Whenever he wanted to say something, Ulysses S. Grant did not mince his words. Aware that his time was fast coming to an end, the hero of Vicksburg and Appomattox knew he had to set the record straight regarding the United States involvement in the war with Mexico. For myself, Grant pronounced, I was bitterly opposed to the measure [of Texas annexation], and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.[footnoteRef:1] As Joan Waugh has recently argued, Grant actively sought to convey in the Civil War passages of his Memoirs the ultimate rectitude of the Union cause.[footnoteRef:2] He directly traced the origins of that conflict to the Mexico War and used some of the strongest language found in all his writings to condemn that conflict as a political act of naked aggression. Given the very stridency of the passages in the Memoirs regarding the Mexican War and its consequences, one might wonder then what lessons Grant took from his service in Mexico. Adam Badeau, who had spent two decades observing the General from his position as his military secretary, recalled, [1: Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, (eds. Mary Drake and William S. McFeely), New York: Library of America, 1990: 40] [2: Joan Waugh, Ulysses S. Grant: Historian, in The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, (eds. Joan Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh), Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004: 5-38.]

Grant always took a peculiar interest in the Republic of Mexico. His experiences during the Mexican War left a lively impression with him, and there was no portion of his Memoirs in which he manifested a keener interest than in the pages describing, not only the campaigns in which he participated and the adventures that befell himself, but the peculiarities of the country, the climate, and the inhabitants of Mexico. I remember well the composition of these chapters, and how impressed I was with the clearness of his memory and the vividness of his youthful perceptions, recalled after so long an interval. At the close of the Rebellion all this interest was intensified; for the conversion of Mexico into an empire seemed to Grant a sequence, or rather an incident, of secession, and his concern did not abate until the expulsion of the French and the re-establishment of the republic. [footnoteRef:3] [3: Adam Badeau, Grant in Peace from Appomattox to Mount Gregor, Hartford, Conn: S. C. Scranton & Co, 1887: 348.]

Despite the more recent scholarly appreciation concerning the achievements in both Grants military and political careers, the peculiar interest in Mexico that Badeau identified with Grant has attracted rather less attention from these writers. Undoubtedly, part of the reason for this absence has to do with the paucity of materials surrounding Grants early life and the overshadowing influence of the Civil War on Grants own life. Historians seeking to probe Grants pre-Civil War life have far less documentary material (i.e. letters, diaries, and contemporary writings) to work with and what remains in the form of memoirs and recollections can often seem colored by hindsight. Thus, historians generally prefer to rely upon the critical analysis offered in the Memoirs concerning the significance Grant attached to the experience of the Mexican War. Many studies highlight the military lessons that Grant acknowledges that he received from fighting alongside future Union and Confederate officers.[footnoteRef:4] While I do not wish in any way to denigrate the importance of that experience to Grant, I believe that another equally interesting development also occurred within Grant as a direct result of his experiences in Mexico when one begins to reexamine the available correspondence. [4: See, for instance, Personal Memoirs, 129.]

The purpose of tonights paper, therefore, is to offer a reconsideration of what lessons Grant received during his time in Mexico. In seeking to place less emphasis on Grants experience as a kind of training ground for the Civil War, I focus instead on how Grants observations of Mexico and its people affected his view of the American Union and why it had to endure in a world where the very idea of self-government seemed in peril. Seen in this light, then, Lieutenant Sam Grants Mexican War service takes on added significance beyond offering Grant a chance to get valuable knowledge of his future Civil War adversaries. Grants lifelong fascination with Mexico, alluded to in Badeaus quote above, stemmed from his realization that while both countries outwardly shared a common system of government, a federal republic, the tendency toward autocratic rule and violent warfare in Mexico threatened the very permanence of the United States itself. In order to substantiate this claim, this paper will examine three major events in Grants life, his service in the war with Mexico, his challenge to the French-installed Emperor Maximilian immediately after the Civil War, and the Generals abiding interest in a route to connect Mexico and the United States via railroad in the years just prior to his death. Rather than study these events separately, I contend that all three of these events together helped to shape the intellectual development of Grant and thus explain why Grant felt compelled to offer the kind of assessment of the Mexican War and its consequences that he did in his Memoirs. Although he had not distinguished himself during his time at West Point, Brevet Second Lieutenant Sam Grant graduated in June 1843, ranked 21st in a class of 39. As described by one of his good friends, this stoutly built, round-faced youth, aged twenty-one, set out to join his new outfit, the Fourth Infantry, in September of that year at Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis, Missouri.[footnoteRef:5] Once he got to his new post, Grant would immediately notice the contrast between the stringent calls for drill and the roll with the loose almost carefree attitude of officers, especially those senior in rank who did not always respect their juniors when issuing orders seemed at times far more interested in devising ways to annoy their subordinates and render them uncomfortable than to instill proper military discipline and foster a sense of cohesion among the regiment.[footnoteRef:6] While the pettiness of the senior officers would pale in the eyes of Grant and other junior officers to the utter disaster that was a volunteer army in wartime, looking back from the vantage point of 1885 the seasoned General would find such a climate among officers hardly conducive to the kind of concerted effort needed to bring about victory. This early lesson in dealing with personal conflict among officers stayed with Grant up to the time when he assumed command of all Union forces in March 1864. At the same time appointed Lieutenant General, Grant would attempt to curtail the back-biting and political maneuvering among ambitious young officers and impose a semblance of unity upon a fractious officer corps in the Army of the Potomac by ordering that all communications be sent through his Head Quarters.[footnoteRef:7] From a more personal perspective, though, Grants time in the academy had brought him to his wife-to-be Julia Dent, through her brother and Grants roommate, Frederick Dent. During his assignment with his regiment at Jefferson Barracks in May 1845, Grant would apply for leave and once given, would spend some twenty days in St. Louis to pronounce his undying (and heretofore, secret) love to his sweetheartin front of her parents.[footnoteRef:8] [5: Daniel Ammen, Recollections and Letters of Grant, 141 The North American Review (October 1885): 363.] [6: Personal Memoirs, 36.] [7: [Check General Orders in O.R.]] [8: Ibid, 39. ]

While Lieutenant Grant prepared to announce his union with Julia, the United States government appeared to be planning a union of its own with the formerly independent republic of Texas. After declaring their independence in 1836, Texans had forced the captured Mexican commander Santa Anna to sign under duress a treaty that would recognize the boundaries of Mexico at the Rio Grande and not the Nueces River that Mexicans had claimed for Texas. Efforts to adjust the dispute diplomatically were unavailing prior to 1844, but when the United States government under President John Tyler signaled that it would consent to annexation of Texas with its claim of the Rio Grande boundary, both Mexican officials and ordinary citizens bitterly condemned both the logic and heavy-handedness of the people they called the North Americans or Anglos. With the prospect of an armed clash appearing more and more likely as the room for negotiation narrowed day-by-day, Lieutenant Grant and the Fourth Infantry received orders to proceed to New Orleans and then on to Corpus Christi, Texas in September 1845. It was there at Corpus Christi that the Fourth Infantry would join other units to comprise an Army of Occupation under the command of War of 1812 and Seminole War veteran General Zachary Taylor. Taylor, in turn, would move the army inside the disputed area to assert the American claim between the two rivers and compel the Mexicans to seek arbitration. During preparations for the long-expected advance of Taylors forces from Corpus Christi, Grant made full Second Lieutenant and had a chance to witness the foreigners pulled from American seaboard cities who constituted the bulk of the rank and file of the Army of Occupation and who had scarcely any knowledge or experience in driving animals or other duties necessary for a fighting force. Once they formally entered the country in May 1846, Lieutenant Grant and his fellow officers witnessed a Mexican Republic on the verge of collapse, a perception confirmed through newspaper reports and conversations with locals. Even prior to the breakout of hostilities, Grant confidently related to his wife his belief that the Mexicans would not go to war with the United States while Mexico suffered from indigenous revolts. As Grant noted, Yucatan, one of Mexicos most powerful states has told Mexico to do their own fighting for they wont [sic] assist, besides this they are on the eve of a revolution with their own subjects, and so far as we have seen, the poorer and less ambitious and much the numerous class of Mexicans are much better pleased with our form of government than their own; in fact they would be willing to see us push our claims beyond the Rio Grande if we would promise not to molest them in their homes and possessions.[footnoteRef:9] [9: USG to Julia Dent, October 10, 1845, PUSG 1:57]

In the northernmost Mexican provinces bordering the disputed area of Texas, inhabitants faced the recurrence of Indian depredations and the seeming lack of interest in their plight by those leaders in Mexico City. In turn, these leaders violently contended with themselves over the direction of the young Mexican Republic, providing opportunities for foreign intervention on the part of European powers whose nationals held a significant portion of Mexicos debt. When he and the Fourth Infantry finally set out for San Antonio in December 1845, Lieutenant Grant described the terrain as uninhabitable thanks in large part to the Commanches and otherswho have always been the enemies of the white man. In Grants estimation, the presence of the United States military promised to increase the population and thus agricultural productivity of the area, since the people feel a confidance [sic] in being protected [from Indians].[footnoteRef:10] [10: USG to Julia Dent, January 2, 1846, PUSG 1:67]

Grants first impressions of the people of Matamoras tended to equate them as being more Indian in looks and habits than white men.[footnoteRef:11] These inhabitants generally lived in something like a wig-wamb, with dirt floors and little of the furniture or luxuries that an American might be accustomed to place in his or her home.[footnoteRef:12] By the time he had spent a few months in the area, Grant seemed rather unimpressed with the general population. Interestingly, Grant would offer the only reference to slavery during his entire time during the war when discussing the local population at Matamoras: [11: USG to Julia Dent, May 24, 1846, PUSG 1:88.] [12: USG to Julia Dent, June 16, 1846, PUSG 1:93]

The people of Mexico are a very different race of people from ours. The better class are very proud and tyrinize [sic] over the lower and much more numerous class as much as a hard master does over his negroes, and they submit to it quite as humbly. The great majority inhabitants are either pure or more than half blooded Indians, and show but little more signs of neatness or comfort in their miserable dwellings than the uncivilized Indian.Matamoras contains probably about 7,000 inhabitants, a great majority of them of the lower order. It is not a place of as much business importance as our little towns of 1,000. But no doubt I will have an opportunity of knowing more of Mexico and the Mexicans before I leave the country and I will take another occation [sic] of telling you more of them.[footnoteRef:13] [13: USG to Julia Dent, June 26, 1846, PUSG 1:98.]

With observation such as the one above, it is not to be wondered that Grant and his fellow officers believed they might be able to tap into the natural resentment the masses felt against their leaders, despite the strong resistance the Americans encountered from many Mexicans as an invading army. Long after he left Mexico, Grant in his Memoirs would continue to maintain that aside from some wealthy Mexicans, the great majority of the Mexican people did not regret our departure as much as they had regretted our coming. This belief and Grants observation of his experiences like the one describing the tyranny of the rich over the poor in Matamoras helped to reinforce within young Grant his hostility to the despotism inherent in oligarchic power, whether from slavery or any elite who did not make their living principally from their own labors. Grant and his fellow officers continued to hope that their movements amidst a country teetering on the brink of political dissolution might compel the masses of the Mexican people to demand their government sue for peace. In many ways, however, the threat of the United States forged a more powerful sense of national pride with Mexicans than they had ever displayed in peace. These people were living, or rather staying, (for I do not consider that the poorer class of Mexicans live atall) under mere sheds, without any other protection. Seeking to raise troops to repel the northern invader, Grant found the Mexican Government in the lead up to the battle of Monterey was making here best endeavors to get as great a body together as she can. But it is thought doubtful whether she will be able to get any reinforcement before our arrival, and in that case, it is reported, that the Northeren [sic] provences [sic] intend to refuse to furnish their quota of troops.[footnoteRef:14] [14: USG to Julia Dent, August 14, 1846, PUSG 1:105]

The breakdown of law and order within Mexico accompanied Grant and the invading army deep into the interior of the country. Grant expressed repugnance at the lack of any kind of justice shown to victims of murderous reprisals carried out by both Mexicans and the volunteer United States troops. While stationed at Matamoras, he told Julia that although he could not begin to count the violence committed upon the persons of poor Mexicans and our soldiers, the military authorities on both sides seemed unable to stem this trend. In fact, some of the volunteers and about all the Texans seem to think it perfectly right to impose upon the people of a conquered City to any extent, and even to murder them where the act can be covered in the dark. And how much they seem to enjoy acts of violence too![footnoteRef:15] Despite the understandable anger felt by Mexicans toward the conduct of United States troops during occupation, business leaders in Mexicos port cities found themselves in the difficult dilemma of whether to treat with the foreign enemy or suffer the wrath of their own government. A great many of the business people, in fact nearly all of them, want to see us remain in the country, Grant observed. The reason was not hard to fathom. The people who have associated with the Americans are threatened with having their ears & noses cut off as soon as their protectors arrive. One of the generals of the Mexican army, a General Terrace, had five young daughters who tended to socialize with the American officers. Almost as soon as news of a proclamation arrived within the camp of United States troops that the Aide-de-Camp of Mexican General Velasco offered to mark the faces of the girls for their treasonous activity, an American officer gave that Aide-de-Camp a good thrashing in a public place, and much to the amusement of the by-standers. Even worse from his perspective, Grant personally witnessed a number of barbarities against Mexican women in the form of shaved heads and others forced to lose an ear for their lack of patriotism.[footnoteRef:16] The presence of armed banditti and guerillas harassed the United States forces at every point, even forcing Grant himself to declare the loss of some $1000 entrusted to the Quarter Master due to a theft in the middle of the night.[footnoteRef:17] [15: USG to Julia Dent, July 25, 1846, PUSG 1:102] [16: USG to Julia Dent, June 4, 1848, PUSG 1:160-161. See also Chapter VII, Paragraph 15 of the Memoirs where Grant says As had been the case on the Rio Grande, the people who remained at their homes fraternized with the Yankees in the pleasantest manner. In fact, under the humane policy of our commander, I question whether the great majority of the Mexican people did not regret our departure as much as they had regretted our coming. Property and person were thoroughly protected, and a market was afforded for all the products of the country such as the people had never enjoyed before. The educated and wealthy portion of the population here, as elsewhere, abandoned their homes and remained away from them as long as they were in the possession of the invaders; but this class formed a very small percentage of the whole population. ] [17: See report dated May 19, 1848 in PUSG 1:158. Grant later swore an affidavit concerning the theft of $1000 of Quarter Master funds on the night of June 16, as found in PUSG 1:162.]

Grants observations deeply impressed upon him the conviction that the arbitrary power of a few might continue to subvert the principle of majority rule well before he embraced the kind of Slave Power conspiracy idea of the early Republican Party. For Grant did not need much convincing to believe that the slide of republican government toward oligarchy would only promote the conditions for civil war and eventual foreign intervention. As part of a foreign intervention into troubled Mexico, Grant saw first-hand how fragile republics could be. During the secession winter of 1860-61, Grant told an acquaintance that a few men have produced all the present difficulty. I dont see why by the same rule a few hundred men could not carry Missouri out of the Union.[footnoteRef:18] Similarly, the nature of the observations he made in Mexico regarding the danger of mixing ecclesiastical with civil powers would shape in part President Grants famous warning to his fellow veterans of the Army of the Tennessee in 1875. In that speech, the President harped upon how those who survived the war must stay vigilant of their freedoms for If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence I predict that the dividing line will not be Masons & Dixons but between patriotism, & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other.[footnoteRef:19] [18: USG to Unknown Addressee, [December 1860], PUSG 1:359-360.] [19: Speech, September 29, 1875, PUSG 26:343. ]

Why had Mexico, a sister republic after all, taken such a different path than the United States? In a number of letters to his wife, Grant found the answer to this question in the incompatibility of democratic political institutions and feudal cultural institutions. While Grant was not free from indulging in the racial assumptions of his day, he traced the misery of the masses directly to the disproportionate power wielded by a privileged few wealthy Mexicans cooperating with the Catholic Church. When Grant and his fellow officers came to Puebla in the spring of 1847 they witnessed a city of some 80-90,000 people with large and well built houses. Although Grant seemed far more impressed with Puebla than his previous posts, favorably comparing it to St. Louis in both appearance and size, he remained little impressed with the people. In particular, the control of such traditional institutions as the Catholic Church and its collaboration with local elites appeared to Grant to render the idea of a Mexican republic something of a farce. The church has all the power, all the wealth, Grant concluded and I think I would be safe in saying that three fourths of the expence [sic] of building Puebla has been in churches and church property.[footnoteRef:20] While Grant did not profess hostility to the religious beliefs per se, after all he frequented a monastery where he learned the rudiments of the Spanish language, his experience in Mexico convinced him that ecclesiastical power could never mix with democratic institutions and would have to remain subordinate to civil power. He related bitterly to Julia how the people responded reflexively At a certain ring of the church bell or when the senior Priest of the place passes you might see them on their ness in the streets all over the city. . . The people are proud and subject to the will of a few and they have no government to act for them.[footnoteRef:21] In the end, Grant could only pity poor Mexico as a country with immense promise in resources and people that had degraded into a place where the rich keep down the poor with a hardness of hard that is incredible and the rest of the populace alternatively starved or survived upon public vices, such as gambling.[footnoteRef:22] [20: USG to Julia Dent, August 4, 1847, PUSG 1:143.] [21: USG to Julia Dent, May 17, 1847, PUSG 1:138, 140.] [22: USG to Julia Dent, January 9, 1848, PUSG 1:149-150.]

Grants attention to the poverty of those around him, victims of a hapless fate, reflected his own desire to escape from the specter of being a financial failure. His employment in the U.S. Army had afforded him a measure of purpose that he lacked in his younger days. As he would display later in his life toward African-Americans, Grant saw in these poor creatures further confirmation of the importance of majority rule in a republican system of government. After he left Mexico, Grants concerns about his possible lapse into poverty heightened as Julia gave birth to Frederick and Ulysses Jr. and he began to wonder whether he would ever leave his remote post near the Pacific. As he told his wife when he contemplated resignation in 1854, I sometimes get so anxious to see you, and our little boys, that I am almost tempted to resign and trust to Providence, and my own exertions, for a living where I can have you and them with me. It would only require the certainty of a moderate competency to make me take the step. Whenever I get to thinking upon the subject however poverty, poverty, begins to stare me in the face and then I think what would I do if you and our little ones should want for the necessaries of life.[footnoteRef:23] [23: USG to Julia Grant, March 6, 1854, PUSG 1:323.]

The war in Mexico exposed Grant to the thing he feared most in his life: the prospect of failure. He would always remember Mexico and its people because his sense of compassion to help others in need would bring him back to Mexico.Although Grant left Mexico in 1848, events during the 1860s serve to link further in Grants mind the twin causes of the Union with that of the Mexican Republic. During the 1850s, both the United States and Mexico witnessed violent political convulsions. In Mexicos case, a power struggle erupted once again between two major factions: the Conservatives and Liberals. The Conservatives strongly favored the traditional privileges of the Catholic Church and some even going so far as to hope for the invitation of some European prince to rule over Mexico. Liberals, in contrast, wished to promote a greater secularization of the countrys politics and generally championed greater access to education and access to the political system. While Grant and the United States government remained preoccupied with reuniting a divided people, the Liberal government in Mexico City headed by President Benito Juarez collapsed due to financial debts held by European investors and the withdrawal of crucial support from the military. Then, in December 1861, the French, Spanish, and English governments made a Tripartite Pact to demand the Liberal government honor its financial obligations to foreign investors and European merchants working in Mexico. During the following year, French Emperor Louis Napoleon, taking advantage of the chaos in both Mexico and the United States would install a member of the Austrian royal family, Prince Maximilian, as the ruler of the Empire of Mexico. This initiative did not receive the support of either the British or Spanish and might have in some ways doomed Napoleons hope of winning British support for intervention on behalf of the nascent Confederacy. Taking advantage of a United States embroiled in a civil war, Napoleon actively assisted Confederate dreams of independence, prodding unsuccessfully for a joint Anglo-French recognition of the new republic as well as offering financial and military assistance to the rebels through Maximilian.Grant tried to get the Lincoln Administration to accept the proposition that the rebellion could never end as long as Maximilian occupied the Mexican throne. Urging that the President in March 1863 consent to the raising of a brigade under the command of Colonel George P. Ihrie, Grant appealed to Lincoln and Chief of Staff Henry Halleck to consider how Ihrie and his Missouri and Illinois volunteers might go to the territories of Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. There, these regiments could aid in squelching out Polygamy, quieting hostile Indians and watching the French in Mexico and to return home through Texas. Unfortunately for Grant, Halleck did not see eye-to-eye with his sometime rival and endorsed the request, Not Approved, leaving matters to rest for the moment.[footnoteRef:24] When Secretary of State Seward paid a visit to the Generals Headquarters at City Point, Virginia, on June 23, 1864, Grant once again brought up the subject of Mexico. According to Horace Porter, who served at the time on Grants staff, Grant himself initiated this part of the discussion with Secretary Seward concerning Maximilian and the French influence. Grants experience in the Mexican War, wrote Porter made him thoroughly well acquainted with Mexico, and he not only had deep sympathy for her people in their present struggle, but was a staunch supporter of the Monroe doctrine generally, and was opposed on principle to any European monarchy forcing its institutions upon an American republic. Seward supposedly assured Grant of his intention to press Louis Napoleon to abandon his efforts to subvert the republican government of the Mexican people. Grant told Seward that he did not wish to start a fight with the French until the rebellion had been successfully put down, but he felt that the establishment of republican government in Mexico would really be a part of our present struggle. Seward concurred with Grant desire to rid Mexico of the French presence, yet continued to stress his aversion to a prospective war with France over the issue.[footnoteRef:25] The meeting eventually ended and with it any possible change from the Lincoln Administrations policy toward Maximilian. [24: USG to President Lincoln, March 30, 1863, PUSG 7:550; Maj. Thomas Vincent to USG, May 1, 1863, Ibid.] [25: Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, New York: The Century Co., 1897: 255-257.]

Grants time at City Point in the autumn of 1864 also brought him a closer connection to the Liberal cause in Mexico. Here he befriended a man who would become a dear friend to him and his family until his death: the Mexican Minister to the United States under the Juarez government, Matas Romero.[footnoteRef:26] Romero hailed from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, a region famous for being the birthplace of Juarez and cultivating many other political leaders of Mexico. As a youth, Romero had distinguished himself, according to his biographer, as a precocious child and prodigious student. His obvious talent gained the attention of the then Minister of Justice, Benito Juarez, who arranged to secure a kind of internship for young Romero within the Relaciones Exteriores or Foreign Ministry charged with the task of studying the archives of that department with a view to publishing its history. By the time the Mexican La Reforma or War of Reform ended with victory to the Juarez forces in 1861 and the American Civil War broke out, Romero had gained valuable experience as Mexicos secretary of the legation to the United States and as a charg daffaires where he would serve until mid-1863. Hampered by the inability of the Juarez government-in-exile to secure the necessary funds to allow Romero to press the United States government for aid, the Mexican volunteered his services as a soldier to resist the French occupation of his country and served for five months as a colonel. Juarez had other uses for this man, however, and sent Romero back to Washington in October 1863 with the promise to fund his efforts to win much needed assistance from the authorities in Washington by settling outstanding claims held by Americans against the Mexican government.[footnoteRef:27] [26: USG to Correspondent of Washington National Republican, August 2, 1883, PUSG 31:9-10; Badeau, Grant in Peace, 391-392.] [27: Robert Ryal Miller, Matas Romero: Mexican Minister to the United States during the Juarez-Maximilian Era, 45 The Hispanic American Review (May 1965): 228-245; Matas Romero, Mexican Lobby: Matas Romero in Washington, 1861-1867, (ed. Thomas D. Schoonover with Ebba Wesener Schoonover), Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986: xi.]

Romero came to Grants Headquarters armed with letters of introduction from Secretary Seward and accompanied by a Liberal General, Doblado. The Lieutenant General had his personal secretary, Adam Badeau, meet with the Mexicans and introduce them to General George Meade and General Benjamin Butler. Grant recalled in 1883 that he told Romero at this meeting about his strong interest he felt regarding Mexican affairs and regarded her invasion by the French as very much like a declaration of war against the United States. The outbreak of the American Civil War, Grant explained to Romero, created the necessary condition for the French invasion and was to be permitted by our government only so long as we were engaged in suppressing a rebellion against our own authority. Badeau observed that Grant seemed especially glad to see the representatives of the Liberal Juarez regime and apparently spent some time exchanging views as to the steps that should be taken to hasten the expulsion of the French and Maximilian. Romero evidently did not record his account of the remarks at the meeting, but likely impressed upon Grant the difficulties in securing a favorable response from the U. S. Congress, much less the State Department, until Grant had defeated Lee.The successful reelection of Lincoln in November 1864 and the imminent victory of the Union cause provided Grant with yet another opportunity to lobby for a more aggressive stance toward the French in Mexico. During the morning of January 8, 1865, Grant allowed Francis P. Blair, Sr. to pass through Union lines under a Flag of Truce on a mission to meet with Confederate President Jefferson Davis.[footnoteRef:28] Blair, the scion of a prominent Maryland political dynasty that included his son Montgomery who was President Lincolns Postmaster General, had a proposal unauthorized by the Lincoln Administration to urge peaceful reunion upon a platform of joint military action against the presence of European powers on the North American continent, more specifically the French imperial project in Mexico. Blairs son Montgomery explained to Mexican Minister Romero that once the Confederates saw the futility of their cause the Lincoln government should invite President Davis to assemble and lead a force of 20,000 battle-tested Confederates and in so doing, revindicate himself [Davis] before his fellow citizens. The army would be composed of two divisions of three brigades each, with each brigade formed out of four regiments. Both Union and Confederate officers should have equal representation in such a force, with Blair suggesting that the Confederate Lee command one division and Unionist Sherman the other. The basic skeletal force would originate in the United States, but more men would get added once the joint effort reached Mexico. Blair also claimed that it would be indispensable for the [Liberal] supreme government to authorize me to name Jefferson Davis, General Lee, or whoever circumstances appropriately indicated as general in chief. Although wildly optimistic about the level of enthusiasm Union and Confederate leaders would display toward such a plan, this was not the first time someone with ties to the Lincoln government had proposed such a venture. Secretary of State William Seward had broached essentially the same idea on All Fools Day, (April 1) 1861 as a means of changing the issue from one of Slavery to one of Union or Disunion. Although Lincoln declined to accept Sewards proposal and would confront it once more at the Hampton Roads Conference, there is some question as to how Grant received such a proposal.[footnoteRef:29] There is nothing in the documentary record of the time to indicate that he expressed any view favorable or otherwise toward Blairs proposal, but he likely thought that Blair would not get very far with the authorities in Richmond given reports of certain Confederates actively negotiating with Maximilian over a Confederate colony in Northern Mexico. [28: USG to Francis P. Blair, Sr., January 8, 1865, PUSG 13:254; John Hay and John G. Nicolay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, Blair Mexican ProjectThe Hampton Roads ConferenceThe XIII Amendment, Century Magazine, (October 1889): 839.] [29: Romero, Mexican Lobby, 51. For a good analysis of both the contents and larger goals of Sewards memorandum, see Patrick Sowle, A Reappraisal of Sewards Memorandum of April 1, 1861, to Lincoln, 33 Journal of Southern History (May 1967): 234-239; for a reference to Sewards interest in such a proposal coming from Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, see John A. Campbell, Memoranda of Conversation at the Conference in Hampton Roads, 42 Southern Historical Society Papers (September 1917): 46-48.]

His suspicion of Confederate motives in creating a base of operations in Northern Mexico led him to send a letter to Major General Irvin McDowell in San Francisco. On the very same day that Grant gave permission to Blair to cross Union lines, he outlined an important task for McDowell. The Lieutenant General advised McDowell to pay a close watch on the activities of Dr. William Gwin, a Tennessee-born physician, former U.S. Senator from California, and noted duelist. In 1863, Gwin had undertaken an effort on behalf of the Confederate government to win Maximilians backing for a colony of white southerners that might help develop economically the northern state of Sonora through railroads linking the Confederacy to its southern neighbor. Maximilian might find the idea appealing precisely when he desperately needed revenues to sustain his government against the reprisals of the opposition Liberals that he had originally deposed in 1861. For Grant, preventing Gwins success would mean that I would not rest satisfied with driving the invaders on to Mexican soil, but would pursue them until overtaken, and would retain possession of the territory from which the invader started until indemnity for the past, and security for the future, satisfactory to the Government, was insured.[footnoteRef:30] [30: USG to Maj. Gen. Irwin McDowell, January 8, 1865, PUSG 13:250; William McKendree Gwin, Memoirs of Hon. William M. Gwin, (ed. William Henry Ellison), 19 California Historical Quarterly (December 1940): 362-366. A good account of Gwins unsuccessful efforts to secure a pro-Confederate colony in Sonora is available in Hallie M. McPherson, The Plan of William McKendree Gwin for a Colony in North Mexico, 1863-1865, 2 Pacific Historical Review (December 1933): 357-386. For further references to Gwins activities, see both Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan to Brig. Gen. John A. Rawlins, June 14, 1865, PUSG 15:148-149 and USG to President Andrew Johnson, June 19, 1865, PUSG 15:157-158.]

A clue as to what the phrase security for the future meant to Grant came when he had an opportunity to send Major General Lew Wallace, at Wallaces behest, to Texas ostensibly under an order to an inspection of affairs on the Rio Grande, but in actuality an opportunity for Wallace to meet with the local Confederate commander at Brownsville near the Mexican border. The purpose, Wallace suggested, would be to discuss the prospect of a joint effort by former Union and Confederate soldiers to expel Maximilian and together take up the adoption of the Juarez [or Liberal] Flag on the bank of the Rio Grande, as the basis of a compromise which would, according to Wallace, stagger the rebellion, next to the giving in of the State of Georgia. Perhaps the most important selling point for Grant was when Wallace argued that his feeler proposal to the Confederates was worth a try and a truce adopted between military officers could do better than Blair & Co. in Richmond. These soldiers held the loyalties of their men and if Wallace played his cards right he might be able to pull them away from their political leaders, especially as the Confederate cause seemed to Wallace increasingly hopeless. Grant evidently found merit in Wallaces plan and directed his staff to prepare the necessary orders.[footnoteRef:31] By April he communicated to Grant that the Union head of the District of Texas, Major General J. G. Walker, a man whom Wallace considered a political Radical. Walker informed Wallace of his strong opposition to such a plan to win over former Confederates. Without this support and with further reports that Confederates would avoid surrender and cross into Mexico, Wallaces efforts effectively collapsed. [31: Maj. Gen. Lewis Wallace to USG, January 14, 1865, PUSG 13:282-283, USG had Lt. Col. Ely S. Parker prepare such an order through a telegram by Lt. Col. Theodore S. Bowers on January 21 and a letter notifying Secretary of War Edwin Stanton on the same date, PUSG 13:282. For a similarly critical view of Francis Blair Sr. Peace Mission and Grants refusal to let Blair pass through into Confederate lines, see New York Times, January 5, 1865. A writer, Monadnock, endorsed essentially the same line of reasoning as Wallace in a letter dated April 22 from London printed in the New York Times, May 5, 1865. ]

Lees surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865 finally seemed to free Grant to turn his attention to the problem of how to prevent ex-rebels from finding sanctuary and a base to launch an attack against Union forces in Mexico. In order to succeed at this task, however, Grant still had to find some means of preventing valuable cotton and arms supplies from crossing into Mexico, as a Confederate Army in Texas under E. Kirby Smiths command might try to leave the country rather than surrender.[footnoteRef:32] To do this, Grant would seek to apply the same sort of logic toward neutrality that he believed the French and British displayed during the past four years. He would not wantonly violate neutrality, as much as find ways around it in order to aid the beleaguered Liberals in their fight against Maximilian, even if it meant allowing subordinates to permit the flow of arms across the border. As Grant pithily told one Major General, We will have to observe a strict neutrality towards Mexico, in the French & English sense of the word. Your own good sense and knowled[g]e of International Law, and experiance [sic] of policy pursued toward us in this war, teaches you what will be proper.[footnoteRef:33] [32: Telegram, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan to USG, May 29, 1865, PUSG 15:104; Telegram, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan to Brig. Gen. John A. Rawlins, June 4, 1865, PUSG 15:129-130. For evidence that Confederates sought to smuggle cotton across the border, see both Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan to Bvt. Col. Theodore S. Bowers, July 7, 1865, PUSG 15:147 and Telegram, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan to USG, July 14, 1865, PUSG 15:240.] [33: USG to Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele, May 21, 1865, PUSG 15:81.]

In order for Grant to achieve his goal for expelling the French, he would need to deal with three issues that could hinder him. Although in the wake of Lincolns assassination, President Andrew Johnson had earned a reputation for his staunch advocacy of the Monroe Doctrine, his willingness to retain Secretary of State William Seward, the foremost proponent of the policy of strict neutrality would cause Grant considerable grief. Connected to the first problem of winning support from the Johnson Administration was how to keep men in arms now that peace had arrived and a large standing army was both financially and militarily unnecessary. Even if Grant was able to solve the first two related problems, he would also require the acquiescence of local Mexican leaders to permit on Mexican soil for a large force of upwards of 50,000 U.S. Army troops. The memory of the last time U.S. troops marched en masse through Mexico made this a very delicate issue. Nevertheless, Grant received assurances from Romero that such an effort could still succeed and local leaders in Mexico would welcome such a gathering of U.S. troops to help liberate their country, especially if Confederates crossed the border with the intention of aiding Maximilian.[footnoteRef:34] [34: Romero, Mexican Lobby, 59, 62.]

Grant continued to receive reports on the Mexican situation from Major General Philip H. Sheridan, whose new military command stretched across the Gulf of Mexico to include Louisiana and Texas. While the Grand Army of the Republic made its triumphal procession on May 23-24 through Washington as a sign that peace had returned to the country, Sheridan was not among those present. Instead, Grant secretly had sent Sheridan to the Rio-Grande in preparation for the possibility of active hostilities with the French-Mexican forces.[footnoteRef:35] Once Sheridan arrived, he conveyed to his commanding officer in a series of dispatches an eagerness to have the pleasure of crossing the Rio Grande with the men under his command. Once safely across, they could give a permanent government to that republic. [O]ur work in crushing the rebellion will not be done until this takes place. [T]he advent of Maximilian was a portion of the rebellion and his fall should belong to its history. Juarez even if he was to be successful tomorrow could not give a stability to a government there without our helping hand.[footnoteRef:36] Grant forwarded these dispatches to President Johnson, adding that Sheridan expresses exactly the sentiments which I believe in, and have often expressed, but understood that the Johnson Administration did not want an international incident and thus Sheridan would violate no instructions [to maintain neutrality] . . . unless aggressed upon by troops there.[footnoteRef:37] [35: Badeau, Grant in Peace, 99; Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 505; Philip H. Sheridan, Personal Memoirs of Philip H. Sheridan, London: Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly: 2:210.] [36: Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan to Brig. Gen. John A. Rawlins, June 29, 1865, PUSG 15:259.] [37: USG to President Johnson, July 12, 1865, Ibid.]

Distressed with his inability to move the Johnson Administration to bolder action, Grant penned a letter to the President on June 19 which formally outlined his feelings on the matter. The letter began with a plea for securing an honorable and permanent peace whilst we still have in se[r]vice a force sufficient to insure it, which required open resistance to the Maximilian regime. Grant predicted that the establishment of such a government as Maximilians over the North American continent would leave the people of the United States nothing before us but a long, expensive and bloody war; one in which the enemies of this country will be joined by tens of thousands of disciplined [ex-Confederate] soldiers embittered against their government by the experience of the last four years. This gave the United States two major reasons for opposing the European interference in Mexico. First, all European powers (with the possible exception of Russia), according to Grant, saw in the late civil war the likelihood of the dismemberment of the country and the overthrow of Republican institutions. Second, the Mexican Imperialists opened their ports to the Confederates and prolonged the war by allowing Confederates to to cross the Rio Grande and from there to go unmolested to all parts of the world and they in return to receive in pay all articles, Arms, Munitions of War, &c. they desired. Nearly a month later, on July 15, Grant would recommend that a U.S. officer, likely Major General John M. Schofield, depart for Mexico with the task of helping direct U.S. volunteers to cross the border and aid the Liberals. At Grants behest, Schofield had just a few weeks earlier obtained the guarantee of a commission leading Liberal and United States troops into Mexico from Romero pending Schofields ability to obtain a loan for such a force from prominent financiers in New York.[footnoteRef:38] Now, Grant explained to the President that such an officer like Schofield might take service under the Liberal Government of Mexico and by giving head and shape to the foreign and Native element there would insure the restoration of the Liberal or Republican Government.[footnoteRef:39] Despite Grants repeated entreaties, he simply was unable to bring the President and the Cabinet around to his manner of thinking. Unable to secure his Mexican loan, Schofield would end up accepting after mature reflection Secretary Sewards proposal to accompany other army officers and diplomats to Paris as part of a special mission to negotiate over Louis Napoleons withdrawal from Mexico. Instead, Grant would try to aid the Liberals in Mexico by adhering to the official position of neutrality while at the same time using the presence of Sheridans troops near the Rio Grande to intimidate Maximilian and provide them much needed assistance and arms in order to capture major cities held by the Imperialists.[footnoteRef:40] [38: Romero, Mexican Lobby, 73; John M. Schofield, Forty-Six Years in the Army, (New York: The Century Co., 1897): 383.] [39: USG to President Andrew Johnson, July 15, 1865, PUSG 15:265; see also above note.] [40: Telegram, USG to Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan, July 1, 1865, PUSG 15:235-236.]

It was not in Grants personality to accept defeat easily. Beginning in August, Grant embarked on a tour of the West, inspecting military posts from New York to Michigan and meeting with the public as well as traveling up to Canada. His unofficial purpose was to find evidence of public sentiment in favor of intervention as well as assure the British authorities in Canada about the U.S. governments good faith efforts to prevent the Irish-American Fenians from making an armed incursion into Canada. A bystander to a conversation between Grant and one of Sheridans officers during the war reported in the New York Times that the Lieutenant General lit one of his cigars and proceeded to talk of his strong feelings on the Monroe Doctrine and supposedly indicated that the U. S. government should at least give all its moral force in aid of the natives against the French.[footnoteRef:41] Grant also spoke, according to the Toronto Globe, without reserve to several persons on the Mexican question on August 10 in Canada and warned the British from offering any aid to Maximilian. The result of all this was to make a war-weary public wonder whether Grants views (if reported accurately) reflected simply his personal opinion or that of the Johnson Administration.[footnoteRef:42] Grant seemed to recognize this problem when he told Brigadier General John A. Rawlins how the papers sometimes distorted his words to represent Grant as an official mouthpiece for the Administration on the issue when in reality he had shied away from connecting his views to the policy of the White House. Ultimately, Grant did not win this battle for the hearts and minds of the people and though he and Sheridan would consistently maintain that his original order to send 50,000 troops to the border and not Sewards hands-off diplomacy hastened the demise of Maximilians rule, the United States would never intervene militarily in Mexico during the remainder of Maximilians regime. He would continue to try to work through the institutional channels and get arms to the Liberals, at one point asking that the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to have the Ordnance Department give 5,000 Springfield rifles and 3,000,000 rounds of ammunition to an agent of the Liberals who resided in New York. Proposals like these continued to get no succor from the Cabinet, as everyone but Attorney General James Speed denied Grants request. [41: New York Times, August 2, 1865; Grant vouched for the essential accuracy of his recorded remarks concerning Mexican affairs in USG to Brig. Gen. John Rawlins, August 20, 1865, PUSG 15:301.] [42: Daily National Intelligencer, October 6, 1865. For critical comments on Grants seemingly belligerent position, see Milwaukee Sentinel, December 14, 1865 and Little Rock Daily Gazette, January 5, 1866.]

Grant did gain some success, though, in finally getting approval from the Secretary of War in June 1866 to ship some 2,000 Enfield rifles that had been consigned to army surplus and place them in Texas within reach of the Liberal forces which could cross the border and take the valuable arms back to Mexico. Yet Grant would not count on the Johnson Administration any longer. General arranged to talk again with President Johnson in order to stop the lukewarmness about Washington, in Mexican affairs, conveniently while Secretary Seward was absent. Although Johnson personally professed sympathy for Grants aims, the General seemed less interested in the question of whether the Cabinet would decide to allow arms sales to the Liberals at Brownsville, Texas. As he told Sheridan, Whether this is done or not, the Liberals are getting arms.[footnoteRef:43] By this time, though, Sheridan and Grant both found it ironic that those who had refused direct aid to the Liberals began to associate themselves vocally with them only when the Liberals began to overtake the Imperialists militarily during the first half of 1866.[footnoteRef:44] [43: USG to Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan, July 20, 1866, PUSG 16:243-244.] [44: USG to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, January 9, 1866, PUSG 16:6; USG to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, March 29, 1866, PUSG 16:137. Stanton submitted the proposal to the whole Cabinet and with the concurrence of everyone, except Attorney General James Speed, it was rejected. See also Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to USG, May 1, 1866, PUSG 16:138 and Stantons endorsement of Armes Trevinos request to purchase arms and ammunition in Ibid. Inadvertently some 2,000 Enfields went for sale to Trevino before the result of the Cabinets deliberations were known and further sales stopped, USG endorsed the original letter authorizing the sale with the recommendation that the remainder prevented from sale be sold to Trevino on June 8, see PUSG 16:139. For a careful treatment of the issue, see Robert Ryal Miller, Arms Across the Border: United States Aid to Juarez during the French Intervention in Mexico, 63 Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (1973): 1-68. ]

The conflict over foreign affairs between Grant and the Johnson Administration had enormous domestic consequences for the unsettled state of American politics during Reconstruction. The immediate political significance of Grants failure to move the Johnson Administration to take more drastic action against the French was the beginning of a gradual estrangement Grant would have with the President and his inner circle, including Seward. Seeking to keep Grant from joining the opposition to his Reconstruction policies, Johnson would try to dangle an appointment before Grant to accompany Mexican Minister Lewis D. Campbell to Mexico in the fall of 1866. Although Johnson believed that Grant had signaled his approval, according to notes recorded by the Presidents private secretary, the General refused to become a pawn in the political game that his good friend William T. Sherman had warned him of earlier.[footnoteRef:45] In the end, Grant would decline and Sherman would take his place, but the strain of this event had edged the ostensibly non-political soldier further towards the position assumed by Congress on Reconstruction policy. Grants passionate crusade to interpret the Monroe Doctrine into a policy for launching a military assault upon Maximilian put him entirely at odds with the Secretary of State and this wedge would only grow over the course of the remainder of Johnsons tenure. When biographer Brooks D. Simpson talks of Grants willingness to accept the Republican nomination for President in 1868 because of his commitment to secure the fruits of northern victory, one should not forget how foreign relations affected how he perceived those fruits. Grants steadfast determination to secure the continued existence of the American Union through his efforts to preserve republican self-government in Mexico would eventually lead him to accept his final public appointment to negotiate a commercial treaty between the United States and the restored Liberal government in Mexico. [45: Notes of Colonel W. G. Moore, Private Secretary to President Johnson, 1866-1868, (ed. St. George L. Sissousat), 19 American Historical Review (October 1913): 99-101.]

The Liberals in Mexico, under Juarez, succeeded in June 1867 with deposing Maximilian, executing him by firing squad and forcing the last Austrian troops protecting the Emperor to leave the country. Louis Napoleon, aware of the aid in arms that the United States offered the Liberals and desperate for a way to extricate himself out of an increasingly costly venture removed the last French presence in Mexico that spring. For Grant, the last battle of the American Civil War had ended.Although republican government had returned to Mexico, the recent wars left the country in a much weakened state financially. The ever-present likelihood of future foreign intervention continued to worry Grant. After his Presidency, he finally had the opportunity to realize a dream of his to travel abroad. His nearly two-year world tour brought him a much greater knowledge of foreign affairs, which many suspected despite Grants protestations would form the basis for another bid for the White House. During the tour, he frequently commented to John Russell Young about his knowledge and experience with Mexico. In one conversation, Grant explained that he did not favor the kind of gunboat diplomacy that other European powers used and that he believed had characterized the U.S. involvement in the Mexican War and his original attitude toward it.[footnoteRef:46] Grant seems to have exaggerated somewhat, however, the depth of his original feelings. The Grant of the Mexican War, if his own preserved correspondence of that time furnishes any guide, never actually expressed hostility to the idea of territorial acquisition. Instead, he seemed to have accepted the possibility of some kind of territorial-based indemnification from Mexico, especially if it (or the threat of it) might produce a quick end to the war and further loss of bloodshed by compelling the Mexicans to sue for peace. The position he took with Young, the same position he would maintain in his Memoirs, thus seems the product of his experience in the Civil War and subsequent efforts to drive out Maximilian. Grants willingness to equate the cause of both the Union with the Liberal cause in Mexico made him far more vocal in favor of preserving Mexicos territorial integrity from rapacious foreign powers and their supposed alliance with certain ecclesiastical powers and a wealthy, privileged fewMexican monarchists and southern slaveholders. If Grant did not favor the kind of imperial territorial ambitions of European powers, he was not wholly adverse to the idea of extending the U. S. commercial empire over Mexico, particularly if it might avoid Mexicans falling into the orbit of European influence. [46: John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant (ed. Michael Fellman), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002: 377.]

This concern over Mexican commerce and it falling prey to European exploitation made Grant receptive to a project to bind the two republics together in a commercial treaty which would provide funds for the construction of a transcontinental route, the Mexican Southern Railroad.[footnoteRef:47] After he returned from his trip around the world, he and his closest political associates arranged for Grant to make a trip to Cuba and Mexico, where Grant would, in his own words, gratify the interest which he had taken in Mexico ever since the Mexican War as well as see if possible how relations of friendship and commerce between the two nations might be established.[footnoteRef:48] Grants February 1880 trip, including his close ally Sheridan, earned the Hero of Appomattox and friend to the Liberal cause in Mexico a triumphant welcome. While the political circus of 1880 continued and the Republican nomination of Grant seemed a strong possibility, Grant returned in the late-spring to the United States. Whatever hopes he had of achieving the nomination were soon dashed as the anti-Grant forces eventually combined on James Garfield, a man known to have a difficult relationship in the past with the former President. After this defeat, Grant continued to pursue his scheme to help stabilize Mexico through American investment. He wrote to his friend Romero that if Mexico could somehow adopt more peaceful elections, perhaps American capital would aid the countrys development as there is no doubt the work of the railroads will progress rapidly and that Mexico will commence to enjoy a progress admirable and a prosperity extraordinary.[footnoteRef:49] [47: The surprisingly neglected story of Grants involvement appears, if only briefly, in Osgood Hardy, Ulysses S. Grant: President of the Mexican Southern Railroad, 24 Pacific Historical Review (May 1955): 111-120.] [48: New York Times, November 12, 1880, quoted in Ibid, 114.] [49: New York Tribune, September 25, 1880, quoted in Ibid; Badeau, Grant in Peace, 352.]

Grants involvement with many of the movers and shakers of the time, including railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington, may have given pause to some given his past dealings with scandal, but the former President saw no reason to shirk from obtaining the backing of the most important capitalists of the day. Grant would make a second trip to Mexico in April 1881, with his wife Julia, other members of his extended family, and Romero. Besides getting an opportunity finally to show his wife the very sights that had impressed him some thirty-five years ago, Grant also took the time to secure the necessary private backing for the railroad as the project would not receive any public subsidy.[footnoteRef:50] In one speech in Mexico City, the General denied that the United States aimed to secure a treaty for more territory and maintained that his purpose for championing a railroad was that I. . . conceived the idea that for the full development of this country, lines south of the city of Mexico as well as the north, were highly important.[footnoteRef:51] Though some continued to criticize the project as a boondoggle for certain wealthy interests, Grants still largely favorable public image aided the project considerably in raising funds. The death of President Garfield in September 1881 had elevated Chester Arthur, a one-time associate of Grant ally Roscoe Conkling to the Presidency. Arthur, despite his aversion to Conkling and Grant, offered the General an appointment in the winter of 1882 to negotiate with the Mexican Commissioner (Grants friend Romero) on a treaty of commerce between those two nations. The presence of two friends vitally interested in a railroad venture provided ammunition to critics of the scheme, including enemies of Grant in the U.S. Senate. For all of the Generals efforts, the treaty would fail when it reached the Senate. Grant professed bitterness at the result, seeing in the treaty the best means of securing Mexican commerce to its natural friendthe republic of the United States. This missed chance would appear in the Memoirs, such as when Grant noted how important internal improvements like railroads served to bind together the states as part of those republican institutions that had been experiments up to the breaking out of the rebellion.[footnoteRef:52] [50: Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant, (ed. John Y. Simon), New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1975: 314-316; Hardy, Ulysses S. Grant, 116.] [51: [Speech of USG in Mexico City], April 22, 1881, PUSG 31:199.] [52: Grant, Personal Memoirs, 774.]

Grants experience during the Mexican War afforded him more than an opportunity to observe future commanders. His careful observations of the people and government helped inform his very ideas about the role the United States had to serve in the world to other nations. Mexicos instability convinced him that the two countries, for all their differences, shared a common destiny. For Grant, the Union was not simply a convenient political abstraction, designed to deal with internal disagreements among states. It also served as a challenge to the European absolutism and balance of power politics that had plagued the world prior to the emergence of the United States. Furthermore, Grant would warn against the dangers of certain concentrations of power in religious institutions that could subvert the will of the majority, the only security in a republic. The Mexican War brought Grant face to face with the very fragility of that form of government and imparted to him the greatest lesson of all: in order to secure liberty at home, men like Grant must secure liberty of its friends abroad.