And I suppose that's why they took the ONE action that would permanently separate them from any future access to those very same territories?
The slave power expected to get Mexico, Cuba and Central America, at least.
I posted this once before. I guess you just missed it:
"Pollard could vision steps and advances "toward the rearing of that great Southern Empire, whose seat is eventually to be in Central America, and whose boundaries are to enclose the Gulf of Mexico." Ahead were "magnificent fields of romance" for the South, as he saw its future. "It is an empire founded on military ideas; representing the noble peculiarities of southern civilization; including within its limits the isthmuses of America and the regenerated West Indies; having control of the two dominant staples of the world's commerce—cotton and sugar; possessing the highways of the world's commerce; surpassing all empires of the world's ages in the strength of its geographical position." Philadelphia newspapers quoted a speech by Senator Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia in their city. "We believe that capital should own labor; is there any doubt that there must be a laboring class everywhere? In all countries and under every form of social organization there must be a laboring class -- a class of men who get their living from the sweat of their brow; and then there must be another class that controls and directs the capital of the country. He pleaded: "Slave property stands upon the same footing as all other descriptions of property."
--"Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, Prairie Years, by Carl Sandburg pp.217-221
Polk tried to get the money to buy Cuba.
Don't you know the history?
Walt
Aside from Cuba which was no stranger to slavery to begin with, the rest was an unlikely long shot at best. Try again.