King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America. Second Edition, Revised by Harriet Chappell Owsley. de Owsley, Frank Lawrence

The University of Chicago Press, (1959). Octavo, red cloth (hardcover), gilt letters, xxiii, 614 pp. Missing ffep.;otherwise, Very Good, in a Good dust jacket with edgewear. From dust jacket: Throughout the greater part of the Civil War the King Cotton philosophy kept high the southern hopes for European intervention. Convinced that there was so substitute for southern cotton and that the lack of it would cripple European economy, the Confederate leaders were sure that England and France would eventually be forced to enter the war on their side. Until well into the third year of the war they acted on this theory, and it was hard for them to realize that neither England nor France would intervene. England, far fron languishing over the loss of southern cotton, was making enormous war profits. Her surplus stock of cotton was sold at a fabulous profit, her linen and woolen industries reaped unexpected harvests of gold, her munitions and steel industries enriched themselves, her shipbuilding was tremendously stimulated by the demands of the Confederate government and the blockade business, merchant houses made millions out of blockade-running, and finally the American merchant marine was driven from the seas and largely transferred to England. France, whose interest in Mexico would have fared better had the South won its independence, approached England unofficially and unsuccessfully on several occasions but was not willing to intervene alone.