The foreign relations of the Civil War has not yet received its fair due from scholars, although they have made considerable progress toward filling that gap in the literature. Among the many first-rate studies of Civil War diplomacy, I have found the following works particularly helpful in preparing this book.
The starting point for any historiographical examination of the Civil War is chapter 8 in volume 1 of Robert L. Beisner's two-volume edited work, American Foreign Relations since 1600: A Guide to the Literature, 2nd edition (2003). But see also chapter 11 of the first edition, Guide to American Foreign Relations since 1700, edited by Richard D. Burns (1983). Still useful for locating both primary and secondary works is Samuel F. Bemis and Grace G. Griffin, eds., Guide to the Diplomatic History of the United States, 1775–1921 (1935), chapter 13.
Pioneering studies of the international dimensions of the war include Ephraim D. Adams's two-volume work, Great Britain and the American Civil War (1925), and Donaldson Jordan and Edwin J. Pratt's Europe and the American Civil War (1931). David P. Crook offers a sweeping analysis of foreign relations in The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865 (1974), and in his slimmer account, Diplomacy during the American Civil War (1975). For Union and Confederate relations with the British, see (in addition to E. D. Adams's work mentioned above) Brian Jenkins's two-volume study, Britain and the War for the Union (1974, 1980), which highlights the British belief that southern independence was a fait accompli, that a prolonged war would hurt international trade, and that concern about a Union-British war shaped Canadian-American relations. Jay Sexton's important study, Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837–1873 (2005), ties investments to diplomacy and is especially strong on the Erlanger loan. For Confederate foreign relations, see Frank L. Owsley's classic study, King Cotton Diplomacy (1959, 2009), which was the first to examine British and French archival materials but is overtly pro-Confederate in thrust and heavy in its economic orientation. A useful synthesis is Charles M. Hubbard, The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy (1998). Indispensable to any discussion of the war is James M. McPherson's Pulitzer Prize–winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988).
Numerous secondary works cover various aspects of British-American diplomacy during the war. For the interventionist issue, see Howard Jones, Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (1992). And for the slavery issue in the Union's relations with both England and France, see Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (1999). The legalities of the Trent crisis receive careful attention in Gordon H. Warren's Fountain of Discontent: The Trent Affair and Freedom of the Seas (1981). Also important are two books by Norman B. Ferris, The Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis (1977) and Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward's Foreign Policy, 1861 (1976), both emphasizing the secretary of state's role in opposing British intervention in the Civil War. For the Confederacy's shipbuilding efforts in England, see Frank J. Merli's classic study, Great Britain and the Confederate Navy, 1861–1865 (1970), and his posthumously published work, The Alabama, British Neutrality, and the American Civil War (2004). British reaction to the Civil War was diverse but primarily pro-Union in the labor sector, according to Richard J. M. Blackett in his major revisionist work, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War (2001). In a controversial account that deserves attention, English Public Opinion and American Civil War (2003), Duncan A. Campbell charges that historians have exaggerated both pro-Confederate and pro-Union sentiment in England.
For Union and Confederate relations with France, see Lynn M. Case and Warren F. Spencer, The United States and France: Civil War Diplomacy (1970). Alfred J. Hanna and Kathryn A. Hanna explore the French emperor's Grand Design for the Americas in Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (1971). French public opinion about the American war becomes clear in two studies: George M. Blackburn, French Newspaper Opinion on the American Civil War (1997) and W. Reed West, Contemporary French Opinion on the American Civil War (1924).
Norman E. Saul examines Russia's critical though underemphasized relationship with the United States during the Civil War in Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763–1867 (1991).