15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
====The South believed it would be recognized by Europe====
Southerners began the war effort confident that the cotton their plantations provided European textile manufacturers would naturally ally their governments to the Confederacy, especially Great Britain. After declaring secession, the North would declare a blockade on Southern ports. Any interruption of cotton supply would disrupt the British economy and reduce the workers to starvation, they thought. Britain would have to break the blockade and provoke a war with the North that would allow Confederates to solidify independence and gain international recognition. James Hammond of South Carolina in 1858 said, "What would happen if no cotton was furnished for 3 years. England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her, save the South." The South doubled down on this bet and threatened embargo cotton. They assumed that Britain and France would be forced to recognize the South to save their economies. Even though the embargo never became the official policy of the Confederacy, planters did it on their own.<ref>James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, (Oxford University Press, 1988), p.383</ref>
When the Union did declare a blockade upon the rebel states in April 1861, however, it did not prompt the response expected from the Europeans. The blockade’s legal and political implications took on greater significance than its economic effects because it undermined Lincoln’s insistence that the war was merely an internal insurrection. A blockade was a weapon of war between sovereign states. In May, Britain responded to the blockade with a proclamation of neutrality, which the other European powers followed. This tacitly granted the Confederacy belligerent status, the right to contract loans and purchase supplies in neutral nations and to exercise belligerent rights on the high seas. The Union was greatly angered by European recognition of Southern belligerency, fearing that is was the first step toward diplomatic recognition, but as British Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell said, “The question of belligerent rights is one, not of principle, but of fact.”
