John Sidney Thrasher

Background

Thrasherwas born at Portland, Me. in 1817.

Education

He received a good education in the United States.

Career

He moved with his parents in 1832 or 1833 to Cuba, where he was destined to win notoriety. In this island he acquired considerable worldly experience, as a clerk (until 1847) in the mercantile house of Tyng & Company, ship-brokers and commission merchants; as a revolutionary agitator and propagandist assisting Narciso López and others from 1848 to 1851; and as a partial editor of the Cuban-owned commercial and anti-Spanish paper, El Faro Industrial de la Habana, from August 1850 to September 1851. As a result of this editorial activity, he was tried by court martial on October 16, 1851, imprisoned by the Spanish authorities, and sent to serve eight years at hard labor at Ceuta on the north coast of Africa. From this embarrassment he was freed, by the beginning of 1852, through the intervention of the American minister and his wife at Madrid, and he promised never to return to any Spanish possession. A year later, 1853, he presented to the State Department--though he never pressed it--a claim against Spain for a sum which he felt represented the extent of damage to his Cuban periodical and the cost of the balm for his wounded pride and reputation.

In the middle of 1852 he was back in New York, but he soon went to New Orleans where he actively aided John A. Quitman and the Cuban filibusters and vociferously declared for Cuban annexation to the United States. He remained there until 1855, when he again returned to New York.

Using his journalistic experience in Cuba and New Orleans, he was able to obtain a position on the New York Herald, for which paper he traveled in Mexico and South America until 1859. During the Civil War he was connected with the Southern Associated Press, with headquarters at Atlanta.

Thrasher's chief reputation rests upon his writing and his editorial work. Besides the Cuban paper already mentioned he was connected as editor or contributor with the Beacon of Cuba, DeBow's Review, and the Picayune of New Orleans; with the New York Herald, Leslie's Illustración Americana, and Noticioso de Nueva York of New York City; with the Civilian of Galveston; and probably with other periodicals.

He was also author of several pamphlets in Spanish and English, including Cuba and Louisiana (1854) and A Preliminary Essay on the Purchase of Cuba (1859). At New York in 1856 he translated and edited in a garbled fashion Alexander von Humboldt's essay on Cuba, under the title The Island of Cuba, omitting the arguments against slavery which so offended his own pro-slavery views. This led in 1865 to a brief journalistic tilt with von Humboldt.

As an itinerant editor, author, and general adventurer, Thrasher seems not to have been entirely honest in dealing either with his friends or with his enemies, but as a pro-slavery protagonist of the purchase of Cuba, his sincerity and his enthusiasm cannot be questioned.

He died after a stroke of apoplexy, and was buried in Magnolia Cemetery, Galveston.

Achievements

• John Sidney Thrasher was a newspaperman and filibuster, who published El Faro Industrial de la Habana, an anti-Spanish newspaper, and supported of Cuba's revolutionary faction.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Island of Cuba

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • A preliminary essay on the purchase of Cuba
  • Message of the President of the United States, transmitting Further information respecting the imprisonment, &c., of John S. Thrasher
  • The Attributes of God (Christian Living Series)

Religion

To his numerous other interests he added in later life a study of spiritualism, and he finally forsook his Baptist faith for this new adventure.

Connections

He married Rebecca Mary, widow of Michel Branamour Menard, founder of Galveston, Tex.

Spouse:

Rebecca Mary Fluker Menard

(1820–1869 (m. 1857))

References

• Life and Correspondence: of John A. Quitman - Vol. 2
• Lopez's expeditions to Cuba
• The Lopez Expeditions to Cuba, 1848-1851: A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of Princeton University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Classic Reprint)