WI: Jefferson Davis Remembers that Egypt and India Exist?

Confederate Cotton Diplomacy has been such an astounding event to me. What if instead of burning their cotton, the Confederates sell their cotton for money to fund their army that was without shoes for half the Civil War?

I know it probably would not have a major impact on the overall outcome of the war, but I was wondering if the Confederates might have been able to do slightly better if they were supplied slightly better.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I know it probably would not have a major impact on the overall outcome of the war, but I was wondering if the Confederates might have been able to do slightly better if they were supplied slightly better.

Actually, I think it would have had a massive impact on the war. The issue is not so much supplying the army as supporting the overall economy. Had the Confederacy followed Judah Benjamin's advice and sold all the cotton they could for as much hard cash as they could get early in the war, when the blockade was still quite flimsy, the financial situation of the Confederacy would have been much better than it was IOTL. This, in turn, would have helped control the runaway inflation that played such a critical role in the collapse of the Confederacy.
 
Confederate Cotton Diplomacy has been such an astounding event to me. What if instead of burning their cotton, the Confederates sell their cotton for money to fund their army that was without shoes for half the Civil War?

I know it probably would not have a major impact on the overall outcome of the war, but I was wondering if the Confederates might have been able to do slightly better if they were supplied slightly better.

I don't think it would have won the war, but it would have made a significant difference at first, would have helped with relations with Britain, and would probably mean a less impoverished South after the war.

The thing is, though, that a South capable of realizing that Cotton wasn't King and that it couldn't dictate to Britain and France was probably a South that didn't secede. Persuading cotton planters that they'd be sitting pretty on the top of the world was one of the main strategies of Southern nationalists.

Just as a South that took the very rational decision to allow the resupply of Sumter would probably be a South that didn't secede in the first place.

However, I'm not saying its ASB. If you get the right person in the right place of influence, they could probably swing it.
 
There are a variety of problems, but some that come to mind:

1) The CSA does not have much in the way of ships and hard currency. Even without the cotton embargo, it can't afford much. And sinking that money into cotton that will sit in warehouses for later loans might not be the best investment when it needs weapons and so on now.

2) At least to Britain, the warehouses already have significant supplies of cotton. That's the real problem, not India and Egypt. Why's Britain going to worry about a cotton shortage that doesn't exist?

3) Britain has no reason to want to support the CSA. Unlike say France in the American Revolution - which saw it as some way to strike it at a rival - Britain has no stake in the US losing the war.

4) http://www.civilwarhome.com/cottondiplomacy.htm

Almost unanimously, Southerners believed they could use cotton to lure England and France into recognizing the Confederacy. Since the administration of Jefferson Davis wanted to avoid any appearance of international "blackmail," the Confederate Congress never formally approved an embargo, but state governments and private citizens voluntarily withheld the crop from the market in hopes of causing a "cotton famine" overseas.

Changing ol' Jeff isn't enough to change the mentality of the Confederate congress (quite willing to oppose him) or the individuals who were the ones actually executing it.
 
The southern politicians also seem to have misunderstood the depth of the anti slavery attitude in Britain, and globally. In the 1850s they had burned a important bridge by making the whole problem one revolving around the retention of slavery. The prewar rhetoric was clear to any Europeans who even casually followed events in the US.

Another misaprehension was the exagerated idea of the the events in the US in the British global view. The Brits had bigger things on their table and a active involvement in the North American was did not look worth the trouble & cost when viewed along side the business of a global empire.
 
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