Inside the Confederate Nation: Essays in Honor of Emory M. Thomas

The Saratoga That Wasn’t: Confederate Recognition and the Effect of Antietam Abroad

THE CAMPAIGN AND BATTLE OF ANTIETAM HAD CONSEQUENCES that reached far beyond the mountains, valleys, and fields of western Maryland where the fighting took place.Indeed the reverberations of this Confederate defeat were heard across the Atlantic in London and Paris. Like the secessionists of 776 who founded the United States, the secessionists of 86 who founded the Confederate States counted on foreign aid to help them win their independence . In the Revolution they got what they hoped for after the battle of Saratoga; French recognition of the fledgling United States and subsequent financial and military support were crucial to American success. In the Civil War southerners failed to achieve foreign recognition, which might have been crucial to Confederate success if it had happened.The outcome of the fighting near Sharpsburg, a Maryland village near Antietam Creek, was the main reason it did not happen; in that respect Antietam could be described as a failed Saratoga. The principal goal of Confederate foreign policy in 862 was to win diplomatic recognition of the new southern nation by foreign powers. Both North and South—one in fear and the other in hope—understood the importance of this matter. As early as May 2, 86, Union secretary of state William H. Seward had instructed the U.S. minister to Britain, Charles Francis Adams, that if Britain extended diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy, “we from that hour, shall cease to be friends and become once more, as we have twice before been forced to be, enemies of Great Britain.” Even if diplomatic recognition did not provoke a third Anglo-American war, southerners expected it to be decisive in their favor. “Foreign recognition The Saratoga That Wasn’t: Confederate Recognition and the Effect of Antietam Abroad JAMES M. MC PHERSON 97 of our independence will go very far towards hastening its recognition by the government of the United States,” declared the Richmond Enquirer in June 862. “Our independence once acknowledged, our adversaries must for very shame disgust themselves with the nonsense about ‘Rebels,’‘Traitors,’&c”and “look upon our Independence . . . as un fait accompli.”Confederate secretary of state Judah F. Benjamin believed that “our recognition would be the signal for the immediate organization of a large and influential party in the Northern States favorable to putting an end to the war.” Moreover “in our Confederate finances at home its effects would be magical, and its collateral advantages would be immeasurable.”2 Benjamin was not just whistling “Dixie.” Judging from the strenuous efforts by Union diplomats to prevent recognition and by the huge volume of Confederate news and editorial coverage of the issue in northern newspapers , foreign recognition of the Confederacy would have been perceived in the North as a grievous and perhaps fatal blow. It would have conferred international legitimacy on the southern nation and produced great pressure on the United States to do the same. It would have boosted southern morale and encouraged foreign investment in Confederate bonds. Recognition would also have enabled the Richmond government to negotiate military and commercial treaties with foreign powers. This question, however, presented the South with something of a catch-22. Although Napoleon III of France wanted to recognize the Confederacy from almost the beginning, he was unwilling to take this step except in tandem with Britain. (All other European powers except perhaps Russia would have followed a British and French lead in that direction.) British policy on recognition of a revolutionary or insurrectionary government was coldly pragmatic. Not until it had proved its capacity to sustain and defend its independence, almost beyond peradventure of doubt, would Britain risk recognition of a new national state. The Confederate hope of course was for help in gaining that independence. Most European observers and statesmen believed in 86 that the Union cause was hopeless. In their view the Lincoln administration could never reestablish control over 750,000 square miles of territory defended by a determined and courageous people. And there was plenty of sentimental sympathy for the Confederacy in Britain, for which the powerful Times of London was the foremost advocate. Many Englishmen professed to disdain the braggadocio and vulgar materialism of money-grubbing Yankees. They projected a conge98 JAMES M. MCPHERSON nial image of the southern gentry that conveniently ignored slavery. Nevertheless the government of Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston was anything but sentimental. It required hard evidence of the Confederacy’s ability to survive, in the...