A group of Southern soldiers from the Mexican American war go to Europe to act as military advisors for the Ottoman sultans. Although they don't convert, they do absorb a lot of the cosmopolitan culture of Turkish life, and eventually, upon returning to the United States in the mid-1860s, form a social society and cultural dissemination group called "The Turkish Confederates". Suddenly, hookah lounges and Turkish coffee shops can be found across the South as these military-political elites start a Turk-mania, if you will.