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Russia and the American Civil War

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Jane:
Russia definitely played the friendship card with the Union.  In fact, in 1863,  Russia parked two naval fleets in American ports, one in New York, the other in San Francisco.  It wasn't exactly friendship though; Russia was having quite a rocky diplomatic relationship with France and Britain herself and war was not inconceivable.  By having her fleets visit America that winter, Russia ensured that they berthed in ice-free ports for the winter and were had easy access to the seas if war broke out between Russia and another country.

Obviously, the Confederacy never obtained diplomatic recognition.  Confederate leaders overestimated British dependence on Southern cotton.  When the Union blockade started at the beginning of the War, it was ineffective and thin, and not difficult to penetrate.  The South basically withheld its crop and didn't even try to run it to Britain, not realizing that Britain had a pretty good stockpile of prewar cotton (the textile industry may have slowed but it never withered on the vine).  The Confederate government tried to convince British politicians that the Union blockade was illegal, but given that blockades were a wartime strategy even the British loved to use, that dog wasn't going to hunt, if you follow my meaning.  

The British government recognized the blockade was legal and pretty much washed its hands of British blackade runners caught by the Union Navy.  The exception to this was, of course, the Trent affair, when the Union Navy stopped a British ship and captured 2 Confederate diplomats on their way to Britain to again plead for diplomatic recognition. The British felt the seizure of the Trent was a violation of international law and tempers flared.  That was pretty much the most the South ever saw Anglo-Amercian relations totter, but US and Great Brirtain sorted it out and smoothed it over.

Napoleon III tossed around the idea of brokering a armistice with the help of Britain and Russia, but he was clearly insincere about it.  In fact, he took advantage of the distraction caused by the Civil War and installed Maximilan Hapsburg as the puppet emperor in Mexico.  We all know how that turned out.

Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation was purely calculated and a brilliant political strategy.  By making the issue less about Union preservation and all about emanicpation from slavery and the dignity of man, Lincoln basically ensured that no European government would ever recognize the Confederacy.  

edited because I just got back to my desk and realized one should never post without checking for spelling errors.

readabook:
Britain and France had strong colonial ambitions in both the Americas and Eastern Europe. Napoleon had proposed to Great Britain and Austria that the three nations immediately declare war on Russia to hasten the dismemberment of its eastern territories such as Finland, Poland, Latvia, estonia etc. Likewise France was interested in Mexico, and England, who has never gotten over the revolutionary war, had ambitions of their own. . Interestingly as well, there were great European financial powers(rothschilds) at work. Russia refused to let itself be monetarily manipulated by the European banking community. They took no loans, and there was no central bank. And America was in a sense financially independant ruining its own economy with funny money and the like and not waiting for the Europeans to do it to them. So there was an obvious motivation of the bankers to gain influence and control in both these areas as well. There were many motives runnig through the undercurrents. You must remember as well, the 19th century was a time of almost hysterical colonial pursuits. Everybody still wanted more and more territories. It was a frenzy.
   
       Knowing that war was being considered against him, Alexander decided to turn a defensive strategy into an offensive one and threw his lot in with the Union. This deterred an invasion from England and France, because the fact was, if they did invade the U.S, the war in Europe would surely begin, something they weren't prepared to deal with. It was a brilliant strategy.The presence of the Russian navy helped enforce a devastating blockade against the confederate states. In fact no shots were ever fired. Neither England or France wanted a war with the us and Russia at the same time.

    Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamtion was a completely absurd proposition, but a move of political genius. It proclaimed freedom for all slaves in precisely the areas where it could not make its authority effective, and allowed slave states under federal control to continue the practice. The war had nothing to do with slavery, it was a war of economics. Lincoln said that slaves or no slaves was fine with him; whatever it took to keep the union together. That was the issue. Also by shifting the war away from one of simple rebellion and secession into a war of "freedom" and the humanitarian issue of slavery, he gained the international political advantage. It was one thing to support an internal rebellion, it was another to support the cruel and inhumane act of slavery which was being denounced and illegalized all over the world. It was a brilliant political move. Also an unconstitutional one, I might add.

Tsarfan:
Warning:

There's nothing about Russia in this post, so skip it if you don't want the distraction.


--- Quote ---Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamtion was a completely absurd proposition, but a move of political genius. It proclaimed freedom for all slaves in precisely the areas where it could not make its authority effective, and allowed slave states under federal control to continue the practice. The war had nothing to do with slavery, it was a war of economics.

--- End quote ---


Your characterization of the Emancipation Proclamation is correct.  However, while economic tensions were a subtext of the conflict, slavery was very much part of the equation.  The civil war broke out because the art of compromise in U.S. politics suffered a progressive breakdown in the decade preceding hostilities.  And the issue over which compromise began to founder was slavery and each state's right to determine the question in its own territory.

Economics came into play regarding the "southern strategy."  In the early- and mid-nineteenth century, many people thought the U.S.' "natural" direction of expansion was more southward than westward.  The South felt that slave labor would be necessary to put those lands under profitable cultivation.  (Ironically, many economists now feel that slavery was already on a dead-end path as an efficient economic institution by the time the Civil War broke out.)

The fundamental issue for resolving these questions was the definition of the core political unit in the United States.  The South felt the state was the core unit, where ultimate power to determine policy and political affiliation of the state was held.  The North felt that the nation was the primary unit.  In fact, before the Civil War, people used the plural when referring to the United States (as in, "the United States are interested in signing a treaty").  After the war, the singular form replaced the plural (as in, "the United States is interested in signing a treaty).  In short, it was the not the ratification of the Constitution but the Civil War that incontestably defined us as a single nation.

And . . . it was an unconstitutional outcome.  The text of the Constitution, by reserving all power to the states that was not explicitly granted to the central government, was grounded in the Southern viewpoint.  I'm one of those Southerners who is glad the North won the war.  But I must acknoweldge that we only got to the right answer on this question by military conflict, not by the genius of the founding fathers.

readabook:
       While a case can be made that slavery was a huge issue in the war, the fact is that slavery became an issue because of it's economic importance to Southern industry, which I'm sure you know was agrarian while the North was industrial. Without slaves, the South would be industrially insolvent. Many southerners had intentions of turning their plantations into the more profitable industrial ventures of the north, but at that present time they were stuck in a way of life dependant upon slave labor. Without it, it would mean the total destruction of their capital base.
    I would submit that although I agree slavery was a relevant issue of the time in regards to humanitarian principles, the issues of the Civil War had nothing to do with humanitarian principles and everything to do with the preservation of the union and the economics there within.
    The South, being predominantly agricultural, had to import practically all of its manufactured goods from the Northern states or from Europe, both of which reciprocated by providing a market for the south's cotton. Goods from Europe were considerably cheaper than those from the North, even after the cost of shipping and such. Therefore, southern states often purchased goods from Europe, putting considerable competitive pressure on American manufacturers to lower their prices and operate more efficiently.
   The Republicans were not satisfied with that arrangement and used the power of the federal government to tip the scales of competition in their favor. Claiming it was in the national "interest", they levied stiff import duties on almost every item coming from Europe that was manufactured in the North. Not surprisingly, there was no duty applied to cotton, which presumedly, was not a commodity in the national interest. European countries countered by stopping the purchase of U.S cotton, which badly hurt the southern economy. The result was manufacturers in the North were able to charge higher prices without fear of competition, and the South was forced to pay more for the majority of its goods. It was a case of legalized plunder where the North was enriching itself at the expense of the South.
   In the beginning of the war, the North was not doing well, and in the early years, the outcome was far from certain. Numerous defeats and sagging enthusiasm decreased popularity for a war that was initially perceived as a war of business interests, and not of humanitarian principles. That presented two problems for the North.The first was how to get people to fight, and the second was how to get people to pay. Both problems were solved by the simple expediency of violating the Constitution, hence the Emancipation Proclomation. To get people to fight, it was decided to convert the war into an anti-slavery crusade. Preservation of the Union was not enough to fire men's enthusiasm for the war. To make the cause of freedom synonomous with the cause of the North, there was no alternative but to officialy decalre against slavery. After having emphasized over and over again that slavery was not the reason for war, Lincoln later explained why he changed his course and issued the proclomation:
 
  "Things had gone from bad to worse until I felt we had reached the end of our rope on the plan we were pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation proclomation."

   Although there was initial success with this strategy, once the bloodletting ensued, enthusiasm waned, and conscription was invoked on both sides. It is interesting to note that Lincoln not only had the South to deal with, but after conscription was forced, he had mass insurrections in the North as well which led to his yet again unconstitutional move of suspending habeas corpus to quell the rebellions.

kenmore3233:

--- Quote --- On another thread talking about the Alaskan purchase it was mentioned that Russia sided with North during the war. Given that both England and France were very sympathetic with the South for various reasons and that the Crimean war was still in recent memory, was this part of a larger geopolitical power play? I've seen pictures of Russian naval ships visiting New York circa 1863 while to my knowledge no British or French ship ever visited a Southern port.
--- End quote ---


In 1863, Russia itself was on the verge of war with England and France. The Russian government sent its warships to shelter in San Francisco and New York so that they would be in a position to raid English and French shipping in the event that war actually broke out.

It is important to recognize that had the ships remained in their Russian ports, they would have been easily bottled up by the English navy.

And no doubt you are aware that in 1863 England and France were close to entering the American Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. Part of the Russian government's aim then was that the presence of the Russian vessels in American ports might help to incline America into an alliance against England and France.

Russia's tensions with England and France in 1863 stemmed from Russia's suppression of an armed revolt in Poland.

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