The "Pearl of the Antilles" was the prize trophy in the new crusade for territorial acquisition, and "Free Cuba" the slogan. The efforts to get control of the island, for purposes of annexation, were persistent, and the history of them is intensely interesting. First came filibustering operations. Three expeditions were sent out in 1849-1851. The command of the last of these was offered--first to Jefferson Davis, and then to Robert E. Lee.[71] It sailed August 3, 1851, under Lopez. In the first scrimmage with the Spaniards, Colonel Crittenden (son of Senator Crittenden of Kentucky) and fifty of his men were captured, taken to Havana, and shot, August 24th. The remainder of the Army of Invasion was defeated; Lopez was taken and garroted; and his followers who had been taken prisoners, were sent to Spain. General Quitman's expedition, organized in 1853-1854, would have been more formidable than any theretofore undertaken. He had commanded a brigade in General Scott's army, in Mexico, and had been Governor of Mississippi. His demonstrations, however, may have been merely in support of Mr. Marcy's efforts, at the time, to open negotiations with Spain for purchasing the island. Meanwhile the Black Warrior incident offered the most promising opportunity of all. The provocation in that case could have been held to be sufficient to justify a declaration of war; and that surely would have been the result, had it not been for the tornado of anti-slavery sentiment which was let loose at the time by the promulgation, in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, then pending in Congress, of the new doctrine of "Squatter Sovereignty"; and by Mr. Dixon's amendment thereto, expressly repealing the restriction of the time honored Missouri Compromise. "It may be affirmed with confidence," says Mr. Rhodes,[72] "that Northern public opinion, excited by the Kansas-Nebraska act, alone prevented this unjust war." The New York _Courier and Inquirer_ said June 1st: Does any sane man live who believes that if Cuba was tendered to us tomorrow, with the full sanction of England and France, that this people would consent to receive and annex her?... There was a time when the North would have consented to annex Cuba, but the Nebraska wrong has forever rendered annexation impossible.