THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
dence, and referred to it with a twinkle in his eye. It was rather an advantage to me to have that funny reminiscence in common with him, for to have been engaged together in a secret adventure of that sort is apt to put men upon a footing a little more confidential than it would have been without such an occurrence.
It was my business to place the situation of my country in the most favorable light in the eyes of the government to which I was accredited. In Spain I could not, of course, appeal to any anti-slavery feeling, because at that time slavery still existed in the Spanish colonies. But as the friendship and good will of the United States was a matter of great importance to Spain on account of the proximity to our shores of the Spanish possessions in the West Indies, I sought to impress the Minister with the immense superiority of the resources of the North to those of the South, which made the eventual suppression of the rebellion inevitable, whereupon the Republic would be more powerful and its friendship more important to its neighbors than ever before. Nor did I forget to mention that the desire to annex Cuba existed hardly at all in the North, but almost exclusively in the South, and that if, by a wonder, the Southern Confederacy should succeed in establishing its independence, it would certainly strive to strengthen itself territorially, and turn its eyes toward Cuba at once. Don Saturnino recognized this as probable, although he was proudly confident that Spain would always be powerful enough to hold her own.
But as to the superiority of our North to the Southern insurgents, he had his doubts. The North being a manufacturing country and the South an agricultural country, the North thus depending upon the South for breadstuffs and other agricultural products, he could not see how the North
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