There are other points to be taken into consideration when we discuss the probable issue of the anticipated conflict. One of these, on which such conflicting testimony has been given that it is scarcely possible to form a decided opinion with respect to it, is the amount of support the Americans would find in the island itself. The Spaniards, as I have above intimated, think it would be unimportant. Ask a Yankee annexionist, and he will tell you that the whole island, with the exception of the European Spaniards resident in it, pines for release from the intolerable yoke of Spain, longs to hoist the Stripes and Stars, and to cling to the proud neck of the American eagle. I have been told by Americans of the numbers of letters received from inhabitants of Cuba, expressive of these sentiments, and imploring sympathy and assistance. But it must be observed that a few malcontents, or American settlers in the island, would suffice to circulate an immense number of such complaints and prayers. One may imagine, for instance, the consignees of the Black Warrior, after inditing their submissive and penitent letters to the governor-general, and their petition to the Queen of Spain for the remission of the fine, dipping their sharpest iron pen into the ink-bottle, and relieving their afflicted souls by throwing off screaming despatches to their friends in New York and New Orleans, inveighing against the tyranny of Spanish rule, and longing for the day when Cuba should join the Union. By those to whom such letters were welcome, they would naturally be made the most of; they would be handed about, talked of, and their contents verbally repeated, until it would seem as if a hundred letters had arrived instead of one. The Spaniards themselves admit that a part of the Creole population would be glad to see the island detached from Spain. To these I suppose we may safely add, as partisans of Cuba’s becoming a State of the Union, all the Anglo-Americans resident in the island. Beyond this, I am in possession of no trustworthy evidence; and when I say that only a small portion of the Creoles or native whites are disaffected to the Spanish government, I state it, as you will observe, on Spanish authority, but, at the same time, on the authority of Spaniards long resident in the island, particularly capable, by their position and intelligence, of forming a correct judgment, and the sole drawback to the value of whose opinion is the admissible supposition that it may be biassed by their natural wishes on the subject.