The American Civil War was an event of great international importance.1 Union and Confederate leaders recognized that their success or failure might swing on actions taken or not taken by the European great powers. European leaders, in turn, saw enticing opportunities and grave threats in the conflagration across the Atlantic. For Europeans, the Civil War also had momentous ideological implications. Conservatives welcomed the breakup of the Union, which some had long predicted, hoping that it would eliminate the menace of U.S.-style democracy throughout the world. Along with President Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, liberals viewed the Union as the "last best hope of earth," agreeing that upon its survival hinged the future of republicanism for "the whole family of man."2 The triumph of the Union, as Lincoln seems to have understood, ensured that within a short time the United States would emerge as a major world power.
The Civil War was part of a worldwide mid-nineteenth-century flowering of nation-building, a broader effort on the part of peoples across the globe to affirm, often through force of arms, their national identity. In Europe, Hungarians and Poles rose up in unsuccessful revolts against Austria and Russia. Modern nations took shape in Italy and Germany through military conquest. After a short war, the Swiss formed a federal union binding together cantons previously divided by religion. The Taiping "rebellion" raged for years in China at gruesome cost; the 1868 Meiji Restoration converted Japan from a feudal entity into a modern nation-state. The quest for national identity extended to North America. With indirect U.S. support, Mexicans frustrated France's attempt to reestablish an American empire. The threat of U.S. annexation during the Civil War forced Britain to shore up Canada's vulnerability, leading in 1867 to creation of a united nation under a federal constitution with a centralized government.
The war also had enormous global implications. In the United States before 1861, union was an incomplete concept, especially in the South. The Civil War can thus be seen as an effort to establish a nation still not completely formed. Like similar struggles elsewhere, this was accomplished by force of arms. The Union victory also marked a turning of the tide internationally in favor of nationalism, solidifying a worldwide trend toward nation-states. More important, the Civil War fused nationalism with liberalism, giving significant moral purpose to nationalism, assuring that popular government could survive, and renewing hope among liberals across the world.3 The steamship, telegraph, and trade brought nations closer at the same time nationalism was highlighting differences and provoking conflict. Other nations closely watched the U.S. internal struggle. Americans were more aware of events elsewhere because of increased immigration, faster and cheaper communication, growing literacy, and mass-circulation newspapers.4
Still clinging to dreams of imperial glory in the Western Hemisphere, Europeans attempted to exploit America's absorption in its domestic struggles. Spain invaded Santo Domingo in March 1861. In the spring of 1863, France's Napoleon III sent troops into Mexico. Europe itself was wracked with conflict during these years, however, putting a premium on caution in its handling of the American war. Crises erupted in 1862 from the Italian Risorgimento and Austria's conflict with Prussia. In 1863, the Polish rebellion against Russia threatened a general European war. By dividing the great powers against each other, these events rendered less likely any form of intervention in U.S. affairs. By increasing problems for France in Europe, German and Italian unification influenced Napoleon's eventual withdrawal from Mexico.5
For both Union and Confederacy, diplomacy was vital. Should the Europeans recognize the belligerency and eventually the independence of the South, offer economic and military aid, perhaps even send military forces, they could ensure its survival and ultimate independence. Their neutrality and refusal to intervene, on the other hand, would help the Union, perhaps even seal Confederate doom. Americans on both sides remembered, in this regard, that French intervention in 1778 had ensured the success of their revolution.6
Confederate diplomacy was founded on naïveté and illusion. Facing a huge disadvantage in such essential sinews of war as population, natural resources, and industrial capacity, the South might have looked abroad to make up the deficiency. In fact, southerners were strangely ambivalent toward the outside world. They believed themselves sophisticated and in touch with European elites. But they were quite out of tune with the prevailing currents of liberal nationalism in Europe.7 Certain of their rectitude and invincibility, they badly misread European attitudes toward their cause and their own need for outside assistance. Especially in the Confederacy's first years, they undervalued the importance of diplomacy. President Jefferson Davis appointed incompetents to the vital position of secretary of state. He and his advisers did not actively seek foreign recognition and aid. If recognition was not forthcoming, some leaders arrogantly reasoned, so what? The "sovereign State of Mississippi can do a great deal better without England than England can do without her," its governor boldly—and recklessly—proclaimed.8
For years, southerners had fancied that they held a trump card. King Cotton, it was called, and it was based on the fundamental—and ultimately flawed—assumption that Europe in general and Britain in particular so depended on southern cotton that they had to ensure its continued import. In theory, at least, it made sense. When the Civil War broke out, about one-fifth of the population of Great Britain made a living from the manufacture of cotton, 80 percent of which came from the American South. France imported 90 percent of its cotton from the South; its textile factories employed 250,000 people. Should the cotton supply be cut off, the theory went, the European powers would be reduced to economic ruin and threatened with revolution. Southerners thus concluded that if the Union attempted a blockade, which they fully anticipated, Britain and France would have to intervene to ensure their own survival. To underscore the point, they burned some 2.5 million bales at the start of the war.9
The architect of Union diplomatic strategy and the individual mainly responsible for its implementation was Secretary of State William Henry Seward. Seward was in many ways a strange person: "I am an enigma even to myself," he once remarked. A man of enormous energy, sloppy in appearance, he was also a genial host, a lover of fine cigars and brandy, a great raconteur, a person of such magnetism, Henry Adams once said, that he could "charm a cow to statesmanship." A man of considerable vision and sophistication, he was also earthy and a total political animal. He was brash, impulsive, and hot-tempered, given to bluster and threats. But he was most dangerous, associates said, "when he pretends to agree a good deal with you."10
More than a bit vainglorious, he fancied himself at the outset a prime minister to the younger and less experienced Lincoln, and he concocted schemes that bordered on the bizarre. For example, on April Fools' Day, 1861 (appropriately), he proposed that the crisis of secession might be averted if the United States declared war on France and Spain simultaneously. This "wrap the world in fire" proposal had the presumed advantage of holding the Union together by instigating a foreign war. Lincoln had the good sense to reject it.
After this inauspicious beginning, Seward matured and went on to conduct Union diplomacy with distinction, maneuvering astutely through a series of crises. Employing a policy of controlled anger, he repeatedly emphasized to European powers the dangers of sticking their noses in America's troubles. More than once, he demonstrated that rarest and most essential of diplomatic skills, talking tough enough to satisfy his domestic constituency and give an adversary pause while compromising when the situation demanded it. He carefully cultivated a madman image, encouraging other nations to believe him reckless. He often reminded Britain and France of the dangers of intervention in U.S. affairs, warning that a Union victory would mean a high price to pay later on. He became a fervent spokesman for the Union and the republican principles upon which it was founded. Once remembered for little more than the purchase of Alaska, which, of course, was labeled his "folly," Seward now ranks among the nation's best secretaries of state.
Lincoln proved a perfect complement to his brilliant and sometimes volatile adviser. The president brought no diplomatic experience to the White House. He had traveled only to Canada, knew no foreign languages, and even by nineteenth-century-American standards would be considered provincial. But he appointed able people to key positions. He was a master at managing the strong men who worked with him. A natural-born politician, he had an instinctive feel for the diplomatic art. Rivals for the presidency, he and Seward formed what Lincoln's personal secretary John Hay called an "official connection hallowed by a friendship so absolute and sincere," a true rarity in government. Lincoln found relief from the pressures of war in Seward's convivial Lafayette Square parlor. For the most part, he left the secretary of state free to do his job, only occasionally reining in his excesses. Above all, Lincoln was the quintessentially American practical idealist. As the war wore on, he eloquently voiced the importance of a Union victory for the worldwide cause of freedom and shrewdly maneuvered between sometimes conflicting domestic and foreign pressures to realize the ideals he preached.11
At the start of the Civil War, only tsarist Russia, among the European powers, stood squarely with the Union. This curious entente between autocratic Russia and the world's leading democracy was deeply rooted in recent history. In the 1840s, the two nations had followed non-conflicting expansionist courses. Each saw the other as a potential check against Britain. Americans played an important role in Russia's economic development, especially in transportation and communications. The two nations developed a remarkable cultural affinity. During the Crimean War, the United States became "considerably Russified," in Secretary of State William Marcy's words, maintaining a benevolent neutrality that verged on the alliance Americans professed to abhor. The United States sold Russia large quantities of coal, cotton, and war supplies. American volunteers fought with Russia; U.S. doctors served with its army. Contacts between the two nations increased after the war, and the rise of abolitionism in both countries in the 1850s provided another important link.12
Russians feared with the outbreak of the Civil War that the United States would not be able to balance Britain during a period of instability in Europe. They were determined to repay U.S. support during the Crimean War. Tsar Alexander welcomed to St. Petersburg in June 1861 the Union minister, Cassius Clay of Kentucky, hailing two nations "bound together by a common sympathy in the common cause of emancipation." Throughout four years of bloody warfare in America and turbulence in Europe, his country never wavered from that position.13
The other major powers, France and England, were sharply divided on the American Civil War. In England, the rising forces of liberalism despised slavery and saw the United States as a beacon of democracy in a conservative world. Despite reservations about slavery, more conservative Britons and indeed the European ruling classes generally considered the breakup of the "American colossus" as "good riddance of a night mare."14
They felt some kinship with the stability, order, and gentility of the southern social system, in contrast to the money-grubbing plutocracy and dangerous mobocracy that, in their eyes, characterized the Union.
Those Europeans responsible for the conduct of diplomacy, balance-of-power politicians in the great age of European realpolitik, saw advantages in a divided America as opposed to a United States. Some Britons, in particular, concluded that Canada and other vital interests in the Western Hemisphere might be more secure with a balance of power in North America instead of U.S. hegemony. Seeking to emulate his famous uncle and fire French national pride through foreign adventurism, Napoleon III thoroughly despised the United States and saw the Monroe Doctrine as a major obstacle to his grand scheme for restoring national glory and containing republicanism by rebuilding in America a French empire centered upon Mexico.
Finally, to some Europeans, the principle of self-determination, as manifested in southern secessionism, had an appealing ring. The staunchly pro-Confederate Times of London, undoubtedly with a twinkle in its journalistic eye, found an "exact analogy between the government in Washington and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces."15 Misjudging U.S. determination to restore the Union and taking Lincoln's early caution on slavery at face value, some British leaders viewed the war as a "meaningless bloodbath." They hoped for peace, and saw separation as an acceptable means to that end.
Although sympathetic to the South and the idea of secession, European leaders were not disposed to intrude. The adventurism that had raised southern hopes of support in fact had left France overextended. A newly cautious Napoleon increasingly deferred to British leadership. British leaders saw advantages in separation and felt some urge to end the war on humanitarian grounds, but they refused to take risks. They listened to Seward's warnings and carefully avoided steps that might provoke war with the United States. They recognized the importance of U.S. trade to their economy and refused to jeopardize it. Much like the United States in the Napoleonic era, they wanted to avoid entanglement and trade with both sides. Neutrality was thus the obvious choice. They sought to steer a delicate course between the two belligerents while protecting their interests and keeping their own people from involving their nation in war. Above all, they sought to stay out of the war and ensure that France did the same.
The combatants themselves provoked the first international crisis of the Civil War. The Lincoln administration adamantly insisted that it faced nothing more than an insurrection, but it employed means appropriate for full-scale war. Seeking to strangle the Confederacy at birth, it proclaimed a blockade, even though, technically, a blockade was an act of war, and, practically, it did not have enough ships to seal off a three-thousand-mile coastline. The Confederacy sent three commissioners to Europe seeking recognition. Using precedents set by the United States, it authorized the employment of privateers—the "militia of the sea"—as an "efficient and admirable instrument of defensive warfare." The Union threatened to treat privateers as pirates.16
Britain responded on May 13, 1861, by proclaiming its neutrality. To some extent the declaration reflected rising hostility toward the United States. The British resented the protective tariff passed by the Republican Congress in 1861 and the Union blockade. They may have moved too fast. They announced their neutrality without consulting Washington. Union leaders considered the move at best premature, at worst outright hostile. Still, the actions taken by the combatants, especially the blockade, left little choice. British leaders saw the rebellion for what it was—a war. They cleverly harked back to precedents set by George Washington in 1793.
The British correctly insisted that they were not taking sides, but their actions appeared to favor the South. The declaration of neutrality automatically conceded belligerent status to the Confederacy. It was seen in both North and South (incorrectly as it turned out) as a precursor to recognition of independence and perhaps even aid. Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell further angered the Union by receiving the Confederate commissioners informally and announcing that Britain and France would act in concert in issues dealing with the war.
"God damn them!" Seward roared in response. His famous Dispatch No. 10 of May 21, 1861, although toned down by Lincoln, still threatened a break in relations if Britain continued to meet with southern representatives and otherwise moved closer to recognizing Confederate independence.17 He demanded respect for the Union blockade. When the British and French ministers visited him together, he insisted on seeing them separately. The U.S. minister to England, Charles Francis Adams, underscored the secretary's warnings. Arriving at his post just as the neutrality crisis erupted, Adams went out of his way to avoid antagonizing his hosts by appearing at court in the traditional stockings and lace rather than the black republican garb required by Marcy's 1854 dress circular. Echoing Seward's warnings, he threatened to depart before beginning his mission if Britain gave further comfort to the enemy.
Taking heed of Union protests and warnings, the British maintained a proper neutrality, offending both sides but increasingly leaning toward the Union. Recognizing the future value of precedents set by Washington, they did not challenge the blockade, despite its questionable legality. To the consternation of southerners, Russell did not receive the Confederate commissioners again. Britain refused to admit privateers to its ports, depriving the Confederacy of the presumed advantages of its "militia of the sea." British leaders did not want to appear to be supporting slavery. They were well aware of the long-run threat of diminishing cotton imports, but because of large crops in 1860 their warehouses were full and they could accept the short-term loss rather than provoke the Union. For the moment, they adopted a wait-and-see demeanor, letting the American dust settle before they acted. Sometimes in diplomacy the "wisest strategy was to do nothing," Russell explained. "They who in quarrels interpose, will often get a bloody nose," Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, the consummate realist, pointedly reminded his colleagues.18 Even the Confederate victory at First Bull Run in July 1861, which momentarily encouraged the South and demoralized the North, failed to budge Britain from its strategy. Now the Confederacy protested British "truckling" to Seward's "arrogant demands" and acceptance of the "so-called blockade."
This changed suddenly in November 1861 when an incident at sea brought the United States and Britain to the verge of war. The Trent affair was the handiwork of the brilliant and eccentric Capt. Charles Wilkes. An accomplished scientist as well as naval officer, Wilkes had headed the Great United States Exploring Expedition on its worldwide journey in the 1840s.19 Arrogant, overbearing, as paranoid as the legendary Capt. William Bligh, he was also impulsive and ambitious—he once promoted himself to captain while at sea and ostentatiously donned the uniform he had packed for the occasion. His actions in 1861 made clear the way an impetuous individual could provoke a major crisis.20 Learning that recently appointed southern diplomats James Mason and John Slidell were aboard the British ship Trent en route from Havana to Europe via St. Thomas, Wilkes, on his own authority, stopped and boarded the neutral ship. Taking upon himself the role of international lawyer and prize court judge, he captured Mason and Slidell. Without searching the ship or taking it to prize court, he sent it on its way. In fact, the neutral vessel was carrying southern dispatches, generally recognized as contraband, but by not following the proper rules of search and seizure Wilkes rendered his actions illegal.
The capture of Mason and Slidell reversed the traditional roles of America and Britain in maritime disputes and provoked anger across the Atlantic. Britons were furious; there was much loose talk of war.21 The cabinet was understandably outraged and demanded that the United States disavow Wilkes's actions, release Mason and Slidell, and apologize. The dying Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's closest adviser, softened the tone of the cabinet's ultimatum, giving diplomacy a chance to work, but British leaders were still prepared to break relations, the last step before war. The nation began to mobilize and took steps to fortify Canadian defenses. France backed Britain and even proposed joint intervention in the Civil War, a step London quickly and wisely rejected. All "the world is disgusted by the insolence of the American Republic," Russell exclaimed.22
The U.S. reaction was mixed. To a nation starved for victories, the capture of the two Confederate diplomats was welcome news, especially since Mason and Slidell had been among the most rabid of southern disunionists. Northerners hailed Wilkes's audacity. Some hotheads responded to British war fever with bellicose talk of their own. Others recognized that Wilkes had violated the nation's traditional stand for freedom of the seas. In time, moreover, even the hottest of heads perceived the difficulty of defeating Britain and the Confederacy at once and recognized that a war with Britain might ensure southern independence. At first complacent, Lincoln and Seward gradually recognized the hornet's nest Wilkes had stirred. Near-panic in financial circles encouraged their desire for compromise. In this instance, Lincoln continued to talk tough to his domestic audience while letting Seward arrange a face-saving compromise. The secretary readily assented to British demands to give up the two diplomats. Since they were contraband, he insisted, their seizure had been legal, but Wilkes's failure to follow the rules forced their release. He also justified his action in terms of America's long-standing support for freedom of the seas and its opposition to impressment.
The Trent affair was both ominous and useful, forcing the United States and Britain at an early stage to confront the risks and possible costs of war. By eliminating a very real threat of conflict with Britain, it left the Union free to concentrate on defeating the Confederacy. But it did not end the possibility of recognition of southern independence or British intervention. And British leaders appear to have concluded from the experience that the best way to deal with the United States was to take a hard line.23
Following the Trent crisis, while Union and Confederate armies settled into their bloody struggle, diplomats from both sides competed for advantages that might determine the outcome of the war. Southern diplomacy could never quite rise above its considerable limits. Communications posed especially difficult problems. The blockade and lack of access to a cable made it extremely difficult to issue instructions and receive dispatches. Confederate officials often had to get news from the northern press. Dispatches were lost or captured and sometimes appeared in Union newspapers.24 In dealing with Caribbean countries, southerners had to explain away their aggressive past, something they tried to do—with only limited success—by noting that they had sought additional territory only to preserve a "balance of power in a Government from whose dominant majority they feared oppression and injury."25 The Confederacy faced a huge challenge in persuading Britain and France to do things that threatened war with the Union. Most important, it could never overcome the stigma of slavery.
Ironically, although the Confederacy inherited through the national Democratic Party a corps of experienced diplomats, it made notably poor appointments. The first commissioners sent to England were an undistinguished group not well suited to a difficult assignment. William Lowndes Yancey, their spokesman, defended slavery with such passion that he quickly made himself unpopular in England.26 Slidell and Mason were both seasoned diplomats, but they were not especially effective. Mason was an intelligent individual, but his boorish behavior, his errant aim with tobacco juice, and his reputation as an apologist for slavery limited his efforts in England. Slidell was astute and experienced and presumably had an affinity with the French through his background in Louisiana and fluency in the language, but he never grasped what motivated French officials or how the government operated. Historian Charles Roland has wryly observed that the two did more good for their cause while incarcerated in a northern prison than when they actually took their posts. Mexican recognition could have been a huge boon to the Confederacy, but John Pickett of Kentucky was as bad a choice for that country as Joel Poinsett and Anthony Butler. Like those two notorious predecessors, he blustered and threatened and displayed open contempt for the Mexican nation and people. His personal behavior was reprehensible—he was jailed for assaulting another American in Mexico City and eventually bribed his way out. In all, southern diplomats were a provincial lot who, even by the standards of the time, evinced enormous insensitivity to foreign cultures. They were much less astute than their Union counterparts when dealing with world affairs.27
Southern foreign policy was poorly conceived. Confederate leaders did not give diplomacy high priority or adequate attention at the outset. By the time they recognized its importance, it was too late. Confident of victory, they did not seek alliances or even foreign assistance. Inexplicably, the Confederacy did not try to establish ties with Russia despite its size and the importance of cotton exports. It did not appoint a mission until late 1862; the commissioner never made it to St. Petersburg.28 The South perceived the importance of an alliance with Mexico to secure access to the outside world through its ports, but it pursued this important goal in a bumbling way. Much in the mode of Butler, Pickett tried to bribe Mexico into recognition. That failing, like Poinsett, he backed the political opposition. When Mason met unofficially with Russell, he did not press the case for recognition and aid, perhaps the South's only hope for survival, letting Britain off the hook.
Even where it achieved some success, southern diplomacy was hemmed in by sharp limitations. Displaying a rare shrewdness born perhaps of necessity, the Confederacy negotiated in 1861 treaties with the Five Civilized Tribes living in Indian Territory in Oklahoma, even pledging that the Indians would not be "troubled or molested" by individuals or the states. The key provision for the Indians was the protection offered against the Union; in return, they vowed fealty to the South and even promised to fight. When the Confederacy could no longer provide such protection, however, and this came as early as the spring of 1862, the alliance disintegrated. The Indians were not inclined to assist a Confederacy that could do nothing for them.29
Confederate propaganda also revealed limitations. The key figure was Henry Hotze, a Swiss-born Mobile journalist who in May 1862 launched on his own the Index, a weekly newspaper propounding the southern point of view. In time, the Richmond government began to subsidize Hotze's work. It also sponsored a propaganda effort in France. Late in 1863, the Confederacy promoted the founding of a Society to Promote the Cessation of Hostilities, a pro-southern organization that used fact sheets, handbills, and lectures to sway British opinion toward recognition. Confederate propaganda evinced some sophistication, revealing a growing maturity in southern foreign relations. Propagandists shrewdly concentrated on the hardest-hit areas of Britain, where they presumed their message would be best received. They admitted, however, that they could not get their point of view across even in these areas because of fierce working-class opposition to slavery.30
The South continued to rely on King Cotton. The voluntary embargo requested by the Confederate government was remarkably effective, far more so than Jefferson's leak-plagued efforts before 1812, making clear the power of southern nationalism. By the spring of 1862, the shortage of cotton began to have significant effects in Europe. Baron Rothschild spoke of a "whole continent in convulsion." Many British mills closed in 1862, prices skyrocketed, and unemployment steadily increased.
Whatever its effects, the cotton embargo did not live up to the faith placed in it. Economic sanctions take time to work, and time was not on the Confederacy's side. It was also a matter of strategy. The South tried to use the embargo as a "lever" to force European recognition. It might have done better to bargain shipments of cotton in return for recognition and assistance. The British blamed the South rather than the Union for the shortages. The virtual embargo of cotton undermined its value as a diplomatic weapon.31
Timing also worked against King Cotton. When war broke out in 1861, England had a huge surplus in its warehouses, in large part because of a bumper crop in 1860 and record imports. There was also a surplus of manufactured cotton goods, so much so, in fact, that many factory owners had shut down or drastically cut back production to keep prices from plummeting. Despite the effectiveness of the voluntary embargo, greed could not be eliminated, and some cotton made it through the embargoes and the Union blockade. Later in the war, the loss of southern cotton was offset by new sources in Egypt and British India. As the Union began to occupy parts of the South, it made sure to get as much cotton as possible to England.
Other factors limited the presumed clout of King Cotton. However important southern cotton may have been to its economy, Britain also had vital economic ties to the North. Bad crops at home during the war forced it to turn to the United States for grain. King Wheat thus proved as important as King Cotton. British citizens had also invested heavily in U.S. canals, railroads, and banks, and these sizeable investments might be threatened if Britain moved too close to the Confederacy. Finally, and perhaps ironically, the Civil War stimulated an economic boom in England in various industries, more than compensating for the loss of cotton. King Cotton may have worked as well as economic sanctions ever have, but it was still not enough. Not for the first time or the last did a nation, or in this case an aspirant nation, fall victim to the chimera of what Jefferson called "peaceable coercion."
The central task of northern diplomacy was easier, of course: to keep the British and French on the cautious path toward which they were already predisposed rather than persuade them to take drastic steps. A new political party, the Republicans had no reservoir of diplomatic experience to draw on, but their diplomats in key positions performed effectively, in some cases remarkably so. Seward matured quickly. He worked diligently to maintain the harmony in Anglo-American relations that followed the Trent affair. He attempted to use Union military success to deter any European move toward intervention and to turn cotton against the South by opening captured southern ports to European ships as a gesture of goodwill.32 Although ignorant of the language and unschooled in diplomacy, William Dayton of New Jersey proved a competent minister in Paris, establishing good relations with Napoleon III and working hard to head off French intervention.33 Nominally minister to Belgium, the wealthy Henry Sanford of Connecticut did much more. Imaginative, indefatigable, often meddlesome in the eyes of colleagues, Sanford was a one-man diplomatic wrecking crew, organizing a number of Union propaganda initiatives, establishing an "octopus-like" secret service network of private investigators and paid informants to track Confederate activities on the Continent, and overseeing and sometimes funding with his own money preemptive purchases to keep crucial war supplies out of Confederate hands. A colleague referred to Sanford without exaggeration as a "Legation on Wheels."34
Cassius Clay of Kentucky earned both notoriety and a measure of distinction in Russia. Clay was one of those anti-slavery radicals Charles Francis Adams labeled "the noisy jackasses," and his militance worried Lincoln. He was sent to St. Petersburg because, it was said, he could do no harm there and—more important—it would get him out of Washington. Clay wore a dazzling array of Bowie knives and brought to his post his notoriously thin skin and propensity for the duel. His "pigeon wing" dancing provided amusement at court. Despite his characteristically eccentric behavior—maybe in part because of it—he proved a good choice. He came to admire the Russian people and to see Russia as "our sincere friend" and "most powerful ally." A surprisingly sophisticated diplomatist with a keen understanding of balance of power politics, he did nothing to harm the existing friendship. In many ways, he actively promoted it.35
Charles Francis Adams in London was even more effective—and much more significant. Like his illustrious father—and indeed grandfather—he also was a "bulldog among spaniels," relentless, tireless in bringing to British attention alleged violations of neutrality and warning of the pitfalls of intervention. Less combative than his distinguished forebears, characterized even by Russell as "calm and judicious," he also employed friendly persuasion to mitigate and reinforce Seward's threats. Adams is generally viewed as one of the most skillful diplomats to have served his nation, a person who made a difference during a critical period.
From expediency, the Union shelved its expansionist ambitions for the duration. Lincoln was in the Whig mold, believing that America's mission could best be carried out by demonstrating "before an admiring world . . . the capacity of a people to govern themselves."36 Seward, in contrast, was an avowed expansionist, whose vision of empire exceeded that of John Quincy Adams. But he understood that such ambitions must be put aside to deal with the emergency. Early in the war, Lincoln and Seward toyed with colonization schemes as a means to address domestic problems and expand U.S. influence abroad. The dispatch of freed slaves into Central America and Mexico, they reasoned, would not only ease racial tensions at home but also help ensure U.S. control over raw materials, harbors, and transit facilities in a vital area. The national security argument gained force as Europeans intervened in Mexico and Central America, In 1862, Congress appropriated funds for a colonization program. African Americans and abolitionists bitterly opposed the idea, however. When Central Americans expressed fears of "Africanization" and especially of the intrusion of a nation that had already revealed its true colors "in the aggression of Walker," Seward and Lincoln backed off.37
In large part to promote U.S. diplomatic objectives, Lincoln slowly and with the utmost caution seized the moral high ground. The United States recognized Haiti and Liberia in 1862. Still wary of measures long urged by abolitionists and opposed by southerners, the president took the unusual step of asking Congress to endorse the move. The first U.S. representative to Haiti held the relatively lowly rank of commissioner. Also in 1862, the United States and Britain agreed to a treaty providing for mutual searches to end the slave trade. "If I have done nothing else worthy of self-congratulation," Seward boasted, "I deem this treaty worthy to have lived for."38 In February 1863, the first American was executed for participation in that illegal activity. At least compared to the days when southerners controlled Congress, U.S. diplomacy was becoming increasingly color-blind.39
The issue of slavery had huge domestic and international implications, and Lincoln handled it with special care. As a young man, he had come to view the institution as morally wrong, but he accepted its protection by the Constitution. He had staunchly opposed the expansion of slavery but, like his idol Henry Clay, looked upon colonization as a possible solution to America's racial problems. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act pushed him toward a harder line. Claiming to be "thunderstruck and stunned" by a measure that infused new life into a moribund institution, he opposed the further expansion of slavery with great moral force. He insisted that the demise of this "monstrous injustice" was essential to preserve the United States as a beacon of freedom throughout the world. When the war began, he was sufficiently concerned about the loyalty of border states such as Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland and the support of moderates North and South to downplay slavery, focusing instead on preserving the Union. By July 1862, in the face of battlefield defeat and possible European intervention, he concluded that emancipation was a military necessity. Freeing the slaves in territory held by the Confederacy could undermine the southern war effort. It might fend off British and French intervention. It would preserve and indeed perfect the Union by securing the promises of freedom enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. "I shall not surrender the game leaving any available card unplayed," Lincoln affirmed.40 On Seward's advice, to avoid the appearance of desperation, he delayed any move until the Union achieved some battlefield success.
Like the Confederacy, the Union waged an active propaganda war across the Atlantic. Seward sent former New York Evening Post editor John Bigelow to influence the French press favorably toward the Union. Bigelow and Republican politico Thurlow Weed carefully cultivated European journalists and sent letters to the editors of major newspapers. Sanford provided material to friendly newspapers across Europe and used his slush fund to hire European journalists to write favorable articles. African Americans played an important part. Fugitive slaves and freed slaves including Jefferson Davis's former coachman, Andrew Jackson, gave speeches discussing the horrors of slavery as they had experienced it to generate support for the Union and opposition to the Confederacy. Speeches in the mill areas in particular helped to focus the debate on the issue of freedom when it could have turned narrowly on cotton. Southern sympathizers, it was said, "breathed a sigh of relief" when Jackson returned to the United States at the end of 1863.41
The summer and fall of 1862 were the closest the American Civil War came to becoming a world war, "the very crisis of our fate," in the anxious words of Charles Francis Adams.42 While Union and Confederate armies slugged it out in the Mississippi Valley and especially across the bloody corridor between Richmond and Washington, the European great powers and especially Great Britain teetered on the brink of intervention. Cotton provides a partial explanation. By the summer of 1862, one-half of Britain's textile workers were unemployed, one-third of its mills had closed, and stocks were dwindling. The trans-Atlantic trade, vital to Britain's economy, suffered severe dislocation. Government revenues declined. Nervous manufacturers pressed the cabinet to do something. The economic crisis was even more severe in France. "We are nearly out of cotton, and cotton "we must have," the French foreign minister told Sanford in April.43
For many Europeans, ending the war for geopolitical and humanitarian reasons became increasingly urgent. The longer the conflict dragged on, the greater its impact on the Old World, the more Europeans sought to end it before the conflagration spread. For Victorians, the carnage produced in America by the harnessing of modern technology to warfare came as a profound shock, provoking growing cries to stop what Britons labeled this "bloody and purposeless war," this "suicidal frenzy."44 General George McClellan's failure to take Richmond in the Peninsular Campaign of 1862 and his adversary Robert E. Lee's dazzling maneuvers persuaded many Europeans that the Union could not win. The war might go on indefinitely. As Lee's armies moved north in August 1862 for what might be a knockout blow, Europeans anticipated that another Union defeat might provide the occasion for intervention.
Although increasingly disposed to do something, British leaders remained cautious. Seward's warnings that the Civil War could become a "war of the world" could not be ignored. There was little inclination to risk war with the Union by challenging the blockade until Confederate independence, as Palmerston put it, was "a Truth and a Fact."45 By the late summer of 1862, however, British leaders were increasingly disposed to mediate the American struggle as a way to end the bloodletting, ease Europe's economic problems, and perhaps even destroy slavery by stopping its expansion. Still failing to perceive Lincoln's steadfast determination to preserve the Union, British leaders assumed that European mediation would lead to an armistice, the end of the blockade, and the acceptance of two separate governments.
A Union military victory in the fall of 1862 gave Lincoln the opportunity to take the initiative on emancipation. Lee's advancing armies met Union forces at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17. In the most gruesome day of the war, the two sides together lost five thousand killed and suffered twenty-four thousand casualties. The battle was at best a draw, but Lee's retreat back into Virginia permitted the Union to claim victory. Antietam stopped the Confederate offensive into the North and provided a much-needed boost to Union morale. Five days later, Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The order did not go into effect until January 1, 1863. Reflecting the president's persisting concern for the border states, it applied only to areas held by the Confederacy. Prosaic in tone, it disappointed abolitionists. On the other hand, it further bolstered northern spirits and spurred black enlistments in the Union army. In his annual message to Congress, December 1, 1862, Lincoln remained cautious on slavery, again speaking of colonization and compensated emancipation. He also eloquently took the moral high ground. Warning that the "dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present" and calling upon Americans to "think anew and act anew," he insisted that only by eradicating slavery could the United States be true to its principles. "In giving freedom to the slaves," he proclaimed, "we assure freedom to the free." He cast emancipation in global terms. At a time when republicanism appeared to be losing out across the world and the threat of European intervention still loomed over America, he insisted that the nation must eliminate the blot of slavery to ensure that it remained "the last best hope of earth."46 The Emancipation Proclamation represented a crucial point in the war. It set in motion the process of ending slavery. It shifted U.S. war aims from mere preservation of the Union to its betterment by making the nation faithful to the ideals enunciated in its Declaration of Independence.47
Often cited as eliminating the threat of foreign intervention, Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation for the short term actually increased pressures on Britain and France to do something. The bloodbath in Maryland and the absence of a decisive victory merely confirmed for European statesmen that the two combatants, without external intervention, might fight on indefinitely at horrendous cost. Lincoln had issued his Emancipation Proclamation in part to gain foreign support for the Union cause, but many Britons initially saw it as an act of desperation. Viewing emancipation through the prism of mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon racism, they also feared it might unleash slave insurrections throughout the South and even set off a race war that could spread beyond the United States. British leaders thus grew more inclined to intervene. Russell discussed with France the possibility of a joint intervention aimed at an armistice. Should the Union reject such proposals, they agreed, southern independence might be recognized. Liberal leader William Evart Gladstone's dramatic October 7, 1862, speech proclaiming that southern leaders had "made an army; they are making, it appears a navy; and they have made what is more than either, they have made a nation," seemed to portend recognition of Confederate independence.
Caution once again prevailed. Gladstone's speech was not authorized. It did not reflect the views of the government or even a pro-southern view on his part. Its main concern was to end the carnage. It evoked a negative reaction throughout England and forced the cabinet to examine the consequences of intervention. Russell was most inclined to act, but the more prudent eventually won the day. Seward's strong words helped persuade British leaders that neither side would accept compromise. Intervention posed varied and considerable dangers, especially the threat of war with the United States. It thus seemed better, as Secretary of War Cornewall Lewis quoted Hamlet, to "endure the ills we have, Than to fly to others we know not of." To this point, France had been more inclined toward intervention than Britain, but a crisis in Italy and turmoil within the French government drew attention away from America at a critical point, rendered Napoleon more cautious, and divided France and Britain. The Yankeephobic but ever careful Palmerston agreed that with Lee retreating into Virginia "the Pugilists must fight a few more Rounds before the Bystanders can decide that the State Should be divided between them."48 As is so often the case at times of momentous decision, doing nothing seemed the best course.49
Another crisis followed in October, largely the work of France's Napoleon III. The French emperor's interventionism was motivated partly by the demand for cotton, but its roots went much deeper. Gaining power through elections after the 1848 revolution, the ambitious and mercurial Napoleon in time assumed the title of emperor and set out to emulate his more illustrious uncle and namesake by restoring France's imperial glory. He challenged British dominance in the Mediterranean and South Asia. He schemed to attain the American empire pursued fleetingly by his uncle. Taking advantage of Mexico's civil strife and chronic indebtedness, he hoped to establish there a base to promote French economic and political power in the Americas. He contemplated a canal across the Central American isthmus. He saw French hegemony in Mexico as a bulwark against U.S. expansion and a springboard to restore monarchy to other Latin American states, thereby heading off the "degradation of the Latin race on the other side of the ocean," in the words of one of his advisers, and containing the advance of republicanism.
Napoleon sent French troops into Mexico in late 1861, ostensibly to collect debts, in fact to establish an imperial foothold. An independent Confederacy would provide an invaluable buffer against the United States, he reasoned. He was increasingly inclined to recognize the Richmond government to further his grand design. Frustrated by British indecisiveness, Napoleon in October 1862 proposed joint French, British, and Russian mediation calling for a six-month armistice and the lifting of the Union blockade. Should the Lincoln administration say no, he told Slidell, the powers might recognize southern independence, perhaps even provide military assistance to force an end to hostilities. Early November 1862 thus became the most perilous time for the Union.50
Again after advancing to the brink of intervention, the Europeans drew back. Russia was eager to end the war but unwilling to antagonize Washington. Its opposition helped kill Napoleon's proposal. Russell was inclined to act, but his colleagues remained cautious. Lewis remained the major voice of restraint, warning that Britain should wait until southern independence was firmly established or the North concluded from events on the battlefield that it could not win. Napoleon would not act without British support. His proposal died. Although it was not clear at the time, any possibility of European intervention expired with it.
Refusing to give up entirely, Napoleon through the instrumentation of a meddlesome and inept British member of Parliament made one last attempt in the summer of 1863. Determined to get cotton and to protect his Mexican venture by ensuring a balance of power in North America, he offered assurances to the pro-Confederate J. A. Roebuck that he would work with Britain toward recognition of the South. The bumbling Roebuck proved a poor choice. His indiscreet statement that the French feared being double-crossed by England infuriated the British, deepening their already considerable—and well-founded—suspicions of Napoleon. He further discredited himself by overstating French eagerness to act. His bitter attacks on the United States as a "mongrelised" democracy and the "great bully of the world" antagonized Union sympathizers and aroused concerns even among southern enthusiasts of the pitfalls of intervention. Once disposed to do something to stop the bloodletting, most British leaders had concluded that no outside power could stop the war except at great risk and cost to itself. British support was simply not forthcoming. Slidell could not persuade Napoleon to organize the Continental powers to act without Britain. A failed intervention could do more damage to his Mexican ambitions than none at all. Napoleon thus concluded that it would be better to do nothing and hope that the Confederacy could somehow secure its independence.51
A crisis over Poland in the summer of 1863 ended already dim prospects of European intervention. When the Poles rose up against Russia early in the year, France, Britain, and Austria demanded a settlement on the basis of amnesty and Polish independence. The apparent European support for the concept of self-determination seemed to offer hope to the Confederacy, but appearances were deceptive. The threat of war in Europe diverted attention from North America during an especially critical time. Napoleon could not resist meddling in the Polish crisis. His actions aroused British and Russian suspicions, closing the option of concerted action in America. Most important, European support for self-determination proved weak. When Russia rejected the powers' proposal and forcibly suppressed the revolt, they did nothing. National interest took precedence over concern for the Poles and commitment to an ideal.52
The Polish crisis also cemented the emerging entente between the Union and Russia, providing yet another reason for European caution. The United States had traditionally given verbal support to self-determination. Thousands of Poles had fled to America after failed rebellions in the 1830s and 1840s; twenty-five hundred Poles fought for the Union in the Civil War. The Lincoln administration might also have traded support for the Poles for a French pledge of non-intervention. But when caught between its ideals and self-interest, the Union behaved like the Europeans. U.S. officials were pleased, Adams noted, that the Polish crisis had "done something to take continental pressure from us." For reasons of expediency, Seward rebuffed a French proposal to join in protest, expressing contentment to leave the Poles to the tender mercies of the tsar. The Russian-American convergence on Poland reinforced European fears of an "unholy alliance" between the two rising powers that might, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville and others speculated, produce a major shift in the balance of power. This specter increased great-power reluctance to act either in Central Europe or in America.53
While Europe fretted about a Russian-American alliance, the appearance of a Russian "fleet" of six warships in New York harbor in September 1863 created a sensation in America—and abroad. At the time, grateful Americans hailed the visit as an overt display of Russian support for their cause, sharply contrasting it with British and French perfidy. More cynical contemporaries and subsequent historians argued that the Russians acted out of self-interest: to keep their fleet from being bottled up in Baltic ports if war broke out over Poland. In fact, Russian motives appear to have been even more complex. The fleet was conducting a normal training exercise and would have left port that summer without the threat of war. Russian officers wanted to observe the new ironclad warfare taking place in America and to demonstrate their country's rising naval capability. They also carried double crews in hopes of purchasing additional ships from the United States. Once the threat of war in Europe eased, they could achieve these practical aims while solidifying already strong ties with the United States.
Whatever the reasons, the Russian "invasion" of New York was a significant time in the Civil War. For two months, three thousand Russian visitors attended parades, balls, and dinners, while U.S. bands played "God Save the Tsar" and toastmasters hailed Lincoln and Alexander II. The visit boosted northern morale and had a negative impact in the South. It aroused further European concern of an alliance, eliminating any possibility of intervention in North America.54
To a large degree, as Horace Greeley suggested at the time, the Union was spared foreign intervention by the "unprincipled egotism that is the soul of European diplomacy."55 Although they quickly recognized southern belligerency, the powers cautiously withheld recognition until the Confederacy proved it could stand on its own. In the wake of southern battlefield success in 1862, they edged warily toward intervention. But the Union victory at Antietam and the more decisive victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg in the summer of 1863 eliminated any real prospect that the Confederacy could survive. Every time they began seriously to consider acting, the British concluded that the possible gains of war with the Union would not be worth the risks. For all his bluster and meddlesomeness, Napoleon followed London's lead. The Union was also lucky that the Civil War took place when Europe was as unstable as at any time since Waterloo. The distractions caused by its internal conflict and the resulting great power divisions rendered intervention less likely.
Ideology as well as realpolitik accounted for European non-involvement. The American Civil War aroused passionate feelings in Europe. The British and French governments, although far from democratic, could not ignore domestic opinion. Slavery, of course, was the crucial issue. British philosopher John Stuart Mill warned that Confederate success would be a "victory for the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits of its friends all over the civilized world." As long as the North fought merely for union, foreigners saw little difference between the two combatants. But Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in time evoked a powerful pro-Union reaction in Britain, especially among liberals and the working class, that drowned out voices favorable to the Confederacy and influenced, if it did not determine, the government's policy. His firm stand against slavery also made it easier for onetime British proponents of intervention to rationalize inaction. A French citizen bluntly informed Slidell that "as long as you maintain and are maintained by slavery, we cannot offer you an alliance. On the contrary, we believe and expect you will fail."56
The Civil War was also fought on the high seas, and here too the great powers, especially Britain, became involved, with traditional roles reversed. Union attacks on neutral shipping caused outrage in Britain, threatening war by the side door. British shipbuilders constructed for the Confederacy commerce raiders that devastated the U.S. merchant marine, provoking threats of war from Seward and Adams. As with the Trent, caution and good sense prevailed. Seward spoke loudly but acted quietly to mitigate conflict with England. The British permitted the Union to stretch belligerent rights in ways possibly useful in a future war.
Union interference with British shipping became a major problem by 1863. A thriving trade had developed in which cotton was exchanged for contraband. Neutral ships deposited goods bound for the Confederacy at ports in the Bahamas, Bermuda, and Cuba. There they were loaded aboard blockade runners, often shipped to Matamoros, Mexico, and then overland to the Confederacy. To cut down or eliminate this trade, Union warships harassed neutral shipping between Havana and Matamoros. Assigned to the region with his Flying Squadron, the indomitable Wilkes hovered off West Indian ports, establishing a virtual blockade of Nassau and Bermuda, plundering neutral shipping, and, as with the Trent, interpreting international law to suit himself. To justify its actions, Washington hurled back at the British the once despised doctrine of continuous voyage, even exceeding British precedent by declaring that overland trade to an enemy port made goods liable to seizure. Britain screamed about freedom of the seas and illegal search and seizure and denounced that "ill-informed and violent naval officer" Wilkes.57
Both sides exercised restraint. Without abandoning measures it considered essential, the Union took steps to mitigate conflict with England. It transferred the abrasive Wilkes where he could do less damage and commanded U.S. naval officers to observe proper rules of search and seizure. While going through the motions of backing its shipowners, the British government acquiesced in American actions and court rulings and ordered warships in the West Indies not to interfere with Union seizure of ships outside territorial waters.
In time, Britain also acceded to Union demands to stop private shipbuilders from constructing ships for the Confederacy. The shipbuilding program was one of the few major successes of Confederate diplomacy. Early in the war, Confederate agent James Bulloch arranged to have built in Britain a small fleet of fast, propeller-driven cruisers to prey on enemy shipping. Commerce raiding, it was reasoned, could hamper Union logistics, drive up shipping and insurance costs, and force trade to neutral carriers. The first products of this program, the Florida and Alabama, went to sea in 1862. Since the two ships left port without armament, they did not violate British neutrality laws. The Florida steamed to Nassau in the spring of 1862, where it was armed and began to attack Union ships. Over loud Union protests, the Alabama also slipped out of port, sailed to the Azores, and acquired armaments. During its nearly two years at sea, it destroyed or captured sixty northern ships. Meanwhile, Bulloch contracted with British shipbuilders for more commerce raiders and also frigates and ironclad rams to break the blockade.58
In a very real sense, the Confederacy was the victim of its success. As the Alabama's tally mounted, Union protests grew louder. The Confederate raiders caused alarm up and down the eastern seaboard. Insurance rates skyrocketed, and trade moved to neutral carriers. Union officials especially feared that the ironclad rams could shatter the flimsy wooden ships manning the blockade. The United States, of course, had been among the foremost neutral profiteers during the Napoleonic wars, but as a belligerent it saw things quite differently. Union officials demanded that the British government stop building ships for the Confederacy, threatening to unleash privateers against British shipping and seek reparations for damages. New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett thundered that the United States would seize Canada in return for Britain's "villainous treachery" and hold it until "full and satisfactory retribution be made."59
The British gradually acceded to Union demands. From the outset, Foreign Office lawyers had urged that the ships be detained, but the ministry had adhered to the more narrow requirements of domestic law. In time, it came around. Union agents snooped around British shipyards and hired private investigators to confirm that the ships were intended for the Confederacy. Adams issued stern warnings, at times even threatening war. As the tide of battle turned against the South and the likelihood of European intervention diminished, the British government grew more cautious. Adams's warnings had an impact. Perhaps more important, Britons grew increasingly concerned about setting precedents that the United States or some other neutral might use in some future war to build ships for their enemies, depriving them of their historic advantage of control of the seas.
Thus in the spring and summer of 1863, the government acted to prevent additional vessels from getting to sea. In April, officials seized the Alexandra on suspicion of intent, indicating a major shift in position. More important, in the summer of 1863, Britain first detained, then seized, and eventually purchased to spare the shipbuilder financial loss the first of the Laird rams, a ship ostensibly built for the pasha of Egypt. With understandable familial pride and exaggeration, Minister Adams's son Henry called it a "second Vicksburg . . . the crowning stroke of our diplomacy."60
For the Confederacy, it was the last straw. An embattled Jefferson Davis bitterly protested the bias of British neutrality, complaining that while taking measures hostile to the Confederacy, Britain, in defiance of the law of nations, permitted thousands of its Irish subjects to come to America in its ships and fight for the Union. Without these "armies from foreign countries," he claimed, the "invaders would ere this have been driven from our soil." In August 1863, Mason left the increasingly hostile environs of London for Paris. The Richmond government expelled British consular officials.61
Davis's tone suggested his government's desperation, and in early 1865, almost as an afterthought, the Confederacy tried one last diplomatic gambit to secure foreign recognition. Suffering military defeat on all fronts, with Atlanta having fallen and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant advancing on Richmond, Davis authorized Louisiana congressman Duncan Kenner to travel secretly to Europe and propose emancipation of the slaves in return for recognition. It was too little, too late. Kenner slipped through the blockade, but the Europeans were not buying. Napoleon affirmed what was already manifest—France would follow England's lead. Britain indicated that under no circumstances would it recognize the South. The mission made clear the extent to which a Confederacy on the verge of defeat would go to somehow salvage its independence. It confirmed once again Europe's unwillingness to intrude.
The Confederate surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, saved the Union and destroyed slavery, resolving by force of arms the two great issues that had divided Americans throughout the nineteenth century. By establishing that the United States would indeed be united with a freelabor economic system, it answered the great question of American nationhood. It ensured that the nation would become a great power.62 The Union's survival of the bloody test of war gave a tremendous boost to national pride and brought a resurgence of self-confidence and optimism. Americans marveled at their power, the largest army in the world, a navy of 671 ships, and a huge industrial base. "We shall be the greatest power on earth," Gen. Joseph Hooker exulted.63 European monarchs had exploited America's internal conflict to reintrude in the Western Hemisphere, but they were soon in full flight. Spain withdrew from the Dominican Republic as the war ended; France and Russia were not far behind. "One by one they have retreated . . . ," Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner proclaimed, "all giving way to the absorbing Unity declared in the national motto, E pluribus unum." Expressing ideas many Americans fervently shared, Sumner foresaw a not too distant time when through stages "republican principles under the primacy of the United States must embrace the whole continent."64
The Civil War also restored faith in the viability of those principles and certainty in the future destiny of the republic. The Union victory affirmed as Lincoln had so eloquently proclaimed in his Gettysburg Address that "government of the people, by the people, for the people" would not "perish from this earth." The abolition of slavery purified American republicanism, producing a "new birth of freedom." Lincoln's assassination just five days after Appomattox added the force of martyrdom to the cause he had so nobly espoused and so diligently pursued. Americans thus emerged from the war with their traditional faith in the superiority of their ideals and institutions revivified. On April 21, 1865, Grant privately hailed a United States "that is now beginning to loom far above all other countries, modern or ancient. What a spectacle it will be to see a country able . . . to put half a Million soldiers in the field. . . . That Nation, united," he added, "will have a strength which will enable it to dictate to all others, [to] conform to justice and right."65
The outburst of nationalism and rebirth of Manifest Destiny that accompanied the Union victory did not set loose a new wave of expansionism. Some Republican leaders clung to Whiggish views that America had enough land. Further expansion would hinder effective governance. The nation could best promote its ideals through example. War-weariness certainly played a part, as did a huge war debt and the enormous problems of Reconstruction: reunification of a defeated but still defiant South and consolidation of the vast western territory acquired before the war. The especially bitter struggle between Lincoln's successor, Vice President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, and the Radical Republicans over reconstruction policy spilled over into foreign policy issues. In the case of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, Americans remained reluctant to acquire territory populated by alien races. Thus, although opportunities presented themselves, Seward's purchase of Alaska was the only major acquisition during Reconstruction.66
This does not mean that expansionist sentiment did not exist or that foreign policy was not important in these years. On the contrary, the Civil War in many ways confirmed the importance of foreign policy to the survival of the republic. An expansionist vision persisted, especially in the persons of Seward and his successor, Hamilton Fish. If there were few new acquisitions, Seward and Fish nonetheless resumed the push to the Caribbean and Pacific initiated in the 1840s and 1850s, charting the course of a new empire and taking the first steps toward its realization. Those historians who view the postwar years as a great hiatus between two eras of expansion miss the essential continuity of America's outward thrust.
Toward its southern and northern neighbors, Mexico and Canada, the United States demonstrated remarkable restraint during and immediately after the war, accepting as permanent the boundaries carved out in the antebellum period. In furtherance of Napoleon's grand design, French troops occupied Mexico City in June 1863. Later that year, Napoleon installed as ruler of Mexico the well-meaning but dull-witted Archduke Maximilian, brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria. Maximilian and his equally naive wife, Carlotta, undertook with enthusiasm the "holy work" of saving Mexicans from their own fecklessness, stabilizing the country, and fending off the march of republicanism in the Western Hemisphere.67
Civil War combatants perceived the dangers and opportunities of these developments to their respective causes and dealt with them accordingly. Despite its professed commitment to the principle of self-determination, the Confederacy sought to accommodate the new Mexican government to curry favor with Napoleon and perhaps gain recognition. Fearful of antagonizing the Union, Napoleon politely rebuffed southern overtures. Seward responded with a policy of "cautious moderation." He had refused to recognize the puppet government and warned that at some future point the United States might remove it by force. On the other hand, he also declined to assist the Mexican resistance forces of Benito Juarez. The United States would practice in regard to Mexico "the non-intervention which they require all foreign powers to observe in regard to the United States," he informed the Europeans.68 To keep Napoleon off balance, he left uncertain what the United States might do in the future.
As the Civil War ended, pressures mounted to do something. Congress and the press denounced foreign intervention. "Defenders of the Monroe Doctrine" organizations sprang up across the country. Defying the neutrality laws, Americans began to provide sizeable clandestine assistance to Juarez.69 Before replacing Lincoln, Vice President Johnson had talked of war with Mexico as "recreation" for Union soldiers.70 "Now for Mexico!" General Grant shouted on the day after Appomattox. Like Johnson, Grant and other generals saw a Mexican operation as a means to keep a large and increasingly restive army occupied. Warning that the establishment of a monarchical government in Mexico was an "act of hostility" against the United States and might provide a haven for Confederates leading to a "long, expensive and bloody war," Grant proposed to Johnson possible military action or at least disposing of America's huge arms surplus by selling weapons to Mexican resistance forces.71
Bogged down in a struggle with Congress over intractable Reconstruction problems, Johnson left diplomacy in the capable hands of Seward. The secretary of state dealt with Mexico in a way that belied his carefully cultivated reputation for recklessness. He saw a needless war as a threat to an already embattled administration and to his lingering presidential ambitions. Grant positioned fifty thousand troops along the Rio Grande. Their commander, the dashing cavalryman Gen. Philip Sheridan, declared substantial stocks of weapons surplus and placed them along the border after informing Mexicans of their location. But Seward blocked Grant's more aggressive proposals, contenting himself with ratcheting up diplomatic pressure on Napoleon and Austria. In November 1865, he warned that failure to remove European troops could mean war. He sent Gen. John Schofield to Paris with instructions to "get his legs under Napoleon's mahogany and tell him he must get out of Mexico."72 When Austria appeared on the verge of sending troops to back Maximilian, Seward warned he would consider it an act of war and the United States could not remain a "silent or neutral spectator." Aware that Austria was already deeply entangled in a crisis with Prussia, Seward exploited its vulnerability. His warning signaled France to speed its exit. Seward may also have hoped through diplomatic firmness to salvage a faltering administration.73
Pressure from the United States was not the only or perhaps even the most important reason for Napoleon's retreat. Juarez's forces waged deadly guerrilla warfare against the invaders. The inept Maximilian could never rally Mexican support, and his power did not extend beyond the presence of French troops. Increasingly absorbed with European problems, the unpredictable Napoleon quickly lost interest in Mexico and began to search for a way out without appearing to capitulate to the United States. Lacking French support and facing a crisis in Europe, Austria declined to test the sincerity of Seward's threats. Both governments left the hapless Maximilian to his own devices. He was thrown out of office and executed by a Mexican firing squad in June 1867. Without giving in to the more belligerent voices inside and outside of the government, Seward served notice on the Europeans that the temporary suspension of the Monroe Doctrine as a result of the Civil War had ended.74
A hotbed of intrigue and conflict during and immediately after the Civil War, Canada was also a potentially explosive issue. Easy access across the border made the northern neighbor a refuge for draft dodgers, bounty jumpers, and anti-war Copperheads, and therefore a source of great resentment to staunch Unionists. Canada also served as a base for Confederate guerrillas, including the legendary John Hunt Morgan. After 1864, the Confederate government mounted a desperate last-ditch effort to open a second front in Canada by embroiling the Union in conflict with Great Britain. A series of cross-border raids was designed to harass Union territory and provoke conflict with Canada. The attacks amounted to little more than pinpricks and at times verged on comic opera, except for a raid into the Vermont town of St. Albans by Kentuckians in October 1864. The raiders robbed a bank, shot up, looted, and burned the town, and then fled back across the border. Local authorities and federal troops pursued them, threatening a clash. Canada's refusal to extradite the raiders or make prompt restitution infuriated the Union. Americans naturally resented the use of Canadian soil for hostile purposes and threatened to gain restitution by seizing it after the war or taking it in compensation for claims for damage done by the Alabama. Sensitive to Canada's vulnerability, the British took Union threats seriously, fearing that a victorious—or defeated—Union might seek revenge by attacking Canada.
Tensions persisted after Appomattox. Hotheads demanded cession of Canada as payment for the Alabama claims and other alleged British breaches of neutrality. Rebellions in Canada's western provinces and annexationist sentiment on the British Columbia frontier after the U.S. purchase of Alaska created opportunities for American troublemakers and aroused nervousness in Canada. The most divisive postwar issue was a series of raids into Canada by the so-called Fenians, Irish expatriates, some of them Union veterans, operating from bases in the United States. Neither Johnson nor Seward at first took the Fenians seriously. They may have taken secret pleasure at Canada's discomfiture now that the incursionist shoe was on the other foot. Their failure to enforce the neutrality laws swiftly and effectively caused anger and resentment in Canada.
Despite persisting provocations, officials on both sides kept tensions in check. The British were determined to prevent border conflicts from getting out of control. Canadian officials made serious if not always effective efforts to enforce neutrality laws, and after initial hesitation offered restitution for the St. Albans raid. A New Yorker, Seward knew and understood the cross border neighbors and gave no encouragement to those who urged supporting rebellions in Canada or even annexation as compensation. Grant and Fish acted more effectively than Johnson and Seward to enforce the neutrality laws and curb the Fenians.
Partly in response to the perceived American threat, Britain created a federal union in Canada through the British North American Act of 1867. Most U.S. citizens quietly acquiesced, even though the word dominion in the new dependency's title gave some republican souls pause. Just as the British in 1776 had been certain that the new United States was not a viable entity, so also Americans believed that the new dominion of Canada would collapse. They accepted as an article of faith what has been called the convergence theory, the belief that because U.S. ideology, trade, and culture were so important to a people so similar to themselves the two nations would converge and Canada would join the United States. Dominion status was a transitional stage. There was no need to push for annexation.75
The 1871 Treaty of Washington helped ease escalating post–Civil War tensions and laid the basis for a growing Anglo-American accord. The treaty is most often noted for its agreement to arbitrate the especially contentious Alabama claims dispute and for its resolution of long-standing spats over U.S.-Canadian boundaries and access to fisheries. It evoked from both sides quite extraordinary concessions, a British apology for damages done by the Confederate raiders and eventual U.S. abandonment of its exorbitant "indirect" claims against Britain for Civil War damages, the latter occasioned in large measure by a desperate U.S. need for British capital to finance its enormous war debt.76 A complex three-sided negotiation between the United States, Britain, and the Dominion of Canada, the Treaty of Washington also had major implications for North America. Much of the time was spent on Canadian issues. The result was tacit U.S. recognition of Canada's new status.77
Seward's moderation toward Mexico and Canada reflected his acceptance of the convergence theory, an integral part of his larger concept of America's destiny. Historians have vigorously debated whether his expansionism was opportunistic and ad hoc or reflected a larger design.78 The distinct pattern of his goals and the purposefulness of his actions strongly suggest the latter. But there is no debating that he was the key figure in mid-nineteenth-century expansion, the link between the Manifest Destiny movement of the 1840s and the overseas expansionism of the 1890s. In terms of his vision of the nation's destiny, he was the logical successor to Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, the latter of whom he referred to as a "patron, a guide, a counsellor, and a friend."79 His horizons extended well beyond the continentalism of his illustrious predecessors to the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Like the expansionists of the 1840s, Seward fused commercial with territorial objectives and moved a step beyond them in promoting the acquisition of overseas territory. He added to Henry Clay's views on economic development specific new concerns arising out of the nation's industrial growth and technological advancement. He strongly endorsed the Republican program of economic development: a national banking system; federal support for internal improvements such as a transcontinental railroad and cable to bind western territories to the Union; and a tariff to protect nascent industries. He added a vigorous commitment to promote investments and markets abroad. Moving beyond his Whig roots, he conceived various expansionist schemes to establish bases and coaling stations for a steam-powered navy in the Caribbean and Pacific. This naval power would in turn protect existing markets and help add new ones. Seward thus also provides a crucial link between U.S. foreign policy in the nineteenth century and in the twentieth.
Never satisfied with a "small policy," in Henry Adams's words, the secretary of state pursued multifarious projects to fulfill his expansive vision of nation's destiny. The seat of empire was moving steadily westward, he believed, and the struggle for world power would occur in Asia. He saw no need for colonies or wars of conquest. Territory would accrue to the United States by natural processes and should be acquired, as Andrew Johnson put it, "peacefully and lawfully, while neither doing nor menacing injury to other states."80 Seward's vision extended from the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to the North Pole to East Asia (what he referred to, ethnocentrically, as the "Far West"). He had long envisioned the Caribbean as an American domain. The difficulty of chasing Confederate raiders "from our own distant shores" during the Civil War underscored the urgency of U.S. control. In January 1866, ostensibly for reasons of health, he toured the area in search of locations for naval bases and coaling stations in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. He negotiated treaties for acquisition of the Virgin Islands and Danish West Indies and for a naval base at Samana Bay in the Dominican Republic. He contemplated acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Tiger Island off the coast of Honduras. Laying the groundwork for fulfillment of a dream dating back to Clay, he negotiated with Colombia a treaty for the right-of-way to build a canal across the isthmus of Panama. His vision extended to the North Atlantic, where he eyed the purchase of Iceland and Greenland, and to the Pacific, where he looked into acquisition of the Hawaiian and Fiji islands, proposed a naval base on the island of Formosa, and initiated preparations for an expedition to open the "hermit kingdom" of Korea to trade and Western influence. His cabinet colleague and sometime foe Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles called him a "monomaniac" on expansion. If he could live another thirty years, Seward once boasted, he would gain for the United States "possession of the American continent and the control of the world."81
Seward's reach exceeded the nation's grasp, or at least the vision of his contemporaries. Some of his schemes fell victim to events abroad or forces of nature. The Colombian Senate refused to ratify the canal treaty; a revolution in Santo Domingo doomed the Samana Bay deal. A hurricane that devastated the Danish West Indies and the opposition of General Grant helped thwart acquisition of those islands. Some of his projects died from lack of interest or support. Most ran afoul of the tempestuous politics of the time. While Seward was busily trying to expand the nation's horizons, Johnson was paralyzed by the conflict within his own party that led to his impeachment. A hostile Senate tabled a treaty for reciprocity with Hawaii and scuttled other Seward projects. "How sadly domestic disturbances of ours demoralize the national ambition," the secretary lamented in October 1868.82
Seward's tangible accomplishments were limited but significant. The navy took Midway Island in the Pacific in 1867 under an 1850s "Guano Law" that permitted acquisition of uninhabited Pacific islands. Strategists were disappointed when it proved unsuitable for a deepwater port. Only many years later would its strategic importance be realized as an airstrip.
Far more important was the windfall purchase of Alaska in the same year. Seward had long viewed this Russian possession as a potentially vital way station toward domination of the East Asian trade. Devastating Confederate attacks on Union shipping in the Aleutian Islands in 1865 had reinforced his certainty of its strategic significance in the north Pacific. Alaska was also seen as a way to pressure Canada to join the United States. For Russia, in the meantime, this vast frozen territory had become a financial and strategic liability. Some Russians feared with good reason that an expansive United States would simply take Alaska and reasoned that they had best get something while they could. The Russian-American Company's hold was weakening. Letting go was made easier since Russia was gaining new, more defensible, territory in Central and East Asia. Some Russians also believed that the sale of Alaska would be a good way to solidify friendship with the United States, a proper ending for a period of good relations.83
Scorned by many at the time, the purchase became Seward's greatest triumph. Eager for something to offset the administration's domestic failures, he jumped at the chance to purchase Alaska. The price of $7.2 million was $2 million more than he wanted to pay and $2 million more than the Russians originally sought, but the secretary was in a hurry to consummate the deal; he and Russian minister Eduard Stoeckl worked until 4:00 A.M. to draw up a treaty. Critics dismissed Alaska as a "sucked orange," "Seward's folly," or Johnson's "polar bear garden." Editor Horace Greeley called it "Walrussia." Foes of the purchase accused Johnson and Seward of trying to deflect attention from failures at home. Seward lobbied furiously and effectively, however, emphasizing the land's commercial and strategic potential and the importance of obliging good friends like the Russians. Congress was in full revolt against Johnson by this time, and the House of Representatives out of pique threatened not to appropriate funds. While complaining about the "wholly exceptional" difficulties of conducting diplomacy in the American democratic system, Stoeckl, who stood to profit handsomely from the deal, bribed key congressmen. At the time of its purchase, the main product of "Seward's icebox" was indeed ice, sold in large quantities to the bustling communities along the West Coast. More quickly than anyone might have imagined, the secretary's vision was vindicated, his prize acquisition, like California earlier, bringing the added bonus of gold.84
Like Seward, Grant's secretary of state, Hamilton Fish, was a New Yorker. In contrast to his flamboyant predecessor, the wealthy and socially prominent Fish was dignified and stodgy. Where Seward had coveted his cabinet post as a stepping-stone to the presidency, Fish dismissed it as one "for which I have little taste and less fitness." Taste and fitness notwithstanding, he ranks among the nation's better secretaries of state, in large part because of his settlement of the Alabama claims dispute with Britain. Unimaginative and somewhat rigid in his thinking, he was a person of good judgment and distinguished himself in an administration not noted for the integrity or accomplishments of its top officials. He served longer than any other individual who held the post in the nineteenth century.
Along with Johnson's successor, war hero General Grant, who instinctively sought to project American power abroad, Fish was a spiritual heir to Seward's expansionism.85 In Latin America, Fish and Grant sought to replace European influence with that of the United States. The secretary of state envisioned a time, as he put it, when "America shall be wholly American," when the "prominent position" of the United States on the continent would entitle it to a "leading voice" and impose on it "duties of right and of honor regarding American questions, whether these questions affected emancipated colonies, or colonies still subject to European domination."86 To expand U.S. influence, they tied to the Monroe Doctrine the no-transfer principle first enunciated by Jefferson in 1808, proclaiming unequivocally that "hereafter no territory on this continent shall be regarded as subject to transfer to a European power."87 They anticipated that the erosion of European power would lead to increased U.S. trade and political influence. They pushed ahead with plans for an isthmian canal. When Colombia blocked yet another treaty, Grant ordered surveys of alternate canal routes, producing a recommendation to build across Nicaragua that would be accepted policy until the turn of the century.
The islands of Hispaniola and Cuba had long been of special concern to Americans. Seward had cast a covetous eye on Samana Bay, a magnificent natural harbor in the Dominican Republic that could guard the eastern approaches to a canal and protect U.S. commercial and strategic interests in the Caribbean. In the Dominican Republic, as elsewhere, internal rivalries created opportunities for U.S. expansion, and the object of American desires took the initiative. With Spain gone, contending factions could no longer play the Europeans against the United States and thus could only seek from Americans the money and guns to remain in power and deter the threat of a hostile Haiti. Between 1869 and 1873, various Dominican factions developed proposals for the lease of Samana Bay, a U.S. protectorate over the Dominican Republic, and even formal annexation. A fraudulent plebiscite was conducted to demonstrate popular support for joining the United States.88
Despite support for annexation on both sides, the scheme faltered. Prodded by cronies with investments in the Dominican Republic, Grant was especially eager to oblige Dominican annexationists or at least acquire Samana Bay. He gave the issue top priority in his scandal-ridden administration. In 1869, the two countries actually agreed to a treaty incorporating the Dominican Republic as a territory. Grant lobbied vigorously for Senate approval, but he met massive and unrelenting opposition. Haiti bitterly opposed a U.S. presence next door, and its minister to the United States spent $20,000 to defeat the treaty. In the United States, expansion into the Caribbean had acquired a bad name among Republicans from Democratic exploits in the 1850s. Many Americans opposed the incorporation of territory with a large non-white population. "Beware of the tropics," warned soldier, diplomat, journalist, and Missouri senator Carl Schurz. "Do not trifle with that which may poison the future of this great nation."89 On the other hand, some idealists opposed absorbing tropical territory they claimed nature had set aside for darker-skinned people. Much of the opposition, including that from the formidable Senator Sumner, was personal and political. Undeterred by the defeat of annexation, Grant pushed for the lease of Samana Bay to private U.S. interests. He might have succeeded had not a revolution in the Dominican Republic in 1873 led to revocation of the offer.90
As always, Cuba posed especially complex challenges. The Spanish colony had been a major object of prewar expansionists, many of them seeking to protect the institution of slavery. Yet another rebellion against Spanish rule in 1868 brought it back to the forefront. Americans were deeply divided. Still infused with idealistic zeal, some Republicans urged continuation of the "noble work" of the Civil War by abolishing slavery in Cuba. African American leaders like Frederick Douglass went further, advocating aid for the Cuban rebels, the abolition of slavery in Cuba, and even its annexation. Harking back to America's traditional sense of mission, other Republicans urged extending Lincoln's "new birth of freedom" by eliminating one of the last bastions of European imperialism in the Western Hemisphere. Spain's brutal treatment of the rebels gave moral urgency to the pleas of interventionists. On the other hand, conservative Republicans opposed the taking of territory inhabited by mixed races and especially worried that acquisition of tropical lands would "degrade" the American people and their institutions. Some former Whigs insisted that the United States should continue to adhere to noninterventionism. Its ideals could best be spread by example.91
Grant and Fish approached the Cuban rebellion with great caution. Although Americans were eager to remove Spain from the Western Hemisphere, the Civil War remained fresh in their minds, and they were unwilling to risk war to abolish slavery or free Cuba. Fish refused to recognize Cuban belligerency, arguing that it could hurt their cause by expanding Spain's right of search. Premature recognition, he also perceived, would undercut the U.S. position in the ongoing dispute with Britain over the Alabama claims. Even when Spanish officials in 1873 seized the Virginius, an arms-running ship flying the American flag, and shot the captain, thirty-six of the crew, and sixteen passengers, the administration responded calmly. The ship was falsely registered in the United States and carrying arms to rebels and therefore liable to seizure.
United States officials were also leery of the consequences of Cuban independence. They doubted Cubans' capacity for self-government and feared that chaos might engulf the island, threatening U.S. economic and strategic interests. There was little support for annexation. The staunchly conservative Fish viewed Cubans as inferior even to African Americans and unfit to be U.S. citizens. He would have preferred an autonomous Cuba under informal U.S. economic and political control. A lawyer himself and a devotee of the emerging specialty of international law, Fish followed British Liberal Party leader Gladstone in advocating multilateral solutions to world problems. To resolve an issue that caused much turmoil in Congress, he proposed in late 1875 a six-nation approach to Spain to end the fighting. The European powers were then embroiled in a crisis in the Balkans and declined the overture, but Fish's ploy was quite extraordinary in its deviation from traditional American unilateralism. After ten years of brutal fighting in which as many as a hundred thousand people were killed, the Cuban rebellion fizzled out. Moving in the direction Fish preferred, U.S. investors took advantage of bankrupt and desperate Cuban and Spanish planters to buy up their property, considerably expanding America's economic stake and preparing the way for a very different outcome in 1898.92
Grant and Fish enjoyed greater success in the Pacific. As in the Caribbean, the Civil War highlighted the value of naval bases in the Pacific. Completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 raised hopes for vastly expanded commerce with Asia. Trans-Pacific steamship lines looked for stopping-off places en route to the Orient. Hawaii seemed an ideal midpoint and Pearl Harbor a potentially vital naval base to guard western approaches to a canal and protect the western coast of the United States. With the British and other European nations lopping off Pacific islands one by one, pressures developed for the United States to do the same.93
As in the Dominican Republic, much of the impetus for closer U.S.-Hawaiian ties came from forces outside Washington, in this case Americans with business interests and political clout in the islands.94 The Civil War also had a huge impact in Hawaii. Confederate raiders destroyed the whaling business. The Union blockade increased demands for raw sugar, encouraging enterprising Americans to expand sugar cultivation. After the war, American entrepreneurs in Hawaii sought an expanded U.S. naval presence to defend a thriving commerce and a protected U.S. market for their sugar. They insinuated themselves with the Hawaiian government to achieve their goals. At one time or another, American sugar planters served as Hawaii's foreign minister and minister to Washington. They made up the delegation that negotiated the treaty. Talk of possible annexation found little support in Washington. "The indisposition to consider important questions of the future in the Cabinet is wonderful," Fish complained. "A matter must be imminent to engage attention—indifference and reticence—alas!"95 Proposals for a naval base at Pearl Harbor also aroused opposition among native Hawaiians. Eventually, to win U.S. support for the free entry of sugar into the U.S. market, American sugar planters sent to Washington to negotiate a reciprocity treaty agreed that Hawaii would not grant such trade terms or naval bases to any other nation, thus limiting Hawaii's sovereignty in return for a secure market for their commodity. The idea, as the American who served as Hawaii's minister to the United States put it, was to "make Hawaii an American colony with the same laws and institutions as our own."96 To seal the deal, Hawaii's King Kalakaua visited the United States in 1874, the first reigning monarch to do so.
As Fish observed, the 1873 reciprocity treaty bound Hawaii to the United States with "hoops of steel." It set off a period of frantic development for Hawaii's sugar plantations, increasing the islands' dependence on U.S. capital and the U.S. market. The demand for cheap labor to work the plantations led to a huge influx of Asians. Hawaiians now controlled only 15 percent of the land and 2 percent of the capital and were relegated to a "dispossessed minority." These demographic changes in turn aroused U.S. fears of Asian control. It was only a short step to annexation.97
The United States' interest in Samoa also originated from local forces. Again, the Civil War played a role, the worldwide demand for raw cotton fueling a land rush on that remote South Pacific island that drew attention to its other advantages. About halfway between Hawaii and Australia, Samoa and particularly the harbor of Pago Pago—"the most perfectly landlocked harbor that exists in the Pacific Ocean"—attracted the attention of New York shipping interests. These shippers encouraged Commander Richard Meade of the Pacific squadron to claim the harbor for the United States. Meade dutifully obliged, but a contentious Senate in 1873 scrapped his treaty. Undeterred, Grant dispatched an agent to inquire about a naval base. A treaty was subsequently negotiated giving the United States the right to a base at Pago Pago and obliging it to use its good offices should Samoa encounter problems with third-party countries. Remarkably, the Senate approved this treaty in 1878, Samoa's first treaty with a foreign nation, perhaps reflecting Grant's departure from office or that body's appreciation of the growing importance of the Pacific. That treaty provided the basis for expanded U.S. involvement in the 1880s and subsequent annexation.98 The treaties with Hawaii and Samoa mark major steps in the establishment of the United States as a Pacific power. They make clear the persistence of expansionist forces during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
THE YEAR 1877 MARKED AN END to the Civil War era. The political compromise worked out in March resolved the deadlocked Hayes-Tilden presidential election of 1876 by keeping the Republicans in the White House in return for restoration of home rule in the South. That year also marked the end of an epoch in U.S. foreign policy. The sections would continue to disagree on foreign policy issues, sometimes heatedly, but the Union victory definitively settled the fundamental question of American nationhood. Postwar non-intervention in Mexico and acquiescence in the Dominion of Canada fixed the boundaries of the continental United States. The Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The major issues on which U.S. foreign policy had focused throughout much of the nineteenth century were resolved. Over the next three decades, the nation would be dramatically transformed through immigration, urbanization, and industrialization. It would take its place among the world's great powers. Continental expansion would give way to overseas expansion.