Courting European Allies
Many Confederates believed that Great Britain would intervene in their favor, but it proved reluctant
to risk war with the Union and instead declared its neutrality. The Confederacy was able to acquire
important military supplies from Europe, including the infamous ships known as “commerce raiders”.
SECESSION TRIGGERS WAR 1861A
ccording to the Confederates
who believed in the power of
“King Cotton,” the fact that
Britain’s valuable textile industry
depended on Southern cotton meant
that Britain would inevitably side with
the South. James Hammond, a South
Carolinian, famously declared in 1858
that “England would topple headlong
and carry the whole civilized world
with her, save the South,” if it was
deprived of cotton supplies for three
years. When war broke out in 1861,
Confederates thus hoped to exert
pressure on Great Britain by refusing
to export cotton, believing that the
resulting economic pain would force
Britain to use the power of the Royal
Navy to break the Union blockade.
More perceptive Confederates
realized that they should not rely
on foreign powers to win their
independence. During the war’s first
year, Lee grumbled about excessive
hopes for foreign aid and declared that
“we must make up our minds to fight
our battles ourselves.”
As it turned out, the British had built
up large stockpiles of cotton because
of bumper crops before the war, and
the Confederate self-embargo also led
British mill owners to look to alternative
sources in Egypt and India. Finally, and
most crucially, the British government
did not want to risk war and years ofBEFORE
White Southerners badly misjudged both
the significance of cotton to the British
economy, and the continuing importance
of British anti-slavery.
SOUTHERN WEALTH AND VULNERABILITY
Historians have sometimes characterized the
antebellum South as a backward slave society, in
comparison to the industrializing North. This is
not altogether fair. The South did, after all, have
a significant role to play in the industrialization
of Great Britain through the export of cotton
to textile manufacturers in northern England.
The South also generated more than half of U.S.
export earnings before the war ❮❮ 16–17.
Nevertheless, many future Confederates failed to
realize that relying too much on the production
of a single cash crop made them vulnerable to
the rise of alternate sources of supply.
ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT
The modern anti-slavery movement had begun
among Quakers based in England, and Britain
had abolished slavery through a program of
compensated emancipation in the British West
Indies in the 1830s. The Royal Navy also devoted
substantial resources to patrol operations off
the African coast to suppress the slave trade.
Confederates underestimated the importance
of this anti-slavery legacy in Britain.
poor relations with the United States
for the sake of the South’s cause, until
it could show its independence to be
imminent and inevitable.
Britain declared neutrality, granting
the Confederacy belligerent
status in international law,
on May 13, 1861, but this
was more of a practical
response to the situation
than a strong desire to
intervene on the side
of the South. The
South’s new status
gave Southern agents
important benefits,
such as the ability to
buy arms, and it also
legalized Confederate
attacks on Union
merchant shipping.
These attacks would
prove devastating to
the Union fleet.Relations with Britain
Northerners took great
offense at the British
declaration, but from the European
perspective, the Confederacy had
obviously created a government that
deserved this level of international
recognition. The Union declaration
of a blockade represented a tacit
recognition that the Confederacy wasmore than just a small band of rebels.
France and its emperor, Napoleon III,
were more sympathetic to the Southern
cause due to its ambitions in Mexico,
but it would not act without the British.
Frictions between the Union
government and Britain reached their
most dangerous point when Captain
Charles Wilkes of the USS San Jacinto
violated international law by detaining
two Confederate diplomats
traveling from Cuba on a
British vessel, the Trent.
This provoked wild talk
on both sides, along with
British preparations for
a possible war, which
neither side wanted.
Lincoln supposedly
declared “one war at
a time” as the guide
for his policy and both
governments looked for
a compromise. In the
end, the Confederate
diplomats were released,
and Washington stated
that Wilkes had acted
without instructions,
instead of giving
the full apology
originally demanded
by the British.
The other variable inhibiting British
recognition was the continued influence
of anti-slavery sentiment in Great
Britain. While some British aristocrats
had a fondness for the Confederacy,
Britain was the home of the modern
anti-slavery movement, having
abolished slavery in all British territories
in 1833. As Northern war goals became
increasingly friendly toward
emancipation, it grew more difficult for
the British government to support an
administration whose vice president had
declared slavery to be its cornerstone.
While the British government remained
concerned about the high loss of life
caused by the war, the long-term result
of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
was to make British intervention all but
impossible, because now the war had
become an explicit contest between
freedom and slavery.Arms supplies to the South
Real tensions would persist, especially
with Confederate agents buying ships
in Britain, and then arming andBritish and French involvement
In this cartoon, Jefferson Davis assails a Union soldier
with a club marked “Alabama”—a reference to the
Confederate ships being built in England. John Bull,
representing Britain, and Napoleon III look on.
Cotton famine
The break in the South’s cotton exports had a devastating
effect on England’s mill workers. With no raw fiber to
process, their jobs did not exist. Unable to work, they
relied on various charities for cheap food.“Davis and other leaders of the
South ... have made a nation.”
W. E. GLADSTONE, BRITISH CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, OCTOBER 1862Charles Francis Adams
President Lincoln appointed Adams as U.S.
ambassador to Britain. His main tasks were
to ensure British neutrality in the war and to
try to limit British arms sales to the South.