Seward's Plan to Avoid Civil War

From the March 8, 2014, Listverse "10 Totally Bizarre Plans to Win Wars" by Marc V.

In short, Secretary of War William Seward's plan was to start a forign war to short-circuit the American Civil War. During the Southern State Secession crisis of 1861, Seward wrote Lincoln and urged him to get the Union into a war with a foreign country, especially France and Spain, who had surely done things that could provoke a war between them and the United States.

This would cause the Southern states to rejoin the fold to fight them.

It never came to pass.

I Wonder If That Would Have Kept the Southern States in the Union.  --Old Secesh