Mexican Exiles and the Monroe Doctrine, New York and the Borderlands, 1865

The meeting of the "Mexican Patriot Club" in the Cooper Institute in New York City on July 19, 1865 gave Mexican exiles a powerful forum from which to exalt the ideal of Republicanism in the Americas, and to hail Mexicans as heroic long-term defenders of that ideal. These exiles sought to shift public sentiment and government policy in the United States in a crucial period mid-1865 when the Mexican Republic led by President Benito Juarez faced the greatest threat from its antagonists and a new threat from its sympathizers. Theirs was a delicate public relations task. They needed to rally support for Mexico's Republic sufficient both to undermine sympathy for Mexico's Empire and loosen U.S. neutrality enforcement, yet not encourage the American expansionists then mobilizing to invade Mexico under pretext of rescuing the Republic from the troops of Napoleon III. The exiles' tactic in this meeting was to rally Americans behind the Monroe Doctrine as a principle of pan-American solidarity -a call to conscience rather than a call-to-arms.