From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (36 page)

"The American destiny did not seem so manifest in the 1850s," historian Reginald Stuart has written.
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During these years, Americans remained an aggressive, acquisitive, competitive breed certain of their own righteousness and the evil of their foes.
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Victorious in war, having more than doubled the size of their nation, they began to see themselves as an emerging world power, even a rival to Britain. Expansionist sentiment remained alive. Some Democrats viewed an aggressive foreign policy as a way to divert the nation from growing internal divisions and hold an embattled Union together. Combining ardent nationalism with blatant racism, the Young America movement in the name of promoting republicanism hoped to project the nation's power abroad. Southerners sought salvation through expansion. They deemed the acquisition of new slave states essential to maintain a balance of power in the Senate. The expansion of slavery would also disperse the black population and thereby help solve the nation's race problem. "The safety of the South is to be found only in the extension of its peculiar institutions,"
DeBow's Review
exclaimed, "and the security of the Union in the safety of the South."
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In the heyday of the so-called filibusters, U.S. expansion turned southward and assumed even more aggressive forms. The name "filibuster" originated through the French and Spanish languages from a Dutch word meaning pirate or freebooter. By no means unique to the United States, these patently illegal, privately organized and funded military expeditions against foreign territory became a staple of American life in the 1850s. The leadership included such well-known adventurers as the charismatic Venezuelan and former Spanish army officer Narciso López, Mexican War hero and Mississippi governor John Quitman, and, most prominently, the onetime physician and would-be ruler of Nicaragua, William Walker. The ranks drew from discharged Mexican War soldiers,
restless young men who sought companionship, adventure, and military glory, the urban unemployed, including recent immigrants and refugees from failed European revolutions, southerners who hoped to expand slavery, and Freemasons who aspired to expand liberty—and constrict Catholicism. Celebrated in the popular press, stage productions, and song, the filibusters captured the romantic spirit of the age. Mexico was the target of countless attacks, most designed to detach its northern provinces. Cuba and Canada also drew attention. There were expeditions against Honduras, Nicaragua, and even Ecuador. A planned "invasion" of Hawaii was aborted. British officials, not without reason, fretted about a possible attack on Ireland. Americans joked about expeditions to the North Pole.
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In contrast to the previous decade, expansionism produced few results in the 1850s. The Franklin Pierce administration through the 1853 Gadsden Purchase extorted from Santa Anna, once again in power and out of pocket, thirty-nine million additional acres of Mexican territory to secure a southern route for the transcontinental railroad. It also seized—for its rich deposits of guano, widely used as fertilizer—Parker Island in the South Pacific, the first non-contiguous territory acquired.
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But there were no other annexations. Brash self-confidence was tempered by escalating sectional divisions. The Compromise of 1850, which admitted California as a free state, exacerbated rather than resolved internal conflict. From the agony of "Bleeding Kansas" to the firing on Fort Sumter, the nation tore itself apart over the extension of slavery. Southern determination to expand the peculiar institution into new areas aroused passionate opposition in the North. Northern frustration of southern designs in turn provoked secessionist sentiment in the South. Expansionism thus tore the nation apart instead of pulling it together, making a mockery of the grand pretensions of Manifest Destiny.

For all the excitement they generated, the filibusters achieved nothing. Private citizens found it difficult to raise the necessary funds and organize and execute complex, often seaborne military operations. Though the Pierce and Buchanan administrations privately sympathized with filibusters' goals, they dutifully enforced the neutrality laws, deterring, hampering, and sometimes stopping expansionist schemes. In no case did local populations rise up to welcome the American invaders as liberators,
as the filibusters so naively expected. Once in country, the outsiders suffered from cholera and other deadly diseases. Many who sought adventure were wounded or killed in battle. Some were captured and executed. Aside from Walker in Nicaragua, none of the expansionist plots brought even short-term success.
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In terms of promoting republican principles abroad, the United States remained properly cautious. The nation by this time was firmly established as the center of world democratic revolution. European reformers conceded the Old World's preeminence in things aesthetic but praised America's political freedoms, religious tolerance, lack of poverty, and technological prowess. They looked to the New World for inspiration and support. Americans in turn hailed the European revolutions of 1848 as extensions of their own. As always preeminently concerned about slavery, southerners feared precedents that might be turned against them. "If we sanction interference, we will be the first who will be interfered with," a New Orleans newspaper warned.
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But others enthusiastically endorsed the European revolutions and even urged active support of them.

Americans responded with special fervor to Hungary's rebellion against Austria's rule. The flamboyant Hungarian leader Louis Kossuth consciously modeled his declaration of independence after that of the United States and became a folk hero. Some Americans even urged active support for the "Noble Magyar." The U.S. government handled Kossuth with great care. Adhering to a long-standing convention of European diplomacy, President Zachary Taylor refused recognition until certain that the Hungarians could sustain an independent government on their own. When Austria, with Russian assistance, crushed the revolution, Webster dismissed the oppressor as "but a patch on the earth's surface" and made clear America's sympathy for people seeking self-determination.
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The United States helped Kossuth get out of a Turkish prison and welcomed him to its shores. Fillmore openly sympathized with the Hungarian struggle. Webster exclaimed that he would "rejoice to see our American model upon the lower Danube and on the mountains of Hungary." But the United States offered no more than verbal support. Turning aside Kossuth's request for aid, Fillmore cautiously proclaimed America's true
mission was "to teach by example and show by our success, moderation, and justice the blessings of self-government and the advantages of our free institutions."
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The United States spurned opportunities for new annexations, even when offered on a silver platter. In the case of Yucatán, race proved the sticking point. This strategic peninsula, gateway to the Gulf of Mexico, erupted into the unusually brutal Caste War in 1847, Indians rising in revolt against their Spanish rulers. Some Americans wanted to save the embattled whites from extermination. Others warned that the British might seek control of a strategic area. The United States did mount a show of force in support of Yucatán's rulers in early 1848, but it turned back their proposals for annexation. Americans grew increasingly disenchanted with the Yucatán whites, who seemed "cowardly" and unworthy of their race. More important, they were not inclined to risk contamination by absorbing the "uncivilized, perfidious" Indians, who, Calhoun said, "were too ignorant to appreciate liberty, or exercise the rights if conferred."
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Similarly, Pierce rebuffed Hawaiian proposals for annexation conditioned on the islands' admission as a state and the granting of full citizenship to their people.
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Persistent efforts to acquire Cuba ran afoul of the explosive slavery issue. Slaveholders saw the creation of new slave states there as a means to redress a congressional balance that had tipped against them. They feared that Britain might acquire Cuba and abolish slavery or push the Spanish toward abolition. They especially worried about what they ominously labeled "Africanization," a Cuban slave revolt as in Haiti that might spread the horrors of race war to the United States. Cuba took on added strategic significance with talk of a canal across the Central American isthmus.

Throughout the 1850s, Cuba was the object of various schemes for acquisition. Administrations from Polk to Buchanan tried to purchase it from Spain. Between 1849 and 1851, Narciso López launched four filibustering expeditions, appealing to southerners to "advance the cause of civilization and humanity"—and to seize the island "while the present condition of her slaves is untouched."
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The pro-southern Pierce and
Buchanan administrations assigned high priority to acquisition. Pierre Soulé, minister to Spain and a diplomat notoriously lacking in diplomatic skills, made Cuba a personal obsession and tried to get it by fair means and mostly foul. He connived with Spanish rebels to overthrow the monarchy in hopes of getting a more compliant government, all the while shamelessly flattering the queen to do his bidding. In 1854, he and other pro-southern U.S. diplomats in Europe issued the so-called Ostend Manifesto (actually released at Aix-la-Chapelle without approval of Washington and hence without official standing), claiming that Cuba was essential to the United States and the institution of slavery. Should Spain refuse to sell it, the United States "by every law human and divine" would be "justified in wresting it from Spain."
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When Britain and France seemed likely to go to war in 1859, southerners urged exploiting the opportunity to take Cuba. England could be kept quiet by maintaining a "defiant attitude toward France."
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All efforts failed. Spanish officials stubbornly insisted that they would rather see Cuba beneath the ocean than as part of the United States. Taylor and Fillmore scrupulously applied the neutrality laws, limiting U.S. support for López's ill-fated expeditions. The popular uprisings the adventurer counted on never materialized. On his last mission, he and some of his motley band of "freedom fighters," Americans included, were captured and executed. The Ostend Manifesto was too much even for the sympathetic Pierce, who saw no choice but to repudiate his reckless appointees. Cuba became as emotional an issue for opponents of slavery as for southerners. Free Soilers who staunchly opposed the extension of slavery blocked Buchanan's efforts to appropriate funds for its purchase. Some southerners expressed skepticism about acquiring a territory filled with alien races. The failure to acquire Cuba turned others toward secession.

Central America drew more U.S. attention than Cuba. Some North Americans had long viewed the region as an outlet for slavery and a possible solution to the nation's race problem. The establishment of trading interests in Asia, the acquisition of California and Oregon, and the gold rush of 1849 heightened interest in a passage across the isthmus. Henry Clay had dreamed of a canal to shorten the distance between Atlantic and Pacific. By the 1850s, Clay's dream had become a national priority. "Central America is destined to occupy an influential position in the family
of nations," the
New York Times
proclaimed in 1854, "if her advantages of location, climate and soil are availed of by a race of 'Northmen' who shall supplant the tainted, mongrel and decaying race which now occupies the region."
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Central America in the 1850s was a uniquely volatile region. Bolívar's federation had long since collapsed, giving way to five separate, insecure, and combative nations. Disputes between the countries over boundaries and resources were exceeded by the conflict within them. The chronic instability and sudden importance of the region drew foreign entrepreneurs, adventurers, and filibusters. Britain had long-standing strategic and economic interests in the area. As the United States began to assert itself, Anglo-American tensions escalated sharply. The 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, providing for joint construction and control of a canal, was negotiated to ease tensions, but its vague language actually sparked new conflicts.

From the late 1840s, the United States steadily expanded its role in Central America. In separate treaties with Colombia and Nicaragua, it acquired rights to build an isthmian canal. The treaty with Colombia gave it a virtual protectorate over the northernmost province of Panama. North Americans bought up Central America's lands and exploited its mines. Entrepreneurs such as the swashbuckling Cornelius Vanderbilt constructed land and water routes across the isthmus. In 1855, Americans completed a forty-eight-mile railroad across Panama, a triumph of Yankee skill and the "marvel" of an age full of remarkable technological advances.
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Whatever benefits they brought to Central America, the "Northmen" hailed by the
New York Times
were also meddlesome and aggressive. Even in the golden age of gunboat diplomacy, minister to Nicaragua Solon Borland gave diplomats a bad name. A physician turned politician, former senator from Arkansas, and avowed expansionist, Borland's self-proclaimed "greatest ambition" was to "see the State of Nicaragua forming a bright star in the flag of the United States." He managed to convert a relatively trivial incident into a near war with Britain. Seeking to protect a U.S. citizen wanted for murder, he claimed diplomatic immunity when local officials tried to arrest the accused and himself for interfering. When struck in the face with a randomly thrown bottle, he demanded a
formal apology. A U.S. Navy vessel was sent to collect reparations for damage to American property and the treatment of Borland. When officials predictably rejected U.S. demands, the captain, exceeding his instructions, bombarded the British-controlled port of Greytown and sent marines ashore to burn what was left, doing an estimated $3 million damage. Some Americans protested this grossly excessive use of force. Experienced in such matters, the British denounced it as an unparalleled outrage and might have retaliated had they not been tied down by the Crimean War. Embarrassed but unwilling to apologize, the Pierce administration clumsily tried to shift blame elsewhere.
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