“I am the last president of the United States,” said James Buchanan on December 20, 1860. South Carolina had just seceded from the Union. Ten more states would follow. Had Buchanan remained in office, there is no question he would have let the South go. The United States would have ceased to exist…
How the British Caused the American Civil War - LewRockwell Show Menu Archives Authors Blog Books & Resources Lew Rockwell Books Ron Paul Books Murray N. Rothbard Library & Resources Mises Institute LRC Bestselling Books Political Theatre Podcasts Store About Contact Donate Advertise Search for: LewRockwell.com ANTI-STATE•ANTI-WAR•PRO-MARKET article-single How the British Caused the American Civil War By Richard Poe December 31, 2021 Donate FacebookTwitter “I am the last president of the United States,” said James Buchanan on December 20, 1860. South Carolina had just seceded from the Union. Ten more states would follow. Had Buchanan remained in office, there is no question he would have let the South go. The United States would have ceased to exist 160 years ago. “So what?” some readers may retort. “Buchanan was right. There’s nothing sacred about the Union. If states want to secede, let them.” A recent poll by the University of Virginia Center for Politics claims that 41 percent of Biden supporters and 52 percent of Trump supporters now supposedly favor secession. While these numbers might be exaggerated, the trend is clear. As tensions rise between “red” and “blue” states, many Americans have come to believe that coexisting with our quarrelsome countrymen is no longer worth the trouble. Many hope that peaceful separation—“national divorce,” as they call it—might allow Americans to part ways amicably, without bloodshed. But will it? History suggests otherwise. Forgotten History In 1861, secession did not bring peace. It led directly to civil war. War came for the same reason it always does, because powerful men wanted it, and stood to gain by it. An old saying holds that, when two dogs fight, a third dog gets the bone. In 1861, the third dog was Great Britain. Britain had a strong interest in breaking up the Union, which she saw as a competitor for global dominance. Britain’s plan was to carve up the United States into colonial spheres of influence, to be distributed among the great powers of Europe. Had the British succeeded, North and South alike would have lost their independence. This fact—once widely known to Americans—has been wiped from our history books. Before we rush headlong into Civil War 2.0, it might be wise to relearn the forgotten story of Lincoln’s struggle against foreign intervention. It would be foolish to walk into the same trap twice. Seward’s Call for War On April 1, 1861, the Civil War had not yet begun. That day, Secretary of State William Seward drafted a memorandum to Lincoln seeking action against “European intervention.” “I would at once demand explanations from France and Spain categorically,” Seward wrote. “I would demand explanations from Great Britain and Russia… And if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France, I would convene Congress and declare war against them.” Seward’s concerns were legitimate. Seeing America’s weakness, foreign powers had begun challenging the Monroe Doctrine, which forbade European intervention in the Americas. Spain had annexed its former colony of Santo Domingo on March 18, pointedly increasing its Cuban garrison to 25,000 men. France was saber-rattling over Haiti and other lost colonies. Meanwhile, British diplomats were working hard to bring Spain, France, and Russia into a coalition strong enough to force Lincoln into recognizing the Confederacy. These intrigues plainly violated the Monroe Doctrine. But no one cared what America thought anymore. The U.S. was falling apart. “Our domestic dissensions are producing their natural fruit,” wrote The New York Times on March 30, 1861. “The terror of the American name is gone, and the Powers of the Old World are flocking to the feast from which the scream of our eagle had hitherto scared them. We are just beginning to suffer the penalties of being a weak and despised Power.” When Seward wrote his memo to Lincoln, the attack on Fort Sumter was still eleven days away. The first shot of our Civil War had not yet been fired. Yet, the mightiest powers in Europe were already spoiling for a fight. Britain was the Ringleader Great Britain was the driving force behind these plots. The British had been planning America’s downfall for years. England made no secret of her ambitions in North America. On January 3, 1860, the London Morning Post bluntly called for the restoration of British rule in America. The Post was known as a mouthpiece for Lord Palmerston, Britain’s Prime Minister. Indeed, Palmerston himself was rumored to write unsigned editorials for the paper, now and then. Should North and South separate, said the Morning Post on January 3, 1860, the colonies of British North America (later combined into the Dominion of Canada) would then “hold the balance of power on the Continent.” Canada would find herself in a strong position to annex the quarreling fragments of the former USA. The first target should be Portland, Maine, the Post suggested. Strategically located at the terminus of Canada’s Grand Trunk Railway, Portland harbor provided Canada with access to the Atlantic during the winter months, when every port on the St. Lawrence River was frozen. Why leave such a vital asset in American hands? “On military, as well as commercial grounds, it is obviously necessary,” argued the Morning Post, “that British North America should possess on the Atlantic a port open at all times of year…” The newspaper recommended that the state of Maine should join the British Empire voluntarily, once the Union collapsed. “[T]he people of that State, with an eye to commercial profit, should offer to annex themselves to Canada,” it suggested. Canada’s growing power in a post-U.S. world would soon lead to further annexations, the Post predicted, culminating in what the paper called “the restoration of that influence which more than eighty years ago England was supposed to have lost.” With these words, the Morning Post made clear that it favored a return to British rule in America, of exactly the sort England had enjoyed “more than eighty years ago” (prior to 1780, that is). Britain’s Plan for Proxy War The threat of reconquest in the Morning Post was not idle. Indeed, it almost succeeded. We know from other sources, including diplomatic correspondence, that England planned to use the Confederacy to fight a proxy war against the United States. When America’s strength was spent, Britain and her European allies then intended to demand international mediation to end the war. If Lincoln refused, the British Navy would break the Union blockade and relieve the South, thus forcing Lincoln to the bargaining table, whether he liked it or not. The arbitrators would partition the United States into two separate countries, North and South. Later, they planned to break up the U.S. even further, into four or more mini-states, too weak to resist re-colonization. British Military Support of the Confederacy The first step in Britain’s plan was to exhaust America’s strength through civil war. To accomplish this, Britain became the chief supplier of arms and supplies for the Southern rebels. On May 13, 1861, Queen Victoria issued a proclamation granting belligerent status to the Confederacy. This meant rebel warships could now operate legally from British ports. British shipbuilders provided the Confederates with a modern navy. Many of the finest rebel warships were assembled in British shipyards, financed by British bondholders, and, in some cases, manned by British crews. Confederate raiders paralyzed Union shipping, sinking almost a thousand ships. One raider, the British-built CSS Alabama, destroyed 65 Union merchantmen and warships in a two-year rampage, until she was finally sunk in June, 1864. The Alabama’s crew was mostly British. British technical support also proved vital in building a gunpowder mill in Augusta, Georgia in 1861. It was the only such facility in the South. Without it, the Confederates would have had no powder. Troop Deployments in Canada England provided more than just logistical support to the South. She also menaced the North with troop deployments and threats of war. For instance, in December, 1861, Britain deployed 11,000 troops in Canada, called out the Canadian militia, and made plans for a naval blockade of the northeastern United States, as described in Dean B. Mahin’s One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (1999). The official reason for these preparations was to defend Canada from possible U.S. attack, in case Britain declared war over the Trent Affair, an incident in which a U.S. Navy vessel had boarded a British mail packet in the Caribbean, arresting two Confederate envoys. However, the Trent Affair merely provided an excuse to roll out existing British plans. Mahin notes, for example, that one of the defensive moves proposed by British strategists in December, 1861 was to seize Portland, Maine, ostensibly to prevent Union forces from cutting off British access to the port. However, as noted above, seizing Portland was an existing British war goal, announced in the London Morning Post nearly two years earlier. Troop Deployments in Mexico While Britain was reinforcing Canada, she also joined France and Spain in a joint invasion of Mexico. All three countries landed troops in Veracruz on December 8, 1861, igniting a Mexican civil war that raged until 1866. The pretext for the invasion was to force payment of Mexico’s national debt. Its true purpose, however, was to secure Mexico as a staging area for intervention in America’s Civil War, a fact which soon became obvious. The French emperor Louis Napoleon Bonaparte III was Britain’s closest ally, beholden to England for his throne. A nephew of Napoleon I, Louis Napoleon seized power in a coup of December 2, 1851, overthrowing France’s Second Republic, with the endorsement and approval of Lord Palmerston. Napoleon III then joined his British patrons on a series of military adventures, including the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the 1861 invasion of Mexico. “One War at a Time” The enormity of French and British provocations clearly justified a military response from the North. Yet Lincoln’s steady hand on the tiller prevented the Civil War from becoming a global conflagration. In his book One War at a Time, Mahin suggests that Lincoln played a deliberate game of good-cop, bad-cop, allowing his hot-headed Secretary of State William Seward to make reckless threats against encroaching foreign powers, while Lincoln provided the soothing voice of reason. On April 4, 1861, for instance, Seward told the The Times of London that he was “ready, if need be, to threaten Great Britain with war” should she dare to recognize the rebel government. Possibly in response to Seward’s threat, the Queen’s Proclamation of May 13 stopped short of granting diplomatic recognition to the South. Nonetheless, Queen Victoria did grant belligerent rights to Confederate warships, which enraged Seward. He promptly drew up instructions for Charles Francis Adams Sr., US ambassador to London, ordering him to warn Great Britain that recognizing the Confederacy would be an act of war. “One war at a time,” Lincoln famously counseled Seward, after reviewing a draft of his letter on May 21, 1861. Lincoln edited the document with his own hand to soften the tone. Throughout the war, these sorts of private interactions between Lincoln and Seward had a tendency to leak out. To some extent, it seems likely the two men were play-acting, putting on a show for foreign diplomats and newspaper reporters. If Lincoln’s good-cop, bad-cop routine was indeed a deliberate strategy, then it was successful. It kept the British nervous, off-balance, and indecisive through the first three years of war. Had Britain and her allies acted early and boldly—breaking the Union blockade of the South; sealing off the Union coast; and seizing New England ports; as they had originally planned—a divided America might have been too weak to resist. Lincoln would have lost public support, and, with it, the war. Motivating the Confederates Seward’s constant threats intimidated the British, making them fearful of direct action. But they never hesitated to spend Confederate blood in their proxy war against the North. To motivate their Southern clients, the British made shrewd use of carrots and sticks. They continually offered the carrot of British recognition. The Confederates knew that, once Britain recognized the Confederacy, other European powers would follow. Lincoln would find himself isolated in the Western world. He would be forced to the bargaining table. But there was also a stick. The British made clear that they would not risk war with the Union until the Confederacy had proved she could carry her weight on the battlefield. On August 14, 1861, British foreign secretary John Russell met with three Confederate envoys in London, advising them that England would consider recognizing their government only when, “the fortune of arms… shall have more clearly determined the respective position of the two belligerents.” Lord Palmerston echoed this view in a letter of October 20, 1861, in which he sympathized with Southern independence, but cautioned that, “the operations of the war have as yet been too indecisive to warrant an acknowledgment of the southern Union.” The Engine of War The promise of British intervention, made privately and repeatedly to Confederate leaders, was the driving engine of the rebellion. Without these promises, there is some doubt as to whether Confederate leaders would have dared go to war in the first place. As early as the spring of 1860, when Lincoln was still campaigning for president, British consuls in the southern states notified London that secession plans were underway and the rebels were counting on British support. Two years later, then-Secretary of State for the Confederacy Judah Benjamin still hoped that British recognition might succeed where the Confederate Army had so far failed. In a letter of April 12, 1862, Benjamin wrote, “A few words emanating from Her Britannic Majesty would in effect put an end to a struggle which so desolates our country.” But the British were unmoved by Confederate whining. Only bloody action on the battlefield would satisfy them. And so the Confederates fought on, ever hopeful that their next victory might be the one that would convince their British patrons to act. England’s Attempt to Force Mediation The Second Battle of Manassas proved a turning point. Following the Confederate victory of August 30, 1862, British leaders decided the time was ripe. Lord Palmerston wrote Russell on September 14, 1862, noting that Union forces had “got a very complete smashing” at Manassas. “[W]ould it not be time for us to consider whether in such a state of things England and France might not address the contending parties and recommend an arrangement upon the basis of separation?” Palmerston suggested. By stipulating that the proposed mediation should be “upon the basis of separation,” Palmerston admitted that the peace talks would be a sham. The outcome had already been decided. North and South must separate. Russell replied on September 17, “I agree with you that the time is come for offering mediation to the United States Government, with a view to the recognition of the independence of the Confederates. I agree further, that, in case of failure, we ought ourselves to recognise the Southern States as an independent State. … We ought, then, if we agree on such a step, to propose it first to France, and then, on the part of England and France, to Russia and other powers, as a measure decided upon by us.” England’s Hidden Goal If Britain’s goal in our Civil War had merely been to seek a peaceful separation of North and South, her actions might be excused as naïve but well-intentioned. However, Britain’s hidden goals diverged sharply from her official ones. The diplomatic correspondence published in Britain’s annual Parliamentary Blue Book tends to give a whitewashed version of British intentions, inasmuch as those dispatches were written with the full knowledge they would be published. A less sanitized version of British intentions can sometimes be gleaned from non-official sources, such as newspaper reports, observations from foreign diplomats, and from the actions of the British government itself. Careful study of such sources reveals that Britain aimed not so much at a peaceful separation of North and South as at the complete destruction of the United States, which she hoped to accomplish by splintering the country into many pieces. Divide and Rule As discussed below, Napoleon III harbored a “Grand Design” for breaking up the United States, which would leave Texas, Louisiana, Florida and other U.S. territories under French control. The British had similar plans, which they no doubt coordinated with their French allies. On September 25, 1861, following a long string of Union defeats, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a leading British statesman and member of Parliament, gleefully predicted America’s break-up into four or more pieces, “with happy results for the safety of Europe.” “That separation between North and South America which is now being brought about by civil war I have long foreseen and foretold to be inevitable,” said Bulwer-Lytton in a speech. He predicted that the U.S. would split not into, “two, but at least four, and probably more than four separate and sovereign commonwealths.” This was good news for Europe, Bulwer-Lytton declared, for, as long as the U.S. remained united, it “hung over Europe like a gathering and destructive thunder-cloud. But in proportion as America shall become subdivided into different States… her ambition will be less formidable to the rest of the world.” “You Will Break Into Fragments” Bulwer-Lytton was not merely expressing his personal opinion. Other sources confirm that high-level British statesmen favored America’s partition into several pieces, not just two. Russia’s foreign minister, Prince Alexander Gorchakov, warned Lincoln of this plan. “One separation will be followed by another; you will break into fragments,” said Gorchakov, in an October 27, 1862 meeting with Bayard Taylor, the American Chargé d’Affaire in St. Petersburg. U.S. Ambassador to Britain Charles Francis Adams, Sr. drew a similar conclusion. “The predominating passion here [in England] is the desire for the ultimate subdivision of America into many separate States which will neutralize each other,” wrote Adams to Seward on August 8, 1862. England Moves Toward War All evidence suggests that British planners knew from the beginning that their goals in America could never be achieved without bloodshed. Even the first step of separating North from South would require military intervention. As noted above, Seward had made clear on April 4, 1861 that the Union would declare war on Britain if she recognized the South. In such a case, the British planned to use the Royal Navy to break the Union’s blockade, fully aware that the North would respond by invading Canada. For this reason, when Lord Palmerston approved the mediation plan, he emphasized, in a letter to Russell of September 17, 1862, that, “We ought to make ourselves safe in Canada, not by sending more troops there [in addition to the 11,000 already deployed the previous year], but by concentrating those we have in a few defensible posts before winter sets in.” Thus the Prime Minister admitted that his “mediation” proposal would likely lead to a ground war between Britain and the United States. Palmerston chose to proceed nonetheless. A meeting of Queen Victoria’s cabinet was scheduled for October 23, 1862 to discuss plans for a joint intervention by France, Russia and Great Britain. “They Have Made a Nation” Two weeks prior to the Queen’s cabinet meeting, Chancellor of the Exchequer Wi… truncated (46,544 more characters in archive)