The incident marked the high point of the U.S. expansionist drive in the Caribbean in the 1850s. In justifying the price, the authors wrote: Southern slave ... (minister to France) met in Ostend, Belgium. The Ostend Manifesto was a document written by three American diplomats stationed in Europe in 1854 which advocated for the U.S. government to acquire the island of Cuba through either purchase or force. The Ostend Manifesto was part of an attempt to add Cuba to the US. The Ostend Manifesto of 1854, as it came to be known, was the byproduct of this attempt at expanding into the Caribbean. The price of $120 million was proposed.

In addition, as James Buchanan–then the minister to Great Britain–wrote in the Ostend Manifesto that discussed the US-Cuba situation, Americans would be “unworthy of [their] gallant forefathers” if they allowed “Cuba to be Africanized and become a second [Haiti], with …

Ostend Manifesto. The document was written by U.S. diplomats, James Buchanan, the U.S. minister to Britain, John Young Mason, U.S. minister to France, and Pierre Soulé, U.S. minister to Spain. The Ostend Manifesto was a document written on October 9, 1854 in Ostend, Belgium. Ostend Manifesto, communication from three U.S. diplomats to Secretary of State William L. Marcy, advocating U.S. seizure of Cuba from Spain. An attempt to expand U.S. territory, the Ostend Manifesto pushed for Spain to sell Cuba to the United States for $120 million dollars. Southerners wanted an aggressive policy with Spanish-ruled Cuba, by having the island become a possible new slave state. Learn more in this article. Acting under instructions from Secretary of State William Marcy, the three were to investigate the possibility of acquiring Cuba from Spain. They went further.