"General Ulysses S Grant, the Northern commander-in-chief and later president, wrote in his memoirs that the Civil War began with America's 1846 invasion of Mexico, which seized territory to permit the expansion of slavery. Because cotton destroyed land within a decade, the slave-owning caste required perpetual expansion of the slave system into new territories. The Southern Confederacy planned to march southward and create a slave empire in Mexico and the Caribbean".

This is one of my beefs with the so called expansion of slavery. After Texas became a state in 1845 no other state ever made slavery legal. The 'expansion' of slavery never occured after 1845, it was effectively stopped. Between Texas and Kansas in January 1861 there was Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, and Oregon all admitted as free states. The territories won and paid for from the Mexican War up until 1861 produced no slave states. If anything the biggest controversy seems to be how big California would be as opposed to the lands wanted and occupied by the Mormans.

As for what the Confederacy would have done if it won it's independance is up for debate, but invading foreign countries after fighting a war such as the 61-65 war would have been suicide. It was hard enough to get the boys to go to Pennslyvania!

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"Was it coincidence that France, England and Spain determined to invade Mexico after Benito Juarez suspended debt-service payment to Mexico's European creditors in 1861, just as the American Civil War began?"

Well I'll answer that with another question. Was it a coincidence that John Slidell of New York, later Louisiana, and Confederate congressman was tied to August Belmont (Democratic Chairman 1860-1872) also an agent of the Rothschild European banking family? They were related by marriage. John Slidell, working for President Polk, was involved in the failed negotiations that started the Mexican war. Later John Slidell plotted against the Stephen Douglas nomination at the April 1860 Democratic Convention.

August Belmont helped draft the "Ostend Manifesto" which was a scheme to take over Cuba during the Pierce administration; Irving Katz, “Augustus Belmont’s Cuban Acquisition Scheme,” Mid-America 50 (1968).

Where ever there was trouble these men were found, and seem to have had a hand in creating the situation that was the Civil War, and their loyalties seem to float around the Rothschild family and European banks.

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David Upton