A Confederate in Europe

THE DULLEST prophet could have foretold that for Americans 1861 would be an eventful year. One by one the states of the deep South were declaring their withdrawal from the Union. If the leaders of secession had solemn thoughts about the gravity of their decisions, they must have felt equally a sense of high adventure, for they were undertaking to create a new nation. Until a confederacy of their own design took form, each state took up the powers, once assigned to a central government, to manage its own foreign relations, defense, and other affairs. It was in this interim, after Georgia seceded and before the Confederacy took shape, that Governor Brown appointed Thomas Butler King as a commissioner to Europe. Probably the closest parallel for the position he held was to be found in the colonial agencies of the pre-Revolutionary era. If the seceding states established themselves and formed a new government, King’s appointment opened up for him the possibility of an entirely new career as the Laurens, or Adams, or Franklin of the new nation.

The swift movement of events precluded such a development. King’s letters of appointment as representative of Georgia to the courts of Europe were issued on January 30, but within the week representatives of the seceding states had gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, to bring into being the Confederate States of America. King joined the move to Montgomery, and remained until the new government had begun operations. His chief concern, he wrote his son Mallery, was the passage of a postal bill for Atlantic steamers.¹ The act which the provisional Congress passed greatly resembled the one which King had sponsored twenty years before in the United States Congress. Under the law of March 1, 1861, the Confederate Postmaster General was authorized to contract with any line of steamers for transportation of the mails from the Confederate States of America to foreign ports. Compensation was to be limited to actual postage revenues, and postal rates were not to exceed those currently in force under the laws of the United States.² Obviously, this mail subsidy was aimed at accomplishing on the national level the same transatlantic steamer service which Governor Brown and the Georgia legislature had tried earlier to encourage.

While Georgia and the other Southern states were taking their first steps towards forming a confederacy, war was still only a possibility. Lincoln was inaugurated in Washington, and still no warlike action ensued. Meanwhile, the daily affairs of life went on, and King, despite a bout of illness, prepared for his journey to Europe. In addition to his official business, he had the private affairs of the Macon and Brunswick Railroad to promote. King and his associates in this company envisaged their line as a rival to the Central Railroad for the cotton traffic of central Georgia. Through local subscriptions they had obtained enough capital for the first forty-seven miles of road. The work was under way, and the initial section was expected to be completed by autumn. In order to complete the remaining 138 miles of track of their main line, they needed capital. The possibilities were limited: state aid, of the kind that King had sponsored in the legislature; bankers in the north, particularly New York; or foreign investment. In the existing political situation, neither state aid nor the New York money market could be counted on. King and his associates therefore prepared to float a loan of $5,000,000 abroad, in return for which they would repurchase shares of stock in Georgia and deliver control of the road to European investors. In addition, the promoters had an even more lucrative transaction in view. One fourth of the capital was to be invested in yellow pine timber lands in Georgia near the line of the railroad. The possession of these reserves, together with judicious purchases of existing stocks of yellow pine lumber, would give them a virtual monopoly on this valuable material, producing large immediate profits. King was designated as the agent to arrange for the loan, and to purchase iron rails for the completion of the section of road then being built, with a commission of five per cent on all transactions.³

When King left New York aboard the Adriatic on March 13, 1861, part of his commission was already outdated. He had been instructed to ascertain if England, France, and Belgium would recognize the sovereign State of Georgia before the formation of a Southern confederacy, and the Confederate States of America was already functioning as a government. Yet his instructions had been broadly conceived as embracing “timely explanations” to the “Governments, Bankers, Merchants, and Manufacturers of Europe” on the significance of events in America “to the end that prompt measures may be taken to conduct trade into its new channel.…”⁴ How and where this mission should be performed was left up to the agent. As soon as the Adriatic docked in Southampton, King hurried up to London. Opinion in the English capital was generally favorable to the Confederacy, he found, for the prospect of free trade with the cotton states was enticing. “If I had authority to negotiate,” King wrote his son, “I think I could have the Government of the Confederate States acknowledged in ten days.”⁵ Lacking authority to speak for the Confederacy, he soon left London and travelled to the Continent to pursue the varied commissions, public and private, that had been entrusted to him.

The speculative scheme of the Macon and Brunswick Railroad came first, or at least furnished the opportunity for approaching influential people. In Paris, King established contact with the head of the banking house of Bellot des Minieres, Freres et Compagnie. The choice was a logical one, for Minieres was currently engaged in negotiations with the Southern Pacific Railroad Company for building new sections of road, negotiations that King may very well have known of from his connection with the company. In addition, Minieres had become involved in other investments in the South, notably the James River and Kanawha Company of Virginia. Minieres expressed great interest in the Macon and Brunswick venture, but he did not commit himself to the scheme. The encouraging letter embodying his views, it might be noted, antedated the news of the bombardment of Fort Sumter. This opening gambit with the French firm, however, provided King with letters of introduction to important governmental circles in Belgium, to which country he now turned his steps.⁶

In Belgium King sought out the company which had been suggested by Governor Brown as the recipient of the state subsidy for establishing steamer service between Georgia and Europe. In authorizing the offer the legislature had acted on the assumption that the company was eager to begin direct trade, but their commissioner met a refusal when he tried to conclude an agreement. King reported his failure in noncommittal words:

But the Belgians are a manufacturing, not a commercial people, and while the Company are most anxious to send us their merchandise … they have but little practical knowledge of, or experience in ocean navigation, and especially the management of steamships.⁷

However, King reported that he was well received, and that public opinion in Belgium favored the Confederacy. What he did not mention, although it was very much to the point, was the fact that Confederate batteries opened fire on Major Anderson’s troops in Charleston harbor three days before King arrived in Brussels. The news of this event, which probably reached Belgium while he was consulting with financial leaders, could hardly fail to put a completely different complexion on the question of direct trade.

Unsuccessful in Belgium, King returned to Paris, which remained his headquarters for his stay in Europe.⁸ Current developments in French politics made it possible for him to hope that he might best achieve his ends in France. To carry out the aggressive new commercial policy of Napoleon III, the French Corps Legislatif and Imperial Council had authorized the building of additional steamers for the existing subsidized French steamship lines to New York and the West Indies. If King could bring about a change of the termini of these routes to Southern ports, his mission would be more than successful, but it was a task that would challenge the most adroit and experienced lobbyist.

Confronted with a general ignorance of American affairs, King embarked on a campaign to educate the leaders of public opinion in France. Gathering what statistics he could find, he produced a memoir on steam navigation addressed to the Comte de Morny, French Minister of Commerce. To accompany this memoir he composed for the minister a letter in which he invited the French to take the lead in securing the commerce of the Southern states. He managed to have copies of the memoir in English and French placed in the hands of the Emperor.⁹ The French translation, together with the letter to the Comte de Morny, was printed in pamphlet form, and then distributed widely. Among the recipients of this brochure King listed the members of the Imperial Council, the Senate, and the Corps Legislatif; newspaper editors, Chamber of Commerce, insurance companies, and leading French manufacturers; members of the German Commercial Union; and the diplomatic corps in Paris.

King’s letter to Morny was aimed specifically at securing the establishment of a French-subsidized line of steamships to Savannah and the extension of a French-West Indies line to New Orleans. He dwelt in glowing terms on the possibilities open to French enterprise. The passenger fares alone he estimated at more than $5,000,000 yearly. To this would be added the mail subsidies for all postal service between the Confederacy and Europe. He pointed out the ease with which existing lines of communication in both France and the Confederacy could be integrated into a system under French control. Most of all, he emphasized the new opportunities in international trade. The South had espoused free trade and had opened her coasting trade to foreigners. A total export trade which he estimated to be worth $300,000,000 was seeking a new channel. Simply by changing the termini of the French steamship lines to New Orleans and Savannah, France could secure the commercial leadership in the two leading cotton ports of the Confederacy. “Cannot France be persuaded to take the lead and reap the advantage?”¹⁰

Whether it was due to King’s plea or not, the French transatlantic steamer policy was changed. The Corps Legislatif approved the extension to New Orleans of the established Bordeaux-West Indies run. The committee considering the steamship subsidy recommended further that in the light of American developments either Norfolk or Savannah be chosen as the terminus of the line of steamships from Le Havre. This change was also accepted, without debate, by the legislators.¹¹ In the final analysis, since Napoleon III was unwilling to break the blockade to enforce such a trade, this minor change in the French subsidy system can hardly be regarded as important; nevertheless, King’s persuasiveness must receive some of the credit for bringing about one of the few official actions in Europe that looked to the establishment of the Confederate States of America.

While King was at work on the Continent, the official Confederate commissioners arrived in England. William Lowndes Yancey, Pierre Adolphe Rost, and Ambrose Dudley Mann, “armed with a dissertation on state sovereignty in their right pockets, and a sample of New Orleans middling upland cotton in their left,”¹² made their first bid for recognition by Queen Victoria’s government. Although they had interviews with Lord John Russell, official channels remained closed to these “diplomatic representatives” of an unrecognized government. Yet King lacked even the dubious status that a Confederate appointment would have conferred. His daughter Georgia went so far as to draft letters to Jefferson Davis, Alexander H. Stephens, and Robert Toombs, appealing to them to give her father some sort of appointment under the Confederate government which would regularize his position abroad.¹³ Her plea, if it reached them, fell on deaf ears; King remained only a commercial agent and an emissary from Georgia to the courts of Europe.

Nebulous as King’s diplomatic appointment was, he exploited it to the full in presenting the case of the Confederacy to European governments. To Edouard-Antoine Thouvenel, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, King wrote a long public letter. Government, he argued, is based on the consent of the governed, and the people of the South no longer consented to the government in Washington. The Union had been a compact among the states, and the seceding states were merely resuming the sovereign powers which they had delegated to the federal government. The government in Washington was now waging “a war of conquest and subjugation on the absurd pretext of preserving the Union.”¹⁴ King then launched an attack on Abraham Lincoln and accused the President of duplicity. By his violation of the Constitution and of the pledges he had given, Lincoln had forfeited all claims to the sympathy of Europeans. In a more telling economic argument, King sought to arouse Thouvenel to the threat which the blockade of the South constituted for French interests. He warned that the cotton crop would soon be arriving at the ports of the Confederacy. Cotton “is as necessary to the working of the spindles and looms of France and England as bread is to feed those who operate them. Has Mr. Lincoln a right to forbid the supply of either?”¹⁵ The war had originated in the attempt of people of the Northern states to force a high tariff on the South, and this Northern policy, he assured Thouvenel, was aimed at world supremacy in commerce and manufacturing. “This war is, consequently, a war on the industry of France and England, under false pretenses.”¹⁶ In this letter King presented Thouvenel with arguments emphasizing the recurrent themes of Confederate diplomats: that secession was legally and morally justified and that France, from self-interest alone, should maintain trade relations with the South.

Far more elaborate was the letter which the diplomatic representative of Georgia wrote to Lord John Russell, Queen Victoria’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Like the letter to Thouvenel, this was designed for public circulation rather than as a bona fide bid for the recognition of Georgia. King began with a brief history of the formation of the Constitution of the United States, in order to prove his contention that secession was a legal right of the Southern states. They exercised this right, he asserted, only as a last resort, the final answer to repeated aggressions on the part of the Northern states. The political separation grew out of the differences in the economic interests of the sections. This line of argument led to an outline of the development of manufacturing, particularly in the northeastern United States, and a sketch of the tariff policies of the federal government since the War of 1812. King denounced the policy of tariff protection, and emphasized the role of the South in resisting the protectionists for over thirty years. With the election of the candidate of the protectionist party, the South, “finding it useless to prolong the contest, has withdrawn from the Union.”¹⁷

Having explained the principles and causes of secession, King proceeded to an analysis of the economic resources and relationships of the two sections. Using tables of figures derived from the 1850 census and estimates for 1860, he touched briefly on the relative state of manufacturing, commerce, and agriculture in the North and the South, and arrived at the conclusion that the economy of the United States rested on the agricultural wealth of the South. The shipping tonnage of the nation, for example, had kept almost exact pace with the increase of the cotton supply. The South was the producing section; the North derived its economic existence from carrying Southern produce and supplying Southern needs for manufactured products. Resorting once more to tables of statistics, King arrived at the figure of $213,000,000 in yearly profits wrested by the North from the South. Now that the South had seceded, this profit lay waiting for the enterprise of European merchants, carriers, and manufacturers.¹⁸

King continued his letter to Russell with an almost lyrical disquisition on cotton—the nature of the plant, the productivity of slave labor, the improvements that had taken place in cultivation, and the capability of the South to supply the expanding demand for cotton indefinitely. After a recapitulation of the economic resources of the South, he repeated his direct appeal:

This vast commerce … is now offered to the manufacturing and commercial nations of Europe. Will they accept it, or will they permit Mr. Lincoln’s blockading squadron to forbid the intercourse?¹⁹

He followed this question with a pointed warning that if Europe was to receive any of the cotton crop of 1861, commercial relations must be established immediately.

In conclusion, King assured Russell of the falsity of Federal representations that the South could not maintain its independence. He had indicated in his letter the economic strength of the Southern states. He needed only to add that the Confederacy contained more than a million and a quarter men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, enough to withstand the assault of any number of Federal troops that Lincoln might send against them.

In addition to these appeals to governmental officials, which served merely as propaganda vehicles, King employed his time in preparing other articles for newspapers. Of these, only one, entitled “The American Blockade,” survived in draft form among his papers.²⁰ It reads like an international lawyer’s brief, beginning with a technical discussion of what constituted contraband of war, together with a brief history of the policy of the United States. King came to the conclusion that the United States had heretofore always adhered to the principle of “liberty of commerce to neutrals except in places invested, besieged and blockaded.”²¹ He then proceeded to the definition of a blockade and cited writers on international law to prove that a blockade must be a fact, not a mere proclamation. This requirement, he pointed out, had been reaffirmed by a congress of European nations in the Declaration of Paris in 1856. He then applied the principles of the foregoing section to the conditions existing in American waters in 1861 and showed that the blockade proclaimed by President Lincoln did not conform to the rules of international law. By this illegal blockade, European countries were being deprived of their rights as neutrals, and some of their citizens were suffering hardships as a consequence. Because of the interruption of the cotton supply from the South, some districts of England and France already faced distress, and desolation was in prospect. Quoting French newspapers of September and October 1861, King pointed to the signs of depression in the textile centers of France and England, Lyons and Manchester. Mills in the English city had found it necessary to adopt a three-day week to conserve the supply of cotton. According to King’s estimates, between 130,000 and 140,000 French workmen were affected by the cotton shortage; in England, he estimated the number indirectly touched would exceed four million. The inescapable conclusion was that neither England nor France could afford to allow such important segments of industry to come to grief because of an illegal blockade.

By the publication of these articles and letters, the Commissioner from Georgia had assumed the role of a Confederate propagandist rather than a commercial agent for his state. It would be hard to justify his activities except in the broadest interpretation of his instructions. Yet in his propaganda efforts King was attempting in some measure to fill the vacuum left by a decision of the official Confederate commissioners. Shortly after their arrival in London, Yancey, Rost, and Mann decided that they could best serve the Confederate cause by refraining from open attempts to influence public opinion through the daily press. When Rost arrived in Paris to take up his duties there, King tried to persuade him that the official commissioners should undertake propaganda efforts. Rost informed the Georgian that he had neither instructions nor funds to carry on such work. Furthermore, he took the position that Napoleon III was an absolute monarch who would make his decisions without regard for public opinion.²² King disagreed decidedly. He, too, was without specific instructions and funds, but he made good use of the resources available to him. He kept in touch with other Confederate sympathizers and propagandists as far away as Moscow and Lisbon.²³ He argued forcefully and planned the distribution of his writings where they might exert a wide influence. He extolled the commercial opportunities presented by a new nation pledged to free trade principles, and he attacked the enemy on a vulnerable point, the doubtful legality of the blockade. Whether European public opinion could have been won to the side of the South is an unanswerable question; certainly it was not to be won by inaction. In comparison with the official representatives, King showed great initiative and energy.

Insofar as public opinion can be gauged, sympathy for the Confederacy and antagonism toward the United States grew during the months that King was active in the propaganda field. In France the change was particularly noticeable in official circles. The Emperor moved from vaguely pro-Union views to such definite pro-Confederate leanings that in July he suggested to Lord Cowley that he was ready to intervene if the British would support him.²⁴ No doubt the progress of events in America and other considerations determined this shift of opinion, but some credit may be allowed to the Southerners abroad who argued the case for recognition.²⁵

In a sense, every Confederate in Europe was a representative of his country, and by his conduct could engage the sympathies of his hosts and associates. Henry Adams, a member of the staff at the American legation in London, expressed the concern he felt over the situation in England. Every Southerner abroad, he wrote to his brother Charles Francis, “is inspired by the idea of independence and liberty, while we are in a false position.… They have an object and they act together.”²⁶ Confederates in Europe won so much sympathy that the Lincoln administration organized a group of distinguished private citizens to try to counteract the Confederate propaganda, and John Bigelow was made consul in Paris primarily to take charge of the battle for European sympathy.²⁷ Thomas Butler King, as one of the earliest and most active advocates of the cause of the South, deserves to share the credit for the successes that even the enemies of the Confederacy acknowledged.

King pursued his independent course and wrote as he pleased. He was answerable only to Governor Brown and the legislature of Georgia for the fulfillment of his mission. On the practical side, however, he was also answerable to the printers and translators of his pamphlets for services that had never been contemplated in his commission. Originally, King had expected to remain in Europe about three months, defraying his expenses and taking a fee for his services from the $3,000 which the legislature had appropriated, the greater part of which he converted into negotiable form before he left New York. At the end of June, when he had already exceeded his planned stay by several weeks, he considered drawing on his own resources for additional funds, but he found that drafts on firms in the Confederacy were not being accepted by the usual sources of credit. By this time his first publishing bills had been presented, both of them for relatively small printings. In July the demands of creditors were becoming insistent, and a suit was being threatened over one bill. Finally, King resorted to an unauthorized draft on Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia for another $2,500, which the Governor was generous enough to honor out of his contingent fund. Perhaps King’s move at the end of September from the Hotel Montaigne to a furnished apartment was an attempt to cut his expenses; at any rate, his bill for lodging was lowered to less than half the former cost.²⁸

By the middle of October, King had still not carried out the specific instructions to conclude an agreement for a subsidized line of steamers between Europe and Georgia. When his negotiations with the Belgian-American Company failed, he had seized the opportunity to influence the plans of the French government and had brought about a significant change in the future projects of the subsidized French companies. In addition, he canvassed other possibilities by opening a correspondence with English steamship companies. Finally, on November 1, 1861, he concluded a contract with the Liverpool firm of Frederick Sabel and Company to establish regular weekly steamship service between Liverpool and Savannah within six months after the removal of the blockade, with a subsidy from the state of Georgia not to exceed $100,000 yearly for five years.²⁹ A month later King went aboard a vessel in Southampton, England, outward bound for Cuba, where he would take passage for his blockaded homeland.

King arrived in Cuba in December 1861, and waited approximately a month for a ship which would take him to the Confederacy. He left Havana on January 20, 1862, aboard the Calhoun, a light-draft steamer bound for New Orleans with a cargo of coffee, powder, medical supplies, and firearms. The Calhoun had seen service as a Confederate naval vessel, but had been converted to blockade running, carrying false registry papers as the Cuba. At daybreak of the third day of the run from Havana, as the Calhoun was standing into the delta of the Mississippi, she was sighted by a ship of the blockading fleet, the U.S.S. Colorado. The Calhoun headed for shoal water in East Bay where the Colorado could not follow, but Captain Bailey of the blockading frigate ordered two schooners to give chase. With the benefit of a strong northerly wind, the Samuel Rotan pulled alongside the Calhoun within an hour. By that time most of the firearms had been jettisoned, and the passengers and crew had taken to the boats, leaving the steamer on fire in two places. Boarding parties from the Samuel Rotan succeeded in putting out the fires before they damaged the remaining cargo materially. Besides the valuable goods that were saved, Captain Bailey could report the capture of the baggage and papers of Thomas Butler King, a Confederate commissioner. His men gave chase to the fleeing passengers and crew, but failed to overtake them.³⁰

The differences that twelve months had wrought in Kings personal fortunes were striking. In January 1861 he was a Georgia planter and railroad promoter, preparing to leave a country uneasily at peace; he reached the Confederacy a year later a fugitive from Federal guns. His Sea Island home had been abandoned to the mercies of military action, and a new plantation awaited him in the wire-grass region of the mainland. His children, united at home in 1861, were now scattered over three states; his four sons were in the army, and his daughter Georgia had married a soldier without waiting for his consent. His nephew James, with whom the two younger daughters were staying, urged their father to come to Linda Plantation after the labors of the past year, but for King personal comfort had to wait. From New Orleans, where the fleeing passengers of the Calhoun found refuge, he journeyed directly to Richmond. Of his activities in the Confederate capital he wrote only vaguely: “My stay here has been much longer than I intended, but as I had suggested to the Government very important measures I have been detained to make explanations …,”³¹ Undoubtedly, he was using his experience in Europe to give weight to his counsels to Confederate leaders, and it seems likely that the important measures were concerned with the need to publicize the Confederate cause. In April, Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin wrote to John Slidell, the new Confederate Commissioner in Paris: “… it becomes absolutely essential that no means be spared for the dissemination of truth, and for a fair exposition of our condition and policy before foreign nations.”³² Edwin de Leon, with whom King had been in contact in France, was designated the official propagandist for the Confederacy in Europe.³³ It is possible that King used a part of his time in Richmond to seek a position of honor in the permanent government that was inaugurated in February. If so, he kept his own counsel and revealed no feelings of dejection over his failure to receive an appointment. With the approach of summer he turned his steps toward Georgia and the new plantation in Ware County which he had not yet seen.³⁴