El Salvador failed effort at U.S. statehood

2017 - Get it?

Tim reminds everyone of a time 200 years ago when El Salvador sought U.S. statehood (When El Salvador applied for statehood). The U.S. rejected the offer for several reasons, including the fact that there were too many Indians, Spaniards, and Catholics in the region, unresolved questions about whether any new state would be free or slave (therefore disrupting the political balance in the U.S.), and because the U.S. was more interested in economic opportunities, of which Central America provided little.

From Walter Feber's Inevitable Revolutions (24-25):

From their first years of independence, however, Central Americans looked naturally to the United States for protection against the large nations to the south and aggressive Mexico to the north. The most startling turn occurred in 1822 when the threat of a Mexican invasion led El Salvador's Legislative Congress to resolve that its new nation become annexed to the United States. Five leading Salvadorans immediately carried the resolution to Washington. It is interesting to speculate how Secretary of State Adams might have responded had he been asked to allow El Salvador to join his beloved Massachusetts as an equal state in the Union. As it was, the Mexican army quickly settled the issue by conquering the capital of San Salvador.

In 1849, when El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras again faced an invasion, the Nicaraguan Minister in London asked the U.S. Minister whether the three nations might be admitted into the Union. The timing was hardly apt. The slave controversy was heating up in the United States. Northerners held deep and not wholly unjustified suspicions that certain Southerners wanted to annex parts of Central America for new slave territory. Rapidly realizing that nothing would come of his request, the Nicaraguan Minister retreated to his fallback position: would the United States helps the three countries defend their territorial integrity?

El Salvador wanted protection not only from Mexico, but from Great Britain and Guatemala as well. Even though the U.S. would proclaim the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 (in some ways because of it), Great Britain was still the dominant regional power. As the center of economic and political power during the colonial period and newly independent country that maintained grand ambitions, Guatemala posed a threat.

Of course, then, U.S. filibuster William Walker would invade the isthmus three decades later. After conquering parts of the territory, trying to bring back slavery, and proclaiming himself president, he was captured by the British and then turned over to the Hondurans who executed him via firing squad.