Alan Taylor: evaluation

Transcript context

…Was there ever a chance of a Union invasion of Canada right after the US Civil War? There’s a chance, because that is one of the periods in which there’s a lot of tension that’s built up. The Northern leaders and the Northern public were very angry at Britain because they had allowed the Confederacy to obtain some very powerful and effective warships. The British had allowed a recognition of the Confederacy, a partial recognition of the Confederacy, in the form of seeing them as a belligerent. This really alienated a lot of Americans toward Britain, who felt that Britain was insufficiently supportive of the effort to suppress this rebellion. There was a lot of talk. And there’s a lot of triumphalism, because the Union forces in April of 1865 have been so triumphant, and the United States has one of the largest and best militaries in the world, which was unprecedented in American history. There was a lot of talk about, let’s even scores by taking Canada. Then on the other side of the ledger is that most of the public, while they didn’t like Britain and liked the idea of adding Canada, they wanted their boys to come home. It had been a long, hard, deadly war, and most of the people just wanted the army to be demobilized. It’s remarkable how quickly the Union army was demobilized. Once that happens, any organized invasion of Canada vanishes. Under the counterfactual, would America have won that war?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.