Cotton Diplomacy – Success or Failure? When the Southern states left the Union to form their own nation, it was hoped that the Confederacy would quickly be recognized as an independent republic by the major foreign powers—England, France, and Russia. Such recognition would add strength to its legal claim of independence, as well as provide much needed financial and weapons support for the war with the North. Shortly after the fall of Fort Sumter, England’s Queen Victoria declared her nation neutral in the conflict but acknowledged the Confederacy as a belligerent nation, which meant it could buy arms from neutral nations and capture merchant and military vessels. Confederate leaders had hoped for more concrete recognition, but accepted the status in the hope that full recognition would come later. The Lincoln administration, on the other hand, viewed England’s neutrality as a hostile act and expressed its displeasure. The Union had expected from the beginning that England would disavow the Confederacy, specifically over the issue of slavery, which most Britons considered a loathsome institution. The first Confederate commissioners to England reported in May 1861 that “the public mindh here [England] is entirely opposed to the Government of the Confederate States of America on the question of slavery…The sincerity and universality of this feeling embarrass the government in dealing with the question of our recognition.” But while the British government acknowledged its disgust over the Confederacy’s continued use of slaves, it ultimately decided on a position of neutrality primarily for financial reasons—British textile manufacturers were dependent on Southern cotton. The Union’s Naval Strategy The Union navy quickly mobilized to set up a blockade of southern ports. The blockade largely prevented the South from selling or receiving goods, and it seriously damaged the southern economy. Breaking the Union’s Blockade

While the two armies fought for control of the land, the Union navy controlled the sea. The North had most of the U.S. Navy’s small fleet, and many experienced naval officers had remained loyal to the Union. The North also had enough industry to build more ships. The Confederacy turned to British companies for new ships. One of the most damaging ways England’s neutral position aided the Confederacy was in its production of Confederate blockade-runners and warships. These small, fast ships could outrun the larger Union warships

which made the difficult task of blockading thousands of miles of coastline from Virginia to Texas all that much harder. Most of the blockade running ships traveled to the Bahamas or Nassau to buy supplies for the Confederacy. These ships, however, could not make up for the South’s loss of trade. The Union blockade reduced the number of ships entering southern ports from 6,000 to 800 per year striking an important blow against the Confederacy by preventing foreign businesses from legally doing trade with Southern states. As a result, a major goal of Confederate diplomacy in the first years of the war was to convince England to declare the blockade illegal so that the Royal Navy could come in and protect British trade with Southern merchants. In 1861, the Confederacy hoped to force England’s hand through an unofficial policy that became known as “cotton diplomacy.” Knowing that England imported nearly three-fourths of its cotton from the South, Confederate farmers began withholding cotton supplies from British textile manufactures. Their goal was to use economic extortion to compel England (and to a lesser degree, France) to recognize the new Confederate republic as an independent nation. It made sense in theory: No cotton meant no textile production, thus bringing the entire industry and thus the government to its knees. There was just one flaw with the plan: England and France both had more cotton than they knew what to do with. A bumper crop just prior to the war pushed prices down and allowed the two nations to stockpile almost two years worth. In fact, as late as 1862, England was able to ship some of its cotton back to mills in New England. In addition, England had found ample new sources of cotton in Egypt and India, which had become part of the British Empire. British leaders contemplated the situation for a while and finally decided that the loss of Southern cotton was less of a problem than the loss of the more lucrative Northern industrial markets, especially during wartime. When all was said and done, “cotton diplomacy” netted the Confederacy almost nothing. Reflection: Q1: Identify the naval plan adopted by the Union to weaken the Confederacy during the war. Q2: Explain the philosophy behind the South’s plan of “cotton diplomacy?” Q3: Why was the South unable to persuade England and France through the use of “cotton diplomacy?”