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

CHAPTER 8. Union-Confederate Crisis over Intervention

253 c ha p t e r 8 Union-Confederate Crisis over Intervention [Union refusal of an armistice would provide] good reason for recognition and perhaps for more active intervention. Napoleon III — , October 28, 1862 Can nothing be done to stop this dreadful war? Alexander Gorchakov — , October 29, 1862 v v Was there ever any war so horrible? Lord John Russell — , November 1, 1862 This destructive and hopeless war [has to end]. William E. Gladstone — , November 27, 1862 If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it. Abraham Lincoln — , December 16, 1862 European interest in intervention remained very much alive by the autumn of 1862. From their vantage point thousands of miles away, the British, French, Russians, Belgians, and others on the Continent had become increasingly concerned about the American struggle, hoping to see an end to the fighting before it endangered onlooking nations and required direct intervention. The American battlefield, it seemed clear after Antietam, would not determine a winner; rather, it promised endless carnage as both antagonists stubbornly fought on, each side resolved to grind out an ultimate victory that rested on virtual annihilation of the other’s forces. The dictates of civilization and the principles of international law condoned an intervention when an ongoing war threatened the belligerents’ neighbors. But the Union viscerally rejected 254 Union-Confederate Crisis any form of outside involvement as a challenge to its integrity and pledged war on the intruders. Furthermore, to step in at this point in the stalemated fighting would be tantamount to extending recognition to the Confederacy, allying with a slaveholding people, and deciding the war’s outcome. The entire matter was ridden with complexities that baffled the strategists and political leaders, along with the learned philosophers and scholars, the hardline veteran warriors, the commercial magnates, the concerned civilians, and the workforce now beginning to suffer on a broad scale in the Old World’s manufacturing districts. Russell’s waning hopes for intervention jumped dramatically in late October 1862, when Napoleon III took the lead in proposing a joint mediation based on an armistice. This was not his first attempt to sell this idea; he had suggested it to Slidell a few months earlier and had received a favorable reception . The emperor’s ongoing problems with Italy had eased, allowing him to focus on domestic economic issues and to assuage a swelling national sentiment for southerners as victims of northern aggression. Russell welcomed the offer, although fully aware of the risks attached to working with the imperious leader. Further encouragement came from Washington, where Stuart reported both Russian and French interest. Stoeckl had conceded that intervention might become “useful” if the Peace Democrats won the congressional elections in November. Mercier felt optimistic about securing a peace after talking with leaders of both political parties in New York. Democrats in the state favored a mediation that did not stipulate a gradual end to slavery. Stuart thought Mercier “rather too anxious to precipitate matters” but held high hopes for Democrat Horatio Seymour in New York’s gubernatorial contest, confident that such a high-profile victory would intensify the movement toward mediation. A special emissary from Europe should come to America to extend recognition as the way to end the war. “If independence has ever been nobly fought for and deserved,” Stuart sighed, “it has been so in the case of the Confederacy.” Mercier concurred but expressed concern about antiBritish sentiment in the United States. Stoeckl, the French minister warned, might suggest a Franco-Russian mediation that ostensibly aimed to relieve this ill feeling but also drove a wedge between England and France. For that reason, Mercier insisted that all three powers make the proposal. Stuart had inaccurately gauged the Russian position. In late October 1862, Bayard Taylor, famous traveler and lecturer and secretary to Union minister Union-Confederate Crisis 255 Simon Cameron in St. Petersburg, met with Gorchakov and found him anxious to see the war end. The Russian foreign minister assured his country’s friendship but thought “the chances of preserving the Union were growing more and more desperate.” He then asked in exasperation, “Can nothing be done to stop this dreadful war?” The Union had “few friends among the Powers. England rejoices over what is happening to you: she longs and prays for your overthrow.” France “is not your friend. Russia, alone, has stood by you from the first, and will continue to stand...