The Implementation of Neutrality

On May 13, 1861, the British cabinet published a proclamation of neutrality accompanied by recognition of Southern belligerency. The French followed suit on June 10, 1861 with a proclamation of neutrality that employed the same cautious language to describe the Southern authority. Instead of taking a stance on the central problem, French Foreign Minister Edouard Thouvenel sought to anticipate the conflict’s damage to French interests in the U.S. However, by keeping an equal distance from both belligerents, France displeased the Lincoln administration, which denied that its enemy had any legitimacy to fight. The legal government remained the one in Washington because the French did not recognize the Confederacy as a state. France therefore maintained diplomatic relations with the Lincoln administration, while French relations with the authorities in Richmond remained unofficial. The Declaration of Paris of April 16, 1856 introduced changes to maritime law. It prohibited privateering, exempted nonbelligerent vessels carrying enemy goods from confiscation, and declared that blockades had to be physically effective in order to be legally binding. Thouvenel found it easier to depart from a strict reading of the Declaration of Paris because the text did not clearly specify any practical arrangements for certifying a blockade’s effectiveness.

The South, a Trade Partner?

Europe’s dependency on North American cotton gave the South leverage. Once hostilities began, the Confederates hoped to inspire a diplomatic choice in their favour through economic pressure since France and Britain felt the effects of the “cotton famine.” The Tuileries cabinet tried to determine the origin of the shortage while assessing the real impact of the crisis on the workforce. Though it initially seemed that the North’s blockade of Southern ports was to blame, proof was uncovered that the cotton supply was being intentionally limited with the Southern leaders’ assent, with some Southern planters burning their cotton rather than see it fall into the hands of Northerners. The effects of the cotton crisis were less dramatic than first expected due to the existence of a cotton surplus in France right before the war, alternate suppliers outside Dixie, and the relatively low number of French workers who were directly dependent on cotton. France also did not lose sight of trade in wheat and other products with the states loyal to the Federal government. This concern for trade in the North explains why France, like the United Kingdom, confounded Southern expectations by not recognizing the Confederacy or otherwise intervening in the conflict.

The Future of the Disunited States

In the summer of 1862, faced with the Southerners’ unexpected resistance and the Union’s failure to make them yield, the Quai d’Orsay briefly envisaged the breakup of the U.S.At the moment the Union appeared most vulnerable to defeat, its existence was seen as essential to a peaceful future for the continent.Henri Mercier was the first to suggest a customs union, two self-governing nations with a common economic market but separate administrations. Thouvenel’s plan for “two federated confederations” proposed a reorganization of the federal framework. For Thouvenel and Drouyn de Lhuys, the future of the U.S. lay in a new union, not a division between two republics.

The Emperor Gets Involved in the War

In defiance of neutrality, because he saw the American Civil War as an opportunity to strengthen France’s position in Mexico and Latin America,Napoleon III pursued a policy openly favourable to the Confederate government: he tried to gain the Confederates a respite from the war via mediation; he twice sought a way to recognize their government; and he wanted to build them ships and buy them maritime weapons. In both 1862 and 1863, Napoleon anticipated victory for the Confederates and wanted to support them with a diplomatic decision.However, Napoleon had to reckon with the resolute opposition of Foreign Minister Eduouard Thouvenel and his successor Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys, who regularly thwarted Napoleon’s plans. The Rappahanock affair was perhaps the peak of these convoluted negotiations. The Confederate envoys understood that there was no consensus in the French government on the position to adopt toward the South. As they attentively followed the exercise of French diplomacy, they saw that it was possible to draw actors into the opposition, to hamper the foreign minister’s efforts by encouraging his colleagues to contradict him, or even to appeal to the emperor and his entourage to achieve their ends.

Conclusion

The imperial government was able to focus solely on French national interests in determining its policy on the American crisis, without taking into account public opinion, because the antidemocratic nature of the Second Empire meant that decision-makers discussed external affairs in the closed sphere of the Quai d’Orsay or the Tuileries Palace. To determine its course of action during the American Civil War, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs therefore relied solely on its assessment of how France could best benefit from the situation created by the crisis, a judgment that it based on the dispatches of its diplomats and consuls. No advantage could be gained from a division of the Union; no valid reason could prompt the French Foreign Ministry to side with the states in rebellion. While Napoleon III hoped for a victory for the secessionists in order to further his own “grand design” in Mexico, he had to revise his American policy under the influence of his foreign ministers, who made him realize that France would not benefit from U.S. dismemberment. Nonintervention prevailed, revealing the powers of persuasion of Thouvenel and Drouyn de Lhuys.

The Imbalance of Power

From the start of the war, the French agents in the U.S. saw the North’s demographic, economic, financial, and technological superiority. However, faced with the staunch determination of the enemy troops, the Union’s military superiority remained in question. French Consul Alfred Paul in Richmond aptly predicted from the beginning that war was inevitable, as was a Union victory. His analysis shaped the view of the Tuileries cabinet on the overall military situation. The imperial government considered that the South’s chances of winning its independence depended on the Federal government’s either backing out in the face of the rebels’ prodigious efforts or being rejected through the ballot box. Paris realized the extent of the North’s potential when Lincoln’s persistence in the war was rewarded with electoral triumph, strengthening his administration.

The Weight of the “Peculiar Institution” in Diplomatic Relations

In France, slavery had been abolished in 1848 by the provisional government of the Second Republic. To the informed public, the slave system in the American South appeared both an anachronistic relic and an absurdity because it limited the region’s economic potential. But given French confusion over the exact part slavery played in triggering the war, the difficulty many anticipated with sudden mass abolition, and its relatively low position on the scale of French concerns, “the peculiar institution” did little to penalize the rebel states. In fact. the French government treated slavery as a marginal issue that could on no account steer or determine its diplomatic policy. While, as Lincoln foresaw, Great Britain was apt to be influenced by the Emancipation Proclamation, in France the diplomatic choice was unfettered by moral considerations. This does not mean that slavery was completely absent from the French diplomatic position. The liberal opposition in France tried to draw a parallel between the violation of slaves’ rights and the repression of freedom in France. By refraining from satisfying the Confederates’ requests, Napoleon III protected the credibility of his own venture. His restraint in the American Civil War gained him allies at home.

Introduction

During the American Civil War, European powers understood that the weakening of the United States was likely to affect the geopolitical balance of the world at large. Napoleon III saw the American war as an opportunity for France to regain international influence in the world. The United States featured prominently in Napoleon’s concerns but low in his affections, for after America’s war with Mexico, Napoleon sought to stem U.S. expansion to protect imperial regimes and preserve Catholicism and the Latin world from the Anglo-Saxons. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the French government’s first concern was to find legal responses to various situations. Diplomatic recognition, which the Confederacy sought, was the central question for France’s policy toward America. France had to consider the intrinsic nature of the new republic, its viability, its compatibility with the French agenda in Mexico, its trade arrangements, the disappearance of the Union, and French relations with Washington.

Napoléon III’s “Grand Design” and the Confederacy

In 1862, Napoleon III sent an expeditionary force to occupy Mexico with the aim of establishing a Latin and Catholic empire in the region as part of his “Grand Design” for the Americas. The American Civil War served Napoleon’s purposes in many ways. First, the division of the Union neutralized the U.S. by rendering it unable to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Second, the location of the new Confederacy, interposed between the Lincoln government and the Rio Grande, would protect Mexican interests. Third, faced with this interference in Mexican affairs, the insurgents showed their support for Napoleon’s enterprise. From the very start of the war, the Confederates and their sympathizers tried to cast themselves out as the natural allies of Napoleon’s new Mexican regime, but the French had their doubts about the sincerity of the South’s support. Until the eve of secession, Southern nationalism was reflected by an unremitting desire for conquest in the Caribbean, Mexico, or Central America. To the Quai d’Orsay, a Confederate victory would signal the resumption of Southern conquests to fuel a slave empire. At the same time, Maximilian, the new emperor of Mexico set up by Napoleon, preferred to remain neutral and keep his distance from the Confederacy.

Myth and Reality

Southern propagandists hoped to rally the French to their cause by using the memory of French Louisiana. In particular, they highlighed the North’s refusal to let its rival leave the federation, recalled the South’s adherence to free trade, used the principle of national self-determination to present the South’s struggle as that of an emerging nation supressed by the North, and painted a picture of an aristocratic Dixie of European culture and customs. As a result, Napoleon III, much of his court, and many of the French elite sympathized with the South. Yet difficulties for the French in the Confederate Stateseventually turned French favour against the South. Southern restriction of business activity, the burning of French-owned tobacco fields, the forced conscription of French nationals, as well as diplomatic blunders by Confederate officials and the increasing authoritarianism of the Confederate government all helped turn the tide of opinion. In addition, the French consuls’ dispatches depicted a very negative image of the Southern elite. The French reactions of astonishment, dismay, and indignation at Lincoln’s death are proof that the vision of a pro-Southern France should be qualified.