So the AHC that I’m challenging you with today is a timeline where the Brittish empire joins on the side of the union during the american civil war
They could phrase it as something like "helping a friendly nation to suppress a dangerous rebellion", maybe?Um... the Union wouldn't let them, considering as far as domestic and international legal theory was concerned it was, in fact, a Civil War and therefore the Federal army was putting down a domestic insurrection. Allowing the British government to formally involve itself would de juro involve recognizing the Confederacy as existing, to say nothing of the... prickly political situation of allowing British forces to operate in American waters/soil for an extended period.
No real reason to do so. Copperheads wouldn't go for it and the Draft Riots would get even worse. People would accuse Lincoln of selling them all out to the Redcoats. I can only imagine the sheer amount of cartoons they would have showing Lincoln as tall and sticklike next to a short and stout Victoria.They could phrase it as something like "helping a friendly nation to suppress a dangerous rebellion", maybe?
Maybe you could set up some sort of Trent War-type scenario, except that ITTL it's the Confederacy seizing the ship instead of the Union. If British public opinion gets sufficiently annoyed by this (not necessarily difficult, given that the CSA was quite unpopular already), the Brits might send a punitive force against the Confederacy, regardless of whether or not the Union wants them to.
@Roland Traveler: While a mistaken identity could cause a British ship to be attacked by a CS privateer, when they boarded it and examined the ships' papers, the British registry would be obvious. While there was a good bit of stupidity and pig-headiness in the CS leadership, pissing off the UK was not part of it. Absent all sorts of manufactured goods from guns to medicine from the UK (and France who followed the UK lead) the CSA would have been incapable of fighting the war for too long. CS manufacturing and captured Union supplies simply were not enough. If the privateer captain did not release the UK ship with an apology immediately, when it sailed to a port to be sold and cargo taken/sold, if in the CSA the government would immediately seize it and return it, if elsewhere the CS would disavow the action and declare the particular ship and crew piratical. One of the major goals of the CSA from day one was to do whatever it could to have the UK recognize the CSA as a nation.
@Roland Traveler: While a mistaken identity could cause a British ship to be attacked by a CS privateer, when they boarded it and examined the ships' papers, the British registry would be obvious. While there was a good bit of stupidity and pig-headiness in the CS leadership, pissing off the UK was not part of it. Absent all sorts of manufactured goods from guns to medicine from the UK (and France who followed the UK lead) the CSA would have been incapable of fighting the war for too long. CS manufacturing and captured Union supplies simply were not enough. If the privateer captain did not release the UK ship with an apology immediately, when it sailed to a port to be sold and cargo taken/sold, if in the CSA the government would immediately seize it and return it, if elsewhere the CS would disavow the action and declare the particular ship and crew piratical. One of the major goals of the CSA from day one was to do whatever it could to have the UK recognize the CSA as a nation.