Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and British Diplomacy

Introduction: The Contradictions of the Emancipation Proclamation

Historians have long puzzled over the contradictions within Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. As a statement of general principle, the document seems compromised by Lincoln's refusal to extend emancipation to slaves within those border states that permitted slavery but had remained within the Union at the onset of hostilities: Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland. This central contradiction was observed at the time; Evans notes that some Abolitionists claimed it was a clever but meaningless document that freed only those slaves then firmly under Confederate control, in states where Lincoln had no power to enforce it. "A poor document but a mighty act," the Governor of Massachusetts said to a friend (Evans 192).

Our confused understanding of the Emancipation Proclamation, however, derives from reading it primarily as part of Lincoln's military strategy. The better framework for understanding the Proclamation is the context of foreign affairs. Even as a matter of military strategy, Lincoln's chief goal in issuing the document on New Year's Day in 1863 was less to disrupt the South and more to prevent the British government from granting diplomatic recognition or military aid to the Confederacy. This essay also examines the ways in which the South employed the same sort of symbolic politics in attempting to influence European views of the Civil War to their own advantage.

Britain's Economic and Political Stakes in the Civil War

The British took a keen interest in the progress of the U.S. Civil War because domestic politics in Britain in 1860 greatly complicated the question of whether they might favor the North or the South. The great textile looms of industrialized northern England required a constant supply of cotton. British colonial holdings in India were intended to make this supply chain secure, but Queen Victoria would not be proclaimed Empress of India until 1876. In 1860, Great Britain's economy was partly dependent on American cotton, while the economy of the Confederacy was almost wholly dependent upon cotton exports to England.

Douglass North, in his account of the American economy in the period immediately before the Civil War, notes that in 1815 the annual value of cotton exports comprised about a third of all U.S. exports, but that by 1860 cotton accounted for more than half of the American economy overall (North 233). North additionally notes that the great majority of cotton grown in the South was exported during this period, reflecting the fact that England had experienced industrialization earlier than America. If a Southern victory was in England's economic interests, though, it would be badly received by large sectors of English society. Parliament had passed a Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 in response to increasing public outrage — particularly among England's evangelical Christian community, galvanized by the oratory of William Wilberforce — over the institution of slavery.

Confederate Diplomacy and the Push for British Recognition

It is within this context — in which Great Britain had a vested interest in the outcome of the American Civil War — that we must understand the way in which both the North and South courted British support. Their means for doing so was primarily diplomatic at first, but such diplomacy could only extend so far. England would not offer official diplomatic acknowledgement of the Confederacy as a sovereign nation, because such recognition would provide such substantial aid to the Southern cause that it could be perceived as outright intervention. Jones usefully summarizes the status quo by mid-1862:

"The hesitant British stance regarding recognition had upset the South as well as the North. The new Confederate secretary of state, Judah P. Benjamin, complained that by not extending recognition, England prolonged a devastating war by encouraging the North to believe that it could subjugate the South… As long as England appeared to doubt the South's capacity to maintain its government, the North would continue the war. British policies, Benjamin insisted, were undermining the chances for peace and thereby hurting their own interests based on trade with the South. Recognition would put an end to the struggle without endangering England." (Jones 111)

The logic offered by the South was itself appealing to the English to a certain degree. As Lincoln knew as well as the South, England's diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy would cost England nothing economically, and might stand to benefit them substantially. As Graebner notes of this period: "Europe's diplomatic tradition cautioned against any recognition of the Confederacy until the South had demonstrated the power required to establish and maintain its independence… Diplomacy reflects the status of power, and Southern power never appeared greater than during the summer and autumn months of 1862" (Graebner 68). In particular, the military events of that summer made the South look like it might prevail: Stonewall Jackson inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Union Army at Second Bull Run, and days later Lincoln restored McClellan's position as head of the Union forces after having removed him in March. As 1862 came to an end, the South was never closer to victory, or to the possibility of ending the war through diplomatic negotiations brokered — and to some extent militarily guaranteed — by Europe.