SPAIN QUICKLY APOLOGIZED for their gunboat firing on the American-flagged mail steamer Aliçana in Cuban waters, and paid an indemnity to its owners, thus reflecting the growing economic and political power of the United States. Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic incumbent in the White House since the Civil War, happily accepted. However, the Republican-dominated Congress used the incident to again agitate for annexation of Cuba.

The year of the Aliçana incident, 1895, also saw the resurrection of armed insurgency in Cuba. Indeed, the depredations committed on both sides, were equal to those of the Ten Years War. The Spaniards tried to convince the world that they had the situation well in hand, that the insurgency was not popularly supported, and that it would be crushed in a matter of months if not weeks. But, word reached Congress that ninety percent of the Cuban population was behind the revolt and that it could grind on for years, prompting Senator Frye, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to proclaim that “I had almost hoped that Spain would assume such an arrogant tone that it would be necessary for the United States to go over and take possession of Cuba.”

The “word” that reached Congress came from American landowners in Cuba. They were convinced that Spain never would be able to administer the island properly, at least not to their economic advantage, and that the Cubans were incapable of self-government. It's interesting to note at this point that Britain's former colonies, almost without exception, transitioned to self-rule successfully. The United States, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, et al, were models of democratic ideals. However, former colonies of Spain, France, and other European nations, struggled with self-rule. Indeed, many still struggle. The success of Britain's former colonies lay in the fact that they had been prepared for nationhood. Although the British always retained executive authority within their colonies, they always provided their subjects with some degree of legislative power to decide local issues and craft laws that answered local problems in ways that were consistent with local customs.

Thus, Cuba's best self-interest might have been best served had it been annexed by Britain, but that nation had far too many problems with its European neighbors during the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries to take a Caribbean island under its wing. It was obvious that Cuba's only hope lay to the north. This view played on José Martí's fear of the “beast”, as he called the United States. He went to Cuba to help lead the fight and win the insurgency before America mustered its resolve. Unfortunately, he died there while leading a charge against the Spaniards. Martí's final thought must have been a prayer for the Cubans to win their independence before the Americans could intervene. His writings belie the fact that he had no faith in the Americans to be as judicious as the British appear to have been. It's not that he believed the Americans to be evil. Rather, it seems that he feared that Cuban customs and identity likely would be lost in the aggressive energy of the Yankees. He need not have feared. His calls for Cuban independence had taken hold, and they would echo throughout the decades to follow. Annexation was never again popular in Cuban political thought.

The option to purchase Cuba which had surfaced repeatedly in the past was summarily dismissed. Fitzhugh Lee, dispatched to Havana by the Cleveland Administration to determine if the insurrectionists had a de facto government. His reports left the President and his Secretary of State with serious doubts that the Cubans would be able to govern themselves.

Once again, Cuba became the center of attention for the American public. Public rallies were organized by ministers and politicians to decry the inhumanity of the fighting on the island. American newspapers fanned the flames of indignation with lurid articles. Congress began passing resolutions demanding belligerent status for Cuban insurrectionists so that they could negotiate for arms, supplies, and ammunition. President Cleveland expressed his agreement with public sentiment but held out hope for Spain to resolve the issue peacefully. He demanded that they deliver the reforms promised in the Treaty of Zanjón that ended the Ten Years War. Cleveland delayed and temporized as the debate raged about him until the end of his Administration in 1897, when he was replaced by William McKinley, a Republican.  It seemed that only war with Spain was going to resolve the issue of Cuban independence or annexation.

FOLLOWING CASTRO'S REVOLUTION, displaced Cubans invaded Miami. Following the Ten Years War, they invaded New York City. These Cuban exiles placed little faith in the Treaty of Zanjón wherein Spain promised political reform. General Martínez Campos, appointed captain-general in 1879, was just another peninsulare villain in the eyes of the insurrectionists. Freedoms of speech, the press, and assembly existed only at his whim. The exiles harbored no illusions of ever adjusting to Spanish rule. “Cuba Libre”, free Cuba, became their battle cry.

One man emerged as the intellectual leader of the Cuba Libre movement, José Martí. Martí established the Cuban Revolutionary Party, and he helped other exiles found more groups dedicated to the dissemination of revolutionary propaganda. 

José Martí, a fierce Cuban patriot, believed himself to be a citizen of the world. He was renowned as a teacher, journalist, poet and revolutionary who captured and ignited the spirit of the Americas with his speeches and writings. Although he focused on freeing all of Latin America from Spanish rule, he saw danger in the growing economic and political power of the United States. He declared that “Cuba must be free of the United States as well as Spain.” He referred to the nation of the Yankees as the “monster” writing, “I have lived inside the monster, and I know its entrails.”

Those who attempt to explain the fissures in US-Cuban affairs solely as a result of the Cold War are overlooking the groundwork laid by Martí long before communism and the Soviet Union. Indeed, José Martí's influence is easily recognized in much of Castro's own speeches and writings, especially in the days long before the attack he led on the army barracks at Moncada near Santiago de Cuba, long before his imprisonment and exile to Mexico, long before his return to lead a successful revolution to depose America's friend, Fulgencio Batista, and long before he ever avowed loyalty to communism or the Soviet Union.

Martí is also the author of the words to Cuba's most popular song, Guantánamera:

The early efforts of Martí and his fellow exiles were stymied by an autonomist party in Cuba. These men and women feared the death and destruction that a fresh outbreak of armed insurrection would bring. They hoped to craft a peaceful solution in which the island would gain self rule as an autonomous member of the empire. Martí worked assiduously to negate the autonomist's influence in America. Although he distrusted the American's expansionist proclivities, he knew that he needed to wield the new world power as a weapon in his fight against Spain.

Against this backdrop, the Spanish government in Cuba committed another diplomatic blunder. Once again, it involved an American steamship, this time the Aliança.

I read much of José Martí's writings long before I began writing Rebels on the Mountain, my novel set in the time of Castro's insurgency. It provided me with the philosophical backdrop of that revolution, and helped me better understand its political underpinnings.

Interestingly, three monuments to Latin American heroes stand at the Artist's Gate to Central Park in New York City. Among them are Simon Bolivar, José de Martin, and José Martí.

AMERICAN CAPITALISTS LEARNED to deal with the graft and corruption of the Spanish administrators in Cuba. They were tired of every successive U.S. Administration failing to either help Cubans win their independence or annex the island. It was time to get down to business. The natural resources and climate of the island promised prosperity. Its proximity to America, as well as its natural harbors, facilitated communication and transportation. With the end of slavery, the only thing standing in the way were the hands of Spanish administrators itching for cash.

Spanish peninsulares, tired of the death and destruction of the Ten Years War, decided to sell out before the Cubans threw them out. Americans moved in with fistfuls of cash and bought up millions of hectacres of lush plantations at a fraction of their value. They bought out prime business properties in every major city. Cubans traded their Spanish masters for American jefes (chiefs). Edward Atkins of Boston became the new sugar baron of Cuba.

In the beginning, American businesses in Cuba flourished. In 1892 alone, almost $78 million in products were shipped from the island to markets in America, more than all other nations in Latin America combined. However, exports of products from the American heartland failed to reach even $18 million. The Spanish imposed heavy tariffs on American goods that the Cubans could not afford to pay. The government also imposed a heavy tax on all foreign owned businesses, and cables began to flood across the Atlantic from Washington to Madrid complaining about unfair treatment. Business owners from European nations suffered equally, but the Americans had acquired the lion's share of assets in Cuba.

Revenue of American-owned businesses dropped every year thereafter until 1898, when Cuban exports amounted to little more than $15 million. Imports were less than $10 million. Spanish interference was taking its toll. Like modern politicians, island officials didn't understand that increased taxation stifles commerce, and a large percentage of a small pie is less satisfying than a small percentage of a large pie.

The Spanish government exacerbated the problem by referring all disputes to courts in Madrid, thereby delaying resolution of commercial disputes. America responded by insisting on most-favored nation trading status. It was, after all, importing 75% of all Cuban exports of sugar, 50% of all tobacco, and 50% of its manufactured products.

American businessmen seemed to know something that no one else knew. Despite the lack of any resolution to these problems, they continued to invest in the island. They sent engineers and contractors to the island to improve its agricultural and industrial efficiency. They built modern sugar mills to replace less efficient smaller mills that processed the sugar cane on each plantation, as well as railroads to move the product quickly and economically to the ports. American capital financed these hacendados, or central mills. Small farmers took the risks and had nowhere else to sell their product except to the hacendado manager. Social-economic problems arose from this system that would continue until Castro's revolution and the land reform that followed. Castro didn't resolve these problems so much as replace them with new ones.

SPANISH SLAVE OWNERS in Cuba used the same tired arguments that were proven wrong in the American South after the Civil War. They feared industrial depression and chronic interracial strife if their slaves were freed. However, under mounting international pressure from every quarter, and bankrupt and exhausted from the Ten Years War, fighting to preserve slavery and their domination of the island, the Spaniards were ready to give up.

Still, the Spaniards held out for gradual emancipation while the Cubans demanded immediate manumission. The law that finally passed the Spanish Cortes (Congress) in 1880 favored the slave owners and provided for an interim eight-year period of patronato (patronage) during which the former owner would care for his slaves. The absurdity of this system was finally recognized and slavery was formally abolished by royal decree in 1866. 

Cubans, especially the former slaves, were not mollified by the end of human bondage. The Guerra Chiquita or Little War, continued unabated until island expatriates living in America and Europe could drum up enough support to mount another major offensive against the peninsulares and their Spanish overlords.

Just as the end of slavery didn't bring racial equality in America, Cuba's former slaves had their rights severely restricted. They were relegated to the balconies of theaters, and most hotels and restaurants wouldn't serve them. Surprisingly, they were admitted to public schools, but the white students were withdrawn to private ones. Trade unions refused to admit them thereby precluding them from employment requiring skilled workers.

Racial discrimination continued in Cuba up until the time that Castro ascended to power. Ironically, Fulgencio Batista, himself a mulato of mixed heritage, often visited the Havana Yacht Club as a guest but could never qualify for membership even though he was President and supreme dictator of the government of the island until Castro forced him to flee.

Under Castro's regime, all traces of racial discrimination were eradicated. However, as in all other communist countries, a new class arose, the bureaucracy. Equality in Cuba allowed everyone except for a privileged few, to descend into poverty. Castro himself took possession of the Presidential palace while the homes of the bourgeoisie were commandeered by the communist bureaucrats, or converted into government offices. The former members of the middle class who failed to escape the island were forced to live as peasants, if they survived the pogroms following the revolution.

Interestingly, interracial marriage was tolerated following the end of slavery in Cuba. Unlike most states in America that enacted anti-misogyny laws, mixed marriages and mulatto children were common in the island's cities and countryside.

I chose to incorporate the story of race relations in Cuba in my novel, Rebels on the Mountain, by having my Caucasian hero, Nick Andrews, court and marry a Cuban mulata, Lucia Comas.

THE DOGS OF WAR began nipping at the heels of the Grant Administration when Spanish officials began executing the captain and crew as well as the passengers of the Virginius, an American flagged merchant ship, in Santiago de Cuba. A few were saved when Captain Lorraine of the British warship HMS Niobe sailed into Santiago harbor and threatened to level the town if the executions were not halted immediately.

The Virginius was a former Civil War blockade runner that had been leased to the Cuban revolutionary junta in New York to transport weapons and supplies to the rebels in Cuba. Long a target of the Cuban authorities, it was finally seized on October 31, 1873, by the Spanish warship Toronado and sailed to Santiago where all aboard were imprisoned. Thirty-six crewmen and sixteen passengers, including Pedro Cespédes, son of the rebel general, were ordered to be shot to death. 

The Virginius affair involved two separate issues: the law of the sea and the law of humanity. Regardless of the legal status of the ship, the United States condemned the executions as barbaric and another example of Spanish brutality. As a matter of maritime law, the captain of the Toronado made the mistake of seizing the Virginius on the high seas. It was actually captured near Jamaica. He should have waited until it entered Cuban territorial waters. But the Spanish had been frustrated in their attempts to take the smuggler because the ship was built to dart in and out of coves and inlets where most seagoing ships, especially warships, were ill-suited.

Even Hamilton Fish, Grant's Secretary of State, was caught up in the moment. Even though he had worked assiduously to avoid confrontation with Spain and thwart the plans of his Minister to Spain as well as the Secretary of War, both of whom were anxious to pursue annexation or purchase of Cuba, Fish dashed off a demand for reparations in which he stipulated: (1) Restoration of the Virginius; (2) Immediate release of the American prisoners; (3) Salute of the American flag in Santiago; and (4) Punishment of the Spanish officers responsible for the executions.

Spain was insulted by the American demands. They responded officially that they acted legally and with honor. Their press took up the cry claiming that the whole affair was nothing more than an expression of the anti-Spanish biases of the American Minister, Daniel Sickles. They dismissed the executions as merely “an unfortunate occurrence” and that the shootings had stopped under orders from the governor-general in Havana. No mention was made of the threat from a British warship. 

America responded by recalling its diplomats from Spain, ordinarily a prelude to war. The Spaniards were surprised by the resolve shown by the United States government and quickly backpedaled. They soon acceded to American demands, asking only to delay punishment of the Spanish officials in Cuba until they had sufficient time to investigate further. The surviving crew were released to American custody and war was averted.

The Ten Years War ended in Cuba three years after the blowup over the Virginius. All sides simply ran out of energy and resources. The Spanish had lost more than 150,000 soldiers and spent more than 700 million pesos. All of the rebel commanders except for Maceo and Vicente Garcia had surrendered their weapons. Fighting had been reduced to an occasional raid on a plantation. A treaty was signed at Zanjón promising more autonomy for the Cubans and granting amnesty to the rebels.

One rebel leader, Calixto García, rejected the terms of the treaty and was exiled to France. He returned to continue the fight against the hated Spanish in what became known as the Guerra Chiquita or “Little War.” It kept the spirit of rebellion alive until the next chapter in Cuban-American relations unfolded.

SECRETARY OF STATE Hamilton Fish had to act. President Grant was anxious to provide the Cuban revolutionaries with belligerent status. This would allow the revolutionaries to negotiate and trade with the United States on an equal footing with the Spanish. The House of Representatives passed a resolution supporting it. Without this status, American officials would be obligated to remain neutral in the bloodbath in Cuba known as the Ten Years War. If Grant fumbled this delicate diplomatic ploy, and Fish was convinced that he would, it was likely that the United States would end up at war with Spain.

In June, 1969, while President Grant toured the country, Fish initiated his own plan. He drafted a proposal and appointed a special envoy to Spain, Paul Forbes, to accompany the Minister to Spain, Daniel Sickles, to present the plan in Madrid. Fish proposed (1) Spain was to recognize Cuban independence; (2) Slavery was to be abolished in Cuba; (3) Cuba would indemnify Spain in the amount of $100 million (to be guaranteed by the United States); and (4) Each side was to recognize an immediate cease fire. In a letter to Sickles, Fish enumerated his rationale. Besides the fact that the United States should be committing to support all legitimate struggles for independence, the violence on the island was threatening American as well as Spanish business holdings there. He encouraged the Spanish to acquiesce to his terms by threatening belligerent status for the rebels if the government in Madrid failed to agree.

In truth, Fish had no intention of granting belligerent status to the rebels. He could always find another excuse to delay if Spain procrastinated.

Spain agreed to Fish's proposals provided that the rebels observe the cease fire first. Spanish pride got in the way again. The Spaniards were willing to leave only after everyone agreed that they could defeat the rebels if they wanted. By laying down their arms, the Spaniards could accept their “surrender” and then sail home with their heads held high. The rebels, of course, had no assurance that the Spaniards would honor the other terms of the agreement once they laid down their arms. They were at an impasse.

Fish had no choice but to withdraw the American proposals. There ensued a series of communiques between Spain and America, containing offers and counteroffers, threats and counter threats. It was obvious that neither side was prepared for war thus, the status quo was insured and the blood bath in Cuba continued unabated.

Diplomats from both countries were at a loss to find a solution until one was thrust upon them when an American ship, the Virginius was seized by the Spanish navy.

THE CUBAN REVOLUTIONARIES looked to the United States as a source of sympathy and material aid. They even harbored visions of veterans of the Grand Army of the Union swarming to the shores of Cuba to help eradicate slavery as they had in America. At the very least, they expected that the vast arsenals of their northern neighbors would open to fill their every request. They soon learned that their visions and expectations far exceeded reality.

The American public was sympathetic to the Cubans. Their opinion of the Spanish was still firmly founded on The Inquisition. However, none were certain that the Cubans were ready for independence. It was popularly believed that Cuba had great potential for prosperity, but that the inhabitants lacked Puritanical determination to labor and create a stable and prosperous nation. “Perhaps these habits of languor and satiety in the landowning elite,” postulated one writer, “were due to an enervating tropical climate; perhaps, to a disinclination to take life seriously.” After all, “dancing was the national pastime.” (This is a sentiment that I echoed in my novel, Rebels on the Mountain, inasmuch as I found it repeated by many other Americans.)

Washington was inundated with letters. The House of Representatives, generally the first governmental body to feel the weight of public opinion, began clamoring for the President to “do something.” Unfortunately, Grant, then President, was struggling with all matters of foreign diplomacy. His cabinet reeled in anticipation whenever the old general put his mind to foreign policy. Governing, Grant was learning, bore little relation to leading an Army. His hesitation to make a decision only encouraged people with competing agendas to begin maneuvering for advantage behind the scenes.

Few wanted the United States to intervene directly and end up in a war with Spain. The wounds of the American Civil War were far from healed. Most were happy to encourage the President to grant belligerent status to the insurrectionists and employ diplomacy to mediate the conflict. However, Gideon Welles, a member of Grant's Cabinet, expressed the misgivings of his peers, noting in his diary that any attempt by the President to engage with Spain diplomatically would likely end up in war.

Grant's Secretary of War, John Rawlins, was more optimistic. He had served with the general during the Civil War and trusted him implicitly and pressed for involvement in Cuban affairs. It is likely that his attitude was helped by the fact that the New York branch of the revolutionary Cuban junta had alleviated his financial problems with $28,000 in Cuban bonds which wouldn't have any value, indeed might increase in value, if the United States intervened and helped them defeat Spain. Unfortunately for Rawlins, his financial dealings with the Cubans became publicly known and he died soon afterward, a broken and bitter man. Although the Americans soon forgot him, the Cubans proclaimed John Rawlins to be the greatest friend they ever had.

America's minister to Madrid, Daniel Sickles, was a Democrat who remained loyal to the Union during the war and was appointed as military governor to the Carolinas when it ended. Like all other Democrats, he favored annexation and began agitating for the Spanish to sell Cuba to the United States as soon as he arrived.

Both Rawlins and Sickles were thwarted by Grant's Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish. He persuaded the President to remain uninvolved in Cuba's problems and not grant them belligerent status. Fish had no great love for either Spain or slavery. He simply didn't trust the Cubans. Fish was firmly in the camp of those who had no respect for the Negroes and half-castes to govern themselves, a nation, or a state.

Unfortunately for Fish, the President was not inclined to do nothing. So Fish had to come up with an alternate plan, one that would keep the President from dabbling in diplomacy and quiet the public outcry to end the bloodbath. Ultimately, he crafted one and implemented it without first obtaining his boss's approval.

DEMOCRATS AND SLAVERY dominated America's attempt to annex Cuba until the end of the 1850s. Repeated attempts to purchase the island or hasten Spain's departure so that it could be annexed all failed. European powers, notably England and France, feared America's growing population and its democratic ideals, and helped Spain maintain its hold on the island. The last gasp of the Democrats to annex Cuba came from Stephen A. Douglas in a debate with Abraham Lincoln. He received thunderous applause when he announced that Spain's oppressive rule was collapsing around the world, and that no nation could save Cuba for Madrid. However, Lincoln was elected and he distrusted all overtures to annex the island. He saw them as plots to create another bastion of American slavery. Thus, America withdrew into its own turmoil during the 1860s – the American Civil War – and the 1870s – Reconstruction. Cuban revolutionaries were on their own.

During a brief period of reconciliation between the Spanish peninsulares and Cuban creoles, they formed the Partido Reformista to bring administrative reform to Cuba and Puerto Rico. The Reform Party in Cuba seemed to succeed when, in November, 1865, a royal decree was issued in Madrid forming a special junta to study the issue. Unfortunately, the junta was myopic, seeing the issues only from the point of view of the Cuban peninsulares while neglecting the creoles' concern for the subjugated masses of the island: the white proletariat, the mestizos, and the Negro slaves. If anything, the junta not only recognized the continuing authority of merchants, tax-collectors, soldiers, and clerics, but also reinforced it. Revolution was inevitable.

In October, 1868, the rebellion was announced in a manifesto first proclaimed at the plantation of Yaro, where the Indian hero, Hatuey, had been executed by the Spanish conquistadores 350 years earlier. This document echoed the grievances of the American colonies voiced in the Declaration of Independence. Thus began the Ten Years War. Manuel de Cespédes, one of the foremost leaders of The Ten Years War, blamed the revolution on Spanish tyranny, excessive taxation and tribute, and denial of political, civil, and religious liberties.

Also, like the American revolution, not all Cubans agreed with the manifesto. Some, like José Antonio Saco, an eminent Cuban writer, argued for better administration, not social liberty. De Cespédes on the other hand, manumitted his slaves and enlisted them as guerrilla warriors. He was joined by a Cuban general, Máximo Gomez, who abhorred class society and the slave system.

Another feature of the Ten Years War that mirrored the American Revolution was the existence of the “Volunteers”, creoles who remained loyal to Spain and Spanish rule on the island. Indeed, just as some of the fiercest fighting occurred between Revolutionaries and Tories in the American Revolution, Cuban Rebels and the Volunteers fought with insane blood lust.

In an interesting parallel between the Ten Years War and Castro's Revolution, fighting centered in the eastern end of the island where the mountainous terrain favored guerrilla operations employed by the rebels. Indeed, the Sierra Maestras Mountains were the home of every Cuban revolution, including Hatuey's fight against the conquistadores. The war was a brutal, vicious affair with rapine and pillage commonly committed on all sides. The insurgents, who had originally promised to respect the lives and property of noncombatants, began burning plantations to ruin the sugar economy of the island and extend the pain of revolution into the royal treasuries in Madrid.

The Ten Years War devolved into a bloody stalemate. Neither side could win and neither side would accept peace on any terms other than their own. The rebels wanted political autonomy before laying down their arms, and the Peninsulares wanted the rebels to lay down their arms in exchange for promises of autonomy. The Volunteers had no position other than to kill rebels.

Watching from the sidelines, President Grant became convinced that only the United States had any chance of ending the Cuban bloodbath.

THE WRECK OF the steamship Black Warrior sits in just 45 feet of water off Rockaway Bar near the entrance to New York Harbor. It is one of the most visited dive sites in that area. Artifacts still  can be found hidden in the sand, and blackfish swim nearby making tempting targets for spear fishermen as well as anglers. Owned by the New York and New Orleans Steamship Line, it called regularly at Havana in the mid-19th Century. During one visit there, the governor general of Cuba seized the ship and set off a diplomatic incident that effectively derailed President Pierce's scheme to buy the island.

Seizing ships. Confiscating cargoes. Jailing crews. These were nothing new in Cuba under Spanish rule. However, the incident with the Black Warrior just happened at the wrong time. American ministers were hard at work in Europe setting up their proposal to purchase the island from Spain. The ministers in England and France were insuring that any request from Spain to help protect their interests in Cuba would be rebuffed. The American minister in Spain was attempting to convince the government there that that had no hope of surviving the revolution that was bound to come. Selling Cuba to the Americans, he argued, would at least provide them with some value before the Cuban creoles simply took control without paying for it. Unfortunately, the cabal of American ministers was too ham-handed and the Spaniards, though they had no reasonable expectation of resisting the American offer, had their pride hurt.

Then came word of the Black Warrior incident. It was an opportunity for the Americans to shift gears and try a more diplomatic approach. Had they, there is a chance that it would have put the deal over the top. Instead, they became even more belligerent and the Spaniards dug their heels in.

The Americans demanded an excessive indemnity for the ship and the Spaniards responded that they were not accustomed to the “haughty and abusive” attitude of the Americans. Intemperate letters were exchanged. In addition to the indemnification of the ship's owners, the American ministers began to demand a formal apology for the disrespect shown towards the ship's ensign, the American flag. The Spanish retorted that they were not obliged to salute a nation's flag when flown on a mere merchant ship. The Americans responded by tripling the indemnification claim.

Then came world that an insurrection against the royal family in Spain was brewing. The American minister, Pierre Soulé, met with the opposition leaders and became convinced that he could negotiate with them even more favorable terms for the sale of Cuba. Convinced that they were on the verge of a break through, Soulé called for a meeting of the American ministers from England and France. They assembled in Germany to plot their final strategy. Soulé's communications with the Secretary of State became overconfident. 

Then came one of the most notorious incidents in the diplomatic history of the United States. All Europe was watching the Americans. It seemed that everyone had some friend within the inner circles of the American embassies and newspaper reports of the planned meeting began to appear. Although the Secretary of State fretted that prospects looked bleak for the effort to secure the deed to Cuba because of all the publicity, the ministers pressed ahead full of confidence. They went so far as to draft the Ostend Manifesto. In it, they spelled out everything, not only the justifications for the island to be annexed to America, but also the price they were willing to pay and, most improvidently, the consequences if Spain should refuse. It wasn't actually a manifesto. If was intended for public consumption, but it became public.

Spain's pride was hurt. They complained bitterly of the affair, and other European powers took up their cause, castigating the American President and his administration for their uncouth behavior towards a sovereign nation. The Secretary of State sent a note to the American ministers in Europe, rebuking them all. He reaffirmed the President's interest in purchasing Cuba but directed them to never raise the issue again unless Spain initiated the conversation.

With the issue behind them and their pride somewhat mollified, the Spaniards released the Black Warrior and paid its owners indemnification, but only a fraction of that which had been demanded. The ship returned to service until it sank in a gale as it attempted to find refuge in New York Harbor.

AMERICA PERCEIVED SPAIN as a citadel of oppression and the mood of the people began to swing against the policies of Presidents Taylor and Fillmore. The spirit of manifest destiny rose once again and Democratic leaders began to agitate for expansion of the young country into Spain's remaining possessions in the Western Hemisphere, notably Cuba and Puerto Rico. Their champion, Franklin Pierce delivered a warning shot across Spain's diplomatic bow when he announced in his Inaugural Address in March, 1853, “The policy of my Administration will not be controlled by any timid forebodings of evil from Cuba.” He went on to add, “...the acquisition of certain possessions not within our jurisdiction eminently important for our protection...” There was little doubt that he was speaking of Cuba.

Journalists of the time celebrated Pierce's declaration. They maintained that Spain was the enemy of democracy so long as Cuba suffered in bondage. Reports of graft and corruption among Spanish officials was endemic. Although the island produced $25 million annually in revenue, less than a fifth of it was received in Spain. Cuba, they editorialized, deserved enlightened and progressive leadership such as only America could provide, to fulfill her commercial destiny. I don't know about you, but I was never aware that Cuba held such a prominent place in American politics until I began researching the history of American-Cuba relations. 

President Pierce could count on his party for support in any plan he chose to pursue to take possession of Cuba. The Democrats were dominated by Southern slave owners and they lusted for the annexation of the island to become another slave state. Furthermore, it would not only increase the value of their slaves, but also equalize their competitive position to Cuba in the sugar markets.

Other journalist stoked the flames of passion for annexation by reporting that the Spaniards were once again flirting with a free labor system in Cuba. Spain had seen the writing on the wall and were again courting British assistance in maintaining their hold on the island. The British, of course, were looking to use Spain's dilemma as an excuse to press for an end to slavery in Cuba.

In a cursory examination of the diplomatic messages to Europe of that time, it appears that Pierce was following the lead of his predecessors. He sent notes to the major powers in Europe reaffirming the American policy of honoring Spain's authority over Cuba, and that no move to transfer that authority to another nation would be tolerated. However, the men he chose to deliver those messages were all decidedly and publicly committed to revolution and annexation. Indeed, a couple had records of antagonizing the governments they were sent to. Now there's a mixed signal if ever there was one.

President Pierce's diplomats in Europe began conspiring to use the uncertainty they were creating to make another attempt to purchase Cuba. They convinced Spain that neither England nor France had the capability or the will to intercede. This, they hoped, would lower the purchase price.

Before the Secretary of State could dispatch the authorization to make a formal proposal to purchase the island, Cuban port officials in Havana seized an American merchant ship, the Black Warrior. A diplomatic incident ensued, and plans to purchase Cuba were shoved to the back burner.