A little later in the same year American interest in Cuba was again appealed to from another source. Several of the former Spanish colonies which had declared their independence, particularly Mexico and Colombia, expressed much dissatisfaction that Cuba and Porto Rico should remain in the possession of Spain. They desired to see the Spanish power entirely expelled from the western hemisphere. They therefore began intriguing for revolutions in those islands, and failing that prepared themselves to take forcible possession of them. These plans encountered the serious disapproval of the United States government, and on December 20, 1825, Henry Clay wrote to the representatives of the Mexican and Colombian governments urgently requesting them to refrain from sending the military expeditions to Cuba which were being prepared; a request with which they complied, Colombia readily but Mexico more reluctantly. Those two countries had been specially moved to their proposed action by the declaration of the famous Panama Congress, then in session, in favor of "the freeing of the islands of Porto Rico and Cuba from the Spanish yoke." It is interesting to recall, too, that in his instructions to the United States delegates to that Congress, who unfortunately did not arrive in time to participate in its deliberations, Clay declared that "even Spain has not such a deep interest in the future fate of Cuba as the United States." Justice requires us, unfortunately, in concluding our consideration of this early phase of Cuban-American relations, to confess that the motives of the United States were not at that time altogether of the highest character. To put it very plainly, there was much opposition to the extension of Mexican or Colombian influence to Cuba because that would have meant the abolition of human slavery in the island, and that would have been offensive to the slave states of the southern United States. Also some of the earliest movements in the United States toward the annexation of Cuba were inspired by the wish to maintain the institution of slavery in that island and to add it to the slave holding area of the United States. It was on such ground that Senator Hayne and others declared in the American Congress that the United States "would not permit Mexico or Colombia to take or to revolutionize Cuba." James Buchanan declared that under the control of one of those countries Cuba would become a dangerous explosive magazine for the southern slave States because Mexico and Colombia were free countries and "always conquered by proclaiming liberty to the slave."