Angelique Gayle (European Diplomacy--Civil War)

European Diplomacy during the Civil War (1861-62)

During the Civil War Europe ties to America was only through the south that never let go of their dream of foreign intervention, and during the wart that intervention was heavily needed for the south if they wanted to continue winning the war. However, neither the Britts nor the French would go along with any policy that involved fighting to preserve slavery, as slavery was not an issue in the war until the fall of 1862.

The government repeatedly declared that they were fighting solely to save the union and that if the Britts could aide the south without defending slavery, and prove their case then there would not have been a problem. This led to a threat of European intervention. If Europe were to intervene the union would have not been successful at winning the war as they may have been overwhelmed by the south.

In October of that same year Confederate President Jefferson Davis sent two distinguished men to represent the Confederacy overseas, James M. Mason and John Slidell. They departed on a British mail steamer entitled Trent. However, the Trent never made it pass the Bahamas. Based on some international law when a country is at war it has the right to search any neutral ships that were speculated to be carrying enemy dispatches. This was the case for the Trent incident and on November 8, 1861, Wilkes raided the ship and led the confederate dispatches off of the steamer. Perhaps, this was the raid that could have snatched the dream of a unified union to an immediate halt. Though the union congress was happy about the raid Europeans was not too fond of the “heroic” gesture, and this almost brought on war between the union and Europe.

Europe demanded an apology from the U.S. and an immediate release of the prisoners. The irony of this stands because something of this nature showed itself earlier on in American history with the war of 1812 when the Britts had done the same thing to –the U.S. and they reversed the matter.

The Trent incident had brought enormous strain in the relationship between the United States and Europe and the thought of another provocation (no matter how minor) may have brought on war.


Another flare-up in the Anglo-American relations were the unneutral building of Confederate commerce-raiders, the most noted being the Alabama. These were not warships because the ships did not leave the port armed they left the port bare and went elsewhere to obtain their guns and ammunition. The ship was flying the confederate flag and has confederate officers but was controlled by British troops. During this time Britain was the chief naval base for the Confederacy, which led the union to believe that Europe was intervening in the war and therefore, they were defending slavery instead of remaining neutral as agreed.

The reality of the matter is that the south was desperate and if they wanted to win and keep slavery, they needed the Britts to aide them as supplies and food were running low, and their economy plummeting rapidly as each day passed. The Britts were in it purely for self gain, and was willing to help the south because then they will have gained a safe haven or a frontier so to speak if they had intervened successfully. I mean after all America was once theirs. But because they weren’t successful in their plan they both lost. And this was indeed a determining factor in how the war would turn out for both sides.

Links:
http://www.teacheroz.com/civilwar.htm
http://www.iol.ie/~kiersey/civwar.html



~Thought to Ponder~ Yes, this is your question…

If Europe had successfully intervened, what may have been the outcome of the war, and what would this have meant for both north and south? How could this outcome have affected the post events of the civil war up until Lincoln’s death?