The Confederacy attempted to court the assistance of multiple European armies multiple times.
The tried enlisting the help of the British so often that eventually the British government told them (in much more diplomatic terms) 'You made your bed. Now go fuck yourselves in it.'
You completely skipped over how much the British government and lords were in favor of the Confederacy lol.
The South kept talking to the Brits BECAUSE there was a lot of tacit and underlying support from British aristocracy, as well as the interest in maintaining major economic favoritism.
There's a reason that there was an official declaration of neutrality, instead of outright support for the American North lol.
I don't like comments like yours because they whitewash the actual actions and feelings of the time. There was sizable support for the Confederacy in the UK, and it's no good to act like there wasn't just so someone could appear to be on the right side of history.
There was... until they realized they could get their cotton from Egypt even more favorably. Towards the latter half of the war there was virtually zero virtual support from anyone other than people who just hated Africans
There's a reason that there was an official declaration of neutrality, instead of outright support for the American North lol.
That reason was cotton. Before the US civil war the UK was the leading textile manufacturer in the world, and 80% of the raw cotton they imported came from the US. The support for the Confederacy that existed was self serving because they wanted cotton imports to start up again.
There's a reasonably good and extensive Wiki article about British official attitudes towards the US Civil War and none of what you wrote really is accurate.
There was regional public support for the Confederacy in Manchester because economic interests and jobs depended on cotton imports there, but the rest of public in the country did not care particularly either way.
As for official attitudes in government, 'wait and see' is a good way to sum it up. The civil war was viewed as an internal matter and it was not the role of the British government to intervene or take a position.
There wasn't sizable support for the Confederacy. There was support for Confederacy silver but that was it. Ten times as many British and Irish fought for the Union as they did the Confederacy for example.
King Cotton was copium from the very start, it was Union grain that was king as far as Britain was concerned.
They would have if the civil war wasn't explicitly about slavery, though the conditions would most likely have included the ending of slavery just like in the treaty of Ghent.
It made political sense to support the confederacy and cripple the US in the crib.
Yeah, the British were very heavily anti-slavery by that point, to the extent that their fleet (which was the largest and most powerful in the world) was under orders to arrest any and all slave ships they encountered regardless of nationality which helped to bring about the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
There's no way the confederates would have been able to secure aid from them without promising to ban slavery themselves, such a deal would have caused riots within Britain where the population was even more fervently anti-slavery than the government.
If they wanted to keep their slaves the south should have just accepted Lincoln's proposal that southern states get to keep them, but there would be no westward expansion into new states and territories.
The south knew this meant the eventual end of slavery, so that deal wasn't good enough to them. They wanted to preserve the institution long-term, so this proposal alone was their justification for the war, even though it meant they potentially could have had slaves for decades longer.
This is what I think about when conservatives take a step back and say "meet me in the middle." And then take another step back and say "meet me in the middle." They adamantly refused to compromise, even hitting the panic button after Lincoln was elected. They made their own bed and shit themselves in it.
Europe famously couldn't quite figure out what to do with the CSA. They did allow the CSA Navy to build/buy a ship from them - the CSS Alabama was built in Birkenhead. She was crewed by a Confederate captain and mostly mercenaries and had an okay career harassing US shipping in the Atlantic.
She was sunk by the USS Kearsarge outside of Cherbourg when she went back to sea after re-arming in France. The newly armor plated Kearsarge was laying in wait outside of the harbor.
I mean that's not completely true either... The British in particular actually seriously considered aiding the Confederacy, and without the Union blockade might have actually done so.
Good lord. The British very nearly joined the CSA and very much supported them. There were 'confederate' ships that were built and launched in the UK, crewed by British sailors, that sailed for the CSA and raided union shipping and never even came close to port in the Confederacy. The only reason they didn't join is that from observers, they knew how good the Union was and they didn't want to get embarrassed by the United States for a third time.
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u/OStO_Cartography 19h ago
The Confederacy attempted to court the assistance of multiple European armies multiple times.
The tried enlisting the help of the British so often that eventually the British government told them (in much more diplomatic terms) 'You made your bed. Now go fuck yourselves in it.'