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CHAPTER XI: THE CIVIL WAR AND THE GROWTH OF INTERNATIONALISM


The Alabama Affair and the Place of Britain in Civil War

The Alabama Affair was one of the more notable incidents of the Civil War. While blockade runners slipped the Union blockade and made safe passage to Britain where they docked to gather supplies, the Alabama Affair was more notorious since it was a commerce raider built by the British for the Confederacy. Of course, this meant that Britain was safeguarding an unrecognized naval ship by international and maritime law – and a ship that was, by legal standards, a renegade ship that should not have been given quarter. The Alabama’s construction caused alarm in the U.S., with the growing fear that British had sympathies for the Confederacy and a growing possibility of British intervention.

British intervention, however, was always unlikely if not never actually going to happen. The Confederacy was a slave holding republic, and Britain had officially outlawed slavery through the work of the Evangelical revivalist and politician William Wilberforce. British Victorian and low-Church Protestant moralism was strongly opposed to pro-slavery sentimentality, and thus, naturally opposed to the moral goal of the Confederacy and her want to preserve that “peculiar institution.” Now, to be sure, not all British people and politicians held the same anti-slavery moralism of Wilberforce and the growing Evangelical movement in Britain during the time. Again, Fremantle was a good example of a British gentleman who saw the great Anglo-Saxon Whig struggle for liberty as being embodied by the Confederate cause. That said, there was legitimate worry in Washington as to London’s intentions over the construction and sheltering of the Alabama – and tensions were high between the United States and Great Britain more based on mutual distrust than actual possibility of British intervention into the war itself.

This is one of the more common myths that have since circulated, in part, because plenty of European onlookers – like Fremantle – took to such a strong interest in the Civil War. Apart from those who actually volunteered to partake in the fighting on either the Union or Confederate cause, many others – especially low grade junior officers – took leave from their military posts in Europe to venture to America to observe the fighting. This was also partially because of the lack of military activity in Europe at the time.[1] The influx of hundreds of European junior officers to observe the fighting could have given the impression that European powers had sent them to report on the fighting and the possibility of quick intervention for imperial ambitions. The reality was the opposite. Officers like Fremantle came over on their own accord, having taken leave for their six month to yearlong escapade to see the heart of the terrible fighting between the American states. Some left their Union or Confederate hosts with clear indications of their sympathy, but none were spies or foreign delegations as sometimes popularly imagined.

gQhixau.jpg

A painting depicting the CSA Alabama, a notable commerce raider built by the British for the Confederate Navy. It sunk many American merchant ships before finally be caught and sunk before war’s end.

The place of Britain in the American Civil War is a testament to the power of money in war. This is given to us even by Plato in the Republic, where Cephalus was a famous arms dealer and that is who he acquired his wealth. War is always good for certain businesses and this was undoubtedly true for British military manufactures and arms dealers. The lull in Europe, and the lack of enough heavy industry in the South (though the South had industrial centers contrary to other popular misimaginations), did mean the Confederacy had to look overseas as the war dragged on. A quick victory would not have needed Confederate eyes and vessels to turn across the Atlantic for arms smuggling, but as the war dragged on and Confederate industries lagged in their production as the war took off, it was only natural that smugglers broke the Union blockades and ran to Britain and France to smuggle arms into the countries. It was profitable for the European manufacturers regardless of the smuggler’s success. And it was profitable for the smugglers if they succeeded. Perhaps the Acton Institute would celebrate the bold audacity and risk of the smugglers as entrepreneurs.

The Great Game in London

This made Britain a priority target for Secretary of State William Seward. There had always been a love-hate relationship between the U.S. and U.K. In fact, the idea of a “Special Relationship” was a product of the twentieth century. Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Party sought to emulate a strong parliamentarian, commercialized, and capitalist Britain. Contrary to the now popular musical play Hamilton, Hamilton was not some 18th century progressive. He was deeply elitist, technocratic, conservative, and a major cheerleader for the national bank and capitalist economics. He even articulated, very clearly, that America’s political elite would be, and should be, the capitalist aristocracy which would have risen to its position of “natural aristocracy” through its own talents and merit. Hamilton was seen as a betrayer of the American Revolution to some of the hyper partisan Jeffersonians, and he was generally distrusted by President John Adams for his supposed imperial and anti-democratic tendencies.

At the same time, Hamilton’s rival Thomas Jefferson was not necessarily an Anglophobe, but he was certainly not an Anglophile like Hamilton. Jefferson’s Francophilia was notable and longstanding, as was Jefferson’s commitment to agrarian democracy and populism. Jefferson distrusted the British model not because he hated the British people, but because he considered the commercialized, strong parliamentarian, and capitalist orientation of British liberal politics as subversive to republican virtue and agrarian communitarian democracy. An enemy of the National Bank, Jefferson articulated a view that – perhaps rightly, all things now considered – that a commercialized body politic would lead to the destruction of civil and civic virtue, atomize society, and pit America against itself. In fact, that view was not unique to Jefferson. He borrowed it from Aristotle. Jefferson was a voracious reader of classical philosophy, even listing Aristotle and Cicero as his role models and credited them for his revolutionary ideals rather than John Locke.[2]

But then the ironies of the Civil War was that Jefferson’s country looked to Britain for support and aid, while Hamilton’s country looked to curtail British support for the Confederacy. American history is replete with such ironies.

Britain, of course, did take an interest in the American Civil War – but not for the reason of intervention on behalf of the Confederacy. The British were torn over the war itself. On the one hand, over 75% of Southern cotton was exported to Britain and the British capitalist economy depended upon the flow of American (Southern) cotton. The British wanted a quick end to the war so the textile industries could be as productive as they were before the start of the war. After all, hundreds of thousands of British workers were laid off because of the American Civil War and the Union blockade which prevented the shipments of cotton and tobacco to Britain. Those workers, safe to say, had little sympathy for the Union whom they blamed for the loss of their jobs.

At the same time Britain had just recently led the fight in abolishing slavery. Evangelical revivalism that was sweeping across the country at the time took a very decidedly anti-slavery and pro-abolitionist moral stance. Yet, many Britons also saw – when slavery was taken out of the equation – a peoples fighting for their customs, traditions, and right to self-federate. However inaccurate their understanding of that was, it was a widely held belief. The Confederacy hoped for immediate British recognition, while then Secretary of State Franklin Pierce (under Douglas) warned Britain of ramifications in the Caribbean if her parliament undertook such action. Seward reaffirmed “the Pierce Ultimatum” with the incoming Fremont Administration.

uSS2Sg7.jpg

London in the 1860s, with St. Paul’s Cathedral at the center. During the Civil War, London was a giant chess board of spies, counter spies, and spy shelters.

It is, then, safe to say Britain was torn – having moral sympathies for the Union, and economic and partial political sympathies for the Confederacy. But rather than British spies involving themselves in American affairs, it was actually the opposite. London became a sprawl for American diplomats and spies, as well as for Confederate spies and “diplomats.” In fact, London became a center for spy hunting as Union spies and diplomats hunted for suspected secessionist spies and diplomats hiding out in the city. Much of the British media painted the Union in a negative light – calling the Union cause “imperialistic” and a “danger to Canadian peace.” But the Pierce Ultimatum, and the fact that Britain had abolished slavery decades meant, kept Britain on the sideline and London a literal James Bond cesspool of spies, counter-spies, and intelligence gathering.

Britain was touched by the war economically and politically. As mentioned, the downturn of the British economy because of the blockade meant a sharpening gap between rich and poor, business owner and worker in British society. While this was occurring well before the American Civil War, the Civil War exacerbated it. Eventually, this caused future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to embark on sweeping social reforms and the establishment the primordial origins of Britain’s welfare state as a reaction to the economic hardships felt by many laborers as a direct result of the American Civil War.[3] Britain’s interest in the war remained high all the way throughout, and the British were never unprincipled enough to try and make money off of the conflict – but the actions of the British to remain “neutral” during the conflict was the greatest gift to the Union during the war itself. The war, and the international diplomatic and spy game that was forced upon the Union, also helped transform American international diplomacy. The days of isolation were dying. The growth of internationalism and overseas imperialism in American foreign policy were on the rise, themselves a direct derivative of the Civil War.


[1] True both historically and in my timeline. As the Civil War was fought from 1860-1864 in my time line, Europe was uneventful from 1853-1872, with just a minor war between Austria and Italy and Russia and Sweden.

[2] This is historically accurate. In all of Jefferson’s writings, he rarely ever mentions Locke. Locke is directly mentioned in three of his many hundred letters and scribblings.

[3] This is also true.


SUGGESTED READING

Eugene Berwanger, The British Foreign Service and the American Civil War

Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War
 
I wonder if in your timeline Lincoln (or someone else) had an equivalent of the 'Letter to the Working-Men of Manchester'.
 
Interesting that you make mention of the central position the Alabama played in defining Anglo-American relations during the period, but not how matters were finally resolved with the Alabama Claims proceedings. Holding that back for a later update, I presume?
 
I recommend, "The Cousins' Wars" by Kevin Phillips. His research shows the mill-worker sympathy for the Union cause was rather stronger than I had thought. The Confederacy's self-imposed 'cotton blockade' didn't bring Britain or France into the war in part because pre-War bumper crops left European mills full of cotton. Once the 'white gold' began to run low, most manufacturers closed down for routine maintenance and started up again when Union conquests (and development of alternative sources in India and Egypt) meant there was some cotton to be had.

Britain certainly was torn, and despite certain aristocratic sympathies for the South remained more-or-less neutral. It was dangerous for the Alabama to be at sea, but the situation would have been dire - perhaps irretrievable - if any of the various ironclads built for the Confederacy had been delivered. Britain owned up to her guilt by accepting the court settlement of the 'Alabama Claims'. One reason was the extremely fast and powerful commerce raiders the Union had a-building at the end of the war (see USS Wampanoag). The Confederate raiders were effective out of all proportion to their number because their successes drove up insurance rates and pushed ship-owners to register under foreign flags, and this was in spite of the large number of US warships engaged in raider-hunting and patrolling foreign ports. A commerce-raiding campaign against British merchant traffic would not have been decisive, but it would have raised a very expensive havoc.

For a pretty good Holmes pastiche set in the post-Civil War period I recommend "Enter the Lion" by Michael Hodel. Unusual in that it centers on Mycroft Holmes, with a young Sherlock making an occasional appearance.
 
I wonder, are you using the Historical Project Mod? Because it would be hilarious if your AAR, which is heavily focused on history, is set in a world of nonsensical borders and fantasy nations.

Also, fantastic AAR. Really meaty, I'm loving it!
 
just caught up and I've learned so many wonderful things keep up the good work
 
That threat is interesting, do you think at this time the US could truly afford to make moves against the British Caribbean at this time IOTL or ITTL?

In my timeline, yes. In our timeline, no. But it was a necessary threat to make the Lincoln Administration feel secure -- though the British press was actually very much anti-Lincoln with strong Southern sympathies, there's no real indication that there was ever a serious threat of British intervention. That doesn't take away from the fact that Britain was involved in the war, through various means and measures, and was deeply affected by the American Civil War too, as I tried to highlight.

I wonder if in your timeline Lincoln (or someone else) had an equivalent of the 'Letter to the Working-Men of Manchester'.

They would have access to all the anti-Union newspapers if they were subscribed and got door service from British weeklies! :p

Interesting that you make mention of the central position the Alabama played in defining Anglo-American relations during the period, but not how matters were finally resolved with the Alabama Claims proceedings. Holding that back for a later update, I presume?

Nope! :p I don't want to cover everything. Some people can read that on their own. :rolleyes:

After reading this update, I can just imagine a spy thriller film set in American Civil War-era London.

Needs to happen. Some "vampire slayer" flick set in ACW London with a Lincoln vampire hunting agent finding all the Southern vampire spies hiding out in London with the help of English werewolves!

I recommend, "The Cousins' Wars" by Kevin Phillips. His research shows the mill-worker sympathy for the Union cause was rather stronger than I had thought. The Confederacy's self-imposed 'cotton blockade' didn't bring Britain or France into the war in part because pre-War bumper crops left European mills full of cotton. Once the 'white gold' began to run low, most manufacturers closed down for routine maintenance and started up again when Union conquests (and development of alternative sources in India and Egypt) meant there was some cotton to be had.

Britain certainly was torn, and despite certain aristocratic sympathies for the South remained more-or-less neutral. It was dangerous for the Alabama to be at sea, but the situation would have been dire - perhaps irretrievable - if any of the various ironclads built for the Confederacy had been delivered. Britain owned up to her guilt by accepting the court settlement of the 'Alabama Claims'. One reason was the extremely fast and powerful commerce raiders the Union had a-building at the end of the war (see USS Wampanoag). The Confederate raiders were effective out of all proportion to their number because their successes drove up insurance rates and pushed ship-owners to register under foreign flags, and this was in spite of the large number of US warships engaged in raider-hunting and patrolling foreign ports. A commerce-raiding campaign against British merchant traffic would not have been decisive, but it would have raised a very expensive havoc.

For a pretty good Holmes pastiche set in the post-Civil War period I recommend "Enter the Lion" by Michael Hodel. Unusual in that it centers on Mycroft Holmes, with a young Sherlock making an occasional appearance.

Well, I'm not surprised that @Director had to comment here. I believe we were briefly discussing this very topic when you were last up here in New Haven! And besides my list of the Cousins' War in the Suggested Reading somewhere, I give full endorsement to your open endorsement of the book here. Great read, though, as you also said in our conversation over dinner, also a tedious read at points.

I'm gonna have to slate Enter the Lion on a future reading list. You haven't disappointed so far! ;)

I wonder, are you using the Historical Project Mod? Because it would be hilarious if your AAR, which is heavily focused on history, is set in a world of nonsensical borders and fantasy nations.

Also, fantastic AAR. Really meaty, I'm loving it!

Nope. Vanilla. Though the borders have been surprisingly historical/realistic -- save for the Scramble for Africa which we'll only briefly discuss since I'm largely staying focused to North America only. But Africa is a mess!

And glad to know you're enjoying the AAR and have found it "meaty." That's part of the intent! :)

just caught up and I've learned so many wonderful things keep up the good work

Great to have you caught up and learning so many "wonderful things." Thanks for the words of encouragement, and hopefully you keep learning nice little tidbits and other stuff through the AAR. :cool:
 
Nope. Vanilla. Though the borders have been surprisingly historical/realistic -- save for the Scramble for Africa which we'll only briefly discuss since I'm largely staying focused to North America only. But Africa is a mess!

And glad to know you're enjoying the AAR and have found it "meaty." That's part of the intent! :)
I'm not referring to the possible borders coming from later in the game, I'm talking about Patagonia being settled by Chile and Argentina in 1830, or the non-existence of the Argentine Confederation (which lasted until 1861), or the lack of the Riograndese Republic (which lasted until 1845) or the lack of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation (founded in 1836, but it usually ends up dissolving historically), etc. As you can tell, Southern America is probably the least developed part of the world in vanilla, excluding Africa (the mod adds many native African tribes and kingdoms, allowing smaller nations to have limited access to colonization). It also breaks up Dutch Indonesia into Dutch Enclaves, puppet tributaries and independent kingdoms.

Can't wait till you get to WW1 and post-war America!
 
I do remember your shout-out for 'The Cousins' Wars', just thought it deserved a second mention. If a reader is the kind of stat nerd who enjoys a deep dive into demographics, it is enthralling... if not, you can skip over those parts because the rest is very readable.

Currently reading the 'Personal Memoirs' of US Grant. Not just informative but amazingly well-written, especially so given that Grant had no writing experience and was dying of throat cancer as he wrote the last half. Mark Twain called it the best military memoir since Caesar, and reading it proves the truth of the assertion that Grant wrote the best, clearest and most succinct orders of anyone in the army.

Anyway - glad to see you continuing with this. in the post-war era I look forward to the American eagle spreading its massive industrial wings.
 
Much of the British media painted the Union in a negative light – calling the Union cause “imperialistic” and a “danger to Canadian peace.”

Rightfully so surely, given America's predatory behaviour over Canada, at least in this AAR? ;)
 
Us can into North American domination
 
CHAPTER XI: THE CIVIL WAR AND THE GROWTH OF INTERNATIONALISM


The Civil War and the Transformation of America

The end of the Civil War brought forth a great transformation in American foreign policy. The growth of internationalism, which I have just covered, is one of the most important aspects to this transformation. But the growth of the new internationalism – or the “new continentalism” – was primarily the result of the industrialization and militarization of American industry in order to wage the war. As previously mentioned, the idea of an industrial north against an agrarian south is a misnomer. The Confederacy had a strong military industry before, and during, the war. However, the lack of adequate resources hampered the Confederacy’s war industry. The northern military industry, by contrast, came into full force by late 1862 and continued through the end of the war. New military arms and technologies, such as repeating and breach-loading rifles, meant that the American military possessed some of the best high-tech military weapons in the mid-19th century.

When the Prophet Isaiah wrote that the Lord would scorch the land and the people be fuel for the fire (Is. 9:19), many in America’s religious – especially Calvinist – community saw the words of the Hebrew Prophet as coming true. The death and destruction that consumed the Deep South, Atlantic Coast, and Virginia valleys, were unlike anything yet unleashed in the annals of the horrors of war. “The Lord is a man of war, and the Lord is his name,” was one of the battle cries for the staunchly Puritan and Calvinist north. The aftermath of the vengeful fury unleashed a new torrent of American religiosity.

I have already commented on the nature of Old Testament Protestantism from among the Puritans, Scotch-Irish, and the Afro-American communities; it would be proper to say that America’s Protestantism was always seen through the lens of the Old Testament. As one scholar has said, American religion – in its foundational origins – “is Old Testament based.” But the Civil War was a bridge too far even for the most staunchly of Calvinist Americans. How much blood and sacrifice was necessary to cleanse America of her original sin, and how much blood and sacrifice was necessary for her to be the shining city of democracy for all the world to see? Too much, apparently.

While the Civil War equally launched a revolution in industrial arms making, I would rather take the time to know comment on the religious divide in American society that was the direct result of the “Civil War as a theological crisis.”[1] On one hand, the scorched earth policies of the late Union armies was directly from the Old Testament “old time religion” of fire and brimstone Calvinism. As another scholar has said, “Never in the history of Christian warfare had there ever been the level of destruction as unleashed by General Sherman and his Calvinist army of God.”[2] But if the war between North and South was a contest between Old Testament Presbyterianism (the Confederacy) and Old Testament Puritanism (the Union), the outcome shattered the victors while retrenching the losers.

N4VuVMq.jpg

A romantic painting of the “Burning of Charleston” during Sherman’s March Down the Coast. Various historians have analyzed Sherman’s campaign of “total war” as a revolutionary moment in the history of warfare, “tinged with the vestiges of righteous Puritanism.”

In the aftermath of the war, southern theologians retained their Old Testament identity and saw the Confederate defeat as Divine punishment for the sins of slavery.[3] And in this, Southern religion only further retrenched itself in Old Testament Calvinism.* If the defeat was divine judgment, then the remnant survivors were the hands and arms being pulled out of the lion’s jaws by the shepherd.** The “new theologians” of the post-Civil War South were linked the prophets of old, calling upon the people to repent of their sins and return to the Lord to find their salvation and “begin anew.”

While Southern religion retrenched itself in its fire and brimstone Calvinism, a dual story – like the History of Israel suffering the sins of Manasseh to the exile wherein at the rivers of Babylon the Jews wept in remembrance of Zion – of punishment and redemption, Northern religion was shell-shocked by the experience of the war itself. The hard-nosed Puritanism that I have described in preceding chapters of this work had collapsed by the end of 1864. The stern and demanding God of War from Exodus, and the God of righteous vengeance of Isaiah, was too much for the “almost chosen people” to handle.

Northern Calvinism, the direct lineage of the Puritans, never dropped their utopian ambitions or sense of election, but the Civil War transformed Northern Protestantism from the eschatological utopianism of the Puritans to a new progressive and evolutionary utopianism of progress. As the historian George Marsden has written, “As with much of Edwards’ work…his views—or variations much like them—eventually became a force in nineteenth-century America. Down to the Civil War, millennial optimism became the dominant American Protestant doctrine. Although Edwards is not usually thought of as a progenitor of the American party of hope, one can easily see continuities between An Humble Attempt and reforming millennial optimism as late as ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ or even into the progressive era.”[4] The collapse of Puritanism did not usher in a change, per se, of Northern utopian theology as much as it shifted the emphasis of utopianism from the fire and judgment millenarianism of the Puritan Fathers to a more benign, evolutionary, and progressive story of gentle progress.


HAuyl0A.jpg

A photo of the ruins of Charleston, 1864.

Northern Protestantism shifted to a Christology of the suffering servant of service rather than a Christology of forthcoming judgement. The story, however, remained the same: it was still New England that was the city upon the hill destined to lead America and the world to the promised land, but the means by which this transformation would occur changed. No longer was the north convinced of its hardline Calvinism of the past, but rather moving to embrace a “new Protestantism” of service and internal transformation – “the transformation of hearts and minds” rather than righteous and just judgment. One scholar has also pointed out that in the aftermath of the Civil War, the breakdown of religious homogeneity – in the sense of common story – was the most important aspect of the Civil War. As American Protestantism was united in the Old Testament, the Civil War brought forth – perhaps ironically – a shift in Protestant consciousness. New Testament service and gentleness became the emerging theology of New England Protestantism. This too was destined to clash with the retrenched Old Testament-oriented Calvinism of the American South.

In the end, while America’s Calvinist ideals and identity waxed and waned over the course of the war, one thing remained: America’s self-commitment to some form of utopianism. But if utopia could not be achieved in fire, judgment, and trial, it would have to be manifested in another way. In place of the gospel of righteous judgment and fire, emerged the gospel of sacrificial service, the gospel of democracy and liberty, and the struggle for liberty as identical with the calling of God. The irony of it all was that American religion in the north transformed from being focused on building utopia in America and this utopia serving as inspiration to the world, to now America building utopia worldwide through the hands of fateful service to the gospel to “go and baptize all the nations of the world,” but with the gospel of liberty and democracy instead of baptism and personal salvation.


[1] See Mark Noll’s book, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.

[2] This is an accurate depiction of the religious nature of the American Civil War. See also Harry Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War.

[3] This is also true. Many southern theologians and pastors, from 1870-1900, articulated the view that the Confederacy’s defeat was God’s divine judgment upon the South for its defense of the institution of slavery. This is remarkable considering how most people see the issue of slavery and the Civil War today – and more remarkable considering that it was Southern theologians who were the first to recognize the war as being fought over the nature of the slavery and the South’s defeat as linked to its defense of slavery.

* The nature of Calvinism’s relationship to the Old Testament is well-documented in scholarly circles, too much to get into here. In short, Calvinism has always been a “religion of the Book” and the “Old Testament” in particular. For instance, John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion quotes more from the Prophetic books of the Old Testament than it does from the New Testament gospels and epistles.

** Amos 3:12

[4] George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Biography, p. 337.


SUGGESTED READING

Allen Guelzo, Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction

Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis

Harry Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation
This rendition of the "Battle Cry of Freedom" fits perfectly with the theme of this update.
 
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That point 3 is, as you say, fascinating given what happens now.
 
Time has obviously gotten the better of me here. Just a friendly note from the author; but given my current duties, responsibilities, and real life writing and publishing this project will resume only as time permits and readership interest.

Poor WJ Bryan...We're so close to his moment under the sun.

Cheers,
Volks
 
Readership interest is still here from me, and I know how to be patient.