The Confederate Nation: 1861 to 1865 (27 page)

Soon after the British backed away from intervention, the French took their turn at proposing concerted mediation. The author of the French mediation note, sent simultaneously to England and Russia, was Drouyn de Lhuys, who had succeeded Trouvenel as French minister of foreign affairs in October of 1862 and who was ironically more pro-North than his predecessor. Drouyn formulated the French mediation proposal at the behest of Napoleon III. In all probability the Emperor chose this moment to offer mediation because of the effects of the cotton famine and the pressure of public opinion to reopen normal trade relations with America. Dispatched in early November, the French note met rejection in both London and St. Petersburg. Palmerston and Russell had been through the process before and turned down the French invitation for the same reasons they had resisted intervention themselves. The Russians were too committed to the United States to risk disturbing the status quo. Thus the French mediation scheme died a speedy and quiet death. Napoleon, however, had the satisfaction of doing something to break the American deadlock and accepted praise from organs of French public opinion for his gesture. The only losers in the affair were the Confederates.
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The mediation enthusiasm in Great Britain during the autumn of 1862 was the nearest thing to intervention undertaken by the European powers during the Confederate war, although in reality diplomatic circumstances were a bit more volatile afterwards than historians have often assumed. The Powers had not declared irrevocable neutrality; they had determined to watch and wait. If there should be a significant alteration in the American situation, both Britain and France were prepared to reassess. During the first half of 1863 the Confederates had reason to believe that there were significant alterations in the South’s position, especially vis-à-vis the British.

By turns that spring the Confederates and then their Northern enemies injected new elements into the international situation on the seas. At long last it seemed that the success of Southern cruisers in what Navy Secretary Mallory termed “commercial warfare” would make the Confederate navy a factor in Atlantic diplomacy. In effect the Confederates established an open-sea blockade; using foreign-built ships, they roamed the seas in search of Union commercial vessels, whose cargoes they captured or destroyed.
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The architect of the Confederate commercial war was James Dunwoody Bulloch, a Georgian who had served in the “old navy.” Bulloch spent the war period, and the rest of his life, in England serving as purchasing agent for the Navy Department. Not only did he contract for ships and oversee their construction, he undertook the more difficult task of running the diplomatic blockade of European neutrality. Often by ruse and subterfuge, Bulloch managed to launch the most important of the South’s nineteen commerce raiders. His greatest success was the
Alabama.
Built at the Laird shipyards, the ship was disguised as the merchant vessel
Enrica
until its maiden voyage in July 1862. After a stroke of good fortune prevented its seizure while still at Liverpool, it sailed to the Azores for armament. Then, under the command of Captain Raphael Semmes, a Marylander who had already served the Confederacy as purchasing agent and commander of the C.S.S.
Sumter,
the
Alabama
began preying upon United States commerce. Although the
Alabama
never entered a Southern port during its extended cruise of twenty-two months, it destroyed or captured more than sixty Northern ships.
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It and the other Confederate raiders were primarily responsible for the doubling of marine insurance rates in the North.

In one sense, though, the
Alabama
and its fellow cruisers were too successful. News of each new capture increased pressure from the United States on the British government to broaden its interpretation of neutrality. Both England and France accepted a standard whereby neutral nations might build merchant vessels for belligerants. Under pressure from the United States, however, the powers began to take more responsibility for the transformation of their products into warships. In April 1863, the British seized the newly built
Alexandria
and held it pending a determination of its intentions at sea. The inquiry resulted in the
Alexandria’s
eventual release but served notice of a British change of heart regarding the construction of Southern ships. In the fall of 1863, Bulloch suffered his worst setback when the British government seized two “rams,” oceangoing ironclads rigged with ramming spars, from the Laird yards at Birkenhead. Thereafter Bulloch’s attempts to purchase and fit cruisers became fewer and less successful. The
Alexandria
case and subsequent actions seemed to indicate that the Palmerston government had decided to appease the United States; certainly the Confederate successes did not bring British support for the cause. The Confederates could not understand the apparent impotence of the “mistress of the seas.”
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Even less could the South understand British action in the case of the
Peterhof,
a British merchant ship captured by the Union navy in the Caribbean on February 25, 1863. The
Peterhof
carried supplies defined by the United States as contraband bound for the neutral port of Matamoros in Mexico. The Union rationale for seizing the
Peterhof
involved a very broad interpretation of international law and hinged upon the contention that its cargo would eventually reach Texas: the “continuous voyage” of a neutral ship to a neutral port included overland transportation to the belligerent Confederacy. British pride and popular resentment produced a reaction which resembled the indignation displayed over the
Trent
affair. The United States and Great Britain were once again at each others’ throats over neutral rights on the high seas, and the positions were much the same as they had been on the eve of the War of 1812— only the roles were reversed. Yet the Palmerston government ultimately submitted to the United States’ action in the case of the
Peterhof
and resisted the jingoism of the British press. Britain was supreme on the seas, and thus Russell embraced an interpretation of international law which in the long run would benefit his nation.
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Many Confederates were baffled at their enemy’s seeming ability to “twist the British lion’s tail” with impunity. Yet British motives in the
Peterhof
affair, as in the
Alexandria
case, were not obscure. At issue was national survival. However much British statesmen would have liked to salve national pride and put the upstart Yankees in their place, British interests demanded restraint. The European balance of power seemed once again in flux; Italian
Risorgimento,
rumblings from Prussia over German unification, and a new rising of the Poles against Russia—all pointed to the wisdom of a policy that preserved British freedom of maneuver. War with the United States would not only destroy the flexibility of British diplomacy, it would also sap British military and naval strength and drain British energy and resources. The North was stronger than the South in every available index of national power. The only way the Confederacy could secure recognition in such circumstances was to demonstrate superiority on the battlefield. Then, in a diplomatic climate dominated by power, the South would become an attractive and inexpensive ally. Until the Confederacy demonstrated decisive military strength, however, Great Britain would remain neutral.
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Confederates were frustrated in foreign affairs on their side of the Atlantic Ocean almost as much as they were in Europe. The Richmond government had some hope of securing an alliance with Mexico against the avaricious, land-grabbing Yankees. Friendly relations with Mexico also promised overland trade and easy access to the outside world through Mexican ports. Unfortunately for the South, Mexicans had longer memories than the Confederate Department of State. The avaricious, land grabbers in Mexican memory had too often been Southerners—as proponents of the Mexican War, Texas revolutionaries, and filibusterers.

Consequently the Confederate commissioner to Mexico, John T. Pickett, former consul at Vera Cruz, former Cuban filibusterer (he participated in a private attempt to seize the island), and ever a consummate conniver, received a cool reception in Mexico City. He realized that the liberal Juarez government in Mexico City was pro-Union and even then involved in negotiations for an $ll-million loan from the United States. Therefore Pickett decided to court Juarez’s conservative rival, the Church Party. He determined to endear himself to Mexican conservatives by offending the liberal government. After all, Juarez controlled only part of Mexico, and in the volatile state of Mexican politics, Pickett had reason to hope the tide would turn in favor of the Church Party. Accordingly in late

1861 Pickett, after numerous “incidents,” deliberately engaged in a brawl with a United States citizen and spent thirty days in jail. After bribing a judge to secure his release, he fancied himself
persona non grata
among Juarez Mexicans and proceeded to Richmond in early

1862 to await a Church Party victory and his triumphant return to favor in Mexico. Neither dream materialized, and Pickett suffered the ultimate embarrassment of entrusting the dispatches explaining his actions to a New Orleans postmaster who turned out to be a Union spy.
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Confederate agent Juan A. Quintero did better in the more or less independent northern Mexican states that shared a border with the South. Quintero was only one of several agents sent by Richmond, but his was a permanent mission, and he was the most successful. Although he claimed Confederate citizenship, Quintero had long lived in Mexico. His first assignment was to visit Governor Santiago Vidaurri in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon. Qpintero returned to Richmond during Hunter’s tenure in the State Department and brought with him assurances of Vidaurri’s friendship. Quintero expressed the hope that the Confederacy might form a permanent alliance against Juarez with the states of eastern Mexico that were in Vidaurri’s camp. Hunter and Davis were reluctant to embroil the Confederacy in Mexican politics but eager to have Quintero follow up his success. Thus Quintero returned to Monterrey to oversee commercial relations between the Mexican North and the American South. Cotton crossed the Rio Grande in exchange for arms, ammunition, powder, metals, coffee, sugar, and more from the outside world. Through Matamoros, the South had an outlet to Europe, albeit a risky one after the
Peterhof
seizure. The Mexicans had the satisfaction of profitable trade, tariff revenue, and presumed safety from Confederate invasion. In 1862 this trade, which gave Confederates some consolation for their failures in Mexico City, began to flourish and became a major factor in the Southern war west of the Mississippi River.
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Rebuffed in their attempts to deal with the Juarez Mexicans, the Confederates in 1863 had hopes that soon Juarez would no longer speak for Mexico. For some time a joint expeditionary force of British, French, and Russian troops had been in Mexico to press the demands of international creditors against Mexicans. In 1863 France assumed leadership of the coalition and gave evidence of more than monetary interest. In January a French army invaded Puebla, and although the conquest seemed leisurely, by June the French had captured Mexico City. If Napoleon III was attempting to establish a New World Empire, he certainly would require the good will of the Confederacy. The United States and its Secretary of State William H. Seward were making vague threats and invoking the principles of the Monroe Doctrine. The Confederacy could, under the right circumstances, be persuaded to ignore Monroe’s dictum and ally with the French.
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Already France had renewed its mediation offer (in January, 1863), and logic seemed to indicate that Napoleon would welcome a buffer state between the North and the new French empire in Mexico. In addition, as a portent of closer relations with France, the Confederacy in 1863 secured a substantial loan—£3 million, or about $14.5 million—through the French banking house of Emile Erlanger and Company. The Confederates received high-risk terms, of course, but given the circumstances there was ample reason for financial optimism in Richmond when Congress approved the transaction on January 29, 1863.
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Although Emile Erlanger himself was not exactly representative of hard-eyed international financiers (he was extremely sympathetic to the Southern cause, and in 1864 married the daughter of Confederate commissioner to France John Slidell), the Erlanger loan encouraged the Confederates to believe that European money was a stronger endorsement of the Southern nation than diplomatic recognition, and that financial interests might rekindle political interest.
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The most immediate benefit of the Erlanger loan was a restoration of faith in Confederate credit. Southern purchasing agents were able to settle old accounts and contract for more war materials on the strength of the loan. For a time, the Confederates in Europe seemed bent upon outdoing each other in spending their government’s new-found wealth. In May of 1863, Collin J. McRae arrived in London with the government’s mandate to consolidate purchasing activities and manage Confederate finances abroad. Because the Erlanger loan was based upon cotton and because Southern military fortunes appeared bright until mid-summer, the Confederates in Europe were able to procure and contract for increased amounts of war supplies in the first half of 1863.
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Ultimately the Confederacy realized £1,759,894 (about $8,535,486) from the sale of loan subscriptions during 1863 and 1864. Profit, discount, and commissions for Emile Erlanger and Company, plus market manipulations by the Confederates themselves accounted for the difference between the money figure for which the Southerners contracted ($14,550,000) and the amount they actually received ($8,535,486). Considering the circumstances under which the rebel nation entered the European money market, the Confederacy had made about the best deal possible.
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