<P> Concerning the international status and nationhood of the Confederate States of America, in 1869 the United States Supreme Court in Texas v. White ruled Texas' declaration of secession was legally null and void . Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederacy, and Alexander H. Stephens, its former Vice-President, both wrote postwar arguments in favor of secession's legality and the international legitimacy of the Government of the Confederate States of America, most notably Davis' The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government . </P> <P> Once the war with the United States began, the Confederacy pinned its hopes for survival on military intervention by Great Britain and France . The Confederates who had believed that "cotton is king"--that is, Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton--proved mistaken . The British had stocks to last over a year and had been developing alternative sources of cotton, most notably India and Egypt . They were not about to go to war with the U.S. to acquire more cotton at the risk of losing the large quantities of food imported from the North . The Confederate government sent repeated delegations to Europe but historians give them low marks for their poor diplomacy . James M. Mason went to London and John Slidell traveled to Paris . They were unofficially interviewed, but neither secured official recognition for the Confederacy . </P> <P> In late 1861 the seizure of a British ship by the U.S. navy outraged Britain and led to a war scare in the Trent Affair . Recognition of the Confederacy seemed at hand, but Lincoln released the two detained Confederate diplomats, tensions cooled, and the Confederacy gained no advantage . </P> <P> Throughout the early years of the war, British foreign secretary Lord John Russell, Emperor Napoleon III of France, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, showed interest in recognition of the Confederacy or at least mediation of the war . William Ewart Gladstone, the British finance minister whose family wealth was based on slavery, was the key advocate calling for intervention to help the Confederacy achieve independence . He failed to convince prime minister Palmerston . By September 1862 the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and abolitionist opposition in Britain put an end to these possibilities . The cost to Britain of a war with the U.S. would have been high: the immediate loss of American grain shipments, the end of exports to the U.S., and the seizure of billions of pounds invested in American securities . War would have meant higher taxes, another invasion of Canada, and full - scale worldwide attacks on the British merchant fleet . Outright recognition would have meant certain war with the United States; in mid-1862 fears of race war as had transpired in Haiti led to the British considering intervention for humanitarian reasons . Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not lead to interracial violence let alone a bloodbath, but it did give the friends of the Union strong talking points in the arguments that raged across Britain . </P>

Who were the confederate political and military leaders during the civil war