ABSTRACT
In personal letters, Humboldt described the unscrupulous Thrasher harshly and said about him that he was one more piece of evidence that North American proslavery elements wanted to annex Cuba. Humboldt was on the right track, since, Buchanan, the presidential candidate of the proslavers, was decidedly in favor of the absorption of the Pearl of the Antilles, and Thrasher was a stubborn annexationist and defender of blacks’ personal servitude. The republican politicians attributed great value to Humboldt’s letter, criticizing Thrasher for suppressing Humboldt’s ideas in favor of emancipation. Thrasher’s translation appeared in 1856, when annexationism had already suffered further setbacks with the death, in 1855, of the Catalan Ramen Pinte, with the behavior of General Quitman, and with the dissolution of the Junta Cubana. The relations that Thrasher had with Villaverde and the Cuban conspirators in the warm land of Louisiana were not always cordial.
