Gadsden Purchase POD

Today is the 152nd anniversary of the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. According to the Wikipedia article:

• The United States originally considered purchasing a much larger portion of territory, namely most of the current Mexican states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Sonora as well as all of the Baja California peninsula. Obviously Santa Anna was not too thrilled about this deal, and neither were the senators from free states, who considered the original deal to be a potential boon for the slave states. What if the final deal had included some or all of this additional territory?
  
• The treaty also included a provision allowing the U.S. to build a transoceanic canal across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, though this option was never exercised. What if the US had opted to exercise this provision, perhaps thirty years later in competition with the French in Panama?

Well the Transoceanic Canal would indeed be a feat of engineering. If the Panama or a Nicargaun canal wasn't built it could be certainly used as a zone of employment, vastly upgrading the Mexician economy and maybe even damping or intensiving the Mexican civil war due to interests in the region.

-Consider the Tampulis Crisis during the Wilson adminstration in OTL. That was started over the United States businesses in the oil town being endangered. This would indeed be a flashpoint, and an excuse to be in MExico. The US now has to protect a bigger vital region to their shipping intrests, which means more soldiers in MExico, and a lasting reason to deal with MExico however they want.

Leo Caesius said:

[*]The United States originally considered purchasing a much larger portion of territory, namely most of the current Mexican states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Sonora as well as all of the Baja California peninsula. Obviously Santa Anna was not too thrilled about this deal, and neither were the senators from free states, who considered the original deal to be a potential boon for the slave states. What if the final deal had included some or all of this additional territory?

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Breakup of the Union, and probably war, in 1854 or 1855. Either some Northern States will secede over the admission of this new "slave territory" with no compensating admission of "free territory," or the Northern States will attempt impose something along the lines of the Wilmot Proviso on the new territory, which will cause the South to secede.

Leo Caesius said:

Today is the 152nd anniversary of the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. According to the Wikipedia article:

• The United States originally considered purchasing a much larger portion of territory, namely most of the current Mexican states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Sonora as well as all of the Baja California peninsula. Obviously Santa Anna was not too thrilled about this deal, and neither were the senators from free states, who considered the original deal to be a potential boon for the slave states. What if the final deal had included some or all of this additional territory?
  
• The treaty also included a provision allowing the U.S. to build a transoceanic canal across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, though this option was never exercised. What if the US had opted to exercise this provision, perhaps thirty years later in competition with the French in Panama?

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I do not see the Canal in Mexico happening, but taking all of those OTL states would be interesting, and might not cause a north-south split.

I agree with Robertp. The free vs. slave debate for the new territories may very well start the ACW a few years early. I'll assume the Union still wins. These territories were thinly populated at the time, but the new border is much closer to Mexico's population centers. We'd see more border incidents with Mexico and more spillover from Mexico's revolutions and civil wars. We would probably have a more fenced off and fortified border and less tolerance for Mexican immigration. I think the territories themselves would be like OTL Arizona: dry, hot and thinly populated and developed until the post ww2 air-conditioned era.

Baja California would be a good idea. No minerals, but plenty of fishing and maybe enough territory to split southern Calfornia away from northern California.

wkwillis said:

Baja California would be a good idea. No minerals, but plenty of fishing and maybe enough territory to split southern Calfornia away from northern California.

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Washington stayed a territory for a number of more years though...

Othniel's apparent nonsequiter is because I edited my posting. I did mention Washington and Oregon before editing.

Wendell said:

I do not see the Canal in Mexico happening, but taking all of those OTL states would be interesting, and might not cause a north-south split.

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Why not? IIRC, the land's relatively flatter, and isn't a malarial hellhole. Or at least not to the same degree as Panama.

Wendell said:

I do not see the Canal in Mexico happening

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I agree with you there. Building an at sea level canal thru Tehuantepec would have been an incredible undertaking. However, the 'ship railroad' as proposed and championed by James Eads would have been a fine example of Yankee Ingenuity. Its very interesting that the plan has been revised again within the last few years. There was talk of building two massive port facilities, one on the Gulf of Mexico and the other on the Pacific, and connecting them with high speed freight train railways. Unloading, rail transit and reloading cargo via Tehuantepec would be faster than sending cargo via the Panama Canal.