| The purpose of this work is to present a comprehensive study of the Confederate navy in Europe that will tie together the individual studies available and at the same time present my own interpretations of this interesting aspect of Civil War history. It is a tale of sailors, ships, and diplomats. |
| Because the focus is on Confederate navy personnel, I have had to depend primarily on the only collection of Confederate Navy Department correspondence that exists, which is published in Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (ORN).1 In many instances these letters are the only record of Confederate navy plans and activities in Europe. The United States State Department Correspondence in the National Archives, Washington, is useful for certain of the activities, but I have used it mostly for the diplomatic responses of the governments of Great Britain, the United States, and France. In England I have consulted the British Foreign Office correspondence and the Russell Papers in the Public Record Office, London, and the Palmerston Papers at the Historical Manuscripts Commission, National Register of Archives, London. In France I have used the Archives de la Marine, the Archives Nationales (Marine), and the Archives du Ministre des Affaires Etrangres. Most of the American and British documents pertinent to Confederate navy activities appear in government publications. Those of the United States have been published as submitted to Congress in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States (1872). Those of Great Britain are scattered throughout the multivolume set of Hansard Parliamentary Debates and the Parliamentary Papers; these recently (1971) have been republished in convenient topical collections in the Irish University Press Area Studies Series, The United States, volume 17, The American Civil War. All of the material related to the Treaty of Washington and the Geneva arbitration also is published in this series in volumes 56-59, The Treaty of Washington. Wherever possible I have cited the published source for any document used or quoted because it is the location most available to the reader. |
| Several excellent scholarly works, based on the same British and American archival material I have used, touch closely on my theme. For the benefit of readers who may find it inconvenient to seek the original |
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