It was the first strategic move made by Lincoln on the outbreak of war.
But it wasn't to stop the South from getting cotton. It was to stop the South exporting cotton and importing the foreign goods they needed, having no manufacturing capacity of their own.
The Union naval blockade, which prevented the Confederacy from exporting its plentiful cotton in exchange for war-supplies. This crippled the Southern economy.
The Civil War cost more than any other war the country had fought before it. Because of this, the North and the South had to find ways to raise money. The economy in each part of the country was affected in different ways. The South had a harder time than the North. There weren't a lot of factories in the South. The people in the South were using cotton to get what they needed. The South would sell cotton to other parts of the country. It would then buy what it needed. The South's economy was built on the labor of slaves. African Americans were forced to work the farms and plantations where cotton was grown. Without their hard work, much of the cotton would be left to rot in the fields. There wouldn't be enough people to harvest it. The war hurt the cotton trade. The North set up a blockade in the waters off the coast of Southern ports. This blockade was able to keep many ships from leaving. The South had a hard time getting their cotton to other countries to sell.
The Confederacy decided to withhold its cotton from overseas countries, in order to pressure them into siding with the South and sending aid. Unfortunately for them, there happened to be a glut of cotton on the world market, so nobody felt the pressure. Meanwhile the South was not able to import war supplies in exchange for its cotton.
It would prevent them from exporting their plentiful cotton in exchange for war supplies.
England did not provide any large-scale assistance to the Confederacy during the Civil War. Blockade-runners did manage to ship some cotton to Britain and smuggle weapons and ammunition into the Confederacy, but England remained neutral throughout the conflict.
At the beginning, the South was totally confident that it would be a short, glorious war, and the blockade would soon be lifted.
Telegraph lines in the South. Or the northern blockade meant the South could not sell its cotton. :P
The Northern blockade meant the South could not sell its cotton.
The Northern blockade meant the South could not sell its cotton.
The Northern blockade was the biggest factor, preventing the South from exchanging its cotton for the war supplies it needed. At the beginning, the South decided to withhold cotton from the world market, to encourage other countries to intervene on behalf of the Confederates and break the blockade. This turned out a blunder, as there was a glut of cotton on the market just then, so no country really felt the pressure, and by the time they changed their policy, the blockade had become highly effective.
The Union naval blockade prevented them from exporting their plentiful cotton.
The North, South, and Europe. Europe is the third ethnic group that fought in the civil war because the south forced Europe to help the south with the powers of their blockade breaking skills. The way the South forced Europe to help them was the use of cotton, the South had a abundant supply of cotton that Europe did not have. Thus bringing Europe into the Civil War .
The Federal blockade prevented them from carrying out trade, particularly in cotton, overseas. Cotton was the South's main source of income, so to lose that was an incredible blow to the economy.
War supplies from abroad. The Union naval blockade prevented them from exporting their cotton in exchange for the goods they badly needed.
At the beginning, they could have imported weapons in exchange for their plentiful cotton. But they decided to hoard their cotton for a time, to make the world feel the shortage of it. Yet it was in a year when there was a surplus of cotton on the world markets, and other countries were not begging the Confederacy for cotton, as they had hoped. By the time they decided to release their cotton for export, the Northern blockade was in place, and the South could only import goods via the blockade-runners.
It prevented the South from selling its cotton to Europe; specially Great Britain.
Despite the Union blockade of most Southern ports, it was not a complete blockade. Thus some quantities of cotton were able to be shipped over to Great Britain during the war.