United States and the Trans Atlantic Powers During the Civil War

United States and the Trans-Atlantic Powers during the Civil War

Prior to and during the earliest months of the U.S. Civil War, the Confederacy banked heavily on the intervention of Britain and France. Relying on the importance of Confederate cotton for the textile mills and related industries of Britain and France, the Confederacy maneuvered in several ways to achieve European intervention. While the earliest years of the War brought Britain, in particular, very close to entering the War, circumstances and Union maneuvers worked against intervention and the Confederacy's hopes were eventually destroyed.

Many Confederates believed that Britain and France were almost certain to intervene in the war and secure Confederate independence. In retrospect, we know that the Confederacy's efforts failed to attain intervention. However, the Confederacy's efforts came very close to success, particularly regarding Britain. Several factors worked for and against intervention and the anti-intervention factors eventually became so powerful that there was no intervention.

One important factor was Britain's and France's heavy reliance on the cotton exports from the South for their textile mills.[footnoteRef:1] Cotton production and export from the Southern states had steadily grown until it became a significant supplier of cotton for the mills of Britain and France by the mid-Nineteenth Century.[footnoteRef:2] In the Confederacy's estimation, stoppage of cotton exports would create financial "upheaval" for Britain and France, as hundreds of thousands of workers were thrown out of work by the lack of cotton.[footnoteRef:3] While it is true that the North established naval blockades to prevent the Confederacy's export of cotton and import of arms, ammunition and other vital supplies,[footnoteRef:4] and while it is also true that the blockade eventually became a highly effective weapon against the Confederacy, [footnoteRef:5] in the war's initial months, the blockade was "notably porous."[footnoteRef:6] Consequently, in the earliest months of the war, the Confederacy could have successfully exported most of its 1860 cotton crop.[footnoteRef:7] Nevertheless, the Confederacy abruptly stopped exporting cotton to Britain and France, believing that an abrupt and total stoppage would make it much likelier that those two countries would diplomatically recognize the Confederacy, intervene in the U.S. Civil War and either fight on the side of the Confederacy or force the Union to negotiate peaceful secession for the Confederacy.[footnoteRef:8] [1: Steven E. Woodworth, This Great Struggle: America's Civil War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011), 67.] [2: Ibid.] [3: Ibid.] [4: Ibid., 68.] [5: Ibid.] [6: Ibid.] [7: Ibid.] [8: Ibid., 68-9.]