History of the United States I / Unit 15 USH1 2152 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Britain and the Proclamation
The idea
The Confederacy expected cotton dependence to secure British support, and Britain did build and sell ironclads to run the blockade, including the CSS Florida and CSS Alabama, both destroyed during the war. But Britain avoided war with the United States, which supplied its grain and bought its goods, and found other cotton in India and Egypt. The Confederacy's staunch commitment to slavery eventually worked against British recognition, Britain having abolished slavery in eighteen thirty-three, and the Proclamation resolved British doubts about Union objectives.
In practice
Many British citizens supporting Union victory after January eighteen sixty-three, on a question that had been open until then.
Where people slip
The anchor calls this the Proclamation's largest practical effect, and it is diplomatic. Pair it with entry 2147 and the shape of the thing appears: the document that freed almost nobody on the day it was signed may have decided the war abroad, by making recognition of the Confederacy politically impossible in a country that had abolished slavery thirty years earlier.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for History of the United States I