Was there foreign involvement in the American Civil War?

by Prolite9

What foreign nations played a role in the civil war?

Were they involved directly indirectly?

I'm curious because I never hear of foreign involvement in the civil war, just major battles.

[deleted]

No, but not for lack of trying. The Confederacy had a vested interest in drawing Britain or France into the war in some capacity, and tried a number of strategies to entice both to lend them a hand.

For Britain, the efforts were mostly centered around cotton. The South had been a big supplier of cotton for the British textile industries for a long time, and France to a lesser degree - King Cotton was very much a thing. The Confederacy's proposed independent economic viability was inextricably linked to cotton trade with Europe, so they tried to demonstrate the power of cotton and force Britain's hand by temporarily putting an embargo on cotton trade. Unfortunately for them, Europe had been stockpiling cotton for sometime, and British colonial territories like India and Egypt were proving viable as alternative cotton sources. Pile on to that the fact that Britain had much bigger diplomatic and trade concerns in relation to the North - specifically the North's cereal exports and Canada's well-being - and there was no hope of getting them involved.

The strategy with France was more varied. On top of the cotton, which was definitely still a consideration for them, the Confederacy also recognized Napoleon III's puppet regime in Mexico, a controversial institution which the North had actively opposed. As much as that gesture was probably appreciated, though, the North had warned France that even recognizing the Confederacy as independent would mean war. That, the limited gain of supporting the Confederacy, and the virtual guarantee that Britain would be a non-participant or, if anything, more likely to side with the northern states, was enough to keep France officially neutral and out of the war.

Sources

  • The Confederate War - Gary W. Gallagher
  • Why the North Won the Civil War - David Herbert Donald
  • If you have access to JSTOR, the wiki article on King Cotton has a curiously comprehensive bibliography with links to a lot of good articles there and other online resources that deal with the role of cotton diplomacy.
cool0hand

I do know that a British shipyard (acting independently from the British government) built two ships for the Confederacy. Palmerston and Russell (PM and Foreign Secretary) had expressly allowed these ships to leave the country. After the war, this led to a dispute between the US and Britain, because the US brought the so-called "Alabama Claims" (named after one of the ships, the 'Alabama') against the British government, to claim compensation for the damage caused by these ships to American shipping. The final compensation of $15.5m was paid by Britain in 1872 as part of the Treaty of Washington.

Sources: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/mirror-redirect?file=1/3/7/8/13789/13789-h/13789-h.htm (Great Britain and the American Civil War - free on Gutenberg as it was written in 1924) http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Lalor/llCy497.html (Geneva Arbitration)