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)
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“My administration is pledged to follow the policies of Mr. Roosevelt in this regard, and while that pledge does not involve me in any obligation to carry them out unless I have Congressional authority to do so, it does require that I take every step and exert every legislative influence upon Congress to enact the legislation which shall best subserve the purposes indicated.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
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—David Hume (1711–1776)
“It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)