During the American Civil War, the Kingdom of Spain was the target of intense diplomatic efforts by representatives of the United States and the Confederate States of America. At the start of the war, both sides believed that Spain was the likeliest European country to recognize the Confederacy, due to having poor relations with the United States long before Secession, and the persistence of slavery in Spanish Cuba and Puerto Rico. For her part, Spain appreciated that a successful rebellion would reduce American expansionism and allow the recovery of Spanish influence in Hispanic America, but she was reluctant to intervene unilaterally because of long-standing policies of cooperation with Great Britain and France, along with avoiding conflict with the United States. Spain discussed the possibility of diplomatic recognition with her allies, and recognized Confederate belligerency from June 17, 1861, allowing Confederate warships to use Spanish ports. Cuba was also an important base for blockade runners in the American Civil War, most of which were owned and crewed by British citizens.Bowen, W. H. (2011). Spain and the American Civil War. University of Missouri Press. 208 pages.
Background
Spain-United States relations were poor long before the war. The US supported the Spanish American wars of independence and created the Monroe Doctrine mainly as a deterrent to Spain regaining its lost colonies, while Spain protested the Mexican-American War as unfair. Furthermore, as relations between Northern and Southern states deteriorated in the 1850s, Southerners insisted on acquiring Cuba as a slave territory that would tip the slave-free state balance in their favor, by war if necessary. Northerners opposed the acquisition for the same reason, but many, including Abraham Lincoln believed it inevitable. However, as the Spanish economy industrialized and grew after the First Carlist War, Spain expanded and modernized its navy with the main aim of defending Cuba from the United States. By 1860, the Spanish Navy was the fourth most powerful in the world, surpassing the US Navy in total firepower and displacement, though not in ship numbers.
At the beginning of the Civil War, the Spanish government declared neutrality. Spain was aware of Southern ambitions in Cuba, but also appreciated that a breakaway South would be weaker than the intact United States. Even more important was Spain's commitment to good relations with Britain and France: if both recognized the CSA and joined the war, Spain would follow, but if neither or only one did, Spain would not. Public opinion mainly ignored the war for those in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, but many aristocrats, military leaders, slave-owning criollos, and Cuban traders favored the Confederacy. Support for the Union gained some traction among middle and lower classes and in the ruling Liberal Union party, particularly after the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Both Southern and Northern American politicians dismissed Spain as backwards culturally and politically, as well as decadent. However, once war began, the same prejudice of Spain as a reactionary power and natural enemy of the United StatesKagan, R. L. (Ed.). (2002). Spain in America: the origins of Hispanism in the United States. University of Illinois Press, 286 pages. made both sides assume that she was a natural ally of the Confederacy, and should be courted more vigorously than even Britain and France. A rare Hispanophile before the war was J. Johnston Pettigrew, who visited Spain in 1859 and wrote on the similarities he found between Spanish and Southern culture.
Diplomacy Relations with the Confederacy
Pierre Adolphe Rost was appointed Confederate commissioner to Madrid. In March 1861, foreign minister Saturnino Calderón Collantes met unofficially with Rost and told him that Spain would not initiate recognition on its own, but that he didn't rule it out in concert with other powers and with approval of France and Britain. Afterward, Calderón refused to meet any representative of the Confederacy unless the war turned clearly in the South's favor. Recognition was discussed with France and Britain, but never in the presence of Confederate agents. On 17 June 1861, Spain recognized Confederate belligerency and allowed their ships to use Spanish ports. Though not the first country to do this, the instant boost that Cuban ports gave to Confederate trade made Spain the target of attacks in the Union press, which labeled her "the only friend of the rebels". Spain would not withdraw its recognition of Confederate belligerency until 5 June 1865, six days after France and three after Britain.
Spain had two consuls in Confederate territory at the beginning of the war: one in New Orleans and another in Pensacola, both former Spanish colonial cities that retained strong commercial ties to Cuba.Kirtley, W. M., & Kirtley, P. M. The Admiral, The Mayor, and the General: The Battle of New Orleans, 1862. NATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE, 62.Cortada, J. W. (1980). Florida's Relations With Cuba During the Civil War. The Florida Historical Quarterly, 59(1), 42-52. These officers were instructed to report on what was happening in the area, but to avoid any official contact with Confederate officials appointed by Richmond, and to continue serving the local Spanish communities in normal consular ways.
In 1863, Judah P. Benjamin banned foreign residents from communicating with their diplomats in Washington, and all foreign diplomats were expelled from Confederate-held territory in October.
Relations with the Union
Lincoln first offered the position of minister to Spain to Cassius Marcellus Clay, who turned it down in favor of Russia. The nomination then fell to Carl Schurz, who was instructed to prevent Spanish recognition of the Confederacy, improve commercial ties, and remind Spain that it had been Southerners who wanted to annex Cuba before the war. The election of Schurz -- an abolitionist, antimonarchist, and veteran of the German revolutions of 1848–1849 -- was protested by the Spanish minister to Washington Gabriel García Tassara, and the fact that he had been proposed for, and rejected already by Portugal and Brazil was considered a snub by Spain. Schurz himself believed that the Spanish ministry was the most important after Mexico, but he despised the country, and resigned after he warned for several months that Spain would soon recognize the Confederacy. After returning to the States, Schurz reiterated his belief that Spain, France, and Britain would recognize the Confederacy soon, unless the Union won decisive battles and pushed for total emancipation in rebel and loyalist states. His provisional replacement was Horatio J. Perry, the American charge d'affairs and husband of Spanish poetess Carolina Coronado. Coronado negotiated with the Spanish royal family in private and, through a series of widely published poems, promoted the aims of the Lincoln administration, especially the abolition of slavery.Lisa Surwillo, "Poetic Diplomacy: Carolina Coronado and the American Civil War." Comparative American Studies An International Journal 5.4 (2007): 409-422.
In 1862, the military governor occupied New Orleans, and Benjamin Butler seized specie from European legations, including the Spanish consulate, claiming that they were purchasing weapons for the Confederates. Following the protest of Spain and other countries, Butler was recalled and all confiscated items returned.
Proposed European mediation Spain supported French proposals to mediate in the conflict in 1862 and 1863, but allowed France to take the lead. In June 1863, a few months after the House of Commons voted against recognizing the Confederacy, France extracted from Spain a plea that she would recognize the CSA if France did it first, regardless of British stance. However, emperor Napoleon III soon became uninterested in the American Civil War due to the lack of decisive Confederate victories and the beginning of the January Uprising and the Second Schleswig War in Europe.
Naval policy
Spain and the Union disagreed over the extent of Spanish national waters around Cuba, with Spain claiming six miles and the Union three. When asked in private by Seward, the secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles argued that the three-mile limit was essential to isolate Florida, but that the Union might have to agree to the six miles to comply with international law.
Several naval incidents happened as Union Navy ships entered Cuban waters to chase commercial vessels that left Florida ports for Cuba or vice versa, sometimes causing blockade runners to run aground on Cuba's shore, which led Spain to protest diplomatically and dispatch vessels to patrol Cuban waters. For the most part, however, the Union Navy steered clear from Cuban and Dominican waters, and the Spanish kept their own ships away from US waters. The Spanish government rejected Tassara's petitions in April 1862 and late June 1863 (when he believed that the fall of Washington, D.C. was imminent) to send warships up the Potomac River, to protect the Spanish legation and evacuate it if necessary.
Spain allowed the US Navy to contract for a coaling station near Cádiz. Seward offered the same deal for the Spanish Navy on US soil, but Spain did not pursue it. On January 4, 1862, strong US diplomatic and naval presence in Cádiz forced the damaged to leave port within 48 hours and take refuge in Gibraltar, where it was sold to the British, repaired, and reused as a blockade runner. In January 1863, docked in Santo Domingo without incident, but doing the same in Cuba engendered US protests in Havana and Madrid due to the courtesy not being extended to two days later.
The most controversial incident happened near the end of the war, when the ironclad , unable to sail except in calm seas, docked at Ferrol between 3 February and 24 March 1865, well past the 48-hours allowed per Spain's recognition of Confederate belligerency. From here, the Stonewall proceeded to Lisbon and then to Havana, followed by two Union warships that were unable to pierce the Confederate ship's armor. On 19 May, the Stonewall was sold for $16,000 to the Spanish colonial authorities, who resold it to the United States for the same sum in July.
Military observers and weapons trade
During the war, the Union granted Spanish representatives unprecedented access to weapons, armies, and military installations. This was a calculated move to dissuade Spain from siding with the Confederacy by showing her the military strength of the Union, all while presenting an outwardly friendly face rather than hostile.
In the spring of 1861, the Union hosted a delegation of Spanish artillery officers investigating weapons purchases for the garrisons of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Though no purchase was made in the end, this helped build positive relations between the two countries. In 1862, general Juan Prim met Lincoln and William H. Seward in the White House while on his way back from refusing to join the Second French Intervention in Mexico. Prim also observed the Army of the Potomac ahead of the Battle of Richmond and visited a prison in Philadelphia. Back in Spain, Prim warned of the size and quality of the Union Army and its readiness to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, in a veiled but public criticism of queen Isabella II's desire to hold onto Santo Domingo and support the French-installed Second Mexican Empire. Afterward, Prim evolved to more liberal ideals that culminated with him leading the deposition of Isabella II in the 1868 Glorious Revolution.
On 8 May 1863, the Spanish purchased four steam gunboats from US shipyards. From the same year, Tassara, military attachés, and other Spanish agents were shown the USS Monitor and other ironclads that caused great impressions. Tassara reflected that Spain's wooden fleet was useless against such ships despite its own ongoing naval buildup.