And your point is what?
The London Spectator spoke for the business class in England who supported the Confederates because they were the primary source of cotton for their mills. Kind of like the New York Times supporting Obama today.
But the Emancipation Proclamation threw British public support to the Union side because the overall opion in Britain then, aside from the textile mill contingent, was anti-slavery.
Don't be so happy about that British support you saw in those early years of the war BTW. If the South had been successful, the British saw the opportunity to refold them into their empire to again become colonies, and very profitable ones at that.
Um, I don’t think the New York Times supports the business class. Nor does Obama. What does the Obama Administration supply the Times other than perhaps talking points and possibly leaked classified information?
If the South had been successful, the British saw the opportunity to refold them into their empire to again become colonies, and very profitable ones at that.
Good heavens, the South would have switched from being treated like a colony by the North to being treated like a colony by the British? Nearly 40 cents of each dollar of cotton revenue was already taken by Northern fees, freighting charges, taxes, etc. [Sources: “God Knows All Your Names: Stories in American History” by Paul N. Herbert, page 148 Link and according to PeaRidge, Kettell’s “Southern Wealth and Northern Profits” Thanks, Pea.].
The colony status of the South was illustrated by an editorial in the Daily Chicago Times on December 10, 1860 [as reported in the New Orleans Picayune]:
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
Keep in mind that the significantly higher Morrill Tariff had not yet passed the Senate when that was published. If the South had stayed in the Union, the Morrill Tariff would have had the effect of increasing the transfer of wealth from the South to the North beyond that resulting from the tariff mentioned above.