jose

I don’t think many Americans realize how close we came to war with France right after our Civil War. While we were distracted by that conflict, French Emperor Napoleon III occupied Mexico and installed the puppet Emperor Maximilian, raising the specter of widespread European recolonization of Latin America. Our leaders unsurprisingly took a dim view of that prospect, and the very day after General Grant accepted General Lee’s surrender, he declared “Now for Mexico!” and sent General Sheridan to the Mexican border with 30,000 men. Grant and Sheridan wanted to invade Mexico to drive out the French alongside Mexican insurgents led by Benito Juárez. Secretary of State Seward, gravely wounded in the events surrounding President Lincoln’s assassination, opposed the plan, warning that “If we got into war and drove out the French, we could not get out ourselves.” There were heated debates within the Andrew Johnson Administration on how to proceed. Eventually, Seward used diplomacy to pressure the French to withdraw, while Sheridan funneled arms to the Mexican insurgents. The last French troops withdrew in February 1867 and Maximilian’s empire collapsed (and he was executed) just months later. I visited the site of the execution (in Querétaro) as US Ambassador to Mexico and reflected on how the events there affected the history of that country as well as my own.

President Trump in Florida: "The epicenter of cartel violence is Mexico. The Mexican cartels are fueling and orchestrating much of the bloodshed and chaos in this hemisphere, and the United States government will do whatever is necessary to defend our national security."