Anglo-French intervention in the ACW

[Hierophant]

So lets say Shiloh goes terribly wrong for the Union. Perhaps Beauregard goes AWOL before the battle and Johnston is forced to stay behind and direct his troops from the rear. (I'm not claiming Johnston was a great general, just looking for away to change the battles outcome).

Sherman dies in the first hours of fighting, and by the days end a good portion of the Army of the Tennessee is destroyed or forced to surrender in Owl Creek. It's a huge, but costly victory for the Confederacy.

In OTL the battle of Shiloh moved London and Paris the farthest toward intervening, if only on humanitarian principles. Would a Confederate victory like the one I described push it farther? Is their anyway Napoleon III could be enticed enough into recognizing the Confederacy, maybe trying to jump the gun on the British?

 

[EnglishCanuck]

Hmm that could qualify for a humanitarian intervention. It might give Napoleon III the clout he needs to argue this to the British, and the British might see the struggle as one worth intervening in at this point.

Problem is that all it might mean is pressure to drop the blockade rather than a 'boots on the ground scenario' as the British would be worried more about the economic issues of the war. France might jump in with soldiers and ships, but in this case I'm seeing negotiations vs actual fighting.

 

[jlk7e]

I don't think actual intervention by the British and French is very likely regardless of the fortunes of war - at least not immediately. In particular, if you look at the British cabinet discussions on the subject, what you see is that the pro-southerners (who are, so far as I can tell, virtually restricted to Russell and Gladstone) aren't actually arguing for armed intervention. They're arguing, at the outside limit, recognizing the Confederacy, and more typically proposing mediation to both sides. Palmerston is always even more cautious than this, and there are other cabinet members (e.g. Lewis, Granville, Argyll) who are either completely opposed to intervention on Realpolitik grounds or more sympathetic to the North.

With such people in charge, it's hard to see how you get anything more than a mediation proposal, no matter how badly things go for the North. If Lincoln and Seward indignantly reject such an offer, what happens next? Is it more likely that the British proceed to a war on dubious merits that half the cabinet strongly opposes, or that they back down and don't do anything much but express their dismay at the bloodshed in North America?

As for calling for an end to the blockade, the problem with that on the British end is the one we see during the Trent Affair: pushing for freedom of the seas is contrary to Britain's long term interests.

Napoleon III seems to have been more genuinely interested in intervention than all but a few members of the British Cabinet (and certainly than Palmerston), but he was distinctly unwilling to do anything without British backing, and his foreign ministers (Thouvenel, then Drouyn de Lhuys) were much more pro-northern than he.

 

[TFSmith121]

Something to keep in mind is that two different European

powers intervened in conflicts in the Western Hemisphere in the 1860s, and it did not go well for them - the French in Mexico and the Spanish on Hispaniola and in the Chincha Islands conflict.

Given the track record of the British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese in the Americas in the late 1700s and early 1800s, it seems pretty clear that the military balance, logistics, economics, and politics were all against a European power attempting to intervene in the Western Hemisphere by the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, if not before, and certainly by the 1860s.

Arguably, it had been so since the British and Spanish defeats in the Americas in the late 1700s and early 1800s, as witness the fates of the British expeditions against Buenos Aires, Baltimore, Plattsburg, and New Orleans, and the Spanish 1814 expedition under Morillo. The "Americans" (north and south) could always out-mobilize, out-last, and (often) on their own home ground, out-fight the Europeans attempting to wage expeditionary warfare.

In the mid-1800s, after independence and the initial periods of national consolidation in the American republics, these realities were demonstrated again by the French in Mexico, and the Spanish on Hispaniola and in the Pacific.

There's a reason the Russians and Danes sold their territories, as well.

Best,

 

[Hierophant]

I never imagined the British declaring war on the US, at most recognizing the Confederacy. Napoleon III, on the other hand, I think realized that the only reason he could intervene in Mexico was because of the ACW.

It behooves him for the US to split apart, if only to weaken the US and put an end to the Monroe doctrine. The French also had been building up in the Caribbean for awhile with forces and supplies, as well as having forces close by in Mexico. I wonder if with the altered Shiloh battle, if Napoleon III would see the odds changed, and gamble on intervention. Especially if he didn't see blow back from the British happening.

 

[jlk7e]

The French forces are pretty deeply engaged in Mexico in the spring of 1862. They're not really available to invade North America. Plus, Napoleon III is nothing if not deeply cautious -- virtually everything he says on the subject of the American Civil War has the caveat that he will only act in concert with the British.

 

[Reader347]

The French forces are pretty deeply engaged in Mexico in the spring of 1862. They're not really available to invade North America. Plus, Napoleon III is nothing if not deeply cautious -- virtually everything he says on the subject of the American Civil War has the caveat that he will only act in concert with the British.

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And Napoleon has to keep a majority of his troops in France to guard against the Germans.