Britains anti Slavery Movement Leads to Active Support of the Unionists?

Britain had been near the center of the 19th Century anti slavery movement, & the RN had been actively involved in suppression of the international slave trade. Any experts on British politics able to comment on what it would take to get Britain to decide to actively aid the Union post secession circa 1861-63. Whats the possible PoD chain and likely point where Britain becomes active?

Note: I am not placing the PoD post 1860, only that active intervention comes after Secession.
 
They can sell weapons openly. I'm not sure if that's any different from OTL. I don't think the US is going to want direct British intervention but if they refuse to sell to the CSA and pressure France to do the same the US's blockade becomes that much easier.
 
Selling to the CSA i one thing, but they have other venues, including smugglers. In this direction I'm wondering what happens with the cotton trade and related economy?

But, as in the OP, what political alignment is possible to create this in London.
 
Not going to happen. The ACW is America's business. Britain has nothing to gain from assisting the Union. Furthermore, until the Emancipation Proclamation takes effect at the start of 1863, the Union is not anti-slavery; and until the 13th Amendment passes Congress at the end of 1864, slavery is legal in the Border States and territory reclaimed for the Union before 1863.
 
About the only thing the UK could do that was needed was to cease all contact with the CSA, use the RN to hunt down their handful of commerce raiders, etc.... and keep providing firearms. The north really didn't need all that much... except firearms in the first couple of years. The north had the industry, the ships, the financing... they just needed time to ramp it all up.
 
Britain had been near the center of the 19th Century anti slavery movement, & the RN had been actively involved in suppression of the international slave trade. Any experts on British politics able to comment on what it would take to get Britain to decide to actively aid the Union post secession circa 1861-63. Whats the possible PoD chain and likely point where Britain becomes active?

Note: I am not placing the PoD post 1860, only that active intervention comes after Secession.

It has been discussed elsewhere on this board but long story short the Union really did not want too much British or indeed anyone's help. After all the political imperative was to show the Union could manage its own affairs and survive on its own. That said the British did not blink when the US declared blockade, though there were a few pointed remarks pointing out technically it should have been a quarantine. They also looked the other way when US warships coaled in Caribbean ports despite the fact that at least one such vessel went out of its way to display flagrant aggression towards British warships.
 
Were British nationals of any significance in the Confederacy? Arraigning finances, exporting cotton, in manufacturing projects. Could Britain have effectively decided its citizens from traveling to the Confederacy, & would there be any appreciable effect.

Was British banking of any value to the Confederacy? Would it be realistic for a 19th Century Brit government to deny access to Londons banks?

Related to the financing would be some sort of sanction on Confederate cotton? I've read something of the Cotton trade during this war & am aware of how convoluted and corrupting the cotton trade became.
 
... Furthermore, until the Emancipation Proclamation takes effect at the start of 1863, the Union is not anti-slavery; and until the 13th Amendment passes Congress at the end of 1864, slavery is legal in the Border States and territory reclaimed for the Union before 1863.

Hm.. that rather ignores a couple decades or more of a major social political & cultural turbulence in US history. It ignores a few bits of anti slavery activity & policy in Britain as well.
 
Hm.. that rather ignores a couple decades or more of a major social political & cultural turbulence in US history. It ignores a few bits of anti slavery activity & policy in Britain as well.

How?

Legally, the US government was not anti-slavery untiil the end of 1862; and not fully anti-slavery until the end of 1864.

The proposed action by Britain would be in support of the US government's fight to suppress secession - which was only indirectly anti-slavery.
 
Your stubborn pedantry here is amusing.

It isn't pedantry to point out slavery was legal in all the border states, Tennessee, and snippets of Louisiana and Virginia under Union control until 1865. This was not lost on commentators and pundits across the Atlantic or in Canada and the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation freed those contrabands in Union hands officially, and decreed that all slaves in those territories still in rebellion to be free from their masters. That this was a sem-dubious prospect under existing American law is precisely why the 13th Amendment was proposed and pushed forward.

The Emancipation Proclamation was not the 'slam dunk' diplomatic card most American historians tend to portray it as.
 
To answer the more broad question, despite Union protestations of the British granting the Confederacy neutrality, the British were about as neutral as you got. Despite blockade runners operating from their ports (which theoretically they could have put more pressure on them, but practically the Bahamas was making way too much money) and their citizens serving in Confederate armies, which while this was illegal and AFAIK, only one Canadian was ever prosecuted for it, the British were more concerned about their perception that the Union would turn its losing/vengeful (the perception switching from 1861-1865) armies towards Canada.

Britain might have exerted more diplomatic pressure for the Union, but this would have had negligible effect on the war. Blockade runners were going to run, and the local officials in the Bahamas and Bermuda were probably going to turn a blind eye to it, and the Royal Navy was not about to assist the Union blockade. The best that they got OTL was Palmerston intervening to quash recognition sentiment in the Cabinet and in Parliament.
 
Hm.. that rather ignores a couple decades or more of a major social political & cultural turbulence in US history. It ignores a few bits of anti slavery activity & policy in Britain as well.
It doesn't ignore the expressed foreign policy of the Lincoln government, though.

'you will not consent to draw into debate before the British government any opposing moral principles, which may be supposed to lie at the foundation of the controversy between those (the Confederate) States and the Federal Union' (Seward to Adams, 10 April 1861)
'refrain from any observation whatever concerning the morality or immorality, the economy or the waste, the social or the unsocial aspects of slavery... the condition of slavery in the United States will remain the same whether [the revolution] shall succeed or fail... the new President, as well as the citizens through whose suffrages he has come into the administration, has always repudiated all designs whatever and wherever imputed to him and them of disturbing the system of slavery as it is existing under the Constitution and laws. The case, however, would not be fully presented if I were to omit to say that any such effort on his part would be unconstitutional, and all his actions in that direction would be prevented by the judicial authority, even though they were assented to by Congress and the people.' (Seward to Dayton, 22 April 1861)

It doesn't ignore the views of the border states, either.

'The undersigned, Representatives of Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, Tennessee, Delaware, and Maryland in the two houses of Congress, have listened to your address... The right to hold slaves is a right appertaining to all the States of this Union. They have the right to cherish or abolish the institution as their tastes or their interests may prompt, and no one is authorized to question the right, or limit its enjoyment. And no one has more clearly affirmed that right than you have... satisfy them [Southern moderates] that no harm is intended to them, and their institutions: that this government is not making war on their rights of property, but is simply defending its legitimate authority, and they will gladly return to their allegiance... Confine yourself to your constitutional authority: confine your subordinates within the same limits; conduct this war solely for the purpose of restoring the constitution to its legitimate authority; concede to each state and its loyal citizens, their just rights, and we are wedded to you by indissoluble ties'.

Britain might have exerted more diplomatic pressure for the Union, but this would have had negligible effect on the war.
In the highly unlikely scenario that the Union government goes all out for anti-slavery, the British might have been a bit more favourable. However, that's completely outbalanced by the loss of sympathy in the Border States, and indeed in the large section of the Northern population more generally who were prepared to fight for the Union but not for the slave. That's why Seward gave the instructions he did to his ambassadors, why Lincoln cancelled moves toward emancipation by Fremont and Hunter, and why as late as 1864 he was prepared to write - although not to send - a letter saying 'if Jefferson Davis wishes, for himself, or for the benefit of his friends at the North, to know what I would do if he were to offer peace and re-union, saying nothing about slavery, let him try me.'
 
Were British nationals of any significance in the Confederacy? Arraigning finances, exporting cotton, in manufacturing projects. Could Britain have effectively decided its citizens from traveling to the Confederacy, & would there be any appreciable effect.

Thousands of Britons traveled to the CSA as blockade runners. Britain probably could have shut down this traffic; however, it was very lucrative.

As to longer-term visitors: I don't know of any who served the CSA in any important capacity. There was Lieutent-Colonel Fremantle of the Coldstream Guards, who visited the CSA for three months in 1863 as a military tourist. (BTW, he was 27, and had been promoted several times without ever seeing action). Fremantle was present at Gettysburg. He was pro-southern, and his book on the trip sold well, but I doubt if it had any significant effect.

Was British banking of any value to the Confederacy?
The CSA raised $15M in Europe on pledges of future cotton exports. The loan was brokered by Erlanger et Cie, a French banking house. (Erlanger became CSA emissary John Slidell's son-in-law in 1864.) However, it seems probable that British investors were among the subscribers.

Related to the financing would be some sort of sanction on Confederate cotton? I've read something of the Cotton trade during this war & am aware of how convoluted and corrupting the cotton trade became.
It should be noted that the CSA's initial policy was to embargo cotton exports. They thought that the demand for "King Cotton" would compel Britain and France to intervene for the CSA.

But the resulting cotton shortage was not immediately critical, as there had been bumper crops in recent years and a lot of cotton was in store in Britain. Then supplies were found in India and Egypt. By the time the crunch was serious, the CSA had changed its policy, but the Union blockade was in force, and the CSA had lost Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and Norfolk, making cotton exports difficult. However, Britain wanted the cotton, and Britons reaped most of the profits from blockade running, so Britain wasn't going Do Anything to shut it down.
 
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