Southern sentiment had supported the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Florida Purchase of 1819. From Jefferson's time Southern statesmen had been advocating the purchase of Cuba. Filibustering expeditions were fitted out in Southern ports with Cuba as an objective; agitation was carried on, inside and outside of Congress; between 1850 and 1861 the acquisition of Cuba was the question of the day. It was an issue in the Campaign of 1853. In 1854 the American ministers to London, France and Madrid met at the direction of the State Department and drew up a document (the "Ostend Manifesto") dealing with the future of Cuba. McMaster summarizes the Manifesto in these words: "The United States ought to buy Cuba because of its nearness to our coast; because it belonged naturally to that great group of states of which the Union was the providential nursery; because it commanded the mouth of the Mississippi whose immense and annually growing trade must seek that way to the ocean, and because the Union could never enjoy repose, could never be secure, till Cuba was within its boundaries." (Vol. viii, pp. 185-6.) If Spain refused to sell Cuba it was suggested that the United States should take it.
The Ostend Manifesto was rejected by the State Department, but it was a good picture of the imperialistic sentiment at that time abroad among certain elements in the United States.
The Cuban issue featured in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in 1858. It was hotly discussed by Congress in 1859. Only twenty years had passed since the United States, by force of arms, had taken from Mexico territory that she coveted. Now it was proposed to appropriate territory belonging to Spain.
The outbreak of hostilities deferred the project, and when the Civil War was over, the slave power was shattered. From that time forward national policy was guided by the leaders of the new industrial North.
The process of this change was fearfully wasteful. The shifting of power from the old régime to the new cost more lives and a greater expenditure of wealth than all of the wars of conquest that had been fought during the preceding half century.
The change was complete. The slaves were liberated by Presidential Proclamation. The Southern form of civilization—patriarchal and feudal—disappeared, and upon its ruins—rapidly in the West; slowly in the South—there arose the new structure of an industrial civilization.
The new civilization had no need to look outward for economic advantage. Forest tracts, mineral deposits and fertile land afforded ample opportunity at home. It was three thousand miles to the Pacific and at the end of the journey there was gold! The new civilization therefore turned its energies to the problem of subduing the continent and of establishing the machinery necessary to provide for its vastly increasing needs. A small part of the capital required for this purpose came from abroad. Most of it was supplied at home. But the events involved in opening up the territory west of the Rockies, of spanning the country with steel, and providing outlets for the products of the developing industries were so momentous that even the most ambitious might fulfill his dreams of conquest without setting foot on foreign soil. Territorial aggrandizement was forgotten, and men turned with a will to the organization of the East and the exploration and development of the West.
The leaders of the new order found time to take over Alaska (1868) with its 590,884 square miles. The move was diplomatic rather than economic, however, and it was many years before the huge wealth of Alaska was even suspected.
2. Hawaii
The new capitalist interests began to feel the need of additional territory toward the end of the nineteenth century. The desirable resources of the United States were largely in private hands and most of the available free land had been pre-empted. Beside that, there were certain interests, like sugar and tobacco, that were looking with longing eyes toward the tempting soil and climate of Hawaii, Porto Rico and Cuba.