Substantial sections of Britain’s business elite were working with impunity to help the slave-owning southern states win the American Civil War – despite the fact that Britain was officially neutral and had outlawed slavery almost 30 years earlier. The entirely illegal, but tacitly British-Government-approved pro-Confederate gun-running operation is thought to have lengthened the American Civil War by up to two years – and to have therefore cost as many as 400,000 American lives.
Bridge of Allan, at any one time, housed around 10 Confederate agents who held their planning meetings there – and used it as a base from which they could visit top shipbuilding magnates and others on Clydeside and "test drive" vessels to assess their speed.
“The clandestine headquarters was established just 32 miles by railway from Clydeside because it was the big shipbuilding magnates there who were being contracted to build or upgrade more than half of the two hundred vessels supplied to the Confederacy by UK shipyards.” said maritime historian Dr Eric Graham of Edinburgh University. “It demonstrates that Britain’s neutrality was, in reality, a complete sham,” said Dr Graham, the author of a major book on the Civil War gun-runners, Clyde Built: The Blockade Runners of the American Civil War.
The anti-slavery Dundee Ladies’ Emancipation Society realized who they were and informed the US consul in Dundee accordingly. After much pressure had been exerted by the US on the British Government, the exposure of the secret headquarters led a year later to the British preventing the export of a giant, potentially game-changing 130m armoured warship - and four other warships - to the Confederate Navy.
Much of the business sector were actively pro-Confederate, as there were considerable fortunes to be made from supplying guns, uniforms, medicines, textiles and even food to the South.Geopolitically, the British government saw the USA as a growing challenge to its global domination – especially in terms of merchant marine carrying capacity. The British also feared US expansionism and potential US-originating threats to Canada and British colonies in the Caribbean. “Economically Britain saw huge advantages in the break-up of the United States. It saw the American South as a source of raw cotton – and as a market for manufacturing goods, whereas it saw the North as an industrial competitor which sought to use protectionist policies to exclude Britain from American markets,” said Dr. Graham.
Bridge of Allan, at any one time, housed around 10 Confederate agents who held their planning meetings there – and used it as a base from which they could visit top shipbuilding magnates and others on Clydeside and "test drive" vessels to assess their speed.
“The clandestine headquarters was established just 32 miles by railway from Clydeside because it was the big shipbuilding magnates there who were being contracted to build or upgrade more than half of the two hundred vessels supplied to the Confederacy by UK shipyards.” said maritime historian Dr Eric Graham of Edinburgh University. “It demonstrates that Britain’s neutrality was, in reality, a complete sham,” said Dr Graham, the author of a major book on the Civil War gun-runners, Clyde Built: The Blockade Runners of the American Civil War.
The anti-slavery Dundee Ladies’ Emancipation Society realized who they were and informed the US consul in Dundee accordingly. After much pressure had been exerted by the US on the British Government, the exposure of the secret headquarters led a year later to the British preventing the export of a giant, potentially game-changing 130m armoured warship - and four other warships - to the Confederate Navy.
Much of the business sector were actively pro-Confederate, as there were considerable fortunes to be made from supplying guns, uniforms, medicines, textiles and even food to the South.Geopolitically, the British government saw the USA as a growing challenge to its global domination – especially in terms of merchant marine carrying capacity. The British also feared US expansionism and potential US-originating threats to Canada and British colonies in the Caribbean. “Economically Britain saw huge advantages in the break-up of the United States. It saw the American South as a source of raw cotton – and as a market for manufacturing goods, whereas it saw the North as an industrial competitor which sought to use protectionist policies to exclude Britain from American markets,” said Dr. Graham.
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