# Diplomacy of the American Civil War

The diplomacy of the American Civil War involved the relations of the United States and the Confederate States of America with the major world powers during the American Civil War of 1861–1865. The United States prevented other powers from recognizing the Confederacy, which counted heavily on Britain and France to enter the war on its side to maintain their supply of cotton and to weaken a growing opponent. Every nation was officially neutral throughout the war, and none formally recognized the Confederacy.
The major nations all recognized that the Confederacy had certain rights as an organized belligerent. A few nations did take advantage of the war to contest the Monroe Doctrine when the United States was unable to enforce it. Spain annexed the Dominican Republic between 1861 and 1865. More threatening was the Second French intervention in Mexico under Emperor Napoleon III, who installed Maximilian I as a puppet ruler and aimed to negate American influence in Latin America. France encouraged Britain to join in a policy of mediation, suggesting that both recognize the Confederacy, while Abraham Lincoln warned that any such recognition was tantamount to a declaration of war. The British textile industry depended on cotton from the South, but it had stocks to keep the mills operating for a year and, in any case, the industrialists and workers carried little weight in British politics. Knowing a war would cut off vital shipments of American food, wreak havoc on the British merchant fleet, and cause an invasion of Canada, Britain and its powerful Royal Navy refused to join France.
Historians emphasize that Union diplomacy proved generally effective, with expert diplomats handling numerous crises. British leaders had some sympathy for the Confederacy, but were never willing to risk war with the Union. France was even more sympathetic to the Confederacy, but it was threatened by Prussia and would not make a move without full British cooperation. Confederate diplomats were inept, or as one historian put it, "Poorly chosen diplomats produce poor diplomacy." Other countries played a minor role. Russia made a show of support of the Union, but its importance has often been exaggerated.

## United States

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."
The occupation of New Orleans by major general Benjamin Butler in 1862 was a diplomatic liability for the Lincoln administration. Butler ordered to treat women who insulted federal troops "as women of the town plying their avocation", which was denounced by British prime minister Lord Palmerston, and also seized money from the Dutch and French consulates under claims that the funds were for Confederate use. Seward advocated for Butler's recall, and Butler was replaced as military governor by Nathaniel P. Banks.
Another 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. Attempts by the Lincoln administration to join the Paris Declaration then were rejected 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"—that is, European countries had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton. However, this assumption was disproven during the war. Peter Parish argued that southern intellectual and cultural insularity proved fatal:
   For years before the war the South had been building a wall around its perimeter, to protect itself from dangerous agitators and subversive ideas, and now those inside the wall could no longer see over the top, out to what lay beyond.
Once the war began, the Confederacy pinned its hopes on foreign military intervention. However, the United Kingdom was not as dependent on Southern cotton as Confederate leaders believed; it had enough stock to last for over a year and developed alternative sources of cotton, most notably in India and Egypt. Great Britain was unwilling to risk war with the United States to acquire more cotton at the risk of losing large quantities of food imported from the North. Meanwhile, the Confederate national government had lost control of its own foreign policy 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.
The Confederate government sent delegations to Europe but they were ineffective in achieving their diplomatic aims. The first commissioners named by CS President Jefferson Davis on February 1861 were William Lowndes Yancey to France and Britain, Pierre Adolphe Rost to Spain, and Ambrose Dudley Mann to Belgium and the Vatican, with journalist Edwin de Leon as their adviser and chief Confederate propagandist in Europe. Of these, Yancey came to be most identified with the "arrogant demands" of the Confederates in Europe. Later, James Murray Mason went to London and John Slidell to Paris, replacing Yancey. The envoys were unofficially interviewed but couldn't secure diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy.
By early 1862, vice president Alexander H. Stephens and others considered Confederate diplomatic efforts such failures that he suggested withdrawing all agents and representatives from abroad and using the resources on the battlefield. Davis ignored this and appointed Judah P. Benjamin as secretary of state, who worked to forge a closer relationship with France, sell cotton at "remarkably low prices" and engage in arms purchases from French and British suppliers to link their commercial interests more closely with the Confederacy. 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 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.
On December 27, 1864, Davis sent Duncan F. Kenner to Britain and France with a proposal for gradual emancipation as a last-ditch attempt to gain international recognition. 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 Robert M. T. 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

The British cabinet made the major decisions for war and peace and played a cautious hand, realizing the risk it would have on trade. Elite opinion in Britain tended to favor the Confederacy, while public opinion tended to favor the United States. Throughout the war, large-scale trade with the United States continued in both directions legally and illegally respectively. 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%, 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 – and therefore enhance British power – and that the Southern 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 it was too premature to recognize the South as a sovereign state since Washington threatened to treat recognition as a hostile action. Britain depended more on American food imports than 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 the Union would make peace with the South and then invade Canada. He was very pleased with the Confederate victory at Bull Run in July 1861, but 15 months later he wrote that:
   The American War ... has manifestly ceased to have any attainable object as far as the Northerns are concerned, except to get rid of some more thousand troublesome Irish and Germans. It must be owned, however, that the Anglo-Saxon race on both sides have shown courage and endurance highly honourable to their stock.

#### Trent Affair

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:
   It is difficult not to come to the conclusion that the rabid hatred of England which animates the exiled Irishmen who direct almost all the Northern newspapers, will so excite the masses as to make it impossible for Lincoln and Seward to grant our demands; and we must therefore look forward to war as the probable result.
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.
Despite public approval of the seizure, Lincoln recognized that the United States could not afford to fight Britain, and that the modified note could be accepted. The United States released the prisoners to the HMS Rinaldo in January 1862. Palmerston was convinced that the increased troops in Canada persuaded the United States to acquiesce. However, the Lincoln administration did not apologize for the incident, nor forswear similar seizures happening in the future.
The incident delayed Mason and Slidell's mission at a critical time when Europeans were discussing recognition, and by the time they arrived, "the emphasis of Confederate diplomacy had shifted from demands for recognition to denunciations of the blockade, a less effective issue for encouraging international intervention in support of the South". 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 of course 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, but immigrants settled exclusively in the North because of the Union blockade of Southern ports. A minimum of 144,000 Irish-born men, plus 90,000 born in the United States to Irish parents, fought for the Union, compared to an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 of both groups who fought for the Confederacy. Union recruiters were active in Ireland and sometimes employed fraudulent methods such as getting men drunk or luring them to America with false jobs offers before coercing them to sign up for the army. The Irish Catholic Church denounced emigration, and the British government tried to curb it by enforcing the long-ignored Foreign Enlistment Act 1819. In 1863, Judah Benjamin and Jefferson Davis recruited the Irish chaplain of the First Missouri Brigade, John B. Bannon, to join Captain James L. Capston in a propaganda campaign in Ireland that was intended both to dissuade the population from emigrating to America during the war and to promote sympathy for the Confederacy. Bannon was helped by John MacHale, archbishop of Tuam, and John Martin, a Young Irelander critical of Thomas Francis Meagher, the commander of the Irish Brigade of the Union Army.

#### Canada

The Union successfully recruited soldiers in British North America, and local officials tolerated the presence of Confederate agents despite Union protests. These agents planned attacks on U.S. cities and encouraged antiwar sentiment. In late 1864, Bennett H. Young led a small cavalry raid on St. Albans, Vermont, where he robbed three banks of $208,000 and killed one American. The raiders escaped back into Canada where they were arrested, but were released after a court ruled that they had followed military orders and extradition would be a breach of neutrality. The bounty was returned to Vermont.
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

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. The textile industry needed cotton, and Napoleon III had imperial ambitions in Mexico, which could be greatly aided by the Confederacy. The United States had warned that recognition meant war. France was reluctant to act alone without British collaboration, and the British rejected intervention. Napoleon III realized that a war with the U.S. without allies "would spell disaster" for France. On the advice of his two Foreign Ministers Edouard 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 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.
The Confederacy, represented by Pierre Rost in Madrid and Charles J. Helm in Havana, offered a defensive alliance, the withdrawal of any claims over Cuba, and the recognition of the 1861 annexation of the Dominican Republic to Spain. The Union, represented by Carl Schurz and Carolina Coronado's husband Horatio J. Perry, reminded that it had been Southerners who wanted to annex Cuba in the first place, gave Spanish diplomats and attachés unprecedented access to American weapons and military installations (which while appearing amicable, had the true purpose of dissuading Spain from recognizing the Confederacy by showing the strength of the Union), and kept the Union Navy out of Cuban and Dominican waters to prevent naval incidents. The Union protested the Dominican annexation, but didn't recognize the Second Dominican Republic nor support it during the Dominican Restoration War. Nevertheless, fears that the United States would ally with the Dominicans after the Civil War ended had a decisive role in Spain's decision to withdraw from Hispaniola in 1865.
Despite never recognizing its independence, Spain did recognize Confederate belligerency on June 17, 1861. This allowed Confederate ships to use Spanish ports, and Cuba became a crucial base for Confederate blockade runners.
The war and the victory of the Union had an indirect role in the gradual abolition of slavery in the Spanish Caribbean.

### Russia

Russian–Union relations were generally very cooperative. Alone among European powers, Russia offered oratorical support for the Union, largely due to the view that the United States served as a counterbalance to the British Empire. Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom in Russia in 1861 and called for the emancipation of slaves worldwide, including 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 Alexander Nevsky and the other vessels of the Atlantic squadron stayed in American waters for seven months, September 1863 to June 1864. The Russian fleet was particularly appreciated in the thinly populated western states, where French-dominated Mexico was perceived as an additional threat to the Confederates.
In 1863, Russia suppressed a large-scale insurrection in Poland during the January Uprising. Many Polish resistance leaders fled the country, and Confederate agents tried but failed to recruit them to come to America and join the Confederacy.
In 1864, the Russian government rebuffed attempts by the Confederate agent Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar to meet with the Tsar in St. Peterburg.
Negotiations for the purchase of Alaska from Russia started during the Buchanan administration but were suspended during the war. They resumed in 1866 and concluded with the sale of the territory in 1867.

### Netherlands

The Netherlands recognized Confederate belligerency. Due to the lack of Dutch territories in North America, however, this had little consequence. The CSS Alabama was active against American trading ships in the Dutch East Indies and caught prizes off the coasts of Java and Borneo.
Three diplomatic incidents happened during the war. In 1861, the CSS Sumter was allowed in the bays of Willemstad, Curaçao and Paramaribo, Suriname, causing suspicion in the United States government. In May 1862, the Dutch consulate in New Orleans was raided by federal troops and the Dutch government protested. After a federal investigation, all confiscated money and items were returned to the consul. Finally, the Dutch vessel Geziena Hillegonda was seized and auctioned after entering American waters in December 1864. In all three cases, "the U.S. government manifested a desire to satisfy the aggrieved party and maintained cordial relations with the Dutch government."
The Lincoln administration opened negotiations with the Netherlands regarding African American migration to Dutch Surinam. Nothing came of the idea, and after 1864 it was abandoned.

## Latin America
### Mexico

In 1861, Mexican conservatives looked to French leader Napoleon III to abolish the Republic led by liberal President Benito Juárez. The French expected that a Confederate victory would facilitate French economic dominance in Mexico. Napoleon helped the Confederacy by shipping urgently needed supplies through the ports of Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas. The Confederacy itself sought closer relationships with Mexico. Juarez turned them down, but the Confederates worked well with local warlords in northern Mexico, and with the French invaders.
Realizing that Washington could not intervene in Mexico as long as the Confederacy controlled Texas, France invaded Mexico in 1861 and installed Austrian prince Maximilian I of Mexico as its puppet ruler in 1864. Owing to the shared convictions of the democratically elected governments of Juárez and Lincoln, Matías Romero, Juárez's minister to Washington, mobilized support in the U.S. Congress, and raised money, soldiers and ammunition in the United States for the war against Maximilian. Washington repeatedly protested France's violation of the Monroe Doctrine.
Once the Union won the war in spring 1865, the U.S. allowed supporters of Juárez to openly purchase weapons and ammunition and issued stronger warnings to Paris. Washington sent general William Tecumseh Sherman with 50,000 combat veterans to the Mexican border to emphasize that time had run out on the French intervention. Napoleon III had no choice but to withdraw his outnumbered army in disgrace. Emperor Maximilian refused exile and was executed by the Mexican government in 1867.

### Brazil

Though nominally neutral, the Empire of Brazil was an unofficial ally of the Confederacy. Emperor Pedro II extended privileges to Confederate ships, allowing them to secure supplies in Brazilian ports, which aided the Confederate naval effort of raiding Union vessels in the South Atlantic. The imperial government granted the Confederacy belligerent status, refusing demands by the Union to treat Confederate vessels as pirates, and ignored diplomatic protests demanding the forcible removal, by a U.S. warship, of the CSS Sumter at the port of Maranhão on September 6, 1861. Similarly, in 1863 the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, James Watson Webb, exchanged correspondence with the Brazilian foreign minister about two Confederate steamers, the CSS Alabama and the CSS Georgia, that had been receiving provisions and repairs at ports in Pernambuco and Bahia, a situation that Webb described as "a gross breach of neutrality".
The Bahia incident happened on the early morning of October 7, 1864 when the USS Wachusett captured the CSS Florida while both ships were in the harbor for repairs, and after both the Imperial Brazilian Navy and the U.S. consul had warned captain Napoleon Collins not to attack the Florida while in Brazilian waters. Pressured by the Brazilian government, the US Navy court-martialed Collins and agreed to return the Florida to the Confederacy. However, Collins's sentence was never carried out, and the Florida sunk off the coast of Virginia after a suspicious November 28 collision with the United States Army Transport Alliance.
After the war, thousands of Confederates emigrated to Brazil on the invitation of Pedro II and subsidized by the Brazilian government.

### Haiti

Despite sharing trade and informal relations since independence, the United States refused to recognize Haiti as a country for most of the 19th century. The main reason was Southern fears that Haiti would become an example and rallying point for a slave rebellion, as Haiti had originated in one, as well as a refusal to recognize the dignity of any black person as an ambassador.
President Fabre Geffrard invited African Americans to immigrate in 1858, wishing to incorporate American developments in agriculture. In 1861, Frederick Douglass visited the country and spoke favorably of it as a destination for freedmen, but the beginning of the war precluded this. Although thousands had moved successfully to Haiti earlier in the century, the roughly one thousand who moved in this time found conditions much worse than expected, and after suffering from smallpox and yellow fever many returned to the United States.
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. The first appointed Commissioner and Consul General was Benjamin F. Whidden. Trade increased after recognition, and in 1864 the port of Gonaïves alone shipped over 250,000 pounds of cotton to the United States.

## 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. In contrast, the American minister to Japan Robert H. Pruyn told British Captain John Moresby that "we hate England", and "I only hope... to see the day when we shall have settled with the South, and can take England by the throat for all the insults and sneers she has heaped on us", even though the American legations were dependent on British protection against increasing anti-foreign sentiment in Japan, and the British agreed to transport Pruyn between Yokohama and Edo free of charge. 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.

#### Shimonoseki conflict

In parallel, the conflict between the aperturist Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi and the isolationist Sonnō jōi movement reached pre-bellic status by early 1863. In February, the Shogun's minister of foreign affairs told Pruyn that Tokugawa feared civil war; the daimyo of Satsuma and Chōshū were most hostile to foreigners and influencing Emperor Kōmei. When asked about the U.S.'s reaction to war in Japan, Pruyn said that they would support the Shogun in any way they could, and that foreign powers would be justified to act against the hostile daimyo in self-defense. Soon after, the emperor summoned the Shogun to Kyoto for the first time since 1634, where he remained for months, while attacks against foreigners multiplied. On May 25, the American legation in Edo was destroyed by fire. The cause was not identified but the Shogun's representative advised Pruyn to move to Yokohama for his own safety.
Pruyn's request of naval protection from Washington went unheeded, but he got an answer from the USS Wyoming, which had been sent to Asia to pursue the CSS Alabama and was fortuitously in Hong Kong. On June 24, the Shogun, on the order of the emperor, formally demanded all foreigners to leave Japan. However, the Shogun himself opposed the order, and his representative told Pruyn to ignore it, reassuring him that the Shogun would protect the foreign legations until it was rescinded. Nevertheless, Pruyn replied that the order was a breach of the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce and tantamount to a declaration of war.
Two days later, Chōshū forces closed the Shimonoseki Straits to foreign shipping and attacked the American merchant S.S. Pembroke. Pruyn demanded "satisfaction" from the Shogun, saying the incident "if justified by the government, constituted war; if disavowed, were acts of piracy." Without waiting for approval from Washington, the Wyoming sailed to Shimonoseki and on 16 July engaged the daimyo's three ships while under fire from coastal artillery, sinking two and damaging the other, along with one battery, 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."
The action of the Wyoming was immediately dwarfed by the French burning of Shimonoseki on July 24 and by the British bombardment of Kagoshima in August, both in response to Japanese attacks against them. One year later, a fleet of British, French, and Dutch warships, accompanied by one American man-of-war as a sign of support, destroyed Chōshū's military capability at Shimonoseki and forced the daimyo to capitulate. The Shogun was satisfied because, although the foreigners had resorted to violence to defend the treaty rights, it had been against Chōshū, an enemy of the Shogunate, and tacitly in support of the Shogun's own policy. The Japanese accepted the indemnity demanded by the Pembroke (considered excessive even by Pruyn) and paid $12,000 on September 5, 1864.
British and French Marines also occupied Yokohama between 1863 and 1875, further decreasing American influence. To counter this, Fisher requested unsuccessfully that a fleet and marine garrison be stationed at Yokohama, on a par with those maintained by the French and British.

### China

The Qing dynasty had a tangential role in the American Civil War. British shipyards building commerce raiders for the Confederate States Navy often passed them as being built for the Chinese government, which was acquiring Western vessels for the war against the Taiping Rebellion.
In the treaty ports, news and rumors about the Trent affair and Confederate raiders heightened tensions between British and American residents, with some suggesting that they should hoist Taiping banners and raid British ships if war broke out between the two countries. However relations relaxed as time passed and the Taiping became a common threat with their advance on Shanghai. When the USS Wyoming arrived in Hong Kong, it was the American community who suggested that British governor Hercules Robinson deny its entry on the basis of neutrality. However, Robinson argued that the neutral course of action was the opposite, and allowed the ship to dock.
Confederate raiding, coupled with the Taiping takeover of the Yangtze Valley (main area of American trade in China), shot up insurance prices for American shipping to the point that they resorted to sail almost completely under the convenience flags of Portugal, Prussia, and Peru.

### Siam

On February 14, 1861 (during the last month of Buchanan's presidency), King Mongkut of Siam wrote a letter to Buchanan expressing his desire for friendly relations with the country. The letter was accompanied by a photograph of Mongkut with one of his daughters, a sword, and two elephant tusks as diplomatic gifts. In the text, Mongkut mentioned that he had been informed of the introduction of the non-native dromedary camel as a beast of burden used by the United States Camel Corps, and said he was willing to cooperate if the United States wished to do the same with the Asian elephant. Per the proposal, the United States would provide a vessel capable of transporting elephants across the ocean, and Siam would forward one or two pairs of young elephants at a time, which would be released in American forests, allowed to multiply, and subsequently captured to haul cargo in forested areas without roads.
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. Lincoln wrote a reply on February 3, 1862, accepting the gifts on behalf of the American people but politely declining the elephants on the grounds that the geography of the United States was unfavorable for their multiplication, and the steam engine was sufficient to cover its transportation needs. This "humorous event" has been misrepresented in later times as Mongkut offering trained war elephants to be deployed in the American Civil War. 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

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. Myers was a crewman of the CSS Sumter and was traveling to Cádiz, Spain to buy coal after the ship was not allowed to buy any in Gibraltar because of the intervention of the U.S. consul Horatio Sprague (the Sumter had been expelled from Cádiz in January). Tunstall was the U.S. consul in Cádiz until 1861, when he was replaced because of his sympathies for the Confederacy, but he denied being part of the Sumter's crew and claimed to be in Tangier to see a sick friend. The two were held in chains at the American consulate while a crowd of 200 to 400 European residents (about one third of the city's foreign population) gathered outside to demand their release. DeLong justified his actions because the American-Moroccan Treaty of 1836 had given the U.S. "all the privileges which the Consuls of any other Nation enjoy", and the Anglo-Moroccan Treaty of 1856 later allowed the British consul to request Moroccan soldiers to help arrest British subjects on Moroccan soil. On February 26, forty US Marines took the prisoners aboard the USS Ino, and they were imprisoned at Fort Warren, Massachusetts.
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, where 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 anyway. Despite this 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 of the crew had abandoned the Sumter in Gibraltar and boarded the 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 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 left the House of Representatives.

## Other countries
### Papal States

In October 18, 1862 pope Pius IX wrote to the archbishops of New York, John Hughes, and New Orleans, Jean-Marie Odin, "to use every effort to bring about a peaceful solution of the difficulties between the states". Hughes had earlier used his influence to win Irish-American support for the Union, 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 a minor European Catholic nation to follow to follow, and that this would cascade into recognition by France and later Britain. The commissioner to Belgium, Ambrose 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.
While in Rome, Lynch wrote the pamphlet "Letter on domestic slavery in the Confederate States of America", intended to justify Southern slavery for a European secular audience with scientific arguments, not biblical or theological. First published in Italian, the pamphlet was translated to German and French, but not English.

### Prussia

Prussia did not participate in the American Civil War. However, several members of the Prussian military served as officers and enlisted men in both armies, just as had numerous men who had previously emigrated to the United States. Military observers were also sent to North America to observe the tactics of both armies, which were later studied by future military leaders of Prussia and the later unified German Empire.
Prussia recognized Confederate belligerency, but because of the lack of Prussian overseas territories, this meant little.
One effect that Prussia had on the war was the new saddle used by the Union cavalry: Union General George McClellan had studied Prussian saddles and used them as a basis for his McClellan saddle.

### Austria

The Austrian Empire pursued amicable relations with the Union throughout the American Civil War. Reminded of the recent 1848 Revolutions, Austria opposed revolutionary efforts on principle, which drove them away from the Confederacy. The Austrian foreign minister 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 his brother forced him 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.

### Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire strongly favored the Union. It signed a trade deal with the Union and considered Confederate ships as pirate ships, banning them from entering its waters. The Ottoman Empire stood to benefit from the Union's blockade of the Confederate ports, with the cotton industry of the empire (chiefly Egypt) becoming Europe's largest supplier of cotton as a result.

### Italy

The Italian military leader Giuseppe Garibaldi was one of the most famous people in Europe as a proponent of liberty and republican government; he strongly favored the Union. Early in the war, Washington sent a diplomat to invite him to become an American general. Garibaldi declined the offer because he would not be given supreme power over all the armies, and because the United States was not yet committed to abolishing slavery. Historians agree that he was too independent in thought and deed to have worked smoothly with the U.S. government.

## 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:
   The North's victory decisively proved the durability of democratic government. Confederate independence, on the other hand, would have established an American model for reactionary politics and race-based repression that would likely have cast an international shadow into the twentieth century and perhaps beyond.