"Wrap the World In Fire," Part III: Confederate Foreign Policy with Great Britain

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"Wrap the World In Fire," Part III: Confederate Foreign Policy with Great Britain

"No you dare not make war on cotton.  No power on earth dares to make war upon it.  Cotton is king!" -South Carolina Senator James Hammond

To a certain extent, the Confederacy's foreign policy can be summed up by the bold words of James Hammond above.  As my previous posts have examined examined possible reasons for British intervention in the Civil War and Union efforts to prevent such an intervention, it is time to turn our eyes South and explore Confederate foreign policy with Great Britain.  The Confederacy built much of its policy around "King Cotton," and the result was a foreign policy more disastrous than many could imagine.

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"Wrap the World in Fire," Part II: Union Foreign Policy with Great Britain

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"Wrap the World in Fire," Part II: Union Foreign Policy with Great Britain

Abraham Lincoln and Union leaders realized from the war's outset the grave threat British intervention posed.  Intervention likely meant successful Confederate independence.  No matter what form, be it mediation, recognition, or literal intervention, any attempt by the British to interfere was based upon separation of North and South.  The causes of the Union and Confederacy were mutually exclusive; either the Union remained whole or the Confederacy earned independence.  British intervention effectively destroyed the cause of preserving the Union.

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Sesquicentennial Spotlight: The Fall of Fort Fisher and the Confederacy's Collapse

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Sesquicentennial Spotlight: The Fall of Fort Fisher and the Confederacy's Collapse

Dr. James A. Mowris surveyed the scene around him and could not help but be struck by its terrible grandeur.  The forty year-old surgeon, under whose care were the veteran soldiers of the 117th New York Infantry, watched enraptured as thousands of Union troops disembarked onto the North Carolina coast.  As the “downy web footed infantry” splashed ashore, a United States Navy fleet provided cover fire, bombarding Confederate-held Fort Fisher nearby.  Fort Fisher protected the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, where for four years sleek Confederate blockade runners had slipped past Union warships and returned laden with much needed provisions, war materials, medicine, and more.  By 1865, Wilmington was the Confederacy’s last remaining open port, a thin golden lifeline the connected the beleaguered South to the outside world and all its riches. Yet James A. Mowris and the nearly 9,000 other Union soldiers accompanying him had arrived to cut that invaluable lifeline.  It was Friday the 13th, January, 1865, and the last great coastal campaign of the Civil War was underway.

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