Did the Confederate States of America have plans to expand into the Caribbean if they had won? Did the U.S. prior to the civil war look to expand into the Caribbean? Was the U.S. southern expansion a cause for the civil war?
I ask because I vaguely remember reading that the U.S. wanted to expand into the Caribbean but the north was afraid that the new Caribbean states would align with the slave states and therefore the north would lose influence.
Maybe a year ago I read a question in this same direction and got a good answer. Now I'll give one!
Today, when various senators and congressmen waste time, giving long speeches to nowhere to waste time and push a vote further away, we call them filibusters. Now why is that?
In the 1850s men like Narciso Lopez and William Walker tried to knockdown Central American governments. This involved things like reinstituting the great American institution of slavery. They were called filibusteros - the Spanish cognate of freebooter, i.e. pirate.
Narciso Lopez originally fought for independence against Spain and tried to bring that fight to Cuba too. After his first attempt failed (Zachery Taylor had his men intercepted before they could leave port from the US), he went around the American south pleading the benefit they would get from an independent slave holding Cuba. This time, he landed and made some progress before the local population joined with Spanish forces and pushed them off. He later tried a third time.
William Walker tried to follow the example of the Republic of Texas and after legal means were rejected, he invaded Baja California and founded the Republic of Lower California - and instated slavery. The Mexican army pushed them out. Later, he was invited as a "colonist" during the Nicaraguan civil war. His men and him eventually took complete control of the country and instituted slavery. Foreign fears were justified when he invaded Costa Rica. After about two years his reign was ended when Nicaraguan rebels, Cosa Rican, Guatalaman and Honduran soldiers kicked him out.
To further further clarify the extent of of this mania, president Lincoln opposed the 36*30' line of compromise (slavery being legal under) calling it "a perpetual covenant of war against every people, tribe and state owning a foot of land between here and Tierra del Fuego" making direct reference to such activities.
A certain Edward A. Pollard wrote: "The path of our destiny on this continent [is] tropical America [where] we may see an empire as powerful and gorgeous as ever was pictured in our dreams of history ... representing the noble peculiarities of Southern civilization ... the destiny of Southern civilization..."
Lucius Lamar: "plant American liberty with southern institutions upon every inch of American soil" You can read his whole speech here
These three quotes from from this page and the next page of Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson If interested in these horrors, I suggest you read the rest of the chapter about Walker's expedition there.
Remember how I mentioned Texas? Well, PresidentAnastasio Bustamante abolished slavery in 1829. However some Americans, known as "empresarios" who had been settling Northern Mexico since its independence, refused to forgo profiting off of human suffering. The Mexican government tried to limit immigration to Texas, the colonists expelled the Mexican army and had the convention of 1832, electing Stephen Austin as president of the Mexican state. Texas eventually gained independence and went so far as to claim land all the way to California. The 1836 constitution did not give citizenship to Africans or Indians (note that Mexico was not a settler colony and most of the population's ancestors are native). The US' annexation of Texas in 1845 resulted in the Mexican-American war annexing the northern half of Mexico all the way to the Pacific. (Note, this was scarcely populated with less than 100,000 non-natives. The natives only received American citizenship in the 1930s.)
Has Manifest Destiny come to mind yet? Yeeaaap.
Well, during this same period castles of the Knights of the Golden Circle started popping up, its members seeking to conquer Mexico and control the entire Caribbean along the lines of an American Rome centered around its own sea - named the Golden Circle. (An All of Mexico Movement had already appeared during negotiations after the Mexican-American war.) The Civil War started shortly thereafter and the Confederacy's defeat ended such hopes. (There was an interesting mini McCarthism going on where some in the North thought members were sabotaging the unions effort at every turn.) Some confederados left to Brazil after the war, invited by the government there to improve the productivity of slave plantations.
[Once upon a time, I read a post here about the historiography of the Greek phalanx which noted that earlier American historians or philosophers somehow considered themselves as modern citizen soldiers like minutemen built around Slave holding or... Something. I've however been unable to find it.]
Primary sources:
William Walker's The War in Nicaragua (He tries to romanticize it all)
Charles Doubleday's Reminiscences of the "Filbuster" War in Nicaragua (he revels in the violence, like a criminal boasting of his crime)
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/filibusters.htm A really nice website full of articles written by various actors, as well as their birth certificates, marriage licenses etc.
Secondhand sources:
Donald Frazier's Blood and Treasure - the Confederate Empire in the Southwest
John McCardell's the Idea of a Southern Nation
T.R. Fehrenbach's Lone Star - a History of Texas and the Texans (An old book the author clearly supports the sins of Texas' founding (even defending no citizenship for Africans and Indians). Like Doubleday's account, this leads to him stating everything instead of writing a white washing apologia.)
David Keehn's Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War
Robert May's The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire and Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America