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 Summary: President Pierce’s order to affix the seal of the United States on his letter to Queen Isabella II of Spain. We are still searching for an exact transcript of Pierce’s letter, but the parenthetical note on “Mr. Soulé’s recall” indicates that Pierce was accepting Ambassador Pierre Soulé’s resignation and would soon appoint a replacement (Augustus Dodge). Two months prior to this note, on November 13, 1854, Secretary of State William Marcy repudiated the “Ostend Manifesto,” written by Soulé in league with John Mason and James Buchanan. The manifesto recommended a policy of “wresting” Cuba from Spain if Spain was unwilling to sell to the United States. Coming on the heels of the Kansas-Nebraska controversy, the manifesto was a political bombshell, causing Northern Democrats to oppose their President and party leader because he cowed to Southern expansionists who wanted Cuba – and Kansas – as potential new slave states. This brief document shows Pierce moderating his stand amid the backlash.
Franklin Pierce. Partially Printed Document Signed as President. Washington, January 15, 1855. 1 p. Inventory # 21877 $10,000 Complete Transcript:
I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of State to affix the Seal of the United States to the envelope of a letter to Her Majesty the Queen of Spain (Mr. Soule’s recall) Dated this day, and signed by me and for so doing this shall be his warrant.
Franklin Pierce
Washington, January 15, 1855 Historical Background:
A leading voice in the “Young America” movement of the mid-1800s, President Franklin Pierce was an expansionist who believed that the providential mission (“manifest destiny”) of the United States was to spread democratic values and free trade to the rest of the world. In his Inaugural Address in 1853, Pierce proclaimed that “the policy of my Administration will not be controlled by any timid forebodings of evil from expansion. Indeed, it is not to be disguised that our attitude as a nation and our position on the globe render the acquisition of certain possessions not within our jurisdiction eminently important for our protection, if not in the future essential for the preservation of the rights of commerce and the peace of the world.” How ironic that Pierce, president of Young America, was enmeshed in a great controversy over the proposed acquisition or conquest of Cuba, a land of sugar and slaves. Pierce was easily seduced by Southern expansionists—including his Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis—who sought new lands for plantation-based slavery. He signed the Gadsden Purchase (1853, ratified in 1854) with Mexico, whereby the U.S. acquired 46,000 square miles of what are now southern Arizona and New Mexico for a projected southern transcontinental railroad anchored at New Orleans. In 1853, Pierce encouraged adventurer John Quitman to amass money and men for a private invasion, or filibuster, in Cuba. He then appointed a combative Louisianan, Pierre Soulé, as ambassador to Spain, and instructed Secretary of State William Marcy to negotiate the purchase of Spanish Cuba. The American ambassador to Britain, James Buchanan, informed Pierce that he thought Cuba could be purchased by leaning on the creditors of Spain, a country with shaky finances. Furthermore, Southern politicians put forth the paranoiac idea that Cuba was on the precipice of a slave revolt, like Haiti’s a half-century early, that would “Africanize” the island and threaten the security of the American Southeast. On April 3, 1854, Secretary of State Marcy empowered Soulé to offer up to 130 million dollars to Spain in exchange for Cuba. If Spain rebuffed Soulé’s offer, then he should take the initial steps toward “the next most desirable object, which is to detach that Island from the Spanish domain and from all dependence on any European power.” At the height of the subsequent controversy, Americans took opposing sides on what Marcy meant by “detach,” which could have meant conquest, but it also could have connoted support for Cuban revolutionaries, akin to U.S. support for the Texas independence movement in the late 1830s and 1840s. The flexible plans of Pierce and Marcy were undercut by Ambassador Soulé’s impetuosity. Marcy instructed Soulé to begin by seeking reparations for the seizure of the cargo of the detained American vessel Black Warrior in Havana. But the ambassador went too far, demanding an exorbitant indemnity on forty-eight hours’ notice. As historian James McPherson pithily writes, “within a year of his arrival at Madrid, Soulé denounced the monarchy, wounded the French ambassador in a duel, presented a forty-eight hour ultimatum (which Spain ignored) over an incident involving an American ship at Havana, and began intriguing with Spanish revolutionaries.” Soulé aroused the suspicions of Britain and France, and Queen Isabella II of Spain and her cabinet hardened their stance on Cuba, refusing to sell—a position Spain maintained for the next half-century. Soulé went on, later in 1854, to meet with the two principal American diplomats in Europe – James Buchanan, ambassador to Britain, and James M. Mason, ambassador to France. The trio conducted a series of talks in Belgium in October, 1854. They met in Ostend, but the “Manifesto” itself was written on October 18 in Aix-la-Chapelle as a “secret memorandum of recommendations to the State Department on the subject of Cuba,” in the words of one historian. In the Ostend Manifesto, the American diplomats proposed offering Spain $120 million for Cuba, but if Madrid was unwilling to sell, “by every law, human and Divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain ... Cuba is as necessary to the North American republic as any of its present members … the Union can never enjoy repose, nor possess reliable security, as long as Cuba is not embraced within its boundaries … ” In this “age of adventure, it is not improbable … that Cuba may be wrested from Spain by a successful revolution, and in that event she will not only lose the Island, but the price which we are now willing to pay for it …” The Manifesto was not intended for the public, but their deliberations were watched by European spies and journalists, and their report was leaked to the American press in early November, 1854. Because of the disastrous defeat of sixty-six Democrats in the 1854 midterm elections, caused by Northern outrage over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, President Pierce decided to disavow the Ostend Manifesto and temper his expansionism. He signed a proclamation against filibustering as a threat to Quitman and his ilk. Then, on November 13, 1854, Secretary Marcy wrote to Soulé, officially rejecting the “suggestions” of the diplomats at Ostend. “However much we might regret the want of success in our efforts to obtain the cession of [Cuba], that failure would not, without material change in the condition of the island, involve imminent peril to the existence of our government.” It was not the time for threats. As historian Frederick Binder puts it, “The report was repudiated, and the administration turned its back on the Ostend participants. Soulé was sacrificed.” Angrily, Soulé resigned and requested permission to return home. To Marcy, he explained that he had “no alternative but that of continuing to linger here in languid impotence …” It is likely that this letter, and the letter from Pierce to Queen Isabella II, were accompanied by a direct letter to Soulé recalling him before his replacement, Augustus Dodge, arrived in Madrid (Dodge reached Madrid in June, 1855). Coming on the heels of the Kansas-Nebraska controversy, the Ostend Manifesto drove anti-slavery northern Democrats to oppose the administration. Many would join the new Republican Party, which fielded its first presidential candidate – John C. Frémont – in 1856. The Ostend Manifesto did not hurt Buchanan, and may have helped him solidify Southern support. Buchanan went on to defeat Frémont in the election. Franklin Pierce (1804-1869) was the 14th president of the United States (1853-1857). Although his roots and home were in New Hampshire, Pierce sided with the South on the slavery issue, and was criticized as a “doughface” Democrat. Yet Pierce was devoted to the concept of a federal Union, and made his chief aim to uphold the Constitution of the United States as a sacred and therefore unchangeable document and to avoid civil war at all costs. Regarded by history as a weak, but well-meaning and honest man, Pierce left office publicly hated and discredited. Pierre Soulé was born in the French Pyrénees, and was exiled for revolutionary activities during the Restoration. In 1825, he fled to Britain, then to Haiti, and on to New Orleans, where he became a lawyer. Soulé was a U.S. Senator from Louisiana (1847, 1849-1853), and Minister to Spain (1853-1855). He was captured by the Union Army during the Civil War, and, in 1865, he fled to Havana (from wikipedia article). References:
Binder, Frederick Moore. James Buchanan and the American Empire (Selinsgrove, Pa., 1994).
McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom (New York, 1988), 107-111.
“Official Report of the Ostend Conference,” The New-York Times, March 6, 1855.
Webster, Sidney. “Mr. Marcy, the Cuban Question and the Ostend Manifesto,” Political Science Quarterly VIII (March, 1893), 1-31.
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