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yeah there was talk of that and in fact %uh william h seward's famous
memorandum of april first eighteen sixty one
%uh proposed that the united states
stir up a controversy with
with either spain or france
or england
%uh over their violations of the monroe doctrine
in mexico and in what was then called santo domingo dominican republic today
seward had this idea that of what he called this is during the secession winter of eighteen
sixty sixty one
first he had the idea that he would be the premier of the lincoln administration that he
would be running things
because he was far more experienced
he had expected of course to be the republican nominee for the president
%uh so and he was secretary of state was of course the the top level of the cabinet
in those days so he expected to be running things
and he also was very much in favor of what he called voluntary reconstruction
that is the seceded states had gone out
but we ought to come up with some kind of policy to encourage them to come back voluntarily
and that's how we're going to solve this problem of secession
%uh that didn't seem to be going very well
and there were all these tensions about fort sumpter
so seward writes this memorandum
in which he
says let's pull the troops out of fort sumpter but we'll reinforce fort pickens just as a
symbol
but more important
%uh let's send %uh strong
diplomatic protests
to france spain and england about
their intervention in mexico they had all sent
%uh they had all intervened in mexico to help collect owed to their nationals
and spain was also sending troops to santo domingo the disorder this is all a violation of
the monroe doctrine you know let's
let's call them on this
and maybe
you know we might even get a war out of this and that will reunite north and south
lincoln you know lincoln put the squibash on that and said you know want nothing
to do with this but that's probably where what you're talking about comes from