CARD 39 - Spanish-American War

 "These islands (Cuba and Puerto Rico) are natural appendages of the North American continent, and one of them (Cuba) almost within sight of our shores, from a multitude of considerations has become an object of transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union... These are laws of political as well as physical gravitation".
U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, 1823

Ostend Manifesto
In 1854, three U.S. ministers met in Ostend, Belgium and drew up a document that stated the U.S. should take Cuba by force if Spain refused to sell it. The three ministers, James Buchanan, John Y. Mason, and Pierre Soulé were pro-slavery Democrats.