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10 Cooperation to End the Slave Trade and Promote Commercial Expansion Cooperation overseas was one of the new shapes of the British-American relationship that continued in spite of the Civil War. There were two primary regions of cooperation away from the battlefields that conditioned how Britain and the Union thought about the fighting. First, behind the refusal of Britain and the United States to fight over some reason connected to the battlefield tensions and potential rivalries on the high seas was the agreement that a free society allowed for the realization of a nation’s true productive powers. In addition to its intrinsic wrongs, slavery barred modernization and had to be removed. Slavery’s inhumanity enabled European leaders to help Lincoln realize that he had to abolish slavery for his war goals to be understood abroad, and emancipation of African Americans in areas of the South not held by Union armies convinced the Europeans that his goals were honorable. He agreed with Seward that to avoid violence and to maintain his political majority he had to wait for emancipation until 863. Second, emancipation occurred at the same time Britain and the United States were continuing their antebellum cooperation to expand overseas commerce. The continuation of their informal partnership in the Far East echoed their cooperation to stop the slave trade. Historians of Civil War diplomacy have generally overlooked this dimension of the British-American Civil War relationship. One reason that the partnership to end slavery did not occur in the first two years of the Civil War was Lincoln’s refusal to act decisively on the question. European leaders could not understand his position on slavery. Watching a Europe that was breaking up into new nations, the British and French believed that the Confederacy was another example of liberal nationalism. Russell and Gladstone thus had a hard time understanding that the Union was fighting for its freedom. Britain was moving its colonies to independence, and the Liberals believed that the Union cause was imperialistic. They did not appreciate Lincoln’s tenet that freedom and slavery could not coexist under the U.S. Constitution. After the autumn of 86 Lincoln tried to allay European suspicions that the Union was fighting a 207 208 caution and cooperation selfish, imperialistic war.¹ He made emancipation a predominant war aim because he agreed with the extreme abolitionists, whose power was growing in Washington throughout the second half of 862, that to cement good feelings with Britain he had to make a strong statement about obliterating slavery. Unionist antislavery actions occurred first in the late summer and fall of 86. In early August Congress passed the Confiscation Act to seize property—including slaves—that aided Rebel war efforts. In September, minister to Spain Carl Schurz, a German refugee from the revolutions of 848, persuaded Lincoln to include slavery in his justifications for the war effort to Europe against the South. Early in 862 Schurz returned from Spain and recommended that Lincoln block European intervention with an emancipation proclamation. Lincoln responded, “You may be right. Probably you are. I have been thinking so myself. I cannot imagine that any European power would dare to recognize and aid the Southern Confederacy if it became clear that the Confederacy stands for slavery and the Union for freedom.” At the same time, the son of former king Louis Philippe of France, the Prince de Joinville, prodded Lincoln on emancipation. Joinville’s plan aided Lincoln’s gradual emancipation plan to arrest the chances of a bloody slave insurrection that frightened the Europeans. Joinville remarked that the feelings of repugnance for a slave state kept the Europeans from intervention, but they could not understand why Lincoln delayed. Lincoln was also prompted by news from Charles Francis Adams that Mason and Slidell were hinting about the South’s willingness to approve gradual emancipation in return for recognition. Adams thought they were creating a deception and believed it was serious enough to merit countermeasures to extinguish Russell’s perception that the North was fighting an imperialistic war. In response, the president did what he felt he could safely do without arousing the Democrats and others who did not want a war on slavery. Lincoln’s antislavery actions made a difference over the next several months. On 6 April 862, representatives of the British Anti-Slavery Society met with Adams to praise the Federals for opposing slavery.² Since the war was not going well, Lincoln was...

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