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Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America
by Robert E. May
Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2002
426 pp.; $45
As I write this, an article in The New York Times describes how relatives of Americans who lost their lives in the September 11 terrorist attacks are suing the government of Saudi Arabia and members of the Saudi royal family for $100 trillion for aiding and abetting the attackers. Their aim, according to the article, is not primarily to obtain damages but to financially cripple the people and organizations that funded the terrorists. The Saudi government vigorously denies any links to the September 11 terrorists and points to its expulsion of Osama bin Laden from Saudi Arabia some years ago as proof of its innocence. The plaintiffs are not persuaded; they note that the terrorists openly channeled money through Saudi-based businesses and charities, making the Saudi government at least criminally negligent if not actually complicit in the events of September 11. Their lawsuit is certain to complicate relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
Absent the lawsuit, these events bear an uncanny resemblance to an earlier campaign of international violence in which the U.S. government appeared to be complicit, or at least criminally negligent. The episode is thoroughly dissected in Robert E. May's new book, Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. In 1850s America, a "filibuster" was someone who invaded a neighboring country to overthrow its government and place himself in charge, often with the intention of having the territory annexed to the United States. The decade prior to the Civil War witnessed dozens of such schemes—and, preposterous as it seems now, at least one came close to success. In fact, if one includes events that occurred prior to and after the term "filibuster" was in vogue, several such endeavors were successful: newly arrived U.S. citizens proclaimed "republics" in Florida, Texas, California, and Hawaii and secured their admission into the Union, sometimes with and sometimes without the knowledge and encouragement of the U.S. government. Leaders of these successful movements often made out handsomely as real estate speculators, bond holders, and plantation owners, and some succeeded as state and even national politicians.
The filibusters of the 1850s, by contrast, all failed, but that does not mean that their actions were inconsequential. May notes that on two occasions efforts by filibusters to promote the independence of Cuba brought the U.S. close to war with Spain. Moreover, because they aroused suspicion of America's intentions among its Caribbean neighbors and European rivals, the filibusters probably impeded rather than advanced efforts by the U.S. government to buy Cuba from Spain or additional territory from Mexico. Filibustering also exacerbated the debate over slavery as it changed from a nationally popular crusade to promote republican revolutions throughout the world to a largely Southern effort to acquire new slave states in Latin America. May notes that President-elect Lincoln refused even to consider the "Crittenden Compromise" that would have extended the line between free and slave territories westward to the Pacific Ocean because he feared that it would tempt Southern expansionists to launch an endless series of filibustering expeditions.
May makes it clear that while filibustering was often treated as a farce in contemporary American popular culture, it was anything but comical for people living in areas chosen by the filibusters for their grandiose schemes. Mexico and Cuba were plagued with incursions that ended in bloody skirmishes. Nicaragua suffered the worst depredations. After the leader of one faction in a local civil war recruited a Tennessean named William Walker to help him defeat his rivals, Walker staged his own election as President and enticed more than 2,000 adventurers from the United States to join his effort to turn the country into a white slaveowners' republic. Hundreds of Central Americans fell in battle before the interlopers were forced out, and on Walker's orders the old colonial city of Granada was put to the torch by the retreating North Americans.
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