GDG- Re: Defeat of AoP, Recognition by Britain

[Margaret D. Blough]

Michael,

I think it is a fair assessment, although, from what I have read, Lee was the most realistic of the group on the prospects of British recognition.  I do have one caveat-while empires don't have emotions, people, including in large groups, do.  The sort of event that can provoke a collective national emotional response is very rare but does exist: the North before and after Ft. Sumter and the US before and after Pearl Harbor are classic examples. 

Regards,

Margaret

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Michael Davidson <mldavidson at verizon.net> 

> Esteemed GDG Member Contributes: 
> 
> 
> Margaret, 
> 
> I think we're in substantial agreement. 
> 
> Your points are very well taken. I knew the extent of damage prohibition of the 
> slave trade 
> caused to the sourthern economy, but I never considered the similar effect to 
> the economy 
> of GB. And I can just see the MPs rising to express their moral outrage at the 
> Trent Affair. 
> 
> I also realize, as Lincoln must have, that GB was not in position to enter a 
> global war at that time. 
> But taking GB as an empire, I remain skeptical that moral outrage is the final 
> explanation. 
> Empires have no emotions (though I do believe empires can advance an inherent 
> morality. I'm not a cultural relativist and I do tend to like British values.). 
> So the 
> outrage could have been both genuine and feigned. 
> 
> In 1812, America had its own dreams of empire, which underlay the decision to go 
> to war with GB a second time. The impressment of sailors was a convenient 
> excuse, 
> although the outrage was genuine then, too. 
> 
> In the 1860s there was little risk that the Lincoln administration would go to 
> war with GB while engaged in its own civil war. Thus British sabre rattling at 
> the Trent episode 
> carried low risk and the possibility of high returns. 
> 
> And the South's confidence that Cotton was King was not realistic. That did not 
> prevent it from being expected. 
> 
> The bottom line is, GB let it be understood it might support the CSA, for 
> whatever its own 
> advantage. The CSA, or at least Davis, Lee, and others in position to set 
> policy, held to this hope, and acted as if it were a real possibility. 
> 
> Is that a fair assessment? 
> 
> Regards, 
> 
> Michael Davidson 
> 
> esteemed member wrote: 
> >> 
> I doubt even the most fervent fire-eaters expected the UK to support them for 
> ideological 
> reasons. What they believed, as an article of faith, was that English cotton 
> mills were so 
> dependent upon slave state cotton that Her Majesty's government. James Henry 
> Hammond said in his infamous "King Cotton" speech in 1858 in the US Senate: 
> 
> >>Why the South has never yet had a just cause of war except with the North. 
> Every 
> time she has drawn her sword it has been on the point of honor, and that point 
> of honor 
> has been mainly loyalty to her sister colonies and sister States, who have ever 
> since 
> plundered and calumniated her. 
> 
> But if there were no other reason why we should never have war, would any sane 
> nation make war on cotton? Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should 
> they 
> make war on us we could bring the whole world to our feet. The South is 
> perfectly 
> competent to go on, one, two, or three years without planting a seed of cotton. 
> I believe 
> that if she was to plant but half her cotton, for three years to come, it would 
> be an 
> immense advantage to her. I am not so sure but that after three years' entire 
> abstinence 
> she would come out stronger than ever she was before, and better prepared to 
> enter 
> afresh upon her great career of enterprise. What would happen if no cotton was 
> furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, 
> but this 
> is certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world 
> with her, 
> save the South. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to 
> make 
> war upon it. Cotton is king. Until lately the Bank of England was king; but she 
> tried to 
> put her screws as usual, the fall before last, upon the cotton crop, and was 
> utterly 
> vanquished. The last power has been conquered. Who can doubt, that has looked at 
> recent events, that cotton is supreme? When the abuse of credit had destroyed 
> credit 
> and annihilated confidence; when thousands of the strongest commercial houses in 
> the 
> world were coming down, and hundreds of millions of dollars of supposed property 
> evaporating in thin air; when you came to a dead lock, and revolutions were 
> threatened, 
> what brought you up? Fortunately for you it was the commencement of the cotton 
> season, and we have poured in upon you one million six hundred thousand bales of 
> cotton just at the crisis to save you from destruction. That cotton, but for the 
> bursting of 
> your speculative bubbles in the North, which produced the whole of this 
> convulsion, 
> would have brought us $100,000,000. We have sold it for $65,000,000 and saved 
> you. 
> Thirty-five million dollars we, the slave holders of the South, have put into 
> the charity 
> box for your magnificent financiers, your "cotton lords," your "merchant 
> princes." 
> 
> As it turns out, they seriously overestimated English dependency on southern 
> cotton. 
> Furthermore, if they had studied, with any degree of objectivity, the 
> Parliamentary 
> history of, first, the abolition of the slave trade and later abolition of 
> slavery itself in 
> British possessions, they should have realized that the UK did this at a 
> significant 
> financial disadvantage to itself. Not only had the UK come to dominate the 
> slave trade 
> (there were Royal investors in the Royal Africa Company) but a substantial 
> portion of the 
> British economy derived its income from servicing the slave trade, even when 
> conducted 
> under other flags, through, among these services, building and outfitting ships 
> and 
> supply trade textiles and other items to be traded for slaves in Africa. This 
> was the 
> reason that the fight to ban the slave trade took so long and was so bitter. 
> Once it 
> happened, the UK put muscle into the ban with the use of Royal Navy ships to 
> interfere 
> with the transatlantic ships. 
> 
> On the Trent, I think the British outrage was genuine. When the tables were 
> turned, the 
> US was willing to go to war in 1812 in significant part due to such actions by 
> the Royal 
> Navy. At the time of the Trent action, British belief in its naval supremacy 
> was a core 
> element of its national identity. The naval officer's action in the Trent 
> affair was seen as 
> a egregious affront to British honor, sovereignty, and dominion over the high 
> seas. 
> Coming from its former colonies added insult to injury. Fortunately, cooler 
> heads, 
> especially Lincoln's on the US and the Prince Consort in one of his last acts of 
> service to 
> his adopted country, prevailed and arrived at a solution which allowed both 
> nations to 
> back down honorably and prevent another such crisis from occurring. 
> 
> I think another thing that never seemed to occur to the secessionists was that 
> the UK had 
> other concerns that were much more important to it than the fate of the United 
> States. 
> The US Civil War began only five years after the Crimean War ended and only 9 
> years 
> before the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War and the rise of Germany. The 
> period 
> was an extremely turbulent one (at one point there were those who blamed the 
> premature birth of Prince Albert Victor on the anguish of his mother, the 
> Danish-born 
> Princess of Wales over war between Prussia and Denmark making royal family 
> relations 
> very awkward since the Prince of Wales' older sister, Victoria, the Princess 
> Royal, was 
> married to the heir to the Prussian throne). The British government had no 
> intention of 
> getting bogged down in a land war in America, although it was quite willing to 
> exploit 
> the situation if it could do so without much risk to itself. 
> << 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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