It was in July, 1848, that Narciso Lopez reached New York, a fugitive from Spanish wrath. There he found that various Cuban Juntas had been formed in the United States, and that a well-organized campaign for the annexation of Cuba was being pushed. This movement was not, of course, approved officially by the United States government; but neither were any extraordinary efforts made to suppress or to discourage it. Several Senators of the United States did not hesitate to make speeches in the Senate in favor of annexation; some of them advocating its forcible achievement if Spain declined to make the cession peacefully. Several of the foremost newspapers also openly espoused the cause. Improving the opportunity presented to him by these circumstances, Lopez sought some prominent American, politician or soldier, who would identify himself with the Cuban revolution and would place himself at its head. Some of his first and strongest efforts were directed toward getting Jefferson Davis, then a Senator and afterward President of the Confederate States, to take command of the expedition which he purposed to fit out; and he offered to place the sum of $100,000 in a New York bank to the credit of Mrs. Davis as an inducement. Davis considered the offer and then declined it; sending Lopez, however, to Major Robert Edward Lee, of the United States army, afterward of the Confederate army, as a more likely candidate. Lee, however, also refused the invitation, for reasons which Jefferson Davis afterward set forth as follows: "He came from Mexico crowned with honors, covered by brevets and recognized, young as he was, as one of the ablest of his country's soldiers, and to prove that he was estimated then as such, I may mention that when he was a Captain of engineers, stationed at Baltimore, the Cuban Junta in New York selected him to be their leader in the revolutionary effort on that island. They were anxious to secure his services, and offered him every temptation that ambition could desire, and pecuniary emoluments far beyond any which he could hope otherwise to acquire. He thought the matter over, and, I remember, came to Washington to consult me as to what he should do. After a brief discussion of the complex character of the military problem which was presented he turned from the consideration of that view of the question by stating that the point on which he wished particularly to consult me, was as to the propriety of entertaining the proposition which had been made to him. He had been educated in the service of the United States, and felt it wrong to accept place in the army of a foreign power while he held a commission."