Daily National Intelligencer

Balt. Amer.

CHARLESTON, MAY 8.

The death of capt. Manuel de los Rios seems to have excited considerable surprise, both as to the time and manner of his assassination. But a brief account of the facts which led to it, will shew that it was the natural consequence of his honorable courage.

A great number of Spanish merchantmen had been for some weeks blockaded in the port of Havana, by a petty Buenos Ayrean privateer, and although there were two vessels of war belonging to his Catholic Majesty in port, their brave commanders had not the courage, with their united force, to attack the little insurgent privateer. Thus situated, the Spanish merchantmen, though ready laden, and with a favorable breeze, might have been blockaded until doomsday, had not a meeting been held to devise private means for the liberation of their embargoed freights. A vessel was armed and munitioned, and the brave Manuel de los Rios was appointed captain. His Catholic Majesty's Viceroy at Havana consented that the attempt should be made to beat off the impudent privateer: and Manuel sailed forth, with a promiscuous crew, to the scene of combat; while the two government vessels of war, with their officers, lay snug in petto. Capt. de los Rios, after a bloody contest, was victorious—he sunk the privateer, and returned to Havana, amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants. The Spanish officers, though they had no sense of honor or of courage, had a feeling alive to envy and revenge; the brave Manuel was found the next day after his victory, assassinated, on the Almeda, a public walk of the city! A deed so atrocious and so cowardly that it seems to have excited the horror of all the inhabitants of Havana. The murder is unreservedly laid to the charge of his majesty's officers: and the motive by which it was perpetrated, evinces the character of the government and its agents, against whose bigotry and despotism, the South Americans are gradually uniting to secure their independence.