Read Online American Scoundrel by Thomas Keneally - Free Book Online
Authors: Thomas Keneally
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to be escorted by one so young. There may have been other reasons that she did not want to state to Buchanan. She was a New Yorker, and had no doubt read of Sickles and Fanny White, and now observed that one rumor was right—that Buchanan
was
under the enchantment of Sickles’s young wife. When Mrs. Thomas asked for a more suitable sponsor, saying that she “decidedly declined to go to court with Teresa,” it caused a quarrel, and Mrs. Thomas was never presented at court. 12
Throughout these squabbles, Dan continued his shuttle diplomacy. He particularly liked the French-American Soulé. Soulé believed not only that Cuba should be liberated from a decadent and cruel Spanish regime, but that it could be divided into two slave states to counterbalance the ever-expanding free states of the North. The Democrats of Louisiana, including and perhaps particularly Soulé and the governor of the state, John Quitman, had willingly supported a number of unofficial military expeditions to Cuba. With their backing, and in one of many foreshadowings of the twentieth-century Bay of Pigs, a Cuban refugee named Narcisso Lopez recruited an army of Cuban exiles, adventurers, and Mexican War veterans for an invasion of the island in 1849. Lopez’stroops acquired the name “filibuster” from the Spanish
filibustero
, meaning freebooter or pirate. Lopez had established a briefly held beachhead on Cuba before being driven out by Spanish troops. Escaping to Key West on his expeditionary ship, Lopez was greeted by Southerners as a hero, and the port officials of New Orleans conspired in mounting a further expedition, which departed in the late summer of 1851. This time Spanish troops were waiting for Lopez and his filibusters. They shot down some hundreds of them, sent 160 off to dungeons in Spain, garroted Lopez publicly in Havana, and lined up fifty American nationals, including the nephew of U.S. Attorney General John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, and executed them.
Soulé had thus brought a number of intense grievances to his appointment to Spain, and to it was added another. In May 1854 the Spanish administration in Cuba seized the American merchant vessel
Black Warrior
. Americans were enraged, and Democrats called for the seizure of what their newspapers called “the Pearl of the Antilles,” Cuba. Soulé actively but surreptitiously offered bribes to the Spanish royal household and supported both Spanish republican activists and Cuban subversives with cash. Dan supported Soulé in his confidence that a little diplomatic cunning and bravery would bring Cuba into American hands, even over the desires of England and France, who had their own interests and ambitions in Central America and the Caribbean. 13
After his visits to Paris and Madrid, Dan was back in London to be involved in a further scandal that July 4. He was put on the job of negotiating arrangements, with the expatriate Bostonian banker George Pea-body, for the celebration of the national day. At initial meetings, Dan found that Peabody, a Boston Brahmin and an Anglophile, sought to improve strained Anglo-American relations by inviting the leaders of British business and community to dinner at the Crystal Palace. Buchanan and Sickles both considered the idea repulsive. July Fourth was, after all, a day of republican observance, not an occasion to improve commerce between the two nations. With lack of support from the American legation for the Crystal Palace idea, Peabody planned, with Sickles’s help, a smaller event at the Star and Garter Hotel in Richmond on the Thames.When Sickles arrived at the celebratory lunch that day in his 12th Regiment uniform, he was outraged to see that a majority of the guests were British and that, at the head of the dining room, a small portrait of Washington was hemmed in between two massive portraits, one of Queen Victoria, the other of the Prince Consort, Albert. According to Dan, Peabody debased himself by asking the Queen to lend these
was
under the enchantment of Sickles’s young wife. When Mrs. Thomas asked for a more suitable sponsor, saying that she “decidedly declined to go to court with Teresa,” it caused a quarrel, and Mrs. Thomas was never presented at court. 12
Throughout these squabbles, Dan continued his shuttle diplomacy. He particularly liked the French-American Soulé. Soulé believed not only that Cuba should be liberated from a decadent and cruel Spanish regime, but that it could be divided into two slave states to counterbalance the ever-expanding free states of the North. The Democrats of Louisiana, including and perhaps particularly Soulé and the governor of the state, John Quitman, had willingly supported a number of unofficial military expeditions to Cuba. With their backing, and in one of many foreshadowings of the twentieth-century Bay of Pigs, a Cuban refugee named Narcisso Lopez recruited an army of Cuban exiles, adventurers, and Mexican War veterans for an invasion of the island in 1849. Lopez’stroops acquired the name “filibuster” from the Spanish
filibustero
, meaning freebooter or pirate. Lopez had established a briefly held beachhead on Cuba before being driven out by Spanish troops. Escaping to Key West on his expeditionary ship, Lopez was greeted by Southerners as a hero, and the port officials of New Orleans conspired in mounting a further expedition, which departed in the late summer of 1851. This time Spanish troops were waiting for Lopez and his filibusters. They shot down some hundreds of them, sent 160 off to dungeons in Spain, garroted Lopez publicly in Havana, and lined up fifty American nationals, including the nephew of U.S. Attorney General John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, and executed them.
Soulé had thus brought a number of intense grievances to his appointment to Spain, and to it was added another. In May 1854 the Spanish administration in Cuba seized the American merchant vessel
Black Warrior
. Americans were enraged, and Democrats called for the seizure of what their newspapers called “the Pearl of the Antilles,” Cuba. Soulé actively but surreptitiously offered bribes to the Spanish royal household and supported both Spanish republican activists and Cuban subversives with cash. Dan supported Soulé in his confidence that a little diplomatic cunning and bravery would bring Cuba into American hands, even over the desires of England and France, who had their own interests and ambitions in Central America and the Caribbean. 13
After his visits to Paris and Madrid, Dan was back in London to be involved in a further scandal that July 4. He was put on the job of negotiating arrangements, with the expatriate Bostonian banker George Pea-body, for the celebration of the national day. At initial meetings, Dan found that Peabody, a Boston Brahmin and an Anglophile, sought to improve strained Anglo-American relations by inviting the leaders of British business and community to dinner at the Crystal Palace. Buchanan and Sickles both considered the idea repulsive. July Fourth was, after all, a day of republican observance, not an occasion to improve commerce between the two nations. With lack of support from the American legation for the Crystal Palace idea, Peabody planned, with Sickles’s help, a smaller event at the Star and Garter Hotel in Richmond on the Thames.When Sickles arrived at the celebratory lunch that day in his 12th Regiment uniform, he was outraged to see that a majority of the guests were British and that, at the head of the dining room, a small portrait of Washington was hemmed in between two massive portraits, one of Queen Victoria, the other of the Prince Consort, Albert. According to Dan, Peabody debased himself by asking the Queen to lend these
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