As the military leaders of the North and the South prepared their armies for the coming war, the politicians of the Union and the Confederacy were also very busy. During the spring of 1861, President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) and Northern senators and representatives worked to provide the Union Army with all of the resources it would need for the upcoming conflict. Meanwhile, Confederate president Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) and other Southern leaders scrambled to establish a whole new government while also preparing their people for war. But the men who led the Union and Confederate governments also spent a great deal of time trying to figure out what the European reaction to a civil war might be.

Both sides knew that if a powerful country like England or France decided that the Confederacy's claim of independence was legitimate, the South's...