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" [Napoleon] will consent to our recieving Cuba into our union to prevent our aid to Mexico and the other provinces. [After that] I would immediately erect a column on the Southernmost limit of Cuba & inscribe on it a Ne plus ultra as to us in that direction. We should then have only to include the North in our confederacy....and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation:"-Thomas Jefferson, in 1808.

Leaving aside this was yet another example of the Jefferson's ability to lose a grip on reality at times, this is quote is interesting because it shows just how long Americans had been thinking about Cuba as an inevitable piece of territory that was going to fall to America. Even in the Spanish-American War, the US tried to subsidize and bribe Cuban politicians into supporting annexation; something that was frankly never in the cards.

But I'm curious, because this also seems to show how unlikely this was to ever happen. Too early, and America simply lacks the power projection to take the territory. Too late, and there's the issue of slavery, the fact that the Cubans don't have any desire to be part of America, etc. etc.
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