This horrible war, this terrible war, this wholly unnecessary war—these words were not mere rhetoric to contemporary Europeans who avidly followed the American Civil War and roundly denounced what they perceived as a blind rage propelling the vicious conflict. The sectional struggle had spun out of control, ultimately leading to more than 600,000 deaths and threatening to disable not only North America but also Atlantic commerce and thereby do irreparable harm to Europe. Trench warfare, cannon, long-range artillery, and rifled muskets; massive armies engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat with guns, knives, and sabers; ironclad warships that made the Union navy seemingly invincible and the once-dominant British and French wooden fleets virtually obsolete—these were some of the killing features of this internecine fighting that had gone beyond the pale of so-called civilized warfare to appall onlookers both inside and outside the divided American republic.1
And so needless from the European perspective: The outcome was a fait accompli, most sage observers in London, Paris, and other continental capitals had asserted from the war's beginning. How could a stumbling Union subjugate the Confederacy, an aggregate of eleven states composed of millions of primarily Anglicized people fervently pushing for independence against a mongrelized northern majority? Almost three years into the war, Union secretary of state William H. Seward bitterly complained that British and French policy toward America still rested on the original assumption that the Union could not reconcile the South and that its independence was unavoidable. President Abraham Lincoln's insistence on preserving the Union had led to a mindless waste of blood and treasure; Confederate president Jefferson Davis's support for secession as the pathway to a new nation seemed irreversible. The republican experiment, long ridiculed by the Old World, had finally imploded, exposing the myriad weaknesses of a popular government now collapsing in anarchy.
To many Europeans, the breakup of the large and unwieldy republic had starkly revealed the inherent strife in a democracy that had degenerated into mob rule, insurrection, rebellion, and chaos—only to reappear as two vastly weakened American republics. Had not the American crisis combined with the political upheavals of the 1840s in Europe to signal the danger to stability and order in supporting democratic reforms in both Britain and France? At the war's outset, many British and French observers took sides and continued to do so throughout, but as the conflict ground on, increasing numbers became repulsed by its human and material destruction and simply wanted the hostilities to end, regardless of who won. Self-interest, of course, guided much of the Anglo-French reaction to the war, but often overlooked was a growing moral concern that weighed heavily on their responsibilities as world leaders. In both practical and moral terms, the British and the French thought the Union engaged in an unrealistic attempt to restore southerners to a nation now permanently ripped apart by secession and whose fighting threatened to inflict external collateral damage.
A great economic and security issue was at stake in America, Europeans believed, one that affected the key question in diplomacy of whether to recognize the Confederacy as a nation. The North American economy was a vital cog in the ocean trade, and the longer the fighting continued, the more other nations suffered from the commercial disruption of what had become an integrated Atlantic network. By the mid-nineteenth century, America and Europe had become the economic basis of an Atlantic commercial world that meshed finance with Union and Confederate foreign affairs to help shape the Blue and Gray diplomacy of the Civil War. Both northern grain and southern cotton had framed this new Atlantic economy, creating a unique relationship between the United States and England (and with France and other European countries, though on a lesser scale) that helped to smooth over difficulties. Economic interests had not allied with the Washington government in determining policy, but they ran in parallel if uneven paths. Especially significant was the series of financial connections that Americans made with European investors during the Civil War as both Union and Confederate agents sought large foreign loans. The Union repeatedly failed, largely because of the prevailing belief overseas that it could not win the war. And, except for the modest Erlanger loan of 1863, the Confederacy likewise stumbled because of the war's uncertainties, along with its use of cotton as leverage for extracting recognition rather than as collateral for loans that might have facilitated the battlefield victories so essential to winning recognition.2
The rising atrocities in the war, many British observers argued as the fighting drummed on, made it their duty as civilized Victorians to resolve the conflict. Starkly realistic engravings appeared in Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, bringing the war into the homes of numerous contemporaries. Mathew Brady's photographs even more graphically introduced civilians to the war's realities by displaying the bodies in the grisly aftermath of battle. Neither Union nor Confederacy could convince outsiders of the righteousness of one cause over the other, making the fighting incomprehensible and therefore pointless. Both antagonists had denied at the war's beginning that slavery was the central issue, which made it difficult for those on the outside to determine why brother fought brother and who was right and who was wrong. Yet the war proved morbidly fascinating to those insulated from its touch by distance and water. Whether the British, the French, and other Europeans grasped what some writers have called the “culture of death,” it had cast a long shadow over American events. Northerners and southerners had seemingly accepted dying on the battlefield as a part of life—a bloody medium through which they passed before entering the “heavenly country” to meet loved ones as a reward for exemplifying duty, honor, and love of country. Many of those fighting in the Civil War had already lived half or more of their expected life span of forty-five, and to die in glory on the battlefield meant to live in glory in heaven. Europeans, however, failed to realize how the promise of a heavenly afterlife drove up the level of destruction as much as death was a product of that destruction. Many observers dismissed the fighting as insane and considered every means possible to bring it to an end.3
This study focuses on Union and Confederate foreign relations during the Civil War from a European as well as an American perspective. Its central thrust is statecraft at the highest levels, with references to public opinion as it appeared to have impact on policy. The events recounted here break into two basic time frames, both highlighting the issue of foreign intervention: from the outbreak of the war in April 1861 through the fall of 1862, when the British took the lead in considering a mediation pointing to recognition of the Confederacy; and from the close of 1862 to the end of the war in April 1865, when the French emerged as the chief proponent of intervention based on an armistice and tied the question of recognition to their military presence in Mexico.
This intricate four-year story highlights numerous themes: the international dimension of the war; the Union's attempts to block the Confederacy from winning foreign recognition; the role of slavery in determining Anglo-French considerations of intervention; the influence of international law on diplomacy; the perils of European neutrality; the shadowy impact of Russia on almost every interventionist venture; the French military intervention in Mexico as a threat to the Western Hemisphere and to the Old World's balance of power; the mixture of reasons for European interest in the American war that ranged from self-interest to the humanitarian obligations of neutral, civilized nations to stop a war hurting them as well as the principal antagonists; the relationship of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence to slavery and the Union; the evolving belief by Lincoln and others that the death of slavery and the horrendous shedding of blood in battle would bring a new birth of freedom; and, finally, the inability of Europeans to understand the Lincoln administration's devotion to Union and emphasis on the integrated nature of slavery to that Union, which led them to interpret the war as a senseless struggle between a Confederacy too large and populous for anyone to deny its independence and a Union too stubborn to admit to the futility of returning to its prewar position. Most of all, this work explores the horrible nature of a war that attracted outside involvement as much as it repelled it.
International law confirmed the Lincoln administration's argument against intervention as a violation of domestic affairs but permitted a loophole that boded ill for the Union and, therefore, boded well for the Confederacy. Other nations affected by the fighting had the right to make their good offices available in encouraging peace talks. If such an offer did not appeal to either warring party, the nations could act out of self-interest in deciding the merits of the case and, if the party adjudged to have justice on its side asked for help or accepted the offer, they could intervene with the purpose of ending that war for the general good. Once the European nations took this interventionist approach—whether by a mediation proposal, a call for an armistice, or the use of military force—they were expected to suggest peace terms.4
Yet this stipulation promised all kinds of problems—not only the necessity of understanding the war's causes before devising its solution, but, most notably, the danger of joining the fighting and widening the war. Neither Union nor Confederacy had been able to reconcile their differences and therefore went to war. How could outside nations better comprehend its causes and formulate a settlement? Would they have to resort to military action to stop the American conflict? More ominous was the Union's pledge to resist any form of intervention in what it termed a domestic conflict, even to waging war on the intruder. And who could guarantee against the interventionist powers falling out among themselves over the drafting of peace terms and, after ending the war, demanding compensation for damages sustained?
Both Union and Confederacy regarded any form of outside involvement in their affairs as a major step toward a foreign recognition that could decide the outcome of the war. Any intervention, the Union argued, constituted meddling in domestic matters and bestowed legitimacy on traitors subverting the U.S. Constitution and the republic based on the central governing ideas set out by the Founding Fathers. The Confederacy countered that the Union had become oppressive, forcing southerners into secession as the initial step toward returning to the republic resting on the principles of self-government envisioned by the Founding Fathers. So serious was the threat of dissolution that Seward privately warned both England and France of war on the intruder; so serious was the Confederacy's attempt at nationhood that it was willing to fight for independence. Had not the resort to war showed irreconcilable differences between northerners and southerners? Did not both sides confront a heightened danger from the outside, particularly as the powers involved in the American contest grew in number and perhaps pondered the gains they might make after bringing the war to a close?
The Union rejected (just as the Confederacy welcomed) all types of intervention as an impetus to southern nationhood. Making good offices available for peace talks afforded the Confederacy a status it did not deserve—whether or not the outside nation participated in the discussions. Mediation, though on the surface an innocent move that imposed no binding decisions, implied the existence of two entities and therefore constituted a major step toward recognition. Arbitration posed an even greater danger, for it required the formulation of a plan of settlement between the American antagonists, its decisions were binding, and it left the way open for broader action if the war hurt neutrals. An armistice likewise was dangerous, for even though its purpose was to permit the opposing camps to consider the wisdom of restarting the war, it also provided time for both sides to refuel for renewed fighting. Neutrality seemed innocuous because it dictated equal treatment to both antagonists. Yet in addition to elevating the Confederacy's stature, the policy could lead to intervention. According to international law, a declaration of neutrality automatically classified both Union and Confederacy as belligerents entitled to negotiate foreign loans; purchase supplies, including arms; conduct searches and seize contraband at sea; enter foreign ports; license privateers; impose blockades; and command moral support and respect for its flag.5 Furthermore, it was virtually impossible for outside nations to be truly neutral because any action beneficial to one belligerent was automatically detrimental to the other. Most important, however, the doctrine of neutrality included the right of interested nations to intervene when the ongoing war threatened them with collateral damage.
Recognition of the Confederacy had great potential for securing southern independence, particularly in the initial eighteen months of the war when the Union was reeling from poor military leadership and battlefield performance. The Confederacy could sign treaties—economic and military—with foreign governments and enjoy all the rights of a nation. Britain, France, and other nations realized there was a razor-thin line between Confederate status as a “traitor” and as an independent nation—much like the margin separating day from night. The rebellious people must demonstrate freedom from the parent state, maintain order at home, deal responsibly with other nations, and show promise of permanence and stability. Perhaps Secretary of State John Quincy Adams said it best in 1818 when writing President James Monroe that a people deserved recognition “when independence is established as a matter of fact so as to leave the chances of the opposite party to recover their dominion utterly desperate.” Five years later, Adams warned the American minister to Colombia that Spain could declare war on the United States if it recognized Latin American independence before its time.6 The principle seemed applicable to the 1860s or any other time period: Premature recognition of Confederate independence justified the Union's declaring war on the intervening nations. To act precipitously made them virtual allies and thus participants in a war determining Confederate independence. Thus the Confederacy's chief frustration became clear: how to achieve a recognition that depended on victory on the battlefield when that victory on the battlefield depended on foreign assistance stemming from recognition.7
There are numerous excellent studies of various aspects of Union and Confederate relations with the European powers, but no one has taken on the daunting task of integrating their diplomacy with that of both England and France—and to some extent Russia.8 The closest attempt at this broad-scale synthesis of wartime diplomacy came some years ago, when David P. Crook published two books, the second a shortened version of the first: The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865 (1974) and Diplomacy during the American Civil War (1975). It would have been easier (and faster) for me to write an account of Union diplomacy that bookended with Frank L. Owsley's longtime standard work on Confederate diplomacy—King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (1959). But the two stories would have run parallel to each other without intersecting and could not fully convey the complicated underpinnings of a transatlantic diplomacy that had a major impact on the war's outcome. The following history is therefore an analysis of Union-Confederate foreign relations with Britain and France and not an account of either the Union's or the Confederacy's diplomacy with the two major European powers. The reason is simple: Events of this period did not happen that way. They occurred in neither an orderly nor a predictable manner, but in a chaotic and concurrent fashion posing problems for diplomats that matched those confronting the generals and the politicians in speed and complexity.
Making sense of the intricacies of the international dimension of the Civil War has been a difficult and yet highly rewarding experience. To make this rendition as faithful as possible to the way it transpired, I have relied on a narrative style aimed at relating the story as its participants saw it play out around them. This approach therefore permitted a look at the intersection of events, both domestic and foreign, that do not become evident in a topical setting. Thus my challenge was to provide a clear summation of the major issues, events, and personalities without obscuring the disorderly and complicated manner in which these matters presented themselves to policymakers in Richmond, Washington, London, and Paris. If the ensuing story is readable and understandable while maintaining its complexity, the book will have fulfilled my purpose.
The Civil War imperiled the Union as Lincoln thought it was in 1861 and soon wished it to be, whereas Davis believed it confirmed the Union formed in Philadelphia in 1787 but since undermined by Washington's tyrannical rule. Lincoln's determination to preserve the Union as he envisioned it was no idle charge; nor was Davis's resolve to restore the original Union that he perceived as created by the Founding Fathers. Lincoln regarded his task as a sacred trust bequeathed to later generations and now belonging to him; Davis thought his responsibility just as precious—to leave a Union that was beyond repair and start anew.
Both northerners and southerners believed themselves morally and legally correct—which left civil war as the only reconciler and thus a certain impetus to the worst kind of fighting and a predictable catalyst to foreign intervention.