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The Civil War in America absolutely dominated the British national conversation, especially in the early years of the war. Politicians followed the conflict closely, and there were even several debates in Parliament over British policy toward the conflict.
Frequently discussed was a line that a lot of Americans would recognize today, of "when should Britain get involved??" because of the destructiveness of the conflict. Prime Minister Palmerston & Foreign Secretary Russell spent a lot of time maneuvering and deflecting calls for Britain to get involved or pick a side.
A few other bits I found surprising when studying this topic—
1. Some British MPs were very pro-Confederate, and pushed for recognition of the Confederacy as a real country in Parliament.
2. British war correspondents were on the ground with both Union and Confederate armies, and sent regular dispatches to British newspapers.
3. British (and other European) officers regularly volunteered on *both* sides.
4. It was fashionable for a time in Britain to be pro-Confederate. Confederate propagandist networks *in* Britain brilliantly played down slavery and played up "self-determination".
5. Britain nearly declared war on the Union (Trent affair), to the point that Royal Navy was just waiting for the go-signal to commence hostilities & Britain sent thousands of additional troops to Canada.
6. There were *tons* of ironclads already in European fleets, there had just never been a fight between ironclads! Europeans watched the Monitor v. Merrimack battle & adapted their fleets & battle doctrines accordingly.
7. The British cabinet had a very serious, "can we even win a war against the U.S. anymore?" conversation at the end of the conflict, after witnessing the million-man army of the Union, the Richmond campaign, and growing effectiveness of the U.S. Navy.
8. Americans credit Seward as a brilliant Secretary of State during the conflict, but in Britain and France he was considered foolish, dangerous, and unpredictable—a lot of the tension between the Union and Europe can be laid at his feet.
9. Prussian military observers watched how the Union used railroads to move massive numbers of troops & supplies around, and adopted a lot of the Union tactics to absolutely crush the French just a few years later. (Franco-Prussian war of 1870.) Seriously - there were European observers *all over the place*.
It should be understood that the british empire was at the peak of economic dependence on the raw material coming from the "new world" at the onset of the civil war; in particular, cotton exports for consumption by british textile mills [1].
> By the late 1850s, cotton grown in the United States accounted for 77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton consumed in Britain. It also accounted for 90 percent of the 192 million pounds used in France, 60 percent of the 115 million pounds spun in the Zollverein, and 92 percent of the 102 million pounds manufactured in Russia.
One reason that there was support for the confederacy was the fear that the outcome of the war would lead to the end of access to abundant and cheap cotton (due to export duties, end of slavery, etc.).
One of the outcomes of the US Civil War was that the British Empire realized a need to "diversify" their sources, resulting in increasingly imperialistic behavior in India and Egypt, among others.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/empire-... the whole book is a fantastic peek behind the curtains of the history of global capital markets
> 6. There were tons of ironclads already in European fleets, there had just never been a fight between ironclads! Europeans watched the Monitor v. Merrimack battle & adapted their fleets & battle doctrines accordingly.
These were very different sorts of ironclads. The British and French ironclads mostly resembled traditional ships, at least at first glance. They had steam engines but also retained their masts, and had broadside guns rather than turrets (except for the ill-fated HMS Captain..)
The American ironclads were more bizarre, superficially resembling submarines, and weren't particularly seaworthy (unlike the European ironclads.) The USS Monitor in particular was a novel design; mastless and steam powered with an armored turret, a shallow draft and low freeboard (similar to earlier ironclad floating batteries, but a lot lower). European navies subsequently started building their own 'monitors'.
The monitor class of ships were eventually pushed to the side by pre-dreadnought battleships that derived more from the traditional and seaworthy European ironclads than from monitors, with some lessons learned from monitors. See the HMS Devastation particularly; mastless and steam powered with armored turrets, but with a hull that was actually seaworthy unlike monitors.
Don’t forget Russia sending ships to America in support of the union. The letters between tsar Alex and Lincoln are some of the loveliest pieces of writing and highest praises for America.
http://beam-inc.org/abraham-lincoln-and-tsar-alexander-ii-pa...
A point I found interesting along the lines of perceived British ambivalence, my understanding is that the Emancipation Proclamation was a brilliant piece of diplomacy. It was anti-slavery enough to make it possible to convince Britain that the war was all about slavery and so they shouldn't intervene because of how much they were against slavery. Yet also weak enough against slavery - only freeing slaves in the territory they hadn't conquered yet - to make it possible to convince the Union officers and politicians that it was a tactical economic ploy against the Confederacy and not a changing of the primary war aims. They were rather ambivalent about slavery, and Lincoln himself feared that "half the officers would fling down their arms and three more states would rise" if he made full emancipation a primary war aim.
A lot more concrete information in this comment than in the article itself. Thank you.
If you feel inclined | knowledgeable could you expand on any English economic turmoil as a result of the American Civil War. All that American Cotton not feeding the British industry must have hurt a lot.
> 5. Britain nearly declared war on the Union (Trent affair), to the point that Royal Navy was just waiting for the go-signal to commence hostilities & Britain sent thousands of additional troops to Canada.
I wonder how much the Union's need to hedge against British intervention—so, to divert resources away from the war against the South, affecting troop placement, artillery availability, fortification building/maintenance/garrisoning, and fleet positioning—prolonged the war.
Karl Marx, who was residing in Britain at the time, also wrote much on the topic. He had nothing but withering criticism of mainstream/elite British attitudes for the war, namely the downplaying the importance of slavery in the formation of the Confederacy.
He, unlike his more socially acceptable contemporaries, also deeply admired Lincoln. Many pieces published in prominent periodicals, like The Economist, painted him as a wily and double-dealing politician. One could understand that interpretation given the compromises he was desperately trying to make with Southern states to prevent the outbreak of war, but it gave prominent Brits an excuses to dismiss the sincerity of his anti-slavery rhetoric after the war broke out. (Lincoln himself was also being deeply transformed by the savagery of war. He would come to believe the carnage was divine punishment for the sin of slavery.) Marx would have none of it. He called out the hypocrisy of those who in the years prior condemned American slavery but would not support the cause of Lincoln and the Union because it didn't have an unblemished history of being totally and consistently anti-slavery.
The claim regarding the effectiveness of "Confederate propagandist networks" is overstated, though. People across Britain were divided on the issue, even across political camps and ethnic groups (e.g. Irish and English). To be clear, by "divided", I don't mean that people necessarily individually ambivalent. There were some staunch supporters on both sides.
There were also multiple reasons for preferring one side over another, too. Slavery was just one issue. Another was potential weakening the Monroe Doctrine. (During the Civil War, France under Napoleon III invaded and conquered Mexico, and Spain re-colonized what would become the Dominican Republic.) Others were access to raw materials, support for wars of national unity (European nationalists admired Lincoln, as would Hitler decades later), etc.
It's interesting how difficult it is nowadays to field a million man army
> 6. There were tons of ironclads already in European fleets, there had just never been a fight between ironclads! Europeans watched the Monitor v. Merrimack battle & adapted their fleets & battle doctrines accordingly.
And the fight they got was comically irrelevant to the ironclads they had.
I'm sure they had lots of great arguments trying to pull anything applicable out of it and apply the lessons to their own fleets.
One of my ancestors was a British aristocrat and tory MP who was so vocal in his opposition to appeasing the American colonists in any way at all that even King George raised an eyebrow.
His total conviction led him to purchase a commission as major of Grenadiers in the 20th Foot, and set off for The Colonies, where he was promptly shot at The Battle of Saratoga and then taken prisoner.
Because he was a wounded officer and a minor noble, his wife was permitted to come and pick him up.
What I found more interesting is the French role in both US and India in inciting rebellion against the British
- https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/the-last-time-the-us-and-ind...
- https://aeon.co/essays/why-american-revolutionaries-admired-...
In addition to conveying information well, this comment motivated me to find Foreman’s cited work. My library even has the audiobook!
I learned more from this comment than the article, and I thank you
Maybe this is nitpicking but I suspect the motive was less "the destructiveness of the conflict" and more a chance to balkanize the US permanently.
Not mentioned: Towards the end of the Civil War, British officers became very concerned that the large and now experienced army might turn its attention North, as they had some 50 years prior. The Civil War was thus a direct catalyst for Canadian confederation.
A direct American invasion was not a catalyst for confederation. Expansion westward was seen as vital, and America’s rapid growth made the endeavour even more vital, lest American immigrants seize Canadian land.
No one feared the American army would turn north. They could have crushed Canada, but peace between Canada and the US was seen as assured as long as the UK wanted it.
Perhaps not a direct catalyst as it was the Fenian Raids, in particular the battle of Ridgeway, that led to Canadian Confederation. The Fenians were largely Union Army veterans of the Civil War. Lincoln's decision to allow the formation of ethnic Irish regiments to aid recruitment allowed for the military organization and training of the Fenian Brotherhood.
In fact, there were some men (Irish nationalists) who gained military experience during the Civil War that were involved in armed raids into Canada from 1865-1871. Encyclopedia article: https://www.britannica.com/event/Fenian-raids
The US took the oregon territories from the british empire in the 1840s. Even before the civil war, the british empire was in no position to challenge the US in north america. America was focused on western expansion to the pacific before and after the civil war, not to worthless canadian tundra and the frigid arctic.
My key takeaways:
* Miller and Chesney’s lectures describe the course of the war up to that point, with Chesney focussing first on fighting in Virginia and then on operations in the west and south, such as Sherman’s March to the Sea
* In his lectures, Chesney laments that Sherman, in his March to the Sea near the end of the war, ‘has given no voucher or note anywhere for the supplies he has seized [from civilians]’ and expresses concern about whether the North and South could be reconciled, given the brutality of the conflict
* The combat between the Monitor and the Merrimac, notable for being the first clash between ironclad ships, is referenced but purposely not discussed because ‘the result has not influenced the military progress of the war’
* In some cases, the conduct of the Civil War was used by British officers to justify their own opinions of how the UK should prepare its military for future wars
* The RUSI lectures demonstrate the challenges of following a war as it is occurring from a distance, the disappointment with the Union’s military performance early in the war and the manner in which foreign conflicts were mobilised to justify the policies of people like the Duke of Cambridge
Not enough, actually. The American Civil War was the first big war where railroads and telegraph lines allowed coordinated operations over a large area, and machine guns and repeating rifles allowed killing large numbers of advancing troops. Grant got this; he wrote "War is Progressive", meaning that there was progress through technology. This was a radical idea in military thinking at the time. Most European military leaders didn't get that until WWI. They were still trying mass charges. Which, against machine guns, absolutely does not work.
> The American Civil War was the first big war where railroads and telegraph lines allowed coordinated operations over a large area, and machine guns and repeating rifles allowed killing large numbers of advancing troops.
Hi, the Crimean War would like to remind you that it existed.
In which American Civil War battles did machine guns play a meaningful role?
It also featured a little bit of trench warfare. I imagine the European observers who saw that were like "Huh, definitely not important, let's not come up with strategies to counter this sort of thing" and then forgot about it for the next 50 years or so.
I think the real answer and probably why the article is a bit light on actual anecdotes, is that Britain or its military at the time probably didn't think much of it all, especially from a military point of view. Plus they were super busy with imperial concerns, especially in the British Raj post-1857 rebellion.
The U.S., although gaining steam economically (pun intended), was still a backwater, rural, nation isolated by a whole lot of ocean (edit: I meant all this from a military point of view). I am sure the abolitionists in power in Parliament were interested in the outcome of the war from that point of view, but it was really of very little consequence to UK or Europe as a whole.
The US South provided 80% of British cotton, and the textile industry was the UK's largest employer and industry.[1].
[1] https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/liverpools-aberc...
> The U.S., although gaining steam economically (pun intended), was still a backwater, rural, nation isolated by a whole lot of ocean
A "backwater"? That forced the 49th parallel on the british in the 1810s? That took oregon territories from the british in the 1840s? The "backwater" that "took" louisiana territories from france and alaska from the russians? The "backwater" that took texas,california,et al from mexico? The "backwater" that took control over the yangtze river from china in 1854?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol
The "backwater" that forced japan to open in the 1850s? Which no european power, including britain, was able to do?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition
It wasn't the british navy that dominated the seas mid 1800s. It was american whalers.
By the civil war, we had been shitting on the british and the rest of the great powers for decades. Not bad for a "backwater".
Quite a few European powers embedded observers with both sides of the conflict. The application of improved small arms and artillery was something that military minds were very interested in, to see how it played out in a large scale conflict.
The US economy overtook the UK's right around the civil war. That's also around when the US population overtook the UK's.
They may have not thought much about the war, but it wouldn't be because the US had a small economy or population.
Not true. By 1860, the US was of comparable size to the UK and France, and had a similar GDP per capita to the UK. De Tocqueville‘s “Democracy in America” had introduced Europe to America’s prosperity in the 1830s and 1840s, so it wasn’t unknown.
The war might not have been militarily relevant to Europeans, but that doesn’t mean people weren’t paying attention. The US was as big and as rich as the European powers at that point. It’s like today: If France broke out in a civil war it would be all over the news 24/7.
Militarily Europe walked away with simple caricatures of the war, but the lionization of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was (rightly) recognized as a new kind of general - one that would be far more familiar in World War I than in the Napoleonic War. This led to a lot of fame.
Generally, the US revolutionary war was viewed very positively in parts of Europe. That upstart new world was finally in its place and would now tear itself to pieces without European governance. Britain considered entering the war early on(on the southern side!) and benefited from the economic collapse of the Americas. The British commercial fleets went from near-parity with the US merchant marine to unquestioned ruler of the commercial seas by the devastation of the blockades and the lack of insurance underwriting for north or south flagged vehicles.
But a lot of things were missed millitary that they would learn in 1914. The role of rail lines and junctions, and the early signs of trench warfare and total war were the only thing that could break near-industrial societies. The potential of armored battleships and submarines. (Though to be fair, imagine how much history would have changed if the Turtle had detonated its torpedo in the Revolutionary War!) These lessons would be learned a hard way sixty years later.
There's also an interesting paper written on the Vatican's view of the American Civil War: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25018756
this was disappointingly content-light. I'm curious about the subject, but this was barely even an introduction.
Here’s an article I found with more info: https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1506&cont...
My chief takeaway: people who weren’t there didn’t have all the details.
> What did British officers think of the American civil war as it was happening?
Go to the source.
Here is a book written by Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, a British officer who traveled with the Confederate army in 1863. He is well known due to appearing in the movie Gettysburg based on The Killer Angels book. Three Months in the Southern States: April, June, 1863. https://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/fremantle/fremantle.html
I'd be interested in how the world would/might react to an American civil war today?
Would we see America's "enemies" sending arms to the side of their choice to fight a proxy war on American soil? Would a side accept that aide?
Would America's "allies" sit out or pick sides? Would those sides align with the sides "enemies" would choose?
I think the world would collectively shit its pants. The world's largest economy and military suddenly splintering while in control of several thousand nuclear weapons? It would seem like Armageddon.
>Would we see America's "enemies" sending arms to the side of their choice to fight a proxy war on American soil? Would a side accept that aide?
If history is any indication, yes and yes.
It would be interesting to know what Prussian officers thought of the battles as they soon after fought a few wars. But I can't read German.
Is Chesney the Guards officer that is portrayed in the "lost cause" movie Gettysburg?
Why do you call it a civil war? In a civil war two parties fight for dominance over the country - England’s and Russian’s civil wars, more than two hundred years apart, are great example. In that war, South did not want to dominate North but secede. It seems calling the conflict “a
Civil war” just follows Northern narrative.
The article was a bit "once over lightly"
Comments here are much more interesting.
After the war I'm sure they took note. The US Army of the North was then the largest army in the world. That had to be concerning.
Second place? The US Army of the South.
In the Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith refers to it as “an ongoing disturbance in our North American colonies” IIRC
If we and the French could just help the Confederates a bit more America might be ripe for reconquest! The French are already in Mexico and we have ships in Canada! The mad king was a fool for letting those backwards colonists break away in the first place.
Those darn Russian fleets showing up in 1863 in NY and SF with sealed orders to attack anyone who attacked the US! How dare they, those Russians will pay!
Get those Freemasonic/B'nai B'rith networks pumping out more confederate spies!
Cotton cotton cotton
That Lord Palmerston and his Zoo!
Whew, they didnt find our connections to John Wilkes Booth.