Slavery and the Confederacy's Challenge

This Northern cartoon expresses the concern that Britain's anti-slavery stance would falter in the face of its economic interests in cotton production.

The failures of 'King Cotton' diplomacy and the increasing economic pressure placed upon the Confederacy by the actions of the Union on land and sea only heightened the importance of foreign support to the Southern government. The South was not without support and sympathy abroad, but such feelings in Britain or France never amounted to more than that. Throughout their attempts to gain foreign aid and recognition, Confederate diplomats and influencers were dogged by a persistent problem - slavery.

The issues of slavery - such as the South's reliance upon it for labor and the role it played sparking secession - were not forgotten by those the Confederacy sought to persuade. Anti-slavery sentiment had, earlier in the century, swept through Europe. Abolition movements in France and England had decades before succeeded in ending the institution and had worked to crack down upon lingering elements of the slave trade. While such sentiment persisted in Great Britain, their fervor had dwindled over the years, though ardent emancipation groups remained.

In the views of these groups and others in Britain, the cause of the Confederacy was irrevocably entwined with the endurance of slavery in North America. Some argued against this perspective, echoing earlier Southern arguments that the enslavement of Africans was a necessary evil or, more extreme, a positive good. Confederate officials and propagandists abroad regularly dodged the issue, with some, such as Henry Hotze of London-based paper The Index, prefering discussion of race in science and society rather than justifications of slavery.

Representatives of the Union would subsequently use this reluctance to their advantage, though they kept in mind the economic benefit the Confederacy's slave labor had brought to Great Britain. In the aftermath of the contentious Trent Affair, Secretary of State William Seward utilized the issue to ease relations following the flare-up. 1862 saw the signing of the Lyons-Seward Treaty, which fostered greater cooperation between the two nations in the fight against slave traders in the Atlantic. However, a greater step in this direction would be announced by President Lincoln later that same year.