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The Play of President Pierce for Cuba: Douglas

At this time Stephen A. Douglas was the "Young America" and "manifest destiny" man of the democracy to succeed Pierce in the presidency, and the words "manifest destiny" meant Cuba. There were strong articles in the reviews, and the idea was abroad that Douglas was to be president, and Cuba ours, as a matter of course. But there was a destiny not manifest to Mr. Douglas, and it was the nomination and election, in 1856, of James Buchanan, the first signer of the Ostend manifesto, to be president of the United States. Mr. Soule was prominent in the Cincinnati convention that nominated Buchanan, and Breckinridge and the Pierce administration was favorable to the succession of Buchanan, who was expected to press the annexation of Cuba at all hazards, and he would have done so, no doubt, if the questions that resulted in war among ourselves had not diverted our tendencies.

There is reason to think the deciding influence that elevated Buchanan to the great office was the Cuban enterprise. If it had not been for that, Young American Douglas would have been president, and there would have been incalculable changes, of which it is very vain to speculate. It seemed for some years that Mr. Douglas was the one man in the country sure to be president. He was immensely popular in the Northwest and had a strong hold in the South. He had a grand voice and was a brainy man in the cultivation of his reputation among the people.

His first great stroke in Congress was his speech for the restoration of the fine imposed by a crank judge in New Orleans upon General Jackson before he beat the British, for his declaration of martial law, and he had Jackson's blessing for that. He made great progress for a young man, and was vigorous and aggressive as a speaker and a man of policy. He had done, his share in exciting attention to the position of Cuba relative to the United States, and shaping the course of his party to the immediate annexation of the Island. The cabinet of Mr. Pierce was strongly southern in tendency, and the president was firmly for the rights assumed by the leaders in that section. The Ostend conference took the direction of Cuba's destiny, so far as we were concerned, out of the hands of Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Buchanan was so placed as to get the usufruct of it. The South did not sustain Douglas at Cincinnati when Buchanan came to the front, and the southern crisis came on, Douglas siding against the sectional extremists of his party on the ultra doctrine that loomed behind the repeal of the Missouri compromise, and going further than prudence counseled in confronting Lincoln in their celebrated debates. The result was the slaughter of Douglas in the Charleston convention, the division of the Democratic party, the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the great war of the states and sections.

The personal power of Douglas was very considerable. He had qualities very different and, as an executive man, superior to those of Buchanan, who was a polished gentleman but not a natural leader as Douglas was. Unquestionably, Douglas would have been president instead of Buchanan or instead of Lincoln, probably both, if it had not been for the help Buchanan got from his Cuban affiliations, and the development of a southern policy that Douglas could not be depended upon to consent complacently to make his rule of life the performance of his purposes. As president he would have been too formidable for a faction of his party.