CHAPTER NINE
[We may] conquer the seceding states by invading Armies. No doubt this might be done in two or three years by a young and able general, a Wolfe, a Desaix, or a Hoche with 300,000 disciplined men – estimating a third for garrisons and the loss of a yet greater number by skirmishes, sieges, battles and southern fevers. The destruction of life would be frightful – however perfect the moral discipline of the invaders.
GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT to WILLIAM H. SEWARD, 3 March 1861, Lincoln Papers
The tragedy of the Civil War as a bloody, fratricidal conflict -brother set against brother, fathers against sons, and in the case of J. E. B. Stuart, son-in-law against father-in-law – invariably engages the attention of United States historians and shapes their approach to the war.1 This depiction is rather overdrawn, and usually applies only to the Upper South or Border states. And on various fields of battle Union regiments from Kentucky, Tennessee and Western Virginia (which entered the Union as a separate state in 1863) were drawn up opposed to Confederate regiments from the same states, including friends and neighbours who had chosen to rally to their states rather than to the Union. Nonetheless, the Civil War for all its emotional impact on American society must be viewed in a wider perspective. Indeed, the American Civil War should be interpreted as one part of a general crisis in North America. The halting of United States expansion while the Union was engulfed in civil commotion, along with similar upheavals in Canada and Mexico, introduced a period of prolonged instability on the continent which invited intervention by other powers. When President Polk invoked the Monroe Doctrine during the Oregon Crisis in December 1845, he signalled the desire of the United States to exclude European influences from North America. The coming of the Civil War and the creation of another American republic hostile to the United States which sought alliances with Great Britain and France threatened to reverse the process initiated by Polk (but which had its origins in the Monroe presidency). During the American Revolution a regional conflict in North America had expanded into a ‘world’ war involving all the great powers. Campaigns waged in the Carolinas and Virginia were relative ‘sideshows’ compared with those waged by European armies and navies in Europe and the Caribbean.2
This chapter will consider three themes. First, it will assess the failure of the third phase of secession and Union success in securing the Border states. Secondly, it will discuss the place of slavery and emancipation in expanding the nature of the war. And thirdly, it will consider the crucial question of whether the conflict would expand from a civil to an international war. From April to July 1861 it was very unclear what kind of war had broken out. By September 1862 it was very clear, though it was quite different from what had been anticipated. There was a paradox here. The war had become much greater in scope than expected, but also more limited in one important respect. It had not expanded into an international war involving the great European powers, Great Britain and France. The reasons for this fundamental limitation need to be explored.
In 1861 it appeared likely that the pattern of the Revolutionary War would repeat itself. Seward even saw war with foreign powers as a solution to the ghastly schism of secession. If the European great powers had intervened in the Civil War then United States dominance would probably have been destroyed and replaced by a balance of power between competing North American republics. General Scott had acknowledged this possibility in a memorandum when he predicted that the United States might divide into four regional republics, North, South, North West and South West. Such a development would increase the influence of Mexico and Canada within a North American states system previously dominated by the United States. It would also have opened the door of opportunity for increasing European influence and intervention. This was foreshadowed by Napoleon Ill’s attempt to install his client, Maximilian, as Emperor of Mexico. Thirty thousand French troops were garrisoned in Mexico by 1862. Spain intervened in San Domingo to crush the Negro rebels, a matter that disturbed Lincoln and Seward during the Sumter crisis. Indeed Seward was so worried by these grave developments that in his ‘Thoughts for the President’s Consideration’ he advocated a most energetic if rash response. T would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically at once. I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia and send agents into Canada, Mexico, and Central America, to rouse a vigorous continental spirit of independence on this continent against European intervention’.3
Seward’s somewhat frantic and extreme reaction was nevertheless in line with the overall trend of United States policy to its North American neighbours. The break-up of the Union, a continental republic which dominated the region, would introduce a mechanism resembling the European balance of power between smaller, competing states. ‘But a balance of power’, Professor Connell-Smith argues, ‘was precisely what the United States would not permit in the Americas. She was determined to maintain an imbalance which was so markedly – and increasingly – in her interests’. Thus a major question that needs to be answered is why the American Civil War remained a local conflict? Why did it not spread into a wider conflagration, particularly given its length and intensity? Related to this issue was the manner in which the war developed into what the twentieth century calls a ‘total’ war. The destruction of the Confederacy, the abolition of slavery and the military occupation of the southern states until 1877 prevented any extension to North America of a balance of power. In 1895 President Grover Cleveland’s Secretary of State, Richard Olney, boasted that ‘Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition’. This was possible, Olney explained, because the United States’ ‘infinite resources, combined with its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable as against any or all other powers’. The firing at Fort Sumter presented an opportunity for preventing such an accretion of power and strategic invulnerability.
The attitude of the United States to foreign powers was conditioned largely by progress on the military front. The danger that a European power might intervene was most urgent when Union armies were routed and Confederate forces invaded northern soil. The thorny problem of war aims is also related to the fate of northern and southern arms. What were the two sections actually fighting about? To what extent did military success (or failure) modify these aims? How were these aims perceived by foreign powers, not least Great Britain? Why did the Civil War remain confined to the United States? Seward was later to pay the British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, a guarded and convoluted tribute. He ‘could have been sustained by his countrymen in placing his Government in an attitude more unfriendly and more directly hostile to the United States’. But, Seward wrote, he resisted this imprudent temptation and ‘prevented our deplorable civil strife from becoming a universal war’.4
Such views emphasizing endurance were comparatively rare in these heady, optimistic days, on both sides. The illusion of a short war was pervasive. The prime consideration appeared to be striking at the political focus of the rebellion – the Confederate capital which was moved to Richmond, Virginia in May 1861. The Confederate Congress agreed to meet there on 20 July. Once this city was occupied and its rebellious body dispersed, the rebellion would be crushed.5 There was little appreciation in these early days of the strength of secessionist feeling. The widespread illusion evident during the Sumter crisis that Unionism would assert itself once the extremities of the dangers to which the South was exposing herself became evident, was still influential.
At first there was a great reluctance to accept this political imperative. But it was forced on northern leaders because southern war aims complemented their own. The South demanded nothing less than recognition of her independence, not only by the Federal government, but also by foreign powers. The longer she survived, the greater the likelihood that such an acceptance would be forthcoming. The North had to be persuaded that the immense effort required to subjugate the South was futile and debilitating. Foreign powers were to be encouraged to intervene and deliver the beleaguered Confederacy.
The secession crisis: the third phase
Secessionists hoped that by creating a southern polity all slaveowning states (whether they accepted the ‘right’ of secession or not) would be attracted to join it, like an irresistible magnet. First the Upper South then the Border states would be dragged into the new confederation. For all its disadvantages, the series of unilateral state secessions operated to disintegrate the Union piecemeal, so that individual states would see that it was inexpedient to remain in the Union, isolated and friendless. A week before the firing on Fort Sumter, a Confederate Commissioner, John Forsyth, was boasting that within sixty days the Confederacy would include all the states, including Washington DC, south of New York. ‘That said states could cut off those damned puritan states east, and never let them in [the Confederacy].’ The prime fault with this strategy was that it now had to confront federal military power. Secession in the Deep South had occurred in an area completely bereft of federal coercive influence: the further north it occurred, the less likely secession could occur successfully with impunity.6
By 20 April, however, it appeared likely that the Federal government would no longer be able to maintain itself in Washington. On the day before, the 6th Massachusetts Volunteers, hurrying to the relief of the capital, had been attacked by a secessionist mob in Baltimore while attempting to take street cars to the station. Sixteen were killed, twelve civilians and four soldiers. The Baltimore militia were called out to deter the federal authorities from taking reprisals. Lincoln was so alarmed that further violence would provoke Maryland’s secession that troops moving to Washington were diverted from Baltimore. This incident illustrates the widening scope of violence after Sumter. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended along ‘the military line … used between the city of Philadelphia and the city of Washington’. This was justified on the grounds that ‘in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it’ – but the Constitution was ambiguous as to which federal agency could exercise this power. The initial suspension aroused little comment. Indeed this whole period demonstrates the reluctance in many quarters to accept that a civil war had erupted. Violence was fitful and intermittent but gradually growing in ferocity. Two thousand stands of arms arrived in Baltimore – a gift from the secessionists of Virginia. One citizen, Joseph Spencer, was arrested for claiming that secessionist rioters ‘had done right’.
On 22 April Governor Thomas Hicks called a special session of the Maryland legislature which met four days later. The prospects looked grave. But within days the secessionist bubble in Maryland was pricked. Its popular support was nebulous: even without opposition ten secessionist candidates nominated to fill vacancies on the Maryland legislature scraped only 9,200 votes. Lincoln had considered suspending the meeting, but he prudently declined because ‘they have a clear legal right to assemble; and we can not know in advance, that their action will not be lawful and peaceful’, and as it turned out the meeting was harmless. But Lincoln was ready to take brutal measures to suppress rebellion in Maryland if necessary, including ‘the bombardment of their cities’. Such action was unnecessary. The Maryland legislature acknow- ledged that it lacked the constitutional authority to pass an ordinance of secession; the issue was a dead letter by the time it adjourned on 14 May. There was no burning reason why Maryland should take such a hazardous step. The number of slaves had dropped significantly as a proportion of the total population: in 1800 slaves accounted for 100,000 out of a total population of 350,000; by 1860 this number had fallen to 87,000 but Maryland’s population had increased to 680,000. And such action as Baltimore had already taken, especially the blockade of Washington, had severely damaged her commerce. On 7 May the Mayor of Baltimore acknowledged that ‘the authorities of the city fully recognise and admit their obligations to submit to the lawful authority of the government of the United States’.
This was an action of the greatest significance. If Maryland had seceded Washington would have been untenable and the prestige of the Federal government might have been dealt a mortal blow. But on 9 May 2,500 volunteers from Pennsylvania passed through Baltimore without incident. Five days later the 6th Massachusetts returned to the city to cheers. Without authority General Benjamin F. Butler took command and prohibited assembly, drilling, the hanging of Confederate flags, and confiscated the property of those sympathizing with the rebellion – a portent of his attitude to slavery. Under the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, John Merryman, a wealthy secessionist, was arrested. A writ of habeas corpus was issued on 27 May in the district court of Baltimore, by an unhappy coincidence presided over by Roger B. Taney, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. With much indignation, bustle and display of otiose legal learning, Taney instructed Butler’s replacement, General George Cadwallader, to appear before him; Cadwallader refused. There was, of course, some legal weight to Taney’s judgment. He argued that Lincoln had subverted the Constitution; the president had impugned the separation of powers and had failed to uphold his inaugural oath to ‘faithfully execute the laws if he takes upon himself the legislative power by suspending the writ of habeas corpus – and the judicial power also by arresting and imprisoning a person without due process of law’. But in this instance, as in so many others, secessionists (or those who acquiesced sympathetically in secession) eyed a rich, iced cake and sought to devour it simultaneously. Secession could never be an exclusive exercise in judicial rights however cleverly interpreted, because ultimately it rested on force. Lincoln had demonstrated at Sumter that secession could not be attained peaceably. In Maryland he demonstrated that the Federal government would exercise its power and protect its security by force if necessary. Revolution would be challenged by counter-revolution, and the Chief Justice’s response may be set aside as only so much bleating because it failed to take account of the immense political changes which had occurred since December 1860. These placed Taney’s sombrely worded judicial warnings at a severe discount.7
Once the capital was secure and federal forces had made their way into it rather like a surge of refreshing water pouring into a dried up reservoir, then confidence began to return that the rebellion would be crushed quickly. Professor Blainey has argued that a belief in a short war is a reflection of confidence in an overwhelming superiority.8 In terms of material strength the North had a preponderant advantage. The total northern population (including Kansas) was 18,907,753 compared with that of 8,726,644 in the Confederate states. But this latter figure included over 3,900,000 slaves who in 1861–62 were not considered suitable material for soldiers. In the vital category of white men of military age (15–40) the North could draw upon a population of 4,000,000 while the South had only a quarter of that figure, 1,100,000. The population of the Border states was 3,588,729 – if they had enthusiastically embraced the southern cause, then the North’s margin of superiority would have been significantly reduced. The margin of industrial production was even greater. The individual value of industrial goods produced by the states of Pennsylvania and New York was double the entire production of all the Confederate states. A striking indication of this is revealed by the number of locomotives (19) built by the South in the year ending 1 June 1860; the North built 451.9 Predictions that a war is likely to be short are based on three main propositions. First, they rely heavily on faith in economic resources, especially financial prosperity. The South despite the paucity of its resources was buoyed up by the expectation that a Confederacy would inaugurate a new age of free trade with Europe which would transform Charleston into another New York. The Secretary of the Treasury, Chase, took pleasure in informing Lincoln on 2 April that as bids for a federal loan were over-subscribed four times that ‘All this shows decided improvement on finances and will gratify you’. Two weeks previously Chase had gloomily advised against re-supplying Fort Sumter. It would require ‘the enlistment of armies and the expenditure of millions I cannot advise it… in the present condition of the national finances’. This sudden upturn encouraged many to believe that the South could not withstand the sheer weight of resources that the North could turn against her, especially in the sophistication and quantity of her weapons technology.
Secondly, predictions that wars will be short are often based on rash and highly emotional forecasts. Even Stanton, who had taken great political risks to cross the party divide during the last days of the Buchanan Administration to feed Republican colleagues with information, thought the war would be short. ‘Nor indeed do I think hostilities will be so great an evil as many apprehend,’ he informed Senator Dix. ‘A round or two often serves to restore harmony; and the vast consumption required by a state of hostilities, will enrich rather than impoverish the North’.10 Certainly Russell was of the opinion that both sides in 1861 were prone to boast about their untried martial prowess and underestimate the resources and skill of their opponents. Thirdly, those who are confident of early military success expect victory to come soon; misplaced optimism frequently prefaces wars.11
This belief in speed and decisiveness was strengthened by the suddenness by which the secessionist tide was turned. Firm, belligerent action by Nathaniel Lyon prevented secessionists seizing 21,000 muskets in Missouri and he defeated their militia, capturing numbers of them before occupying the state capital. Jefferson City. The result of his action enabled the Federal government to maintain control of most of the state, though other parts degenerated into guerrilla war. Three-quarters of all Missourians who fought in the Civil War fought for the North (as did two-thirds of all Marylanders). The loyalty of Delaware (with only 2 per cent of its population as slaves) was never in doubt. The western counties of Virginia ‘seceded’ from the Confederacy, and were swiftly occupied by Union forces commanded by George B. McClellan. The only area of doubt was in Kentucky. Lincoln said, ‘To lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game’. In May the state declared ‘a position of strict neutrality’. In fact, this aided the Confederacy immeasurably. A neutral Kentucky shielded the southern heartland better than a Confederate army. Lincoln declined to recognize this neutrality but agreed to respect it and did not extend any form of blockade to Kentucky’s land frontiers. In June the Unionists won in excess of 70 per cent of the votes in a special election. The Confederacy then rashly violated Kentucky neutrality in September, and solved Lincoln’s problem by occupying this important state. In November an ordinance of secession was passed by a convention, but Confederate troops occupied only the south western corner of the state. The hard hand of war hit Kentucky and this state did experience a ‘brothers war’. But such a precipitate move opened up the Confederate heartland to invasion.12
The problem of slavery
Of course, as slavery was inescapably part of the issues which had led to the rupture of the Union and the recourse to physical force to resolve them, it was inextricably linked with the form assumed by those military activities. This development was complicated by the determination of the executive branch not to use military force to alter either the parameters of political discussion after April 1861 or permit any change in the status of slavery in the southern states. Congress, moreover, subscribed to a similar view of war aims. On 22 July the House of Representatives passed a resolution supporting the presidential stance; the Senate three days later resolved that the war was not for oppression, conquest or subjugation, ‘nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those [seceded] States’ but to preserve the Union and its laws, and ‘as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease’. But as federal armies moved on to Confederate soil, adherence to this position became more burdensome. Once begun, organized violence generates its own momentum. To secure the desired ends those agencies resorting to violence must exercise a tight control over this political instrument; such control was impossible to maintain under the plural military and political system adopted by the United States. When Benjamin F. Butler’s troops occupied Fort Monroe in Virginia in May 1861, they welcomed Negro slaves into their camps who were set to work on Union works. Butler declared them ‘contraband of war’, that is to say, property used for warlike purposes. Butler justified his action on military grounds, and it was endorsed by the War Department. ‘In a state of rebellion’, Butler argued, T would confiscate that which was used to oppose my arms – and take all that property which constituted the wealth of that state, and furnished the means by which the war was prosecuted, besides being the cause of the war’. Butler took no action which redounded on the status of Negroes as slaves. For under the Fugitive Slave Act, commanding officers were obliged to return escaped Negroes as property to their rightful owners. This raised the possibility that the Union army could be transformed into a judicial arm of an Act which was execrated in New England. The resulting controversy gave the lie to the notion that somehow the war did not involve the slave question or race relations.13
This was a problem that could not be concealed. On 30 August General John C. Frémont, the former Republican presidential candidate and now commander of the Department of the West, promulgated in grandiose language from his headquarters at St Louis, a ‘proclamation’ that declared a state approaching martial law. Frémont would ‘assume the administrative powers of the State: any citizen caught possessing arms would be court-martialled and shot if found guilty; the property of those opposed to the government would be confiscated, including their slaves ‘hereby declared as freedmen’. Its incendiary effects on the Border states were obvious. Joshua F. Speed commented to Joseph Holt that ‘we could stand several defeats like that at Bulls run [sic], better than we can this proclamation if endorsed by the Administration’. It also rather bombastically (if naively) usurped executive authority. Lincoln could not permit one local commander to issue piecemeal declarations which had effects on government policy over a whole range of matters.
Frémont’s position was also open to attack on other grounds. His administration in Missouri was foolish and careless. (A useful informant on these matters was Seward’s nephew, Samuel S. Seward.) Lincoln argued that the terms of the proclamation were ‘purely political’. The status of property should ‘be settled according to laws made by lawmakers and not by military proclamations’. Frémont received a mildly worded reproof from Lincoln, which he did not deign to obey. An official investigation of Frémont’s administration revealed all kinds of petty irregularities. A Californian crony was paid $191,000 to build forts at St Louis – at three times the usual cost. To Frémont’s annoyance, officers from Washington were sent out to observe his activities. The formidable Mrs Frémont, the daughter of Thomas Hart Benton, travelled to Washington to lobby the president personally on her husband’s behalf. Boisterous and indignant, she received the crushing reproof of which Lincoln was more than capable: ‘You are quite a female politician’. Orders for Frémont’s dismissal were issued in October 1861. This caused a furious uproar. Frémont had enjoyed public applause because he seemed to be doing something to break the torpor which was paralysing the Union war effort in the autumn of 1861. As George Templeton Strong, hardly a radical but a man who was increasingly impatient with laggard methods, wrote in his diary, Frémont’s declaration ‘looks like war in earnest at last. … A most significant step in the right direction, though it may weaken the national cause in Kentucky’ – but this looked like a risk well worth taking.14
But there can be no doubting the correlation between enthusiasm for liberating the slaves and voices calling for an energetic prosecution of the war. Those who counselled caution and prudence were usually men who wished to preserve slavery in the South, or like Charles P. Stone, were slaveholders themselves. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, a former army officer who would soon be called to Washington to advise the Secretary for War, had advocated evacuating Sumter on the grounds that it would be a prudent strategic withdrawal. ‘Take the Major [Anderson] away and employ the Navy in collecting the revenue’. He (wrongly) thought that the president would attempt to avoid any occasion for war. T would abandon the public property. I would not spike the guns’. But when it came to standing behind the guns, Hitchcock revealed a marked lack of enthusiasm for the task. ‘Many friends urge my return to the Army. But I have no heart for engaging in Civil War. … If fighting could preserve the Union (or restore it) I might consider what I could do to take part – but when did fighting make friends?’ Sherman wrote candidly that civilians were much keener than soldiers not only to start a war but also to prosecute one, ‘and so it appears now’. General John M. Schofleld, who had a distinguished military career, commented on this gap in martial enthusiasm in his memoirs:
Men who have been fighting most of the three or four years generally become pretty cool, while those in the rear seem to become hotter and hotter as the end approaches…. They must in some way work off the surplus passion which the soldier has already exhausted in battle.
This ‘surplus passion’, which was frustrated by early failures, influenced profoundly the character and development of the war. Although military operations commenced with the firing at Fort Sumter, the origins of a war to emancipate slavery lie in these early failures. Conservative generals, who found a leader in the new commander called by Lincoln to take command of the Army of the Potomac in July 1861, George B. McClellan, could not understand that their failure to achieve the decisive victory which public opinion cried out for led to an increase in the influence of the Radicals. Furthermore, this slow transition in the character of the war was determined by the democratic process (what Clausewitz called ‘popular passions’) which had contributed to the political crisis assuming a military form. This elementary point is obscured by the many accusations that the hysteria generated by political intercourse was of material assistance to the Confederacy.15
Each step forward in the war, each acceleration in its intensity, had been preceded by an outburst of popular enthusiasm or fury. The channels of democratic procedure and intercourse had directed the velocity of military force aimed at the Confederacy, as before First Bull Run. But after that battle, despite the shock attendant on an unexpected defeat, political conservatism had reasserted itself. In both the congressional resolutions on war aims, in presidential use of the war powers (and the nomination of McClellan to command the Army of the Potomac, though his political views were less obvious than they would be three months later), and in the passage of the First Confiscation Act of 6 August 1861, war aims remained strictly limited. The First Confiscation Act, which confirmed Butler’s actions at Fort Monroe, simply declared that slaves employed to support military measures against the United States were declared forfeit – but not free.
But the alternative interpretation, favoured by Hans L. Trefousse, that there was much common ground between the Administration and its congressional critics, and that they managed to establish a working partnership, signally fails to take into account the impact of military failure on politicians who had been persuaded to expect a quick and decisive military victory. Some enthusiastically agreed with the radicals that the war effort must be revitalized. Others reluctantly agreed that the only way this could be achieved was by removing constraints on discipline and foraging, and by striking at the very heart of the southern social system and property rights – the emancipation of slavery. But many who were eager to root out traitors were less keen to contemplate the social consequences of more drastic measures. Indeed Browning was soon complaining in November 1862 when he heard that Union troops in the West were ‘doing an immense deal of wanton mischief, as well as mercenary plundering. That they rob and steal for private gain, and burn and destroy through malice or wantoness, utterly regardless of the loyalty and disloyalty of the person depredated upon’. The firing at Fort Sumter had, in short, released a two-way political process. The war reflected the political system that had produced it; yet that political system, and the views aired in its institutions, were profoundly influenced by the course of military operations; these two elements could not be separated. Any interpretation of party politics in the American Civil War which fails to take this omnipresent reality into account is partial and incomplete.16
The making of the Emancipation Proclamation
The main problem that Lincoln faced in the first year of the war was that the North had not resigned itself to the kind of long, arduous conflict which we readily associate with the American Civil War. The popular expectation was a massive northern victory by the summer of 1862. Seward informed Senator Sumner that he had been passed ‘authentic information from Virginia that the Rebellion will be over there in 4 weeks’. On 3 April in what has been rightly judged a monumental blunder, Stanton closed all recruiting offices. The indecisive Battle of Shiloh in April was a portent of things to come, a portent confirmed by the great disappointment of McClellan’s failure in the Seven Days Battles of June 1862. These general engagements indicated that, far from a prompt suppression of rebellion, the Federal government would have to brace itself to wage a full-scale Civil War. This was a slow process which took just over twelve months from the firing of the opening bullets at Fort Sumter. It may be gauged by the increasing attack on private property. The defence of private property is, after all, one of the prime duties of a nation-state. Once such a duty is jettisoned, however gradually, then it is clear that all pretence at harmony between conflicting polities has been abandoned. All barriers to the escalation of organized violence and brutality have been swept away until the end of ‘total’ victory has been achieved. The July 1861 resolution passed by the House of Representatives had stated that soldiers were under no compulsion to return runaway slaves. The Confiscation Act of 6 August declared that any slaves found undertaking military labour for the enemies of the United States would be forfeit. Such measures did not impugn the Fugitive Slave Act because they were worded in such a way as to avoid reflecting on the liberty of the broad mass of slaves.
Whereas the first six months of the war had seen only one great battle, First Bull Run, the period of six months from 31 March 1862 had seen a clutch of great battles, Shiloh, Seven Days, Second Bull Run, and then in September 1862, Antietam. Only the battles in the East had great political consequences because it was these that agitated the thoughts of politicians in Washington. Not only did these battles transform the face of war in North America but also the unprecedented scale of death and destruction inflicted on American society had important political consequences. Their very indecisiveness led to a recourse to ‘total war’ measures. After Lee’s withdrawal to Maryland, on 22 September Lincoln presented to his Cabinet the text of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This august occasion was enlivened by Lincoln reading an amusing passage from Artemus Ward’s the ‘High Handed Outrage at Utica’, which affronted the sensibilities of the pompous Salmon P. Chase, who thought it inappropriately frivolous for such a solemn occasion. Turning more gravely to the necessity he had been forced to confront, Lincoln observed, ‘I think the time has come. I wish it were a better time. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked’. Nonetheless, Antietam had driven Lee from northern soil and restored some credit to the northern cause.17
The entire document was justified as an exercise of the presidential war powers. The reference to the president as commander in chief which prefaces it did not appear in the proclamation calling out the militia in April 1861. All slaves held as chattels in states ‘in rebellion against the United States’ from 1 January 1863 were ‘then, thenceforward, and forever free’. All federal agencies were to recognize this freedom and not discourage chattel slaves from seeking it. If the Confederate states returned to the Union, however, then Lincoln would ensure that loyal slaveowners would ‘be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves’. If they remained outside the Union then they risked losing all. For the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation applied only to areas not occupied by Union forces. Those occupied by Union troops would be able to keep their slaves, at least for the time being, and would receive compensation after a due process of gradual emancipation. Blair and Seward were still worried about the Border states; but Lincoln now felt confident in their loyalty. The Federal government ‘must make the forward effort… . They [will] acquiesce, if not immediately, soon’. This emphasis on the ‘forward movement’ is significant. Lincoln realized that a means had to be found, now that the war had moved into a second phase, of striking at the Confederacy rather than sitting back and allowing the South to strike at the Union, which it had done rather successfully over the previous two months. Given the adamant Confederate refusal to make any concessions, Lincoln now realized that he had no choice if he was to achieve a reunion of the states but to wage a punitive war against the South and its social system. He was candid in agreeing that after 1 January 1863 ‘the character of the war will change. It will be one of subjugation…. The [old] South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and ideas’.18
The fearful cost of the war, which would be multiplied many times before it came to an end, not only supported those who called out for more drastic war measures, but also lent credence to an increasingly strong cry that the South be punished for bringing the curse of fratricidal conflict on the United States. The North, furthermore, should be punished by providence for tolerating the evil of slavery for so long. Even those soldiers who had objected to the Emancipation Proclamation realized as they advanced on to southern soil how slavery bound together and sustained its war economy. By striking at slavery Lincoln aimed to root out the fundamental cause of the war: the paramount issue which had tempted the South to seek its independence. Yet conservative members of his cabinet, one of whom, Seward, was considered a radical in 1861, were still fearful that the outbreak of a servile rebellion in the Confederacy would tempt foreign intervention. How and why this had not occurred despite the comparative success of southern arms we must now turn to consider.19
The illusions of the South
The South, like the North, was prey to a number of illusions after the firing of the first shots at Fort Sumter. The first of these was that the war would be won with ease and without bloodshed. The second was that southern independence would be won with the assistance of foreign powers. The third was that the British felt a deep sympathy for their ‘Cavalier’ kith and kin in the South based on indefinable racial and cultural links. There was a dangerous contradiction lurking at the heart of these calculations. Great Britain in the South’s eyes was both sentimental and mercenary. The Confederacy consciously modelled itself in the style of the American Revolution. In 1780–81 France had made an important contribution to achieving American independence. Southerners had convinced themselves that they could exploit Great Britain’s mercenary interests and compel her to intervene, thanks to the power of ‘King Cotton’. This strategy began to assume the hypnotic power of an article of faith. An overweening belief in the economic power of the South became evident in the early 1850s. By 1861 most southerners, quite ignorant of the world outside their own states, parroted ill-thought-out notions of the long reach of King Cotton. William Howard Russell had numerous conversations with southerners who seemed to consider the British Empire
as a sort of appanage to their cotton kingdom. ‘Why, sir, we have only to shut off your supply of cotton for a few weeks, and we can create a revolution in Great Britain. There are four millions of your people depending on us for their bread, not to speak of the many millions of dollars. No, sir, we know that England must recognise us’, etc.
Most southerners were comforted by the sight of cotton bales piled up on the docks of Charleston. ‘All these gentlemen to a man are resolute that England must get their cotton or perish’.
Great Britain would break the illegal Union blockade in her frantic search for cotton. The Confederacy held that the federal blockade was illegal because blockades were declared between nations at war, which the South claimed to be, while the Federal government insisted that it was suppressing an insurrection. This was an inconsistency that the Lincoln Administration worried about in private but did not acknowledge in public. Recognition of Confederate independence would then follow, with British military and naval assistance in the war against the North. This kind of thinking was therefore mutually supportive. The war would be short because the South would be victorious in a single great battle with few casualties (‘a whippin’’), and victory would be consummated at a stroke by British intervention. Both these points did nothing to reduce southern conceit. The Governor of Mississippi, Pettus, seemed to labour under the misconception that his state cut a greater figure on the world stage than the British Empire. Russell quotes him as announcing that ‘England is no doubt a great country, and has got fleets and the like … and may have a good deal to do in Eur-ope, but the sovereign state of Mississippi can do a great deal better without England than England can do without her’. Such voices were guilty of the sin of what Napoleon called ‘making pictures’. They drew a sketch of the world as they would have liked it to appear, rather than how it actually appeared, and they lacked the imagination and the knowledge to grasp the hard realities of international affairs. Consequently, southern illusions fed on one another. As even an educated southerner wrote home to his wife, ‘I believe the war will not last long…. England’s interest unerringly points to an issue with them [the North], and it will surely come. Let us adhere closely to our policy. Let us keep our cotton and let not a single bag go, except in exchange for necessary articles’.20
Thus Confederate policy was governed by this idée fixe. In July 1861 the Confederate vice president, Alexander H. Stephens, claimed confidently that the blockade would be broken ‘or there will be revolution in Europe…. Our cotton is … the tremendous lever by which we can work our destiny’. The self-imposed blockade of cotton worked most efficiently, supervised by local committees of public safety. During the first twelve months of conflict after Fort Sumter, European importation of cotton was but 1 per cent of its normal level. No official embargo was declared in case this risked European wrath rather than their intervention. But despite this initial success the European great powers did not intervene to slake the thirst of their cotton mills for cotton. In the first place, the massive crops of 1857–60 had permitted British mill-owners in particular to build up large stocks. Working off these, as James M. McPherson points out, was actually a commercial ‘blessing in disguise’ despite some gloomy forebodings from British ministers. Therefore, pace southern expectations, there was little pressure from commercial lobby groups to take action against the northern blockade. The same factors operated in the smaller French cotton industry. Also, the main impact of unemployment postdated the highwater mark of southern military success in the summer of 1862. This too had the unfortunate consequence that when the South struck after the Seven Days her blow missed its mark in Europe. Nonetheless, the Confederacy was determined to achieve recognition from European powers, especially Great Britain. The activities of her emissaries brought the United States to the brink of war with Great Britain and a step nearer fulfilling the Confederate goal of widening the war to involve European powers.21
Anglo-American crises and their resolution, 1861–62
The first step which encouraged the South was the British recognition of belligerent status for the Confederacy as part of the declaration of neutrality on 13 May 1861. France followed this British initiative on 10 June. These moves set the pattern for the crisis. France followed the British lead and would not act without her. These declarations provoked a great deal of hostile northern comment but had in fact been conceded by Lincoln with the levying of the blockade. Therefore, it was with an optimistic air that on 12 October 1861, in accordance with their policy of gaining foreign recognition, the Confederate government dispatched two emissaries, James M. Mason (Virginia) and John Slidell (Louisiana), to Britain via Havana, Cuba. They took the British packet, Trent bound for St Thomas in the Danish West Indies, where they planned to take ship to Southampton. They were intercepted by the USS Jacinto, commanded by the intrepid Captain Charles Wilkes. Wilkes boarded the Trent, removed the two envoys, arrived back in the United States on 15 November where he was greeted by rapturous applause, and incarcerated them in Fort Warren, Boston. On 29 November the British Cabinet met in emergency session and agreed that Wilkes had violated the law of nations; and the following day, the British Ambassador, Lord Lyons, demanded the return of Mason and Slidell and an apology for an aggressive act. With the British press agitating for the dispatch of a naval expedition to break the federal blockade, war between Britain and the United States looked likely. But behind the bellicose demands of the press, on both sides of the Atlantic, was a determination not to take precipitate action. The French note supporting the British was phrased so as not to give unnecessary offence. This desire to avoid confrontation more than any other factor explains the avoidance of conflict between the United States and Great Britain and why the Civil War remained restricted to the United States.
Queen Victoria interceded in the affair. Anxious to avoid war, she persuaded the dying Prince Albert, who could hardly hold his pen, to tone down the second note delivered by Lyons rendering it much less offensive to the Lincoln Administration. The British government demanded that Mason and Slidell be returned within seven days; if the United States failed to comply then diplomatic relations would be severed. A number of warlike preparations were undertaken: reinforcements were dispatched to Canada; the fleet was mobilized; and an important Union order for saltpetre – an essential compound in the manufacture of gunpowder – was cancelled. But behind this warlike smokescreen, both sides played for time. Formal demands were presented on 19 December in a more conciliatory spirit. A further four days’ grace was granted to the Lincoln Administration by not conveying written demands until 23 December; a reply was not required for seven days after this. In the meantime, Seward, having now abandoned his earlier bombastic and belligerent stance, wrote to the American minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, on 30 November, ‘I trust that the British Government will consider the subject in a friendly temper, and it may expect the best disposition on the part of this Government’.
Again, it was in the interests of both sides to come to some kind of accommodation. The Lincoln Administration was in no position to risk war with Britain. By December 1861 the United States Navy had still not effectively blockaded southern ports. The Royal Navy could break this blockade with ease, inflict damage on the US merchant marine, and replace a Union blockade of southern ports with a British blockade of northern ports. The effect of this on the putative northern war effort need hardly be stressed. Seward’s position was that Wilkes had acted without the knowledge or instructions of his government. The prisoners should be regarded as contraband of war. As the Trent was a merchant ship it could be lawfully searched, and was unmolested once the contraband had been identified and removed. But Seward then conceded that contraband should have been subject to the jurisdiction of a prize court; as this procedure had not been followed, the United States government was content to release Mason and Slidell. Indeed, in line with the existing ‘short war’ mode of thought, Seward now asserted that the issue was unimportant because of the ‘waning character of the rebellion’ which he was sure would crumble in the spring of 1862. This line was agreed at a cabinet meeting on 25 December, even though the president took some persuading to give up the Confederate emissaries. Thus the crisis was brought to an end as quickly as it had blown up. Within months the two countries had signed a treaty suppressing the Atlantic slave trade. By appearing conciliatory the Lincoln Administration had wriggled out of a triangular trap in which, no matter how hard it might have struggled, it could not have broken free by force.22
Anglo-American relations had been improved by the Trent crisis. Throughout the summer of 1862 Great Britain acquiesced in some stringent enforcement of the rules of blockade. British merchant ships, notably the Bermuda, had their cargoes confiscated because they were headed for the Confederacy. They were placed before a prize court, and in the case of the Bermuda she was bought by the United States Navy and put to work enforcing the blockade. These actions put Great Britain in a tricky dilemma. The United States and Great Britain had gone to war in 1812 mainly because of a British determination to enforce identical regulations in her own blockade of Napoleonic France. The United States, then a neutral, claimed they did not apply to her. The United States had refused to recognize the Declaration of Paris (1856) which upheld the right of any blockading power to search and confiscate contraband en route to a belligerent state. But on 24 April 1861 the United States had no choice but to accede to the Declaration of Paris because under international law, to be legal and binding a blockade had to be effective, and this entailed asserting all the rights and powers that the American government had previously found so obnoxious. The readiness of the United States government to concede ground on this contentious issue reversed earlier confrontations, with Britain dealing with an American blockade and not vice versa. Unless the British government was determined to declare war and enter on the side of the South in the Civil War, she would be setting a most unfortunate precedent. Breaking the blockade would be tantamount to inviting the United States to side with Britain’s enemies in a future hypothetical conflict which could endanger the British Isles. This was a risk which the British government felt that it could not take, however inviting short-term advantages might appear if she entered the American conflict in 1862.23
This whole question of weighing future security needs against the short-term benefits of intervention dominated British and French deliberations during this first year of the Civil War. The longer the war continued the greater the chance that the South would survive if she defended her territorial integrity successfully. As Lord John Russell pointed out in May 1861, with a territory of some 700,000 square miles, an organized government machinery and a number of powerful armies at her command, the belligerent rights of the Confederacy were a question of fact. If she sustained herself intact then intervention might follow under certain conditions, but it could not be expected as a virtual right as many southerners seemed to demand. It is impossible not to be amazed by the casual way southerners treated foreign affairs and the running of the Confederate State Department in the opening months of the Civil War. Indeed southern efforts in this area were contradictory, and the ‘King Cotton’ policy almost self-destructive. The South could gain her independence only by force: this was after all, in the final resort, the motive behind secession. Therefore she should have employed all her resources, military, diplomatic and financial to securing that aim. Belligerent rights did permit her to raise loans abroad and this could have been done, and munitions purchased by the use of her undoubted cotton wealth. But by indulging in the ‘King Cotton’ self-imposed blockade the Confederacy denied herself the ability to make use of this financial strength in the first year of the war. Her ability to field strong, well-equipped armies was accordingly reduced, as was her power to seek the victory which would have attained independence. The South seemed to think that intervention would follow a declaration of independence like day follows night. Southerners probably read too much into the history of the American Revolution. Intervention would have followed consistent and sustained military success; but this eluded the South.24
Yet in the summer of 1862 it looked momentarily as if the Confederacy would defeat Union armies in the field. A succession of military victories, Seven Days, Second Bull Run and the invasion of Maryland, indicated that intervention was more likely than hitherto. And the Confederate commander, Robert E. Lee, was of the view that the South would have to advance and win her independence and not wait passively for another power to join the struggle, and help her attain it. Yet, for all their triumphs, southern armies had an annoying habit of failing the Confederacy at crucial moments. In August 1862, as Lee advanced into Maryland, Lord John Russell prepared a memorandum cautiously advocating joint mediation in the struggle with France and Russia; this fell somewhat short of the outright recognition that the South hoped for; only if the North abruptly rejected his overtures would recognition be proffered. Napoleon III prepared to intervene but would not do so without British support. Russell’s plan was tentative and probing. If the South was victorious at the Battle of Antietam then he would place the plan before the British Cabinet on 23 October. News of Lee’s withdrawal from Maryland after Antietam effectively shelved it. The issue of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation also undercut Russell’s efforts to continue with his mediation policy. Moreover, Britain did not interfere in the American conflict because she assumed (and hoped) that the South would win. It was regarded as a ‘lesson’ of history that a large, compact, homogeneous unit would win its independence by the weight of its own exertions. Gladstone’s famous speech when he declared that ‘the South had made a nation’ was a typical viewpoint. But it by no means followed that because Great Britain hoped the Confederacy would win that she would relish intervention on her behalf; wanting something to happen and doing something about it are far from identical states of mind. In 1861–62 Great Britain offered the South all aid short of physical help.25
Why then did Great Britain not intervene in a conflict when the short-term benefits would have been enormous? Such an intervention would have shattered United States dominance in North America and replaced a continental republic with a number of smaller American republics which would have greatly increased British influence in the region. The answer is quite simple: there was no overwhelming motive for entering the war. Great Britain was actually profiting from the war, and the Lancashire MP, John Watts, wrote that ‘all good and honourable men spoke of the cessation of the most terrible war of modern times as a thing to be dreaded’. Whereas in 1860 the cotton industry had entered a crisis, with bankruptcy common, by 1862 trade was booming. This was not simply because war enabled cotton mill owners to use up tons of stored cotton. They were able to sell tons of manufactured goods which had previously languished in warehouses. Within a year of Sumter these were sold at a profit of $200 million. Banking interests objected to intervention. They had joined in cotton speculation; peace would bring cheap cotton ‘and that meant Judgement Day’. The same was true of the linen and woollen industry: they ‘waked to life again and recaptured much of their lost ground, and reaped a golden harvest’. In the former, profits were $14.5 million in excess of normal levels for the five years prior to the war. In the latter, profits increased by $30 million and more workers were employed.
The North and South spent, at a conservative estimate, $100 million on munitions (including powder, lead, steel plates and rails, knives, sabres and bayonets), exclusive of tents, shoes, leather goods and the ships built for the Confederacy, like the famous commerce raider, the Alabama. Enormous profits were also made from blockade-running. Only one in eight blockade-runners were caught, and 1.5 million bales of (smuggled) cotton were sold at inflated prices. Another great boon brought by the American Civil War was the almost complete destruction of the United States merchant marine either by Confederate privateers or by Washington’s own action. The American fleet was ‘grounded’ and Britain purchased the best ships of the fleet at the bargain price of $42 million. Before 1860 the United States had been Britain’s only major rival in the carrying trade, indeed had surpassed her in the direct trade between Britain and America. Before 1860 the United States had 2,245,000 tons of merchant shipping to Britain’s 940,000. By 1863 this rival was destroyed indefinitely. Britain was not prepared to go to war to hazard her own merchant marine, let alone her now guaranteed supremacy. This was another factor that the ‘King Cotton’ preoccupation had not taken into consideration. Wartime developments could not be taken into account by a rigid idée fixe that had been formulated under peacetime conditions.
Far from being coerced by the South into intervening, Great Britain had made enormous profits. Far from being thrown into chaos she had been rejuvenated. In 1860–64 her foreign trade had increased from $374 million to $509 million. Nevertheless, Great Britain wished to see the Union permanently split; it would certainly favour British interests in the New World and decisively weaken her only rival in the western hemisphere. But Great Britain did not interfere in the American Civil War because the short-term economic motive of benefiting from the conflict while remaining neutral outweighed the political motive of weakening a strategic rival. That is to say, the political-economic situation was the exact reverse of that forecast by the ‘King Cotton’ doctrine. Besides Britain shied away from setting a precedent by interfering in fratricidal struggles. It would also make little sense in losing her best customer in exchange for the Confederacy, one whose economic potential simply did not begin to compare with the United States. British investments in the North in railroads, banks, mines and companies exceeded those in the cotton industry.26
The South hoped to extend the war by inviting British intervention on her side by two-fold means, by coercion – by withholding cotton – and by sentiment – the affinity that the British upper class would feel for the patrician southern planter class. These expectations were not fulfilled because the South grossly overestimated the power of cotton and the likelihood of intervention. Britain and France, for a variety of reasons, were not prepared to enter the American Civil War. Fundamentally, the Confederacy blundered because it staked all on a theoretical economic argument wholly irrelevant to European power politics. The supposed cultural bonds, though they cannot be dismissed completely, were not strong, and failed to pull Britain towards the brink of intervention on the South’s side. As a factor in practical politics they were more apparent than real. The British government had no intention of endangering British prosperity to save English-speaking gentlemen from a ‘motley crew of Germans and Irish’. ‘King Cotton’ diplomacy served only to isolate the Confederacy and increase its vulnerability to the military power now being mobilized against southern forces.27
Thus by the autumn of 1862 the American Civil War had assumed the character that we have come to associate with it. It remained a civil war, and the likelihood of European intervention decreased – gradually (even during the dark and troublesome months of December 1862 to June 1863 which saw a major cabinet crisis and a second Confederate invasion of the North), and then markedly after July 1863. Therefore the conflict begun at Fort Sumter in April 1861 did not escalate into a vast international conflict resembling that of 1775–83 involving all the great powers, concluding, with perceptible inevitability, with the independence of a second North American polity. The Trent crisis was the first major landmark of the war. As other powers were excluded, the North could concentrate on attaining a decisive victory over the South. It appeared more receptive, and in some quarters positively enthusiastic, in adopting punitive methods to crush the South. The Emancipation Proclamation was the second important landmark pointing towards punitive action because it permitted, and eventually justified, the rapid passage to measures that attacked private property and dispensed with the formalities of military discipline. Crushing the southern people and their institutions would be just as much the object of northern generals as southern armies. General Butler urged such a course in 1863 before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. He carried forward the strategy which he had begun tentatively at Fort Monroe two years before. He wanted an army to ‘supply itself ruthlessly from the country … organising … Negroes into troops with which to go to Richmond the other way’. Warming to his theme, which would correctly predict General Sherman’s course a year later, he suggested that ‘to take away all the producers, to stop the production of the country and everything else contributing to the power of the Confederacy… will be such a movement as would determine our strength and the weakness of the Confederacy, for it is but a shell’. And such views, expressed by a general with a mediocre record of field command, indicate that the strategies eventually adopted the following year were already part of the common currency of political discussion, and not the unique fruit of military genius.28
Pursued to a decisive and victorious conclusion, the American Civil War ended any possibility that the balance of power would return to North America; liberal democracy, based on unified and durable social and political institutions was sustained. The American system dominated by the United States would not just survive but thrive. The Civil War, and the issues which gave it shape and form tested, as Lincoln said, ‘whether that nation or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated can long endure’. But only he, whose hopes had been raised prematurely, as they were dashed so frequently, by promises of imminent and rapid victory, sensed the true cost of the punitive war upon which he had so reluctantly embarked.29
1. Emory M. Thomas, Bold Dragoon: The Life of f. E. B. Stuart (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 95. Major General Philip St George Cooke, although of a distinguished Virginian family, remained loyal to the Union. Stuart nursed the romantic hope of taking him prisoner. ‘I married his daughter, and I want to present her with her father; so let him come on’.
2. Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1783 (London: Longman, 1968), pp. 180–6.
3. W. L. Morton, ‘British North America and a Continent in Dissolution, 1861–71’, History XLVII (June 1962), pp. 139–56; Scott to Seward, 3 Mar. 1861, Lincoln Papers; ‘Some Thoughts for the President’s Consideration’, 1 Apr. 1861, ibid.; Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War, 3rd edn (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 59.
4. Gordon Connell-Smith, The United States and Latin America: An Historical Analysis of Inter-American Relations (London: Heinemann, 1975), p. 78; Gerald G. Eggert, Richard Olney: Evolution of a Statesman (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1974), p. 206.
5. Richard S. West, Jr. Lincoln’s Scapegoat General: A Life of Benjamin F. Butler, 1818–93 (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1965), pp. 73–4.
6. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Eugene H. Berwanger (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), pp. 48–9, 55; General Scott’s Daily Report no. 5, 5 Apr. 1865; Col., Charles P. Stone to Seward, 5 Apr. 1861, Lincoln Papers.
7. Mark E. Neely, The Fate of Liberty (New York: Oxford UP, 1991), Dean Sprague, Freedom Under Lincoln (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1965), pp. 2–3, 5–14,25–38,39–41.
8. Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War 3rd edn (London: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 35–6, 41, 51, 56.
9. Peter J. Parish, American Civil War (London: Eyre Methuen, 1975), pp. 107–10.
10. Chase to Lincoln, 16 Mar., 2 Apr. 1861, Lincoln Papers; Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold H. Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War (New York: Alfred A., Knopf, 1962), p. 120.
11. Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Horace Greeley: Nineteenth Century Crusader (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1953), pp. 275–6, 276–8; Russell, My Diary North and South, pp. 25, 27, 61–2, 66, 80, 82 (entries for 3–15 Mar., 5 Apr., 8 Apr., 16 Apr.).
12. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford UP. 1988), pp. 284–301; Stephen E. Wordworth, ‘ “The Indeterminate Quantities”: Jefferson Davis, Leonidas Polk, and the end of Kentucky Neutrality, September 1861’, Civil War History 38 (Dec. 1992), pp. 289–92.
13. Quoted in Hans L. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1989), p. 144; Benjamin F. Butler, Butler’s Book: A Review of his Legal, Political and Military Career (Boston, MA: Thayer, 1892), p. 258; Private and Official Correspondence of Benjamin F. Butler, ed. Jesse A. Marshall (privately issued, Norwood, 1917), I, p. 232; Parish, American Civil War, p. 234; Thomas and Hyman, Stanton, p. 232.
14. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 284–301; Wordworth, ‘ “The Indeterminate Quantities”: Jefferson Davis, Leonidas Polk, and the End of Kentucky Neutrality, September 1861’, pp. 289–92.
15. Ethan Allan Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field, ed. W. A. Croffut (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1909), p. 430; Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1929), p. 142; John M. Schofleld, Forty-Six Years in the Army (New York: Century, 1897), p. 314; Brian Holden Reid, ‘General McClellan and the Politicians’, Parameters XVII (Sept. 1987) pp. 102–3.
16. This interpretation seeks to cut across the long-running controversy over the nature of Republican Radicalism. See the two essays by David Donald and T. Harry Williams in Grady McWhiney (ed.) Grant, Lee, Lincoln and the Radicals (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1964), pp. 79–91, 92–117. Also see Hans L. Trefousse, The Radical Republicans, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 167. Browning’s views may be found in his Diary, eds Theodore C. Pease and James G. Randall (Springfield, IL: Illinois State Historical Library, 1925), pp. 538, 585 (entries for 2 Apr., 20 Nov. 1862).
17. David Donald (ed.) Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), pp. 149–52 (entry for 22 Sept.).
18. John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation (Edinburgh UP, 1963); James G. Randall and David Donald, Lincoln the President: From Springfield to Gettysburg, 2 vols (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1947), II, pp. 162–5; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 558.
19. See Peter J. Parish, ‘The Instruments of Providence: Slavery, Civil War and the American Churches’, in W. J. Sheils (ed.) The Church and War (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), pp. 291–320; Glyndon G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford UP, 1969), pp. 330–34.
20. Allan Nevins, The Ordeal of the Union (New York: Scribner’s, 1947), I, p. 471; Francis B. Simkins, The South, Old and New: A History, 1820–1947 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), p. 221; Russell, My Diary North and South, pp. 130, 178, 195 (entries for 7 May, 2 and 14 June 1861); Randall, Lincoln the President, II, pp. 33–6; The Granite Farm Letters: The Civil War Correspondence of Edgeworth and Sallie Bird, ed. John Rozier (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988), p. 53; Brian Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union (London and Montreal: McGill and Queen’s UP, 1974), I, p. 207, shows Palmerston’s determination not to permit intervention for cotton.
21. Frank L. Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 2nd edn (Chicago UP, 1959), pp. 5–23; Parish, American Civil War, pp. 397–403; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 382–7; John D. Pelzer, ‘Liverpool and the American Civil War’, History Today 40 (Mar. 1990), pp. 46–52.
22. Cecil Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972), I, p. 442; Van Deusen, Seward, pp. 308–20; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 390, points to the importance of the saltpetre order in forcing Lincoln to resolve the crisis; Randall, Lincoln the President, II, pp. 33–53; Jenkins. Britain and the War for the Union, I, pp. 194–9, 202–3, 211–14, 216, 224, 226–9, 235–6; Allan Nevins, The War for the Union: The Improvised War, 1861–1862 (New York: Scribner’s, 1959), I, pp. 387–94; Llyn M. Case and Warren F. Spencer, The United States and France: Civil War Diplomacy (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1970), pp. 59, 122–3, 201, 217–20, 230; D. P. Crook, The North, the South and the Powers (New York: Wiley, 1974), p. 111, shows that despite the jubilation in the North at the seizure of the Trent, there was anxiety at Britain’s reaction.
23. This issue is explored in detail in Ephraim D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War (London: Longman, 1925) I, pp. 256–67, 268–73; see also Van Deusen, Seward, pp. 293–5; E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1950), p. 191, likens the South to ‘a silly child, looking across the big water expecting the British lion with one bound to leap the Atlantic and with a mighty thrust of its paw crush the blockade’.
24. As Mason observed of the northern penetration of the Mississippi Valley in February 1862, ‘The late reverses at Forts Henry and Donelson have had an unfortunate effect upon the minds of our friends’. Quoted in Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, I, p. 294; see also Parish, American Civil War, p. 401.
25. Howard Jones, Union in Peril (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), p. 8; Henry Blumenthal, ‘Confederate Diplomacy: Popular Notions and International Realities’, Journal of Southern History XXXII (1966), pp. 151–71; Case and Spencer, United States and France, pp. 338–45; Crook, The North, the South and the Powers, p. 224, argues that even if the South had been victorious at Antietam, it was by no means inevitable that British intervention would have followed.
26. Jones, Union in Peril, pp. 111–15; Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, pp. 542–52; Crook, The North, the South and the Powers, p. 269, also demonstrates British dependence on northern grain imports. Imports of US wheat, flour and maize on average rose to 33.3 per cent of total British imports in the years 1860–65.
27. Pelzer, ‘Liverpool and the American Civil War’, pp. 46–50, shows the strength of sympathies with the South; but see Max Beloff, ‘Great Britain and the American Civil War’, History 37 (1952), pp. 44, 47; also W. D. Jones, ‘British Conservatives and the American Civil War’, American Historical Review LVIII (1953) p. 543; H. Blumenthal, ‘British Sympathies in the American Civil War’, Journal of Southern History 33 (1967), pp. 356–67.
28. Morton, ‘British North America and a Continent in Dissolution’, p. 149; Butler, Butler’s Book, pp. 582–3.
29. Morton, ‘British North America and a Continent in Dissolution’, p. 145; Randall, Lincoln the President, II, p. 310.