Jim Bradshaw
‘Generous impulses moved them to peril’
It caught the imaginations of dozens of optimistic adventurers from south Louisiana when Narcisco Lopez led an ill-fated invasion to wrest Cuba from the Spanish Empire in 1851.
It was the era of Manifest Destiny, the belief that expansion of the United States was inevitable. A huge part of the continent had just been annexed as a result of the Mexican-American War, and many people thought Cuba might someday become an American state.
Annexing Cuba was not a new idea. Thomas Jefferson considered it shortly after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and sent agents to the island to discuss the idea. In 1823, John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, suggested that if the island was freed from the Spanish, it would inevitably gravitate toward statehood. In 1851, Spain had just turned down an offer by President James K. Polk to buy Cuba for $100 million, but lots of people still thought its acquisition and annexation was just a matter of time.
Lopez didn’t necessarily want statehood, but he did want a free Cuba, and this was his fourth try to make it happen. The United States opposed the first two, in 1848 and 1849, and they failed before they got started. In the third try, 600 men managed to land in Cuba, but were eventually driven out. This time it was do or die.
At least that was the view of one of the men who sailed with Lopez, identified only by the initials C.A.E. He wrote several letters to the newspapers back home, beginning with one from “on board the steamer Pampero, bound for Cuba, to fight for liberty.”
He’d traveled to New Orleans with a group of men who signed up for the fight and were among “800 efficient men on board [the Pampero], whose very visages are indelibly impressed with philanthropy and bravery, and who are determined to succeed or die in the cause.”
They were full of optimism when, “after having 15,000 stand of arms put on board” they left aboard “the fastest steamer that floats out of this port … being cheered on by thousands of patriotic citizens of New Orleans.”
They had an uneventful trip across the Gulf but ran into trouble when they tried to get ashore at Bahia Honda, about 50 miles west of Havana. It didn’t go well.
The Franklin newspaper carried the “most painful” reports at the end of August of Lopez and the “gallant band who went out by the Pomparo to aid in the revolution of Cuba.” The news brought “a melancholy gloom” to all who read it.
“An intense anxiety has been felt for a long time for the fate of the Pampero and her men,” the newspaper reported. “Their safe landing on the island was a problem of much doubt, but it was hoped and confidently expected that if they could get a foothold there, they would receive such timely aid from the creoles as would ensure them a fair show with the Spanish forces.”
Unfortunately, the cheering throng that had seen them off from New Orleans included Cuban spies who knew everything about their plan.
The Spanish army was waiting for them. The expedition didn’t get its foothold, causing “the most painful doubts of their having obtained any succor from those in whose cause they had risked their all.”
Most of the men who were not killed in battle were captured, taken to Havana, and executed.
“A few weeks ago they left us with hearts swelling with a generous devotion to the principles of freedom, at the call of an oppressed people who were struggling … for liberty. Noble and generous impulses moved them to peril their lives to rescue the oppressed from the power of the tyrant,” the newspaper said. “They have fallen martyrs in the name of freedom.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.
