Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations

CHAPTER 7. Antietam and Emancipation

215 c ha p t e r 7 Antietam and Emancipation Let us do something, as we are Christian men. . . . Let us do something to stop this carnage. London Morning Herald — , September 16, 1862 We are now passing through the very crisis of our fate. Charles Francis Adams — , October 9, 1862 British intervention appeared certain after the Union’s second defeat at Bull Run in the autumn of 1862. Its attempt to defeat the Confederacy had again proved impossible, a truth that seemed obvious to contemporaries three thousand miles across the Atlantic. Surely the Lincoln administration would recognize the futility of continuing a war that could destroy both antagonists . Southern separation posed the only viable alternative to mounting atrocities. From the Times and the Morning Post came appeals to the Palmer t ston ministry to recognize the Confederacy. The Morning Herald expressed d the growing popular sentiment: “Let us do something, as we are Christian men.” Whether “arbitration, intervention, diplomatic action, recognition of the South, remonstrance with the North, friendly interference or forcible pressure of some sort . . . , let us do something to stop this carnage.” The London ministry, indeed, thought the time had come for intervention . “The Federals,” Palmerston observed to Russell, “got a very complete smashing, and it seems not altogether unlikely that still greater disasters await them, and that even Washington or Baltimore may fall into the hands of the Confederates. If this should happen, would it not be time for us to consider whether . . . England and France might not address the contend- 216 Antietam and Emancipation ing parties and recommend an arrangement upon the basis of separation?” If either or both antagonists rejected mediation, the prime minister added, the two European governments should “acknowledge the independence of the South as an established fact.” Russell concurred. If mediation failed, “we ought ourselves to recognize the Southern States as an independent State.” The cabinet should meet in late October to discuss the proposal. Second Bull Run encouraged the Palmerston ministry to consider southern separation as the key to stopping a war that the Union must accept as over. In light of their growing desperation, the prime minister and his foreign secretary refused to believe that Washington had any resiliency left. Palmerston and Russell thus linked either approval or rejection of mediation by the Union with an admission to independence that, by definition, pointed to ultimate recognition of a Confederate nation. Yet the Lincoln administration continued to renounce mediation as an unwarranted interference in American affairs that would prolong the war by holding out the prospect of southern recognition. The British again ignored the Union’s warnings against any kind of intervention and insisted that they sought only to bring the two warring parties to the peace table. But the White House correctly suspected that mediation marked the first step in a process that as a matter of course would lead to a foreign acclamation of separation and then, finally, to recognition. What other outcome could there be once the Union refused a public offer of mediation from one or more European powers that claimed only to want the war to end? Recognition, the Union realized, would open the Confederacy to commercial and even military agreements, making the European nations virtual if not actual allies of the new nation. With the welfare of one or more continental powers then tied to the Confederacy, the peacemakers would be under enormous pressure to use force to end the conflict. These events might have played out in the autumn of 1862, had not Confederate general Robert E. Lee followed his victory at Second Bull Run with a raid into Maryland. Palmerston had accepted the probability of mediation after Second Bull Run, but remained uneasy about the Union’s stubborn insistence on continuing the fight. Consequently, he welcomed Lee’s trek into the north, for it provided the likelihood of more southern victories that would finally convince the Lincoln administration of the hopelessness of its cause. Palmerston wrote Russell: “Though the time for making a communication to the United States is evidently coming, yet perhaps it is partly actually come.” With the two Antietam and Emancipation 217 huge armies approaching each other above Washington, “another great conflict is about to take place” that should put us “in a better State than we now are in, to determine as to our course.” The “northern Fury has not as yet sufficiently spent itself,” but...