So much in regard to the direct participation taken by the American government in these movements, tending solely to augment the territory and the power of the Yankees on sea and land; as regards the expeditions and agitations undertaken by private parties with the indirect support of that government, the list is as long as it is instructive.
Apart from the attempts of Narciso López and other filibusters against Cuba, Rousset Boulbon, although working on his own account, drew all his supplies for the invasion of Sonora from the United States; Crab came into that same district with the hope of conquering it and annexing it, if he had not been opportunely routed by Gabilondo in Caborca; Zerman had an identical purpose in reaching California; Walker proclaimed the Republic of Lower California, placing upon the flag of that newest nation a single star, which, if his adventure had proved successful, would have come to be one more star in the North American flag; routed by General Blanco, he went to Central America, where his presence gave rise to a bloody war and innumerable disturbances.
We should never end if we were to enumerate, one by one, all the schemes which the brains beyond the Rio Grande engender for enlarging their territory and dismembering that of the American republics.
Mexico was compelled to spend great sums in combatting the filibusters who appeared and in shooting or severely punishing them; Spain was obliged to send numerous troops to Cuba and to constantly invoke the moral support of European cabinets; an energetic response had to be given to the proposition to buy Savannah harbor and a round denial to the claims for the island of St. Thomas and others belonging to Denmark and Holland; England was forced to establish long-drawn negotiations, resulting in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which in part assured the independence of Central America; necessarily this unchecked appetite for lands and islands exhibited by the United States caused alarm and apprehension throughout Europe. Finally, it was necessary that the great Secessionist War should came, through which this nation expiated a part of its great crimes, a war which brought it to the verge of ruin, but which taught it, in time, to check itself upon the perilous descent, upon which Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and others had started it--men who, without having the qualities of great statesmen, contributed, by their policy and their counsels, to bring about this great crisis to which their unbounded ambition and the cancer infecting their institutions bore them.