United Kingdom in the American Civil War

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For the most part, Britain chose to remain neutral during the American Civil War. Although Britain did remain mostly neutral, it had some involvement with both the United States of America and the Confederate States of America. In the end, these instances of minor British involvement did not impact the outcome of the war.

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[edit] Slavery

The Confederate States of America was based mostly on the institution of slavery which was interpreted as completely repugnant by most nations by the middle of the nineteenth century. Neither Britain nor France would go along with any nation that fought to preserve slavery, let alone aid it. But up to the fall of 1862, slavery was not an issue in the war. The Federal government had explicitly declared that it was fighting solely to save the Union. If a Southern emissary wanted to convince Europeans that they could aid the South without thereby aiding slavery, he could prove his case by citing the words of the President and Congress. As far as Europe was concerned, no moral issue was involved; the game of power politics could be played with a clear conscience.

[edit] The Trent Affair

Main article: Trent Affair

During the height of the war, the threat of European intervention was real and immediate. Outright war with Britain nearly took place in the fall of 1861, when a U.S. naval officer, Captain Charles Wilkes, undertook to capture two Confederate emissaries with an unexpected result. Confederate President Jefferson Davis had named two distinguished Southerners, James M. Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana, as commissioners to represent Confederate interests abroad, Mason was to go to England and Slidell to France. They got out of Charleston, South Carolina, on a blockade runner at the beginning of October and went via Nassau to Havana, where they took passage for England on the British mail steamer Trent.

At this time the USS San Jacinto was returning to the United States from the African coast. The ship put in at a Cuban port, looking for news of Confederate agents who were reported to be active in that vicinity. While there, the ship's commander, Wilkes, received word of Mason and Slidell's presence. It was generally agreed at this time 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 he had the right to remove them. So on November 8, 1861, he steamed out into the Bahama Channel, fired twice across the Trent’s bow, sent a boat's crew aboard, seized the Confederate commissioners, and bore them off in triumph to the United States, where they were lodged in Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. Wilkes was hailed as a national hero. Congress voted him its thanks, and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, commended him.

This triggered an uproar in Britain which threatened to bring the United Kingdom to war. Eleven thousand British troops were sent to Canada, the British fleet was put on a war footing, and a sharp note was dispatched to the United States, demanding return of the prisoners and an apology. Lincoln, concerned about Britain entering the war, issued an apology and ordered the prisoners released.

The Trent Affair had been symptomatic of the heavy strain the war had put on relations between the United States and Britain, demonstrating the danger that an unexpected occurrence might provoke hostilities.

[edit] Potentially recognizing the Confederacy

Much more serious was the situation that developed late in the summer of 1862. At that time, as far as any European could see, the Confederacy was beginning to look very much like the winner. The Northern 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 United States Secretary of State 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 ought to be ended by giving the South what it wanted.

Earl Russell had given Mason no encouragement whatever, but after news of the Second Battle of Bull Run reached London and the Prime Minister, agreed that along in late September or thereabouts there should be a cabinet meeting at which Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary would ask approval of the mediation proposal. (Implicit in all of this was the idea that if the United States government should refuse to accept mediation, Britain would go ahead and recognize the Confederacy.) Then, Russell and Palmerston concluded not to bring the plan before the cabinet until they got further word about Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North. If the Northerners were beaten, then the proposal would go through; if Lee failed, then it might be well to wait a little longer before taking any action.

The British working class population, most notably the British cotton workers during the Lancashire Cotton Famine, remained consistently opposed to the Confederacy. But the decisive factor, in the fall of 1862 and increasingly thereafter, was the Battle of Antietam and what grew out of it.

Antietam by itself showed that Lee's invasion was not going to bring that final, conclusive Confederate triumph which had been anticipated. The swift recession of the high Confederate tide was as visible in Britain as in America, and in the end Palmerston and Russell concluded that it would not be advisable to bring the mediation-recognition program before the cabinet.

Far more significant than Antietam, however, was the Emancipation Proclamation.

[edit] The 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 antislavery men must be brought into full, vigorous support of the war effort, and to bring this about the Northern government must officially declare itself against slavery. Abraham Lincoln was preparing such a speech and would not give it until a major victory took place. Antietam gave Lincoln the victory he had to have, and on September 22 he issued the famous proclamation, the gist of which was that on January 1, 1863, all slaves held in a state or a part of a state which was in rebellion should be free.

The Northern Government now was committed to a broader cause, with deep, mystic overtones; it was fighting for union and for human freedom as well, and the very nature of the Union for which it was fighting would be permanently deepened and enriched. A war goal with emotional power as direct and enduring as the Confederacy's own had at last been erected for all men to see.

And in Europe the American Civil War had become something in which no western government dared to intervene. The governments of Britain, France, or any other nation could play power politics as it chose, as long as the war meant nothing more than a government's attempt to put down a rebellion; but no government that had to pay the least attention to the sentiment of its own people could take sides against a government which was trying to destroy slavery. The British cabinet was never asked to consider the proposition which Palmerston and Russell had been talking about, and after 1862 the chance that Great Britain would decide in favor of the Confederacy became smaller and smaller and presently vanished entirely. The Emancipation Proclamation had locked the Confederates in an anachronism that could not survive in the modern world.

[edit] Col. Arthur Fremantle and the Battle of Gettysburg

On April 2, 1863 Col. Arthur Fremantle, a member of Her Majesty's Coldstream Guards, came to America traveling through parts of the Confederate States of America and the Union. Contrary to popular belief, Fremantle was not an official representative of the British; instead, he was more of a "tourist".

Fremantle entered the Confederacy through a Mexican town of to avoid being in violation of the Union blockade. Travelling through Texas, the deep south, and then finally arriving in the company of the Army of Northern Virginia on June 27, Fremantle witnessed the Battle of Gettysburg as part of a cadre of foreign observers attached to the headquarters of Lt. General James Longstreet. Taking his leave of the Confederates after the retreat from Gettysburg, Fremantle crossed into the North, and arrived in New York City on July 12, the day before the outbreak of the New York Draft Riots, which the alarmed Englishman witnessed first hand.

When he got back to England, he wrote a book on his experiences in America, Three Months in the Southern States, which was published three months before the end of the war. Despite what he saw at Gettysburg, the book predicted a certain Southern victory.

[edit] See also

Canada in the American Civil War

[edit] Sources

[edit] External links

[edit] Book Sources