Beyond / Q&A

Abraham Lincoln’s Foreign Policy Helped Win the Civil War

Why Lincoln’s "one war at a time" doctrine saved the Union.

by Kevin Peraino, Alex Ward via Vox on February 18, 2019

Abraham Lincoln visiting soldiers encamped at the Civil War battlefield of Antietam in October, 1982.

President Lincoln, wearing top hat, is shown with Union Army Gen. George B. McClellan, and his staff at Antietam, Maryland, in 1862.

AP Photo/Alexander Gardner

...and in the future, and why — starting this Presidents Day — you should really start thinking about Lincoln as a global statesman. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation is below. Alex Ward What’s the main thing you would want people to understand about Lincoln’s foreign policy?

Kevin Peraino

We don’t think of Lincoln as a foreign policy president at all. The closest thing he came to traveling overseas was going to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, and he spoke no foreign languages.

But my contention is that in the end, he turned out to be a pretty good foreign policy president — and quite an important one.

Alex Ward

What were his accomplishments, then?

Kevin Peraino

First, I should mention that he had a really accomplished secretary of state in William Henry Seward, and so Lincoln didn’t do everything himself.

But I think the biggest thing he did was keep the European powers from intervening on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. And there were a series of tests that, if he’d handled them badly, could have led to war and could’ve changed the course of American history.

Alex Ward

What’s the best example of that?

Kevin Peraino

One classic moment was the Trent Affair in 1861. It happened toward the beginning of the Civil War, which started off badly for Lincoln.

A couple of renegade Union sailors captured two Confederate diplomats traveling on a British mail ship to Europe. The sailors imprisoned the diplomats, which buoyed Lincoln and many in the Union because it was viewed as a big victory.

But the British were outraged by this, and Lord Palmerston, the British prime minister, sent troops to Canada. There was a real, palpable risk of war during this crisis.

Lincoln smartly played both sides. He talked tough about the situation, but in the end he released the men — on Seward’s advice — and averted a serious crisis. However, Britain maintained its position of neutrality in the war after the fact. That was a blow to both the Union and the Confederacy, who’d each hoped to ally with London.

Alex Ward

So Lincoln finds a way to calm the crisis by not provoking more British anger. What else did he do?

Kevin Peraino

Another good example is when France invaded Mexico in the middle of the Civil War. There were a lot of people in the press and in Congress calling for an invasion of Mexico to oust Napoleon III’s troops.

But Lincoln resisted, mainly so that he wouldn’t antagonize Napoleon III and push him to support the Confederacy. So that was probably a good decision. That didn’t mean he didn’t weigh in on foreign issues, though.