The book The Killer Angles

I don't recall the text of the book, which is an historically unreliable source. However, the Prime Minister of England at that time was Viscount Palmerston, who hated the United States on principle, and was irrationally hateful about Lincoln. He would have liked nothing better than to have intervened. The reality of the day, however, was that England hadn't the naval muscle to have broken the blockade. By 1863, there were roughly two million Americans under arms, about 1.5 mil in the north and occupied portions of the south, and about a half a million in the south. There was no continental army at that time which could have landed a force sufficiently large to have had a serious impact on the war, even without the consideration that by 1863, the United States Navy was larger than any other navy on earth at the time. Southerners had long hoped for European intervention, and Palmerston's attitude (he was never one to keep his mouth shut when there was an opportunity to make a nasty remark) toward the concept of the United States, and the character of Lincoln (a man about whom he knew nothing) were such as to give them false hopes. The primary manufacturing sector in England and France was the textile industry; the working class of the textile mills, many of whom were thrown out of work by the blockade and the consequent lack of southern cotton for those mills, nevertheless idolized Lincoln, and were firmly on the side of the United States.

Freemantle was a military observer--a class of officer notorious for offering useless opinions.

The South hoped that the European powers, especially Britain, would intervene in order to provide the cotton necessary to keep their mills operating. The Union blockade seriously hampered the imporation of municians and supplies needed to fill the shortfall of Southern industrial might. On the other hand, many hoped the blockade would provoke the British into intervention. Hopes rose when a Union vessel stopped, boarded, and removed Confederate diplomats from a British ship on the high seas. The hope for intervention was flawed, as Setanta has already pointed out.

Another factor that Setanta didn't mention was that at the time the "monopoly" on cotton that the South had previously enjoyed was in decline. Egyption and cotton from India were beginning to flow into English mills, and there was eve a bit of a cotton surplus. The English mills hardly stubbed their toes on the loss of Southern cotton. That is not to say that there wasn't some effect, and that there wasn't increased unemployment in the English economy, but that's another and longer story.

Asherman's point about the Trent incident is very much to the point about intervention. Two Confederate agents, Mason and Sliddel, took passage on an English mail packet (small, fast ship with good cargo capacity, frequently used for transatlantic passengers) named Trent. The United States Navy stopped Trent, and took the two men into custody. Palmerston howled, and Lincoln ordered that they be released and put on a boat for England.

Southerners took this as a sign that Lincoln feared English intervention. This was a lack of subtlety in their view. Palmerston was always a bellicose type. His public career began as Secretary of State at War (highest civilian in the Army), and he then held the foreign portfolio in several governments. As foreign secretary, he frequently used "gunboat" diplomacy--i.e., he threatened less powerful states with the Royal Navy. It was not lost on either his political opponents nor the European press that he didn't pull this on the French, the Russians, or anyone else with a powerful fleet. When Trent was stopped, the press in England (largely conservative, and catering to the aristocratic and plutocratic elements of society) raged, and Palmerston rattled his sabre vigorously, but . . . the Royal Navy made no moves to release Trent, nor to challenge the United States Navy anywhere in the world. The U.S. Navy was all over the globe at that time, the newest and fastest warships, while the older and slower maintained the blockade of the South. The best of the Navy cruised the world to find southern blockade runners and commerce raiders. At no time did the Royal Navy interfer or challenge. Palmerston had no more stomach for a real confrontation with the U.S. fleet than he had ever had for any creditable naval force.

In the 1830's, the United States Navy had backed down from the Royal Navy when the nascent republic, Los Estados Unitos del Rio de la Plata (modern Argentina) tried to claim the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, which move U.S. frigates had originally supported. Naval officers with experience in the War of 1812 (such as David Farragut, who would make a name for himself in the Civil War), were humiliated, as were many members of Congress--all of whom vowed "never again." By the 1840's the United States Navy was a match for any single European fleet. When war with Mexico looked certain, English and French squadrons showed up at Vera Cruz, ostensibly to protect their citizens in Mexico, and very likely to attempt to force debt repayment on the Mexicans before the United States put that government out of business. When Scott's expedition headed for Vera Cruz, they were preceded by the Navy, and the English and French quickly weighed anchor and headed for Tampico. The U.S. Navy sent frigates to shadow them, and they left Carribean waters altogether.

In the 1880's, the English Admiralty elucidated their naval policy with regard to other European powers--they codified it has having a fleet equivalent in size to the next two largest European fleets plus ten percent. They never considered the United States Navy in their calculations, for two reasons. The obvious one was that they did not envision fighting the Americans. The other was that it would have been hopeless for them to attempt such a building program--the United States Navy at most times after 1840 has been as large as or larger than the Royal Navy. You'll have to dig to discover this, as English writers certainly don't take notice, and American authors are either ignorant of it, or ignore it.

Southerners thought the incident of Trent and the U.S. Navy showed that English intervention might be possible, and could be effective. They didn't read far enough into it. It demonstrated more than anything else, that the Royal Navy, and no other navy in Europe, was going to be willing to actively interfer with a U.S. Navy which had begun the war as large or larger than any European fleet, and grew during the war at a rate which European naval officers could only envy.