Australia and the American Civil War
The Australian cotton crop became more important to Britain, which had lost its American sources, and Australia served as a supply base for Confederate blockade runners.
The Australian public was shocked by the revelation by a Russian navy deserter, who claimed that attacks on British naval targets was secretly planned by Russia in the case of an outbreak of war with Britain.
[7] The flagship of the Russian Pacific squadron, Bogatyr under Rear Admiral Andrei Alexandrovich Popov, officially made a friendly visit to Melbourne in early 1863.
[9] The information was attributed to Lieutenant Władysław Zbyszewski, a Russian navy officer from Poland stationed onboard Bogatyr, who had deserted from service in Shanghai soon after she left Australia, and found his way to Paris to join the January Uprising.
[12] The United States consul, William Blanchard, insisted that the Victorian government arrest the Confederates as pirates, but Victoria's governor, Sir Charles Henry Darling, ignored his pleas, satisfied with the Shenandoah’s pleading of neutrality when requesting to be allowed to undertake repairs.
While at Williamstown, James Iredell Waddell, the captain of the Shenandoah and his men participated in several "official functions" which the local citizens arranged in their honour, including a gala ball with the "cream of society" at Craig's Royal Hotel in Ballarat and at the Melbourne Club.
[15] After leaving Australia, the Shenandoah sailed north into the Pacific Ocean and captured twenty-five additional Union whaling ships before finally surrendering at Liverpool, England in November 1865.
[12] One of the original Confederate crewmen, midshipman John Thomson Mason, stated that they just happened to find the stowaways, of various nationalities, and enlisted them outside of Australian waters.
[20] In 1872 the British government paid the United States US$3,875,000 as a result of the assistance provided to CSS Shenandoah and other Confederate ships in Victoria and other ports controlled by Great Britain, after an international jury ruled on the case in Geneva, Switzerland.
[13][dead link][21] When the six colonies of the Australian continent federated to form a self-governing nation in 1901, Australia favored the British model of government as they had misgivings about America's powerful postwar "monarchical" presidency.
[23][24] A further precautionary measure was evident in the addition of the word "indissoluble" to the Federal Constitution of 1897–1898 in Adelaide, to prevent the "political heresy" of secession as engaged in by the Confederacy.
