International Reaction

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward

William H. Seward

Richard Cobden

Richard Cobden

After the draft emancipation proclamation was released in September 1862, New York Evening Post Editor William Cullen Bryant editorialized: “Its puts us right before Europe….It brings back our traditions; it animates our soldiers with the same spirit which led our forefathers to victory under Washington; they are fighting today, as the Revolutionary patriots fought, in the interests of the human race….”1

Journalist Noah Brooks observed: “The people of foreign countries, especially of England, poured across the Atlantic their congratulations that slavery was at last abolished in the Republic of the United States. Lincoln had been assured by many of the more advanced Republicans who were nearest him, that the British Government would cordially respond to this declaration of universal freedom. In this he was disappointed. Lord John Russell, who, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was the official mouthpiece of the British Government in Matters outside of the kingdom, in a despatch to the British Minister at Washington, mildly sneered at the proclamation as ‘a measure of a very questionable kind,’ ‘an act of vengeance on the slaveowner.'”2

Long before President Lincoln issued the Draft Emancipation Proclamation, Secretary of State William H. Seward was concerned about its impact on foreign governments. He saw it as a two-edged sword which could help but also hurt the Lincoln Administration’s diplomatic efforts. When in mid-July 1862 President Lincoln submitted to Congress draft legislation on compensated emancipation, Seward sent out Mr. Lincoln’s text to his embassies in Europe with a note that “there is no reasonable doubt that the policy involved cannot be long in winning the favor of the country, and in assuring the stability of the Union.”3 Historian Burton J. Hendrick wrote:

Seward did indeed show interest from the standpoint of foreign relations, but in a way precisely opposed to Lincoln’s intention. The Secretary of State at first deprecated emancipation on the strange ground that it would injure our standing in Europe. The universal dislike of slavery that prevailed on the Continent he disregarded. Seward believed that the one and only interest Britain and France had in the contest was a material one. In their eyes – so he insisted – the United States was important only as a source of cotton; for these nations there were no principles involved; anything that increased the supply of this essential material would receive their approval and anything that diminished it would arouse their hostility. Emancipation, in Lincoln’s view, would destroy the Southern labor system, and thus would be an excellent thing; Seward agreed that it would handicap Southern agriculture, and for that very reason he looked upon it unfavorably. The British governing classes and their commercial and financial allies hated the North, above all, because the war, by depriving their spindles of cotton, had created vast unemployment and put millions of people on public relief; the Proclamation would make conditions worse, and still further stimulate the demand for recognition. Two days after Lincoln submitted his original paper, Seward wrote John Lothrop Motley, minister to Austria, inquiring: ‘Are you sure that today, under the seductions and pressures that could be applied to some European powers, they would not rise up and resist an attempt to bestow freedom upon the laborers whose capacity to supply cotton and open a market for European fabrics depends, or is thought to depend, upon their continuance in bondage?’ Motley’s almost thunderous negation, ‘A thousand times No1’ was evidently not exactly the response which Seward had expected to elicit.”4

Noted historian Dean B. Mahin, “European opinion on the American conflict was divided mainly along ideological lines. Henry Sanford, U.S. minister in Brussels, wrote in 1864 that the opinions of most European newspapers on the American war depended on the ideology of the political parties or factions that supported them:

The deep interest with which our struggle is regarded in Europe, both by the party of liberal progress and those hostile to it, becomes every day more apparent….The former see in our success the vindication of the principles they profess….Their opponents…seem to dread our success as likely to prepare the way for trouble and revolutions in Europe…and think no effort should be spared to avert it, hence the bitter, unscrupulous, and mendacious course which their organs in the public press have pursued toward us.”5

Historian Mahin noted, for example, that: “The Emancipation contributed to warmer U.S.-Dutch relations, and Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg restored U.S. military prestige. Sarcastic and insulting remarks about the United States disappeared from the Dutch press, and Dutch bankers began to buy U.S. bonds.”6 Similarly in Switzerland, “by 1863 the ‘croaking ravens’ had been silenced by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.”7

Historian Bruce Tap wrote that U.S. Minister to Spain Carl Schurz “told Secretary of State Seward that Europe regarded the war as proof that democratic institutions could not work. Most Europeans, Schurz continued, believed that slavery had caused the war and understandably thought ‘that the destruction of slavery was to be the avowed object of the policy of our government, and that the war would be nothing else than a grand uprising of the popular conscience in favor of a great humanitarian principle.’ Since the administration spurned such an interpretation, Schurz observed the cause of the North perplexed Europeans and generated little sympathy.”8

The Lincoln Administration hoped that foreign governments would react favorable to the Emancipation Proclamation. In a memorandum on July 22, Secretary of War Stanton recorded: “Seward argues: That foreign nations will intervene to prevent the abolition of slavery for the sake of cotton. Argues in a long speech against its immediate promulgation. Wants to wait for troops. Wants Halleck here. Wants drum and fife and public spirit. We break out relations with foreign nations and the production of cotton for sixty years.”9 William H. Seward biographer Frederic Bancroft wrote: “The aim that was uppermost in Seward’s mind at this time was to ward off European interference by persuading Great Britain and France that the sufferings caused by the lack of cotton would not continue long if these powers should cease giving encouragement to the Confederacy. More than once he had recently warned them that otherwise a service insurrection, and a consequent cessation in the production of cotton, would result from the prolongation of the war. It alarmed Seward to think that the course proposed might put an end to the extensive slave-labor in the Confederacy, and perhaps bring on a negro insurrection – either of which could have been used as a plausible excuse for intervention. As Secretary of State, it was natural that he should regard the foreign relations of the country – then so critical – as of first importance. He was also very impatient with what he regarded as an irrational clamor for making emancipation, instead of national integrity, the object of the war.”10

There was trouble brewing for the Lincoln Administration in England in the summer of 1862. “As early as the 6th of August [Foreign Minister John] Russell made a rather vague suggestion to [Prime Minister Henry] Palmerston that ‘some move’ in the American war should be made by October. No overt action was taken, however, until the 13th of September, after news had arrived of the disastrous Northern defeat at Manassas and Lee’s invasion of Maryland. On that day Russell instructed the English ambassador in Paris to privately sound Thouvenel, the French Foreign Minister, on the possibility of join intervention. Soon after, Russell and Palmerston agreed that if the North refused mediation on the basis of a permanent separation, the next step should be recognition of the Confederacy. Palmerston, however, was more cautious than Russell, and suggested including Russia in the proposed overture to the belligerents, thinking this might made the North more willing to accept,” wrote historian Martin Duberman, biographer of Charles Francis Adams.11

Historian Burton J. Hendrick wrote: “The foreign situation, in the summer and fall of 1862, had reached a critical stage. Confederate recognition by Great Britain and France was assuming more ominous proportions every day. Lincoln’s declaration to Horace Greeley that he was waging war not to end slavery, but to save the Union, gave the English supporters of the South a powerful argument. The masses in both Britain and France had sympathized with the North chiefly because they hated slavery. But, Confederate apologists in England and France urged, Lincoln, according to his own declaration, was fighting not for freedom of the black but for power – not to end an abominable social evil, but to secure the dominance of the North. Gladstone advocated, practically openly, the admission of the ‘nation’ that Jefferson Davis had made to fellowship with Great Britain; Russell, the Foreign Secretary, as his correspondence with Palmerston shows, had settled his mind on recognition. Emancipation, Lincoln knew, would end this agitation at once and forever make its renewal impossible.”12

“On September 24 Palmerston informed Gladstone of Russell’s support for a meditation proposal that included the participation of France and Russia. Whether or not they accepted the invitation to join, the settlement would rest on an armistice that required the Union to lift the blockade and enter negotiations based on souther separation.” wrote historian Howard Jones.13 The Emancipation Proclamation disrailed such mediation attempts. Allan Nevins wrote: “The threat of intervention was averted, in the first instance, by the realism of British leadership. It was not ended by the stubborn stand of Lancashire workers; courageous as they were, they had no great political power. It was not ended by [Richard] Cobden or [John] Bright. It was not ended by the Emancipation Proclamation, for the decision was taken when that edict was new and was regarded dubiously in wide British circles. What ended it was Palmerston’s circumspect common sense, George Cornwall Lewis’ brilliant analysis of what interference would mean, the blunt opposition of Milner Gibson and the Duke of Argyll, and the Ministry’s wholesome fear of middle-class opinion.”14

“The British cabinet met to consider mediation before the Antietam dispatches arrived in England. Blustering Palmerston, timid at heart, insisted that action be delayed. Wait, he cautioned, until full reports were in,” wrote Lincoln chronicler Jay Monaghan. “On September 25, 1862, he wrote Russell that it was tantamount to recognition of the Confederacy. He said further that it would be well to ask Russia to join them. ‘Her participation in the offer might render the North the more willing to accept it.'”15

But the intervention that the Palmerston government had planned collapsed by mid-November. Other forces had come into play. Historian Duberman wrote: “The news of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had led by the fall of 1862 to a sharp – and this time more enduring – rise in sympathy with the North. In the fact of this change it would have proved difficult in the future – even had the Ministry so desired – seriously to consider interfering with the American conflict.”16 British legislator John Bright wrote to the American Counsel at Liverpool, John Haines Dudley: “The Proclamation is a grand move, not too soon, not too late in my opinion. It must have a good effect here in putting your enemies more and more in the wrong.” He added: “Don’t be too unhappy about English opinion – there will be a reaction – and it is what you do in America, and not what people think here that will decide the contest.”17

Historian John Hope Franklin wrote: “The preliminary Proclamation, despite this critical reaction, captured the imagination of workingmen in many parts of the world who viewed it as a great humanitarian document, and whenever slaves learned of it they laid down their tools and took on the mantle of their newly-found freedom. By the end of December, 1862, the suspense attending the final Proclamation was so great that even before it was read it had assumed the significance of one of the great documents of all times.”18 Charles Francis Adams, the U.S. Minister in England, wrote home that the Emancipation Proclamation “has rallied all the sympathies of the working classes…and has produced meetings the like of which, I am told, have not been seen since the days of the corn laws.”19 Several months later, Adams’ aide and son, Henry Adams, wrote: “The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us here than all our former victories and all our diplomacy. It is creating an almost convulsive reaction in our favor all over this country. The London Times is furious and scolds like a drunken drab. Certain it is, however, that public opinion is very deeply stirred here and finds expression in meetings, addresses to President Lincoln, deputations to us, standing committees to agitate the subject and to affect opinion, and all the other symptoms of a great popular movement peculiarly unpleasant to the upper classes here because it rests on the spontaneous action of the laboring classes.”20

After the draft Proclamation, the London Times had editorialized: “Where he has no power Mr. LINCOLN will set the negroes free; where he regains power he will consider them as slaves. ‘Come to me,’ he cries to the insurgent planters, ‘and I will preserve your rights as slaveholders; but set me still at defiance, and I will wrap myself in virtue and take the sword of freedom in my hand, and, instead of aiding you to oppress, I will champion the rights of humanity. Here are whips for you who are loyal; go forth and flog or sell your black chattels as you please. Here are torches and knives of employment against you are disloyal; I will press them into every black hand, and teach their use.’ Little Delaware, with her 2,000 slaves, shall still be protected in her loyal tyranny. Maryland, with her 90,000 slaves, shall ‘freely accept or freely reject’ any project for either gradual or immediate abolition; but if Mississippi and South Carolina, where the slaves rather outnumber the masters, do not repent, and receive from Mr. LINCOLN a licence to trade in human flesh, that human flesh shall be adopted by Mr. LINCOLN as the agent of his vengeance. The position is peculiar for a mere layman. Mr. LINCOLN, by this proclamation, constitutes himself a sort of moral American Pope. He claims to sell indulgences to own votaries, and he offers them with full hands to all who will fall down and worship him. It is his to bind, and it is his to loose. His decree of emancipation is to go into remote States, where his temporal power cannot be made manifest, and where no stars and stripes are to be seen; and in those distant swamps he is, by a sort of Yankee excommunication, to lay the land under a slavery interdict.”21

In mid-September, Seward told John Hay that American “foreign affairs are very much confused. He acknowledged himself a little saddened.”22According to Bancroft: “Just a week after this Cabinet discussion of July 22d, Seward explained in a letter to his wife how a proclamation of emancipation would then do no good, but much harm, and added: ‘Proclamations are paper, without the support of armies. It is mournful to see that a great nation shrinks from a war it has accepted, and insists on adopting proclamations, when it is asked for force. The Chinese do it without success.’ For several weeks, at least, he continued to be opposed to the plan decided upon, and felt a lingering contempt for what must have seemed to him like extravagant buncombe. This is shown in his sarcastic remark to the Secretary of the Treasury early in September: ‘He said,’ Chase records in his diary, ‘some one had proposed that the President should issue a proclamation, on the [expected] invasion of Pennsylvania [by Lee], freeing all the apprentices of that state, or with some similar object.’ No wonder Chase thought ‘the jest ill-timed.’ A Washington despatch in the New York Times of September 27, 1862, said: ‘Secretary Seward has all along been known to be unfavorable to the act [of proclaiming emancipation], though not as outspoken in his opposition as Secretary Blair.'”23

Historian James M. McPherson wrote: “The battle of Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation had a signal impact abroad. Only two days before the first news of Antietam arrived in London, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Prime Minister Palmerston’s’s son-in-law, told Confederate envoys John Slidell and James Mason that ‘the event you so strongly desire,’ a British-French offer of mediation and diplomatic recognition, ‘is very close at hand.’ But the news of Union victories in Maryland came as ‘a bitter draught and a stunning blow’ to friends of the Confederacy in Britain, wrote the secretary of the American legation. ‘They express as much chagrin as if they themselves had been defeated.'”24 Reaction was not as positive as the Lincoln Administration hoped, according to Lincoln biographer Isaac Arnold:

“While congratulations came pouring in upon the President from the people of Great Britain, Lincoln rather expected that now the government of good old Mother England would pat him on the head and express its approval. Senator Sumner, whose social relations with many English members of Parliament had been most friendly and cordial, said to the President: ‘The British government cannot fail to hail your proclamation with fraternal congratulations. Great Britain, whose poets and whose orators have long boasted that ‘Slaves cannot breathe in England,’will welcome the edict of freedom with expressions of approval and good will;’ yet when the proclamation reached London, Lord John Russell, in a dispatch to the British minister at Washington, sneered at the paper ‘as a measure of a very questionable kind,’ ‘an act of vengeance on the slave owner.’ ‘It professes,’ said he, with cynical ill-nature, ‘it does not more than profess, to emancipate slaves, where the United States authorities cannot make emancipation a reality but emancipates no one where the decree can be carried into effect.” Yet, without the good wishes of his lordship, or encouragement from the English government, the United States did make emancipation eventually a reality, and Lord Russell lived to see the decree of Mr. Lincoln carried into effect to the extent of freeing every slave in the republic. But for this result no thanks to him or to the government of which he was the organ.25

In England where public opinion was split between a pro-Confederate aristocracy and a pro-Union working class, the Emancipation proclamation had the most profound effect – even though it was not immediately obvious in government policy. Henry Adams, the son of the U.S. Minister to London, wrote: “The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us here than all our former victories and all our diplomacy. It is creating an almost convulsive reaction in our favor all over this country….Public opinion is very deeply stirred and finds expression in meetings, addresses to President Lincoln, deputations to us, standing committees to agitate the subject and to affect opinion, and all the other symptoms of a great popular movement peculiarly unpleasant to the upper classes here because it rests on the spontaneous action of the laboring classes.”26 Prior to the issue of the draft Emancipation Proclamation, there was strong pressure in England to intervene in the American conflict – either through mediation or through recognition of the Confederacy. There were strong economic reasons for doing so since the British textile industry had been crippled by the embargos on American cotton. The working classes who supported emancipation were the same English citizens who had been most injured by the Civil War.

Historian Dean B. Mahin wrote that President Lincoln’s “hopes for the international benefits of the proclamation have been overlooked by most historians. One exception was Princeton professor Woodrow Wilson, who wrote in 1893 that Lincoln hoped that proclamation would ‘imperatively prevent that foreign recognition of the Southern Confederacy which he dreaded.”27 Historian James M. McPherson wrote: “The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation further eroded the Confederacy’s chances for diplomatic recognition – though at first it seemed to have the contrary effect. The American minister to France warned Seward to expect ‘the most mischievous efforts’ by Confederate sympathizers ‘to pervert and misconstrue the motives which have prompted the proclamation.’ Anti-American conservatives in Britain and France, and even some liberals, professed to see the Proclamation not as a genuine antislavery act but as a cynical attempt to defect European opinion or as a desperate effort to encourage a slave insurrection. If Lincoln really wanted to free the slaves, they asked, why did he announce that the Proclamation would apply to states where he had no power and exempt those where he did? The Proclamation was ‘cold’ vindictive, and entirely political,’ wrote the British chargé d’affaires in Washington. Lord Russell, who had earlier censured the Lincoln admiration for not acting against slavery, now perversely pronounced the preliminary Proclamation a vile encouragement to ‘acts of plunder, of incendiarism, and of revenge.”28

Historian McPherson wrote: “But Antietam did not cool the ardor of Russell and Gladstone for recognition [of the Confederacy]. They persisted in bringing the matter before the cabinet on October 28, despite Palmerston’s repeated insistence that matters had changed since mid-September, ‘when the Confederates seemed to be carrying all before them….I am very much come back to our original view that we must continue merely to be lookers-on till the war shall have taken a more decided turn.” The cabinet voted Russell and Gladstone down.”29

Foreign Minister Earl Russell wrote the British Minister in America: “The Proclamation professes to emancipate all slaves in places where the United States authorities cannot exercise any jurisdiction nor make emancipation a reality; but it does not decree emancipation of slaves in any States or parts of States occupied by federal troops….There seems to be no declaration of a principle adverse to slavery in this Proclamation. It is a measure of war of a very questionable kind. As President Lincoln has twice appealed to the judgment of mankind, in his Proclamation, I venture to say I do not think it can or ought to satisfy the friends of abolition, who look for total and impartial freedom for the slave, and not for vengeance on the slave owner.”30

According to Albert A. Woldman, author of Lincoln and the Russians,”In a lengthy report to St. Petersburg shortly after Lincoln issue the preliminary Proclamation, [Russian Minister to Washington Edward] Stoeckl charged that radical Republican leaders had forced Lincoln into this extreme measure in a desperate effort to maintain their waning political powers. ‘Their program called for immediate and unconditional emancipation; the army of the slaves against their masters; the confiscation of all property belonging to the insurgents; and finally the inauguration in the North of a reign of terror to silence the protests of the timid conservatives.”31 Other European responses included:

  • Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi: “Prosperity to you, Abraham Lincoln, pilot of liberty; hail to all you who for two years have fought and died around her regenerating banner; weal to you, redeemed sons of Ham – the free men of Italy kiss the glorious marks of your chains.”32
  • Lord Russell in letter to British Minister Lyons in Washington: “The proclamation professes to emancipate all slaves in places where the United States authorities cannot exercise any jurisdiction or make emancipation a reality; but it does not decree emancipation of slaves in states or parts of States occupied by federal troops….There seems to be no declaration of a principle adverse to slavery in this proclamation. It is a measure of war of a very questionable kind.”33
  • Russian Minister Baron Stoeckl: “Whatever it may be, the President’s act is untimely and unwise. The course which Mr. Lincoln should have taken in the present difficulty was to have complied with the will of the people, the vast majority of whom are conservative, and who while desiring emancipation, want to achieve it in such a manner as to avert a servile war. Several well-intentioned leaders have counseled the President to take this step. Unfortunately, he adopted an entirely different course of action and yielded to the radicals who today are the masters of the situation. They will not stop with the recent Proclamation. They will demand the dismissal of all Cabinet officers and all army commanders who do not share their radical views. Mr. Lincoln will be forced to submit to all their wishes, even to his own abdication, for which the radicals have already formulated secret schemes.”34

In the summer and fall of 1862, a number of anti-slavery, pro-Union groups developed in England, according to R J. M. Blackett in Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War. They included the Committee on Correspondence with America on Slavery, London Emancipation Society and the Union and Emancipation Society.35 Historian Blackett wrote that the Union and Emancipation Society “was launched following a massive meeting at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester on the last day of 1862. Arranged to coincide with the implementation of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the meeting was meant to demonstrate the depth of working-class support for the maintenance of the Union and for the president’s antislavery policies. Resolutions were adopted that condemned slavery as a violation of all principles of liberty and praised that condemned slavery as a violation of all principles of liberty and praised Lincoln for his efforts to keep the Union together. In an address to Lincoln, the meeting assured the president, “[I]f you have any ill-wishers here…they are chiefly those who oppose liberty at home.”36

According to Jay Monaghan: “in England, as the day approached for Lincoln’s decision, British opinion marked time. Would Lincoln be afraid to sign the momentous order? John Bright spoke to his constituents on December 18, 1862. He pleaded for the Northern Cause but did not mention the proclamation. Lincoln might fail! Two meetings of idealists decided that Lincoln would not let them down. They risked making themselves the laughingstock of all Europe by passing resolutions on December 31, 1862, congratulating Lincoln for signing the death warrant for the institution of slavery. One meeting was organized in London by the Emancipation Society. The Principal speaker was Newman Hall. The other meeting, held in Manchester, was more informal – almost a spontaneous congregation of working people, with no prearranged chairman. The mayor was prevailed upon to act unofficially. A letter from John Stuart Mill was read. The press noted one M.P.. Obviously few ‘respectable’ people were present.”37

Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner took an active role in trying to rally British sentiment in favor of emancipation and against intervention. Biographer Moorfield Storey wrote that “Sumner constantly corresponded with his English friends, impressing them with the fixed resolution of the North to restore the Union, no matter at what cost of civil or foreign war; insisting that England could not, upon moral grounds, throw her weight for slavery, and in every way endeavoring to prevent war. In Washington he was in constant consultation with the President and Seward, in touch with each difficulty as it arose, and while his efforts were not known to the public they were of the greatest value.”38

Jay Monaghan wrote of the reaction in England to the issuance of Final Proclamation: “The first newspapers from abroad carried accounts of the growing importance of the Emancipation Proclamation. The bad news had not yet reached England. Everywhere, so the papers said, public meetings were being held. A good half of the journals had come out for the Northern cause. Richard Cobden noticed ‘the great rush of the people to all public meetings,’ and pronounced it an excellent example of Englishmen’s sympathy for ‘personal freedom.’ John Bright said that every meeting in the kingdom would vote overwhelmingly in favor of Abraham Lincoln. Philosophical professional men addressed eager audiences. So did liberal university professors, leaders of the Manchester school, and lawyers who had no economic stake in the South. Professor Goldwin Smith, unhappy liberal from conservative Oxford, wrote Does the Bible Sanction American Slavery? The professor was carried away with the possible opportunities of democracy. He lectured on the war and planed visiting America to converse with the democratic demigod, Abraham Lincoln himself.”39

Monaghan wrote: “Lincoln learned that many of the antislavery meetings were spontaneous. [Charles Francis] Adams wrote that he had taken pains to have no part in them. ‘The smallest suspicion of my agency would do more harm than good.’ Consul Morse wrote that the meetings had cost him ‘much labor & some money…but I think both have been well spent & are producing results far better than [I] had any reason to hope.’ Many of the meetings were arranged by the emancipation societies. Furthermore these organizations had begun to contain the names of prominent people on their rosters. Cardinal Newman’s brother, Francis William Newman, author of The Good Cause of President Lincoln, was a member of the London Emancipation Society. In Newman’s pamphlet English readers learned why the South suppressed freedom of speech and the press. The poor whites must not know that they were being degraded by slavery. Other prominent people joined the Emancipation Society rolls. John Stuart Mill added his illustrious name but lamented that ‘the very best people’ were disappointed by the vulgar tone of American politics- ‘and all the more so because it is the likeness of what we may be coming to ourselves.'”40

On April 1863, President Lincoln drafted a resolution to be adopted, he hoped, by mass meetings in England. He gave it to Charles Sumner to send to John Bright, one of the Lincoln Administration’s most prominent British sympathizers: “Whereas, while heretofore, States, and Nations, have tolerated slavery,recently, for the first time in the world, an attempt had been made to construct a new Nation, upon the basis of, and with the primary, and fundamental object to maintain, enlarge, and perpetuate human slavery, therefore,

“Resolved, That no such embryo State should ever be recognized by, or admitted into, the family of Christian and civilized nations; and that all Christian and civilized men everywhere should, by all lawful means, resist to the utmost, such recognition.”41


Even after the final Emancipation Proclamation was issued, the fight for the hearts and minds of Europeans continued.


Footnotes

  1. Oliver Carlson, The Man Who Made News: James Gordon Bennett, p. 351.
  2. Noah Brooks, Abraham Lincoln: The Nation’s Leader in the Great Struggle through which was Maintained the Existence of the United States, p. 310-311.
  3. Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward, Volume II, p. 333.
  4. Burton J. Hendrick, Lincoln’s War Cabinet, p. 360-361.
  5. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War, p. 197-198.
  6. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War, p. 205.
  7. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War, p. 207.
  8. Bruce Tap, Over Lincoln’s Shoulder: The Committee on the Conduct of the War, p. 20.
  9. Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward, Volume II, p. 333.
  10. Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward, Volume II, p. 334-335.
  11. Martin Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1866, p. 294.
  12. Burton J. Hendrick, Lincoln’s War Cabinet, p. 354.
  13. Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom, p. 103.
  14. Allan Nevins, The War for the Union: War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863, p. 273.
  15. Jay Monaghan, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs, p. 252.
  16. Martin Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1866, p. 298.
  17. David Hepburn Milton, Lincoln’s Spymaster: Thomas Haines Dudley and the Liverpool Network, (Letter from John Bright to Thomas Haines Dudley, October 18, 1862).
  18. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, p. 283.
  19. Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, p. 360.
  20. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie and War Years, p. 347.
  21. Herbert Mitgang, editor, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait, p. 320-321 (London Times, October 7, 1862).
  22. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, editor, Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 40 (mid-September, 1862).
  23. Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward, Volume II, p. 335.
  24. James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, p. 141.
  25. Isaac N. Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 268-269.
  26. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War, p. 139-140.
  27. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War, p. 131.
  28. James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, p. 143.
  29. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 794-795.
  30. Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, p. 180-181.
  31. Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, p. 182.
  32. Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, p. 182.
  33. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Volume I, (Lord Russell to Lyons, January 17, 1863).
  34. Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, p. 184.
  35. R. J. M. Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War, p. 75.
  36. R. J. M. Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War, p. 81.
  37. Jay Monaghan, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs, p. 271.
  38. Moorfield Storey, Charles Sumner, p. 243.
  39. Jay Monaghan, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs, p. 279-280.
  40. Jay Monaghan, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs, p. 280.
  41. Roy P. Basler, editor, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume VI, p. 176.