Category: Foreign Viewpoints

Lincoln’s RMS Trent Blunder

What is known as the “Trent Affair” occurred on November 8, 1861, when a US warship intercepted and boarded the British mail ship RMS Trent in international waters. On board were two envoys of the new Confederate States of America, James M. Murray and John Slidell, who were enroute to England, and later France. This seizure of diplomats was seen as a violation of England’s neutrality which of course sparked a serious diplomatic crisis.

Lincoln had little government and no international experience as he had served 8 years as a county representative in Illinois, and only 2 years as an Illinois State representative in the US Congress. His first reaction was to celebrate the seizure of the South’s envoys and refuse their release, until a wiser and internationally experienced William Seward convinced Lincoln of the imminent danger created by a foolish US sea captain.

Lincoln’s RMS Trent Blunder

“A British diplomat Lincoln met with on December 4 [1861] wrote his government that despite Lincoln’s simple assurance of no desire for trouble with England, he could not ignore the strong impression that the policy of the US government “is so subject to popular impulse that no assurance can or ought to be relied upon under present circumstances.” Lincoln, in his upcoming message to Congress avoided mention of the Trent Affair, but relying upon [Treasury] Secretary Cameron’s estimate of quickly enlisting 3 million men, boasted of showing the world that he could easily quell disturbances at home while protecting ourselves from foreign threats.

Despite northern braggadocio, Lincoln’s rickety war financing and knowing New York banks were about to suspend specie payments, the Trent Affair contributed greatly to the virtual collapse of his war financing which depended upon public confidence. By mid-January 1862, Lincoln was forced to issue “greenback” fiat currency, as his government was simply out of money.

By the end of the war in 1865, the north had become burdened with rampant inflation, the constant manipulation of gold prices by speculators, a morass of different bond issues and four major forms of currency – national bank notes, specie, greenbacks and individual bank notes. And the last were to be simply taxed out of existence.

In mid-December 1861, Lincoln and his cabinet discussed the serious ramifications of war with England: the threatened breaking of the blockade to reopen the cotton trade, and the blockade of northern ports. He was distressed as well by the new French monarchy in Mexico and French diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy.

And should the Confederacy achieve its independence, northern capitalists feared widespread smuggling of British goods into the north across the long border with the Confederacy and thereby crippling northern manufacturing. It could not have been lost on Lincoln and his cabinet that the American republic they now governed would not have existed without French intervention in 1781, which clearly made the difference between the American colonists’ success or failure.

In the meantime, Britain was reinforcing Canada with troops, planning invasions of the US from British Columbia and Canada West (Ontario) while US troops were occupied in the American South. Additionally, British ships would cripple northern shipping by its blockade and preying upon northern merchantmen, and not necessarily in cooperation with the South’s navy. Additionally, modern ‘Laird Rams’ being built in England posed a very serious threat as their submerged iron prows could wreak havoc with the north’s wooden blockading fleet. Though the north’s fleet was growing by late 1861, its newer ships were ‘improvised merchantmen’ for blockade duty and not steam or sail warships.

The British military sent provisional orders during the first two weeks of the Trent crisis to quickly establish an offensive base at Bermuda from which to attack the north’s blockading force. Another fleet located at Havana under Commodore Dunlop would neutralize the northern ships at Pensacola Bay while Key West and Fort Jefferson would be left to the powerful British West Indies Squadron.”

(Key West’s Civil War: Rather Unsafe for a Southern Man to Live Here. John Bernhard Thuersam. Shotwell Publishing LLC, 2022, pp. 206-207)

Seward Insists Upon Servile War

Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward promised the cotton-dependent British an early end to war with “Northern victories releasing the raw cotton” of the South to England. Seward’s claim that New Orleans would soon be under his control was quickly dashed, and all were aware that Southern plantation owners would sooner burn their cotton bales than allow them to fall into enemy hands.  A desperate Seward then followed Virginia’s Royal Governor’s (Lord Dunmore) November 1775 edict to incite race war in the South, threatening both Britain and France that any aid to the American Confederacy would unleash a bloody slave uprising there. This would not only destroy Europe’s cotton source but also repeat the Haitian massacres of the early 1790’s which saw the slaughter of 4,000 white men, women and children. In retaliation, some 15,000 Africans were killed by the French.

Seward Insists Upon Servile War

“Fearing the growth in England, especially, of an intention to intervene, Seward threatened a Northern appeal to the slaves, thinking of the threat not so much in terms of an uncivilized and horrible war as in terms of the material interests of England. In brief, considering foreign attitude and action in relation to Northern advantage – to the winning of the war – he would use emancipation as a threat of servile insurrection, but he did not desire emancipation itself for fear it would cause that very intervention which it was his object to prevent.

On May 28, 1862, Seward wrote to US diplomat Charles Francis Adams, emphasizing two points: first, US diplomats abroad were now authorized to state that the war was, in part at least, intended for the suppression of slavery, and secondly, that the North if interfered with by foreign nations would be forced to unleash servile war in the South.

Such a war, Seward argued, would be “completely destructive of all European interests” and a copy of this was given to Britain’s Lord Russell on June 20th . . . and that any attempts a European mediation of the conflict would result in servile war unleashed upon the South. On July 13, Lincoln told Seward and [Gideon] Welles of the planned [gradual and compensated] emancipation proclamation and that this was his first mention of it to anyone.

On July 28, after Lord Russell reviewed Seward’s arguments, commented on the fast- increasing bitterness of the American conflict which was disturbing and unsettling to European governments, and wrote: “The approach of servile war, so much insisted upon by Mr. Seward in his dispatch, only forewarns us that another element of destruction may be added to the slaughter, loss of property, and waste of industry, which already afflict a country so lately prosperous and tranquil.”

(Great Britain and the American Civil War. Ephraim Douglas Adams. Alpha Editions, 2018 (original manuscript 1924), pg. 388-390)

The Inhuman Struggle

The British officer below had little knowledge of the American South prior to arriving in Virginia for a month’s visit in 1862 – but soon became a staunch advocate of the Confederacy. After returning to England, he penned an article for Blackwood’s Magazine entitled “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters” which the following is drawn from. His closing words in the article urged the British Parliament to recognize the Confederate States of America, writing that it was time to put an end “to the most inhuman struggle that ever disgraced a great nation.”

The Inhuman Struggle

“The first British soldier to visit the Confederacy had at one time expected to be fighting against the North. Lieutenant-Colonel Garnet J. Wolseley, a veteran of several of Queen Victoria’s wars, was part of a British force ordered to Canada during the Trent affair of late 1861. After the threat of war soon receded, he traveled to New York City in September 1862 to join London Times correspondent Frank Lawley for a visit to the American Confederacy. By the time the two men crossed the Potomac, General Robert E. Lee’s army was withdrawing from Maryland after the Sharpsburg campaign.

Even as he entered Virginia, Wolseley was favorably disposed toward the Confederacy, ostensibly out of concern for civil liberties in the wartime North. He described residents of Maryland as “stricken . . . with terror” by arrests ordered from Washington. Traveling by train from Fredericksburg to Richmond, Wolseley and Lawley shared accommodations with the wounded from Lee’s Maryland campaign. Their plight impressed even Wolseley, the professional soldier:

“Men with legs and arms amputated, and whose pale, haggard faces assumed an expression of anguish at even the slightest jolting of the railway carriages, lay stretched across the seats – some accompanied by civilian friends who had gone from Richmond to fetch them back, and others by wives or sisters, whose careworn features told a tale of sleepless nights passed in painful uncertainty regarding the fate of those they loved.”

When Wolseley reached Lee’s headquarters, he and Lawley were taken to meet the general. The British officer was impressed: “[Lee] is a strongly built man . . . He is slightly reserved; but he is a person that, whenever seen, whether in a castle or a hovel, alone or in a crowd, must at once attract attention as being a splendid specimen of an English gentleman.”

Wolseley found an appealing lack of pomp and ostentation at Lee’s headquarters, which, he noted, consisted of seven or eight pole tents, pitched on ground so rocky as to be uncomfortable to ride over. Lee’s staff lived two or three to a tent, a nearby stream being the only amenity.

Everywhere he was impressed with the tough, dedicated Confederate soldiers. Could such men be defeated, he would ask, “by mobs of Irish and German mercenaries hired at $15 a month to fight in a cause they know little and care less about?”

(British Observers in Wartime Dixie. John M. Taylor. Military History Quarterly, Winter 2002, pp. 68-69)

Post-Revolution Dispute Over Slaves

The following is a glimpse of the Debates in the House of Representatives of the US during the First Session of the Fourth Congress, Part II, upon the subject of the British Treaty. Members of the House, especially those of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania were surprised that compensation for the loss of slaves by Americans during the war was not within the document. The following was written by William Renwick Riddell of Toronto, September 24, 1927.

Post-Revolution Dispute over Slaves

“When Britain accepted the Treaty, Washington proclaimed it on February 2, 1796, and sent a copy to both Senate and House.

In reading these debates I was struck by the prominence given to the claims for Negroes taken away [by the British] in 1783 and earlier. This was not one of the matters as to which [negotiator] John Jay was instructed to be insistent . . . But the greatest number of protests in the House were concerning these Negroes.

Mr. Maclay of Pennsylvania, on April 14, gave as his first objection to the treaty “that it did not provide for the loss of the Negroes” (p.34). Mr. S. Lyman of Massachusetts thought that Jay should have told the British Minister at the very first interview: “You have carried off our Negroes” (p.52).

Mr. Nicholas of Virginia complained that “of the Negroes [carried off by British troops] nothing is said in the present Treaty. Some Representatives, like Mr. Hillhouse of Connecticut, thought “Negroes, horses and other property were . . . placed on the same footing and that it was as much a violation of the Treaty to carry away a horse as a Negro.” He asked, “will any man say after reviewing the circumstances, that the 7th Article was meant to secure the restitution of Negroes and other property taken in the course of the War?”

Mr. Findley of Pennsylvania considered that “the claim for recompense for Negroes was as strong as that for the recovery of British debts and as equitable (p.177).” Mr. Holland of North Carolina thought it strange that in things that were self-evident, there should be so great a difference of opinion and that the war-emancipated Negroes should be returned to their former masters in America (p.99). Mr. Gallatin of Pennsylvania agreed and said that the British ministry had agreed to this interpretation during Mr. Adma’s embassy, but the American ‘negotiator (Jay) had for the sake of peace waived that claim.

At his day we might ask ourselves, what would be thought of the United States if they had sent back South . . . the slaves emancipated by Lincoln? In the end, for the sake of peace Britain in 1826 paid $1,204, 960 for those slaves taken, though none were returned to the US.”

(Great Britain, Canada and the Negro. Journal of Negro History, Carter G. Woodson, ed., Vol. XIII, No. 2, April 1928. pp. 188-180)

 

Cotton for the North and England

It is said that England in 1861 ran twice as many spindles as all other countries combined, with Lancashire at the center. The London Times editorial of September 19, 1861, stated that one-fifth of the entire British population was held to be dependent, directly or indirectly, upon the prosperity of Southern cotton, which accounted for 80 percent of the total English importation of raw cotton. Additional cotton was sent north to the busy cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts.

And it cannot be forgotten that it was Massachusetts tinkerer Eli Whitney who brought forth the cotton gin. This invention replaced the slow method of pulling seeds by hand, increased cotton crop yield and helped perpetuate African slavery in America.

Cotton for the North and England

“For ten years past whenever Southern threats of secession had been indulged in, the writers and politicians of that section had expanded upon cotton as the one great wealth-producing industry of America and as the one produce which would compel European acquiescence in American policy, whether of the union, before 1860, or if the South, if she should decide upon independence.”

A writer in DeBow’s Review declared “the South annually throws upon the world for the poor & the naked, [and] we are doing more to advance civilization . . . than all the canting philanthropists of New England & Old England will do in centuries. Slavery is the backbone of the Northern commercial as it is of the British manufacturing system . . .”

Before the Civil War was underway Charles Greville wrote to Clarendon: “Any war will be almost sure to interfere with [the South’s) cotton crops, and this is really what affects us and what we care about. With all our virulent abuse of slavery and slave-owners, and our continual self-laudation on that subject, we are just as anxious for, and as much interested in, the prosperity of the slavery interest in the Southern States, as the Caribbean, as the Carolinian and Georgian planters themselves, and all Lancashire would deplore a successful insurrection of the slaves [by northern abolitionists], if such a thing were possible.”

(Great Britain and the American Civil War. Volume II. Ephraim Douglass Adams. Alpha Editions, 2018 (original 1924), pp. 300-301)

Canada Feared Invasion

Canada Feared Invasion

In the end Great Britain chose the course of neutrality because it realized that to do otherwise gambled with the security of its Canadian possessions. Neutrality offered a diplomatic protection for Canada and assured the Northern States that Canada would have no part to play in support for the South.

By 1864, the fear of northern invasion lingered, and as events would show, it was not unfounded. The Union army had grown from a group of hastily recruited civilians into the largest standing army in the world. As General Sir Charles Hastings Doyle observed in a letter to his Canadian commander Sir Fenwick Williams: “They are formidable. If they persevere, they must ultimately succeed.”

And what of the North won and turned its eye to Canada in anger? Or, if the South won its independence and the North turned to Canada for compensation? Hastings Doyle, who was commander of British Troops Atlantic, which included Bermuda, put this to Williams, relating a conversation he’d had with American military commander Ulysses S. Grant and General George Meade during a visit to the siege of Richmond.

“I sympathize with neither side, for they both hate us cordially,” Hastings Doyle wrote. “I used to chafe them a good deal about when they planned to pay you and I a visit. The reply I invariably received was: ‘Oh, we do not have anything to say to you until we have taken Mexico.’ There is but one feeling. Mexico will be theirs when the war with the South is over.”

(Dixie and the Dominion: Canada, the Confederacy and the War for the Union. Adam Mayers, The Dundurn Group. 2003, pp. 52-53)

 

The North’s War Against Free Trade

The unbridled pursuit of financial gain in America was no surprise to Englishmen and simply “a distasteful feature of democracy.” The British noted the widespread corruption in American political life and the rise of low men to power, while those better educated and unwilling to play the demagogue were not sought out. The British saw, especially in Northern States, an unwholesome tyranny of the democratic mob which eventually would break apart and replaced with an aristocracy or monarchy of better men.

The North’s War Against Free Trade

“The United States Senate, after fourteen Southern members had withdrawn (as their States had withdrawn from the United States), passed with a majority of eleven votes the almost prohibitive Morrill Tariff; the Confederate States adopted a constitution forbidding any tariff except for revenue – a denial, that is, of the principle of protection (for select industries).

From the economic point of view, which to some students of history is the only point of view, a major issue became perfectly clear. The North stood for protection, the South for free trade.

And for Englishmen . . . certain conclusions were obvious. “This [tariff] was the first use the North made of its victory [in the Senate]”, said one Englishman in a pamphlet . . .” The contrast between North and South was real and unambiguous, and so too were England’s free-trade convictions.

With those convictions and after these events, it was natural that many Englishmen . . . should readily embrace the theory of the South’s seceding because of economic oppression – since there had to be a reason for secession and both sides agreed that slavery was not the reason. As one of the ablest of the “Southern” Englishmen, James Spence, said, the South had long been convinced “that the Union was worked to the profit of the North and their own loss. [And] consider that the immediate cause of the revolt of those 13 colonies from this country was a duty of 3d. per pound on tea . . .”

The Confederate States were well aware of the appeal of economic facts. Their Secretary of State instructed James Mason on his mission to England to stress the free trade commitment of his government, as well as the British people’s “deep political and commercial interest in the establishment of the independence of the Confederate States.”

(The Glittering Illusion: English Sympathy for the Southern Confederacy. Sheldon Vanauken. Regnery Gateway, 1989. pp. 48-49)

British Sympathy for American Independence

Though unofficial Southern support in England was evident through most of the war, by mid-1864 Lincoln’s unofficial alliance with the British-hating Czar along with coming Alabama claims caused postwar British official opinion to take a northward turn. The Russian sale of Alaska in 1867 was to ensure that it did not fall into British hands, and the victorious North threatened an invasion of Canada and seizure of Greenland with its 2-million-man army in blue. This would have been punishment for expressing Southern sympathy.

British Sympathy for American Independence

“But in the course of the war, between 1861 and 1865, James Mason, Confederate States Commissioner to England, wrote confidentially to his Secretary of State in Richmond, Virginia, that “there can be no mistake that with all classes in England which have an opinion, their entire sympathy is with us.”

Captain James Bulloch, C.S.N., wrote that “personal observation, confirmed by the testimony of every other agent of the Confederate States Government whose duties compelled him to reside in England . . . , convinced me that the great majority of the people in Gret Britain – at least among the classes a traveler, or a man of business, or a frequenter of the clubs, would be likely to meet – were on the Southern side.”

Lest this be supposed but Southern optimism, the United States Consul at Liverpool wrote: “It was evident from the commencement [of war] that the South . . . had the sympathy of the people of England . . . I speak now of the great mass of the English people.” Henry Adams, the son and secretary of the United States minister in London, wrote: “As for this country, the simple fact is that it is unanimously against us and becomes more firmly set every day.”

An English partisan of the North wrote to a member of the opposite camp about the Southern supporters: “I fear you do not overstate your constituency when you put it at three-fourths of educated Englishmen.”

After a debate in the House of Commons on recognition of the Confederacy, the Manchester Guardian said that the debate “should not be thought to have anything to do with the sentiments and sympathies of the English people, for these were entirely with the South.” The manager of The Times wrote to a strongly pro-Southern correspondent: “Your views are entirely in accordance with those of this paper & I believe of the majority in this country.” The pro-Northern Spectator said: “The educated million in England, with here and there an exception, have become unmistakably Southern.”

(The Glittering Illusion: English Sympathy for the Southern Confederacy. Sheldon Vanauken. Regnery Gateway, 1989. pp. 1-2)

“This Country Splitting Business”

After the Japanese capitulation in 1945 the US government stymied an already-existing pan-Korean government, albeit leftist, in favor of installing Syngman Rhee, who ruled the south as a virtual dictator. The latter used former Japanese soldiers as police and government officials, with the support of the Americans. The 1950 war, which many believe was initiated by Rhee, cost the lives of a million Koreans and virtually leveled the country with bombing. Today, North Korea is the real Korea and ruled by Koreans; and South Korea remains a US-controlled colony.

“This Country Splitting Business”

“Senator Stuart Symington: ‘We go into this country splitting business . . . First, we split Germany. Then we split China. We stay with billions and billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of people in the case of Germany; China we stay with billions and billions of dollars and thousands of people. Then we split Korea and stay there with billions of dollars and tens of thousands of military [troops], all at heavy cost to the American taxpayer. Then we split Vietnam . . . now we split Laos . . . Do you know of any other country we plan to split pretty soon?

Mr. [William J.] Porter (US Ambassador to South Korea): No sir.

Senator Symington: This has been quite an interesting policy, hasn’t it, over the years? Our allies don’t do [this], nor do our possible enemies. We do it all over the world . . . ‘

(Hearings before the Subcommittee on US Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad of the Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, 91st Congress, 2nd Session, 1970, pp. 1579-82)

 

Foreigners Serving the Confederacy

The following is historian Dwight Dumond’s book review of Ella Lonn’s “Foreigners in the Confederacy found in the North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, January 1941. pp. 85-86.

Foreigners in the Confederacy. By Ella Lonn. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 1940.

“This record of the services rendered to the Confederate States of America by foreigners and by foreign-born citizens will take rank as one of the foremost contributions to the mounting volume of revisionist literature in that field of American history. In it we have presented, for the first time, an adequate appraisal of the importance of a large segment of the Southern population. It might not be too much to say that, for the first time, we have been told of its existence; and the telling has shattered some venerable traditions.

Foreign immigration into the United States during the two decades preceding the Civil War did not go entirely to the free states. In 1860 the foreign-born in Mobile constituted twenty- five per cent of the white population, in Charleston thirty per cent, in Savannah thirty-three per cent, in New Orleans forty per cent, in Memphis forty-two per cent. There were 3,263 Irish in Charleston, 3,100 in Savannah, 4,100 in Memphis. In New Orleans there were 24,398 Irish, 19,752 Germans, and 10,564 French. There were 43,464 Irish and 88,487 Germans in Arkansas. Ten per cent of the people in Texas were born under a foreign flag. Many races were represented among the 250,000 foreign-born in the Confederate States with Irish, German, French, and English predominating. They were slave- holding planters, merchants, professional men, skilled craftsmen, and unskilled workers.

Having discussed the geographical distribution of the several racial groups in her first chapter, Miss Lonn then traces their relationship to every aspect of the intersectional conflict. There is an excellent chapter on their divergent and changing attitudes toward slavery and secession; there are long accounts of the prominent military and civil officials under the Confederacy; and there is a chapter on military companies of foreign-born and one on foreign-born adventurers. The array of such prominent men is imposing – cabinet members Benjamin, Memminger, and Mallory; diplomats and special commissioners Henry Hotze, Father John Bannon, Reverend Patrick N. Lynch, and John A. Quintero; officers Patrick R. Cleburne, Prince de Polignac, Heros von Borcke, and a host of others; and entire companies of French, Polish, Italian, Spanish, and Irish troops, including the famous German Fusiliers of Charleston, the Emerald Guards of Mobile, and the Louisiana Zouaves.

Finally, there are three outstanding chapters dealing with the contributions of the foreign-born in special fields of military service such as engineering, secret service, ordnance, and medicine; with foreigners of distinction as teachers in schools and colleges, as businessmen, and as manufacturers; and with Confederate legislation and diplomatic conversations respecting foreigners in particular reference to citizenship and conscription.

It is a remarkable book, excellently documented, containing a splendid bibliography, and, considering the enormous quantity of facts and statistics presented, written with a pleasing style that excites admiration.

DWIGHT L. DUMOND