Cuba, Southern expansion & the Golden Circle

One of the long-term effects of the rise of the Republican Party as an explicitly sectional, anti-Southern party in the 1850s was the defeat of efforts by US President James Buchanan, Southerners and the Democratic Party in general to acquire Cuba and bring it into the Union as a plantation State. This would have added two more Southern senators, giving the South more parity in the all-important upper house of Congress and the ability to block anti-Southern legislation. As Dr Robert E May writes in his book The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire: 1854-1861 Buchanan’s ‘favored project was the annexation of Cuba.’ He explains, ‘By 1859, annexation of Cuba appeared to be the best means of reunifying his party as well as securing renomination in 1860.’ In addition to aiding the South, Cuba would have almost certainly elected more Democrats to the US Congress and helped to counter the rise of the Republican Party. To this end Buchanan sent an envoy to Spain to attempt to purchase the island from the Madrid government. Spain was a very divided society which was troubled with three civil wars in the nineteenth century; various factions were often in need of funds and US Democrats thought they could take advantage of this situation to buy the large, prosperous island to the south of Florida. By that time Spain had lost its empire in the New World and had a troubled relationship with the elites of Cuba, many of whom saw advantages to joining the Union as a plantation State. Bills advancing the purchase of Cuba were written in Congress and many believed the long-anticipated US acquisition was at hand. Recalcitrant Republicans in the US Congress ultimately prevented the acquisition of Cuba, which would have otherwise become another Florida, Louisiana or Texas. As May writes: Republicans served notice once again that they would never permit American acquisition of a tropical slave country. On January 24, the day that Branch introduced his bill to the House [authorising the purchase of Cuba], Albert Jenkins of Virginia shrewdly maneuvered William Kellogg of Illinois into admitting that the main reason Republicans opposed the bill was unwillingness to add another slave state to the Union. Homer Royce of Vermont warned: Southerners who supported the bill to increase their section’s political strength were ‘laboring under a great delusion.’ Thus, the North could expand throughout the Northwest and Midwest but the South was prevented from expanding (and therefore maintaining political parity with the North) due to the rise of the Republicans and their united voice on the issue. The situation was such that some of the Fire-Eaters (such as Robert Barnwell Rhett) by that time opposed the purchase of Cuba prior to Southern secession ‘because they felt that continuous attention to demands for Caribbean territory obscured other, more important southern grievances.’ Those who by that that time already supported secession feared that bringing Cuba into the Union would pacify many Southerners and delay independence. The early Cuban flag designed by Narciso López. The modern version uses a slightly darker shade of blue. The early Cuban flag designed by Narciso López. The modern version uses a darker shade of blue. SOUTHERN FILIBUSTERING & THE FLAG OF CUBA An interesting reminder of Southern efforts at expansion into the Caribbean can still today be found in the flag of Cuba. The flag which became the national banner of Cuba was designed by Narciso López, a wealthy Venezuelan-born adventurer of Basque ancestry. As a young man López fought against the Leftist revolutionary Simón Bolívar, who sought the independence and unification of all of Latin America. He worked for the Spanish government in Europe and later moved to Cuba where he failed at a few business ventures and joined a faction that supported independence. López was forced to flee the island under pressure from Spanish authorities and took up residence in New York City. There he recruited Cuban exiles, Democrats and supports of expansion to back his plans for a filibustering (a private military campaign) expedition to Cuba. At the time this was a popular movement, especially in the Lower South but also in New York and California, as a way to bring about Southern (and Democratic) expansion. He gathered 600 men in Mississippi and had three ships ready to take his troops to Cuba. Whig president Zachary Taylor intervened at the last minute and ordered the ships seized. López, who supported slavery and wanted to bring Cuba into the Union as a Southern State, moved to New Orleans and began again to organise a filibuster of Cuba. He offered Jefferson Davis, the moderate Democrat and US Secretary of War who would go on to become president of the Confederate States in 1861, a great sum of money as well as land to support his efforts to gain Cuba. Davis, who was not a supporter of filibustering, turned him down. López also made an offer to future Confederate general Robert E Lee for his support and Lee apparently seriously considered the plan but declined to participate. Despite failing to win over these men, López did have a great deal of Southern support and led a filibuster in 1850 into Cuba with roughly 600 men. The assault failed and he had to quickly retreat to Key West. In that military campaign though, López carried a flag which he designed – the banner which would eventually become the national symbol of Cuba. It had a long star like the Bonnie Blue flag of the Republic of West Florida (a short-lived Southern country that was conquered by the United States in 1810), the Republic of Texas (another Southern country which eventually joined the Union) and the secession banners of many Southern States in 1860-61. It also originally used a soft blue colour like the Bonnie Blue, though this was later changed to a darker shade. The determined filibuster mounted another campaign in 1851, again with several hundred men. That expedition ended in tragedy for López and many of his men, who were eventually surrounded, captured and executed by Spanish forces. Others were used as prison workers in Cuban mining camps. Wikipedia’s article on López concludes: The execution of López and his soldiers caused outrage in both the northern and southern United States. Many who did not support the expedition found the Spanish treatment of military prisoners brutal. The strongest reaction occurred in New Orleans, where a mob attacked the Spanish consulate. Despite its failure, López’s expedition inspired other filibusters to attack Latin American countries throughout the 1850s, most notably William Walker’s invasions of Central America in 1855-1860. Had he been successful, López could have profoundly altered politics in the Americas, giving a strong Caribbean foothold to the United States and spurring its further expansion. Instead, the failure of López and other filibusters discouraged Americans, especially in the South, from adopting expansionist strategies. Faced with the inability of slavery to move southward, many Southerners turned away from expansion and talked instead of secession. Though Southern attempts to gain Cuba ultimately failed and López’s efforts for that cause ended in tragedy, as did William Walker’s in Nicaragua, the flag of Cuba is a reminder of what could have been. The South, which had sprung from a long-established and wealthy plantation civilisation (called the ‘Golden Circle’ by many of that era) that ultimately stretched from Brazil to the Chesapeake Bay, had been severed from the other plantation societies by the American Revolution. Numerous Southern leaders in the nineteenth century dreamed of uniting those societies as a bulwark against the Progressive, industrial and expansionist societies of the Northern United States and Western Europe. For a time in the mid-1800s it seemed as if the South would be united with at least parts of the Caribbean world (Cuba and Nicaragua, in particular). That was thwarted by the Republican Party and the Northern USA. Then, a short time later, it appeared that the South would be an independent country, free to decide its own future and possibly to expand into the Caribbean. Again, Southern dreams were destroyed by the Republican Party and the Northern USA – that time with disastrous loss of life, destruction of property and the subjugation of the South.