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Source: LewRockwell.com
How the British Caused the American Civil War
By Richard Poe | December 31, 2021
"I am the last president of the United States," said James Buchanan on December 20, 1860.
South Carolina had just seceded from the Union. Ten more states would follow.
Source: LewRockwell.com
How the British Caused the American Civil War
By Richard Poe | December 31, 2021
"I am the last president of the United States," said James Buchanan on December 20, 1860.
South Carolina had just seceded from the Union. Ten more states would follow.
Had Buchanan remained in office, there is no question he would have let the South go. The United States would have ceased to exist 160 years ago.
"So what?" some readers may retort. "Buchanan was right. There's nothing sacred about the Union. If states want to secede, let them."
A recent poll by the University of Virginia Center for Politics claims that 41 percent of Biden supporters and 52 percent of Trump supporters now supposedly favor secession.
While these numbers might be exaggerated, the trend is clear.
As tensions rise between "red" and "blue" states, many Americans have come to believe that coexisting with our quarrelsome countrymen is no longer worth the trouble. Many hope that peaceful separation—"national divorce," as they call it—might allow Americans to part ways amicably, without bloodshed.
But will it? History suggests otherwise.
Forgotten History
In 1861, secession did not bring peace. It led directly to civil war.
War came for the same reason it always does, because powerful men wanted it, and stood to gain by it.
An old saying holds that, when two dogs fight, a third dog gets the bone.
In 1861, the third dog was Great Britain.
Britain had a strong interest in breaking up the Union, which she saw as a competitor for global dominance. Britain's plan was to carve up the United States into colonial spheres of influence, to be distributed among the great powers of Europe.
Had the British succeeded, North and South alike would have lost their independence.
This fact—once widely known to Americans—has been wiped from our history books.
Before we rush headlong into Civil War 2.0, it might be wise to relearn the forgotten story of Lincoln's struggle against foreign intervention.
It would be foolish to walk into the same trap twice.
Seward's Call for War
On April 1, 1861, the Civil War had not yet begun. That day, Secretary of State William Seward drafted a memorandum to Lincoln seeking action against "European intervention."
"I would at once demand explanations from France and Spain categorically," Seward wrote. "I would demand explanations from Great Britain and Russia… And if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France, I would convene Congress and declare war against them."
Seward's concerns were legitimate.
Sensing America's weakness, foreign powers had begun challenging the Monroe Doctrine, which forbade European intervention in the Americas.
Spain had begun saber-rattling over its lost colony of Santo Domingo, pointedly increasing its Cuban garrison to 25,000 men. France was applying similar pressure over Haiti.
Meanwhile, British diplomats were working hard to bring Spain, France, and Russia into a coalition strong enough to force Lincoln into recognizing the Confederacy.
These intrigues plainly violated the Monroe Doctrine. But no one cared what America thought anymore. The U.S. was falling apart.
"Our domestic dissensions are producing their natural fruit," wrote The New York Times on March 30, 1861. "The terror of the American name is gone, and the Powers of the Old World are flocking to the feast from which the scream of our eagle had hitherto scared them. We are just beginning to suffer the penalties of being a weak and despised Power."
When Seward wrote his memo to Lincoln, the attack on Fort Sumter was still eleven days away. The first shot of our Civil War had not yet been fired.
Yet, the mightiest powers in Europe were already spoiling for a fight.
Britain was the Ringleader
Great Britain was the driving force behind these plots. The British had been planning America's downfall for years.
England made no secret of her ambitions in North America.
On January 3, 1860, the London Morning Post bluntly called for the restoration of British rule in America.
The Post was known as a mouthpiece for Lord Palmerston, Britain's Prime Minister. Indeed, Palmerston himself was rumored to write unsigned editorials for the paper, now and then.
Should North and South separate, said the Morning Post on January 3, 1860, the colonies of British North America (later combined into the Dominion of Canada) would then "hold the balance of power on the Continent." Canada would find herself in a strong position to annex the quarreling fragments of the former USA.
The first target should be Portland, Maine, the Post suggested. Strategically located at the terminus of Canada's Grand Trunk Railway, Portland harbor provided Canada with vital access to the Atlantic during the winter months, when every port on the St. Lawrence River was frozen.
Why leave such a vital asset in American hands?
"On military, as well as commercial grounds, it is obviously necessary," argued the Morning Post, "that British North America should possess on the Atlantic a port open at all times of year…"
The newspaper recommended that the state of Maine should join the British Empire voluntarily, once the Union collapsed. "[T]he people of that State, with an eye to commercial profit, should offer to annex themselves to Canada," it suggested.
Canada's growing power in a post-U.S. world would soon lead to further annexations, the Post predicted, culminating in what the paper called "the restoration of that influence which more than eighty years ago England was supposed to have lost."
With these words, the Morning Post made clear that it favored a return to British rule in America, of exactly the sort England had enjoyed "more than eighty years ago" (prior to 1780, that is).
Britain's Plan for Proxy War
The threat of reconquest in the Morning Post was not idle.
Indeed, it almost succeeded.
We know from other sources, including diplomatic correspondence, that England planned to use the Confederacy to fight a proxy war against the United States.
When America's strength was spent, Britain and her European allies then intended to demand international mediation to end the war.
If Lincoln refused, the British Navy would break the Union blockade and relieve the South, thus forcing Lincoln to the bargaining table, whether he liked it or not.
The arbitrators would partition the United States into two separate countries, North and South.
Later, they planned to break up the U.S. even further, into four or more mini-states, too weak to resist re-colonization.
British Military Support of the Confederacy
The first step in Britain's plan was to exhaust America's strength through civil war. To accomplish this, Britain became the chief supplier of arms and supplies for the Southern rebels.
On May 13, 1861, Queen Victoria issued a proclamation granting belligerent status to the Confederacy. This meant rebel warships could now operate legally from British ports.
British shipbuilders provided the Confederates with a modern navy. Many of the finest rebel warships were assembled in British shipyards, financed by British bondholders, and, in some cases, manned by British crews.
Confederate raiders paralyzed Union shipping, sinking almost a thousand ships. One raider, the British-built CSS Alabama, destroyed 65 Union merchantmen and warships in a two-year rampage, until she was finally sunk in June, 1864. The Alabama's crew was mostly British.
British technical support also proved vital in building a gunpowder mill in Augusta, Georgia in 1861. It was the only such facility in the South. Without it, the Confederates would have had no powder.
Troop Deployments in Canada
England provided more than just logistical support to the South. She also menaced the North with troop deployments and threats of war.
For instance, in December, 1861, Britain deployed 11,000 troops in Canada, called out the Canadian militia, and made plans for a naval blockade of the northeastern United States, as described in Dean B. Mahin's One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (1999).
The official reason for these preparations was purportedly to retaliate for the so-called Trent Affair, an incident in which a U.S. Navy vessel had boarded a British mail packet in the Caribbean, arresting two Confederate envoys.
However, the Trent Affair merely provided an excuse to roll out existing British plans.
Mahin notes, for example, that British strategists in December, 1861 recommended seizing Portland, Maine, to prevent Union forces from cutting off British access to the port.
As noted above, seizing Portland was an existing British war goal, announced in the London Morning Post nearly two years earlier
Please go to LewRockwell.com to read more.
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Look at this image of Blair. That is the face of a psychopath:
The prince suffers from a rare disease that prevents him from sweating.
Related:
The Venetian Janice-faced liars in the City of London have not forgotten this after the end of the British war against Russia in the Crimean War:
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