One evil this new Captain-General did earnestly try to overcome. He endeavored to do away with the fee system which had caused so much unjust imprisonment and suffering. He made an effort to obtain fixed salaries for all government officials instead of fees, but at every turn he was balked by the Peninsulars. There is some reason to believe that he was not altogether sincere; that he was a fair spokesman, but an evil performer; that he did not allow his right hand to know the injustice he was planning to do with his left. At any rate, at the very time when he was offering such cheering words of hope to the Cubans, he was putting into operation a regular line of vessels from Cadiz, Spain, to Havana. He offered various excuses--of course, expansion, and many others--for this action, but thinking Cubans well knew that his real purpose was that communications might be more easy and frequent with the Spanish court, and that news of uprisings, and the dispatching of troops to suppress them, might be less delayed. He also--but, of course, this was done under orders of the Spanish government, induced, we are told, by his recommendations--increased and strengthened the fortifications of the island, and asked for and received a greater number of troops to man them.
However, there must have been some ground for the belief that Concha in some ways favored the Cubans for in no other manner could he have raised such a storm of dislike among the Peninsulars as constantly whistled about his head, and finally resulted in his recall.
While these events were taking place in Cuba, Lopez, in the United States, was far from idle, and he was not lacking in friends who sought to aid him. Singularly enough those in the South who were numbered among his supporters seemed not to be disheartened by the failure of the Cardenas expedition, and, of course, the juntas were active in stirring up popular opinion in favor of filibustering, and in obtaining both moral and financial support for another enterprise. But with it all money was woefully lacking.
General Henderson, who had been a member of the first expedition, and had been one of those indicted and tried, at this time wrote to a friend:
"I need not tell you how much I desire to see him (Lopez) move again, and it is more useless to tell you how wholly unable I am to assist him to make this move. With my limited means, I am under the extremest burdens from my endeavors on the former occasion. Indeed I find my cash advanced for the first experience were over half the cash advanced to the enterprise, and all my present means and energies are exhausted in bringing up the arrearages. Yet I still believe in the importance, the morality and the probability of the enterprise; and I believe it is one the South should steadfastly cherish and promote. I feel it is more especially incumbent on us who have once failed to retrieve ourselves from so much of the opprobrium and reproach as the defeat has cast upon us. For we know that, could we succeed, we should win all those triumphs which success in such enterprises never fails to command. And would not such triumph be glorious! I believe you yield equal consideration to the importance of this subject as I do; and as a Southern question, I do not think, when properly viewed, its magnitude can be overestimated."