From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (41 page)

While Europe fretted about a Russian-American alliance, the appearance of a Russian "fleet" of six warships in New York harbor in September 1863 created a sensation in America—and abroad. At the time, grateful Americans hailed the visit as an overt display of Russian support for their cause, sharply contrasting it with British and French perfidy. More cynical contemporaries and subsequent historians argued that the Russians acted out of self-interest: to keep their fleet from being bottled up in Baltic ports if war broke out over Poland. In fact, Russian motives appear to have been even more complex. The fleet was conducting a normal training exercise and would have left port that summer without the threat of war. Russian officers wanted to observe the new ironclad warfare taking place in America and to demonstrate their country's rising naval capability. They also carried double crews in hopes of purchasing additional ships from the United States. Once the threat of war in Europe eased, they could achieve these practical aims while solidifying already strong ties with the United States.

Whatever the reasons, the Russian "invasion" of New York was a significant time in the Civil War. For two months, three thousand Russian visitors attended parades, balls, and dinners, while U.S. bands played "God Save the Tsar" and toastmasters hailed Lincoln and Alexander II. The visit boosted northern morale and had a negative impact in the South. It aroused further European concern of an alliance, eliminating any possibility of intervention in North America.
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To a large degree, as Horace Greeley suggested at the time, the Union was spared foreign intervention by the "unprincipled egotism that is the soul of European diplomacy."
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Although they quickly recognized southern belligerency, the powers cautiously withheld recognition until the Confederacy proved it could stand on its own. In the wake of southern battlefield success in 1862, they edged warily toward intervention. But the Union victory at Antietam and the more decisive victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg in the summer of 1863 eliminated any real prospect that the Confederacy could survive. Every time they began seriously to consider acting, the British concluded that the possible gains of war with the Union would not be worth the risks. For all his bluster and meddlesomeness, Napoleon followed London's lead. The Union was also lucky that the Civil War took place when Europe was as unstable as at any time since Waterloo. The distractions caused by its internal conflict and the resulting great power divisions rendered intervention less likely.

Ideology as well as realpolitik accounted for European non-involvement. The American Civil War aroused passionate feelings in Europe. The British and French governments, although far from democratic, could not ignore domestic opinion. Slavery, of course, was the crucial issue. British philosopher John Stuart Mill warned that Confederate success would be a "victory for the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits of its friends all over the civilized world." As long as the North fought merely for union, foreigners saw little difference between the two combatants. But Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in time evoked a powerful pro-Union reaction in Britain, especially among liberals and the working class, that drowned out voices favorable to the Confederacy and influenced, if it did not determine, the government's policy. His firm stand against slavery also made it easier for onetime British proponents of intervention to rationalize inaction. A French citizen bluntly informed Slidell that "as long as you
maintain and are maintained by slavery, we cannot offer you an alliance. On the contrary, we believe and expect you will fail."
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The Civil War was also fought on the high seas, and here too the great powers, especially Britain, became involved, with traditional roles reversed. Union attacks on neutral shipping caused outrage in Britain, threatening war by the side door. British shipbuilders constructed for the Confederacy commerce raiders that devastated the U.S. merchant marine, provoking threats of war from Seward and Adams. As with the
Trent,
caution and good sense prevailed. Seward spoke loudly but acted quietly to mitigate conflict with England. The British permitted the Union to stretch belligerent rights in ways possibly useful in a future war.

Union interference with British shipping became a major problem by 1863. A thriving trade had developed in which cotton was exchanged for contraband. Neutral ships deposited goods bound for the Confederacy at ports in the Bahamas, Bermuda, and Cuba. There they were loaded aboard blockade runners, often shipped to Matamoros, Mexico, and then overland to the Confederacy. To cut down or eliminate this trade, Union warships harassed neutral shipping between Havana and Matamoros. Assigned to the region with his Flying Squadron, the indomitable Wilkes hovered off West Indian ports, establishing a virtual blockade of Nassau and Bermuda, plundering neutral shipping, and, as with the
Trent,
interpreting international law to suit himself. To justify its actions, Washington hurled back at the British the once despised doctrine of continuous voyage, even exceeding British precedent by declaring that overland trade to an enemy port made goods liable to seizure. Britain screamed about freedom of the seas and illegal search and seizure and denounced that "ill-informed and violent naval officer" Wilkes.
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Both sides exercised restraint. Without abandoning measures it considered essential, the Union took steps to mitigate conflict with England. It transferred the abrasive Wilkes where he could do less damage and commanded U.S. naval officers to observe proper rules of search and seizure. While going through the motions of backing its shipowners, the British government acquiesced in American actions and court rulings and ordered warships in the West Indies not to interfere with Union seizure of ships outside territorial waters.

In time, Britain also acceded to Union demands to stop private shipbuilders from constructing ships for the Confederacy. The shipbuilding program was one of the few major successes of Confederate diplomacy. Early in the war, Confederate agent James Bulloch arranged to have built in Britain a small fleet of fast, propeller-driven cruisers to prey on enemy shipping. Commerce raiding, it was reasoned, could hamper Union logistics, drive up shipping and insurance costs, and force trade to neutral carriers. The first products of this program, the
Florida
and
Alabama,
went to sea in 1862. Since the two ships left port without armament, they did not violate British neutrality laws. The
Florida
steamed to Nassau in the spring of 1862, where it was armed and began to attack Union ships. Over loud Union protests, the
Alabama
also slipped out of port, sailed to the Azores, and acquired armaments. During its nearly two years at sea, it destroyed or captured sixty northern ships. Meanwhile, Bulloch contracted with British shipbuilders for more commerce raiders and also frigates and ironclad rams to break the blockade.
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In a very real sense, the Confederacy was the victim of its success. As the
Alabama
's tally mounted, Union protests grew louder. The Confederate raiders caused alarm up and down the eastern seaboard. Insurance rates skyrocketed, and trade moved to neutral carriers. Union officials especially feared that the ironclad rams could shatter the flimsy wooden ships manning the blockade. The United States, of course, had been among the foremost neutral profiteers during the Napoleonic wars, but as a belligerent it saw things quite differently. Union officials demanded that the British government stop building ships for the Confederacy, threatening to unleash privateers against British shipping and seek reparations for damages.
New York Herald
editor James Gordon Bennett thundered that the United States would seize Canada in return for Britain's "villainous treachery" and hold it until "full and satisfactory retribution be made."
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The British gradually acceded to Union demands. From the outset, Foreign Office lawyers had urged that the ships be detained, but the ministry had adhered to the more narrow requirements of domestic law. In time, it came around. Union agents snooped around British shipyards and hired private investigators to confirm that the ships were intended for the Confederacy. Adams issued stern warnings, at times even threatening war. As the tide of battle turned against the South and the likelihood of European intervention diminished, the British government grew more cautious. Adams's warnings had an impact. Perhaps more important,
Britons grew increasingly concerned about setting precedents that the United States or some other neutral might use in some future war to build ships for their enemies, depriving them of their historic advantage of control of the seas.

Thus in the spring and summer of 1863, the government acted to prevent additional vessels from getting to sea. In April, officials seized the
Alexandra
on suspicion of intent, indicating a major shift in position. More important, in the summer of 1863, Britain first detained, then seized, and eventually purchased to spare the shipbuilder financial loss the first of the Laird rams, a ship ostensibly built for the pasha of Egypt. With understandable familial pride and exaggeration, Minister Adams's son Henry called it a "second Vicksburg . . . the crowning stroke of our diplomacy."
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For the Confederacy, it was the last straw. An embattled Jefferson Davis bitterly protested the bias of British neutrality, complaining that while taking measures hostile to the Confederacy, Britain, in defiance of the law of nations, permitted thousands of its Irish subjects to come to America in its ships and fight for the Union. Without these "armies from foreign countries," he claimed, the "invaders would ere this have been driven from our soil." In August 1863, Mason left the increasingly hostile environs of London for Paris. The Richmond government expelled British consular officials.
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Davis's tone suggested his government's desperation, and in early 1865, almost as an afterthought, the Confederacy tried one last diplomatic gambit to secure foreign recognition. Suffering military defeat on all fronts, with Atlanta having fallen and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant advancing on Richmond, Davis authorized Louisiana congressman Duncan Kenner to travel secretly to Europe and propose emancipation of the slaves in return for recognition. It was too little, too late. Kenner slipped through the blockade, but the Europeans were not buying. Napoleon affirmed what was already manifest—France would follow England's lead. Britain indicated that under no circumstances would it recognize the South. The mission made clear the extent to which a Confederacy on the verge of defeat would go to somehow salvage its independence. It confirmed once again Europe's unwillingness to intrude.

The Confederate surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, saved the Union and destroyed slavery, resolving by force of arms the two great
issues that had divided Americans throughout the nineteenth century. By establishing that the United States would indeed be united with a freelabor economic system, it answered the great question of American nationhood. It ensured that the nation would become a great power.
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The Union's survival of the bloody test of war gave a tremendous boost to national pride and brought a resurgence of self-confidence and optimism. Americans marveled at their power, the largest army in the world, a navy of 671 ships, and a huge industrial base. "We shall be the greatest power on earth," Gen. Joseph Hooker exulted.
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European monarchs had exploited America's internal conflict to reintrude in the Western Hemisphere, but they were soon in full flight. Spain withdrew from the Dominican Republic as the war ended; France and Russia were not far behind. "One by one they have retreated . . . ," Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner proclaimed, "all giving way to the absorbing Unity declared in the national motto,
E pluribus unum.
" Expressing ideas many Americans fervently shared, Sumner foresaw a not too distant time when through stages "republican principles under the primacy of the United States must embrace the whole continent."
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The Civil War also restored faith in the viability of those principles and certainty in the future destiny of the republic. The Union victory affirmed as Lincoln had so eloquently proclaimed in his Gettysburg Address that "government of the people, by the people, for the people" would not "perish from this earth." The abolition of slavery purified American republicanism, producing a "new birth of freedom." Lincoln's assassination just five days after Appomattox added the force of martyrdom to the cause he had so nobly espoused and so diligently pursued. Americans thus emerged from the war with their traditional faith in the superiority of their ideals and institutions revivified. On April 21, 1865, Grant privately hailed a United States "that is now beginning to loom far above all other countries, modern or ancient. What a spectacle it will be to see a country able . . . to put half a Million soldiers in the field. . . . That Nation, united," he added, "will have a strength which will enable it to dictate to all others, [to]
conform to justice and right
."
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The outburst of nationalism and rebirth of Manifest Destiny that accompanied the Union victory did not set loose a new wave of expansionism. Some Republican leaders clung to Whiggish views that America had enough land. Further expansion would hinder effective governance. The nation could best promote its ideals through example. War-weariness certainly played a part, as did a huge war debt and the enormous problems of Reconstruction: reunification of a defeated but still defiant South and consolidation of the vast western territory acquired before the war. The especially bitter struggle between Lincoln's successor, Vice President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, and the Radical Republicans over reconstruction policy spilled over into foreign policy issues. In the case of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, Americans remained reluctant to acquire territory populated by alien races. Thus, although opportunities presented themselves, Seward's purchase of Alaska was the only major acquisition during Reconstruction.
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