Following President Buchanan's suggestion in his December 1858 message to Congress, Democratic Senator John Slidell of Louisiana introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate on this day to appropriate $30,000,000 as a down payment on a possible purchase of the island Cuba from Spain. Despite powerful Republican opposition which saw it as a naked attempt to increase the national slave power, the bill passed through the Foreign Relations Committee in February but died as the term of the Congress expired in March. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 195. The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge for the Year 1860 (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 1860), 386.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Lawmaking/Litigating
Relevance
Personal
