France and the Confederate Navy - 1862-1868: An International Episode

by John Bigelow

Overview

John Bigelow's "France and the Confederate Navy" is a contribution of great value to the history of this country's international relations during and for a few years subsequent to the Civil War. Mr. Bigelow has an interesting story to tell of the efforts of Confederate agents to build and fit out in the ports of France and with the connivance of the French Government, several heavily-armed vessels-of-war. His narrative is unconventional in form and lively and entertaining in matter. As the representative of this Government in France he learned of all the steps that were taken to make the French ports the base of naval operations for the Confederates, and he gives a readable account of his moves to checkmate this scheme. The escape of one of the vessels, the "Stonewall," brought matters to a crisis, but happily the war was ended before she reached an American port. Mr. Bigelow's narrative, which has much of the interest of a romance, is supplemented by documents from both Union and Confederate sources.

–The Book Buyer, Vol. 5 [1888]

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781663515759
Publisher:	Dapper Moose Entertainment
Publication date:	06/10/2020
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

John Bigelow (November 25, 1817 – December 19, 1911) was an American lawyer and statesman. After the party's nominee, Abraham Lincoln, was elected President in 1860, Lincoln appointed him American Consul in Paris in 1861, progressing to Chargé d'Affaires and Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Napoleon III. In this capacity, working together with Charles Francis Adams, the American Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Bigelow helped to block the attempts to have France and the United Kingdom intervene in the American Civil War in favor of the Confederacy, and thereby played a material role in the Union victory. In 1865, he was appointed American Ambassador to France. After leaving this position, he went to Germany, where he lived for three years, through the period of the Franco-Prussian War, and became a friend of Otto von Bismarck.