Cotton vs. wheat

I have recently run across a fact that I have never heard discussed before regarding the possible recognition of and intervention of Great Britian on behalf of the Confereracy. The Confederates firmly believed in the supremacy of "King Cotton" and that losing its supply of cotton from the South would cause such severe economic problems for the English that it would force them into intervention on behalf of the Confederacy. In fact, in 1861 the South embargoed exports of cotton to the UK to make the cotton shortage worse.

And yes, the loss of Southern Cotton did cause hardship in the UK. particularly in the Lancashire spinning and weaving mills.

However, and this is what I was unaware of, the UK had poor domestic harvests in the early 1860s and in 1860 imported about 1/3 of its wheat imports from the US, mainly supplied from the wheat and corn producing areas of the Old Northwest territories, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. This was enough to feed millions of English families with a fundamental ingriedient of their diet, bread. The amount of wheat and corn exported to Great Britian from the US only increased during the war.

And there were no alternate sources of wheat for the English. All the other wheat producing areas such as Poland were at about their maximum production capacity. The other major modern wheat producing areas such as Australia and Argentina were not yet on line at that time.

So, if Great Britian had recognized and intervened on behalf of the Confederacy the wheat imports from the US would have ceased. This would have created much more serious problems throughout the UK and would have caused the cost of bread, when available, to skyrocket. The English government realized that this was a much more serious problem and would affect many more people than the weavers and spinner of Lancashire.

So, besides other issues King Cotton was trumped by Emperor Wheat. I had never heard this raised before in discussions of the lack of support and recognition of the CSA by Great Britian. Also, these facts were easily available to the Southerners in 1860 and '61 but seem never have been considered by the fire eating sessionists. They really had their economic blinders on when they were so confident the King Cotton would compel British support.