By 1860 the United States had earned the grudging respect of European imperial powers and Latin American neighbors. As republicanism elsewhere floundered, the United States’ success, by traditional metrics of wealth and expansion, could not be ignored. By the late 1850s, British administrations along with Russia and France sought to partner with the United States to, among other things, transfer technologies, create stability in warring Mexico and Asia, end the international slave trade, and frame clearer rules for neutrality. Prosperity, territorial growth, and decades of American bragging about republicanism’s superiority thus left many perplexed about secession and war. Ambassador John Appleton noted that Russia’s imperial court “cannot understand … how a great government like ours, whose career has been eminently prosperous can be suddenly destroyed without any apparent cause, by the very people who are themselves a part of it; and who are daily receiving its benefits.”