"Russia's Role in the ACW" Topic

Good article here:

link

Just wondering if our in house experts can expand on/confirm/deny the content?

Thanks.

King Mongkut (Rama IV) of Siam offered to send trained war elephants to aid Lincoln.

Union War Elephants and Camelry. Those should scare that Confederate Cavalry but good!

I have seen the bit about England and France fearing a war with Russia before, but I have never really understood why.

Without a Prussian or Austrian alliance what could Russia do? Glare across Germany? The Russian navy wasn't tiny but could it really pull off a Crimea style landing on the English or French coast? And if England was willing to risk Canada and American trade what was angering the Czar going to add to the mix that made the whole thing undoable?

Cory, I do think that it was principally the recollection of what Yankee privateers had done before to British trade, and would probably do again that kept the British out of our Civil War.

But in regard to Russia, recall that the Crimean War ended only in 1856, and the Russians gave the Allies a run for their money. The Russian navy made an important force booster to the US Navy, especially with Russian fleets stationed in fortified American ports. The Russians could have found a pretext to make war on the Ottomans again, and the British would have had to counter again the Russian threat to Istanbul and the Dardanelles. These points had to be factors in the British decision not to intervene.

nsolomon99 Oddly enough that tidbit was already known to me :)

Thanks all. Good discussion.

The article seems to jibe with this book link
that I am reading now.

Lincoln didn't have any love for the Russians, but it was a marriage of convenience that gave the US a firm European ally. Russia was suspicious of English and French intentions, and didn't want to find her fleets bottled up in case of war.

Zippy, I am skeptical on the added naval force, but you are right, I hadn't considered a renewed Russo-Turkish war with a grab for the Dardanelles while England and France were busy elsewhere.

I am getting rusty, I guess I need to get in some Diplomacy games for a refresher course.

79thPA is close to the mark. The Czar wanted his
fleet disbursed in 'safe' harbors and the relative
warmth of US East coast compared to, for example,
the Baltic (and the ease with which the Baltic could
be blocked) made it attractive.

Too, the USN was stretched very thin until mid-1863,
so a Russian presence, even if only that, was welcome.

The enemy of my enemy etc…

The Russians were basically a paper tiger in the 1860s. 1855 had shown them that their navy was essentially worthless in the defence of their capital – remember the "Crimean" war was decided in the Baltic. Nothing has really changed in a decade other than the French and British navies becoming even stronger. As Dr Andrew Lambert said at a conference I attended in Greenwich all it took was the announcement that a special service squadron was forming to pay a visit to the Baltic to get the Russians to pipe down. I suspect Russian offers in regard to the civil war were an attempt to remain relevant in the modern world more than anything

While I am sure the Russians wanted to be thought of as a force to be reckoned with I think there were also a lot of cooler heads in the UK who did not want war – plus the very large abolitionist movement in the UK wanted the North to win

We have played "what if" games of Russia taking advantage of the Union preoccupation with the Confederacy to invade California. Indian war parties vs. scouting Cossacks….what's not to love? The Russians were turned back at the Battle of San Francisco.

After Union troops including 5th New York was transferred by rail to the Far Western Theater, the Russians were convinced France had entered the war on the side of the Union. Demoralized, the long withdrawal towards Alaska commenced. Retreating through Canada, the remnants of the Russian Force were intercepted by the BIF and destroyed.

Thanks all!

Russia wasn't all that far from India, either.

My understanding is that the Union misinterpreted the Russian move as "active support," when the Russians were really just putting some of their fleet safely out of the Royal Navy's reach, in case of war. This is generally in line with what 79th PA and Ed Mohrmann said already.

Once the Trent Affair passed, and it passed quickly in no small part due to Prince Albert's opposition to Slavery and Queen Victoria's as well, especially after Albert died, Britain's interest in yet another North American War passed quickly. Britain was deeply suspicious (and probably correctly) of French intentions in the Americas. Britain of course had worked so hard for the abolition of slavery that the political will to join the Confederacy just wasn't there. In addition of course there was the fear in Great Britain that any North American War might spread into a World War. The Crimean War had not been a walk over, the Sepoy Mutiny had not been all that long ago. Naturally, while many in Britain would probably have been happy to watch the United States fall apart they generally weren't interested in taking an active part.

Now, while the Russians also weren't all that interested in taking an active part in the war either, the Czar had of course freed the serfs. In addition the Russians feared losing Alaska and what is now British Colombia without any compensation. The Russians knew that the British were wary of Russian attempts to increase their naval strength. Squadrons placed in neutral ports were safe from a preemptive strike.

I don't believe that the Russian Naval presence in the US kept the British out of the war, the fact that the British had little to gain and much to lose did that. But it may very well have been a small reminder of what might have happened.

Rock on my brother! I have been preaching that same point on here for years. There wasn't anyway the British would intervene militarily in the ACW. The best the South could hope for was full recognition and mediation from Britain and that was a long shot. Almost impossible after the Emancipation Proclamation.

The British came close to intervention four times.

In the summer of 1861 they took Seward's words very seriously and expected him to try and force a war with the UK. They considered intervening, but simply sent some reinforcements to Canada as a warning. It worked, Seward was completely rattled by the British show of resolve and stopped trying to revoke a war.

Then in the winter of 61-2 we get Trent, which went so far as to have war orders issued and Lord Lyon under orders to "break off relations" (i.e. effectively declare war) if the US didn't back down.

Then there's the Emancipation Proclamation. The British viewed this as a cynical attempt to forment a servile insurrection and race war, noting the North hadn't emancipated their own slaves. I news of this had reached the UK a month earlier they might have intervened, but due to the coming winter (and the attendant difficulties sending an army to Canada) decided to wait and see.

Finally in July '63 John Roebuck MP submitted a private members bill recognising the CSA (after return from consulting the French emperor), but debate was delayed until news of Lee's defeat at Gettysburg arrived, and Roebuck withdrew it undebated. With the Tories baying at the bit to intervene, and most of the Liberals agreeing (even Cobden and Bright) it is likely a CS victory at Gettysburg would have brought the British and French into the war.

Nobody has mentioned that the Russian fleet in American harbors meant that one chess piece was off the table for the British. Any sudden attack on one of these places might have meant a war with Russia or at least complicated and unpredictable consequences in Europe. Unless they were willing to stir up troubles, it gave the British pause.

67thtigers

What the Confederate government wanted was full recognition and mediation. There was very little chance for direct military intervention from Britain. But if Britain gave the CSA full diplomatic recognition then perhaps the British would pressure the US to end the blockade and perhaps offer mediation to end the conflict. But as you could imagine the Lincoln administration would turn it down and thus would seem to be unreasonable and perhaps a pretext to naval intervention.

The closest to war the US and UK ever got was over the Trent Affair. This resulted in the deployment of 11,000 troops to Canada. The British commander in Canada was asked by a reporter what his plans were to defeat the United States if it came to war? To paraphrase, he replied, he was just hoping to hold onto Canada. The United States was a country on a war footing but had never fully mobilized its potential. Seward suggested going to war with Britain and Lincoln famously replied, "One war at a time…" Lincoln issued an apology and released the Southern Diplomats. The crisis was over.

When word reached Britain that the Union lost another battle at 2nd Manassas, the British cabinet met and the issue of Southern recognition and an offer to mediate between the two sides was brought up for discussion. As with much of history, timing is everything. Word came that Lee had invaded the North. The matter was tabled to see what would come of the Southern invasion. It was never discussed again.

With the Emancipation Proclamation any chance of British intervention was ended. Yes the London papers called it a desperate act and didn't really free any slaves. Antietam wasn't the decisive victory Lincoln had hoped to hang the hat of Emancipation on, but it was close enough.

This changed the focus of the war not just to preserve the Union but to end slavery. Britain had ended slavery throughout most, if not all of its empire. It had a work force which was anti-slavery and pro-free labor. Britain would not side with slavery.

The United States was providing Britain with over 40% of its wheat and corn imports during the war years. Suspension would have caused massive famine because Britain imported about 25-30% of its grain. Poor crops during 1861 and 1862 in France made Britain even more dependent on shiploads from New York.

Furthermore, British banks and financial institutions in the City of London had financed many projects such as railways in Union states. There were fears that war with the Union would result in enormous financial losses as investments were lost and loans defaulted on. Britain's shortage of cotton was partially made up by imports from India and Egypt by 1863.

The Trent Affair led to the Lyons-Seward Treaty of 1862, an agreement to clamp down hard on the Atlantic slave trade, using the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy. In the end no redcoat would set foot on American soil.

There were alternate sources of cotton in Egypt. Much southern cotton was shipped illegally through the blockade with southern people and northern speculators and generals getting most of the profits- little from this to support the rebellion. The English mills did lose much volume of cotton cloth exports, BUT they sold less but at a HIGHER markup and not that much loss in overall profits. Since they were manufacturing in an overproduction supply versus market requirement mode, this did not hurt as much as it might be thought. Lower efficiency mills suffered,,,, so what? The south really didn't think out what the real economic situation was at. They were already close to the BUST of a boom and bust cycle and were too arrogant and stupid to realize it. We shouldn't expect yahoos in the backland plantations to understand that they didn't hold the trump cards they thought that they held.

Lincoln once made a cogent comment about cotton and the blockade to one of his generals (Canby I think), to the effect that the Confederates were only getting out about 1/6 as much cotton as they would without the blockade, but because of the blockade-induced shortage they were still getting about the same amount of $$ for the 1/6 as they normally got for the whole! Which left them free to devote the other 5/6 of cotton-producing land to to other things, like growing food.