It was very many years before the South recovered, and it has scarcely recovered now. Nor has the bitter feeling of the South towards the North, which arose from the war and from the many differences of which it was the outcome, even yet wholly died away. As lately as 1924 a member of one of the old Virginian families told me that the Great War, of 1914-1918, by summoning Americans from North, South, East, and West to serve in the same regiments and in a common cause, had done more to bring them together and create a sense of unity, and dispel the misunderstandings, than anything that had happened in all the years between the American War of Secession and the Great War.
Maximilian in Mexico
While the United States were thus in the agonies of their Civil contest, an attempt was made to interfere with the affairs of Mexico which was in direct defiance of that Monroe Doctrine already mentioned. Just as there is now, at this time of writing, so were there then, Europeans and European property in Mexico which the Government of the country was not able to make tolerably secure. It did not seem to be putting out much effort to secure them. Europe thought then, as she is perhaps justified in thinking now, that if the United States forbade any foreign interference with the American Continents it was their business to see that the States of those Continents behaved themselves in a reasonable manner. At that moment the United States were obviously unable to undertake any such responsibility. Europeans in Mexico therefore appealed to Europe, and especially to Napoleon III., to enforce a better government on the country. It was the sort of appeal to which the character of Napoleon, made him peculiarly ready to respond, and under his promise of support Maximilian, brother of Francis Joseph of Austria, went out to take over the government of Mexico, with the title of Emperor. His reception was by no means as warm as he had expected. On the contrary, he found his own partisans inferior in force to those of the opposing faction. For a brief while he held a nominal rule over some two-thirds of the country. The French troops supporting him were quite insufficient to put down the native republican bands. His position was very shaky even at its best.
Then in 1865 the United States, freed from their Civil War, reasserted the Monroe Doctrine, and made some demonstrations under arms which clearly indicated that they were ready to give active effect to it. Upon that, Napoleon recalled his French troops, and the already shaky position of the Mexican Emperor at once became desperate. He was captured, tried by a court martial, condemned, and shot.
So, tragically and ingloriously, ended what really was Europe's one and only attempt at action opposed to the doctrine enunciated by Monroe.
A certain implication, or what has been considered an implication, of that doctrine, namely, that the United States shall abstain from any interference with affairs foreign to her own two Continents, even as she has forbidden the foreigner to interfere with them—this implication she violated, most happily for Europe, in the Great War. But she had already violated it in her own Spanish war, of 1898, which followed on Spain's ineffective attempts to restore reasonably good government in Cuba, that island which lies in a position to guard the Gulf of Mexico and the Panama Canal. Spain was unable to enforce respect for the lives and property of Americans in the island, and, not unjustifiably, the United States, after some years of long-suffering, resolved that the Spanish rule must be overthrown. Even America herself shared in the general surprise that the complete defeat of Spain was so easy; and she was genuinely surprised also to find the sympathy of Great Britain cordially with her in the short war.
And as its results, not only Cuba itself, but also the far-off Philippines, those Spanish-owned islands where Portuguese going East and Spaniards going West had unexpectedly met a few centuries before, were given over to the United States.
Nearly at the same time certain Samoan Islands and the Hawaiian group of islands were annexed to the United States. Therefore she too must now shoulder her portion of what Kipling has well called "the white man's burden."