Could the CSA defeat Mexico.

Most TLs have the CSA purchase Mexican territory, which seems likely to me. Chihuahua and Sonora were Republican strongholds, far away from Mexico City's center of control, and weren't really valuable in the 1860s-80s except for Pacific access, which Mexico already has plenty of. It would make sense for Max to sell off those two provinces to make a quick buck (which he really needs) and wipe his hands of the problem of lingering Republicanism. Meanwhile, the population of both provinces was tiny up until the early 1900s, so even if a guerrilla war was waged against the South, it's likely that they wouldn't have enough people to sustain it beyond a few years.

Max would sell parts of Mexico after Hell froze over not before. He needed some locals to accept him to have a ghost of a chance of surviving. He would throw that chance away by selling part of the country. If he did it anyways his regime would be lucky to survive the following Tues.
 
The cottons price failed sharping in the 1870-1900 as your same source indicate, is true that the total between value 1870-1900 rise but the production more than doubled for a little more that the 1,2% increase in the value of the total exported, if anything a independent CSA will have a horrible financial crisis in the 1870-1900 period.

Barring a peaceful separation the CSA will be in a horrible financial crisis day 1.
 
Forgot to mention this in my original reply, but I don't think Washington can be expected to adhere to the (non-binding and periodically reinterpreted) Monroe Doctrine in a world where it doesn't have a Caribbean coast and the border of the CSA is a stone's throw away from the White House. If anything it has every reason to play nice with whoever is in Mexico City, because it needs a friend on the CSA's southern flank a lot more than it needs simmering border tensions.

Agreed. I think that US Foreign Policy would revolve mainly around screwing the CSA anyway it can.
 
I can't help but wonder why the Confederacy, who desperately needs the good will of France in the 1860s would invade Mexico during Maximilian's reign. Geo-politically it makes little sense. Now, I'll concede, the fire eaters were rabidly expansionistic, and if they held control of the CSA government, it's possible they could overreach and piss off any good will from France or Maximilian Mexico. But I think any elections following victory wouldn't have favored the fire eaters. Despite popular misconceptions, the fire eaters were a fairly small minority and while they were the tail that wagged the dog in the lead-up to the civil war, I'm not convinced they would be able to hold power after independence.

Now, if the CSA in their infinite wisdom decided to invade Mexico before 1870, logistics would make such a venture anything but certain. There were less than 300 miles of railroad in Texas during the Civil war, and all of it was based around Galveston Bay. Mostly as a means of getting cotton to market. It's a long dusty march from Galveston to Laredo, and while it's certainly possible to support an army far away from your logistics base, it's not efficient or cheep. For the sake of giving the CSA a western base, let's say that General Sibley's New Mexico Campaign was better organized (or just luckier) and he decisively defeated Col. Canby and the union forces and let's say he's able to win any battles up to the Colorado River. A peace treaty that gives the CSA NM and AZ everything south and east of the Colorado River gives the CSA a lot of room to expand without another war, apart from what hell the Apache would make of their expansion into NM and AZ.

I think an interesting TL would be one in which the CSA survives but allies itself with Maximilian's Mexico (maybe Maximilian pivots toward the CSA when the French get their wallets handed to them by the Prussians). What would Mexico have looked like 20 or 30 years after, if Maximilian had survived and Juarez been defeated? What would it have looked like, if it were closely allied with a surviving CSA?

Also I wouldn't expect that the CSA railroad would expand much by 1870. In OTL it was connected to the second most industrialized country on the planet. In this TL it is has an unmanageable debt crisis, near worthless currency, a war torn landscape it has to repair on its own etc. They would be lucky if the rails are in the same shape they were in 1860 not talking about expanding.
 
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