Golden Circle (proposed country)

The Golden Circle (Spanish: Círculo Dorado) was an unrealized 1850s proposal by the Knights of the Golden Circle to expand the number of slave states. It envisioned the annexation of several areas—Mexico, Central America, northern South America, Cuba, and the rest of the Caribbean—into the United States in order to vastly increase the number of slave states (it was proposed that Mexico alone be divided into 25 new slave states) and thus the power of the slave holding Southern upper classes. After the Dred Scott Decision (1857) increased anti-slavery agitation, it was advocated by the Knights of the Golden Circle that the Southern United States should secede in their own confederation and invade and annex the area of the golden circle to vastly expand the power of the South.

European colonialism and dependence on slavery had declined more rapidly in some countries than others. The Spanish possessions of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Empire of Brazil continued to depend on slavery, as did the Southern United States. In the years prior to the American Civil War, the rise of support for abolition of slavery was one of several divisive issues in the United States. The slave population there had continued to grow due to natural increase even after the ban on international trade. It was concentrated in the Deep South, on large plantations devoted to the commodity crops of cotton and sugar cane, but it was the basis of agricultural and other labor throughout the southern states.

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