850, a disgruntled Spanish general from Venezuela named Narciso Lopez boarded one of two hired ships at New Orleans along with 500 filibusters for the purpose of invading Cuba and saving the Cuban people from Spanish rule. There were several problems with this scheme, the main one being that they forgot to ask the Cuban people if being saved was okay with them. Another was that none of them had the foggiest notion of what they were doing but refused to let a small thing like that get in the way.
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None of it mattered to General Lopez. In his wildly romantic mind the Cubans would welcome his arrival with glee and rush to join his filibusters to wrest freedom from their Spanish rulers. It was against U.S. law to do this, by the way, but he went ahead with it anyway. He rounded up an enormous chunk of money from American supporters, especially Democrats in the southern states, who saw his expedition as the best way to enlarge U.S. Territory and expand slavery at the same time. They imagined this would tip the balance of power in Congress toward the South and away from venal Yankee merchants with their thumbs on the Tariff scale.
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Just before hauling anchor, Lopez delivered a grandiose pep talk on deck in which he instructed his “freebooters” to “strike from the beautiful limbs of the Queen of the Antilles (Cuba) the chains which have too long degraded her in subjection to a foreign tyranny.” Brevity was not exactly the soul of wit for old Narciso but, nevertheless, Cheers rose from the whiskey-infused assembly. The Lopez banner was unfurled, the anchors were hauled, the sails were set and off they flew, storming down the Mississippi full of booze and righteous determination to free Cuba.
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Attracting little notice from the inhabitants, Lopez and his army went ashore just outside the little town of Cardenas, into which they marched at dawn, seizing the rail station without resistance. They then moved on to the barracks of the Spanish garrison where they were challenged by the guard. When asked “who goes there?” a Kentucky officer answered “friends and Lopez”, whereupon he was immediately shot.
Undeterred, the little army then set fire to the palace and captured the Lieutenant Governor and forty Mexican soldiers, planting Lopez’s new Cuban flag on the governor’s charred residence. Lopez entered the smoking town expecting a grateful people to celebrate their rescuers but was met by resentful Cubans refusing to speak and walking around unanimously hostile to the freebooters. Lopez saw his prospects quickly unravel and abandoned his plan to march on Matanzas. It got worse quickly.
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By noon that day, they got word that 2,000 Spanish troops were forming to make a counterattack. Lopez saw that his situation had become hopeless and ordered everybody to go back to the ships and re-board. The Spaniards caught up with them and began firing artillery pieces as the ships struggled to get out of harm’s way. Lopez’s lead ship then ran aground. He shouted orders to the crew to throw all their heavy equipment overboard including 100 soldiers who got off the ship and rowed their way in dinghys to a nearby island. A rising tide finally lifted the ship off the shoal and they struck off for Florida, leaving five Americans stranded back there at Cardenas to be executed by firing squad.
Incredibly, while under way toward Florida, Lopez was unable to convince his officers that they should try another landing at the city of Mantua, fifty miles to the west! This nearly caused a mutiny among the crew and might well have done so if the Spanish warship Pizarro hadn’t been spotted in hot pursuit. Lopez was forced to temper his enthusiasm. The Pizarro chased them across the Caribbean waters almost all the way into Key West. There, many a hat and handkerchief waved to welcome home the saviors of Cuba.
Lopez made it to Savannah, Georgia, where he was arrested for violating the Neutrality Laws and then promptly released. He continued traveling through the South, recruiting new filibusters at Mobile and New Orleans. Finally, by August, 1851, he was ready to have another go at freeing the Cubans. It ended in a series of disasters in the rugged, rain drenched and mosquito infested mountains until at last, Lopez was arrested. He was arrested because his beloved Cubans recognized him and betrayed him to the Spanish commanding general.
He was executed by garroting before a crowd of 4,000 Cubans. All the remaining captives were executed by firing squad.
Except one.
On the night before he was to be executed, a 23-year old American prisoner asked the jailer if he would permit him to write a letter home. It was granted. He addressed that letter to “President Millard Fillmore at the White House, Washington, D.C.” and in it he wrote:
“Dear father, please don’t mourn for me but forgive me if I have brought any shame upon you and Mother and pray for me as I am bound for death in the morning. Your loving son, Wilbur.”
Of course he made it all up but he knew the Spaniards would read the letter. And they did, after which they decided that this young man’s execution might ignite a terrible response from the United States and that it would be best if they just put him on a boat for Savannah and forgot about it.
And they did.
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