Cotton diplomacy

Cotton diplomacy refers to the diplomatic methods employed by the Confederacy during the American Civil War to coerce the United Kingdom and France to support the Confederate war effort by implementing a cotton trade embargo against the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. The Confederacy believed that both the United Kingdom and France, who before the war depended heavily on southern cotton for textile manufacturing, would support the Confederate war effort if the cotton trade were restricted.

Ultimately, cotton diplomacy did not work in favor of the Confederacy. In fact, the cotton embargo transformed into a self-embargo which restricted the Confederate economy. Ultimately, the growth in the demand for cotton that fueled the antebellum economy did not continue.

Until the American Civil War, cotton was the south's primary product. The southern economy heavily relied on the continual growth and production of cotton. Southern cotton, also referred to as King Cotton, dominated the global cotton supply. By the late 1850s, Southern cotton had accounted for "77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton consumed in Britain, 90 percent of the 192 million pounds used in France, 60 percent of the 115 million pounds spun in the German Zollverein, and as much as 92 percent of 102 million pounds manufactured in Russia."

Senator James Hammond of South Carolina bluntly declared that "old England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her... No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king." This faith in King Cotton further added to the South's confidence in American cotton as economically dominant and as a global necessity.

On April 16, 1861, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln ordered a blockade of Confederate ports to weaken the Confederacy's economy. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet realized the Confederates could not compete economically with the Union because cotton was the primary economic driver of the Confederate economy. The blockade restricted naval and merchant access to Confederate ports. It proved to be highly effective, decreasing cotton “exports to Europe from 3.8 million bales in 1860 to virtual nothing in 1862”, and eventually stagnating the Confederacy's economy. By late 1861, the Confederate Congress believed that the best way to remove the Union blockade was through cotton diplomacy, or a cotton embargo. Cotton diplomacy stopped cotton exports to the United Kingdom and Europe “to coerce European intervention by withholding all exports of raw cotton or attempt to create a cartel that would reduce the quantity of exports to a level that earned monopoly profits.” In doing so, the Confederacy hoped to gain valuable allies to fight alongside them during the Civil War, or to generate enough profit from cotton to sustain the war effort.

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