As a result of the Trent Affair, let’s say Britain and France (B&F) recognize the CSA. The South would’ve seen this as a good thing. But what would’ve happened?
The North was winning the war against the South (despite some well-publicized setbacks in the East). The North wouldn’t have simply said “Okay, other nations recognize you, I guess we better stop trying to bring you back”.
Why would B&F want to help the South? While I know they needed cotton and wanted to give the USA a black eye, it would still seem like more trouble than its worth. They’ll probably ruin all relations with the USA, as I’d imagine their industry was more beneficial for trade than cotton.
The South also thought they might get military intervention. It might be a hard sell for their troops to get in the middle of this rather vicious war, simply because they recognize a country. Never mind transporting a large number of troops across the Atlantic. Would those numbers be effective enough against the very large Union armies? I guess they send supplies and ammo by breaking the blockade, but would these be enough to ensure a CSA victory?
Lincoln was determined to see this through and end the rebellion. I’ll bet he would’ve ignored all B&F-brokered peace settlements or cease-fires establishing the Confederacy.
And, geez, I haven’t even brought up the slavery issue.
Would B&F recognizing the CSA bring about an end to the war?
I don’t think the idea was ever that there would be British and French troops fighting on American soil. I think the CSA’s main hope was that the Royal Navy would wipe out the Union fleet.
The Royal Navy stopping the blockade, and the French and British giving the CSA financial aid. The Confederacy suffered from horrible inflation ($1 CSA= 90 cents USA at the beginning of the war and .017 cents USA at the end), and an influx of good money would have driven prices down by backing up the currency and restored the CSA’s economy.
As others have said, diplomatic recognition would have only been a part of the package. What the CSA wanted was for the British and French to break the American blockade and give the CSA financial support. Britain and France could have done both of these easily enough.
There were strategic and economic reasons why Britain and France wanted the United States to lose the war. But probably the main reason was political. A lot of protesters in Europe wanted political changes and they held up the United States as an example of what they wanted. The standard response in Europe was essentially “Sure, it looks like the United States is working. But they’re actually very unstable. Too much democracy just doesn’t work. The first big crisis they have their country will fall apart.” And the Civil War looked like it was the crisis that would prove this. So the powers-that-be in London and France had a vested interest in an American defeat.
Conversely, the reformers in Britain and France had a vested interest in an American victory. They wanted to be able to show that a broadly democratic government could survive a major crisis. And in addition, many of these reformers were the same people who were most opposed to slavery so they also had that reason to oppose the CSA. So British and French support for the CSA would have split those countries along political divides.
There would have been serious economic consequences as well. Britain dominated the seas militarily and would have shut down American trade. But while the British had the biggest Navy, the Americans had the biggest merchant fleet. And while the United States imported European manufactured goods, it exported massive amounts of grain to Britain and France. So a blockade would have hurt Europe almost as much as it did America. And the people who would have felt this the most would have been the workers who were already against the war for the above mentioned political reasons.
And Britain had a hostage in North America. There were only a few thousand troops in Canada. It would have been almost impossible for the British to hold Canada against the large armies the United States had in the field.
The British and French would have also had a hard time taking the war to America. As I said, they could have imposed a blockade. But if they tried to sail in close and shell American cities they would have found their ships vulnerable to the new American ironclads.
So my opinion is that while the United States couldn’t have defeated the Britain and France in the eighteen-sixties, there’s a better than even chance that Britain and France might have collapsed if they had tried to defeat the United States.
No, but I think it would have made the war even longer and more bloody. And possibly it would have expanded the war to a war between the US and the UK and/or France, as supporting the CSA might have been seen as an act of war. By the end of the Civil War the US military was probably one of the strongest in the world, but at the beginning I’m unsure if the US could have maintained the blockades of Southern ports…which would have meant that the CSA would have access to markets to buy finished goods (like guns, cannon, swords, uniforms, etc) and sell their own raw materials.
Maybe, but both countries had ironclads of their own. Britain had 8 as of the end of 1863, France had 9. The US had more, but the US was obviously at war at the time. If Britain or France declared war, they’d also step up ship production.
Be a lot harder for them to logistically support ironclads in our waters than for us to fight them closer to home. I think the Brits and French had a lot of older ships (a lot more than we did) but I’m not sure how good those would have done against more modern ships that the US had by then…or how much economic slack either Britain or France had to build a large modern fleet and the logistics to support it in a war against the US at that time.
In Harry Turtledove’s alternative history of the Civil War and First World War the CSA and Britain and France were pitted against the US and Germany. The Brits and French were fairly decisive in the Civil War phase (they end up forcing the US to allow the CSA to exist as a separate country) but the US and Germany were able to beat them decisively later on during WWI. Not sure how accurate it was, but it was entertaining at any rate.
A committed French and British intervention would have effectively added the resources and manpower of (French controlled) Mexico and (British controlled) Canada to the Confederate war effort. Barring a negotiated peace, the result would have either been a devastating defeat for the Union or (almost as likely) US annexation of the entire continent.
Even if the North and South come to a negotiated peace deal do you think they could exist side by side without the North trying to reabsorb its lost possessions a couple years down the line? I guess it depends if Britain and France are interested in restarting North American colonial wars and put boots on the ground. Then things get really messy.
I once read a book that said the CSA was willing to abolish slavery in order to win European recognition…
I don’t think it would have made any difference. Long term, the CSA didn’t have the industry or manpower to maintain a war effort much longer than they did. When fighting a bigger tougher opponent, you have to score a knockdown punch in the first round, or you are going to get pummelled.
This is what Germany did in the Franco Prussian war but failed to do in two world wars.
The early ironclads were not very good for extended ocean travel. They were basically coastal ships. So they were great defensive weapons but they couldn’t project power.
Even during the Civil War, the US has a vast, vast economy and was far more powerful than Britain and France - even fighting together. Now, add in the intervening ocean and nothing much would probably happen. The British might lose Canada, and couldn’t sustain a serious military threat. And a British attempt to seriously go to war would have given the U.S. even more public support, allowing even more military. But neither could have threatened the base of the other’s power, which is one reason it didn’t happen.
Basically, there was no chance the British would have intervened. They might have ‘recognized’ the South. But even breaking the blockade would have involved them in risky and expensive high-seas war against the one power capable of challenging British navy. The U.S. had (and still does, actually) the resources to make good almost any amount of loss, much more than Britain then or now. They knew that, and knew further that even if they “won” it would have been a Pyrrhic victory.
I think that might be an overstatement. If we accept the values on this chart ( which are certainly arguable ), the UK just edges out the US in GDP in 1870 - add in France and they considerably swamp out the US. And in the same year the U.S. population was ( again, arguably ) ~38,000,000 vs. ~21 million in the UK ( excluding overseas possesions ) and ~37,500,000 in France ( excluding overseas possesions ).
This all several years after the reunification of the U.S. - it would have been smaller, poorer and in a certain sense weaker in the early 1860’s. The US navy, at least in terms of sheer size, had grown to #2 in the world by 1865. But was still smaller than the Royal navy, let alone the British + French navy. And we know that the European countries had no problem raising large numbers of troops in this period. France mobilized ~500,000 regulars during the very brief Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and as many more militia.
None of which is to say that a war between the US and European powers would have come to much. I actually fully agree with you that such a conflict was both highly unlikely and would have been sorta “unwinnable” in most respects. But I do think you are overestimating the US a little at this point. It was growing into a colossus and was halfway there, but still not quite the giant it would become in the 20th century.
The European ironclads were very different from the Merrimac and Monitor — those were respectively a hodgepodge piece of junk and a submarine minus the waterproofing. (That may be a bit harsh, but it’s more or less true.) The H.M.S. Warrior would have had no problem conducting operations around the American Northeast — iron hulls actually allowed for longer hull lengths and more efficient use of space. (A propos to nothing, I think the Warrior is my favourite ship of all time.) Now, this is not to say that a war with the US would have been a good idea, but breaking the American naval blockade would have been entirely feasible, particularly with wartime levels of production.
The Warrior certainly could have sailed across the pond and taken on wooden blockaders.
She would have had a much harder time against monitors. The monitors were inadequate for shore bombardment because of their small number of guns, but they were ideal for breaking other ironclads. The first one, the Monitor herself, had 8 inches of turret armor and big, hard-hitting 11-inch Dahlgren shell guns – both armor and guns were much heavier than the Warrior’s. Later monitors up-armored and upgunned, usually sporting at least one 15-inch Dahlgren that would have gone through Warrior’s armor like a grizzly bear through a styrofoam cooler you left out on the picnic table.
And the Union ship New Ironsides, while not a monitor, was perhaps stronger. Sporting neither “lots of medium-sized guns” like Warrior or “a pair of really big guns” like the monitors, she carried a broadside of 8 really big, armor-breaking guns, and has been called “the strongest ship in the world” by some historians. True, she was substantially slower than Warrior, and the latter could have simply run away. She’d have to have done so. New Ironsides predated HMS Dreadnought by 44 years, but was much the same concept – heavy armor and a uniform battery of all big guns.
Hmm, interesting point. How was the New Ironsides as a blockader? (I ask because I glanced at her Wiki, which gave 7 knots as a top speed. It seems as if you’d need an awfully small harbour mouth to be able to keep ships out with that limitation.)
Let’s say the UK recognized the CSA and stationed more troops in Canada. Considering all of the advantages the USA had it still took 4 years to defeat the US, 3 lost cigars (Antietam) and Ewell having a different definition of “practical” than Lee (Gettysburg); Could the US have fought a two-front war?
