The Age of Lincoln and the Art of American Power, 1848-1876

by Nester, William

  This mattered little to either Zachary Taylor or Millard Fillmore, who were disinterested in foreign policy. Fortunately Daniel Webster filled this void as the secretary of state from July 1850 to October 1852. He was well acquainted with his duties and foreign relations, having previously held that post from March 1841 to May 1843. He initiated two policies of lasting importance during his first stint: the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty settled the northeastern boundary between the United States and Canada, and the 1842 Tyler Doctrine asserted Hawaii as a sphere of American influence worth defending should any foreign power dispute it. His most important policy during his second stint was to uphold the Tyler Doctrine.

  Although American merchants and missionaries dominated Hawaii’s economy and government, their British and French counterparts were also contenders. In 1850 the French minister to Hawaii’s monarchy threatened to land troops to assert the French community’s interests in a dispute with King Kamehameha. When Webster learned of this threat, he protested to the French minister in Washington, had the American minister in Paris echo that protest, and sent word to America’s Pacific flotilla commander and minister in Hawaii to assure the king that the United States would defend him. The grateful monarch sent word to Washington that he was actually prepared to raise the American flag and declare his realm’s annexation to the United States should the French invade. In the face of American resolve, the French backed down in July 1851. Webster resisted calls by the American community in Hawaii for the United States to exploit the situation by annexing the kingdom. He insisted that American interests were better advanced by upholding Hawaii’s sovereignty while expanding informal power over the islands. The United States would eventually take over Hawaii, but not for nearly another five decades.

  Unlike his two immediate predecessors, President Franklin Pierce took an active role in foreign policy. He had good political and ideological reasons for doing so. As a “doughface,” or northerner with southern sympathies, he did everything he could to benefit slavocrats within the Democratic Party. This interest lay behind his most important initiative. He authorized James Gadsden, America’s minister to Mexico, to buy a swath of territory across northern Mexico. The rationale was to provide land for a future transcontinental railroad to run from New Orleans to San Diego. Gadsden first offered President Antonio López de Santa Anna $50 million for 250,000 square miles of northern Mexico. Santa Anna bluntly rejected the offer. After weeks of haggling they finally agreed that Mexico would sell 54,000 square miles of land south of the Gila River, which runs west from southern New Mexico through Arizona to the Colorado River, for $15 million, the same price that the United States had paid for all of upper California and New Mexico under the 1848 Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo. A version of the treaty barely squeaked by with a thirty-three to twelve Senate ratification vote, reflecting solid southern support and a divided North. Those who favored the purchase enticed a few key votes by agreeing to sever 9,000 square miles from the territory, thus reducing the acquisition to 45,000 square miles while slashing the price to $10 million.

  Slavocrats were united in the desire to expand slavery but differed over where and how. Many looked far beyond the horizon southward as well as westward for potential conquests. During the Mexican War, a vocal minority demanded that the United States conquer all of Mexico, whereupon slavery would be reimposed throughout the country; they were enraged when the winnings were limited to New Mexico and California. They then began scanning the Caribbean islands and Central America for potential conquests. Cuba and Nicaragua appeared especially ripe for the plucking; Cuban nationalists sought to overthrow Spanish rule, while near anarchy prevailed in Nicaragua as factions vied for power across a land that provided a transit route between the oceans.

  In bowing to the slavocrat demand for Cuba, Secretary of State William Marcy penned on April 3, 1854, one of the more controversial letters in the nation’s diplomatic history. In it he authorized Pierre Soulé, America’s minister in Madrid, to buy Cuba from Spain for up to $130 million. If talks failed Soulé was authorized to “direct your efforts to detach that island from the Spanish dominion and from all dependence on any European power.”11 Just why did the Pierce administration desire Cuba? Slavery was legal and pervasive in Cuba. If Cuba were acquired and split up into states, slavocrats would dominate the Senate indefinitely.

  However unlikely that Madrid would have agreed to the sale, Soulé could not have been a worse man for that mission. He was a hothead and troublemaker. He had fought a duel with the French ambassador for gazing at Soule’s wife’s décolletage, and he freely passed bribes to officials and others who might advance his interests. Not surprisingly, the Spanish government rejected any notion of selling Cuba to the United States. This enraged Soulé, who in October hurried to Ostend, Belgium, where he rendezvoused with two other American diplomats, James Buchanan and James Mason, the respective ministers to Britain and France. Together they journeyed to Aix-la-Chapelle and there issued the Ostend Manifesto, which declared that “Cuba is as necessary to the North American republic as any of its present members,” called for the island’s purchase for no more than $120 million, and warned that “by every law, human and Divine, we shall be justified in wrestling it from Spain” if Madrid refused to sell.12

  The Ostend Manifesto was the most explicit public declaration by high-ranking officials of Manifest Destiny’s essentially imperialist nature. It provoked a political firestorm in America and Europe when newspapers published the text. In the United States, northern liberals denounced it while conservatives split, with some silently embarrassed and others either tepidly or enthusiastically supportive. Although Marcy had issued Soulé instructions that differed little from the Ostend Manifesto, the last thing he or others who backed such a blatantly aggressive policy wanted was its revelation to the world. Marcy had no choice but to repudiate the Ostend Manifesto and recall Soulé. These gestures could not begin to repair the diplomatic damage abroad and political damage at home. The result was a shelving of the most overt efforts of American imperialists until the Spanish American War of 1898.

  As for Nicaragua, the 1849 gold rush transformed American interests there. The country provided relatively easy transit by river and flat land from the Caribbean to the Pacific. American steamship companies, most notably Cornelius Vanderbilt’s, dominated the route. Visionaries spoke of one day linking the oceans with a canal across either Nicaragua or Panama.

  Americans were not the only foreigners with growing ties related to travel and trade in the region. Unlike the United States, Britain had colonies across the Caribbean and resented American meddling in what it considered its sphere of interest. Yet the British recognized that America’s crushing defeat of Mexico revealed that it was no longer the second-rate military power that Britain had fought in the War of 1812. Indeed, while the United States remained a second-rate global power, it was clearly North America’s number-one military power. British power was stretched thinner as it expanded its empire in regions around the world. The last thing British policymakers needed was a war with the United States.

  To avoid a future fatal clash of interests, Secretary of State John Clayton and British minister Henry Bulwer signed on April 19, 1850, what became known as the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which prevented either country from building a canal across any Central American country without the other’s permission. Bilateral relations improved further when Marcy and James Bruce, the Earl of Elgin and Canada’s governor general, signed on June 5, 1854, the Marcy-Elgin Treaty that opened for Americans the St. Lawrence River for transit, Canada for trade, and Canadian waters beyond three miles of shore for fishing.

  Nicaragua’s endemic political instability and violence threatened America’s transit and growing commercial interests there. This threat was personified when Solon Borland, America’s minister to Nicaragua, was hurt by an angrily thrown bottle as he addressed a crowd at Greytown. Upon hearing of that insult, the Pierce administration decided that a show of force was
essential. Capt. George Hollins, who commanded the USS Cyrene, received orders to steam to Greytown and demand an apology from local authorities. In July 1854, after his demands were ignored, Hollins ordered his gunners to bombard the port. Then, in the eyes of Nicaraguans and others, the White House compounded this act of war by at once publicly disclaiming and privately encouraging a series of aggressive acts by Americans.

  If Washington’s direct purchase or conquest of any more lands for the potential expansion of slavery was too controversial at home and abroad, slavocrats advocated an alternative strategy. A private venture would conquer a country and impose a constitution that established democracy for whites and slavery for blacks. The new government would then ask for annexation to the United States. This private venture version of imperialism became known as “filibustering,” from the Spanish word filibustero, which means freebooter or pirate.13

  No filibusterer was a more vivid, persistent, fleetingly successful, and ultimately spectacular failure than William Walker.14 By all accounts he had a brilliant, obsessive intellect. He was born in Nashville in 1826, graduated from the University of Nashville at age fourteen, got a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, then moved to New Orleans where he passed the bar, practiced law, and edited the New Orleans Crescent. In 1849 he joined the frenzied rush to California’s gold, but he never panned a stream or dug a mine. Instead, he settled briefly in San Francisco, where he became a leader in the vigilante movement, exposed crime and corruption through newspaper articles, and fought three duels in which he was twice wounded.

  None of these adventures satisfied such a restless mind and spirit. In 1853 an obsession seized him to conquer and rule his own country. He embarked with forty-five heavily armed followers to take over Baja California. Upon capturing La Paz, the provincial capital, he proclaimed himself president. This was just the first step. He aimed eventually to vanquish all of Mexico, one province after another. He led his men to invade neighboring Sonora. Although Mexican troops decimated the filibusterers, Walker managed to escape to the United States.

  Rather than let that defeat humble him, Walker instead was inspired by his brief grasp of power as Baja’s “president.” In 1855 he sailed with fifty-seven men for Nicaragua, where he joined and soon led an insurrection against the government. By July 1856 he had routed his foes and proclaimed himself the president. He then legalized slavery and granted land to southerners who brought their slaves and started plantations. All went well until Walker tried to overthrow Cornelius Vanderbilt as president of the Accessory Transit Company, which controlled the transportation route across the country. Vanderbilt threw his money and organizational support behind the rebel forces and eventually forced Walker and his surviving followers to flee to New Orleans in May 1857.

  Across the southern United States, slavocrats celebrated Walker as a hero, “the grey-eyed man of destiny.” He soon massed enough men and money for a second expedition against Nicaragua. In November 1857 he sailed from Mobile but the navy intercepted his vessel, arrested him on federal charges of violating U.S. neutrality laws, and took him to New Orleans for trial. A sympathetic jury acquitted him in May 1858. Walker soon set forth on his third expedition to Nicaragua but his ship wrecked on a reef sixty miles from shore; a British vessel rescued the castaways and returned them to the United States. Despite his string of defeats, Walker did not give up but simply changed his strategy. Rather than launch his fourth expedition with fiery speeches and parades before adoring crowds, he and ninety-eight men quietly embarked in small groups aboard different vessels bound for Honduras, where they planned to assemble and invade neighboring Nicaragua. A British warship intercepted the ship that Walker was sailing on, arrested him, and turned him over to Honduran authorities. On September 12, 1860, Walker faced a firing squad at Trujillo.

  Narciso Lopez was that era’s second most notorious filibusterer. He was a Cuban nationalist who fled to New York City in 1848 after the Spanish crushed his effort to provoke a revolt. There he recruited several hundred mercenaries for an expedition to liberate his homeland. Recognizing that he lacked the status, men, and funds to pull off his campaign, he asked Senator Jefferson Davis to lead the effort. Davis declined the leading role even though he was an outspoken proponent of conquering Cuba to expand American slavery; he did, however, introduce Lopez to his slavocrat network of politicians and businessmen. With this backing, Lopez packed men and supplies aboard a small flotilla of vessels and prepared to sail for Cuba in September 1849. Getting wind of the expedition, the Taylor administration ordered the navy to interdict it for violating America’s neutrality law. Lopez switched his base to New Orleans, which was geographically and ideologically far more conducive to realizing his dreams. In May 1850 he and six hundred followers sailed from New Orleans. To the filibusterers’ dismay, Cubans fled rather than joined the invaders after they landed on the island’s northwest coast. As an overwhelming force of Spanish troops neared, Lopez reembarked his men and they escaped to Key West.

  Despite Lopez’s failure, southerners toasted him as a hero. Within a year he had attracted enough men, money, munitions, and provisions for another expedition. Second in command was William Crittenden, the attorney general’s nephew. The Fillmore administration was aware of the plot but succumbed to political pressure to turn a blind eye to it. In August 1851 Lopez sailed with 420 men for Cuba. This time the Spanish army moved quickly, attacked, slaughtered about two hundred of the invaders, and captured the rest, including Lopez and Crittenden. In the subsequent trials, the court sentenced 160 filibusterers to prison in Spain, condemned 50 men, including Crittenden, to execution by firing squad, and had Lopez garroted in the public square.

  The grim fate of Lopez’s expedition provoked rather than deterred the slavocrats. They were outraged that President Fillmore apologized to Spain rather than backing the filibusterers. They reaped their vengeance in 1852 by helping elect Franklin Pierce to the White House. In his inaugural address, Pierce asserted that the “policy of my Administration will not be controlled by timid forebodings of evil from expansion. Our position on the globe renders the acquisition of certain possessions . . . eminently important for our protection. . . . The future is boundless.”15

  Pierce was good to his word. In July 1853 he actually encouraged Mississippi governor John Quitman to fulfill his own dreams of conquest. By early 1854 Quitman had signed up a thousand or so Americans, Cuban exiles, and adventurers from an array of other nationalities. In May Senator John Slidell of Louisiana introduced a resolution to suspend the neutrality law. Everything was set to go. But the president got cold feet and provoked slavocrat rage when he issued on May 31 a proclamation that Washington would prosecute filibusterers under the neutrality law. The reasons for Pierce’s flip-flop were rooted in politics rather than the law or morality. His administration and party had spent enormous political capital in pushing the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress. Pierce and most other leading Democrats feared that they would destroy their party’s northern wing if they openly backed Quitman’s expedition to conquer Cuba.16

  News soon reached the United States of an American foreign policy triumph that most northerners and southerners alike applauded. American interests in the Far East originated when the merchant ship Empress of China sailed from Boston for Canton in 1784. This inaugurated a steadily growing trade with China as a key link in a global trade network where canny American sea captains exchanged goods for ever-greater profits in ports along the way during voyages that lasted years and, after their return to their home port, made them and their investors very rich. Until 1842, only Canton was open to foreign traders. That year Britain imposed the Treaty of Nanjing on China after winning the Opium War that began in 1839. Under its terms, China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain and opened five more ports to trade. The United States joined other foreign powers in negotiating access to the ports. All this boosted trade across the Pacific basin that included buying hides and tallow at California ports, sea otter pe
lts along the Oregon coast, sandalwood at the Hawaiian Islands, then known as the Sandwich Islands, and most profitably, Chinese silk, porcelain, and tea. But a vital link was missing in that network.

  Japan had severed itself from virtually all trade relations shortly after 1600 when the Tokugawa clan vanquished their rivals and took over the country. The new rulers blocked trade fearing that the European powers posed an insidious threat to their rule by arming their enemies and converting the population to Christianity. American and European merchants alike fantasized about selling their wares to a nation of thirty million consumers. Profit was not the only reason to convince the Japanese to open their country. In their long circuit around the Pacific basin, merchant and whaling captains alike longed to drop anchor in Japanese ports to buy food, water, and coal but dared not do so knowing that Tokugawa officials imprisoned and at times executed any foreigners who violated their isolation policy.

  The Opium War and Treaty of Nanjing gave America’s diplomatic and international business communities hope that Japan could be pried open. The Japanese kept a window open to the world through the port of Nagasaki, where the Chinese and Dutch were permitted to trade. The Tokugawa regime was well aware that China’s humiliating defeat had made the western powers dominant in the Far East. Determined to avoid China’s fate, some within the regime leaned toward opening Japan to a secondary power like the United States through diplomacy rather than to the world’s greatest military power, Britain, through war. The Japanese knew that they could not long resist a naval blockade that cut off their ports from food supplied by the coastal trade or bombarded their wooden cities to ashes.

  For these reasons, President Fillmore ordered Commodore Matthew Perry to organize and launch an expedition to convince the Tokugawa to establish trade and diplomatic relations with the United States. Perry was an excellent choice. During his more than two decades in the navy, he had sailed the world and fought in the Mexican War. Upon receiving his mission, he at once massed the necessary vessels, sailors, and supplies and gathered all available information on that mysterious realm. En route to Japan, he honed his diplomatic skills by negotiating trade and diplomatic treaties with the kingdoms of first Thailand and then the Ryukyu, or Okinawa, Islands. He adapted to the time-consuming consensus-building style of Japanese decision making. After his flotilla dropped anchor in what is now called Tokyo Bay in July 1853, he remained patient during a tense deadlock that lasted several weeks as Japanese authorities demanded that the Americans leave and he requested that they simply accept a letter from President Fillmore to their ruler. After the Japanese finally yielded, Perry announced that he would return for an answer within a year, then sailed away to winter in the Ryukyu Islands. During the intervening nine months before he reappeared in March 1854, the Tokugawa forged a consensus that it was better to trade than fight. The Treaty of Kanagawa, signed on March 31, required Japan to open two small ports to American merchants and diplomats on a “most favored nation” foundation whereby the United States automatically received any benefits that Japan bestowed on other countries. From this limited beginning, Japan was eventually brought fully into the global system through a series of subsequent treaties with the United States and other foreign nations.