In February 1853, New Hampshire senator John Hale was about to leave the Senate, having run unsuccessfully for President as the candidate of the Free Soil Party, a third-party, anti-slavery organization. (Hale would quickly return to the Senate.) He departed the upper chamber with a blast, convinced that the "Slave Power" that he fought on the domestic front wanted to annex Central American territory. In the speech below, Hale attacked a scheme of Southern senators, who were calling for the United States to seize the Tehuantepec isthmus of Mexico (the possible site of a trans-isthmian canal). We know what positive policy the authors of the Ostend Manifesto desired: what did Hale want?