U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward
“If any European Power provokes a war, we shall not shrink from it. A contest between Great Britain and the United States would wrap the world in fire.” These bold words were uttered in the hot summer of 1861, when the United States was ripping apart at the seams, standing on the precipice of a great Civil War that would consume over 620,000 lives before its culmination four years later. At a time when the Union seemed to be crumbling, these fiery threats of war with Great Britain came from none other than the United States Secretary of State, William H. Seward. Why would Seward seem to be promising war with the world’s greatest power when his own nation was just entering the terrible throes of civil war?
The answer lies in the high-stakes game of diplomacy that was being played not only by the Union, but also by the Confederacy, with Great Britain during the American Civil War. For the Union, foreign intervention in the conflict was a constant threat, one that would ensure the separation of the South. Conversely, the Confederacy constantly sought and expected foreign recognition and intervention, seeing it as an assurance of independence. This series of posts will explore both Union and Confederate foreign relations with Great Britain during the American Civil War. In today’s brief post, I take a look at the possible reasons for British involvement in the conflict. Later this week, I will examine both Union and Confederate foreign policy strategies, and finally compare Union and Confederate foreign policy, and its effectiveness, vis-à-vis Britain.
To understand the importance of American (both North and South) and British foreign relations during the Civil War, what were the possible reasons for British involvement in the conflict. Were Union fears and Confederate hopes regarding British intervention justified? Obviously, Britain did not significantly intervene in the American Civil War, but this does not mean that the possibility didn’t exist. There were several motivating reasons for British intervention in the conflict.
First, intervention may have arisen out of Great Britain’s own self-interest, primarily involving the economic ramifications of the war. While the sheer damage of the Civil War was massive, it often goes overlooked that the conflict caused considerable economic woes overseas. While the details of this economic depression will be accounted for later, suffice it to say that Great Britain was suffering significantly due to the unavailability of cotton for its textile and merchant markets. Under international law at the time, a neutral state could intervene in a foreign civil war when its own welfare was endangered. As The Economist’s editor of the day pointed out, “We participate in the ruin that is going on [regarding the Civil War]…We have, therefore, a right to speak and to be heard.” With Britain’s economy suffering directly from the war in America, Britain may have had a legal pretext to intervene in the conflict.
Cotton, such as this in front of a cotton gin in 1862 South Carolina, kept British textile mills humming. The Civil War disrupted the flow of “King Cotton” across the Atlantic
Second, there was a strong belief among British leadership that Great Britain had a humanitarian duty to help end the conflict. Again, international law claimed that nations had an obligation to help the combatants avoid “disaster and ruin, so far as it can do without running too great a risk.” Arguably as the world’s greatest power, Britain had a moral duty to try to find an end to the ever-increasingly bloody struggle. As the London Morning Herald pleaded in September of 1862, “Let us do something, as we are Christian men…Let us do something to stop this carnage.” Further, most British considered the Union cause futile—there was no way the entire American South could be subjugated and brought back to the fold; this disbelief that the Union could be welded back together led to the conclusion that mediation between the parties (mediation based on separation) was a logical, humane policy.
Lord Palmerston (Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston) served as British Prime Minister throughout the American Civil War
Third and last, involvement in the American struggle could always be caused by international incidents. Perhaps the best example of such a perilous breakdown is the infamous Trent Affair. In late 1861, a U.S. warship boarded the British steamer Trent and arrested two Confederate envoys on board who were headed for Europe, an action viewed by many as a violation of international law. The affair immediately caused tensions to rise between the U.S. and Great Britain. Indeed, an American in London at the time wrote to Secretary of State Seward, “The people are frantic with rage, and were the country polled, I fear 999 men out of a thousand would declare for immediate war.” The insult to British honor caused by the U.S. Navy seemed likely to spark a war. Britain responded to the incident by issuing a seven-day ultimatum demanding an explanation and the release of the Confederate prisoners. Despite the popularity of the Navy’s actions at home, President Abraham Lincoln conceded to British demands and defused the situation, releasing the prisoners and having Secretary Seward issue a note of explanation. In a personal letter to friends, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston reveals both the satisfaction the apology provided and just how perilously close war had come: “If we had not shewn [sic] that we were ready to fight, that low-minded fellow Seward would not have eat the leek as he has done.”
Thus, the possibility of British intervention in the American Civil War was very real. Whether due to economic interests, humanitarian pleas, or international incidents, both the Union and Confederacy had to grapple with the prospect of British intervention in their conflict. As the international power of the day, Great Britain had tremendous power to enforce her will, especially considering the likelihood that France (and perhaps other European nations) would follow her lead. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which the Union could have survived if Great Britain forced mediation and separation upon the two warring factions. For the Union, then, it was critical to keep Great Britain out of the war by any means possible. My next post will explore the stratagems employed by the U.S. to keep the British neutral.
Zac Cowsert received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and Political Science from Centenary College of Louisiana, a small liberal-arts college in Shreveport. He is currently a graduate student at West Virginia University focusing in U.S. History and the American Civil War. His studies and research often explore the Trans-Mississippi Theater. ©
Further Reading and Sources
“America’s Bloodiest Day.” America’s Civil War 20.4 (Sept., 2007):26-29.
Anderson, Stuart. “1861: Blockade vs. Closing the Confederate Ports.” Military Affairs 41.4 (Dec., 1977): 190-194.
Blumenthal, Henry. “Confederate Diplomacy: Popular Notions and International Realities.” The Journal of Southern History 32.2 (May, 1966): 151-171.
Brauer, Kinley J. “British Mediation and the American Civil War: A Reconsideration.” The Journal of Southern History 38.1 (Feb., 1972): 49-64.
James, Lawrence. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Jenkins, Philip. A History of the United States. 3rd ed. Ed. Jeremy Black. Willshire, U.K.: Palmgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Jones, Howard. Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations. Eds. Gary W. Gallagher and T. Michael Parrish. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Lincoln, Abraham. Abraham Lincoln: A Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings. Ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher. New York: Signet, 1964.
Owsley, Frank Lawrence. King Cotton Diplomacy. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.
Reid, Brian Holden. “Power, Sovereignty, and the Great Republic: Anglo-American Diplomatic Relations in the Era of the Civil War.” Diplomacy and Statecraft 14.2 (June, 2003): 45-76.
Temple, Henry John (Third Viscount Palmerston). The Letters of the Third Viscount Palmerston to Laurence and Elizabeth Sullivan 1804-1863. Ed. Kenneth Bourne. London: Royal Historical Society. 1979.
“Trent Affair.” Colombia Electronic Encyclopedia. 6th ed. 1 July 2010.
*This series of posts emerged from a research paper I wrote at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark in the spring of 2011.
Have you read Fragile Fabric of Union by Brian Schoen?
I have not! Should I?
I have wondered what would have happened if the Trent’s Captain John Moir had ignored the warning shots of the San Jacinto. Likely US Captain Wilkes would have fired on the British ship and, at that point, it would have been war. Interesting to think, the fate of the country in the Civil War, hung on whether a Brit captain decided to stop his ship or not.
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British intervention in the American Civil War would have led to a repeat of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in the aftermath of the Mexican-American war. Any portion of British North America that Britain could retain would be at the mercy and forbearance of the Union, and the Union Army would conquer all of North America save for Russia and Mexico.
The British Empire would be greatly reduced, and the Royal Navy would be defeated in virtually all naval engagements with the Union Navy. Britain would lose all of Canada.
In my view, the world, including the South, underestimated the power and fighting spirit of the North. There was no army in the world save for the Union Army that could have prevented the Confederacy from winning its independence. The British Empire managed to last so long and become so large not because it was the strongest world power at any point in its time, but rather because it knew not to get into a war it could not win, or the wrong kind of war that would escalate into a total one.
The more I learn about the Civil War, the more I am astounded at both the achievements of the Union and Confederate armies and navies. I see in the American Civil War a superpower nation having already formed, with the sole reason America wasn’t the world’s foremost military power in 1870 being that it consciously chose to reduce its military, and a time when every great power without exception would seek to maintain and extend that power to the farthest extent possible. America could have easily become an “empire” larger and more powerful than the British Empire in the 1870s, at the direct expense of Britain.
The United States would first conquer all of Canada, and subsequently take Greenland and Iceland, the latter which is located only 500 miles northeast of the British Isles.
A massive naval buildup on the part of the United States would occur, and fears of invasion would force Britain to relinquish its control of India and Australia. In the matter of ten years following the American Civil War, the British could have found itself reduced to the island that it began as, with no allies, no empire, with a loss in power as great as that of the Spanish Empire, which lost nearly all of its possessions in the early 19th century save for Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean.
The British Empire, from 1815-1861, was the most powerful empire in the world. It eventually grew to become the largest empire the world has ever seen by 1897. But every wise British statesman and soldier at the turn of the 19th century knew in their hearts, although loathed to admit, that their rise following the American Civil War was achieved because of their decision to not intervene in that war, and that the continuance of their empire would be conditioned on friendly relations with that nation across the sea, that nation which had won independence from the Empire that would become the one on which the sun never set.
In my opinion, the United States became the world’s foremost military power during the years between 1846 and 1848, and settled the unresolved political and economic issues that had plagued it since its birth during the Civil War years.
The U.S was in grave danger at the beginning of the civil war until Russia sent Naval squadrons to U.S. ports and made Britain and France give up on the idea of intervention. (It would have caused an early WW1). The U.S. was not a “foremost military power” in the 1840s, though by 1865, it had a million men in arms, factories across the land churning out weapons, and ironclad gunboats protecting it’s coasts and therefor beyond the reach of any foreign power. 1865 in my opinion.
In the 1840s, the U.S. was just as vulnerable as it had been during the War of 1812, when the British were able to march into D.C. and burn it to the ground. By the 1860s Chancellor Bismarck of Prussia greatly admired President Lincoln and the Russians were still stewing over the Crimean war and would have jumped at the chance for payback. With the Prussians and Russians as allies the U.S. was in fact a major world power.
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