In 1854 President Franklin Peirce (a handsome and well spoken if slightly dense man) attempted to negotiate the puchase of Cuba from Spain. A bunch of his croneys got it in their head that if Spain didn't want to sell it that they would go to war with them to get it. Amoung others future President James Buanan met with several forgin ministers in Ostend, Belgium and drew up an internal document which stated that if Spain refused the rediculusly low purchase price that the US was justified in going to war to take it. It was not a manifesto it was a memo intended to be read by the President and Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (the future Confederate President) but it got leaked to the newspapers. It was quite an embarresment to the Pierce adminstration because it was against international law to take land by force. The abolishionist New York papers had long critisized the Peirce administration pro-Southern and pro-slavery stance and Cuba would have brought an enormous amount of slave territory into the country. Most Northerns at the time saw it as a scheam to extend the boundaries of slavery within the confines of the 1850 comprimise.
No, TRY NOT! DO or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda. |
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