In retrospect, filibustering can seem like a curious footnote to the antebellum era, a case of quixotic eccentrics racing down one of history’s blind alleys. In reality, it was a significant element in the United States’ slide toward civil war. Militants in the South embraced the movement in hopes of enlarging the territory open to slavery; the filibusters’ focus on Cuba, for example, was due in part to the island’s proximity to Florida and the fact that large-scale slavery already existed there. Perhaps most important, filibustering reflected the explosion of freelance violence as civil
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