The principal subscribers to the Junta stock at the South, he thought, were land speculators; persons who expected that, by now favouring the movement, they would be able to obtain from the revolutionary government large grants of land in the island as gratuities in reward of their services or at nominal prices, which after annexation would rise rapidly in value; or persons who now owned wild land in the States, and who thought that if Cuba were annexed the African slave-trade would be re-established, either openly or clandestinely, with the States, and their lands be increased in value, by the greater cheapness with which they could then be stocked with labourers.
I find these views confirmed in a published letter from a Louisiana planter, to one of the members of Congress, from that State; and I insert an extract of that letter, as it is evidently from a sensible and far-thinking man, to show on how insecure a basis rests the prosperity of the slave-holding interest in Louisiana. The fact would seem to be, that, if it were not for the tariff on foreign sugars, sugar could not be produced at all by slave-labour; and that a discontinuance of sugar culture would almost desolate the State.
"The question now naturally comes up to you and to me, Do we
Louisianians desire the possession of Cuba? It is not what the provision
dealers of the West, or the shipowners of the North may wish for, but
what the State of Louisiana, as a State, may deem consistent with her
best interests. My own opinion on the subject is not a new one. It was
long ago expressed to high officers of our Government, neither of whom
ever hesitated to acknowledge that it was, in the main, correct. That
opinion was and is, that the acquisition of Cuba would prove the ruin of our
State. I found this opinion on the following reasons: Cuba has already
land enough in cultivation to produce, when directed by American skill,
energy, and capital, twenty millions of tons of sugar. In addition to this
she has virgin soil, only needing roads to bring it, with a people of the
least pretension to enterprise, into active working, sufficient nearly to
double this; all of which would be soon brought into productiveness were
it our own, with the whole American market free to it. If any man supposes
that the culture of sugar in our State can be sustained in the face of
