A History of the American People

giving Pierce a landslide in the electoral college, though his plurality over all the other
candidates (there were four vote-splitters) was only 50,000. In theory Pierce's Cabinet bridged
North and South, since his Secretary of State, William Learned Marcy (1786-1857), was a
member of the old Albany Regency, the New York politico who had egged on Jackson to enjoy
the spoils of victory' in 1829. But Marcy did not care a damn about slavery and, as Polk's Secretary of War, had been a rabid architect of the war against Mexico. Again, Pierce's Attorney- General, Caleb Cushing (1800-79), though a Harvard-Massachusetts Brahmin, was primarily, like Marcy, aManifest Destiny' man, and thus a Southern ally. On the other side, Pierce made
Jefferson Davis (1808-89) secretary of war, and Davis was not merely a genuine Southerner but
the future President of the Confederation. In practice, then, the Pierce administration was
committed to policies which might have been designed to help the South.
The first expression of this policy was the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. This was Davis' idea,
significantly. America was then discussing alternative possibilities for transcontinental railways
and Davis was determined, for strategic as well as economic reasons, that the South should
control one route. This required passage through a large strip of territory in what was then still
northwest Mexico. Davis persuaded Pierce to send the South Carolina railroad promoter, Senator
James Gadsden (1788-1858), to Mexico to promote the purchase of the strip. This was a dodgy
business, as Gadsden had a financial interest in securing the purchase, which was made with US
federal money-$10 million for 45,000 square miles-and the Senate agreed to ratify the deal only
by a narrow margin, partly because this extra territory automatically became slave soil. Indeed
Davis' original idea, that Gadsden should buy not only the strip but the provinces of Tamaulipas,
Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and the whole of Baja (lower) California, was also
on the cards but not proceeded with as the Senate knew these vast territories would have been
turned into several new slave states, and would never have ratified the deal, the Senate now
having a Northern majority, or rather an anti-slave one.
There were other possibilities for the South, however. They wanted Cuba, to turn it into an
ideal slave state. The acquisition of Cuba,' wrote Davis,is essential to our prosperity and
security.' He regretted that, in joining the Union, the Southern states had forfeited their right to
make treaties and acquire new territories on their own, otherwise Cuba would already be in the
Union, and slave soil. James Buchanan (1791-1866), who as Polk's secretary of state had been a
leading mover in acquiring Texas, was now minister in London and intrigued and negotiated
furiously in 1854 to have Cuba purchased and annexed. But nothing came of it-this was one of
many occasions when Northerners in Congress frustrated the South's dream of an all American,
all-slave Caribbean." There were various filibustering expeditions to seize by force what might
be more difficult to acquire by diplomacy. Prominent in them was William Walker (1824-60), a
Tennessee doctor and populist fanatic, who wanted to annex chunks of Latin America to the US,
not to make them slave states but to give their peoples a taste of democracy. The 'gray-eyed man
of destiny' entered Lower California in 1853 and proclaimed a republic, but Pierce was not hard-
faced enough to allow that. Then Walker took his private army to Nicaragua and actually had
himself recognized by the US in 1856. But that aroused the fury of another predator, Cornelius
Vanderbilt (1794-1877), whose local transport system was being disrupted by Walker's doings,
and as Vanderbilt had more money, he was able to force Walker to `surrender' to the US Navy.
Finally Walker turned to Honduras, but there the British navy took a hand and turned him over,
as a nuisance, to a Honduran firing-squad.
Now that the Gadsden Purchase made a Southern railway route to California geographically
possible, others were looking for northern routes, and this too had an important bearing on the