At the start of the American Civil War one of the Confederates main goals was to get Britain to join the war on their behalf. One of the Confederates first plans was to put in place an unofficial cotton embargo towards Britain. The Confederates thought that this would mean Britain would join the war because of the importance of cotton to the British economy. Many historians like Alan Farmer state that the cotton embargo "backfired" but it did cause a cotton famine to occur in Lancashire because of the lack of cotton. The Cotton Embargo did fail because it meant that now the Confederates were unable to export their most valuable resource to Britain who bought a majority of it. The Embargo also angered a lot of the British Population and Politicians because they saw that the Confederates were holding cotton from them.

The British also didn’t want to get involved in the war because only a few years before the start of the American Civil War the British had been involved in the horrible Crimean War. The Union were also very good at stopping Britain from joining the war because the North exported a lot of grain to Britain and arguably this was more important than Cotton as Historian James McPherson writes "King Grain took more importance to King Cotton" and if Britain did join the war for the Confederacy they would be unable to get these important imports. There were a few events which nearly led to Britain entering the war these are the Trent Affair and ships that were built by Britain for the Confederacy. The Trent Affair was an event which occurred in November 1861 when two Confederate Commissioners were on their way to Britain to negotiate with British officials when they were stopped by a Confederate Ship which removed the two commissioners forcibly. This caused outrage in the British Cabinet because the Union had come aboard a British Ship and had removed two personnel. This was the closest that the British would come to entering the war because they sent troops and ships to Canada and stopped exporting war materials to the Union. The Union would eventually release both the Commissioners and admitted they had done an illegal act. Personally, I think that the Trent Affair could have been catastrophic for the Union if it escalated a little bit more than it did because Britain most likely would have invaded from Canada and would have bombarded the Union blockade and destroy the Union Navy with the far superior Royal Navy. British shipbuilders throughout the whole of the war were building ships for the Confederacy for a variety of different purposes. The commerce raiders were warships bought by the Confederacy from Britain which they used to cause havoc to the Union blockade and merchant ships. The Laird Rams situation was the last time that Britain was nearly involved in the war. This event was when it was found out by the Union that Britain seemed to be building Laird Rams which were a special type of ship which used its long bow which would stick out of the front of the boat. Perfect for defeating a blockade. When the Union got word of this Charles Adams the British minister for the Union said that the Union would declare war on Britain if they sold these boats to the Confederacy. Britain would buy the boats for themselves and the crisis would eventually end.