Until now, the story of Narciso Lopez's daring invasions of Cuba has remained one of the great lost sagas of American history. Wildly famous during the mid-nineteenth century as the leader of a filibuster, a clandestine army, Lopez led the first armed challenge to Spain's long domination over Cuba. While U.S. historians have tended to view Lopez as an agent of pre-Civil War southern expansionism, Tom Chaffin reveals a broader, more complicated picture. Although many southerners did assist Lopez, the web of intrigue that sustained his conspiracy also included New York City, steamship magnates, penny press editors, Cuban industrialists, and nothern Democratic urban bosses.

Drawn from archives in both the United States and Cuba and enlivened by first-person accounts and reports from federal "special agents" assigned to spy on Lopez, Fatal Glory holds appeal for both scholars and the general reader with an interest in Cuba, U.S. foreign policy, or the U.S. sectional crisis of the 1850s.