How the Battles of Puebla and Gettysburg are Linked in Saving Democracy

By Patrick J. Kelly, San Antonio Express News

The 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a watershed defeat for the Confederate States of America, occurred earlier this month.

One of the untold stories of the Civil War, however, is that if Gen. Robert E. Lee had pulled off another one of his military miracles in rural Pennsylvania, historians might now be writing of the pivotal role that Texas played in upending the democratic form of government the people of North America now take for granted.

Engaged in a desperate struggle for union, the Lincoln administration was unable to halt Emperor Napoleon III’s deployment of French troops to Mexico in early 1862. The French leader invaded Mexico as part of his “Grand Scheme” to replace the democratically elected government of Benito Juárez with a European monarch, the Archduke Maximilian of Austria.

Juárez’s Liberal army offered unexpectedly stiff resistance to the invaders, most notably by temporarily halting the French advance at Puebla on May 5, 1862 (the famous Cinco de Mayo).

The Confederacy, however, hoped to leverage the Mexican question to help persuade the French emperor to offer diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo by SPakhrin]

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