expeditions in Central America and in the islands of Cuba. They were the
policy of the South, executed by Mr. Buchanan with his accustomed
docility. The point in question was to make conquests, and conquests for
slavery. By any means, and at any price, the South was to procure new
States. Cuba would furnish some, several would be carved out of Mexico
and Central America; for otherwise the slavery majorities would be
compromised in Congress, and slavery would be forced to renounce forever
the election of the Presidents of free America. To avoid such a
misfortune, there is nothing that they would not have been ready to
undertake.

Thus, step after step, and exaction after exaction, overthrowing, one
after the other, all barriers, the Wilmot proviso, the Missouri
Compromise, the right of majorities in the Territories, the very
sovereignty of the States annulled by the Dred Scott decision, the South
had succeeded in drawing the United States into those violent and
dishonest political practices which filled the administration of Mr.
Buchanan. The barriers of public probity, and the right of men, yielded
in turn; the administration dared write officially that Cuba was
necessary to the United States, and that the affranchisement of slaves
in Cuba would be a legitimate cause of war. The United States were yoked
to the car of slavery: to make slave States, to conquer Territories for
slavery, to prevent the terrible misfortune of an abolition of slavery,
such was the programme. In negotiations, in elections, nothing else was
perceived than this. If the liberty of the seas and the independence of
the flag were proudly claimed, it was by the order of the South, and
there resulted thence, whether desired or not, a progressive
resurrection of the African slave-trade; if candidates in favor of the
maintenance of the Union were recommended, it was to assure the
conquests of slavery within and without, the invasion of neighboring