The Emancipation Proclamation was a successful maneuver that kept the British from supporting the Confederacy with arms and munitions, and naval assistance, if not soldiers.
Britain had wanted to trade directly with the South so as to get cheaper cotton. The Northern voters voted for high cotton tariffs that cost British buyers a lot of money. Britain had an economic interest in trading directly with a free Confederate nation of Southern states.
The British people were very anti-slavery, having demanded an end to slavery in Britain not 25 years before.
With the Emancipation Proclamation stating that all Southern slaves were free men, he boxed the British government into either supporting Confederate slave practice and alienating the British subjects, or appealing to the British people by not supporting the Confederacy.
It was a brilliant move by Lincoln that kept the British on the sidelines. It was never intended to free anybody as it carried no weight of enforcement. It was a shrewd political move.
“It was never intended to free anybody as it carried no weight of enforcement.”
On that, I can fully agree.
I don’t think there was any real prospect of any of the European powers entering the ACW. Just as we should have stayed out of the First World War, the Europeans saw no imperative interest in the fight. Personal opinion to be sure.
not just Britain either though they cam close to coming in and if they had the south might have won as that blockade would have been lifted so Lincoln need that reason to keep them out and it worked plus france and most of Europe was close to seeing the south as a country , free from the north
good post