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French Relations - American Civil War

While France had been a vital ally of the young nation during its War of Independence, relations deteriorated shortly afterward. In 1793 the United States quarreled with France about neutrality and then fought a brief, undeclared war in 1798. By the time of the Civil War, Americans were complaining about the French occupation of Mexico and that regime’s conduct toward Confederate rebels.

Napoleon restored colonial slavery in 1802. The Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, signed on June 9, 1815, established the principle of abolishing the slave trade. Although France was to prohibit the slave trade in 1818, little was done to enforce the law and reciprocal right of search was denied the British until 1831; until then, Arab slavers were often able to sail under false French colors. Abolition of slavery in the French colonies (1848) must be credited to the 1848 Revolution. The progressive abolition of slavery across the Caribbean region extends over a whole century, the first abolition being in Haiti in 1793 and the last in Cuba in 1886. The small states of Central America, including Mexico, abolished slavery in the 1820s.

But the British Peime Minister Lord Palmerston, in Remarks in the House of Commons, August 10, 1861 noted : "France not many years age abolished Slavery in her colonies; and we had reason to hope that the French nation and Government, being thoroughly convinced that Slavery and the Slave-trade were abominations, and having determined to get rid of both, there was no danger whatever of their backsliding....

"Then came, four or five years ago, the Regis contract for the emigration of so-called free laborers into a French colony, but which was nothing more nor less than the Slave-trade in its purest and simplest form, at least as far as the acquisition of the laborers was concerned. It was the Slave-trade in the beginning of the process, though not entirely so in its end, because when these unhappy creatures were landed in a French colony they were apprenticed against their will, subjected to regulations which rendered them liable to degrading punishments, and otherwise made to feel that they were in a state far from one of freedom, although the French law did not acknowledge the system of slavery.

"The manner in which these negroes were caught was exactly the same as that in which the Spanish and the Portuguese got their slaves in order to send them to Cuba. It was said, indeed, that they were ransomed, and were to be set free, and documents were given to them which professed to be certificates of their emancipation. But they were obtained in the first instance by persons who sold them to the French by all those means of force, of violence, and fraud by which slaves were and still are procured for the Spanish market at Cuba."

The Southern conspirators had intrigued with the Mexicans for a new Union. Attempts had been made by leaders of influence in the Southern States to come to an understanding with persons of similar position in Mexico with a view to a political union. These negotiations had taken a serious aspect shortly after Fremont was made the Republican candidate for the presidency in 1856, when it had become plain that the South must before long inevitably lose its control of the government of the Union. Among the advantages expected by the South from such a scheme were deliverance from the threatened domination of the Free States, and another period of political supremacy in a new Union, of which the members would be bound together by a community of interest, and be the dispensers of some of the most valuable products of the New World.

Slavery had without difficulty been re-established in Texas; it was supposed that the same might be done in other provinces of Mexico. There was, moreover, the alluring prospect of a future brilliant empire, encircling the West India Seas, and eventually absorbing the West India Islands. To the Mexicans there would be the unspeakable advantage of a stable, a strong, a progressive government.

The Emperor Napoleon resolved to turn that scheme to his own advantage in his relations with the Austrian Empire. He encouraged the disruption of the American Union with a view of neutralizing the power of the republic. France placed a European ruler, Maximilian on the throne in Mexico for economic reasons. A united "United States" would have opposed such a move. France wanted the Confederacy as a "buffer state" between its protectorate in Mexico and the rest of the United States.

He drew England and Spain into a joint expedition to Mexico. Representatives from the Spanish, French, and British governments met in London, and on October 31, 1861, signed a tripartite agreement to intervene in Mexico to recover unpaid debts. European forces landed at Veracruz on December 8. Juárez urged resistance, while Conservatives saw the intervening forces as valuable allies in their struggle against the Liberals.

Although the British and Spanish governments had more limited plans for intervention, Napoleon III was interested in reviving French global ambitions, and French forces captured Mexico City, while Spanish and British forces withdrew after French plans became clear. During the year 1862 the Emperor Napoleon proposed to the Russian and British governments to join him in trying to bring about an armistice of six months between “the federal government and the Confederates of the South.” The proposition was declined.

Undoubtedly he would have been joined by the British government in his offer had not the latter been recently (November, 1862) advised by Lord Lyons that such an offer at the present crisis would be injurious to the peace party in the North. Perhaps, also, Napoleon was deceived as to the real import of the autumn elections of 1862, mistaking them for an indication of a popular desire for peace even at the price of disunion.

On the 9th of January, 1863, M. Drouyn de l’Huys, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, addressed M. Mercier, the French minister at Washington, on this subject. The government, he said, in proffering its good offices, had been guided by its friendship toward the United States. “We can not," he added, “regard without profound regret this war, worse than civil, comparable to the most terrible distractions of the ancient republies, and whose disasters multiply in proportion to the resources and valor which each of the belligerent parties develop.” It was urged, also, that recourse to the good offices of one or several neutral powers contained nothing incompatible with the pride of a great nation.

This offer President Lincoln (on the 6th of February) declined to consider, Seward replying for him that it would only be entering into diplomatic discussion with the rebels whether the authority of the government should be renounced, and the country delivered over to disunion and anarchy.

In 1863, Napoleon III invited Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, to become Emperor of Mexico. Maximilian accepted the offer and arrived in Mexico in 1864. Although Maximilian’s Conservative government controlled much of the country, Liberals held on to power in northwestern Mexico and parts of the Pacific coast.

In response to these actions, Secretary of State Seward issued statements of disapproval, but the U.S. Government was unable to intervene directly because of the American Civil War. Moreover, both Seward and U.S. President Abraham Lincoln did not want to further antagonize Napoleon III, and risk his intervention on the side of the Confederacy. The U.S. Government also rejected overtures from other Latin American countries for a pan-American solution to the conflict. However, the Mexican Minister to the United States, Matías Romero, worked carefully to build American support for Mexico. Seward soon began to show increased support for Juárez’s government.

Napoleon III declined to recognize the Confederacy. The Confederacy was supported by Conservative supporters of Napoleon III, Bourbon legitimists, and Roman Catholic interests. The Union had the support of republicans and Orléanists (those who wanted a descendant of Louis Philippe on the throne). Throughout the period of French intervention, the overall U.S. policy was to avoid direct conflict with France, and voice displeasure at French interference in Mexican affairs, but ultimately to remain neutral in the conflict. After 1866, Seward provided more direct support for Juárez, while French willingness to withdraw de-escalated Franco-American tensions. Although U.S. support for Juárez improved U.S.-Mexican relations temporarily, disputes over policing of the border under Secretary of State William Evarts would erode the good will built during Seward’s tenure.

As the Confederacy collapsed, U.S. leaders were able to shift resources to resisting French intervention in Mexico and to deploy troops along the Texas-Mexico border. U.S. pressure, combined with Mexican resentment and military success against Emperor Maximilian ultimately compelled French Emperor Napoleon III to end his imperial venture in Mexico.