In August, 1850, General Narciso Lopez, at the head of 450 men, led a second expedition which he had organised in the United States to Cuba. He contrived to successfully evade the Spanish and American warships, which the respective governments, suspecting his intention, placed on watch between the American mainland and the island, and on the 12th of August disembarked at Cabano, forty miles west of Havana. The would-be liberators of Cuba were, however, badly received by the people, none of whom joined their standard, and many of whom took active part with the Spanish Government against them. Some skirmishes took place between the filibusters and the garrison, and in the end the former broke up into small parties which eventually surrendered or were captured. Lopez was among the latter. He was publicly executed, declaring “I die for my beloved Cuba.” Colonel Crittenden, an American, nephew of the Attorney-General of the United States, was one of Lopez’s lieutenants in the expedition. After a fight against two battalions of infantry and a company of horse, which he sustained for some time with only a hundred men, he attempted to escape from the island with his surviving followers, but was captured and shot together with them, about fifty in all, on the 16th of September, 1850, at the Castle of Atares.
