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The most important of these was the arrest of Confederate commissioners that precipitated the Trent Affair in November of 1861, an incident that was resolved by the release of the commissioners one month later. Other foreign governments issued statements of neutrality.Īs the Union Navy took steps to enforce the blockade, controversies arose with foreign governments over the legality of Union seizures of neutral shipping, as well as other related practices. Great Britain granted belligerent status on May 13, 1861, Spain on June 17, and Brazil on August 1. announcement of its intention to establish an official blockade of Confederate ports, foreign governments began to recognize the Confederacy as a belligerent in the Civil War. By July of 1861, the Union Navy had established blockades of all the major southern ports.įollowing the U.S. Lincoln extended the blockade to include North Carolina and Virginia on April 27.

President Abraham Lincoln sided with Seward and proclaimed the blockade on April 19. Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, argued for a de facto but undeclared blockade, which would prevent foreign governments from granting the Confederacy belligerent status. Secretary of State William Henry Seward recommended adopting the blockade shortly after the Battle of Fort Sumter in April, 1861 that marked the beginning of Civil War hostilities. It was less successful at preventing the smuggling of cotton, weapons, and other materiel from Confederate ports to transfer points in Mexico, the Bahamas, and Cuba, as this trade remained profitable for foreign merchants in those regions and elsewhere.

Government successfully convinced foreign governments to view the blockade as a legitimate tool of war. The blockade, although somewhat porous, was an important economic policy that successfully prevented Confederate access to weapons that the industrialized North could produce for itself. The Blockade of Confederate Ports, 1861-1865ĭuring the Civil War, Union forces established a blockade of Confederate ports designed to prevent the export of cotton and the smuggling of war materiel into the Confederacy.

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