The US Civil War: Looking across the Southern Border

Abstract

The US Civil War: Looking across the Southern Border Erika Pani (bio) How have Mexican historians viewed what was arguably the most consequential armed conflict in North America’s nineteenth century? The US Civil War overlapped with a deep crisis in its southern neighbor, as foreign invasion, civil war, and the clash between monarchical and republican regimes threatened the nation’s very survival. Within a historiographical tradition that, like others, has been reluctant [End Page 173] to gaze beyond the national navel, Mexican visions of the fratricidal conflict in the United States have been neither ubiquitous nor particularly profound. Inevitably, they have been wrapped up in how the US Civil War molded relations between the two neighboring republics and how it affected Mexico itself. Both contemporary observers and later historians have seen the United States’ collapse into domestic strife as a precondition to France’s Intervention in Mexico, as the ambitious Napoleon III turned his dream of restoring French influence in the New World into an invasion (1862–67). The massive, polyvalent contest that followed the attack on Fort Sumter and upturned continental geopolitics has been read through different lenses, colored by the issues that have concerned Mexican historians at different moments in time. There are three instances in which the US Civil War—or rather its diplomacy toward Mexico—took on greater historiographical relevance. The first coincides with the war itself, as the Mexican Republic’s envoy to Washington, Matías Romero, chronicled the war in real time, in order to assess how the divided Colossus’s complicated politics—foreign and domestic, and involving both the Union and Confederate governments—would affect the republican government of Benito Juárez, as Mexico was also riven by war and, for the second time in a decade, split in two, when a rival monarchical government, supported by French bayonets, was established in the nation’s capital. The young diplomat, who on his first posting had to take over for his government’s Washington legation, painted the war from the Union’s capital, geographically, ideologically, and emotionally. Before the fighting started, he fleetingly mused that the “great calamity” of secession might “benefit” the Mexican Republic by dividing and weakening its threatening, land-hungry neighbor.43 But despite the frustration he endured in his dealings with William Seward—whose priority during the war was keeping the peace with the great European powers, not upholding the Monroe Doctrine—Romero believed those who defended the Republic, in both the United States and Mexico, were engaged in a common transatlantic struggle in which democracy would triumph over tyranny. He hoped and advocated for the victory of the Northern armies and the restoration of the Union. Mexico’s minister deplored that “ardent fanaticism in favor of slavery” had led to the “overthrow [of] the political system under whose shadow [the United States had] progressed in a fabulous manner.”44 Throughout the war, he was optimistic [End Page 174] about Republicans winning elections and the North winning the war; he trusted this would entail the positive transformation of US-Mexico relations and lead to the abolition of slavery, despite Congress’s not debating this crucial issue as it should, “in terms of intrinsic justice.” Romero blamed this on Americans’ unwillingness to take on “abstract questions.”45 Romero’s analysis of US politics between 1860 and 1867 is impressive for the wealth of information processed, the eye for detail, and the insight into the weight of different factors: congressional debates, elections, military recruitment, the reputation and performance of military commanders, the economics of slavery, the price of gold, and the value of paper currency. His grasp of the importance of public opinion and party politics allowed him to skillfully exploit divisions among Republicans and build effective alliances beyond the Lincoln and Johnson administrations. Because of this, his description of the war and its aftermath remains unrivaled for its thoroughness, complexity, and depth—even when compared to work that has benefited from hindsight, distance, and academic training. It should come as no surprise that Romero’s vast, meticulously well-organized Washington correspondence—ten volumes, covering the period between 1860 and 1868—is the most important source for those interested in US...