All-Mexico Movement Goes Through

IIRC they offered that to the USA but Washington didn't want to play

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

If we had a different President and we were not recovering from the Civil War things might have gone differently. Hmm... Grey Wolf, do you know when the French offered Yucatan to us?
 
If we had a different President and we were not recovering from the Civil War things might have gone differently. Hmm... Grey Wolf, do you know when the French offered Yucatan to us?
Yeah, I would like to know when!
 
I think he means when Yucatan was an independent nation an offered annexation to the US in exchange of help against the Maya rebellion.
 
If Trist hadn't signed, the USA would have gone into the 1848 election with no end to the war in sight, and with increasing pressure to accept a compromise peace. The generals were politicised, the rivalries with Polk were fraught, the senate was divided, and the budget was draining down a black hole.

Hmm. The U.S needed money, and didn't know what to do with Mexico.
What if we'd sold it? (presumably to the British, who wouldn't introduce slavery).
 
I agree. Look at the fight they gave the French. I think at best we could have taken the northern states, eg. Sonora, Baja and perhaps I we were lucky balkanized the southern portions, but OTOH hand we could have offered protectorate status to Yucatan.

Thats probably about as realistic as it gets for the US wanting to expand to the max. During the 1840's few people lived in those provinces as they did in the territory the US did get from Mexico. It was only after the war did the Mexican government really begin pushing people to the northern lands and the border in order to secure that land in case the US ever got grabby again.

An all of Mexico movement is a cool thing to ponder but its funademntally flawed on everything from slave politics to culture to distance, heck even I didn't try to fit it into Ameriwank:p
 
If we had a different President and we were not recovering from the Civil War things might have gone differently. Hmm... Grey Wolf, do you know when the French offered Yucatan to us?

Not the French, Yucatan itself. Heres what the Armenian Genocide has to say about it...



In 1847 the so-called "Caste War" (Guerra de Castas) broke out, a major revolt of the Maya people against the Hispanic population in political and economic control. At one point in 1848, this revolt was successful to the point of driving all Hispanic Yucatecans out of almost the entire peninsula other than the walled cities of Mérida and Campeche.

The government in Mérida appealed for foreign help in suppressing the revolt, with Governor Méndez taking the extraordinary step of sending identical letters to Britain, Spain, and the United States, offering sovereignty over Yucatán to whatever nation first provided sufficient aid to quash the Maya revolt. The proposal received serious attention in Washington, D.C.: the Yucatecan ambassador was received by US President James K. Polk and the matter was debated in the Congress; ultimately, however, no action was taken other than an invocation of the Monroe Doctrine to warn off any European power from interfering in the peninsula. The Yucatan government attempted to recruit American veterans of the Mexican American War to put down the rebellion.[1]

After the end of the Mexican-American War, Governor Barbachano appealed to Mexican President José Joaquín de Herrera for help in suppressing the revolt, and in exchange Yucatán again recognized the central government's authority. Yucatán was again reunited with Mexico on 17 August 1848.
 

JJohnson

Banned
I'm interested in this timeline.... if not all of Mexico, how about grabbing Yucatan, Rio Grande Republic, Cuba (separate from Mexico, I know, from Spain in 1848), Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, and Sinaloa? Population-wise and geographically, could the US grab at least those portions of Mexico? And if so, would there have been any push to make a land union of Yucatan to the rest of the Union? How would such a timeline evolve from there, in regard to the Civil War, Spanish-American War, and elsewise?

James
 
There is a good short story about this topic in on of the many AH collections. The name, author and title of the overall book escape me right now, but I'll look it up in my collection later tonight. The point is that the Mexican population remains restive and when Lincoln is elected in 1860 he promises the Mexican territories independence at the end of the ACW in return for their assistance, in the form of volunteers. This actually makes the most sense as Lincoln, if butterflies didn't prevent his election in the first place, was never supportive of the acquisition of territories from Mexico and having to hold down a restive Mexican population while fighting the Civil War surely would have proven too much for the Union to handle.

As for the plausibility of the US acquiring all of Mexico in the first place, I think its very slim. What would be needed for this to occur is the Mexican's doing something dumb like assassinating Trist. If that had occurred Scott would have been forced to remain in Mexico City with an Army and Polk would have been given a reason to go to Congress and ask for more of Mexico. With this "stab in the back", especially when Trist was trying to help Mexico get off as easy as possible, Polk may have been able to whip up popular and Congressional support for the annexation of all of Mexico.

With a population of 7.6 million (1850 estimate), Mexico was well behind the population of the US (23,191,876 1850 census) but this population was clustered around the central core and east coastal regions. Holding the peripheries would have been easy, but the high population areas would have been a problem for some time. American immigrants, coming from initially from Europe, would have quickly settled in these outer region. It would not have been surprising for them to outnumber native Mexicans within just a generation. That being said, if the US could provide the populace of Mexico with a better economy, more personal freedoms, political stability and an enhanced sense of personal safety (all of which were very likely when compared to the mess that passed for Mexico's home grown governments) than it is quite likely that Mexico, even the populace regions, could have been successfully integrated into the United States.

Benjamin
 
Not the French, Yucatan itself. Heres what the Armenian Genocide has to say about it...



In 1847 the so-called "Caste War" (Guerra de Castas) broke out, a major revolt of the Maya people against the Hispanic population in political and economic control. At one point in 1848, this revolt was successful to the point of driving all Hispanic Yucatecans out of almost the entire peninsula other than the walled cities of Mérida and Campeche.

The government in Mérida appealed for foreign help in suppressing the revolt, with Governor Méndez taking the extraordinary step of sending identical letters to Britain, Spain, and the United States, offering sovereignty over Yucatán to whatever nation first provided sufficient aid to quash the Maya revolt. The proposal received serious attention in Washington, D.C.: the Yucatecan ambassador was received by US President James K. Polk and the matter was debated in the Congress; ultimately, however, no action was taken other than an invocation of the Monroe Doctrine to warn off any European power from interfering in the peninsula. The Yucatan government attempted to recruit American veterans of the Mexican American War to put down the rebellion.[1]

After the end of the Mexican-American War, Governor Barbachano appealed to Mexican President José Joaquín de Herrera for help in suppressing the revolt, and in exchange Yucatán again recognized the central government's authority. Yucatán was again reunited with Mexico on 17 August 1848.

I think we should have taken them up on the offer. If nothing else thats some more oil within our borders.
 
But you have a population willing to fight to the death to preserve themselves, vast land for them to hide in and retreat to, an area as large as the US at the time if not larger to industrialize and monitor and have the army occupy, an occupation that would likely last decades and cost a lot of money, and a few breakaways that would likely prefer their own independence rather than American statehood. Its like Vietnam mixed with a hyper stretched version of Reconstruction.
Yeah and those willing to fight to the death would get killed making it easier for later generations, if this really went through sad but yeah that is the way it'd play out Vietnam was lost on the home front on the court of public bitching not on the battlefield.
Mexico would get taken over... eventually. If it was motivated enough, though chances of genocide are high
 

JohnJacques

Banned
Vietnam was lost on the home front and on the strategy boards. Maybe not on the battlefields, because we won battles. But the war was lost almost from the beginning.

"Making it easier for later generations"? In the context of Mexican occupation, what in the hell does that platitude mean?
 
Vietnam was lost on the home front and on the strategy boards. Maybe not on the battlefields, because we won battles. But the war was lost almost from the beginning.

"Making it easier for later generations"? In the context of Mexican occupation, what in the hell does that platitude mean?
Well that to admittedly hindsight is twenty twenty you know.
I'm looking at it like this white people at the time even from the north still viewed non 'pure' people as inferior their would be few if any qualms about killing swathes of Mexicans to make it safer for white settlers. If all the trouble makers get killed and the government established large southern stye plantations and other American stuff well in a few generations that 'cleaning up of all those banditos' will mean the 'white settlers' that would have come down would have had time to have kids, and them have kids.
You see where i'm going with this? Its not a pretty thing.
 

JohnJacques

Banned
Its not pretty- but you're wrong about Northerners getting behind it.

They viewed Mexican acquisitions as mostly useless and mostly slave states.

The first political crisis isn't the occupation- its the divvying up of the territories into slave and free.
 
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