A long shadow: The road to Appomattox – Part 3: 1864-1865

As the war that had begun on 12 April 1861 dragged on, European nations looked on with a mixture of anxiety and apprehension. Prior to the conflict, for example, textile mills in Great Britain had imported more than three-quarters of their cotton from the American South, and the Confederacy tried to play this as a trump card in dealing with the British. Hoping to bring the country into the war as an ally, the South first embargoed exports to the UK. But this effort backfired. The British prime minister Lord Palmerston had no intention of allying with the South, or of running the risks of evading the Northern naval blockade of the Confederacy’s ports – a decision reinforced by the fact th