DK - The American Civil War

COURTING EUROPEAN ALLIES

AFTER

Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation

Proclamation, issued after the Battle of

Antietam, doomed Confederate hopes for

international recognition.

CONFLICTING BRITISH CONCERNS

In the short term, the war’s bloody outcome

concerned the British government, which wished

to end the bloodshed in North America for

humanitarian reasons, but in the long term, it

would be difficult for any British government to

side with slavery against freedom.

CSS ALABAMA

Some tensions between Northerners and Britain

would persist until after the war, especially in

relation to the destruction of Union merchant

shipping by the Confederate commerce raiders

that had been built in British shipyards.

Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner

famously declared after the war that Great

Britain should compensate the United

States for the damages inflicted by the most

famous Confederate commerce raider, CSS

Alabama, by giving it the territory of Canada.

In the end, Britain paid compensation instead.

Built in Britain and commissioned in 1862

after being armed and fitted out in Portugal’s

Azores Islands, the Alabama never visited

any Confederate ports in its two-year

career. It raided Union shipping around the

world, capturing or destroying 65 Union vessels

without loss of life on either side. The ship was

brought to battle off Cherbourg, France, in 1864,

and sunk by USS Kearsarge 284–85 ❯❯.

converting them into commerce
raiders—ships that were used to disrupt
or destroy the enemy’s merchant
shipping— in other ports. However,
British leaders gradually responded to
Northern complaints about this issue,
and the adept American minister to
London, Charles Francis Adams, ably
served the administration’s interests.
Matters came to a head when the
British government finally moved to
prevent the Confederacy from acquiring
the “Laird Rams,” two ironclad
warships being built in Liverpool,
England, that could have wreaked

havoc on the Union blockade patrols.
The Union government went as far
as to threaten war with Britain over
the two ships, and the British relented,
buying the ships for their own navy
in the fall of 1863.
The South found that if it wished
to win its independence, it would
have to rely on its own efforts and
exertions. It could not hope for the
same sort of assistance that the United
States had received from France during
the American Revolution.

KEY MOMENT

On November 8, 1861, Union Captain

Charles Wilkes, commanding USS San

Jacinto, boarded the British steamer, Trent,

traveling from Havana to England, and

arrested Confederate envoys James Murray

Mason and John Slidell. Many overly

enthusiastic Anglophobic Americans

declared Captain Wilkes a hero, while the

British were outraged by the breach of

THE TRENT AFFAIR

neutral rights and the insult given to the

British flag. The British government even

dispatched 8,000 troops to Canada, though

in reality the British armed forces were

poorly prepared for war.

In the end, cooler heads prevailed on

both sides of the Atlantic, and the Union

government released the envoys, while

avoiding any acknowledgment of guilt.

When Charles Francis Adams was presented

to Queen Victoria after the Trent Affair, he

sought to defuse tensions by appearing in

stockings and lace, as opposed to the

customary black republican broadcloth

used by most American ministers.

Emperor Napoleon III
Napoleon intended to build up French influence and
trade in the New World. Toward this he hoped to make
a formal alliance with the Confederacy.