The diplomacy of the American Civil War involved the relations of the United States and the Confederate States of America with the major world powers during the American Civil War of 1861–1865. The United States prevented other powers from recognizing the Confederacy, which counted heavily on Britain and France to enter the war on its side to maintain their supply of cotton and to weaken a growing opponent. Every nation was officially neutral throughout the war, and none formally recognized the Confederacy.
The European Atlantic nations, the Empire of Brazil, and the Kingdom of Hawaii recognized that the Confederacy had certain rights as an organized belligerent, which for example allowed Confederate ships to dock at their ports for 24 hours, or more in case of repairs or adverse weather. A few took advantage of the war to contest the Monroe Doctrine when the United States was unable to enforce it. Spain annexed the Dominican Republic between 1861 and 1865.James W. Cortada, "Spain and the American Civil War: Relations at Mid-century, 1855–1868." Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 70.4 (1980): 1–121. in JSTOR More threatening was the Second French intervention in Mexico under Emperor Napoleon III, who installed Maximilian I as a puppet ruler and aimed to diminish US influence in Latin America. France encouraged Britain to join in a policy of mediation, suggesting that both recognize the Confederacy,Lynn M. Case, and Warren E. Spencer, The United States and France: Civil War Diplomacy (1970) while Abraham Lincoln warned that any such recognition was tantamount to a declaration of war. The British textile industry depended on cotton from the South, but it had stocks to keep the mills operating for a year and, in any case, the industrialists and workers carried little weight in British politics. Knowing a war would cut off vital shipments of American food, wreak havoc on the British merchant fleet, and cause an invasion of Canada, Britain and its powerful Royal Navy refused to join France.Kinley J. Brauer, "British Mediation and the American Civil War: A Reconsideration," Journal of Southern History, (1972) 38#1 pp. 49–64 in JSTOR
Historians emphasize that Union diplomacy proved generally effective, with expert diplomats handling numerous crises. British leaders had some sympathy for the Confederacy, but were never willing to risk war with the Union. France was even more sympathetic to the Confederacy, but it was threatened by Prussia and would not make a move without full British cooperation. Confederate diplomats were inept, or as historian Charles M. Hubbard put it, "Poorly chosen diplomats produce poor diplomacy." Other countries played a minor role. Russia made a show of support of the Union, but its importance has often been exaggerated.
United States
For decades historians have debated who played the most important roles in shaping Union diplomacy. During the early 20th century, Secretary of State William H. Seward was seen as an Anglophobe who dominated a weak president. Lincoln's reputation was restored by Jay Monaghan who, in 1945, emphasized Lincoln's quiet effectiveness behind the scenes.Jay Monaghan, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs (1945). In 1976, Norman Ferris published a study of Seward's foreign policy, emphasizing his leadership role.Norman B. Ferris, Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward's Foreign Policy, 1861 (1976). Lincoln continues to get high marks for his moral leadership in defining the meaning of the conflict in terms of democracy and freedom.Kinley J. Brauer, "The Slavery Problem in the Diplomacy of the American Civil War," Pacific Historical Review (1977) 46#3 pp. 439–469 in JSTORHoward Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (2002). Numerous monographs have highlighted the leadership role of Charles Sumner as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Charles Francis Adams as minister to the Court of St James's (United Kingdom).Martin Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1886 (1960). Historians have studied Washington's team of hard-working diplomats,Francis M. Carroll, "Diplomats and the Civil War at Sea" Canadian Review of American Studies 40#1 (2010) pp. 117–130. financiersJay Sexton, Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837–1873 (2005). and spies across Europe.David Hepburn Milton, Lincoln's Spymaster: Thomas Haines Dudley and the Liverpool Network (2003.Harriet Chappell Owsley, "Henry Shelton Sanford and Federal Surveillance Abroad, 1861–1865," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 48#2 (1961), pp. 211–228 in JSTOR
Lincoln's foreign policy was deficient in 1861, and he failed to garner public support in Europe. Diplomats had to explain that the United States was not committed to abolishing slavery, instead appealing to the unconstitutionality of secession. Confederate spokesmen, on the other hand, were much more successful: ignoring slavery and instead focusing on their struggle for liberty, their commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy. Most European leaders were unimpressed with the Union's legal and constitutional arguments and thought it hypocritical that the U.S. should seek to deny to one of its regions the same sort of independence it won from Great Britain some eight decades earlier. Furthermore, since the Union was not committed to ending slavery, it struggled to persuade Europeans (especially Britons) that there was no moral equivalency between the rebels who established the United States in 1776 and the rebels who established the Confederate States in 1861. Even more importantly, the European aristocracy (the dominant factor in every major country) was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had failed. European government leaders welcomed the fragmentation of the ascendant American Republic."Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War (2014), p. 8 (quote), pp. 69–70
A major setback was that the United States had been alone among the world's maritime powers in not joining the 1856 Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law, which banned privateering, established that neutral ships with non-contraband goods were to be free from seizure in wartime, and that a naval blockade had to be effective to be legal (i.e., that a nation declaring a blockade must be able to enforce it for it to receive international acceptance). When the war began, the Confederacy commissioned privateers and used neutral ships as runners against the Union blockade of its ports. The Lincoln administration attempted to join the Paris Declaration in 1861 but was rebuffed by Great Britain and France, who accused the Union of trying to use European navies to wage maritime war against the Confederates.Bowen, W. H. (2011). Spain and the American Civil War. University of Missouri Press, p. 47.
The occupation of New Orleans by major general Benjamin Butler in 1862 was another diplomatic liability for the Lincoln administration. Butler ordered to treat women who insulted federal troops "as women of the town plying their avocation", which was denounced by British prime minister Lord Palmerston, and also seized money and specie from the Dutch, French, Spanish, and Belgian consulates under claims that they were used to fund the Confederates. Lincoln sympathized with Butler but Seward advocated for his recall and to return all seized valuables as to not alienate European governments that might recognize the Confederacy.Hunter, G.H. (2011) Fall of New Orleans and Federal Occupation. 64 Parishes.Kirtley, W. M., & Kirtley, P. M. The Admiral, The Mayor, and the General: The Battle of New Orleans, 1862. National Social Science, 62.
Confederate States
Even the most avid promoters of secession had paid little attention to European affairs prior to 1860. The Confederates had for years uncritically assumed that "cotton is king", therefore European countries would have to support the Confederacy's independence to secure their source of cotton. However, this assumption was disproven during the war. Peter Parish argued that southern intellectual and cultural insularity proved fatal:
The Confederate government sent delegations to Europe but they were ineffective in achieving their diplomatic aims. The first emissaries (William Lowndes Yancey, Pierre Adolphe Rost, and Ambrose Dudley Mann) were named by the provisional Confederate States Congress before hostilities began, in February 1861, and instructed by secretary of state Robert Toombs to proceed to London, then to the courts of Napoleon III of France, Alexander II of Russia, and Leopold I of Belgium after they had secured British diplomatic recognition. Journalist Edwin de Leon was the emissaries' main adviser and chief propagandist in Europe.Bowen, W. H. (2011). Spain and the American Civil War. University of Missouri Press. p. 58. However, the United Kingdom was not as dependent on Southern cotton as believed; it had enough stock to last for over a year and developed alternative sources of cotton, most notably in British India and Ottoman Egypt.Blumenthal (1966) Meanwhile, the Confederate national government lost control of this tool when cotton planters, factors, and financiers spontaneously decided to embargo shipments of cotton to Europe in early 1861. It was an enormously expensive mistake, depriving the Confederacy of millions of dollars in cash it would desperately need.Jay Sexton, "Civil War Diplomacy". In Aaron Sheehan-Dean, ed., A Companion to the US Civil War (2014): 745–746.
None of the early Confederate emissaries had background in diplomatic relations. The leader, Yancey, was a popular Fire-Eater before the war and was chosen mainly to remove him as a competitor to Jefferson Davis for the Confederate presidency. In Europe, Yancey was perceived as demanding and arrogant, and his outspoken defense of states' rights, and past calls for the constitutional protection of slavery and re-establishment of the transatlantic slave trade were received with bewilderment. Meanwhile, Rost's Louisiana French was perceived as crude and clumsy when he traveled to Paris in an attempt to get over the impasse caused by the refusal of British foreign secretary John Russell to meet with the Confederates. Toombs, who would later oppose the attack on Fort Sumter, had envisioned a peaceful secession and believed that foreign recognition would be secured with little effort; he instructed the emissaries to stress states' rights as the reason for secession to the detriment of any other factor, but this wasn't considered an important issue by Europeans. Once war began, the emissaries failed to address concerns like the Union blockade of Southern ports, European trade with the North, northern wheat imports to Great Britain, Europe's general aversion to privateering and slavery, and Franco-Spanish ambitions in Mexico and Hispaniola. In contrast, the Union only had to mobilize the United States's established pre-war diplomatic apparatus to outclass the Confederates, whose own communications with Europe became increasingly slow and infrequent as the blockade took hold. All foreign ambassadors were in Washington, D.C.; only a few consuls resided in the South, mostly in port cities, and their exchequer was held at the pleasure of the Lincoln administration. Immediately after the outbreak of hostilities, Seward declared that all foreign consuls in the areas of insurrection were expected to transact official business only through their ministers in Washington, and that any direct communication with Confederate officials would jeopardize their diplomatic status. This maneouvre successfully excluded Confederate representatives from official diplomatic circles, both at home and abroad.