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Beau Cleland, "Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: How Pirates, Smugglers, and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy" (U Georgia Press, 2025)
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- [00:02]
A
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B
Much weirder than the last time.
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A
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B
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C
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:36]
B
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Beau Cleland about his book titled Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria, How Pirates, Smugglers and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy. Published by the University of Georgia Press in 2025, this book looks at the American Civil War, but maybe from a different perspective than we're used to. We're going to be talking, for example, about the Atlantic Ocean, about the British Empire, about London, about British Caribbean colonies, maybe even a little bit about Canada and how looking at all of those sorts of places and the interactions with the American south maybe give us a different understanding or texture on some of the elements that turns out were pretty important in determin what happened in the conflict. So Beau, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [02:29]
A
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [02:30]
B
Could you please start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book.
- [02:36]
A
Sure, yes. I'm currently an assistant professor of history at the University of Calgary, which is in Alberta in Canada, way out west by the Rocky Mountains. Before that, though I'm not Canadian, I'm in fact an American. And that kind of ties into where this book came from.
- [02:54]
I wasn't always a historian. Before this I was a soldier in the U.S. army. And at one point in my life I was in Afghanistan and wondering what on earth I'm doing here and who we're fighting. And I followed that question into graduate school at first in international relations at Johns Hopkins University. And while I was there I was interested in these questions of know, transnational insurgency. You know, conflicts have spill across border, they're supported by, by, you know, state actors who are not necessarily involved directly in the fighting. And I was doing a research project just for, as a research assistant for one of my professors there and I was tasked with looking into a Confederate raid across the Canadian border into Vermont during the U.S. civil War in 1864. And I, I hadn't heard of it before and I was like, well, this sounds a lot like the things I'm wondering about from my own experience in Afghanistan. And I started chasing this down and I decided I wanted to pursue history graduate education. And, and so that raid and what I learned about its connections to a bunch of other events in Canada and elsewhere led me to this book project because I quickly realized that it wasn't just, you know, a handful of Confederates robbing banks in Vermont or hijacking steamships on the Great Lakes. In fact, it turns out they were, they were part of a much broader network that encompassed much of what I've calling British America for the purposes of this book. I realize that term has different definitions depending on where you go, but I realized that this is part of a broad network that was mostly not run by the Confederate government that deeply involved British subjects, especially colonial subjects inland and Bermuda in the Bahamas, in a far reaching network of supporters that was actively involved in the war not just as bystanders, but in some cases as active participants bearing arms, but in other ways as logistical supporters and things like that. And so by following those threads, I ended up with a book project out of what I thought was a summer research job for a few weeks.
- [04:58]
B
It's always funny how it can be something seemingly really small that kind of sparks something that really grows a lot bigger than that. So thank you for giving us the backstory of the project. And in fact, it's exactly that point of kind of the scale of what you discovered that I want to make sure we're very clear on. Because as you said, this is not what, 1, 2, 5 raids? The whole point of the subtitle of your book of talking about smuggling pirates, right. There has to be something blocking them that would make just normal legal trade not possible. So can you tell us about kind of the systemic blockade that the Confederacy was facing and how big a problem it actually was for their efforts?
- [05:37]
A
Sure. So, yeah, the roots of this, as I've found, go back to the start of the war and the declaration by the United States of a blockade. The Southern states are in rebellion against the government, you know, that we can, leaving aside the, you know, let's maybe call it the legal propriety of declaring a blockade against your own territory in a place where you don't recognize the conflict is in place. You know, that gets kind of ironed out gradually in court cases and so on afterwards. But the point is that Lincoln declares a blockade of the relay Estates in April 1861. In theory, this blockade covers the entire coastline from Virginia to, to Brownsville, Texas, on the Mexican border. That is a gigantic distance and one that was impossible to police with the tiny U.S. navy that existed in the spring of 1861 and Confederates scoffed at this at first. They urged the British especially and others to ignore the blockade or declare it as ineffective and therefore illegal under the terms of the 1856 Declaration of Paris, which has settled a number of issues coming out of the Crimean War.
- [06:45]
Now, it should be said that the United States and the Confederacy by extension, were not signatorious to disagreement. However, it was, yeah, the point was fair, that there's no way the US Navy could have blockaded all of that coastline. And in fact, they never effectively did so, even as the Navy grew gigantically during the war. However, it turns out that there are relatively few deep water ports connected inland by rail in the entire south, just a mere handful of them. And those are much easier to police. And. And so the United States quickly acted to control those. Some of them they seized by land. New Orleans falls in early 1862. You know, some ports in coastal Georgia and Florida and South Carolina are in Union hands quite quickly as well, as well as North Carolina and the remaining important deepwater ports that remaining Confederate hands on the Atlantic coast at least are Wilmington, North Carolina and Charleston, South Carolina. Those end up being the two most important ports for shipments from abroad for the Confederacy for the duration of the war.
- [07:47]
Much of the existing literature on the blockade and blockade running the war tends to focus on these questions of effectiveness, did it work? And so on. And I kind of accepted as prima facie that.
- [08:01]
It was effective in some ways, because turns out that after, you know, late 1861, it is impossible to send a normal shipment of weapons or supplies or anything like that from Europe to the Confederacy directly. Large ships cannot get past the blockade into these deep water ports. And so the Confederacy quickly finds itself in need of some other way to get through the blockade.
- [08:26]
So this blockade, even though it's relatively loose, you know, the success rate of ships passing through it was fairly high. Your odds of getting caught on any individual voyage were pretty low, even for a sailing schooner, for example. But some of that has to do with changes in tactics and so on as the war goes on. But the blockade, which is dismissed by Confederate leadership and the public as being as ineffective or worth scoffing at, quickly becomes an issue, far more an issue than the Confederates expected. Well, some of this has to do with just Confederate pre war expectations about, about their power and international influence. You know, there's a, a classic study of Confederate formulations called King Cotton diplomacy. And you know, that's the, the idea that, you know, to put it very briefly, that Confederate economic power in the hands of, in, in terms of, of cotton exports would be enough to persuade the powers of Europe to intervene on their behalf in any conflict with the north because their economies are dependent on a fixed supply of cotton from the South. And that, you know, the belief is that they especially they being the English, are so mercenary that they'll do anything to have it. They'll intervene on our behalf despite the fact that we have slaves and they are an invalid anti slavery power. Those expectations proved to be very misguided, and we can return to that perhaps later. The Confederates also, both sides believe that, you know, that the war would be a very short duration. And they were both quickly disabused of that notion. And so by late 1861, both sides in the conflict are, you know, realizing that we need to find new ways to acquire weapons and equipment to field very large armies and of the size that never existed before on the North American continent. And so both sides, in fact, by large numbers of weapons, especially infantry weapons, such as rifles from Europe. But the south has, unlike the north, has also very limited abilities to produce its own weapons, gunpowder and lead, and is far more reliant on imports for all kinds of stuff, especially finely machined parts and things like that. And so, you know, the south is, just by its, its very economic situation, far more dependent on imports than the north was. And this is a relic of the, you know, the antebellum economic system of the US where, you know, manufacturing is entirely concentrated or almost entirely concentrated in the North. The southern states are largely agricultural and deeply reliant on the products of plantation agricultural exports. And so we're in the situation where the south cannot easily have large shipments come from Europe.
- [11:11]
They increasingly also cannot pay for what they're trying to buy in Europe. They've sent agents abroad to purchase weapons in Britain and the continent. And these people are quite successful at finding guns. The difficulty ends up being how to get them from Europe into the Confederacy and then how to pay for them. You know, the south is a cash poor society throughout this era. It is very wealthy per capita. As far the wealthiest people are southerners in the US with just a handful of exceptions. But almost all that wealth is tied up in land or in enslaved people. And so, you know, they lack hard currency species to purchase things kind of on a cash and carry basis in Europe. And they have a difficult time obtaining loans to do this. You know, there's one, the south, you know, the Confederacy is not a recognized government. There is little appetite to give them loans in Europe to start with. This is exacerbated by a kind of long standing issues of debt repudiation by southern state governments from before the war. And so there's, there is, they're running to the issue of how do we buy this? What do we have that is of value to people in Europe, to businessmen that can allow us to purchase these things? And the answer of course is cotton. You know, there's, of course there are, there's some other difficulties with that that we can get to in a moment. But what, what it comes down to is a Confederacy suddenly finds itself.
- [12:36]
Shorn of its, of its expectations that, that the Royal Navy will come in and sweep the blockade away on their behalf and is now in need of a way to reliably run the blockade. And they, there's two basic options they have for this, one of which is to use small sailing vessels to go into ports that are not well protected or just can land things on the coast. And you can do that, but it's difficult to move large number, large volumes of items or very heavy items that way. And you know, they are, their carrying capacity is somewhat limited. Or you need some kind of ship that can effectively evade the increasingly stringent blockade of these major southern ports on the Atlantic coast especially. And that requires fast shallow draft steamships that can, that can get in and out of these relatively shallow Confederate ports. I call them deep water, but that's a relative basis. Most time, you know, ships that draw the same kind of water as a large sailing ship would not be able to get over the bar and into these ports very easily. And so you need kind of fast sailing ships. And it turns out the, you know, the, the ships that run in places like the Clyde estuary in Scotland are almost perfect for this type of operation. So increasing those types of vessels are purchased in Britain and brought across the ocean to run the blockade. But of course, those are not, for the most part, built for long distance travel. They are not going to go directly from Confederate ports to Europe. So they need other options. And increasingly it becomes obvious to both people in Britain's kind of Atlantic world colonies and the Confederacy that places like the Bahamas and Bermuda and to a much lower extent, Cuba are or would be valuable outposts to do this. And so they start turning towards these British colonies as a way to, to overcome the difficulties of this, this expanding Union blockade of the southern coastline. Of course, there's no guarantee that they're going to be welcome in these places. They had to foster existing connections there in terms of both personal and family and business connections in order to create a suitable environment to facilitate blockade running. Hmm.
- [14:41]
B
It's exactly this sort of the extent to which they're going to have a welcome reception that I'd like to go to next, because you've outlined very clearly for us why the Confederates are looking to have these connections. But what kind of foundation are they building on? Before the war, for instance, were there already links between places that are now part of the Confederacy and these British Caribbean colonies? Did they know each other? Did they like each other? Like what's. Where are they starting off with building these wartime relations?
- [15:10]
A
At risk of using a cliche, in some ways it is a love hate relationship between, when I'm saying Southerners, but I explicitly mean, you know, white Southerners of, you know, especially those who are the slaveholders themselves or supportive of slaveholders. You know, these are the people who are the backbone of the Confederate elite and southern governments, even in the antebellum era. And their relationship with, with British colonies in the new World in general was, I would characterize it as suspicious at best, openly hostile at worst. And there's a lot of reasons for this, not least of which is, of course, that the British Empire abolished slavery in its possessions.
- [15:48]
By 1834 is when it's officially done away with. And that was seen as a naked threat by many southern thinkers in the antebellumura. And so much of kind of US foreign policy between 1830 and 1850 or so is casting at least one eye askance at suspicions of british abolitionism as a threat to the United States. And there are some specific incidents that intensify this suspicion. There are a series of shipwrecks and other incidents involving what we call the coastwise slave trade. So the internal slave trade done over water within the US which is very often moving enslaved people from the upper south of Maryland, Virginia and so on to the deep south, especially New Orleans, to work on sugar and cotton plantations in the rapidly expanding slave plantation complex of what we call the old southwest, you know, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and increasingly Texas. And so there's a huge internal movement of enslaved people that's done over water because it's cheaper to do it that way. But when these ships come to grief, you know, their route pass has them passed by british possessions on the atlantic coast, Especially Bahamas and Bermuda. And the Bahamian waters especially are quite treacherous in this era for shipping of all sorts. It's very shallow. There are challenging current systems. When the weather is bad, you can very easily run aground on a reef that's just below the water line. And so ships come to grief all the time in the bahamian archipelago. And usually that's dealt with with no issue. There's a. There's a robust and sometimes possibly criminal system of what we call wrecking or, you know, these are professional ship salvagers who are, you know, very often people are black colonial subjects in. In the Bahamas themselves. And, you know, and they. Their job is to go to a shipwreck or a stranded ship and take off the cargo and rescue the passengers and bring them into port, and for their efforts are generally entitled to a share of the proceeds. This is a long way to get into the fact that some of these ships, the cargo was people. And in those cases, because British law did not permit slavery to exist on its territory, those people were freed. And this was seen by southerners, right or wrong, as being a violation of kind of the international comedy of nations of their rights in property and as a kind of a. An aggressive way for Britain to. To attack the u. S. Internal slave trade. One of those cases notably involved not a shipwreck, but an uprising on board a slaving vessel called the Creole in 1841. In this case, a. An enslaved man named Madison Washington, who had previously escaped slavery to freedom in canada and returned home to try to retrieve his wife from slavery. And he was being recaptured. He was being shipped south. And people were aware through either through Washington or others, that if they reach British territory, they would be free. And so he freed himself from his chains and the enslaved passengers rose up, attacked the crew, you know, killed one and seized the ship and forced the ship to sail into Nassau, which is the main city in the Bahamas, on the island of New Providence. There they were briefly held, but then liberated by, under British law. And this was seen as, again, British, you know, perfidy encouraging slave uprising, which was the, you know, the bit noir of Southern society. Every threat to slavery, every hint at rebellion was seen as echoes of a second Haitian rebellion. You know, their southern antebellum Southern literature is full of references to Haiti and to wanted massacres.
- [19:41]
In the course of a slave uprising. And this seemed to them, if you're, you know, in their jaundiced view, as evidence that at least some British authorities were perfectly happy to have this happen if they're allowing these.
- [19:54]
Enslaved pirates, as they saw it, to seize a southern ship and murder a crew member and then get their freedom in British territory with no consequences.
- [20:03]
However, that, you know, that, that kind of intense paranoia starts to fade a bit as southerners are seeing the threat to slave elsewhere, increasingly coming from within their own society in the north. And so after 1850, that intense Anglophobia starts to fade a bit. And by the time of the Civil War, they're willing at least to see the possibility of help coming from places like the Bahamas or Bermuda. You also asked about, are there other connections? And this is, this is the case. So, you know, despite the xanglophobia, there are deep connections, especially in certain portions of the old south with the Bahamas, some of which stands back to the American Revolution. We don't have to go back that far. But, you know, the Bahamas were heavily settled by people fleeing.
- [20:53]
The losing side of the American Revolution or the American War for independence. And a number of them left the south with their enslaved people as property in tow and resettled in the Bahamas. And so, you know, in some cases, like, you know, Southern society was, was replanted quite literally in the Bahamas and, and persisted there for, for, you know, in the intervening decades. You know, some of the more important people in Bahamian Society by 1861 are either the, the sons or otherwise the, the direct heirs of, of loyalist planters who had relocated to the Bahamas. And yeah, they are also deeply connected with, with regional trade between the Bahamas and, and places like, you know, South Carolina, but especially Florida. You know, it turns out that if you've ever been to Key West. The, you know, the tourist shops there are filled with, with flags advertising the Conch Republic. You know, C O N C H Conch being the, you know, the large shellfish that's kind of prominent as a, as both a, a decoration and a food source in the region. Well, so it turns out that Conch is also a sometimes pejorative name for a white Bahamian. And the Conch Republic, Key west had been settled in part by white Bahamians moving there for trade with the US and so before the war, there are existing familial networks and trade networks between Florida and one of the main cities in Florida is Key west and the Bahamas. And it turns out that those networks are going to be really important for establishing the networks of trade that persist during blockade running.
- [22:24]
C
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- [23:36]
A
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- [24:06]
B
These networks are clearly very important, but as much as they're already some aspects of it that are in existence if you do, as you described there, and some affinities that might be in common, I think it's probably worth at this point picking up the supposition you mentioned earlier that some Confederates had, that they would be able to establish these links and trade not just with individual British colonies or kind of individual Brits in those colonies, but that like the nation of Britain would be involved not so much on this kind of informal who do you happen to know basis, but like as a country, why didn't that happen even though there were people that thought it would?
- [24:48]
A
Some of this has to do just with plain miscalculation on the part of Southerners. As I mentioned. I briefly mentioned the kind of King Cotton diplomacy earlier and those expectations again were that in the event of a war that all Southerners had to do was to pinch off the flow of cotton and John Bull would squeal and come running to Southern aid to help them. And so the thought was that, you know, we don't need to invest in, you know, in naval forces or things like that. In the event of this war, the British will do that for us. Of course, this is undermined by a number of factors, one of which is just, I mean this is something Southerners should have seen coming but did not, is that the cotton crop in 1860 was enormous. And so in 1861, when the war begins, warehouses in places like Liverpool are still overflowing practically with southern cotton from the previous season that hadn't been used yet by, by factories in Lancashire and elsewhere. And so there is no urgent, immediate need for any kind of intervention because there's plenty of cotton on hand to keep the factories running. But I suspect even if there had been a shortage of cotton right away, Southerners had just overest, overplayed their hand in a number of ways. One of which is that, you know, the Palmerston government does not like the United States. You know, Palmerston is no fan of mob democracy as he saw it in the US but he's also hard headed and he's.
- [26:18]
A realist in terms of dealing with international affairs. You know, he's interested in preserving British honor and prestige, but he is not interested in starting a war because what he sees is some jumped up slave driver in the south is demanding that he do so. And so there is no.
- [26:36]
It seems very unlikely to me that Palmerston would have intervened on Southern behalf right away just because.
- [26:43]
He wants cotton or he thinks that his country needs cotton. And so, yeah, there is no recognition of Confederate declarations of independence right away. There's no recognition of Confederate diplomats that are sent to London right off the bat. And it's worth considering the Southern missteps in this as well. You know, the people they send initially as diplomats to London are. They maybe couldn't possibly have picked worse people. And in some ways, Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, sends these guys like. Like William lounge Yancy, who is a Southern fire eater, an advocate in some cases, of reopening the Atlantic slave trade. He sends him overseas because he doesn't like the guy, and he wants him out of the south and out of his hair because he's a problem. And, of course, this may be maybe the worst possible person they could have chosen to initially represent the Confederacy abroad. This isn't. Their next choices aren't much better. The next person they send is a former Virginia senator, James Murray Mason, who is infamous in Britain for being the author of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. So, again, these are not people calculated to appeal to British sentiment in any way. And so there's a. A vast overestimation on the part of Southerners of how Britain will respond to this. And there's also. And this will restart to get into kind of the informal approach to things. There is also an effort to use economic coercion right off the bat to. To try to get British involvement in the war. And this is done through what's called the cotton embargo. And so this is a. A something that the Southern government proclaims is not a real thing. They have no involvement in it. We swear it is just. Our. Our independent merchants are just, you know, withholding cotton for shipment to Europe because of. Because they feel like it. It's not an official policy. That said, now this is done with a wink and an awe by the Confederate government. And the idea being that by deliberately withholding cotton shipments in 1861, that this would again, kind of squeeze that king cotton pressure point and push British intervention. Of course, this is a.
- [28:40]
I sometimes struggle with their thought process on this because it just seems so foolish. So, on the one hand, they are begging the Royal Navy to intervene because the blockade of their ports is illegal and ineffect because it is not effective. The international law requires that a blockade be. Have enough force to really threaten and prevent entrance and exit to a harbor to be. To be legal. So every day they're Frequently they're sending lists of ships that have come in and out of Southern ports to British diplomats and saying, look here, see, the blockade doesn't work. And then also they're pointing out, look, you need to help us because there's no continents coming out and it's hard to look at a list of ships coming in and out of the south and then also say that no cotton is moving. And you know, Palmerston and his government are not stupid. They realize exactly what's happening and they're not going to be coerced or extorted in this way. And so the Southerners overplay their hand with that regard, at least.
- [29:38]
B
Yeah, sometimes these kind of calculations really don't work out the way they're expected to. So that's helpful to understand that piece there. So we then turn back to where the Confederacy is able to make connection. So we've talked, we've mentioned Bermuda in the Bahamas. Can we talk a bit more about the Bahamas kind of. Why is this such a key node in particular?
- [29:59]
A
Certainly. And of course, the obvious one is geography. Right. So the Bahamas are fairly close to the southern coast. Of course, we have to remember in 1861, Florida is not a highly populated state. The, you know, Miami is a, if it exists at all, is a tiny village. And so the main southern population centers and, and ports are further north, you know, in, in Georgia and the Carolinas or even in North Florida in places like Fernandina and Jacksonville. But that said, the Bahamas are geographically the closest piece of non United States territory to the Confederate Atlantic coast. And, and so just by simple geography, it is an obvious place if you need to facilitate fast sailing or steam vessels going back and forth from the coastline. You need somewhere to refuel. You know, these ships burn a huge amount of coal. And so every ton of coal you have on board is a ton of cargo you can't carry. And so the shorter the distance to back and forth to these ports, the better. And so geography is maybe the main one, but it's not enough here. Right. So there is no guarantee that a British colony will permit blockade urinary to happen out of its, out of its ports. You know, each colony does, at least in the Bahamas and the Bermuda have an independent legislature. You know, they are, they have not been caught up in some of the problems of the former sugar colonies in the West Indies in terms of having some of their independence retrenched upon by the Crown. And the Bahamas in particular, there's a long tradition of.
- [31:43]
Let'S call it recalcitrants to the prerogatives of Crown rule. And so.
- [31:51]
There'S an opportunity here for Confederates to lean on imperial tensions between colony and metropole in places like the Bahamas. And so if they can find a place like the Bahamas that has existing ties of sentiment and kinship, there's a very similar honor culture among the white elite. And I'm using elite somewhat ironically here for, for the Bahamas.
- [32:13]
But there's a, there's similar honor culture between there in the south that, that has links back to those, those cultural ties. There's ties of kinship. You know, the, the initial trading relationship between the Bahamas and the Confederacy during the war is orchestrated by a Key west man who's has family ties to the Bahamas, including with the wealthiest and most influential man in the Bahamas, a merchant named Henry Adderley. And they helped facilitate an initial attempt to ship a large.
- [32:44]
Pile of weapons to the Bahamas and then have the ship shelter there and then run into a southern port from there. And so we have these, these converging factors, right? You have the geography. This is a convenient location. You have existing ties of sentiment, kinship with Southerners, including Southerners who are now working for the Confederate logistical apparatus in Richmond. And, you know, the, this tradition of, of behaving elites being a royal pain to colonial governors and administrators. And these, it turns out, are just what the, the doctor ordered. If you need to have local laws changed to make blockade running legal. In this case in the Bahamas, you know, it was illegal to, to break bulk cargo, meaning to. To break up the initial packaging of, of cargo from its initial transit point and put it onto different ships merely for the purpose of shipping it somewhere else.
- [33:38]
Usually if you do that, you have to pay entrance fees and go through customs processing and things like that. It becomes a whole thing. So what the Confederates need is someone in the Bahamian legislature to change the rules for them. And in the person of Adderley, they've got a friend who sees opportunity to help them. But he also, you know, Adderley is. He is, I think he's around 60 years old, just over 60 when the war begins. And he is by.
- [34:08]
Kinship, he's ties to the South. He was as a young man very resistant to British abolition. He was fined by the governor for his aggressive response to the abolition act in 1832. And so he has a long tradition of being at least friendly to slavery. And he sees opportunity in what's to come in blockade running. And so he. Not just Adelaide, there are a number of people in the Bahamian legislature who are open to this change the rules to make blockade running possible. And they are more or less open to working with Confederate merchants and shippers in order to facilitate blockade running.
- [34:54]
B
What about Bermuda then? Are they involved in different ways or for different reasons than the Bahamas, or is it sort of the same kind of idea?
- [35:02]
A
Bermuda is a slightly different case. So in the Bahamas, the blockade running develops pretty quickly in late in 1861 and 1862 as the, the blockade on the coast becomes more effective. And I think it's important to note here that, that the initial blockade running efforts are not done.
- [35:19]
By the Confederate government. It's left in the hands of private parties. Some of the initial purchasing in Europe is maybe facilitated by a Confederate agent, but increasingly the shipments are handled by private parties. And when people realize how much money is to be made by running these goods in and out of Confederate ports, the number of firms and people involved in this mushroom quite quickly. Both people coming from London, people locally in the Bahamas doing this, and people from the south, almost none of whom are Confederate government officials or agents or things like that, you know, have this thing pick up very rapidly. And so by the, by the summer of 1862, Bahamas, the Bahamas are buzzing with blockade running traffic. In Bermuda, this picks up quite a bit later, in part because Bermuda's a little bit further away from the southern coast. You know, it's kind of, it sits, you know, in terms of latitude far out, you know, kind of from the mid Atlantic states, pretty substantial distance. And so if you're, if we're in a steamship in the 1860s, the difference is, you know, in some cases, 24 to 36 hours further sailing to get there than it is to go from Nassau and back. And so initially it's not as popular with the blockade running set. Bermuda is also a slightly different colonial tradition than the Bahamas. Neither had been sugar plantations, you know, but both had slavery. And it had very large populations of now formerly enslaved people and their descendants. But in Bermuda's case, it is the pro Confederate, I guess tendencies of the place tend to be moderated by a large military presence by the Royal Navy and the British army. You know.
- [37:00]
The North American West Indies fleet's kind of summer station is at Bermuda, has a very large dockyard and repairs presence. There's a convict presence there with convict ships and convicts sent to work on various military projects in the colony. And so there's. And the governor is usually a military officer in this area. In this case at the time of civil war, it's an army colonel who's in charge of the garrison there. And so the government is, you know, there's still a local elected legislature, but it is slightly more moderate in what it can achieve. That said, though, after the Trent Affair of 1861, where, you know, where a U.S. navy ship seized a couple of Confederate envoys off a British mail steamer, which nearly succinctly war between Britain and the United States, attitudes in the, in Bermuda, especially among the military elite, turn sharply against the Union as well. And so there's a, you know, although there's a large military presence on the island, increasingly people like the governor are, are sympathetic to the Confederacy as well. And they also find sympathetic local merchants who are willing to facilitate trade and ties with, between Europe and the Confederacy.
- [38:14]
Interestingly, in, in Bermuda this is, and the Bahamas as well. This one thing they get involved with is changing ship registries from, you know, from southern states and giving them the protection, at least the fig leaf protection of British registration, which would, in the absence of other evidence, would protect them from being seized by the U.S. navy. And that is pioneered in the Bahamas. It's extended to bermuda later in 1861. And the colonial office is kind of forced by circumstances to accept what kind of these pro Confederate local officials in the Bahamas did and make that British policy around the world for obtaining new registrations for former British ships. And so this is a situation where these, these kind of informal diplomacy and these efforts by, by colonial actors kind of presents the, you know, the Whitehall with, with a fait accompli and they're forced to accept this decision as policy rather than going through the, the difficult and painful process of trying to force them back from it. This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee.
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- [40:38]
B
That's a really interesting impact of all of this. What about people on these islands that are less friendly to these efforts? You mentioned, for example, that there are communities on both of the islands that were either people who were previously enslaved or other black communities. How did they respond to for example, their governor doing these things for the Confederacy?
- [41:00]
A
So this is one of the more interesting aspects of the story in my mind. And so the book is really framed around this idea of Confederate informal diplomacy, these substate relations between non official actors as being really important for sustaining blockade running in these other networks. And they sustained their support among the white community in all kinds of ways. They're integrated with them culturally and socially. They're doing social events, they're having horse races in Hamilton, in Bermuda or in Nassau, all kinds. They're hosting dinners and things like that. They are deeply integrated in these, the elite society of these colonies. These Confederate traders and informal officials are. However, the vast majority of the workforce on these islands are people of color. They're black colonials for the most part. And they are caught in some cases between a rock and a hard place here.
- [41:53]
The blockade running brings quick wealth to both colonies and so there's a chance here to alleviate grinding poverty and to find work, especially on the docks and wharves and things like that with the blockade runners. However, this is. Runs up against a strong and deeply and genuinely held anti slavery activism in both these communities. And they are not powerless. And so they are. And they are also intensely aware that southern slavery is still a threat to them personally in some cases. In 1861, just before the war, or sorry, 1860 rather a two young black boys, for example, were kidnapped by an American ship captain in, in kind of coastal waters in the Bahamas, brought to the south and sold into slavery. So they were very aware that, that southern slavery is a danger to them and their, and their kin, you know, as long as it exists. And you know, there's also, we have, we have evidence from, from friendly society speeches and, and on, on Emancipation Day and things like that, that they are very aware of the condition of their brethren in chains on the mainland as, as they called them. And that there is a, there's activism among them to, to do something about it and to if they can, and if they can do it so safely. And so this manifests itself in a number of ways in the Bahamas, which is a huge archipelago There are lots of small islands and inlets and places where they rarely if ever, see the light of colonial authority. There are lots of opportunities for doing things kind of sub rosa to help resist the slaveholders rebellion in the south. In Nassau itself, this takes the form of spying and acting as careers for the American consul there, passing word to, passing to Navy ships about movements of blockade runners and so on, or Confederate plots and things like that. They increasingly act as kind of as pilots and guides for the U.S. navy. So the United States Navy starts keeping a squadron in Bahamian waters. But again, these are challenging places to navigate through and you often need someone with local knowledge to help you avoid running aground and, and coming to grief on, on these rocks and shoals. And so a number of black Bahamians serve as pilots on these ships at great, at great risk to themselves.
- [44:02]
People out in the archipelago in these, in these kind of these out islands, as they're called at the time, are also happy to provide supplies and shelter and anchorages to US Navy ships, which is in violation of colonial rules. You know, they were forbidden from anchoring in British coastal water, so within three miles of shore, but they did so all the time because they had the support of the local populace. You know, there are no white officials in many of these islands, especially that sit along the main shipping channels. And so the US Ships are able to sit there and wait. And we have a number of cases where between the actions of these sheltering bodies, pilots and couriers, the United States was was able to intercept and capture valuable blockade runners loaded with cotton or with coming out or with arms and equipment going in to Confederacy, which it's hard to say exactly how many because we don't always have the good records on, on which ships had these pilots on board. They weren't officially enrolled in the ship's books, for example, and they weren't eligible for pay in many cases, at least prize money paid, which is an injustice that meant several American captains tried to have redressed, incidentally. But so there is a network of spies, of couriers, of pilots that are actively working against the Confederate project. And of course these people are at risk.
- [45:16]
I'm aware of at least five or six pilots in the Bahamas who were arrested, charged with violations of the Foreign Enlistment act, and sent to prisons for fairly harsh terms of hard labor because of their efforts to help the United States. Even though in theory they weren't formally enrolled as U.S. service members and did not take part in armed conflict actively, yet they were still convicted. By comparison, we have many Cases of, of white British subjects who did the same thing for the Confederacy that were not prosecuted, that were in some cases allowed to go free despite clear evidence that they had been engaged in some cases illegal conduct for the Confederate side. And we'll probably get some of these guys later. And so these communities face a great deal of risk, but they often did this for no prospect of reward or even pay.
- [46:03]
They did it. So we have testimony from the US Consul saying that they're doing it. I'm paraphrasing here, but for, you know, he's doing it to, to aid his, his, his fellow people in slavery in the U.S.
- [46:17]
The other aspect of this is that they also, because Confederates had no experience really with, with large bodies of free black laborers. They were very bad at, at dealing with demands for, for things like pay increases. Inflation was rampant in, in both these island sets during the war because of the influx of money. And so wages often did not keep pace with prices. And so In Bermuda in 1863, the Black Dock workers who were working for the Confederate operation there, which was a much more kind of direct government operation there because it was slightly less busy than Nassau, went on strike asking for a raise. The Confederate official there who was kind of helped coordinate this, he fired all the workers. He tried to recruit scabs, you know, replacement workers from elsewhere in the islands. But there was a great deal of community solidarity among the black community in the Bahamas. They organized into fraternal organizations like, like the Odd Fellows, Masonic lodges and, and mutual aid societies of various sorts. And through these groups they are able to, to resist the replacement workers. They're driven off by violence in some cases against their fellows. And they also resist violently the efforts to break their strike. There's a huge cotton fire on the wharves during a strike in 1863. You know, thousands of cotton bales worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in courtesy at that time, which was a huge loss, go up in flames. The deep suspicion was that this was set by the strikers because there was a distraction fire set among hay bales on the other side of town just beforehand. They all sat idly by and refused to fight the fire as white blockade running crews and soldiers and everyone else tries to put fire out. And eventually the Confederates and their fellow travelers among the Bermudian elite are forced to settle. The workers are rehired, they're given a substantial pay raise, and they were able to flex their economic muscles against.
- [48:12]
An unwilling and inflexible Confederate approach to dealing with them. A similar situation happens in Bermuda in the spring and early summer of 1864, although in this case, it's met with a little less severe.
- [48:26]
Arson, but a lot more violence against strike breakers and things like that by. By the striking parties. And that, too, was settled on, you know, in favor of the workers. But while the strikes were happening, there was substantial disruption to Confederate shipping operations. And so these had military impacts on Confederate war effort that are difficult to calculate, but certainly did not help them at a time when. When the war was in a critical phase.
- [48:50]
B
Yeah, definitely worth adding into the picture. And it is, in fact, on the subject of violence, I'd like to turn to next. So that was violence sort of against the Confederate cause. What about some British colonial support that was enacting violence for the Confederates both in the Caribbean? And you also talk about Canada. So what's going on with this? Why does this happen, especially as the war progresses?
- [49:13]
A
Sure. So this is where we start getting into this. This intercolonial network being. Being much bigger than just blockade running. So it. Early in the war, I guess I should start by saying.
- [49:25]
Confederate naval strategy, when the war started, leaned heavily on the idea of privateering. That is to say, you know, private ships licensed to attack enemy shipping. You know, this is a simplistic way of putting. Is legalized piracy. And this is a way for, you know, states without strong navies to kind of overcome some of the weakness by hiring people to. Or that hiring, but by licensing people to go seize enemy cargoes on government behalf. But there are stringent rules about this in terms of having a license, paying a bond, and so on. And the Confederates quickly found that they couldn't make it work, given.
- [50:01]
The rules in place for privateering. And so early on, there are a number of Confederate privateers who are out there. They do seize a number of Union merchant vessels, some of them are, but they find increasingly that they cannot bring the ships into a Confederate port for sale, as is required by law. And instead of just giving up, they. Some of them turn to what essentially is smuggling or theft of these vessels. You know, what they've descended to piracy, in essence, on Confederate behalf. And they find support for this in the Bahamas, especially on some of these outlying islands, where local officials are willing to look the other way as a Confederate privateer captain brings a captured ship ashore, takes all the cargo off it for sale kind of surreptitiously elsewhere, and then tries to sell the ship or rename it or doctor the papers to steal it without having to go through the formal adjudication process. And this was enabled by local officials. You know, these are often people who are very poor themselves and see opportunity here for, you know, to make a quick buck. And this is done a number of occasions in the Bahamas when people doing this were captured. One in particular was a man named Vernon Locke. Vernon Locke is. Is not a Southerner. He was acting under a pseudonym they'd taken from a. A Southern captain who had died. He is from. From Nova Scotia originally. And so he is. He's a British subject. He has never lived in the south, at least for any length of time. But he is openly attacking Northern shipping on Southern behalf. And it turns out that he, along with a couple of the players, are going to be a recurring theme in this pattern of violence, of British colonial violence on Confederate behalf. So it starts with simply looking the other way for Southerners doing this in places like the Bahamas. Walk is arrested, he is not put on trial. He's given a very light bail. He pays his bail and then walks out and leaves immediately. You know, this is enabled by. By the pro Confederate colonial authorities in the Bahamas. They. They look the other way, and he's off again. And so when these guys pop up again, they are starting to do things like. Like hijack ships at sea. It turns out that they. They increasingly cannot get appropriate vessels for privateering. And so he said, well, what if we just board them as passengers with hide firearms in our baggage and then seize them while they're out on the water? This was pioneered by Confederate raiders in the Chesapeake, but they first try it at sea in a couple places. But interestingly, this first raid that's successful is organized in New Brunswick in what is now Canada. And the crew is entirely made up of British North Americans, of people from the colonies. There are no Southerners in charge. The man in charge called himself a Southerner, but he was a British subject named John C. Brain, and he is. Or, sorry, he's one of them. But Brain and Locke organizes. Together, they travel to New York City. They. They get on a ship. Once it's out at sea, they. They hijack it off Cape Cod, they murder a crew member, and their goal is to take the ship, sell its cargo, and then outfit it as a privateer, which now they have a fast steamship to do this. The whole thing goes off the rails there. It turns out they're. They're better at coming up with ideas than they are at planning. They run out of fuel right away. They're eventually recaptured by the US Navy in the new Nova Scotian coastal waters, which causes its own international incident because the US Navy is not supposed to be there.
- [53:29]
But these efforts are. I think, notably they're noticed by the Confederate government and they are encouraged by them. This is a. They see this as a way to get out of the straitjacket of the formal rules of privateering and to help alleviate the pressure of the blockade and US Naval superiority. And so in the case of Brain and the people who are captured for this, they do get a handful of the crew members and put them on trial. The Confederate government pays for the defense. They see this as. Even though these men were plainly violated law, they were acting as pirates. You cannot just join a war and decide to hijack a ship at sea as a civilian. That is piracy. But the Confederate government sees this as a chance to maybe bend the international regime around privateering, which was increasingly moving against them and to encourage raids like this. Importantly, I think as a force multiplier for them, it cost them nothing to do this, yet it pulled in Union naval attention all out of proportion to the number of people involved in the investment. And so increasingly this is encouraged and facilitated by the Confederates because they increasingly are. Are desperate to make some kind of dent in, in this naval war.
- [54:45]
B
And you mentioned being put on tribal trial. What happened to these guys? Did any, did they have any consequence for this?
- [54:53]
A
Almost none at all. None of the British colonial subjects involved in this raiding. The capture of the, the steamship Chesapeake, which was the one that was taken out of New York City, you know, as it's. When the US Navy recaptured it, they did get their hands on several of the. Of the crew members. The leaders get away. They just, they flee into the interior of Nova Scotia. The local populace is not a little interested in handing them over to the United States. There are, There are long memories there of the War of 1812 and a general unfriendliness to what they see as kind of Yankee arrogance. And so, you know, no one is handing over these, these guys for trial if they're, if they know who they are. A few of them are captured and they're put on trial for. At least they're put up for an extradition hearing in New Brunswick. But it turns out that the, the. There's a network of colonial elites in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, who are very sympathetic with the Confederacy and they were able to mobilize support on, on their behalf. So they get perhaps the best lawyers in, in New Brunswick to represent the men that are being put on trial for trial, but they're having an extradition hearing to be extradited to the United States. To face trial for piracy and murder. And they are able, with a sympathetic judge whose brother was working as a Confederate representative for, for their lawyers or for their. For these people on trial. The brother is a Supreme Court justice in New Brunswick, and he is the one overseeing the trial. He's predictably releases them on the idea that. That the war. There was some defect in the warrant for their extradition. And by the time that they're. They're able to get a second warrant for their rearrest, because these, you know, these. If they're not guilty of piracy, these men are guilty of violating the Foreign Muslim Act. There's no, you know, they definitely committed a crime. It's just a matter of choosing which one to try them for. But the entire judicial system in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick goes out of its way to help them escape. And they do. They vanish. They're never. They're never arrested again. And many of them could go on to. To participate in further raids. They see that there's no consequence, so why not keep trying? And that's exactly what happens. There are a number of further attacks that are done almost entirely by British subjects, many of them operating with the support and connivance of local colonial communities.
- [57:04]
B
Which is really interesting to be more aware of through this work. So thank you for highlighting that for us. Is there anything further we want to say as we come to the end of our discussion about the impact of this, not necessarily in terms of kind of how much money did the Confederacy gain or lose? Because obviously that's hard to tell, but maybe for these wider questions of kind of who gets to use violence for what, and what does sovereignty and international law mean, and how do colonies relate to kind of governments at home? Is there anything further we want to discuss to conclude?
- [57:38]
A
Sure. So I'm maybe if I was going to urge readers to take one thing away from this, it's that if we remove this state from its place of priority in understanding these relationships of violence and diplomacy, especially in kind of these internals and conflicts like the Civil War.
- [57:59]
We have a much more, I think, realistic view of who matters in affecting both the course of the war and these both intra and inter imperial relationships.
- [58:10]
It is wild to me how the actions of these handful of people, some of whom are rich and influential, some of whom are nobodies, draw the attention of basically everyone who is. Who is important at all in the government structures of two fairly substantial empires in this form, just by hijacking a ship off in Atlantic waters, or one murder in a war where hundreds of thousands are dying. These single killings end up being super consequential in terms of distracting the attention of the armed forces of the United States or diplomatic and bureaucratic apparatus of the British Empire in ways that aren't readily apparent if we're only looking at formal state relationships and the actions of formal armed forces. And so. And that leads us to questions about things like the durability of international law. We're in the midst of a vast British project especially to regularize interstate violence in the 19th century. The Declaration of Paris is one piece of this. And the idea is to put international violence firmly in state hands and take it out of its long tradition of being, you know, mutable and often private in nature. The Confederacies and their efforts during this war remind us that, that this is an incomplete project at best. And it turns out that using these older tools of non state or, you know, privatized military force can be very effective and useful especially for. For powers who are struggling with international legitimacy and or with a lack of military resources. And the same thing goes with sovereignty and these colonial metropole relationships. It turns out that the divided sovereignty inherent in this imperial governance structures leaves a lot of room for bad actors to operate. This is maybe not. Shouldn't be a surprise to anybody, but the way it manifests itself can be quite important. And we see that in the Confederacy. The book title is somewhat of a. An airport book. Grab your attention. Title at least the airport sub. The subtitle is you know, these. But the idea is that these, these smugglers, these, you know, these scoundrels, as I've kind of referring to these people who keep appearing in. In colony after colony causing problems. They. I'm not sure if we could say they almost say the Confederacy, but they do make it possible for the Confederacy to live years beyond it would have the length that would have otherwise. I think there's no question that they added years to the length of the war because of their ability to facilitate blockade running, their ability to distract Union military efforts, their ability to in some cases attempt to provoke a war between Britain and the United States. One thing we didn't cover here is some of these raids out of Canada that are kind of a sign of increasing desperation in the last days of the war. And ultimately we can tie this to the Lincoln assassination in 1865 as well. You know, I, a Canadian did not pull the trigger on, on Lincoln, but John Wilkes Booth presence in Washington, his ability to get there, his funding or. And the escape of some of his, his kind of co conspirators or at least his, his fellow travelers after the assassination were all facilitated by this network of supporters that Confederates had cultivated across British North America, especially in places like Montreal. And so while perhaps they, you know, they didn't order Lincoln's assassination, these Confederate networks made it possible, especially these networks throughout the British colonies in the Americas. And so this is enormously consequential for, for the course of the war and for the course indirectly so Reconstruction in the US because incidentally after the war you know, a number of the most important Confederates shelter. They leave the United States and they find shelter in British America, especially in Canada or some of them stay permanently, others live for a few years. Jefferson Davis spend some time in Montreal and elsewhere in Canada once he's released from prison. And so we have the roots not just of.
- [62:05]
The post war disorder after Lincoln's killing, but also the roots of the Lost cause mythology of the rightness and justice of the Southern cause.
- [62:15]
Is fostered in Canada after the war. Jefferson Davis's personal papers are kept in a Montreal bank when the war is over. Juleborley and some of the other kind of premier lost cause writers that try to shape the memory of the war spend their initial post war years writing in Canada. And so in some ways we can, we can point this network as being both a enduring source of strength for Confederates during the war, but also maybe the, the nest that incubates the lost cause version of the war that did so much to promote white supremacy and the long term success of things like Jim Crow in the war's long long tail afterward.
- [62:49]
B
It is a very long tale indeed. And I'm curious whether you are in it. Is, has this project given you a tail into your next one? Are you doing something different next? Do you, you gonna go take a nap after all of this? What's next for you?
- [63:02]
A
Well, a nap sounds great but in the meantime I, I do have a, a project that is. I'm taking my adventures to another ocean. I've. I like the idea of exploring the importance of non state actors, especially violent ones in, in affecting, you know, the course of events and, and I've decided to take this approach to the Pacific Ocean in the person of an American pirate who operated across Pacific for a period of almost 20 years in the Civil War era and using him as a framing device to look at how non state violence and these kind of, these reciprocal cycles of retaliation that they fomented in island communities across the Pacific Ocean helped drive both American and British imperialism in the Pacific. World in the mid 19th century, so I'm in the early stages there, but that's what I'm working on now.
- [63:52]
B
Well, that sounds fun. Best of luck with that project.
- [63:54]
A
Yeah, thanks.
- [63:56]
B
While you are exploring a different ocean, listeners can read the book we've been talking about that's mainly around the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean, titled Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria, How Pirates, Smugglers and Scoundrels Almost Saved the Confederacy, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2025. Beau, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [64:17]
A
Thanks for having me, Miranda.
- [64:31]
B
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