an was both
dull and perverse in obeying the demands of his party, especially
on the slavery issue. In his Annual Message of 1858 he expressed
satisfaction that the Kansas question no longer gave the country
trouble. He also expressed gratitude to "Almighty Providence" that
it no longer threatened the peace of the country, and congratulated
himself over his course in relation to the Lecompton policy, saying,
"it afforded him heartfelt satisfaction." He, in the same message,
set forth his anxiety to acquire Cuba, assigning as a reason that
it was "the only spot in the civilized world where the African
slave trade is tolerated."

Cuba was wanted simply to make more slave States to extend the
waning slave power, and thus to offset the incoming new free States,
which then seemed to the observing as inevitable.

Buchanan suggested that circumstances might arise where the law of
self-preservation might call on us to acquire Cuba by force, thus
affirming the policy set forth in the Ostend Manifesto, prepared
and signed by Mason, Soule, and himself four years earlier.

Slidell of Louisiana, from the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the
Senate, promptly reported a bill appropriating $30,000,000 to be
used by the President to obtain Cuba; and it soon transpired that
Southern Senators were willing to make the sum $120,000,000.

The introduction of the bill caused a sensation in Spain, and her
Cortes voted at once to support her King in maintaining the integrity
of the Spanish dominions.

A most violent debate ensued in Congress, reopening afresh the
slavery question.

The bill was antagonized by the friends of a homestead bill--"A
question of homes; of lands for the landless freemen." The friends
of the latter bill denominated the Cuba bill a "question of slaves
for the slaveholders."

Toombs of Georgia, ever a fire-eater, save in war,(88) vehemently
denounced the opponents of the Cuba appropriation and the friends
of "lands for the landless" as the "shivering in the wind of men
of particular localities." This brought to his feet Senator Wade
of Ohio, impetuous to meet attacks from all quarters, who exclaimed:

"I am very glad this question has at length come up. I am glad,
too, it has antagonized with the nigger question. We are 'shivering
in the wind,' are we, sir, over your Cuba question? You may have
occasion to shiver on that question before you are through with
it. The question will be, shall we give nigge