Hunter Wallace (who recently appeared on our podcast to talk about the South and the Caribbean) has a detailed summary and review of Robert E May’s book The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861 over at Occidental Dissent. This is timely since we recently posted the first part of a series of articles called ‘Southern expansion and Northern opposition‘ about the book. The summaries and reviews are approached a bit differently, possibly making them both useful and interesting to our readers (at least we hope so). A bit of the conclusion of Wallace’s piece is excerpted below:
The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire was blocked by Northern Republicans, internal division within the South, resistance from Spain and Mexico, and the outbreak of the War Between the States.
After leaving the Union, Southerners temporarily disavowed their imperial ambitions in a bid for European recognition and support, and to keep Mexico neutral and a useful partner in circumventing the Yankee blockade of the Southern coast.
The destruction of the Union also eliminated a major rationale for Caribbean expansion because there was no longer any need to retain parity with the free states in the Senate.
In the final two chapters, Robert E. May makes an interesting argument that Caribbean expansion was the poison pill that killed the Crittenden Compromise and destroyed the only chance to save the Union in 1861.
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