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The British did help the Confederacy, primarily in the supply of weaponry. Some examples of this are the Blakely cannon, the Whitworth cannon, the Whitworth sharpshooter rifle and most numerously the Enfield rifled musket. A great number of the Confederate soldiers used the .577 caliber Enfield rifle. In the latter part of 1862 the British were very close to giving full diplomatic recognition to the C.S.A., at the critical point the Union Army stopped Lee's incursion into Maryland and Lincoln released his Emancipation Proclamation which suddenly made the North's cause the abolition of slavery, when it had previously been to preserve the union. The British having ended slavery in Britain not too long before, didn't want to be seen by the rest of Europe as supporting slavery. So the diplomatic recognition and the additional support that would have come with it never materialized.

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8y ago
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8y ago

They didn't help at all. The Confederacy thought they would because most of the English cotton came from the US south. What they didn't realize is that the English had warehouses filled with bales of cotton and didn't need to protect their supply lines. The Confederate diplomacy didn't work.

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Q: How did Great Britain help the Confederacy during the US Civil War?
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During the American Civil War both sides tried to get help, but the Confederacy had a bit more bargining power in-so-far-as they were able to export tobacco and cotton, however Great Britain and France stayed out of the American Civil War.


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