CHAPTER XI: THE CIVIL WAR AND THE GROWTH OF INTERNATIONALISM
The Alabama Affair and the Place of Britain in Civil War
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.
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.
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
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