From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (40 page)

Like the Confederacy, the Union waged an active propaganda war across the Atlantic. Seward sent former
New York Evening Post
editor
John Bigelow to influence the French press favorably toward the Union. Bigelow and Republican politico Thurlow Weed carefully cultivated European journalists and sent letters to the editors of major newspapers. Sanford provided material to friendly newspapers across Europe and used his slush fund to hire European journalists to write favorable articles. African Americans played an important part. Fugitive slaves and freed slaves including Jefferson Davis's former coachman, Andrew Jackson, gave speeches discussing the horrors of slavery as they had experienced it to generate support for the Union and opposition to the Confederacy. Speeches in the mill areas in particular helped to focus the debate on the issue of freedom when it could have turned narrowly on cotton. Southern sympathizers, it was said, "breathed a sigh of relief" when Jackson returned to the United States at the end of 1863.
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The summer and fall of 1862 were the closest the American Civil War came to becoming a world war, "the very crisis of our fate," in the anxious words of Charles Francis Adams.
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While Union and Confederate armies slugged it out in the Mississippi Valley and especially across the bloody corridor between Richmond and Washington, the European great powers and especially Great Britain teetered on the brink of intervention. Cotton provides a partial explanation. By the summer of 1862, one-half of Britain's textile workers were unemployed, one-third of its mills had closed, and stocks were dwindling. The trans-Atlantic trade, vital to Britain's economy, suffered severe dislocation. Government revenues declined. Nervous manufacturers pressed the cabinet to do something. The economic crisis was even more severe in France. "We are nearly out of cotton, and cotton "
we must have,
" the French foreign minister told Sanford in April.
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For many Europeans, ending the war for geopolitical
and
humanitarian reasons became increasingly urgent. The longer the conflict dragged on, the greater its impact on the Old World, the more Europeans sought to end it before the conflagration spread. For Victorians, the carnage produced in America by the harnessing of modern technology to warfare came as a profound shock, provoking growing cries to stop what Britons labeled this "bloody and purposeless war," this "suicidal frenzy."
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General
George McClellan's failure to take Richmond in the Peninsular Campaign of 1862 and his adversary Robert E. Lee's dazzling maneuvers persuaded many Europeans that the Union could not win. The war might go on indefinitely. As Lee's armies moved north in August 1862 for what might be a knockout blow, Europeans anticipated that another Union defeat might provide the occasion for intervention.

Although increasingly disposed to do something, British leaders remained cautious. Seward's warnings that the Civil War could become a "war of the world" could not be ignored. There was little inclination to risk war with the Union by challenging the blockade until Confederate independence, as Palmerston put it, was "a Truth and a Fact."
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By the late summer of 1862, however, British leaders were increasingly disposed to mediate the American struggle as a way to end the bloodletting, ease Europe's economic problems, and perhaps even destroy slavery by stopping its expansion. Still failing to perceive Lincoln's steadfast determination to preserve the Union, British leaders assumed that European mediation would lead to an armistice, the end of the blockade, and the acceptance of two separate governments.

A Union military victory in the fall of 1862 gave Lincoln the opportunity to take the initiative on emancipation. Lee's advancing armies met Union forces at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17. In the most gruesome day of the war, the two sides together lost five thousand killed and suffered twenty-four thousand casualties. The battle was at best a draw, but Lee's retreat back into Virginia permitted the Union to claim victory. Antietam stopped the Confederate offensive into the North and provided a much-needed boost to Union morale. Five days later, Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The order did not go into effect until January 1, 1863. Reflecting the president's persisting concern for the border states, it applied only to areas held by the Confederacy. Prosaic in tone, it disappointed abolitionists. On the other hand, it further bolstered northern spirits and spurred black enlistments in the Union army. In his annual message to Congress, December 1, 1862, Lincoln remained cautious on slavery, again speaking of colonization and compensated emancipation. He also eloquently took the moral high ground. Warning that the "dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present" and calling upon Americans to "think anew and act anew," he insisted that only by eradicating slavery could the United States be true to its principles. "In
giving
freedom to the slaves,"
he proclaimed, "we
assure
freedom to the
free
." He cast emancipation in global terms. At a time when republicanism appeared to be losing out across the world and the threat of European intervention still loomed over America, he insisted that the nation must eliminate the blot of slavery to ensure that it remained "the last best hope of earth."
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The Emancipation Proclamation represented a crucial point in the war. It set in motion the process of ending slavery. It shifted U.S. war aims from mere preservation of the Union to its betterment by making the nation faithful to the ideals enunciated in its Declaration of Independence.
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Often cited as eliminating the threat of foreign intervention, Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation for the short term actually increased pressures on Britain and France to do something. The bloodbath in Maryland and the absence of a decisive victory merely confirmed for European statesmen that the two combatants, without external intervention, might fight on indefinitely at horrendous cost. Lincoln had issued his Emancipation Proclamation in part to gain foreign support for the Union cause, but many Britons initially saw it as an act of desperation. Viewing emancipation through the prism of mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon racism, they also feared it might unleash slave insurrections throughout the South and even set off a race war that could spread beyond the United States. British leaders thus grew more inclined to intervene. Russell discussed with France the possibility of a joint intervention aimed at an armistice. Should the Union reject such proposals, they agreed, southern independence might be recognized. Liberal leader William Evart Gladstone's dramatic October 7, 1862, speech proclaiming that southern leaders had "made an army; they are making, it appears a navy; and they have made what is more than either, they have made a nation," seemed to portend recognition of Confederate independence.

Caution once again prevailed. Gladstone's speech was not authorized. It did not reflect the views of the government or even a pro-southern view on his part. Its main concern was to end the carnage. It evoked a negative reaction throughout England and forced the cabinet to examine the consequences of intervention. Russell was most inclined to act, but the more prudent eventually won the day. Seward's strong words helped persuade British leaders that neither side would accept compromise. Intervention posed varied and considerable dangers, especially the threat of war with the United States. It thus seemed better, as Secretary of War Cornewall Lewis
quoted Hamlet, to "endure the ills we have, Than to fly to others we know not of." To this point, France had been more inclined toward intervention than Britain, but a crisis in Italy and turmoil within the French government drew attention away from America at a critical point, rendered Napoleon more cautious, and divided France and Britain. The Yankeephobic but ever careful Palmerston agreed that with Lee retreating into Virginia "the Pugilists must fight a few more Rounds before the Bystanders can decide that the State Should be divided between them."
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As is so often the case at times of momentous decision, doing nothing seemed the best course.
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Another crisis followed in October, largely the work of France's Napoleon III. The French emperor's interventionism was motivated partly by the demand for cotton, but its roots went much deeper. Gaining power through elections after the 1848 revolution, the ambitious and mercurial Napoleon in time assumed the title of emperor and set out to emulate his more illustrious uncle and namesake by restoring France's imperial glory. He challenged British dominance in the Mediterranean and South Asia. He schemed to attain the American empire pursued fleetingly by his uncle. Taking advantage of Mexico's civil strife and chronic indebtedness, he hoped to establish there a base to promote French economic and political power in the Americas. He contemplated a canal across the Central American isthmus. He saw French hegemony in Mexico as a bulwark against U.S. expansion and a springboard to restore monarchy to other Latin American states, thereby heading off the "degradation of the Latin race on the other side of the ocean," in the words of one of his advisers, and containing the advance of republicanism.

Napoleon sent French troops into Mexico in late 1861, ostensibly to collect debts, in fact to establish an imperial foothold. An independent Confederacy would provide an invaluable buffer against the United States, he reasoned. He was increasingly inclined to recognize the Richmond government to further his grand design. Frustrated by British indecisiveness, Napoleon in October 1862 proposed joint French, British, and Russian mediation calling for a six-month armistice and the lifting of the Union blockade. Should the Lincoln administration say no, he told Slidell, the powers might recognize southern independence, perhaps even provide military assistance to force an end to hostilities. Early November 1862 thus became the most perilous time for the Union.
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Again after advancing to the brink of intervention, the Europeans drew back. Russia was eager to end the war but unwilling to antagonize Washington. Its opposition helped kill Napoleon's proposal. Russell was inclined to act, but his colleagues remained cautious. Lewis remained the major voice of restraint, warning that Britain should wait until southern independence was firmly established or the North concluded from events on the battlefield that it could not win. Napoleon would not act without British support. His proposal died. Although it was not clear at the time, any possibility of European intervention expired with it.

Refusing to give up entirely, Napoleon through the instrumentation of a meddlesome and inept British member of Parliament made one last attempt in the summer of 1863. Determined to get cotton and to protect his Mexican venture by ensuring a balance of power in North America, he offered assurances to the pro-Confederate J. A. Roebuck that he would work with Britain toward recognition of the South. The bumbling Roebuck proved a poor choice. His indiscreet statement that the French feared being double-crossed by England infuriated the British, deepening their already considerable—and well-founded—suspicions of Napoleon. He further discredited himself by overstating French eagerness to act. His bitter attacks on the United States as a "mongrelised" democracy and the "great bully of the world" antagonized Union sympathizers and aroused concerns even among southern enthusiasts of the pitfalls of intervention. Once disposed to do something to stop the bloodletting, most British leaders had concluded that no outside power could stop the war except at great risk and cost to itself. British support was simply not forthcoming. Slidell could not persuade Napoleon to organize the Continental powers to act without Britain. A failed intervention could do more damage to his Mexican ambitions than none at all. Napoleon thus concluded that it would be better to do nothing and hope that the Confederacy could somehow secure its independence.
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A crisis over Poland in the summer of 1863 ended already dim prospects of European intervention. When the Poles rose up against Russia early in the year, France, Britain, and Austria demanded a settlement on the basis of amnesty and Polish independence. The apparent European support for the concept of self-determination seemed to offer hope to the Confederacy, but appearances were deceptive. The threat of war in Europe diverted attention from North America during an especially critical time. Napoleon could not resist meddling in the Polish crisis. His actions
aroused British and Russian suspicions, closing the option of concerted action in America. Most important, European support for self-determination proved weak. When Russia rejected the powers' proposal and forcibly suppressed the revolt, they did nothing. National interest took precedence over concern for the Poles and commitment to an ideal.
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The Polish crisis also cemented the emerging entente between the Union and Russia, providing yet another reason for European caution. The United States had traditionally given verbal support to self-determination. Thousands of Poles had fled to America after failed rebellions in the 1830s and 1840s; twenty-five hundred Poles fought for the Union in the Civil War. The Lincoln administration might also have traded support for the Poles for a French pledge of non-intervention. But when caught between its ideals and self-interest, the Union behaved like the Europeans. U.S. officials were pleased, Adams noted, that the Polish crisis had "done something to take continental pressure from us." For reasons of expediency, Seward rebuffed a French proposal to join in protest, expressing contentment to leave the Poles to the tender mercies of the tsar. The Russian-American convergence on Poland reinforced European fears of an "unholy alliance" between the two rising powers that might, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville and others speculated, produce a major shift in the balance of power. This specter increased great-power reluctance to act either in Central Europe or in America.
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