Absolutely no effect; Faragut is ordered to extend the blockade to the Mexican ports, cutting off the French troopships and preventing refueling. Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana and two French islands off Newfoundland are taken. The beast Butler, in command of New Orleans, raises new regiments of freed and mulatto blacks which the South, by this point in the war, had considered also. Lee and Grant, with Jeff Davis's blessing, agree to a
temporary cessation of hostilities to coordinate in their ol' stompin' grounds of the Mexican War. Lee even separates Longstreet's corps, as at Chickamauga, to assist as old West Point comrades Generals Thomas and Sherman turn west without prompting, as surely as Patton at the Bulge. Stand Watie and his Cherokee Nation and vast numbers of paroled Confederate
'galvanized Yankees' eager to escape the POW camps along the frigid Great Lakes, who served or had forebears in the Mexican War, leap to the colours to repel the
damn-froggies and their few
enthusiastic Mexican allies, chafing under foreign domination. Throw in the feared Texas Rangers, always prepared for any Mexican related contingency- the Foreign Legion-and a few deals with the cutthroat Comancheros, the ghastly Comanche and Apaches, given license to rape, steal and plunder at will... ol Boney Tres, shocked at the Franco-phobia, will hafta' go away. FINIS! Lincoln had
actually considered invading Canada a the beginning of his term to
unite the entire country against a common foe; this is just a westerly variation...three years later. Hopefully, having united against a common foreign threat, cooler heads, Lee's in particular, as Generalissimo of the South, could prevail before a resumption of domestic hostilities.
