In 1881, Republican James G. Blaine has ridden a hard-line platform of anti-Confederatism into the White House, having defeated Democratic incumbent Samuel J. Tilden in the 1880 presidential election. Both American nations have been sanctioning Indian raids into each other's territory. The international tension between the United States and the Confederate States peaks when Confederate President James Longstreet, desiring a Pacific coast for the Confederacy so that the South can have a transcontinental railroad for itself, purchases the northwestern provinces of Sonora and Chihuahua from the financially strapped Second Mexican Empire (which is still ruled by Maximilian) for CS $3,000,000. Blaine uses the "coerced" purchase as a "casus belli", leading to the commencement of what will later become known as the "Second Mexican War".