Thunderhawk wrote:I was under the impression that Mexican freedom fighters (name?) were buying military supplies from US factions (South, groups of deserters, profiteers, etc.) and getting either direct or indirect aid from Britain (as the south did).
In the war of independence (1810-1821), I doubt american involvement was pronounced since the US was not that powerful at the time, and it itself was involved in a war with Britain from 1812 to 1815. Aside from this, the war of independence was mostly a war of attrition.
As for the war with France (40 years later), I am unsure how much support came from factions
during the civil war, but it couldn't have been much since most of the resources would have been channeled towards their own conflict. After the war, there was a more substantial procurement of arms, but by that time the balance of the conflict had already changed, and while the US put troops on the border and made threatening gestures, the retreat of the French troops was probably more due to the rise of Bismarck in Germany than to this gesture.
Furthermore, Im not sure if WW1 would have actually happened at all. Even if Napoleon came and fell as he did historically, the European geopolitics of the 19th century would surely be different with a dominant Britain and no nice 3rd party state to buy and sell arms/equipmnent/etc to.
But even with a vastly larger empire compared to Germany, it does not appear to have cowed Germany much in the run-up to WWI. I am unsure what the real effect would be.