#filibusters

[langue2canard]

A Junior Woodchucks' book page a week! (8/?)

From the French edition of the Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook published in 1970.

(translation by me. ask me if you'd like to see the original page)

[racefortheironthrone]

I read somewhere that the Confederates intended to conquer Central and South America if they won the civil war, is that true? Would they be able to conquer these places? In addition to the Union, can any country or alliance in these regions prevent them?

In the lead up to the American Civil War, one of the key arenas of conflict between pro- and anti-slavery forces in the United States was the expansion of slavery. For reasons having to do both with the agricultural impact of intensive cotton cultivation on soil fertility, the impact of rising demand for slaves, and the need to maintain political equilibrium in the U.S Senate, pro-slavery advocates believed quite strongly that slavery had to keep expanding or it would die out.

Students are probably most familiar with the debates over the extension of slavery into western territories of the United States that touched off conflicts over the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and so forth, but there was a good deal of political conflict over the expansion of American slavery southward especially in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

The most prominent example of this is the Mexican-American War, which was seen by anti-slavery Northerners as a war waged in order to conquer more southern territory for slavery, and which would see conflict between the "All-Mexico" movement that sought the US annexation of all of Mexico versus the Wilmot Proviso's efforts to exclude slavery from the territories gained from Mexico.

However, there were also a series of attempts by pro-slavery southerners in the mid-19th century known as filibusterers to overthrow Caribbean and Latin American governments by force in the name of annexing them to the United States as slave territories and future slave states. Many of these efforts had support from pro-Southern presidential administrations:

in 1849, 1850, and then again in 1851, there were the Cuban expeditions of Narciso López which sought to overthrow the Spanish and establish a slave state. A lot of very prominent southerners, including the Governor of Mississippi, were involved in these filibustering campaigns - and even more prominent southerners were approached but decided not to join. While López managed to land troops twice, he was never able to gain local Cuban support against the Spanish and ended up getting executed in Havana.

In 1853, William Walker attempted to conquer Baja California and Sonora, and declared these territories to be the Republic of Sonora, but was forced to withdraw by the Mexican army.

In 1854, there the infamous Ostend Manifesto, a document that tried to justify a U.S invasion of Cuba in the event that Spain refused to sell Cuba to the United States. This document leaked and caused a huge political scandal.

Most famously, there was the 1855 filibuster of William Walker, who succeeded in overthrowing the government of Nicaragua with a private army. Declaring himself to be both commander of the army and preaident of the new Republic, Walker re-established slavery and was able to win U.S recognition in 1856. However, Walker's ambitions grew larger than his grasp and when he attempted to invade Costa Rica, his forces were defeated and the governments of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala allied together against what they saw as a hostile regime, and together with the Costa Ricans invaded Nicaragua in 1857, forcing Walker to flee the country.

In addition to these attempted campaigns, there were a number of proposed efforts that didn't come together or were called off - after his involvement with the López affair in 1850, Quitman of Mississippi made preparations for an invasion of Cuba in 1854 with support from the Pierce Administration, but abandoned their efforts due to fallout from the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

While the Confederacy was generally too busy with the American Civil War to pursue military conquest to their south, there were some exceptions to the rule and certainly there were major forces within the Confederate government who planned for southern expansion in the event of Confederate victory. For more on this, see:

The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire: 1854-1861.  Robert E. May. (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989.)

Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post-Civil War World. Adrian Brettle. (Richmond: University of Virginia Press, 2020).

[gettothedancing]

Republicans, Independents Consistent On Key Issue While Democrats’ Views Change Based On Who Benefits: Poll

A new poll released this week found that the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose ending the filibuster and oppose packing the Supreme Court.

The Wall Street Journal added:

Mason-Dixon pollster Brad Coker finds consistently strong opposition among independents to such plans for structural changes, and concludes that moderate and unaffiliated voters did not vote for Joe Biden in 2020 “to turn the government upside-down” or “remake America.” Rather, they were hoping he would bring calm and perhaps “less bickering” to Washington, he adds. …

If Senate Democrats choose to make such radical changes despite widespread popular opposition, the new survey suggests they can expect a political reckoning in 2022. Independents saying they would be less likely to vote to re-elect their senators if they “voted to remove the filibuster rule and pack the Supreme Court” outnumber those saying they would be more likely by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

Mason-Dixon has a well-earned reputation for producing among the most accurate political polls.

[omniatlas]

North America 162 years ago today: Filibuster War (02 Apr 1857) https://buff.ly/2Uo6EEn For many US citizens, the Mexican-American War had demonstrated that conquering Latin America was both easy and the natural destiny of the United States. In the 1850s numerous adventurers tried their luck by mounting expeditions against Mexico and Central America, some hoping to perpetuate slavery by expanding the slave states. The most successful of these “filibusters” was William Walker, who gained control of Nicaragua in 1855 and held it for more than year before being driven out by Costa Rica and its allies. #northamerica #history #welovemaps #map #1850s #1857 #ushistory #americanhistory #april #april2 #centralamerica #filibusters #costarica #elsalvador #henrycrabb #honduras #mexicanhistory #nicaragua #williamwalker #maps #19thcentury #victorianera #todayinhistory #historytoday #historyteacher #historybuff #historynerd #historygeek #manifestdestiny #usexpansion (at Managua, Managua) https://www.instagram.com/p/BvvkpNag0Vh/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=2o9bu7gariu7

[post-grammatic-stress]

Me: I know you're just asking me to tell a story so we waste class time. Stop it. It makes me feel used.

Student 1: No! We're not! We're just . . .

Student 2: We're doing that thing we learned in government class today!

Me: . . . Filibustering?

Student 3: YEAH!

Me: But you're not filibustering - you're making ME filibuster my own class. It's happening right now!

[sadoldjonny]

Schumer: Senate to vote on filibuster change on voting bill | AP News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Days before the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol , Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the Senate will vote on filibuster rules changes to advance stalled voting legislation that Democrats say is needed to protect democracy.

Now, if we can just get all 50 Democrats to vote for it, and has anybody considered asking Lisa Murkowski to help?

[jilli1205]

Schumer: Senate to vote on filibuster change on voting bill | AP News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Days before the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol , Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the Senate will vote on filibuster rules changes to advance stalled voting legislation that Democrats say is needed to protect democracy.