After Maximilian’s arrival in Mexico City, the European powers soon recognized his government. However the United States maintained diplomatic relations with Juarez throughout the intervention. Even though the Juarez government enjoyed U. S. recognition, the outbreak of the Civil War thwarted Juarez’s hopes for U. S. aid. In November 1862, the United States imposed a ban on the export of military supplies since they were needed for Union forces and U. S. authorities feared that exported arms might end up in Confederate hands.18
Both the United States and the Confederacy were willing to make deals at the other’s expense. The United States offered to buy Baja California, claiming such a purchase would keep the Confederacy from seizing it. The Confederates, in turn, promised to return New Mexico and California to Mexico if the liberal government would sign a peace treaty with the Confederacy. The liberals rejected the offer, noting that the Confederacy offered to give Mexico territory it did not control, while failing to offer Texas, the former Mexican territory that it did control.19
Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward proved to be quite effective at preventing France from supporting the Confederacy—the major U. S. foreign policy goal during the Civil War. To avoid antagonizing Napoleon, complaints about violations of the Monroe Doctrine were muted. The United States gave the French an incentive to remain neutral by permitting them to buy mules, food, and other supplies at U. S. ports to support their military effort in Mexico.20
In April 1861, President Lincoln decreed a blockade of Confederate ports, thus interrupting the sale of southern cotton to Europe. To circumvent the blockade, Confederate cotton was carted to the Rio Grande. It was then brought into Mexico and exported through Bagdad, a makeshift port at the mouth of the Rio Grande. Since Bagdad—whose population reached as many as 12,000—lacked a harbor, small craft would brave the surf to carry the cotton to freighters waiting offshore in Mexican territorial waters. Rather than creating an international incident, Union warships did not interfere with such shipments.21
The Confederates exported an estimated 300,000 to 350,000 bales of cotton through Bagdad. In early 1865, Union General Ulysses S. Grant commented, “There is never a day that there are not 75 to 150 vessels off Bagdad, discharging and receiving cargos.” The same carts that brought cotton south would return north laden with rifles, medicine, uniforms, and other military supplies brought to Bagdad by sea.22
Ships sailing from Bagdad carried Confederate cotton to Liverpool, Barcelona, Le Havre, and even New York City. After leaving Bagdad, ships sometimes stopped in ports such as Nassau or Havana to hide the origin of the cotton. As historians Milo Kearney and Anthony Knopp noted:
Profit knows no political loyalty, and New York traded heavily with Matamoros [adjacent to
Bagdad], including in carbines, pistols, and ammunition on the transparent fiction that these
Goods were destined only for Mexico and would not find their way into Texas.23
The blockade of Confederate ports during the U. S. Civil War also led to a commercial boom in northeastern Mexico. In exchange for cotton, Mexico sent the Confederacy flour, hides, wool, lead, silver, salt, footwear, cloth, blankets, gunpowder, and potassium nitrate (to produce gunpowder). Monterrey served as the distribution center for Mexican goods bound for the Confederacy. Thousands of carts carried goods between Monterrey and Texas.24
As the Confederacy collapsed, some 8,000 to 10,000 Confederates moved to Latin America to avoid Union rule. Most of them went to Mexico, where they felt Maximilian’s empire would be preferable to Reconstruction. Maximilian’s official publication, the Diario del Imperio, invited large-scale southern immigration, hoping that the immigrants would introduce new agricultural methods.
Maximilian designated 500,000 acres in Veracruz for Confederate resettlement. Confederates arriving there founded a community, which they named for Empress Carlota. Few Confederates fared well there. Many were felled by disease after having being weakened by poor diet. Liberal forces attacked their community, which also suffered earthquake damage. After the fall of the empire, most of the surviving Confederates returned to the United States.25
After the U. S. civil war ended, Secretary of State Seward stepped up the pressure on France to withdraw its troops from Mexico. The specter of a French alliance with the Confederacy no longer restrained U. S. action. Seward sought to obtain French withdrawal without involving the United States in another war. To accomplish this, U. S. General Philip Sheridan was sent to the Rio Grande with 50,000 veteran troops. Sheridan encouraged rumors that his force was preparing to invade Mexico, sent scouts into northern Mexico, and provided extensive support, including 30,000 muskets, to liberal forces.26
On their own initiative, several thousand Americans crossed the border to serve with Juarez. They converted Juarez’s force—some of whom were armed with bows and arrows—into one armed with the most modern arms. Americans who had experience with repeating rifles and artillery proved to be especially valuable. While some former Confederates served with Maximilian’s forces, they were too few to offset former members of the Union army serving with Juarez. After President Andrew Johnson revoked the ban on arms exports in May 1865, additional arms were sold to Mexico.27
In November 1865, the United States sent the French a note declaring, “The presence of a French army in Mexico which maintains a government imposed by force and against the free will of the Mexican people, is a source of serious preoccupation for the United States.” Napoleon replied that he was pulling his troops out as fast as transport allowed.28
Although Mexicans had hoped for direct U. S. assistance after the Civil War ended, the Mexican ambassador to the United States, Matias Romero noted later that Mexico probably benefited from the U. S. failure to intervene. He commented that U. S. pressure “accomplished its object without entailing on Mexico the curse which usually falls on nations who call in a more powerful neighbor to relive them from a present danger. . .” The United States did receive official thanks from Juarez, who stated that U. S. efforts against Maximilian “justly deserve the sympathy and the regard of the people and government of Mexico.”29
World History
