Henry Hotze - Agent in Europe

Agent in Europe

He arrived in London on October 5 and came to the determination that the Confederacy needed a strong diplomatic and propaganda effort in Europe. He returned to Richmond and made his argument to the Confederate leadership. On November 14, he was created an agent with the core task of influencing British public opinion toward supporting the Confederacy. Until the end of the war, he made substantial and vigorous activities to this end.

Hotze realized that propaganda effort had to be about more than cotton alone. He appealed to prejudice against the United States, British naval rights, and the rights of smaller nations. He paid English journalists to support the cause and wrote his own pieces in the Morning Post, the London Standard, the Herald, and the financial weekly paper Money and Market Review.

In May 1862, he created a weekly journal, The Index which was perhaps the best Confederate propaganda activity in Europe. It had a circulation of around 2,000 and was distributed primarily in Britain but was also read in France, Ireland, and even sent back to the Union itself. Hotze's realism and subtlety in his propaganda upset other Confederate agents in Europe like Edwin De Leon, John Slidell, and Paul Pecquet du Bellet.

Hotze participated in a number of other important activities to support the south. He assisted in writing Lord Campbell's speech against the Union blockade given in the House of Lords on March 10, 1862. He also had an important dinner with William Ewart Gladstone (according to Gladstone's papers, July 31, 1862), where he stressed that the Union and Confederacy could negotiate their boundaries in a mediation effort. As 1862 moved on and after the battle of Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation, Hotze became more frustrated over the course of public opinion in Great Britain.