If this test works it indicates cross thread quoting is viable, which as a cited link covers the copyright for threadmarking on this forum admirably and would simplify copy paste for thread linking.
Especially with the new click to expand feature.
Especially with the new click to expand feature.
“Another Splendid Mess You Got Us Into, Teddy!”
Ever Wonder How Teddy Roosevelt Kicked Off WW I?
Prologue:
As Europe entered its Post Napoleonic Peace due in large part to the Congress of Vienna, things started to turn increasingly ugly in the western hemisphere. The Empire that was Spain underwent a rapid and extremely brutal period of decolonization that makes the post-World War II Africa and East Asia Wars of National Liberation look reasonably mild and civilized. The South American and Central American “republics” like to portray these uprisings and revolutions as throwing off the yoke of foreign tyranny that came from Madrid with home rule. In reality, these uprisings were more or less revolts by the colonial aristocracies, prettied up with the façade of Jeffersonian democracy, borrowed mainly for the purpose as lying propaganda to fool the great masses of the oppressed peoples, to replace foreign tyrants with new domestic ones in reality. The local upper crust, not pure Spanish by blood, chased out and replaced the foreign Spanish with themselves as rulers. The peons, if anyone would bother to ask, as the Dominican and Jesuit friars did and recorded, would have answered: “New bosses (Jefes) are worse than the old bosses. At least with the old bosses, every one of us is despised because of our impure blood. Our new patrons think they smell like roses when they come from the same mongrels we do.”
In the midst of this warfare, fueled in parts by “idealism”, racism, prejudice and the recognition that whoever the banditos were, who took over the land from Spain, could keep all the loot for themselves instead of see it loaded up in ships and sent off to Madrid’s treasuries; a few colonies, mostly in the Caribbean Sea remained loyal. One of these colonies was Cuba.
Then There Is The United States Of America.
The post Napoleonic Period was one in which the Americans, who had been hammered hard in the Napoleonic Wars and escaped national disaster by the skins of their diplomatic teeth. The Treaty of Ghent (1814) was more another exercise by Great Britain to tidy up her business affairs while she was involved in the packing off of that Corsican upstart, an affair that was not yet completely concluded. It changed nothing much in North America, except burdened the Americans with a huge war debt and delayed Britain’s planned takeover of South American commerce by a couple of years. The War of 1812 was a mere bagatelle, a minor distraction on the road to taking over everything not nailed down outside Europe to Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, the British prime minister of the day. This right bastard [Peterloo Massacre of 1819, I refer one to the Corn Laws and the repression of the Parliamentary reform movement, the relative lack of suffrage in Northern England. McP.] wanted to clear decks, so to speak. This was understood by the Americans at Ghent who cut the best deal they could with his government to get themselves out of the jam their own incompetence had dumped them when they foolishly declared war in the first place.
South America was rich and anyone in Washington and London, could see that whereas Spain was in ruins from the Peninsula Campaign and the Madrid government, allegedly pro-British, was quite weak and enfeebled and thus unable to assert its authority in country much less to colonies overseas. This exposed the Americas south of North America to exploitation and commercial conquest. Britain saw opportunity. America saw a breathing spell to recover from a ruinous war. South America was easier pickings than two wars on the North American continent showed to be to London.
Of course history has a way of making fools of men who perceive local temporary advantage and assume it is permanent. The British would find the new South American politics they encountered befuddling and the continent harder to pillage than their businessmen ever imagined. The Americans meanwhile increased in population and swarmed west and grew strong at a faster and much more alarming rate than predicted, so that by 1848, the admiralty in London told The Right Honourable Lord John Russell FRS, the prime minister of the day, that if war came with the Polk Administration, there were no guarantees. Canada could go. The Americans would be badly damaged, but the British Empire in the New World was at great hazard. Fortunately the Americans looked south.
Why Look South?
There was a great schism in the American social contract. You could see it in the American Congress, specifically the U.S. Senate. To proportional representation modern Europeans, the “federalism” of the American republic is a stumbling block to their comprehension of US history. They do not understand bicameralism or why “states” are issued 2 senators apiece as opposed to a unicameral parliament and representatives based on districts or chunks of population as the US House of Representatives is. The more astute European students of American history assume it was sectional politics, and racism: that somehow the slave owning classes in the southern states demanded it to prevent a national popular vote in some future Congress from outlawing their “peculiar institution”
That is not exactly what happened. Powerful states at the national founding, like Virginia and New York, which had large populations, wanted unicameralism and proportional representation. It was small states like Rhode Island and Delaware and South Carolina with small populations and who knew they would be swamped in the commercial competitive interests and backwash of the Virginias and New Yorks who insisted on the Senate. Later, Virginia and the southern United States would as a sectional block would play the Senate like a pipe organ to keep “balance of power” in the US Congress to block an increasingly anti-slavery and industrial, banking, mercantile northern United States from overwhelming them politically and economically and in sheer population. Slaves were the major issue, but who owned the wealth was a part of it, too. In 1848 the capital in human slaves was 9 billion US dollars. The US industrial plant and mercantile trade was worth just shy of 11 billion US dollars. Tipping point. The American south needed to redress that imbalance. Canada was obviously not the place to do it. There was Mexico however. As early as 1834, the Jackson Administration was already thinking ahead to when there would need to be new states and new Senators to keep the US Congress stable. The Republic of Texas was the result. It was supposed to be absorbed quickly and broken up into four or five states which would join the southern American voting block. Ten senators would redress the Senate balance of power nicely. Texas did not cooperate. All or nothing to join up with the United States, they said. This caused a 12 year delay while all the parties involved tried to figure out their Plan Bs. There was also Mexico, still smarting from the Texas Revolution of 1835 and which had not given up all hope of regaining their lost state. They said they would fight if the Americans annexed Texas. It was 1837 and the professional American army, a tough hard-bitten outfit, not filled with fools, told the Martin Van Buren Administration, that it could not be done, not without serious risk of a major defeat. The US NAVY was willing to try Mexico, but van Buren told everyone in it to go pound sand while he thought about it.
What was that conniving son of a _____ actually thinking? Plan C, which is Cuba. This time the USN, not filled with fools either, told MvB the naval facts of life, circa 1836; i.e. the United Kingdom would be very annoyed if the United States grabbed Spain’s colony. Jamaica was right next door and the British would assume it was next on the American’s menu. This promptly put both “projects” on hold for 12 years.
Succeeding US presidents keep a close eye on European events. They look for any reasonable opening, an opportunity to solve their Texas, US Senate and economic problems all at one full swoop at Mexico’s expense. They see 2 roadblocks, Britain and France. Spain does not enter the calculations, yet, because Cuba, has always been and is Plan C.
Politician and soon to be President James K. Polk sees things going south (Bad pun. McP.) in Europe, starting in 1847. The Austro-Hungarian empire is up to its ears in Hungarians and Italians. The French tie themselves up trying to save the Austrians and putting down their own 1848 types. The North German Confederation has a case of the 1848 revolutionitis, too The British seem busy stamping out brush fire wars in India and become alarmed as the Balkan Peninsula also catches the 1848 revolution fever. Russia is being naughty, too. She, Britain, is cosseted
Spain is in the middle of its Carlist War. It is not a good time to be a pan-pacifist in Europe as little problems keep Paris and London and anyone else who matters, busy. Nobody will look too hard at the Americans with all these troubles closer to their homes.
Time To RAM That Texas Annexation Bill Through Congress And Tell The British 54-40 Or Fight!
Boy, the professional US Army becomes upset. They do not want a Mexican War just yet. They actually hope for 185---never. They get one, anyway. Somehow, because they actually find a decrepit military super-genius in their ranks, named Winfield Scott, they manage to pull off an astounding victory from the stalemated war they predicted should be the expected result. That victory makes even the Duke of Wellington, the first soldier of the age, take notice:
The British promptly settle the Maine and Oregon Boundary questions though “The Pig War” is still in their future with the Americans. I think Winfield Scott may have a “small” influence there.
Anyway, it occurs to Washington, and Mister President James K. Polk, that having bitten off territories four times the size of France, having permanently ticked off Mexico and really annoyed Great Britain, too; that Plan C should be shelved for the time being and maybe the United States should just digest her conquests and make slave and free states on a one for one basis and solve that other problem in the US Senate. So hopes President James K. Polk, who once he fulfills (most of) his campaign promises, unusually for an American president, has the sense to get out of Dodge (Washington) while his reputation is sky high, just one horse ahead of the lynching posse that is out to get him for screwing everything in the country up with his "stupid" war.
What About Plan C?
Cuba has never left the interest of southern Americans looking for new “slave” states and more senators, nor has it escaped the notice of northern American business interests who see a great source of sugar and certain other crops that America needs for her burgeoning industries as raw materials. But how to get at Cuba after the dangerous Mexican American War which was a lot closer run thing than most people not in the know realize? Look at what almost happened to Zachary Taylor’s army in northern Mexico? It was a miracle that the Mexicans had not destroyed that army and handed the Americans a catastrophic defeat.
Their thoughts turned to a previous model of American expansion, the Louisiana Purchase, when a war plagued and cash strapped Napoleon, after Haiti threw the French out in 1804.^1, forced him to make the best deal he could with the Americans for Louisiana^2
^1 The History of Haiti, Revolution and Independence
^2 Louisiana Purchase - HISTORY
Spain would be a tougher nut to crack. It was 1854, six years after the Mexican American War. Another window of opportunity was open as Britain and France were snowed underneath Russians in the Crimean War.^3
^3 Crimean War - HISTORY
Now emboldened by their successful seizure of land from Mexico in 1848 and with the major European powers at each others’ throats, America’s leaders soon turn their attention to Spain’s “Ever Faithful Isle.” The US initial attempts to acquire the island reached its climax in 1854. In October of that year, three expansionists, all toadies and appointees of President Franklin Pierce, who serve as United States ambassadors in Europe (Pierre Soulé in Spain, John Mason in France, and James Buchanan in Britain) meet secretly in Ostend, Belgium, to plan the annexation of Cuba, under orders of Secretary of State William Marcy. The “Ostend Manifesto” that they draft states that the United States should purchase the island for no more than $120 million as an Action Grande Majeur (Major international act. McP.). The offer would be made as an assistance to a Spanish government in deep trouble financially and would be presented as the act of a friendly power. The insult the United States would receive when the Madrid government refuses, would be the war excuse the United States uses as justification in seizing it by force; if Spain refuses to sell.
The Isabelline government of Spain, to the Americans’ surprise was ready to sell! What scuttled the deal? Three things torpedoed America’s first chance at Cuba. First was the Spanish Revolution of 1854 which threw out the Spanish conservatives who were to be American bribed and installed the “progressives”
Second was this mess.
Needless to say, Franklin Pierce was nowhere near as subtle or as smart as Thomas Jefferson. He proved to be feckless, gutless and a chicaner, so when the news came out that he attempted to buy Cuba he backpedaled post haste. Apparently he could not keep his big mouth shut while his ambassadors schemed in Belgium.
The northern American newspapers soon ferreted out the Ostend Manifesto as a result of President Pierce not keeping his part of the Black Warrior Affair quiet and through their news articles it soon raised fierce domestic American opposition in the northern United States to allow a cabal of southern American sympathizers, all of them, ambassadors firmly connected with the southern American scheme to acquire Cuba as a slave state or maybe 3 (6 senators), to pursue the scheme to success.
The progressive biennium (Bienio progresista) (1854-1856).in Spain was the final coffin nail for the 1854 attempt to purchase Cuba.
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Stay tuned "Next Time" for how the United States Civil War and a little thing called the SS Virginius Affair leads to the Spanish American War!
P.S. For those who wonder where this is going, well... after the USS Charleston (C-2) rams and sinks the protected cruiser SMS Kaiserin Augusta and drowns Rear Admiral Otto von Diederichs, it gets a little exciting... especially after 1900.
of Nautilus, Argonaut, Narwhal, and another three for the Atlantic in an asb story.