Could Lincoln Have Accepted Any Foreign Support During the Civil War

Let's say that Britain, instead, of considering supporting the CSA, decides that for moral reasons (in fact in OTL the British public was pro-Union) as to rid slavery from the U.S., decides to offer Lincoln support.

Would Lincoln accepted it as a quick way to end the conflict? Or would he not fearing the CSA would use it as a propaganda tool against him (aka Lincoln inviting the British to roll back the U.S.'s hard-earned independence)
 

Gaius Julius Magnus

Gone Fishin'
I don't see him doing it. Lincoln wanted to keep the war as an internal concern and using foreign troops to help crush the rebellion would be a propaganda coup for the Confederacy and anti-Lincoln and anti-war Democrats and Republicans and it wound undermine the U.S.'s standing with the both it's loyal populace and the international community if it had to rely on Britain to put down it's own rebellion. A lot of politicians, generals, and newspapers in OTL already grumbled with the British government's pro-southern appearance and attitudes.

Maybe he'll accept some munitions, building of some ships, and volunteer regiments but that's about it.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Intervention in another country's civil war is a recipe

Intervention in another country's civil war is, historically, pretty much a recipe for disaster, and for the legitimate government to accept such assistance is pretty much a swift road to illegitimacy.

All conflicts between nation states are political, but civil war are, if anything, hyper-political, and inviting foreign intervention into a given "national" political question is a guarantee of sowing the wind, so to speak...

The US was willing to accept foreign volunteers are individuals (as witness GP Cluseret) but their commissions were USVs, and formed "volunteer" units were not something that were offered or sought, for obvious reasons.

The problems with "foreign legions" as formed bodies are demonstrated quite clearly by the British attempts at recruiting, organizing, and training the German, Swiss, and Italian legions for the 1854-56 war.

The long and the short of it is such units, whether volunteers or mercenaries, generate more problems than they are worth, and make it clear the cause and government recruiting them is weak.

Now, if the British had actually held to their professed policy of neutrality in terms of rebel purchases of arms and equipment from British sources in 1861-65, that would have been helpful, but there was too much money to be made by the good people of Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Maritimes to shut it down...and in London, ultimately.

It took the threat of war by the US to get the British to move against the Laird company, for example.

Best,
 
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