Influence
The balance of power between the northern and southern U.S. states was threatened by the proposed Golden Circle. Federalists feared that a new Caribbean-centered coalition would align the new Latin American states with the slave states in the US. This would tilt the balance of power southward and weaken U.S. federalism in favor of the Pan-American confederalist union. Those Americans in favor of the Gold Circle believed that an alignment with the remaining slaveholding Caribbean territories would reinforce their political strength.
After the civil war, many Americans from the South moved their slave-based operations to Cuba and Brazil (see Confederados), where slavery remained legal into the 1880s. Other American adventurists in Latin America repeated some elements of the Golden Circle. William Walker was the most successful of the individuals who tried to build a Latin American empire. Some historians think that the Spanish-American War was a continuation of these policies.
Read more about this topic: Golden Circle (proposed Country)
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Just what is the civil law? What neither influence can affect, nor power break, nor money corrupt: were it to be suppressed or even merely ignored or inadequately observed, no one would feel safe about anything, whether his own possessions, the inheritance he expects from his father, or the bequests he makes to his children.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)