Sin Perdón

While fire-eaters, both North & South, fanned controversial flames into open, armed hostilities, the political situation south of the 1860 US-Mexico border also quickly deteriorated.  Prior to opening shots at Fort Sumter, Liberal Republican President Benito Juárez wrested power away from the clerical Conservatives who had held the country in a oppressive grip since before Spain’s embarrassing evacuation.  Juárez’s election, and subsequent persecution, prompted affluent expatriate Conservatives to flee to Europe, where, as political refugees, they gained the sympathies of France’s Napoleón III.  Seeing the turmoil brewing in the US, Napoleón, backed by some of Europe’s most influential bankers, gambled and embarked on a mission of regaining a foot-hold on the western continent that had been lost since the publication of the US’s Monroe Doctrine.