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Further Reading

England in the American Civil War

In 1861 each party in the United States counted confidently on the support of the English Government and people, the North because of the universal condemnation of human slavery, the South because of the importance of cotton to English commerce. The diplomatic efforts of both were concentrated upon Great Britain. With her aid the South might win. Without her aid the Southern cause was almost hopeless, and the one European friend of the South, Louis Napoleon, would not dare to interfere directly. That England did not actively interfere on the Southern side is a proof of the power of idealism in English politics.

Bernhardi wrote in 1901, "Since England committed the unpardonable blunder ... of not supporting the Southern States in the American war of secession, a rival to England's worldwide empire has appeared ... in the form of the United States of America." He later marveled that the Union did not take advantage of England's distress to take possession of Canada. But the English Government in 1861-1865 tried in characteristic British ways to keep aloof from the American struggle. The result was that England incurred the fierce dislike of both South and North.

The Southern leaders were disappointed and angry because the English Government would not recognize the Confederacy as independent, although the Premier, Palmerston, at one time in 1862 favored such action, and because the English Government would not interfere with the Federal blockade of the Southern ports, and because English sentiment against slavery was so strong. Alexander H. Stephens even proposed to abolish slavery in the hope of thus winning English favor.

The resentment of the North had more complex elements. It became increasingly disappointed and angry for the following reasons. First, the English Government recognized in May, 1861, the belligerent rights of the Confederates. Although President Lincoln had practically done the same thing a month earlier by proclaiming the blockade, the North felt that the action had been hasty, and therefore unfriendly. Second, the sympathy of the upper and wealthier classes of English society was given not to the free North, but to the more aristocratic South. They bought Southern bonds. The Times thundered for the South. A majority of English writers pointed out that it would be advantageous for England to deal with two republics here instead of one, and that our crude democracy had found its inevitable end. The historian Freeman sat down to write in several volumes a "History of Federal Government, from the Foundation of the Achaian League to the Disruption of the United States." He published the first volume in 1863, and wrote no more. Mr. Gladstone almost disrupted Palmerston's cabinet in 1862 by announcing in a public address that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South had made an army, a navy and a nation.

Northerners noted that Gladstone's wish was the father of his thought, but could not know at the time that, by his premature and discreet eulogy he had thwarted the hope of official recognition of Southern independence, a hope that was forever extinguished by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. In November 1862, the British cabinet under Prime Minister Lord Palmerston considered an interventionist proposal to recognize the Confederacy and thus force the Union to discuss peace. The cabinet overwhelmingly voted against this, not least because it did not wish Britain to be seen on the side of slaveholders against Lincoln and emancipation. Together with the Russians, Britain then rejected the proposal by French Emperor Napoleon III for an armistice demand backed by multilateral force should either American belligerent reject the demand (in reality this was a threat aimed at the North, since an armistice effectively would ratify southern independence).

The English Government placed so lax an interpretation upon its neutrality laws that a halfdozen cruisers flying the Confederate flag, built in British shipyards, manned by British crews using an equipment bought in England, and permitted to use British ports as bases of supply, roamed the ocean and destroyed practically all of Federal merchant marine that was not sold to Englishmen. The Laird rams, the most powerful warships that were built in England for the Confederates, and that, if set free, might have shattered the Union blockade, were prevented from leaving the docks, not so much by the vigilance of the British Government as by the wise courage of Minister Charles Francis Adams at the Court of St. James who wrote to Earl Russell: " It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war." But, in spite of all these delinquencies and blunders, the fact remains that Confederate diplomacy utterly failed to obtain any help from England to break the strangle-hold of the Federal blockade. The Union's own unwise laws prevented recovery of merchant marine after the war was over, but public opinion was by that time too incensed against Great Britain to see or believe that, and believed that English neutrality had been purposely strained so that the only rival merchant marine might be wiped out.

The majority of the governing class in England were convinced that the South would win and wished it to. When it became evident that the triumph of the North would destroy slavery, English sympathy for the Union cause increased daily. The laborers of Lancashire, led by John Bright, though in distress through the paralysis of the cotton mills, stood firm for human freedom.