I agree. I read all three of them. The later in the series the less sence it made. This is the confederate equlivalent. Harriston got published. No telling what else might be too.This is as bad as Harry Harrison's Stars and Stripes trilogy; I should know, I saw both the mockumentary and read the books.
The Confederacy did intend to expand "the slave empire". It was one of the ideas espoused by the Fire-Eaters in the 1850s.
It was an idea thrown about in 1860 campaign speeches by men like John B. Gordon in 1860, when he spoke of Southern slaves playing banjos in Nicaraugua and Mexico in the future, of a Confederate banner waving from Delaware Bay to the Pacific.
Jefferson Davis had long been an advocate of expanding slavery. He spoke of it forcefully while a US Senator and Secretary of War. He was a strong backer of attempts to buy or conquer Cuba. He was offered command of one filibustering expedition, but turned it down; he suggested Robert E. Lee, and Lee declined. When the expedition failed and the Spanish were after the head of the leaders, he gave a speech in which he said "I want Cuba, and I intend to have her!"
That is actually NOT true. The legitimate government of Mexico, the Juarez Government, NEVER sent an ambassador to the Confederacy and certainly NEVER offered recognition. About the only thing you could be referring to is the so-called "Vidaurri Affair," which occurred in the summer of 1861. Santiago Vidaurri, the Governor of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, offered to sell his provinces to the Confederacy in exchange for Confederate troops and especially artillery, with which he planned to overthrow the Juarez Government and establish himself as President of Mexico. Davis turned him down because he considered it "imprudent and impolitic" at the time...he didn't really have the troops to spare, anyway.His spots did not change once he became President of the Confederacy. In the early days in Montgomery in 1861, when the Confederacy desperately wanted international recognition, Mexico sent an ambassador to discuss the situation, prepared to extend recognition. This would have been the very first nation to recognize the Confederacy. Davis refused to meet the man because, as he said, it might prove embarassing if he had to invade Mexico within a year or two.
Even as the Civil War raged, Confederate government agents conspired to pave the way for extension to the Pacific by bribing the governors of states in northern Mexico. Plans -- not very realistic ones, but plans -- were laid on how to do that. Agents were dispatched through Mexico to California to foment revolt there. There was also, of course the Confederate attempt on what we now see as the states of New Mexico and Arizona, which was to be followed by the occupation of southern California.
All of this fits in neatly with Davis' pre-war career. He had been the mover and shaker behind the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico after the Mexican War. He was promoting a RR route from New Orleans to the Pacific, and wanted that land to build it on. His idea stayed with him, and all signs were he would have tried to implement it if he could.
This excerpt from the NY Times shows the most cynical, propagandized version:
“The original school of secession conspirators looked almost entirely to the establishment of a great Slave Empire in the semi-tropical regions bordering upon the Gulf of Mexico. The Border States, to which we have thus far confined our military operations, were not expected nor desired to join the black oligarchic military Empire. They were looked upon rather in the light of outworks, to belong to the South, or to remain neutral, as they pleased, but really to be used as a barrier against the Abolition encroachments of the Northern States. At first extending from South Carolina to Florida, and sweeping from thence in a semicircle to the Rio Grande, the new Empire would speedily subjugate the feeble States of Mexico. Cuba and other West India Islands would be annexed, and all the negroes and peoples of other inferior races reduced to their normal condition of Slavery. The Gulf of Mexico would then form a central lake, round which would circle the States of the grand Confederation, whose corner-stone should be Slavery, and its rulers the lords of the plantation. This was the dream, fevered but gorgeous, of the conspirators who imagined they had fallen heir to the visions of AARON BURR -- such men as SLIDELL, JEFF. DAVIS, TOOMBS, RHETT and WIGFALL.”