Is there a way that the United States could have acquired Cuba before the Spanish American War? If so, when(preferably before the 1890's)?
What's interesting Captain, is that it was the South that wanted to acquire Cuba, and the North that opposed. It was generally assumed that any Cuban State would be slave holding.
Southern slaveholders made such optimistic assumptions about states carved from the Lousiana Purchase and the Mexican cession, too, and we all know how it ended: freesoiler settlers (or in Cuba's case antislavery natives) outnumbered and ougunned them in most of those lands. See Kansas.
Case is, to make a state slave-holding, slaveholders and slaves have to relocate there in substantial numbers. Slaveholders are typically much less numerous than freesoiler settlers or antislavery natives in these situations, and slaves are a fragile property, so many nasty things (from the slaveholder's PoV) may happen to them when the plantations are close to an aggressive and determined antislavery population.
Slaveholders can't invoke the protection of federal authorities because antislavery states block any such attempts in Congress, and local territorial/state authorities are at best as badly split on the issue as the population itself.
Guess how this ends.
So whatever happened to the "Cruel Conquistador"?I've wondered if the Southern Slave Class, would have been all that happy if they did get Cuba.
50 % of the Negroes were Free, 50% Slave, Negroes in the 1800's [pre Italian/South Europe migration] made up 50% of the Population.
So Free Negroes were 25% of Cuba's Population. more than any American State.
Slaves had legally protected Rights to be paid, if Farmed out to Others than their owner/relatives and to hold on to their own Money.
There where strict laws about breaking up Married Couples and Families.
There were many Mixed Slave/Free Families who lived and worked together, With the only indication of Slavery, was the requirement of the Slaves to turn over produce made, or moneys received.
All this was very different from Slave Customs in the American Slave States, And attempts to impose American Customs would have lead to Mass unrest.