United Kingdom and the American Civil War
The
Large-scale trade continued between Britain and the US. The US shipped grain to Britain, and Britain sold manufactured items and munitions to the US. British trade with the Confederacy fell over 90% from the prewar period, with a small amount of cotton going to Britain and hundreds of thousands of munitions and luxury goods slipped in by numerous small blockade runners operated and funded by British private interests.[1]
The Confederate strategy for securing independence was based largely on the hope of military intervention by Britain and France. A serious diplomatic dispute erupted over the "Trent Affair" in late 1861 but was resolved peacefully after five weeks.
British intervention was likely only in co-operation with France, which had an imperialistic venture underway in Mexico. By early 1863, intervention was no longer seriously considered, as Britain turned its attention elsewhere, especially toward Russia and Greece.[4] In addition, at the outbreak of the American conflict, for both the United Kingdom and France the costly and controversial Crimean War (October 1853 to February 1856) was in the still-recent past, the United Kingdom had major commitments in British India in the wake of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and France had major imperial ambitions outside of the Western Hemisphere, and was considering or had already commenced military ventures in Morocco, China, Vietnam, North Africa, and Italy.
A long-term issue was the sales of arms and warships to the Confederacy. Despite vehement protests from the US, Britain did not stop the sales of its arms and its shipyard (John Laird and Sons) from building two warships for the Confederacy, including the CSS Alabama.[5] Known as the Alabama Claims, the controversy was partially resolved peacefully after the Civil War when the US was awarded $15.5 million in arbitration by an international tribunal only for damages caused by the warships.
In the end, British involvement did not significantly affect the outcome of the war.[6] The US diplomatic mission, headed by Minister Charles Francis Adams Sr., proved to be much more successful than the Confederate missions, which were never officially recognized by Britain.[7]
Confederate policies
Confederate opinion, led by President
Davis left foreign policy to others in government and, rather than developing an aggressive diplomatic effort, tended to expect events to accomplish diplomatic objectives. The new president was committed to the notion that cotton would secure recognition and legitimacy from the powers of Europe. The men Davis selected as secretary of state and emissaries to Europe were chosen for political and personal reasons – not for their diplomatic potential. This was due, in part, to the belief that cotton could accomplish the Confederate objectives with little help from Confederate diplomats.[9]
Hubbard added that Davis's policy was stubborn and
Union policies
The Union's main goal in foreign affairs was to maintain friendly relations and large-scale trade with the world and to prevent any official recognition of the Confederacy by any country, especially Britain. Other concerns included preventing the Confederacy from buying foreign-made
British policies
British public opinion was divided on the American Civil War. The Confederacy tended to have support from the elites: the aristocracy and the landed gentry, which identified with the Southern planter class, and Anglican clergy and some professionals who admired tradition, hierarchy and paternalism. The Union was favored by the middle classes, the religious Nonconformists, intellectuals, reformers and most factory workers, who saw slavery and forced labor as a threat to the status of the working man. However, historians have noted that most Britons did not express an opinion on the matter.[12] As for the government, Chancellor of the Exchequer William Ewart Gladstone, whose family fortune had been based on slavery in the West Indies before 1833, supported the Confederacy. Foreign Minister Lord Russell wanted neutrality. Prime Minister Lord Palmerston wavered between support for national independence, his opposition to slavery and the strong economic advantages of Britain remaining neutral.[13]
Even before the war started, Lord Palmerston pursued a policy of neutrality. His international concerns were centered in Europe, where he had to watch both Napoleon III's ambitions in Europe and Otto von Bismarck's rise in Prussia. There were also serious problems involving Italy, Poland, Russia, Denmark and China. British reactions to American events were shaped by past British policies and their own national interests, both strategically and economically. In the Western Hemisphere, as relations with the United States improved, Britain had become cautious about confronting it over issues in Central America. As a naval power, Britain had a long record of insisting that neutral nations abide by its blockades, a perspective that led from the earliest days of the war to de facto support for the Union blockade and frustration in the South.[14]
Diplomatic observers were suspicious of British motives. The Russian Minister in Washington, Eduard de Stoeckl, noted, "The Cabinet of London is watching attentively the internal dissensions of the Union and awaits the result with an impatience which it has difficulty in disguising." De Stoeckl advised his government that Britain would recognize the Confederacy at its earliest opportunity. Cassius Clay, the United States Minister in Russia, stated, "I saw at a glance where the feeling of England was. They hoped for our ruin! They are jealous of our power. They care neither for the South nor the North. They hate both."[15]
Lincoln appointed
I cannot help fearing that he will be a dangerous foreign minister. His view of the relations between the United States and Britain had always been that they are a good material to make political capital of.... I do not think Mr. Seward would contemplate actually going to war with us, but he would be well disposed to play the old game of seeking popularity here by displaying violence toward us.[19]
Despite his distrust of Seward, throughout 1861, Lyons maintained a "calm and measured" diplomacy that contributed to a peaceful resolution to the Trent crisis.[18]
Slavery and trade with the Confederacy
The Confederate States came into existence after seven of the fifteen
Lincoln's
During the Civil War, several British arms companies and financial firms secretly conducted business with Confederate agents in Europe, supplying the Confederacy with badly needed arms and military wares throughout the conflict, in exchange for Southern cotton. Companies like Trenholm, Fraser & Company also provided funding for British shipyards which built blockade runners[24] used for running the Union blockade to import badly needed cotton which textile factories in Britain were heavily dependent on. British companies like Sinclair, Hamilton and Company, S. Isaac, Campbell & Company, London Armoury Company and others were the primary suppliers of arms and military supplies, frequently extending credit to Confederate agents for them to make such purchases.[25][26][27] One historian estimated that these actions extended the Civil War by two years and cost 400,000 more lives of Union and Confederate soldiers and civilians.[28]
Trent Affair
Outright war was a possibility in late 1861, when the U.S. Navy took control of a British mail ship and seized two Confederate diplomats. Confederate President
It was generally then agreed that a nation at war had the right to stop and search a neutral merchant ship if it suspected that ship of carrying the enemy's dispatches. Mason and Slidell, Wilkes reasoned, were in effect Confederate dispatches and so he had the right to remove them. On November 8, 1861, he fired twice across the bow of the Trent, sent a boat's crew aboard, seized the Confederate commissioners, and bore them off in triumph to the US, where they were held prisoner in Boston. Wilkes was hailed as a national hero.
The violation of British neutral rights triggered an uproar in Britain. Britain sent 11,000 troops to Canada, and the British fleet was put on a war footing with plans to blockade New York City if war broke out. In addition, the British put an embargo on the export of saltpetre which the US needed to make gunpowder. Approximately 90% of the world's natural reserves of saltpetre were in British territory and the US had a purchasing commission in London buying up every ounce it could get.[30] A sharp note was dispatched to Washington to demand the return of the prisoners as an apology. Lincoln, concerned about Britain entering the war, ignored anti-British sentiment, issued what the British interpreted as an apology without actually apologizing, and ordered the prisoners to be released.[29]
War was unlikely in any event, as not only was the United States importing saltpetre from Britain, it was also providing Britain with over 40% of its wheat imports during the war years, and suspension would have caused severe disruption to its food supply. Britain imported about 25–30% of its grain ("corn" in British English), and poor crops in 1861 and 1862 in France made Britain even more dependent on shiploads from New York City. Furthermore, British banks and financial institutions in the City of London had financed many projects such as railways in the US. There were fears that war would result in enormous financial losses as investments were lost and loans defaulted on.[31]
Britain's shortage of cotton was partially made up by imports from India and Egypt by 1863.
Possibility of recognizing Confederacy
The possibility of recognizing the Confederacy came to the fore late in the summer of 1862. At that time, as far as any European could see, the war seemed to be a stalemate. The US attempt to capture the Confederate capital had failed, and in the east and west alike, the Confederates were on the offensive. Charles Francis Adams Sr., warned Washington that the British government might very soon offer to mediate the difficulty between North and South, which would be a polite but effective way of intimating that in the opinion of Britain, the fight had gone on long enough and should be ended by giving the South what it wanted. Recognition, as Adams warned, risked all-out war with the United States. War would involve an invasion of Canada, a full-scale American attack on British shipping interests worldwide, an end to American grain shipments that were providing a large part of the British food supply, and an end to British sales of machinery and supplies to the US.[33] The British leadership, however, thought that if the Union armies were decisively defeated, the US might soften its position and accept mediation.[34]
The British working-class population, most notably the British cotton workers who suffered the Lancashire Cotton Famine, remained consistently opposed to the Confederacy. A resolution of support was passed by the inhabitants of Manchester and sent to Lincoln. His letter of reply has become famous:
I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the working people of Manchester and in all Europe are called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow this Government which was built on the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basis of slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe.
Through the action of disloyal citizens, the working people of Europe have been subjected to a severe trial for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstances I cannot but regard your decisive utterances on the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and re-inspiring assurance of the inherent truth and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity and freedom.
I hail this interchange of sentiments, therefore, as an augury that, whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.
— Abraham Lincoln, 19 January 1863
There is now a statue of Lincoln in Manchester, with an extract from his letter carved on the plinth.
Lincoln became a hero amongst the British working class with progressive views. His portrait, often alongside that of
The decisive factor, in the fall of 1862 and increasingly thereafter was the Battle of Antietam and what grew out of it. Lee's invasion was a failure at Antietam, and he barely escaped back to Virginia. It was now obvious that no final, conclusive Confederate triumph could be anticipated. The swift recession of the high Confederate tide was as visible in Britain as in America, and in the end, Palmerston and Russell dropped any notion of bringing a mediation-recognition program before the cabinet.
Emancipation Proclamation
During the late spring and early summer of 1862, Lincoln had come to see that he must broaden the base of the war. The Union itself was not enough; the undying vitality and drive of Northern anti-slavery men must be brought into full, vigorous support of the war effort and so the United States chose to declare itself officially against slavery. The Lincoln administration believed that slavery was the basis of the Confederate economy and leadership class, and that victory required its destruction. Lincoln had drafted a plan and waited for a battlefield victory to announce it. The Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln victory, and on September 22, he gave the Confederacy 100 days' notice to return to the Union or else on January 1, 1863, all slaves held in areas in rebellion would be free.[23] William Ewart Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a senior Liberal leader, had accepted slavery in his youth; his family had grown wealthy through the ownership of slaves in the West Indies. However, the idea of slavery was abhorrent to him, and his idea was to civilise all nations.[36] He strongly spoke out for Confederate independence. When the Emancipation Proclamation was announced, he tried to make the counterargument that an independent Confederacy would do a better job of freeing the slaves than an invading northern army would. He warned that a race war was imminent and would justify British intervention.[37] Emancipation also alarmed the British Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell, who expected a bloody slave uprising. The question then would be British intervention on humanitarian grounds. However, there was no slave uprising and no race war. The advice of the war minister against going to war with United States, as well as the tide of British public opinion, convinced the cabinet to take no action.[38]
Confederate diplomacy
Once the war with the US began, the best hope for the survival of the Confederacy was military intervention by Britain and France. The US realized that as well and made it clear that recognition of the Confederacy meant war and the end of food shipments into Britain. The Confederates who had believed in "King Cotton" (Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton for its industries) were proven wrong. Britain, in fact, had ample stores of cotton in 1861 and depended much more on grain from the US.[39]
During its existence, the Confederate government sent repeated delegations to Europe; historians do not give them high marks for diplomatic skills. James M. Mason was sent to London as Confederate minister to Queen Victoria, and John Slidell was sent to Paris as minister to Napoleon III. Both were able to obtain private meetings with high British and French officials, but they failed to secure official recognition for the Confederacy. Britain and the US were at sword's point during the Trent Affair in late 1861. Mason and Slidell had been seized from a British ship by an American warship. Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, helped calm the situation, and Lincoln released Mason and Slidell and so the episode was no help to the Confederacy.[40]
Throughout the early years of the war, British foreign secretary Lord Russell, Napoleon III, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, explored the risks and advantages of recognition of the Confederacy or at least offering a mediation. Recognition meant certain war with the US, loss of American grain, loss of exports, loss of investments in American securities, potential invasion of Canada and other North American colonies, higher taxes, and a threat to the British merchant marine with little to gain in return. Many party leaders and the general public wanted no war with such high costs and meager benefits. Recognition was considered following the
In 1863, the Confederacy expelled all foreign consuls (all of them British or French diplomats) for advising their subjects to refuse to serve in combat against the US.[42]
Throughout the war, all European powers adopted a policy of neutrality, meeting informally with Confederate diplomats but withholding diplomatic recognition. None ever sent an ambassador or official delegation to Richmond. However, they applied principles of international law and recognized both sides as belligerents. Canada allowed both Confederate and Union agents to work openly within its borders.[43]
Postwar adjustments and Alabama claims
Northerners were outraged at British tolerance of non-neutral acts, especially the building of warships and blockade runners smuggling weapons to the South. The United States at first only demanded
However, Palmerston bluntly refused to pay, and the dispute continued for years after the war. After Palmerston's death, Prime Minister Gladstone agreed to include the US war claims in treaty discussions on other pending issues, such as fishing rights and border disputes. In 1872, pursuant to the resultant Treaty of Washington, an international arbitration board awarded $15,500,000 to the US only for "direct damages" caused by British-built Confederate ships, and the British apologized for the destruction but admitted no guilt.[45]
Long-term impact
The Union victory emboldened the forces in Britain that demanded more democracy and public input into the political system. The resulting Reform Act 1867 enfranchised the urban male working class in England and Wales and weakened the upper-class landed gentry, who identified more with the Southern planters. Influential commentators included Walter Bagehot, Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and Anthony Trollope.[46] Additionally, many British and Irish men saw service in both the Union and Confederate State Army.
Popular culture
- Song: "Our Neutral Friend" on IMSLP
See also
- Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839
- United Kingdom–United States relations
- France in the American Civil War
- Canada in the American Civil War
- Bahamas in the American Civil War
- Blockade runners of the American Civil War
- Timeline of British diplomatic history
- International relations (1814–1919)
- Foreign enlistment in the American Civil War
References
- ^ ISBN 9-7810-0050-8772.
- ^ "The Lancashire Cotton Famine". Historic UK. Retrieved August 2, 2020.
- ^ "Abraham Lincoln". manchesterhistory.net. Retrieved August 2, 2020.
- ^ Niels Eichhorn, "The Intervention Crisis of 1862: A British Diplomatic Dilemma?" American Nineteenth Century History (2014) 14#2, pp. 287–310.
- ^ "American Civil War, CSS Alabama – Crew of the British Isles". Archived from the original on September 28, 2006. Retrieved September 22, 2007.
- ^ Stephen R. Wise, Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War (1991).
- ^ Martin B. Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1886 (1961), p. 333.
- ^ Charles M. Hubbard, "James Mason, the 'Confederate Lobby,' and the blockade debate of March 1862," Civil War History (1999) 45#3 pp 223–237
- ^ Hubbard, Burden Of Confederate Diplomacy (2000), p. 7
- ^ Hubbard, Burden Of Confederate Diplomacy, pp. 21–25.
- ^ Jones (1992), pp. 2–3. Hubbard, p. 17. Mahin, p. 12.
- ^ Duncan Andrew Campbell, English Public Opinion and the American Civil War (2003).
- ^ A.G. Hopkins American Empire: a global history (Princeton UP, 2018) pp 231–33.
- ^ Berwanger, p. 874. Hubbard, p. 18. Baxter, The British Government and Neutral Rights, p. 9. Baxter wrote that "the British government, while defending the rights of British merchants and shipowners, kept one eye on the precedents and the other on the future interests of the mistress of the sea."
- ^ Graebner, p. 60-61.
- ^ Mahin, p. 47. Taylor, p. 177.
- ^ Warren, pg. 82.
- ^ a b Hubert F. Dubrulle, "Lord Lyons" in David Heidler, ed. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War pp. 1234–5.
- ^ Mahin pg. 7. Mahin notes that in the 1850s, Seward had talked of annexing Canada (pg. 6) and in February 1861, he had spoken frequently of reuniting the North and South by a foreign war (pg. 7).
- ^ Duncan Andrew Campbell, English Public Opinion and the American Civil War, (2003), pp. 26–27.
- ^ R.J.M Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War, (2001), pp. 54–55.
- ^ Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain, (2012), p. 56.
- ^ a b Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: the Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War, (1999)
- ^ Bullock, 1926, pp. 320, 334
- ^ Wise, 1991, pp.
- ^ Mendelsohn, 2012, pp. 43–44
- ^ Owsley, 1959, p. 368
- ^ David Keys (June 24, 2014). "Historians reveal secrets of UK gun-running which lengthened the American civil war by two years". The Independent.
- ^ a b Norman B. Ferris, The Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis (1977)
- ^ James M McPherson "Battle Cry of Freedom"
- ^ The Lancashire Cotton Famine. In Our Time. May 14, 2015. 45 minutes in. British Broadcasting Corporation.
- ^ Ginzberg, (1936)
- ^ Martin B. Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1886 (1961); Van Deusen (1967)
- ^ Ephraim Douglass Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War (1925)
- ^ Jones (1992) ch 8–10
- ISBN 9780521079662.
- ISBN 9780465080922.
- ISBN 9781851094318.
- ^ Ginzberg (1936)
- ^ Ferris (1977)
- ^ Jones (1999)
- ^ Berwanger (1994)
- ^ Graebner (1960)
- ^ John W. Dwinelle (1870). American Opinions on the "Alabama," and other political questions. pp. 37–39.
- ^ Merli (2004)
- ^ Brent E. Kinser, The American Civil War in the Shaping of British Democracy (Ashgate, 2011)
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