<P> Once the war with the US began, the best hope for the survival of the Confederacy was military intervention by Britain and France . The US realized that as well and made it clear that recognition of the Confederacy meant war and the end of food shipments into Britain . The Confederates who had believed in "King Cotton" (Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton for its industries) were proven wrong . Britain, in fact, had ample stores of cotton in 1861 and depended much more on grain from the US . </P> <P> During its existence, the Confederate government sent repeated delegations to Europe; historians do not give them high marks for diplomatic skills . James M. Mason was sent to London as Confederate minister to Queen Victoria, and John Slidell was sent to Paris as minister to Napoleon III . Both were able to obtain private meetings with high British and French officials, but they failed to secure official recognition for the Confederacy . Britain and the US were at sword's point during the Trent Affair in late 1861 . Mason and Slidell had been illegally seized from a British ship by an American warship . Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, helped calm the situation, and Lincoln released Mason and Slidell and so the episode was no help to the Confederacy . </P> <P> Throughout the early years of the war, British foreign secretary Lord Russell, Napoleon III, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, explored the risks and advantages of recognition of the Confederacy or at least offering a mediation . Recognition meant certain war with the US, loss of American grain, loss of exports, loss of investments in American securities, potential invasion of Canada and other North American colonies, higher taxes, and a threat to the British merchant marine with little to gain in return . Many party leaders and the general public wanted no war with such high costs and meager benefits . Recognition was considered following the Second Battle of Manassas, when the British government was preparing to mediate in the conflict, but the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, combined with internal opposition, caused the government to back away . </P> <P> In 1863, the Confederacy expelled all foreign consuls (all of them British or French diplomats) for advising their subjects to refuse to serve in combat against the US . </P>

What was going on in europe during the civil war