There seemed to be a few countries out there that had beef with America in the mid-1800s - Britain, Canada, France, Spain, Mexico…wouldn’t the Civil War have given them the perfect opportunity to reclaim some lost land like the Southwestern US? I’m curious why no one decided to take a shot at America when it was at its weakest.
Mexico was crippled by the Mexican War, in which about half their country had been stolen and the army decimated, and then had a civil war from 1857 to 1860.
Canada in 1861 was not an independent country and didn’t have enough adult males to build an army big enough to hurt the United States.
Everyone else was on the other side of an ocean, and it’s a hell of a job to mount a cross-Atlantic amphibious assault. The United States could have easily spared a few divisions to fight off a foreign invasion if necessary.
There’s a book about this, “Stars and Stripes forever”?
Well, to a large exent- no one wanted to have it look like they were siding with Slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation made that issue something that couldn’t be winked at. The people in France and Britian were strongly anti-slavery. The South had tied themselves inextrictably as pro-slavery (it was in their Constitition for gods sake). Oddly, the very issue* that caused them to seceed was the issue that caused them to have no real allies. The Governments of France and GB were less “noble”- they did make overtures and winked at pro-Southern violations of Neutrality. They wanted the cotton trade. However, after the Emancipation Proclamation, it would have been political suicide to suggest allying with the CSA.
As to other nations like Mexico- it could also have been that they knew we’d kick their ass. At the end of the Civil War, the Union was likely the strongest Military power on earth.
*Indeed, the causes of the Civil War were many and varied. Slavery, however, was the primary issue and the one issue there could be no longer be a compromise on. Yes, "states rights’ was an issue- but the primary “right” those states wanted was the right to have slavery. For example the Southern St ates fought very hard against the “right” of Northern States to aid & abet run-away slaves. There were economic issues too, of course- mainly rooted in the slave-labour agricultural South, and the Industrial North.
Were any countries pro-slavery or did any countries endorse the Confederate cause after the Emancipation Proclamation?
There are several answers to this.
One is that the time to have attacked the U.S. was before the Civil War, not during it. Before the war our armed forces were in a state of near hibernation. Other than a few troops fighting Indians, the army was a sleepy backwater. Once the war started, however, we quickly put together the largest mechanized armies the world had ever seen. Why would anyone have wanted to fight us then?
Another is that the U.S. was always extremely fortunate to be a full ocean’s width away from Asia and Europe. Getting an army to the southwest from Europe would have required sailing for over 10,000 miles, a ridiculous distance to transport troops in those days. And the U.S. Navy was busy patrolling the Atlantic to capture Confederate blockade runners.
Mexico was a possible source for an invasion, true. The problem was that it had itself just undergone a civil war of sorts. [A quick overview.] The European powers were more concerned about Juárez’s suspension of payments to them, and England, France and Spain sent 10,000 to Mexico in 1862. Mexico City fell in 1863.
So why not use Mexico as a staging area? Mostly because of the final point: it would be insane. The U.S. was a major economic power by the 1860s. But it was more of an importer of European goods than an exporter to them. As such, the European powers had every reason to stay on good terms with the U.S. It was too distant to invade, had too many people in arms to be as easily overpowered as Mexico, and was sending them money for all sorts of goods by the barrelful.
Of what use was the barren southwest? At the time, absolutely none. The transcontinental railroad wouldn’t be put through until after the war, you couldn’t grow crops there, and few of the major metal ore strikes had yet been made. Worse, even if you might get a few thousand troops there by some devious route what happens when the war ends? Then the U.S. has a half million wildly angry soldiers ready to march across the country to exterminate those few soldiers in the middle of a waterless desert. And every other European power would be cheering them on, knowing that whoever did such a stupid act would be a pariah in the U.S. for generations to come, giving them a chance to reap all that good trade money.
And all this doesn’t even mention that nobody really had a beef against the U.S. at the time: I’m not even sure what you’re referring to.
I’m sorry, but this is a really hairbrained idea. It doesn’t seem to emerge from any understanding of the world in the 1860s. Have you been reading too much bad alternate history sf? 
No significant nations were pro-slavery, and no one endorsed the CSA at all, AFAIK. I think only a couple of African nations still had legalized slavery, and I could be wrong about that. (They certainly had slavery, yes, but whether or it it was “legal” or just winked at is another thing). Until WWI, it wasn’t common for just about every nation to “jump on the bandwagon” on one side or the other. Indeed, that’s the reason why it’s called a “World War”.
Overall, an excellent post. 
However, historically GB had a grudge against us, *and *we had allied with France- which is another reason for GB to have a grudge against us. But I don’t think it was enough to spend millions of pounds on a war.
Mexico- well, yes, they had a beef (Texas, California, etc). But they were in a state of chaos.
Brazil did not formally abolish slavery until 1888, which is why several thousand Confederate expatriates emigrated there after the war.
:smack:
[Elvis voice]Thank you. Thank you very much.[/Elvis voice]
Fortunately, Britain isn’t the Balkans. The War of 1812 was a half century in the past. Anti-slavery opinion ran high throughout the war era, more than high enough to keep the Confederate emissaries from gaining any kind of real voice in Parliament to sway Britain into an anti-North antagonism. The English were also happy to have the U.S. as a dumping ground for Irish emigrants and wouldn’t have wanted that to end. (How many people realize that over a million people immigrated into the North during the Civil War? That amount of immigration into a country at war has to be unique. In fact, the North gained more eligible soldier bodies by immigration than it lost to deaths, making it stronger after four years of war. Please stop all nonsense about how the South could have won the war.)
And economics trumps pretty much everything, always. The North was an economic powerhouse in 1860 and the war basically quadrupled everything. The English were already strapped supplying their armies in their various colonies. Why cut off their largest purchaser of goods at the same time? Armies live outside of economics only in fiction.
Great posts. I figured the beef was the historical differences with Great Britain (Rev. War, 1812), Mexico losing much of it’s southwestern territory to the US, France losing in 1763, Canada fighting the US in 1812, Spain losing Florida and France the Louisana area (ok both were bought by the US but both areas probably still had loyalists and wouldn’t you want to get these chunks of land back if you could easily?). On top of this the Indians probably had a few reasons to go to war - I figured the Civil War would have been the perfect opportunity for all and was wondering why no one jumped on the chance.
Well, the British very nearly attacked the Union over the Trent Affair. That might’ve messed things up a little.
The superpower back then was Britain. Britain was not going to allow any other country to occupy the United States without British approval. So the real issue is why Britain decided to stay out.
Domestically, Britain was very divided on the American Civil War. There were economic issues, ideological issues, and moral issues involved and different segments of the British population were on opposing sides. So any intervention in the American Civil War would have caused a huge political crisis in Britain.
Strategically, Britain knew that the United States and the Monroe Doctrine worked to British advantage. Occupying the United States would have been a huge expense and would have forced Britain to either allow other Europeans to occupy their own shares of the Americas or to assume the burden of keeping them out. Either option would have stretched British resources and made Britain the target of more foreign resentment.
Militarily, it would have been a tough war. The British Empire was the number one power in the world. But the United States was also a major power and was geared up to its peak for the war. Britain was still rebuilding its military from the Crimean War and Sepoy Mutiny a few years before and was involved in some big operations in China and Africa during the same time as the Civil War.
Another factor is that in the middle of the war, the Union had the largest army in the world. Any European country would have been outnumbered, especially with the difficulty of getting the troops over here.
Not to dispute any of this… but, er, there is one conflicting report.
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, “Plunges into History Again”, c. 2004, has an entry on Rose O’Niel Greenhow, a confederate agent, who at the time of her death may have been coming back from Great Britain with news that GB was prepared to enter the war against the Union.
Okay, okay, give me a few moments to see if there’s anything on this in Wikipedia…
(“Even if it’s not true, it’s still a good story.”)
As others have noted, Canada did not exist as a separate dominion during the period of the U.S. Civil War. In fact, the U.S. Civil War was one of the concerns that pushed the British North American colonies towards Confederation.* There was a fear in the B.N.A. colonies that once the war was over, the North might be inclined to march north into Canada in a replay of 1812, this time with a much stronger army, and take over. One purpose of the Canadian Confederation was “in union, strength” - to discourage the victorious U.S. armies from taking us over, colony by colony.
The U.S. declared war on Britain in 1812, and then invaded Canada. The fact that we were attacked by the U.S. didn’t create a “beef” - other than a healthy concern to prevent it from happening again.
- “Confederation” in the Canadian meaning, a union of the British North American colonies, not meaning the C.S.A.
…I’m back. Wikipedia says only that she had been on a mission to Great Britain, not the results of that mission.
Well, and that she died carrying $2,000 to be brought back to the CSA.
She drowned when the lifeboat she was in capsized: she was in the lifeboat to evade capture by the Union Navy.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Hee hee hee hee hee. Guffaw. Chortle, chortle.
Good one, Civil Guy. 
Well, yes, it’s a funny sounding source, and I’m not going to pretend it’s the last word (or any other word) in historical references, but…
“I am not making this up.”