Britain’s involvement in the US Civil War

By ⋅ October 28, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment
Play
Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

A long forgotten and controversial part of Britain’s past is being unearthed by an American historian living in London. Tom Sebrell has uncovered evidence of strong support for the southern Confederate states in the Civil War in America. Britain was officially neutral during the war. But Sebrell is now leading walking tours of London that reveal untold stories of Britain’s role. Laura Lynch decided to take the tour for herself. Download MP3


Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. An American historian living in London is stoking a long-dormant controversy. Tom Sebrell is leading walking tours of London that highlight Britain’s strong support for the American south during the US Civil War. It’s controversial because Britain was officially neutral during the war. The World’s Laura Lynch took the tour herself.

LAURA LYNCH:  Right outside the Marble Arch underground station on busy Oxford Street, Tom Sebrell is marshalling the troops. A group of people interested in taking a walk through Britain’s past.

TOM SEBRELL:  We’re going to walk from here to Edgware Road and then when we get to the corner of Edgware Road and Oxford Street, that’s where the tour starts. Alright.

LYNCH: Sebrell stops outside a stately home across the street from Hyde Park.

SEBRELL: This building right here is the first site on the tour. Before we go into the discussion about it I want to talk a little about why there are American Civil War sites in London. Some of you are probably a bit [INDISCERNIBLE] about.. When the war broke out, the Confederacy being a brand new nation realized they had to get foreign recognition in order to win. And that makes sense when you think back to the War of Independence.

LYNCH: Eleven southern, slave-owning states seceded from the United States, the Union, in 1861 and formed the Confederate States of America, “The Confederacy.” The Confederacy came to London, looking for support and it wasn’t hard to find. The British base of operations was here at the home of Sir Alex Beresford-Howe, an author and Conservative politician.

SEBRELL: During the war, Beresford-Howe is going to serve as the chairman of the London branch of the Southern Independence Association and this is their London headquarters.

LYNCH: The Southern Independence Association had branches across Britain, all dedicated to the cause of the confederacy and the break-up of the United States. Their members included much of the aristocracy, driven partly by a desire to secure a steady supply of cotton and partly by a fear that the US was becoming too big, too strong, too fast. Second stop, the home of the Confederacy’s embassy in London. Southern diplomats were very popular here. Sebrell recalls the rock star treatment granted to two of them.

SEBRELL: Now James Murray Mason and John Slidell, they arrive at Southampton and they’re put on the train to London. Immediately upon arriving here they are treated as celebrities and they are taken to Madame Tussauds where wax busts are made for them. God knows where they are now.

LYNCH: Britain was officially neutral. Efforts to push a bill through Parliament forcing the country to officially intervene on the side of the Confederates stalled over the question of slavery. The British had abolished the practice decades before. But Sebrell says that didn’t stop supporters from raising vast amounts of cash through the sale of what was called the Confederate Cotton Bond.

SEBRELL: So the Confederates release the bond in London, Liverpool, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, all those markets. In London and Liverpool it is a huge success from the very beginning and the list of people who subscribe to it is absolutely astonishing. We know for a fact that in the first year of the Cotton Bond being on the London market, it raised over 3 million pounds. Today that is the equivalent of 135 million pounds. So, a lot of money.

LYNCH: The equivalent of 215 million US dollars from, among others, two future Prime Ministers, the money was used to buy weapons, uniforms, even ships. Throughout the war, Abraham Lincoln made use of his own diplomats in London to successfully keep Britain at bay. Today, there’s little recognition of the southern support that swelled here during the war. No plaques or statues of Confederate heroes. Sebrell says Britain simply eradicated that history. For the young Britons on today’s tour, it’s a revelation. Do you think British people know much about what happened here during the Civil War?  Did you know?

BEN: I didn’t now. That’s partly what made me come here. I don’t know many people who know much about the American Civil War, but I just tend to think of it as American’s own business.

CHLOE: I found particularly interesting the Anglo-American dynamics, the relationship within the Civil War. Again, I was quite surprised at the British alliance of the aristocracy with the Americans and, yeah, I didn’t realize there was this much British involvement in the American Civil War.

LYNCH: Tom Sebrell’s tours may not sit well with everyone, especially those who deny there were ever strong pro-south sympathies. But he hopes people will take another look and see that the tension created during the civil war years, suggests the much storied “special relationship” between Britain and the United States of America wasn’t always so close. For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

MULLINS: Tom Sebrell discusses the big money Britain raised for the Confederacy in the US. Watch the video at TheWorld.org.


Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Discussion

7 comments for “Britain’s involvement in the US Civil War”

  • ccairnes

    I’ve recently looked at the role of the Prince of Wales in keeping England neutral during the American Civil War. He was also instrumental in keeping Europe at peace while he was King Edward VII.

  • Jeff Arndt

    It is interesting the support the Confederate States of America had around the world. Canada also had strong support for the CSA. President Jefferson Davis was treated like a hero during his visits to Canada.

  • Jonathan Ryshpan

    I suspect that the American Civil War is not as well known outside of the U.S. as it ought to be, it being the largest and most disastrous war in the European world during the 19th century. A few years ago, I was shown high points of the siege of Dubrovnik by one of the defenders, who told me that he didn’t think there could ever be any kind of trust or good feeling between the various nations of the former Yugoslavia after such an ugly war. When I told him that the U.S. had been put together after a war that produced 600,000 casualties in a nation of about the same population as Yugoslavia, he was taken aback; plainly he knew very little about it.

  • http://www.pri.org Kyle Lerfald

    It certainly isn’t forgotten here in the USA; for instance, just about every book ever written on the Confederate blockade runners mentions they were made and crewed in England. Arms and armor, ships and men. It nearly came to open conflict between the US and UK, but, much like the War of 1812 is taught in US schools, the US Civil War has a lot glazed over it in the UK. It’s a bit like asking the Irish who that “friendly foreign power” is in the 1916 uprising…Kaiser Wilhelm and Germany. I imagine it’s not as happy a fact when set against the background of World War I. Real history can be uncomfortable.

  • gary yurow

    I think it is well known in the states that for commercial reasons -ie cotton -GB was supportive of the South.Also,I believe that Karl Marx was in GB at the time and writing about the war;mostly about the benefits of a northern victory.

    It’s somewhat surprising that Europeans are not well versed on the events surrounding the Civil War, since it is the definative event in American history and maybe in modern history.It set the stage for the end of slavery in the west,progress in democratization,civil rights, and the spread of industrialization.

    Finally,it should be noted that even though GB had abolished slavery in its borders it was quite compicit in the development of the slave trade.

  • Kara Amundson

    I have always enjoyed “The World,” but this story needs some fact-checking. Both Mason and Slidell were received politely, but no one in either Great Britain (Mason) or France (Slidell) had any intention of entertaining their requests for aid. Britain had a large cotton surplus and was in no danger from the blockade; Napolean’s feeble France had more to fear from European powers than a desire to assist its erstwhile revolutionary partner. Meanwhile, what Britain did lack was wheat, which it was buying from the North by the the shipload. The British Foreign Minister (from whom his French partner took his own cue) greeted Mason, “[Your credentials] are unnecessary, since our relations are unofficial.” Lest any of this fail to convince those ardently of the belief that the Brits craved to tear loose from the Union the infant Confederacy, I recommend pp. 135-140 and 220-221 of Vol. I of Shelby Foote’s excellent Civil War trilogy. While some of the British public may have had strong pro-Confederate leanings, official British policy was not–even at the most trying and heated moments.

  • http://deathofsoutherngod.blogspot.com/ Dan Walker

    Don’t worry about Brits who don’t know about the US Civil War, because the dumbest and most misled people on earth about this war, reside in Southern USA.

    I’ve spoken to hundreds of Southern folks, almost all of them consider themselves well read and knowledgable about the Civil War and what led up to it.

    Not ONE Southerner has any idea about the Southern Ultimatums issued by Southern leaders in Montgomery in 1861.

    These were ultimatums issued at the same time, by the same people, that wrote the CSA constitution. These Ultimatums were praised in Southern newspapers with headlines such a “THE TRUE ISSUE!”.

    What was the true issue? What were the Southern Ultimatums?

    This should be easy to answer, for anyone who knew the history. These were the most important points the Southern leaders cared about.

    They were joyously announced, and treated with much fanfare. The South’s founding fathers issued them, after careful deliberation.

    So what were their Ultimatums?

    To spread slavery. That’s right, to spread slavery. Not to protect it where it was, but to spread it.

    The FIRST Ultimatum was a demand — under the threat of war — that the NORTH must push slavery into the territories. Go read their own ultimatums.

    You can get a list from the RIchmond newspapers. But you wont find them in any Southern text book — which means no US text book.

    The Ultimatums were nothing unusual. They were very logical to the Southern leaders. This is exactly what they had been demanding for over a generation.

    The “compromise” of 1820 and 1850 were much the same thing. The South giving an ultimatum to spread slavery. The Compromise is bogus word — this was the Appeasement of 1820, and the Appeasement of 1850.

    Each time the Southern leaders said they would be satisfied. They demanded the spread of slavery into certain areas, and they got it. Each time they later wanted more — came back, made more threats, and got more slavery territory.

    This is exactly what was happening again, in 1861. Not sort of like the same, thing, not kind of like the same thing, this was exactly the same onward expansion of slavery, and to expand it by violence and force, against the will of the people involved.

    So in March of 1861, the Southern leaders thought nothing of once again, issuing threats and demands. Spread slavery into the territories north of the line we said before. Spread it by violence. Spread it by force, but spread it, or face our wrath.

    Go read the Ultimatums yourself.

    Kansas, of course, had just kicked the thugs and terrorist out, who had come to Kansas in the 1850′s to force slavery down the throats of the people in Kansas. Kansas won that war.

    Then in 1860, Kansas voted 98% to 2% to keep slavery out — forever.

    So what did the South do? They did what they always did — demand more slavery.

    The Ultimatums by Southern leaders in March of 1861 were that the NORTH must spread slavery to Kansas, (the territories). Everyone on earth knew that Kansas was violently opposed to slavery.’

    Everyone knew that Kansas just voted overwhelmingly to keep slavery out.

    So if the South ever cared about “states rights” (what a joke) they would respect Kansas rights, right?

    Wrong. In fact, the issued a war ultimatum that the North must make Kansas “accept and RESPECT ” slavery.

    That was the basic of the start of the Civil War.

    The above it the basic history of the South from 1820-1861.

    So come on home from England, learn yourself what the heck you are talking about. Then go pretend you are some sort of exprt.