Congressman Lincoln and the return of the wooden leg of General Santa Anna

[Liz Rosenthal]

I've found the posts by David L. and Rsmyth very illuminating.

Also, it tended to be Southerners who were interested in annexing more land, south of the U.S. border, whether it was Mexico or Cuba or even Central America. These supporters were quite vocal about their wish to spread the benefits of their slave society to the rest of the Americas. They sponsored numerous campaigns to get something started south of the border - chiefly Cuba and Central America, from what I can recall - and they anointed a particular individual, popularly known as the "Grey-Eyed Man of Destiny," to lead these efforts, which were called filibustering. (I had no idea until I read about this that the filibuster originally had a meaning other than a tactic of obstruction used by U.S. senators against legislation up for consideration in the Senate!)

Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson provides an excellent overview of all of the filibustering that went on in the antebellum era at the behest of the Slave Power. Incidentally, the U.S. first got its meddlesome reputation with Latin Americans because of filibustering; the U.S. citizens who engaged in filibustering were known as "gringoes."