WI: With no Civil War, Does America fight a different opponent?

I was wondering if (for whatever reason) the Civil War is avoided, does the United States get involved in a war against a different opponent during that same time period, the 1860's to maybe the 1880's? I don't include the wars against the Native American tribes of the Plains because that conflict had already been going on when the Civil War began.

The only one I can really think of for this time period is fighting against France during their intervention in Mexico.

Thoughts? Ideas?
 
I was wondering if (for whatever reason) the Civil War is avoided, does the United States get involved in a war against a different opponent during that same time period, the 1860's to maybe the 1880's? I don't include the wars against the Native American tribes of the Plains because that conflict had already been going on when the Civil War began.


Unlikely.

Any war raises the question of acquiring territory, which in turn raises the question of whether or not to permit slavery in the region(s) acquired - an explosive issue in this period. So there will be great reluctance to go to war.
 
The only contentious issue that might have led to war with anyone would be the location of the border with Canada ("Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!"). Doesn't really seem too likely.
 
Unlikely.

Any war raises the question of acquiring territory, which in turn raises the question of whether or not to permit slavery in the region(s) acquired - an explosive issue in this period. So there will be great reluctance to go to war.
Agreed. To add to this, fighting a war of conquest is far different from fighting a war of national preservation. The war in Mexico was hugely unpopular (Ulysses S. Grant called it "the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation") and the US seemed to struggle in finding the will to prosecute the Civil War to its full conclusion. Expansion in this time period was being increasingly viewed as a slaver's plot, so as long as the slavery question was unanswered, foreign wars would be unlikely.
 
the question is just where to go. While the US is thought of as aggressively imperialistic by many, by the time of the ACW, the US had effectively gotten all it wanted. A nice peaceful border compromise with the UK for the OR territory and the parts of Mexico that were really wanted. There were some who differed, but most of the American public had no interest in taking any more of Mexico or going to war with the UK over trying to get more of Canada. The US already had a huge area in the west to settle, the desire for more conquests wasn't really there. AK and Hawaii were taken more as afterthoughts than real imperialism. So... where to go for aggressive conquests? More islands in the Pacific?
 
An earlier war with Spain for annexing Cuba, in order to placate southern interests and distract the slavery advocates away from expanding west?
 
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