Marcy never for a moment, of course, thought of acting upon these abominable recommendations. The overwhelming sentiment of this nation would have been against it. Even in the South, the majority of thoughtful men held that Soule and his colleagues had gone too far, while throughout the North, the Manifesto was scathingly denounced as a proposal of international brigandage. Not only in Spain, but almost equally in France and Great Britain, American diplomacy and the honor of the American government were regarded as seriously compromised. In these circumstances Marcy, to whom the Manifesto must have been revolting, very adroitly declined to recognize its real purport, but insisted upon interpreting it in an entirely different way from that which its authors had intended. The result was that the note was practically pigeonholed.
Soule was so chagrined and enraged at this disposition of a favorite child of his mind that he resigned his office as Minister to Spain, to the unmistakable relief both of Marcy and of the Spanish government. Buchanan, another of the signers, became President of the United States a couple of years later, and in his second annual message, in December, 1858, sought to revive the Manifesto, referring to the possibility of its sometime being necessary for the United States to seize Cuba under the law of self-preservation. He also requested Congress to appropriate $30,000,000 for the purchase of the island, and a bill to that effect was introduced, but it was never pressed to final passage. Again in 1859 he referred to the subject, being still apparently obsessed with the idea that the conquest of Cuba was necessary for the preservation of the United States, but on this occasion his reference to the subject was entirely ignored by Congress. Then came the Civil War in the United States, which, for a number of years, debarred that country from paying any attention to the affairs of its southern neighbor.
The years following the close of the Civil War in the United States were marked with momentous occurrences in various other countries, particularly in Cuba, and the two nations with which she had long been intimately connected, Mexico and Spain.
The beginning of the year 1866 in Peninsular Spain saw General Prim heading a revolutionary body of troops at Aranjuez and at Ocana. These operations caused great excitement, and feeling ran high throughout the kingdom, for they were generally regarded as indicative and provocative of a radical change of government. Martial law was, however, promptly proclaimed at Madrid, and thus countless sympathizers with the revolution were restrained from taking an active part in it. The army of the government, under General Zabala, hastened to the scene of the insurrection, and pursued the revolutionary troops with such vigor that the latter, including General Prim himself, were compelled to retreat across the Portuguese frontier near Barracas, since they were, in fact, only about six hundred strong and were not prepared to make a resolute stand. In the same month, January, 1866, other revolutionary bodies were dispersed in Catalonia and Valencia.