Although the Civil War, Reconstruction, and domestic affairs like Johnson's fight with Congress greatly overshadowed the two prior wars of German unification, the Grant administration was stable enough to lend some attention to European affairs, even if they still remained peripheral to American politics. The response of American policymakers to the pronouncement of the German empire in 1871 was generally positive.

The Civil War experience and Northern victory played a role in the US's approval for German unification. Napoleon III's dalliances with Mexico and military support of Maximilian I short-lived Empire of Mexico while the US was preoccupied with the Civil War was a source of Franco-American tension. Although the French Emperor's pro-Southern views never translated into a formal recognition of the Confederacy, Confederate agents were able to secure French loans to pay for European-military supplies and a modern ironclad warship. Although these supplies did not alter the course of the war and the ironclad CSS Stonewall only made it to North American waters in time for Appomattox, Quai d'Orsay's coyness surrounding Southern rebellion as well as Napoleon III's Mexican policy led to some American policymakers to look on the Second Empire with a great deal of suspicion. Although the France's cultural clout still held great appeal for many Americans, France's actions during the Civil War cast a cloud over Franco-US relations.

While France's stock fell during the Civil War, that of Germany's rose for a number of Republican lawmakers. The German-American community had been largely pro-Unionist and German-American regiments served with distinction during the war. Although the nativist sentiments of the 1840s and 50s had not entirely disappeared, the German-American community was emerging as a power bloc within the Republican party. Carl Schurz and Friedrich Hecker, both exiled 1848er democrats, raised German-American regiments and promoted unionism among the German-American community. Although grassroots support for unionism among the German-American community was not as deep as partisans like Hecker or Schurz claimed, German-American political support for Lincoln had become notable. German-American political activists were vital in the confused politics of secession in preventing Missouri from joining the Confederacy and German-American votes were able to swing Illinois into Lincoln's favor in the election of 1860. The Civil War gave German-Americans avenues which to enter American politics, either as part of the Republican machine or through military service in the GAR, and mainstreamed their acceptance within these political circles. The memory of German support for the union and France's waffling over the Confederacy colored Grant's declaration of US neutrality in the Franco-Prussian War. In a letter to the French ambassador Jules Berthemy at the outbreak of hostilities, Grant noted that memories of the Civil War ran long among both the US government and its population:

That it is the intention of the United States Government to preserve a strict neutrality in the war, but that [Berthemy] must not be surprised if a strong feeling manifested itself among the people in favor of the Prussians; that the people had good memories, and they remembered that while the Germans sympathized with the Union and took its bonds freely during the war, the French people had manifested no sympathy for the Union but had negotiated a loan for the Rebels, and the French government had sent an expedition into Mexico which had been construed by the people as an act hostile to this country.

Grant's pro-Prussian tilt in the war did not prevent private individuals did sell Civil War-surplus to the French armies, but the actions of the US government during the war favored the North German Confederation. For example, the US closed off its territorial waters to ships of the belligerents and while this was a not unprecedented behavior, it deprived the French Navy, which greatly exceeded that of the German fleet, access to American coal, thus hamstringing its attempt to seize the merchant fleet of the Confederation. The US did extend diplomatic recognition to the Third Republic after Napoleon III's ignominious defeat and surrender at Sedan, but French ministers discovered that the State Department would not object to the annexations of Alsace and Lorraine. Grant's personal envoy to both belligerents during the war was General Ambrose Burnside, who was chosen largely because he was already on the continent, was fairly pro-Prussian in his attitudes and much more interested in military developments than diplomacy.

Prussian victory in the war met with widespread approval within the Grant administration. Grant's message to Congress on German unification was filled with platitudes directed towards the German Empire. President Grant sent a congratulatory telegram to Wilhelm I praising the German people achieving their long sought-after unification. One rationale behind this eagerness was on the surface it appeared that Germany was following the example of the United States. Although the executive was undemocratic (the Kaiser was in theory head of state and the chancellor appointed by him), Imperial Germany was a federal entity with universal male suffrage.

One of the most stalwart defenders of this governmental pro-German stance was the American envoy to Prussia, George Bancroft. This historian and intellectual identified closely with German culture and philosophy and he saw Prussia as a progressive force on the continent. Bancroft had extended unofficial recognition to the creation of the North German Confederation, an unauthorized action that nonetheless gained the approval of Secretary of State Seward. Bancroft cabled Grant's Secretary of State Hamilton Fish when the Franco-Prussian War broke out that wider US interests were served by Prussian victory. Not only were Prussian armies fighting for German unification, but Bancroft asserted "but also for the best interests of civilization, of civil and religious liberty and of popular freedom." After the Prussian victory, he reported back to Fish that the Reich's new institutions enabled the unification of Germany along progressive lines and he drew explicit parallels between German-American actions during the Civil War and von Molkte's armies, noting that "the men who fought successfully for our Union opened the way for the renovation of Germany."

Bancroft's support for Prussia was not only due to the Civil War, but also because he identified with Protestant Prussia's various anti-Catholic measures. The American envoy noted in cables back to Washington his approval of Bismarck's Kulturkampf and drew explicit parallels between Bismarck's religious policies and the American separation of church and state. Bancroft saw this as a necessary action to drive out Jesuit influences in southern Germany, which he contended was detrimental to their historical development, and contrasted the new Germany favorably to the Third Republic, which his reports was being influenced by ultramontaines that wanted to restore the temporal power of the papacy.

The German-American community largely looked upon unification as a positive development. The larger German-American community of St. Louis held a pro-German Verbrüderungsfest (unity festival) that soon swelled as news of the great victory at Sedan filtered inside the press. Despite the fact that a good many of its political elites were exiled 1848ers and proponents of democracy, they managed to disassociate Bismarck's reactionary politics and Prussia's role in suppressing the 1848 revolution with the wider objective of German national unity. Schurz flew the German flag from his offices despite his private apprehensions about the role the Bismarck and the Hohenzollerns in the new German political order. Liberal nationalist sentiments of the 1848er generation slowly gave way to more strident and völkisch sentiments within the German-American community, and although the community's commitment to American institutions and democracy never wavered, their defense of the Kaisereich and German culture made them quite vulnerable during the nativist turn of the First World War.

The federal system of Imperial Germany was quite a different animal than that of the US and it soon became clear to American policymakers that Imperial Germany was not a democracy akin to the US. Imperial tensions over Samoa also hurt German-American relationships. America was at best peripheral to Bismarck and his successors' foreign policy and they generally sought to placate American opinion when minor tensions erupted, but never developed a coherent or thorough American policy. Nevertheless, US-German relations remained relatively cordial, neither warm nor cold, between the two governments until the First World War.

Sources

Boemeke, Manfred Franz. Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999.

Campbell, Edwina S. Citizen of a Wider Commonwealth: Ulysses S. Grant's Postpresidential Diplomacy. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 2016.

Efford, Alison Clark. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era. Cambridge: Ca,bridge University Press, 2013.

Jonas, Manfred. The United States and Germany: A Diplomatic History. Ithaca (N.Y.) [etc.]: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Keim, Jeannette. Forty Years of German-American Political Relations. Philadelphia: Printed by W.J. Dornan, 1919.