Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson, co-author of the Declaration of Independence, expressed a desire to make the island of Cuba part of the territory of the United States. Albert J. Beveridge, a senator from Indiana, reproduced Jefferson’s words in a 1901 article: “Her [Cuba’s] addition to our confederacy is exactly what is wanting to advance our power as a nation to the point of its utmost interest.’” However, it was John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state to President James Monroe, who argued most forcefully for annexing Cuba, still a Spanish colony in 1823 and virtually the only one Spain retained after the wave of successful Latin American struggles for independence that began thirteen years earlier.
Thus, it was not surprising that in the same year, Adams authored what became the Monroe Doctrine, a proto-imperialist manifesto that staked a US claim to the Americas and warned European powers against any future interventions into the hemisphere. Cuba was a key piece of US designs for Latin America, as American politicians set out to actualize the vision they had for their young nation, as an equal to the traditional imperial powers of Europe.
The 1823 targeting of Cuba as an important future acquisition also marked the beginning of US attempts to control the island’s fate, while it was still in the hands of Spain. This dynamic shaped interactions between the two countries moving forward, including eventual attempts to purchase Cuba and incorporate it into the Union, a three-plus year occupation of the island following the Spanish-American War, and a decades-long obsession with bringing down its Communist regime.
The diverse ideologies behind plans to annex Cuba
In the early nineteenth century, many American politicians saw Cuba as a natural extension of the US. The island was a significant element of foreign policy for several reasons, including the fact that it was an ideal location from which to exert control over the Gulf of Mexico, and the fact that Cuba’s economy, like that of its northern neighbor, relied heavily on wealth derived from the labor of the enslaved. In other words, southerners saw Cuba as an ally in slavery.
In April 1823, Adams wrote to US Minister to Spain, Hugh Nelson, that Cuba was of extreme political and commercial importance to the US, and that “it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our federal Republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself.”
In what has come to be known as his “ripe fruit” theory, Adams wrote in the same letter, “If an apple, severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjointed from its own unnatural connection with Spain and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only towards the North American Union, which by the same law of nature cannot cast her from its bosom.”