"
Within three months the blockade and its effectiveness was to be made
the subject of the first serious parliamentary discussion on the Civil
War in America. In another three months the Government began to feel a
pressure from its associate in "joint attitude," France, to examine
again with much care its asserted policy of strict neutrality, and this
because of the increased effectiveness of the blockade. Meanwhile
another "American question" was serving to cool somewhat British
eagerness to go hand in hand with France. For nearly forty years since
independence from Spain the Mexican Republic had offered a thorny
problem to European nations since it was difficult, in the face of the
American Monroe Doctrine, to put sufficient pressure upon her for the
satisfaction of the just claims of foreign creditors. In 1860 measures
were being prepared by France, Great Britain and Spain to act jointly in
the matter of Mexican debts. Commenting on these measures, President
Buchanan in his annual message to Congress of December 3, 1860, had
sounded a note of warning to Europe indicating that American principles
would compel the use of force in aid of Mexico if debt-collecting
efforts were made the excuse for a plan "to deprive our neighbouring
Republic of portions of her territory." But this was at the moment of
the break-up of the Union and attracted little attention in the United
States.
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