May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002, xviii + 426 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8078-2703-7.

Reviewed for EH.Net by Ben Wynne, Department of History, Florida State University.

Robert E. May's latest work, Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America, offers an excellent treatment of an often-overlooked American proclivity of the pre-Civil War period. As May points out in his preface, in today's vernacular, the term "filibuster" itself has been hijacked, its antebellum meaning obscured by longwinded speeches designed to create legislative logjams in Washington. However, before the Civil War the term referred to "American adventurers who raised or participated in military forces that either invaded or planned to invade foreign countries with which the United States was formally at peace" (xi). Many of the questions May strives to answer in his book are precisely those that make the topic so fascinating: exactly who were the men (and occasionally women) who participated in these expeditions? What motivated them? Why did the United States not do more to rein them in and what were the long-range consequences of this activity?

The work is divided into nine chapters. The first three provide an overview of the filibuster phenomenon, tracing it back to America's earliest history, and outlining the American government's responses to early expeditions. They also introduce the audience to some of the notable characters involved in filibustering, including Narciso Lopez, who dreamed of taking Cuba; William Walker, the doomed conqueror of Nicaragua; and Mexican War hero and Mississippi governor John A. Quitman (of whom May has previously produced a fine biography). These early chapters also address filibustering's place in American popular culture, where it was celebrated in many circles as a glamorous incarnation of the spirit of Manifest Destiny. Some participants in filibuster expeditions became larger than life figures, and their exploits were lauded in books, songs, theater productions, and in the popular press. Whenever the legality of these expeditions was brought into question, American apologists took great pains to point out that filibustering was not strictly an American phenomenon, with British activities in India frequently used as a comparison.

The next four chapters delve deeper into the nature of the expeditions. May describes the disparate motives that brought men into the service. Some participants were displaced veterans of the Mexican War who had difficulty adjusting to civilian life once that war ended. Others, including many immigrants, came from urban environments that were short on jobs and long on desperation. Some men entered the service one step ahead of the law while others came from the better elements of society. May also points out that the same sense of comradery and secrecy that drew many men of the period into the Freemasons also drew some men into the filibuster movement, as did abstract vision of glory and more basic desires for adventure and travel. Latin America was a favorite target for these expeditions because of political instability in the region and because filibusters could claim, in the true spirit of Manifest Destiny, that they were actually "liberating" a supposedly inferior culture through conquest. Through it all the United States government could do little to stop the filibuster expeditions that continually undermined American foreign policy. According to May, the Federal government's lack of success was due to more than just the fact that it lacked sufficient manpower to deal with the problem. Sympathetic public officials and a general public that was fascinated by the phenomenon also allowed the expeditions to flourish.

The book's final chapters deal with the consequences of filibustering. May points out that, ironically, while the movement was associated with the tenets of Manifest Destiny, filibusters actually impeded United States' territorial expansion by discrediting the process of territorial growth. They also created innumerable headaches for the American State Department, whose diplomats had to convince foreign officials that the American government did not sanction filibustering and indeed did its best to combat it. Many foreign governments tended to reflect their view of filibusters as notorious pirates onto Americans in general, which bred distrust among other nations that had the potential to lead to war. The mayhem that filibusters generated in Latin America and other areas also impeded the expansion of U. S. commercial interests.

Toward the end of the book May discusses the influence of filibustering on the sectional tensions that were threatening to tear the country apart during the 1850s. In the decade before the Civil War, slavery and filibustering became hopelessly intertwined. Some filibusters solicited Southern support for their efforts with the implication that they would be spreading the institution of slavery into conquered territories. In other cases, as filibustering began to be thought of as more of a southern activity, the implications were more direct. The best example May gives is that of John Quitman and his allies, who not only recruited Southerners for an invasion of Cuba, but also sought financial backing from slaveholders and completely "conceptualized their project in sectional terms." (257) When the administration of Franklin Pierce enforced the Neutrality Law against the expedition, Quitman and his associates interpreted the policy as an attack on slaveholding and on the South in general. While May concedes that there is sparse evidence of filibustering as a bona fide secessionist plot, he does emphasizes that dreams of a tropical empire based on slavery were in the minds of some, and he furthermore adds that with regard to the secession crisis, "Had Americans never filibustered, the Union might have weathered the storm." (279)

Robert May, who is professor of history at Purdue University, has produced a well-crafted work that is a must read for anyone interested in antebellum America. It is surprising that filibustering has not received more attention from historians in the past. Filibusters had an important impact on the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War, and their stories are filled with dramatic events and colorful characters. In May's book the significance of the topic is certainly apparent.

Ben Wynne is Visiting Assistant Professor in the History Department at Florida State University. His most recent book, Hard Trip, A History of the 15th Mississippi Infantry, C.S.A. will be published in April of 2003 by Mercer University Press.