The principal points of this manifesto were as follows:
"The United States ought if possible to purchase Cuba with as little delay as possible.
"The probability is great that the government and Cortes of Spain will prove willing to sell it because this would essentially promote the highest and best interests of the Spanish people.
"The Union can never enjoy repose nor possess reliable securities as long as Cuba is not embraced within its boundaries.
"The intercourse which its proximity to our coast begets and encourages between them (the inhabitants of Cuba) and the citizens of the United States has, in the progress of time, so united their interests and blended their fortunes that they now look upon each other as if they were one people and had but one destiny.
"The system of immigration and labor lately organized within the limits of the island, and the tyranny and oppression which characterize its immediate rulers, threaten an insurrection at every moment which may result in direful consequences to the American people.
"Cuba has thus become to us an unceasing danger, and a permanent cause for anxiety and alarm.
"Should Spain reject the present golden opportunity for developing her resources and removing her financial embarrassments, it may never come again.
"Extreme oppression, it is now universally admitted, justifies any people in endeavoring to free themselves from the yoke of their oppressors. The sufferings which the corrupt, arbitrary and unrelenting local administration necessarily entails upon the inhabitants of Cuba cannot fail to stimulate and keep alive that spirit of resistance and revolution against Spain which has of late years been so often manifested. In this condition of affairs it is vain to expect that the sympathies of the people of the United States will not be warmly enlisted in favor of their oppressed neighbors.
"The United States has never acquired a foot of territory except by fair purchase, or, as in the case of Texas, upon the free and voluntary application of the people of that independent State, who desired to blend their destinies with our own.