When the Confederacy seceded from the Union shortly after the election of Abraham Lincoln, they hoped to quickly win their independence in a short war. But they also held what they hoped was an ace up their sleeve; they believed their cotton trade made it paramount for European nations to recognize the Confederacy if not intervene in its favor. Lincoln and the North also was aware of the precarious status with Great Britain, and the relationship was quickly tested by the “Trent Affair”, which featured the arrest of Confederate diplomats after Union forces boarded a British ship.

 

During the first half of the Civil War, both sides played a game of cat and mouse hoping to curry favor with Great Britain. Ephraim Douglass Adams (1865–1865) was an American educator who became an associate professor of history around the end of the 20th century. From that position he wrote his two-volume history of Great Britain and the American Civil War, one of the most comprehensive accounts of the relationship between Great Britain and the warring United States and Confederate States respectively.