The Southern Exodus to Mexico by Wahlstrom Todd W;

Author:Wahlstrom, Todd W; [Wahlstrom, Todd W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036050 History / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 1920599
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2014-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

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Southern Colonization, Railroads, and U.S. and Mexican Modernization

During the post–Civil War era, southern migrants were not the only foreigners with economic development plans for Mexico. Union general William S. Rosecrans was among the northern business promoters in Mexico who helped spearhead a new era of economic relations between the two nations, especially in terms of railroads. General Rosecrans became U.S. minister to Mexico in 1868. Upon his arrival, he made it clear that he favored U.S. economic expansion across the border through railroad development. In April 1869 he recommended to the U.S. secretary of state, Hamilton Fish, a comprehensive program for railroads in Mexico, with the possibility of buying the main artery that ran from Veracruz to the capital.1

Rosecrans likewise sent two petitions to the Mexican Congress for railroad construction projects during the Restored Republic period (1867–76). One proposed to go from Tampico or Tuxpan on the Gulf coast to Mexico City and the other from Antón Lizardo to Cuernavaca (south of Veracruz to south of the capital), with a possible extension to the Pacific Ocean. Soon afterward Rosecrans published a letter to President Juárez recommending American capital investment and enticements for immigrants to spur modernization. As with southern promoters, Rosecrans linked immigration and railroads as key initiatives to spur the Mexican economy. As he stated to Juárez, “a beneficent progress” depended on “railroads and immigration,” and it was “the paramount duty of every friend of Mexico, every friend of humanity, to promote the adoption of these means for her salvation and regeneration.” To this end, he continued to urge the approval of the two extensive railroad lines named above, with the intention of establishing a link across the continent.2

Rosecrans’s railroads never materialized under his watch, but his efforts help reveal a mesh of business activity in Mexico that intersected with southern economic plans. A brief review of his involvement with Mexico establishes a basis for recognizing that the economic plans associated with southern colonization were not the only ones that failed in the era following the American Civil War and the French Intervention. More importantly, Rosecrans allow us to see that the modernization plans of southern colonization were part and parcel of U.S. efforts to strengthen economic ties with Mexico and establish a greater presence in the Latin America. The primary difference was that the southern plans tended to target joint southern-Mexican benefits instead of U.S. industrial advantages.

One level of southern influence on the course of U.S. and Mexican history is the role of southern colonization in the hemispheric economy. Southern promoters’ search for an alternate destiny to Reconstruction contributed to the larger impulse toward bridging borders and crossing oceans that defined the second half of the nineteenth century. The postwar South’s focus on railroad development and southern commerce reflected two prominent ways in which southern colonization intersected with and informed main currents of economic revival after the Civil War and the fall of Maximilian’s empire.

Rosecrans in Mexico after the Civil War

The idea of a transcontinental railroad from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific was not a new one.

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