Read Online 1858 by Bruce Chadwick - Free Book Online

no distant day… the tide of [U.S.] emigrants will flow to the South…if permitted to go there, peacefully, Central America will soon contain an American population which…will preserve the domestic peace, while the different transit routes across the Isthmus [of Panama]…will have assured protection.” 633
    No other president would envision an American empire spreading through Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean until the twentieth century, but James Buchanan was certain that he could establish one. His grand scheme had several components: 1. dislodging European governments that controlled Central and South America and the Caribbean islands, especially England, in return for U.S. protection of their citizens still living there; 2. the annexation of one or more of the northern states of Mexico; 3. new treaties with countries such as Paraguay and Brazil to make U.S. shipping more prosperous, to be enforced militarily; 4. the planning of some kind of waterway that could cut across the narrower sections of Central America in Honduras, Nicaragua, or Panama and save U.S. ships months on the dangerous trip around the southern tip of South America; 5. the purchase of Cuba and its annexation as a slave state; and 6. the rapid development of Honduras and Nicaragua as U.S. protectorates after, at his urging, thousands of Americans moved to those countries and peacefully took over their political and economic systems.
    The president was careful in all of his public declarations and private correspondence to insist that all of this would be done through monetary purchase and political persuasion, not military might. He argued, too, that few American presidents had his long experience in foreign affairs as a congressman and ambassador to England. He selected Lewis Cass as secretary of state because Cass shared his imperialistic schemes. As soon as he was sworn in, the president set up a second presidential office at the State Department so he could work with Cass on his expansionist plans.
    Under new treaties, the British, at his urging, had agreed to pull out of their Central American and Caribbean possessions, ceding their lands and forts to the local governments. They would not give up the Bay Islands, off the coast of Honduras and close to where Buchanan envisioned his cross-continent waterway. The president became enraged. He refused to honor the old treaty, and negotiations with England fell apart. A few months later talks resumed, and while the British did not formally agree with Buchanan’s demands, they told him that they would not object to any interpretation of the treaties that he took. Buchanan, however, had to promise that he would not use any military action against the countries they had abandoned.
    The president did so, certain that American immigration to these countries and islands would soon make the residents see that American business and governmental supervision were good for them. He also planned to ask Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to buy up Mexican states and Caribbean islands. The president continually assured everyone that there would be no military invasions of these countries.
    His promises fell apart in 1857 when, against his wishes, an American soldier of fortune, William Walker, took an expeditionary force to Nicaragua, intent on overthrowing the government there and setting up an independent, but pro-American, state. Following a congressional and media outcry, Buchanan dispatched a naval force to arrest Walker and his men. They did so, but Walker was not imprisoned. He returned to Central America on another jingoistic expedition later and was killed in an attempt to overthrow the government of Honduras.
    Buchanan’s actions in the Walker affair were questionable at best. Walker insisted that he had the secret blessing of the White House on his campaigns in Central America. Some scholars have suggested that while Buchanan publicly condemned Walker, he privately hoped