The Fleeting Moment When the Confederate States of America Had the Best Opportunity to Achieve Independence and Why Their Efforts Failed

The first six months of 1862 provided a string of Federal victories in the West at Mill Springs, Fort Donelson, Pea Ridge, Island Number 10, and Shiloh. In May, New Orleans fell, and Union General George McClellan’s army was so close to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, that the troops could set their watches by the city’s church bells. But then the unexpected happened. In June, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia pushed McClellan’s much larger army back to the James River. In Europe, Confederate diplomats sought international recognition for the Confederate States of America, which was made even more attractive now that a shortage of cotton made the powerful textile interests anxious to end the war. Further tipping the balance, in July, the Confederacy secretly ordered two of the latest ironclad ships from England’s famous Laird Shipyard—the same yard that built the commerce raider Alabama. These steam-powered ironclads would be far superior to anything in the Federal navy. While the “high tide” of the Confederacy is often identifed as Pickett’s Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the most opportune time for the Confederacy vanished seven months earlier, coinciding with the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and the failure of the secessionist states to be recognized as a sovereign nation.

As Philip Leigh explains on every battlefront and in the governmental halls of Europe, the Confederate effort reached its furthest extent during the second half of 1862. But with the president’s proclamation, battlefield reverses, Europe’s decision to reject Confederate diplomatic overtures, and Britian’s decision to halt the sale of the ironclads, the opportunity for Confederate success ended. The Confederacy would recede, and the great battles of 1863 and 1864 only marked the Southerners’ tenacity and stubborn belief in a lost cause.​

Philip Leigh is the author of a number of books, including Lee’s Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies, Southern Reconstruction, and Trading with the Enemy: The Covert Economy During the American Civil War. From 2012 to 2015 he was a regular contributor to the New York Times Disunion Series, which commemorated the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War. He has an engineering degree from the Florida Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

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