Diplomacy of the American Civil War

For decades historians have debated who played the most important roles in shaping Union diplomacy. During the early 20th century, Secretary of State William H. Seward was seen as an Anglophobe who dominated a weak president. Lincoln's reputation was restored by Jay Monaghan who, in 1945, emphasized Lincoln's quiet effectiveness behind the scenes. In 1976, Norman Ferris published a study of Seward's foreign policy, emphasizing his leadership role. Lincoln continues to get high marks for his moral leadership in defining the meaning of the conflict in terms of democracy and freedom. Numerous monographs have highlighted the leadership role of Charles Sumner as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Charles Francis Adams as minister to the Court of St James's (United Kingdom). Historians have studied Washington's team of hard-working diplomats, financiers and spies across Europe. Lincoln's foreign policy was deficient in 1861, and he failed to garner public support in Europe. Diplomats had to explain that the United States was not committed to abolishing slavery, instead appealing to the unconstitutionality of secession. Confederate spokesmen, on the other hand, were much more successful: ignoring slavery and instead focusing on their struggle for liberty, their commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy. Most European leaders were unimpressed with the Union's legal and constitutional arguments and thought it hypocritical that the U.S. should seek to deny to one of its regions the same sort of independence it won from Great Britain some eight decades earlier. Furthermore, since the Union was not committed to ending slavery, it struggled to persuade Europeans (especially Britons) that there was no moral equivalency between the rebels who established the United States in 1776 and the rebels who established the Confederate States in 1861. Even more importantly, the European aristocracy (the dominant factor in every major country) was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had failed. European government leaders welcomed the fragmentation of the ascendant American Republic." A major setback was that the United States had been alone among the world's maritime powers in not joining the 1856 Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law, which banned privateering, established that neutral ships with non-contraband goods were to be free from seizure in wartime, and that a naval blockade had to be effective to be legal (i.e., that a nation declaring a blockade must be able to enforce it in order for it to receive international acceptance). When the war began, the Confederacy commissioned privateers and used neutral ships as runners against the Union blockade of its ports. The Lincoln administration attempted to join the Paris Declaration in 1861 but was rebuffed by Great Britain and France, who accused the Union of trying to use European navies to wage maritime war against the Confederates. ==Confederate States==

Even the most avid promoters of secession had paid little attention to European affairs prior to 1860. The Confederates had for years uncritically assumed that "cotton is king", therefore European countries would have to support the Confederacy's independence to secure their source of cotton. However, this assumption was disproven during the war. Peter Parish argued that southern intellectual and cultural insularity proved fatal: The Confederate government sent delegations to Europe but they were ineffective in achieving their diplomatic aims. The first emissaries (William Lowndes Yancey, Pierre Adolphe Rost, and Ambrose Dudley Mann) were named by the provisional Confederate States Congress before hostilities began, in February 1861, and instructed by secretary of state Robert Toombs to proceed to London, then to the courts of Napoleon III of France, Alexander II of Russia, and Leopold I of Belgium after they had secured British diplomatic recognition. However, the United Kingdom was not as dependent on Southern cotton as believed; it had enough stock to last for over a year and developed alternative sources of cotton, most notably in British India and Ottoman Egypt. Meanwhile, the Confederate national government lost control of this tool when cotton planters, factors, and financiers spontaneously decided to embargo shipments of cotton to Europe in early 1861. It was an enormously expensive mistake, depriving the Confederacy of millions of dollars in cash it would desperately need. None of the early Confederate emissaries had background in diplomatic relations. These Confederate purchasing agents, often working with blockade runners funded by British financiers, were more successful. James Dunwoody Bulloch was the mastermind behind the procurement of warships for the Confederate Navy. Confederate propagandists, especially the former U.S.-appointed diplomats Henry Hotze and James Williams, were partly effective in mobilizing European public opinion. Hotze used liberal arguments of self-determination in favor of national independence, echoing the failed European revolutions of 1848. He also promised that the Confederacy would be a low-tariff nation in contrast to the high-tariff United States and consistently emphasized that the cotton shortages in Britain were caused by the Union blockade of Southern ports. In March 1862 James M. Mason teamed with several British politicians to push the government to ignore the Union blockade. Mason argued that it was only an unenforceable "paper blockade", which violated international law. However, most British politicians rejected this interpretation because it was counter to traditional British views on blockades, which Britain saw as one of its most effective naval weapons, as demonstrated by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In 1863, the House of Commons voted against recognizing the Confederacy. This was followed by a de facto diplomatic crisis that soured Southern relations with Britain, France, and Spain. Benjamin banned foreign residents from communicating with their diplomats in Washington, and all foreign diplomats were expelled from Confederate-held territory in October. The situation was so dismal that even De Leon called for the recall of all Southern agents from Europe. Due to the Union blockade of Southern ports, Kenner was forced to infiltrate Union territory and board a ship in New York City, sailing for Europe on February 11, 1865. When announced, the proposal caused widespread confusion and opposition in the Confederacy, as many, including Hunter and Robert P. Dick, didn't understand the war to be in defense of anything but slavery. Kenner was still trying to get an audience in mid-April, when news of the fall of Richmond reached Europe and he deserted his post. ==Colonial Powers==

United Kingdom , pictured in 1863, was British prime minister throughout the war. The British cabinet made the major decisions for war and peace and played a cautious hand, realizing the risk it would have on trade. Frederick Law Olmsted's book The Cotton Kingdom was published in England and "helped sway British public opinion toward the Union cause". Throughout the war, large-scale trade with the United States continued in both directions, both legally and illegally. The Americans shipped grain to Britain while Britain sent manufactured items and munitions. Immigration continued into the United States as well. British trade with the Confederacy fell by 95 percent, with only a trickle of cotton going to Britain and hundreds of thousands of munitions slipping in by small blockade runners, most of them owned and operated by British interests. Prime Minister Lord Palmerston was sympathetic to the Confederacy. Although a professed opponent of the slave trade and slavery, he held a lifelong hostility towards the United States and believed a dissolution of the Union would weaken the United States – thereby enhancing British power – and that the Confederacy "would afford a valuable and extensive market for British manufactures". Britain issued a proclamation of neutrality on 13 May 1861. The Confederacy was recognized as a belligerent, but not as a sovereign state, since Washington threatened to treat recognition as a hostile action. Britain depended more on American food imports than on Confederate cotton, and a war with the U.S. would not be in Britain's economic interest. Palmerston ordered reinforcements sent to the Province of Canada because he was convinced that the Union would make peace with the South and then invade Canada. He was pleased with the Confederate victory at Bull Run in July 1861, but 15 months later he wrote that: Trent Affair , at right, warns Uncle Sam, "You do what's right, my son, or I'll blow you out of the water." A diplomatic crisis with the United States erupted over the Trent Affair in November 1861. The USS San Jacinto seized the Confederate diplomats James M. Mason and John Slidell from the British steamer RMS Trent. Public opinion in the United States celebrated the capture of the rebel emissaries. The US action provoked outrage in Britain. Palmerston called the action "a declared and gross insult", sent a note insisting on the release of the two diplomats, and ordered 3,000 troops to Canada. In a letter to Queen Victoria on 5 December 1861, he said that if his demands were not met, "Great Britain is in a better state than at any former time to inflict a severe blow upon and to read a lesson to the United States which will not soon be forgotten." In another letter to his Foreign Secretary, he predicted war between Britain and the Union: However, the Queen's husband, Prince Albert, intervened. He worked to have Palmerston's note "toned down" to a demand for an explanation, and apology, for a mistake. However, the Lincoln administration did not apologize for the incident, nor forswear similar seizures happening in the future. In addition, the inability of the CSA to break the blockade or defend its port cities from occupation became a reason for non-intervention. "King Cotton" The British Industrial Revolution was fueled by the expansion of textile production, which in turn was based mostly on cotton imported from the American South. The war cut off supplies, and by 1862, stocks had run out, and imports from Egypt and India could not make up the deficit. There was enormous hardship for the factory owners and especially the unemployed factory workers. The issues facing the British textile industry factored into the debate over intervening on behalf of the Confederacy in order to break the Union blockade and regain access to Southern cotton. Historians continue to be sharply divided on the question of British public opinion. One school argues that the aristocracy favored the Confederacy, while the abolitionist Union was championed by British liberals and radical spokesmen for the working class. An opposing school argues that many British working men—perhaps a majority—were more sympathetic to the Confederate cause. Finally, a third school emphasizes the complexity of the issue and notes that most Britons did not express an opinion on the matter. Local studies have demonstrated that some towns and neighborhoods took one position, while nearby areas took the opposite. The most detailed study by Richard J. M. Blackett, noting that there was enormous variation across Britain, argues that the working class and religious nonconformists were inclined to support the Union, while support for the Confederacy came mostly from conservatives who were opposed to reform movements inside Britain and from high Church Anglicans. Humanitarian intervention The question of British and French intervention was on the agenda in 1862. Palmerston was especially concerned with the economic crisis in the Lancashire textile mills, as the supply of cotton had largely run out and unemployment was soaring. He seriously considered breaking the Union blockade of Southern ports to obtain the cotton. But by this time the United States Navy was large enough to threaten the British merchant fleet, and Canada could be captured easily. A new dimension came when Lincoln announced the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. Many British leaders expected an all-out race war to break out in the American South, with so many tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths that humanitarian intervention was called for to prevent the threatened bloodshed. Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone opened a cabinet debate over whether Britain should intervene. Gladstone had a favorable image of the Confederacy and urged humanitarian intervention because of the staggering death toll, the risk of a race war, and the failure of the Union to achieve decisive military results. In rebuttal, Secretary of War Sir George Cornewall Lewis opposed intervention as a high-risk proposition that could result in massive losses. Furthermore, Palmerston had other concerns, including a crisis concerning King Otto of Greece, in which Russia threatened to take advantage of the weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire. The Cabinet decided that the American situation was less urgent than the need to contain Russian expansion, so it rejected intervention. Palmerston rejected Napoleon III of France's proposal for the two powers to arbitrate the war and ignored all further efforts of the Confederacy to gain British recognition. Blockade runners Several British financiers built and operated most of the blockade runners, spending hundreds of millions of pounds on them. They were staffed by sailors and officers on leave from the Royal Navy and regularly used the British territories of Bahamas, Bermuda, and Nova Scotia as strategic stopovers. When the U.S. Navy captured one of the blockade runners, it sold the ship and cargo as a prize of war for the American sailors, then released the crew. During the war, British blockade runners delivered the Confederacy 60 percent of its weapons, 1/3 of the lead for its bullets, 3/4 of ingredients for its powder, and most of the cloth for its uniforms; this assistance may have lengthened the Civil War by two years and cost 400,000 lives of soldiers and civilians on both sides. CSS Alabama A long-term issue was the British shipyard (John Laird and Sons) building two warships for the Confederacy, notably the CSS Alabama, over vehement protests from the United States government. The controversy was resolved after the war in the Treaty of Washington which included the resolution of the Alabama Claims whereby Britain gave the United States $15.5 million after arbitration by an international tribunal for damages caused by British-built warships. Ireland Millions of Irish people emigrated to the United States during the 19th century, particularly after the Great Famine of 1845-1852. The process continued during the Civil War after crop failures in 1861 and 1862, The St. Albans raid angered Americans. The Irish republicans of the Fenian Brotherhood, many of them veterans of the American Civil War themselves, were permitted to openly organize on U.S. soil and launch several raids into Canada between 1866 and 1871. London formed the Canadian Confederation in 1867, in part as a way to meet the American challenge without relying on support from the British military. Slave trade The British had long pressured the United States to increase their efforts to suppress the transatlantic slave trade, which both nations had abolished in 1807. Pressure from Southern states had neutralized this, but the Lincoln administration was now eager to sign up. In the Lyons–Seward Treaty of 1862, the United States gave Great Britain full authority to crack down on the transatlantic slave trade when carried on by American slave ships. France , unofficial diplomatic agent of the Confederate States of America in France The Second French Empire under Napoleon III remained officially neutral throughout the Civil War and never recognized the Confederate States of America. It did recognize Confederate belligerency on 10 June 1861, one month after Britain. On the advice of his two foreign ministers Édouard de Thouvenel and Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys, Napoleon III adopted a cautious attitude and maintained diplomatically correct relations with Washington. Half the French press favored the Union, while the "imperial" press was more sympathetic to the Confederacy. The public generally ignored the war, showing more interest in Mexico. The Mexican campaign was protested and treated as a hostile act by the Union, while the Confederacy tolerated it in an effort to court French support and recognition. In 1863 Confederate diplomatic efforts moved their focus from Britain to France, with the Union's counter-diplomacy following. Weapons purchases also moved almost exclusively to France after the Union successfully argued in court that Confederate weapons purchases were a breach of British neutrality. Napoleon III's offers to mediate peace between the Union and the Confederacy were angrily rejected by Seward, and by 1864 he lost interest due to the lack of decisive Confederate victories and the outbreaks of the January Uprising and the Second Schleswig War in Europe. Near the end of the war, representatives at the 1865 Hampton Roads Conference briefly discussed a proposal for a north–south reconciliation by a joint action against the French in Mexico. In his reply to a 1866 French request for neutrality, Seward said that French withdrawal should be unconditional, and the French agreed to withdraw from Mexico by 1867. Spain Spain was a target of intense diplomatic efforts by the Union and the Confederacy. At the beginning of the war, both sides believed that Spain was the European country most likely to recognize the Confederacy, due to long poor diplomatic relations with the United States and the persistence of slavery in Spanish Cuba and Puerto Rico. For her part, Spain appreciated that a successful rebellion would reduce American expansionism and allow for the recovery of Spanish influence in Hispanic America, but was reluctant to intervene unilaterally due to long-standing policies of cooperation with Britain and France, and of avoiding conflict with the United States. Despite never recognizing its independence, Spain did recognize Confederate belligerency on June 17, 1861 following Britain and France. This allowed Confederate ships to use Spanish ports, and Cuba became a crucial base for Confederate blockade runners. In 1861, Tsar Alexander II issued the Edict of Emancipation, which abolished serfdom in Russia. He additionally called for the emancipation of slaves worldwide, including in the US South, Brazil, and Cuba. During the winter of 1861–1862, the Imperial Russian Navy sent two fleets to American waters to avoid them getting trapped if a war broke out with Britain and France. Many Americans at the time viewed this as an intervention on behalf of the Union, though some historians deny this. The Atlantic squadron stayed in American waters for seven months, September 1863 to June 1864. The Russian ships were particularly appreciated in the thinly populated western states, where French-dominated Mexico was perceived as a larger threat than the Confederates. In 1864, the Russian government rebuffed attempts by the Confederate agent Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar to meet with the Tsar in St. Peterburg. Netherlands The Netherlands recognized Confederate belligerency. Due to the lack of Dutch territories in North America, however, this had little consequence. CSS Alabama was active against American trading ships in the Dutch East Indies and caught prizes off the coasts of Java and Borneo, which imperiled American trade with China. The Lincoln administration opened negotiations with the Netherlands regarding African American migration to Surinam. Nothing came of the idea, and after 1864 it was abandoned. Portugal Portugal recognized Confederate belligerency. In 1865, the ironclad CSS Stonewall entered Lisbon harbor while being pursued by USS Niagara and USS Sacramento, which couldn't pierce Stonewall's armor. Stonewall was instructed to leave port without delay, and the Union ships to remain east of Belém Tower for 24 hours to ensure that they wouldn't fight while on Portuguese waters. Because Niagara moved while Stonewall was sailing away, the Tower's garrison fired nine shots on Niagara to dissuade it, hitting it twice but causing no casualties. The commander of Niagara, Thomas Craven, claimed that he wasn't trying to pursue Stonewall but merely repositioning the ship within the harbor. The Portuguese government apologized for the incident, giving the U.S. vessel a 21-gun salute and replacing the Tower's commander and governor. ==Latin America==

Mexico Benito Juárez The American Civil War began just after the Reform War ended in Mexico with victory of the liberal president Benito Juárez over the Mexican Conservative Party, which included monarchist elements. Eight days after Juárez entered Mexico City, on January 19, 1861, the Mexican government sent ambassador Matías Romero to Springfield, Illinois where he met president-elect Lincoln with the stated goal of establishing an alliance with the United States as a "sister republic" in the Western Hemisphere. The U. S. government offered to cover the arrearages of the debt, but this was rejected by the allied powers. While remaining neutral in the intervention, the United States reserved their own right to intrude in Mexico if it was necessary to protect U. S. citizens and commercial interests, and placed ships on the Gulf of Mexico to secure trade routes and key ports. After occupying Veracruz, the Spanish and British agreed to withdraw on April 9, 1862 in return for Mexico using 80% of the port's custom revenues to settle the debt. The Confederate States approved the monarchy in hopes that this would gain them French recognition, but Napoleon III remained noncommittal without British support, and in 1864 he vetoed a mutual recognition of the Confederate States and the Second Mexican Empire in order to not drag France into a war with the United States. The United States provided weapons, supplies, hospital care, and volunteers to the republicans. In January 1866, African American troops from Clarksville, Texas raided Bagdad, Tamaulipas and fired on French vessels. After French protest, the Andrew Johnson administration removed Godfrey Weitzel as commander of Clarksville and disciplined the soldiers involved. The French withdrew completely from Mexico on March 12, 1867 and Maximilian was captured by republican forces on May 14. Before French withdrawal, a few hundred ex-Confederates settled the New Virginia Colony in central Mexico, having been invited and offered land grants by Maximilian. The settlers could not bring slaves, as slavery was illegal in Mexico. The vast majority returned to the United States after Juárez's victory, except for a few that went to Brazil, Venezuela, and Jamaica. the Empire of Brazil has been called an unofficial ally of the Confederacy. Uniquely among New World nations, Brazil recognized Confederate belligerency After the war, thousands of ex-Confederates emigrated to Brazil on the invitation of Pedro II and subsidized by the Brazilian government. Though slavery was legal in Brazil, the immigrants were not allowed to bring slaves because their importation from other countries had been banned in 1831. Following the departure of most Southerners from the House of Representatives, the United States recognized Haiti on 5 June 1862. Lincoln hoped that relations with Haiti would entice African Americans to move there, and that this would reduce race tensions in the postwar United States. Cap-Haïtien was the main base of the West India Squadron, a Union flotilla created on September 1862 to hunt Confederate commerce raiders, under command of Charles Wilkes. In May 1865, US Marines landed in Cap-Haïtien to protect the American consulate after revolts against Geffrard began across Haiti. ==Asia and the Pacific==

Hawaii King Kamehameha IV declared Hawaii's neutrality on August 26, 1861. However, many Native Hawaiians and Hawaii-born Americans (mainly descendants of American missionaries), abroad and in the islands, enlisted in the military regiments of various states in the Union and the Confederacy. Many Hawaiians sympathized with the Union because of Hawaii's ties to New England through its missionaries and whaling industries, and the opposition of many to the institution of slavery, which the Constitution of 1852 had officially outlawed. Japan The Tokugawa Shogunate did not participate in the American Civil War. American representation in Japan remained loyal to the Union, and the Confederacy never tried to establish relations with the country. However, the war indirectly affected the fledging relations between Japan, the United States, and European countries. European rivalry According to historian George M. Brooke, the United States was set to play a significant role in the creation of the Imperial Japanese Navy, but the outbreak of the Civil War prevented it, and the Japanese turned to the British Royal Navy for assistance instead. American prestige in Japan, high from the 1853 Perry Expedition and the early arrival of American missionaries, declined in 1862-1863 due to the war straining communications, lack of American military presence in Japan, and Anglo-French threats to recognize the Confederacy, which stoke tensions between Americans and Europeans and were perceived as a weakness by the Japanese. The American consul in Kanagawa, Colonel Fisher, blamed the diplomacy of the French Jesuit Mermet de Cachon the most, perceiving the British as a lesser threat represented only by their global naval and military power. The consul in Hakodate, E.E. Rice, asked for a letter of marque to turn his ship The One into a privateer if war with Britain and France broke out. Pruyn's request of naval protection from Washington went unheeded, but he got an answer from USS Wyoming, which had been sent to Asia to pursue CSS Alabama and was fortuitously in Hong Kong. before retiring due to lacking depth charts of the area. Pruyn reiterated that "the attack on the Pembroke was an act of piracy, which required immediate punishment." In America, the attack was approved by Congress, by Abraham Lincoln in his 1863 Annual Message to Congress (today the State of the Union address), Secretaries of State Seward and of the Navy Gideon Welles, as a vindication of the honor of the American flag and the "enlightened and liberal policy" of the Shogun against "the perverse opposition of the hereditary aristocracy of the Empire". Only decades later, historian Tyler Dennett would rebuke the incident as "un-American when judged by the entire American record in Asia." China British shipyards building commerce raiders for the Confederate States Navy often disguised them as being built for the Qing dynasty, which was acquiring Western vessels for the war against the Taiping Rebellion. Elephants are not true domestic animals because they couldn't be bred in captivity until recently, and the nations of southern Asia were historically dependent on the capture and trade of wild-born elephants for use as work animals. The capture and sale of live elephants to other countries had been a royal monopoly in Siam for centuries before Mongkut's offer was made. Though the letter was given to the American Consul in Siam, no ship was allocated to deliver it directly to Washington, and it was expected to be substantially delayed as it changed ships from port to port. The Camel Corps that prompted Mongkut's offer was abandoned during the war, partly because its main proponent had been Jefferson Davis during his time as Secretary of War in the Pierce administration. ==Africa==

Morocco , USS Kearsarge, and CSS Sumter at Gibraltar in 1862 A crisis comparable to the Trent Affair occurred on February 19, 1862 when the U.S. consul in Tangier, James DeLong, arrested two Southerners, Henry Myers and Thomas Tate Tunstall, after they arrived at the city on the French ship Villa de Malaga. DeLong was assisted by Moroccan guards commanded by the niyaba (foreign minister), Mohammed Bargach. On March 1, DeLong accused the European consuls of stirring up anti-American sentiment and failing to act against an armed mob that had threatened his life and the American legation. Europeans replied that it was a spontaneous, peaceful demonstration, and claimed either that their own nationals had not taken part in the incident, or that they had been removed by their consular authorities. The commander of the Ino, J. P. Creesy, did not mention the crowd having weapons or threatening violence in his description of the incident, only that they cried "freedom" in Spanish (the second language of Tangier) and called Tunstall by his name. The most critical country was France, whose foreign minister Thouvenel complained to the Lincoln administration. He questioned the legality of the arrests, argued that the prisoners were entitled to French protection due to arriving on a French vessel, and thought that Tunstall deserved better treatment due to his status as a former diplomat, legally codified or not. Seward rejected the French points, arguing that Myers and Tunstall lost French protection when they left the ship; the arrests respected the laws of Morocco, where Confederate belligerency was not recognized and they were only U.S. citizens; and European citizens had no right to interfere in the arrests in any case. Notwithstanding the defense of the consul's actions, Lincoln replaced DeLong with Jesse McMath just a few weeks later, and the prisoners were released later in the year. By then, captain Raphael Semmes and most crew had abandoned the Sumter in Gibraltar and boarded CSS Alabama in England. The Makhzen pledged support for the Union in a royal decree. A brother of sultan Muhammad IV of Morocco, Moulay al-'Abbas, said that he wished the United States "victory (victorious as they always are) over those who have rebelled against them". In September 1863, another decree banned all Confederate ships and agents from Moroccan ports, telling the governors of the coastal cities: "If any vessel of the so-called Confederate States of America enters your port, it shall not be received, but you must order it away at once, as they are not allowed entrance, because we do not know them and they have no consul by whom they may be known to us." In appreciation, Lincoln said that he would reconsider renegotiating the unequal treaty with Morocco for another more favorable to the country. Liberia Founded by the American Colonization Society, Liberia had declared independence in 1847 and asked repeatedly to establish foreign relations with the United States. President James K. Polk refused the request, and all his successors before the war declined to respond. As in Haiti's case, American high society was concerned about the consequences of giving their due treatment to a black ambassador and his family. Liberia was finally recognized in 1862, after most Southerners had left the House of Representatives. ==Other countries==

Belgium Belgium recognized Confederate belligerency in 1861. Betraying the secrecy of Sanford's mission, Quiggle wrote to Garibaldi and implied that the Italian would receive supreme command of the Union Army. This idea was confirmed to Garibaldi by Sanford's messenger, Joseph Artomi, before Sanford arrived in Italy and without his knowledge or approval. In reality, Lincoln and Seward only wanted Garibaldi to assume command of the army defending Washington, D.C. from a possible Confederate attack. Others including Enrico Cialdini wanted Garibaldi to fight the brigandage in Southern Italy. while Odin had supported the Confederacy. Father John B. Bannon, a Catholic chaplain in the Confederate army, persuaded Davis to seek recognition from the Papal States as a way to regain the moral high ground after the Emancipation Proclamation. It was hoped that papal recognition might entice some minor European Catholic nation to follow, and that this would cascade into recognition by France and later Britain. A. Dudley Mann met the pope in December 1863 and received a letter addressed to the "Honorable President of the Confederate States of America," which Mann claimed equivalent to diplomatic recognition. However, Judah Benjamin told Mann that it was "a mere inferential recognition, unconnected with political action or the regular establishment of diplomatic relations". On July 4, 1864 Pius IX received Bannon and the archbishop of Charleston Patrick Neeson Lynch, officially not as foreign emissaries but as members of the clergy. The pope said that it was "clear" that North and South were "different nations", but declined to recognize the Confederate government, and said he would not speak in support of slavery if he was called to mediate in the war. He thought that the North's emancipation in a single act was too drastic, but recommended the South to improve the conditions of slaves and work towards gradual emancipation. the Captains Regent of San Marino offered Abraham Lincoln honorary Sammarinese citizenship. The move was intended to affirm San Marino's independence and republican government by allying it to a larger republic, in a time when the annexation of San Marino by the Kingdom of Italy appeared imminent. Garibaldi was granted the same honor in April. Lincoln accepted on May 7, German states Austria The Austrian Empire pursued amicable relations with the Union throughout the American Civil War. Reminded of the 1848 Revolutions, Austria opposed revolutionary efforts on principle, which drove them away from the Confederacy. Foreign minister Bernhard von Rechberg stated three days after the outbreak of the war that "Austria hoped to see the United States reunited since she was not inclined to recognize de facto Governments anywhere." Assuming the war would end shortly, Austria hoped that through a friendly relationship with the Union, the United States would later help them protect their maritime neutral trading rights, which they feared would be violated in the case of a European war. In 1864, Napoleon III installed Archduke Maximilian, brother to the Austrian emperor Francis Joseph I, as emperor of French-controlled Mexico. Austria made efforts to separate itself from the French venture, and when Maximilian assumed the throne he was forced to renounce his claim to the Austrian crown. These actions satisfied Union diplomats, allowing the United States and Austria to maintain friendly relations through the close of the Civil War. Prussia Prussia recognized Confederate belligerency, but because of the lack of Prussian overseas territories, this meant little. Other German states The free cities of Bremen and Hamburg recognized Confederate belligerency. Ottoman Empire The Union established closer relations with the Sublime Porte during the Civil War. Ambassador James Williams, a native of Tennessee, resigned as soon as he knew of the war in early 1861 and became a Confederate propagandist in Britain and France. In May, Seward wrote a letter to the Ottoman government explaining the situation, but Williams's provisional successor, John Porter Brown, censored references to slavery before passing the letter to Mehmed Emin Âli Pasha, preventing frictions because slavery was legal in the empire. The new ambassador, Edward Joy Morris, was appointed in June and proved friendly and effective. Morris was received by the pledge of sultan Abdulaziz, the grand vizier, and other members of the Ottoman government to support the territorial integrity of the United States. Lincoln also wrote a letter of condolences for the recent passing of sultan Abdülmecid I, which was warmly received at the Ottoman court. The Ottomans had imported American cottonseeds and agronomists since the 1840s. This lucrative agriculture expanded in Egypt during the 1850s, but could not compete with the established American cotton in European markets. The situation changed dramatically when the South ordered a cotton embargo at the beginning of the war. In October 1861, the Sublime Porte ordered all provinces to increase cotton production, which went from 15,000 bales in 1861 to 60,000 in 1862. This created an incentive for the Ottomans to declare their respect of the Union blockade and close their own ports to Confederate ships on April 23, 1862, labeling them pirates. Finally, the Ottomans were opposed to any separatist movements in the aftermath of the successful Greek and Serbian Revolutions, and the United States had never been involved in the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which made them not hostile to Turkish interests unlike the European powers. Rather, the undivided United States appeared to be the strong political and economic partner that Ottomans sought outside of Europe. Following a U.S. request, the Ottoman government announced that no more soldiers would be sent to Mexico. The strengthening of American-Ottoman ties culminated with the opening of the first Ottoman embassy in Washington in 1867. However, the Union victory also emboldened the U.S. to intervene in the eastern Mediterranean and pursue the end of slavery there, leading to the first crisis between the two countries when the United States supported the Cretan Revolt in the same year. ==World perspective==

Historian Don H. Doyle has argued that the Union victory had a major impact on the course of world history. The Union victory energized popular democratic forces. A Confederate victory, on the other hand, would have meant a new birth of slavery, not freedom. Historian Fergus Bordewich, following Doyle, argues that: ==See also==