The Federal Government's desperate struggle—funding revolutionary organizations in various countries to launch uprisings—naturally could not be allowed to become known to those governments.
If the news leaked, the Northern Government might not be finished. Every country still needed a divided United States, and would not beat it to death with a single stick. But Lincoln's administration would certainly be finished at once.
Even the capitalists supporting them would abandon them at the first opportunity, perhaps even jump out to stomp on them.
It could not be helped. The great powers could wrangle three parts of reason out of no reason at all—what if they actually had reason on their side? Without giving Britain, France, Austria, and Spain a satisfactory explanation, the Federal Government could never get past this.
Of course, none of that mattered to President Lincoln anymore. Given the current situation, he would lose office even if he did nothing. If he stirred things up, the worst that could happen was being thrown out early.
He had not directly planned these operations. As long as no one was caught with hard evidence proving the covert funding of these revolutionary organizations, it remained within the acceptable bounds of political struggle. Being driven from office would settle the matter.
The party that truly had to bear responsibility was the Federal Government. It was merely a question of how much compensation it would have to pay. That was still better than having several great powers intervene with their full strength.
Dividing the United States was the shared desire of all nations; how many pieces it would be split into depended on the actual operation. Lincoln was unwilling to place his hopes in the moral integrity of other countries, and chose to make one final gamble.
If it succeeded and internal turmoil erupted