Guantánamo (10 page)
Authors: Jonathan M. Hansen
Late the following year, Monroe had the opportunity to refine the parameters of the American imperial system. The catalyst in this process was the British foreign secretary, George Canning, who proposed that the U.S. join with Britain in an alliance ostensibly designed to prohibit Spain's allies (Russia, Prussia, Austria, and France) from intervening on Spain's behalf in the ongoing Latin American revolutions, but which included a disavowal on the part of both Britain and the United States of further imperial ambition in the region. Monroe's advisors, including the previous presidents Madison and Jefferson, were divided. Madison and Jefferson urged Monroe to accept the British overture; John Quincy Adams advised Monroe to reject it. Jefferson thought the question “the most momentous which has ever been offered to my contemplation since that of Independence.” If that made America a nation, “this sets our compass and points the course which we are to steer through the ocean of time opening on us.” Jefferson reiterated his fundamental belief that the Western Hemisphere comprised a system of its own; the United States must steer clear of European entanglements while keeping Europe out of “cis-Atlantic affairs.” Only one nation had the wherewithal to defy this division, Jefferson told Monroe, namely, Britain. By accepting Britain's overture, the United States would attract to its side its most powerful European rival, thereby ensuring the security and integrity of the American system.
What about Jefferson's old dream of one day taking Cuba? In the interest of peace, an aging Jefferson was willing to defer that dream for
the time being. Even Cuba was not worth the cost of war. Cuban independence, America's “second interest” after annexation, could be won without war, and by this time, late in his career, Jefferson found empire less compelling than Britain's “peace and friendship.”
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Monroe himself appeared to be leaning away from his old mentor and toward Adams. “I have always concurred with you in sentiment,” he wrote Jefferson in June 1823,
the time being. Even Cuba was not worth the cost of war. Cuban independence, America's “second interest” after annexation, could be won without war, and by this time, late in his career, Jefferson found empire less compelling than Britain's “peace and friendship.”
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Monroe himself appeared to be leaning away from his old mentor and toward Adams. “I have always concurred with you in sentiment,” he wrote Jefferson in June 1823,
that too much importance could not be attached to [Cuba], and that we ought if possible to incorporate it into our union, availing ourselves of the most favorable moment for it ⦠. I consider Cape Florida and Cuba, as forming the mouth of the Mississippi, & other rivers, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, within our limits, as of the Gulf itself, & in consequence that the acquisition of it to our union, was of the highest importance to our internal tranquility, as well as to our prosperity and aggrandizement.
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Jefferson lost this debate to the younger, more vigorous John Quincy Adams. Adams convinced Monroe that England's real purpose in proposing the alliance was not to neutralize France and its allies but to impede American expansion. Indeed, Canning's proposal threatened the premise of the American system itself by assuming an equality of British and American interests on this side of the Atlantic. Britain had everything to gain, the United States less than nothing. “We should at least keep ourselves free to act as emergencies may arise,” wrote Adams, “and not tie ourselves down to any principle which might immediately afterwards be brought to bear against ourselves.”
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A month later, Monroe uttered the sentiment that became the Monroe Doctrine, but which owed more to Adams's and Jefferson's thinking than to his own. In his speech to Congress on December 2, 1823, Monroe reiterated the idea of Jefferson, Madison, and others that Europe and the West constituted two distinct and irreconcilable “systems” of government. The United States had long since disavowed any interest in Europe's internal affairs; now it expected Europe likewise to keep out of America's neighborhood. Any “enlightened and impartial” observer could see that the United States had a keener interest than Europe in the fate of Latin American states. Monroe
warned Europe that the United States would regard “any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” The United States had, “on great consideration and on just principles,” acknowledged the independence of the new Latin American states (except Haiti). It “could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny” as anything but an expression of hostility. In warding off Europe, Monroe had no doubt that he spoke for the hemisphere. It beggared belief, Monroe insisted, that left to their own devices “our southern brethren” would adopt the European system “of their own accord.”
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warned Europe that the United States would regard “any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” The United States had, “on great consideration and on just principles,” acknowledged the independence of the new Latin American states (except Haiti). It “could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny” as anything but an expression of hostility. In warding off Europe, Monroe had no doubt that he spoke for the hemisphere. It beggared belief, Monroe insisted, that left to their own devices “our southern brethren” would adopt the European system “of their own accord.”
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Lawrence Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson, the Adamses, Monroeâin short, anybody who thought to capitalize on the resources of the North American continentâunderstood that the continent was valuable only to the extent that the United States had access to the rivers and seaports that drained it, and that the usefulness of those rivers and seaports, in turn, depended on access to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Though the Monroe Doctrine encompassed more than Cuba, Cuba was inspiration enough. “The right to use a thing, comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use,” Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson had written the U.S. chargé d'affaires for Spain, William Carmichael, in August 1790, regarding U.S. access to the Spanish port at New Orleans. Jefferson and his successors knew that New Orleans was useless without control of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, and that control of these waters was the province of Cuba. The presence of an enfeebled Spanish empire in Cuba was acceptable to Jefferson and his successors; the advance of France or, especially, England was not. If a hostile power ever thought to use Cuba to deny U.S. merchants access to the Gulf of Mexico and the port of New Orleans, Jefferson warned Carmichael, “there is no saying how far we may be led”; the United States would never forsake its “western citizens” or abandon “their rights.”
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One of the clearest early elucidations of U.S. policy regarding Cuba came fromâno surpriseâSecretary of State John Quincy Adams in the spring of 1823. In a note to Hugh Nelson, U.S. minister to Spain,
Adams observed that, despite America's determination to steer wide of European conflagrations, Europe's “maritime wars” inevitably concerned the United States, as they took place upon the sea, “the common property of all.” More than that of any other nation, Adams observed, U.S. well-being relied on that common property; the nation's status as a neutral among belligerents was bound to create conflicting interests. At the time Adams wrote, France and Spain were on the verge of war. Adams worried lest a defeated Spain be put in a position of having to barter off her few remaining colonies in the New World: Cuba and Puerto Rico. These islands were nontransferable to any but the United States, Adams emphasized. They were “natural appendages to the North American continent,” he wrote, “and one of them, Cuba, almost in sight of our shores, from a multitude of considerations, has become an object of transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union.” Cuba's location at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico and
Adams observed that, despite America's determination to steer wide of European conflagrations, Europe's “maritime wars” inevitably concerned the United States, as they took place upon the sea, “the common property of all.” More than that of any other nation, Adams observed, U.S. well-being relied on that common property; the nation's status as a neutral among belligerents was bound to create conflicting interests. At the time Adams wrote, France and Spain were on the verge of war. Adams worried lest a defeated Spain be put in a position of having to barter off her few remaining colonies in the New World: Cuba and Puerto Rico. These islands were nontransferable to any but the United States, Adams emphasized. They were “natural appendages to the North American continent,” he wrote, “and one of them, Cuba, almost in sight of our shores, from a multitude of considerations, has become an object of transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union.” Cuba's location at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico and
the West Indian seas; the character of its population, its situation midway between our southern cost and the island of St. Domingo, ⦠the nature of its production and of its wants, furnishing the supplies and needing the returns of a commerce immensely profitable and mutually beneficialâgive it an importance in the sum of our national interests with which that of no other foreign territory can be compared, and little inferior to that which binds the different members of this Union together.
Cuba and the United States, insisted Adams, shared geographical, commercial, moral, and political interests rooted in nature. Current developments in the United States, Cuba, and the larger world made it “scarcely possible to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our federal republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself.” Of course, Adams understood the objections of many of his compatriots to extending the American republic overseas. Still, there were “laws of political, as well as physical gravitation,” he wrote, “and if an apple, severed by a tempest from its native tree, cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection to Spain, and incapable of
self-support, can gravitate only toward the North American Union, which by the same law of nature, cannot cast her off from its bosom.” Like Jefferson three decades earlier in warning Spain to grant the United States access to New Orleans, Adams assured Nelson that America was ready to fight for these
natural
rights. In the interests of U.S. citizens, and now, crucially, the “incapable” Cubans, America could do no less.
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Thus Jefferson's notion of an empire for libertyâan empire of equal and reciprocal and federated statesâbegan to evolve into a narrower claim about America's natural right to take Cuba, and to govern it on behalf of others not yet ready for self-government.
self-support, can gravitate only toward the North American Union, which by the same law of nature, cannot cast her off from its bosom.” Like Jefferson three decades earlier in warning Spain to grant the United States access to New Orleans, Adams assured Nelson that America was ready to fight for these
natural
rights. In the interests of U.S. citizens, and now, crucially, the “incapable” Cubans, America could do no less.
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Thus Jefferson's notion of an empire for libertyâan empire of equal and reciprocal and federated statesâbegan to evolve into a narrower claim about America's natural right to take Cuba, and to govern it on behalf of others not yet ready for self-government.
The United States was not the only American republic interested in Cuba. In the mid-1820s, Mexico and Colombia, two powerful and newly independent states, proposed mounting an expedition to liberate Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain, thereby finally ridding the hemisphere of the last vestige of the Spanish Empire. U.S. officials did not like the sound of this. In April 1826, Daniel Webster rose in the House of Representatives to weigh in on Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba. Webster declared Cuba unequivocally the “most important point of our foreign relations ⦠the hinge on which interesting events may possibly turn.” Did Spain have the right to transfer Cuba to another European power? Was there a limit to U.S. rights in the Western Hemisphere? Wasn't the United States, after all, the
universal
nation? Rights, Webster observed, are realized in geographical contexts. The United States enjoyed rights in its own hemisphere that European states plainly did not, and vice versa. “Proximity of position, neighborhood, whatever arguments the power of injuring and annoying, very properly belong to the consideration of all cases of this kind.” Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana was a case in point. That action had been based on “convenience,” “proximity,” and “natural connection.” Where some of Webster's colleagues differentiated between a voluntary transfer by Spain of Cuba to another European state and a forcible transfer, Webster recognized “a distinction without a difference.” The question came down to whether there was “a danger to our security, or danger, manifest and imminent danger, to our essential rights, and our essential interests.” In the case of Cuba, there could be no doubt. Not only had U.S. trade with Cuba come by 1826 to exceed U.S. trade with France (“and all her dependencies”), but also Cuba
commanded “the mouth of the Mississippi River. Its occupation by a strong maritime power would be felt, in the first moment of hostility, as far up the Mississippi and the Missouri as our population extends.” Moreover, Cuba lay “in the very line of our coastwise traffic, interposed in the very highway between New York and New Orleans.” The states of Europe must knowâthe Latin American republics, too, for that matterâthat Cuba was transferable to none but the United States.
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universal
nation? Rights, Webster observed, are realized in geographical contexts. The United States enjoyed rights in its own hemisphere that European states plainly did not, and vice versa. “Proximity of position, neighborhood, whatever arguments the power of injuring and annoying, very properly belong to the consideration of all cases of this kind.” Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana was a case in point. That action had been based on “convenience,” “proximity,” and “natural connection.” Where some of Webster's colleagues differentiated between a voluntary transfer by Spain of Cuba to another European state and a forcible transfer, Webster recognized “a distinction without a difference.” The question came down to whether there was “a danger to our security, or danger, manifest and imminent danger, to our essential rights, and our essential interests.” In the case of Cuba, there could be no doubt. Not only had U.S. trade with Cuba come by 1826 to exceed U.S. trade with France (“and all her dependencies”), but also Cuba
commanded “the mouth of the Mississippi River. Its occupation by a strong maritime power would be felt, in the first moment of hostility, as far up the Mississippi and the Missouri as our population extends.” Moreover, Cuba lay “in the very line of our coastwise traffic, interposed in the very highway between New York and New Orleans.” The states of Europe must knowâthe Latin American republics, too, for that matterâthat Cuba was transferable to none but the United States.
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U.S. concern about Cuba's fate ebbed in the late 1820s and '30s, when U.S. and European powers informally agreed to maintain the status quo. Meanwhile, the U.S. government pledged to do nothing to encourage Cuban insurrection. In 1830, Spain consented to the seating of a U.S. consul. Despite occasional diplomatic flare-ups, relations between the United States and Spain remained stable enough to encourage American investment in the Cuban sugar and railroad industries. Notably, it was at this time that American shipping gained control of the lucrative Cuban slave trade. A note from the U.S. secretary of state, Edward Livingston, to William Shaler, U.S. consul in Havana, aptly sums up U.S. interests during this era. “The great objects of our Government in relation to Cuba,” Livingston advised, “are a free and untrammeled trade, on its present footing, eased of the discriminating duties; to preserve it in the hands of Spain, even at the expense of war; and only in the event of finding that impossible, to look to its annexation to our confederacy.” Livingston himself appeared cool on the matter of annexation, not least because of widespread doubts about Cubans' ability to shoulder the burdens of republican government. This was talk for a later day.
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In 1846, the United States went to war with Mexico over a border dispute in Texas. It emerged from the war with the New Mexico and California territories, which, along with the recent addition of the Oregon Territory, extended U.S. possessions to the Pacific. Disagreement about the fate of slavery in these new territories culminated in the Civil War. In the immediate aftermath of war with Mexico, many northerners and southerners alike looked to the annexation of Cuba as a means of forestalling, perhaps ending, the sectional controversy.
By the time Americans' attention returned to the subject of Cuban annexation in the late 1840s, Cuba had emerged as one of the world's most valuable colonies and its leading sugar producer. Cuba was also one of the few remaining slave economies and, hence, one of the few remaining markets for what had become after 1831 (when Brazil became the last country formally to outlaw the African slave trade) the trade in contraband slaves. Cuba's black market in slaves peaked in the five-year period between 1840 and 1845, when nearly one hundred thousand slaves were brought ashore, many off U.S. ships. This American bonanza inspired Spain to introduce stiff penalties for slave traders, and over the course of the next fifteen years, fewer than three thousand slaves arrived in Cuba.
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Whenever the market got tight, slavers looked to Guantánamo, which, as early as the 1820s, had come to the attention of British patrols as a leading depot for contraband.
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Whenever the market got tight, slavers looked to Guantánamo, which, as early as the 1820s, had come to the attention of British patrols as a leading depot for contraband.
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