Circa1865

England reaped a fortune with its dominance of blockade running for most of the war, and stood nearly ready for mediation and intervention on the side of the American South. The latter was frustrated not by any abhorrence of slavery — as the British had much to do with its introduction and perpetuation in North America – but by the appearance of Russian fleets in New York and San Francisco harbors in the fall of September, 1863. The Russians had not forgotten their fleets bottled up during the Crimean War, and Lincoln was glad to have an ally with which to threaten Europe if intervention was attempted.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

That Fatal, Unjust Advantage

“How different might the fortunes of war have proved had England been honestly neutral. Grant even that she had seized the Alabama and the Florida, what would this have signified if she had stopped Federal recruiting in Ireland and insisted that the example should be loyally followed on the continent?

Had she taken stringent measures to prevent emigration of recruits to the North, as she stopped the supply of a navy to the South, the Federal armies would have been weakened by more men than Grant and Sherman now command, and thus the North would have lost that fatal, that unjust advantage by which the South has been crushed.

Richmond has fallen before an army of foreign mercenaries. Lee has surrendered to an army of foreigners. With a horde of foreigners Sherman occupied Atlanta, took Savannah, ravaged Georgia, and traversed the Carolinas.

By the aid of foreign mercenaries the South has been destroyed, and that aid the conquerors owe to the connivance of England. It is not often that a duty neglected, an opportunity thrown away can ever be retrieved. It is not often that a great public wrong goes utterly unpunished.

We are little disposed to import into politics the language of the pulpit, but we cannot forbear to remind our readers that nations as well as individuals are responsible for the use they make of the powers and opportunities intrusted to them, and history does not encourage us to hope that so grievous a dereliction of duty as that of which on our part the South has been the victim will go eventually unpunished.”

(English Sentiment for the South, from the Methodist Review, 1867, Confederate Veteran Magazine, January, 1921, page 48)