The
Lincoln administration entertained many outright fictions from its
peculiar ten-percent of a State’s population (in areas occupied by
Northern troops) able to establish a new “Vichy” government; creating
the new State of West Virginia without the consent of the State in which
the area resided; to claiming that its war against the South was waged
against mere domestic insurgents and not belligerents entitled to
recognition and trade with foreign powers. After the war, the US
government pursued claims against England for trading with the
insurgents.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Mr. Seward’s Threadbare Compliant of British Recognition:
“After
sketching the origin of what he calls the “domestic insurrection,” Mr.
[Hamilton] Fish [in 1870] says: -- “In such a contest [as the War
Between the States], the Government of the United States was entitled to
expect the earnest goodwill, sympathy and moral support of Great
Britain.”
After expressing the “painful astonishment” which the manifest
absence of that sympathy produced, Mr. Fish gives an elaborate
rechauffee of Mr. [William] Seward’s complaints against Great Britain,
beginning with the allegation that the Declaration of Neutrality and the
admission of the South to belligerent rights were premature and
unfriendly to the United States, that they gave encouragement to the
“insurgents,” and enabled them to prolong the contest…..
But
Lord Clarendon, in his answer, gave some additional reasons why the
complaint was in itself unreasonable, and why the grounds upon which it
was advanced is untenable...
Lord
Clarendon said that at the time when the Queen was advised to issue the
Proclamation of Neutrality, hostilities had actually begun, that the
Confederate States had established a defacto Government, with all the
machinery of civil and military power; that Fort Sumter had fallen, and
the Confederate troops were in occupation of the Shenandoah valley, and
were threatening Washington; that the Confederate President had called
for a levy of 32,000 troops, to which the seceded States had promptly
responded; that the Federal President had called for 75,000 volunteers,
and then for 42,000 more; that as fast as the regiments could be armed
they marched to the defence of Washington, and that the contending
armies were, indeed, “face to face.”
In respect to the operations at sea, he said that “on the 17th
of April the Confederate President had issued a Proclamation offering
to grant letters of marque, and two days after the Federal President had
declared the Southern ports to be in a state of blockade; that one or
more British ships had actually been captured while attempting to run
the blockade; that Confederate privateers were already at sea; that one
had been captured on the 8th of May by the [US] ship Harriet
Lane; that a few days after the American barque Ocean Eagle, of
Rockland, Maine, was captured by the Confederate privateer Calhoun, of
New Orleans, and that at the same port the Sumter was fitting out for
her cruise.
Lord
Clarendon especially drew attention to the following facts: He said: --
“Mr Seward, writing at the time, and previously to the Queen’s
Proclamation” (May 4), “characterized the proceedings of the
Confederates as “open, flagrant, deadly war,” and as “civil war.”
(Congress Papers, 1861, p. 165); It was also judicially decided by the
Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of the Amy Warwick and
other prizes, that “the proclamation of blockade was in itself official
and conclusive evidence that a state of war existed which demanded and
authorized such a measure.”
In
view of the foregoing, Lord Clarendon said: -- “The date at which the
Civil War actually commenced has, therefore, been fixed by the published
dispatches of the Secretary of State, by proceedings in Congress, by
the formal judgment of the United States prize-courts, as well as by the
universal assent of all the neutral Powers concerned, and he expresses a
very justifiable surprise that Mr. Seward’s threadbare complaint of
British Recognition of an accomplished and admitted fact should be
revived four years after the close of the war.”
(The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe, James D. Bulloch, Volume II, Sagamore Press, 1959, pp. 368-370)
