The climax came in 1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cuba captured on the high seas the Virginius* with a filibustering expedition on board and executed fifty-three of the crew and passengers, among them eight Americans.

For a time war seemed imminent, but Spain acted quickly and effected a peaceable settlement.
* See "The Path of Empire", by Carl Russell Fish (in "The Chronicles of America"), p.

119.
It became evident soon after 1867 that the issues involved in reconstruction were not in themselves sufficient to hold the North solidly Republican.

Toward Negro suffrage, for example, Northern public opinion was on the whole unfriendly.

In 1867, the Negro was permitted to vote only in New York and in New England, except in Connecticut.