Board Thread:New on Turtledove/@comment-24402759-20150517212707/@comment-21519-20150521035948

Jacob, I would remind you that there were comments in IatD predicting that the US would respect Texas's independence only so long as it remained convenient for them to do so. As for the Latino states, they've been used to American statehood (even if it was the wrong America) and the US will likely claim to be the CS's successor state (at least when it suits their purposes). Returning Chihuahua and Sonora in the situation as we left it would be madness, and doing so as a reward if the anti-Hapsburg forces ever manage to chuck their emperors and establish a government to Philadelphia's liking also strikes me as unlikely.

Fenrisulven, I don't have much more to say, except this: When the UK left the Lower 26 counties, they did so because they'd decided that having an independent Ireland would be less trouble than holding them in the union by force. If they'd only recently acquired the island after enduring four Irish invasions of their homeland within the span of a lifetime, they would have certainly decided otherwise.