cotton is crowned king
- Almost unanimously, Southerners believed they could use cotton to lure England and France into recognizing the Confederacy. While 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.
- France had reasons to support the South.Napoleon III, saw an opportunity to get cotton and to restore a French presence in America, especially in Mexico, by forging an alliance.
- Before the American Civil War, cotton produced in the American South had accounted for 77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton used in Great Britain. After Britain had officially declared its neutrality in the American war in May 1861, the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis , Secretary of War under U.S. President Franklin Pierce, and former U. S. senator – strongly supported what became known as King Cotton diplomacy.
King Cotton Mentality
The "King Cotton" mentality was seriously flawed, not the least in overestimating the value of "white gold." Throughout the late 1850's and in 1860, and as a result, Great Britain had a surplus of cotton. Cotton prices did rise sharply late in 1861, but workers, not owners, suffered from the effects of unemployment. Producers, drawing from their reserves, did not feel the pinch until late in 1862, and within a year imports from India, Egypt, and Brazil sufficiently replaced Southern cotton. The greatest problem for the South lay in its embrace of slavery, as the British took pride in their leadership of ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade. To support a nation that had openly embraced slavery now seemed unthinkable. After the Emancipation Proclamation, Britain was much less prepared to intervene on behalf of the South. Europe's wait-and-see attitude hardened into unassailable neutrality after the Southern armies suffered reverses beginning at Gettysburg, and Davis and his supporters realized the cotton strategy had failed as a diplomatic tool. They had unwisely hoarded their one great asset and undermined their best chance of financing the war.