I just...I just...I just had to do it: Freeper responses to the deal.

[ieoeja]

79. You got the Civil War backwards.

The French wanted to back the Confederacy from day one, but did not want to act unilaterally. I suppose they worried that a unilateral move would push the Brits into the USA camp.

After the Brits declared for the USA, the French sent an Army to assist the Confederacy. They planned to kill two birds with one stone as this force would land in Mexico and used to put down a small rebellion in Mexico on their way north to join the Confederate Army. They met those Mexicans on the 5th of May and ... they were fought to a draw.

The small rebellion ballooned into a large rebellion. And the French Army found itself bogged down in Mexico unable to help the Confederacy.

Cinco de Mayo could almost be an American holiday as it ended the Confederacy's only faint hope for victory.

Personally, I am of the opinion that the US would have stopped them at the Mississippi River. Assuming Grant and company still headed east to finish the war, the Navy might have been charged with stopping the French. Which means the French would have been facing Marines who were otherwise little used in the Civil War as nobody really wanted to turn them lose on our fellow citizens. The US would have had no such compunctions about loosing them on the French.