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Philip Leigh
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Trading with the Enemy: The Covert Economy During the American Civil War Hardcover – May 20, 2014

by Philip Leigh (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 25 ratings
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The Impact of Illicit Trade Between the North and South During the Civil War
While Confederate blockade runners famously carried the seaborne trade for the South during the American Civil War, the amount of Southern cotton exported to Europe was only half of that shipped illicitly to the North. Most went to New England textile mills where business “was better than ever,” according to textile mogul Amos Lawrence. Rhode Island senator William Sprague, a mill owner and son-in-law to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, was a member of a partnership supplying weapons to the Confederacy in exchange for cotton. The trade in contraband was not confined to New England. Union General William T. Sherman claimed Confederates were supplied with weapons from Cincinnati, while General Ulysses S. Grant captured Rebel cavalry armed with carbines purchased in Union-occupied Memphis. During the last months of the war, supplies entering the Union-controlled port of Norfolk, Virginia, were one of the principal factors enabling Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army to avoid starvation. Indeed, many of the supplies that passed through the Union blockade into the Confederacy originated in Northern states, instead of Europe as is commonly supposed. Merchants were not the only ones who profited; Union officers General Benjamin Butler and Admiral David Dixon Porter benefited from this black market. President Lincoln admitted that numerous military leaders and public officials were involved, but refused to stop the trade.
            In Trading with the Enemy: The Covert Economy During the American Civil War, New York Times Disunion contributor Philip Leigh recounts the little-known story of clandestine commerce between the North and South. Cotton was so important to the Northern economy that Yankees began growing it on the captured Sea Islands of South Carolina. Soon the neutral port of Matamoras, Mexico, became a major trading center, where nearly all the munitions shipped to the port—much of it from Northern armories—went to the Confederacy. After the fall of New Orleans and Vicksburg, a frenzy of contraband-for-cotton swept across the vast trans-Mississippi Confederacy, with Northerners sometimes buying the cotton directly from the Confederate government. A fascinating study, Trading with the Enemy adds another layer to our understanding of the Civil War.
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  1. Print length
    224 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Westholme Publishing
  4. Publication date
    May 20, 2014
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1594161992
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1594161995
  8. See all details
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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
25 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Ronald E. Walker
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Look At Some Dark Civil War Secrets
Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2014
Verified Purchase
If you are looking for captivating and scandalous Civil War stories, “Trading With the Enemy” is for you.

Modern historians largely ignore intersectional wartime trade. Despite thousands of Civil War titles, “Trading With the Enemy” appears to be the only one devoted to the topic. Yet about twice as much Southern cotton was shipped to Northern states as slipped through the maritime blockade to Europe.

The book reveals appalling scandals that reach forward 150 years to the current day. For example, one trader made so much money that he became the largest shareholder in New York’s National City Bank, which is presently known as Citicorp. His great-grandson was the bank’s Board Chairman as recently as 1967.

A second example is the connection between Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary - Salmon P. Chase - and his son-in-law who was Rhode Island Senator William Sprague. The Senator joined a partnership that traded weapons to Confederates in exchange for cotton. Sprague who was then the richest man in the country obtained most of his wealth from New England cotton-textile mills. Although Chase was not a part of the partnership, for most of the War he was responsible for issuing the required trading permits that enabled selected Northerners to buy Rebel cotton. Not surprisingly Sprague’s mills seemingly never ran short of feedstock. The present J.P. Morgan–Chase Bank is a successor to an earlier one named for Secretary Chase after he died.

Even President Lincoln admitted that inter-belligerent commerce was widespread and corrupted, yet he did not stop it. He admitted to an Illinois friend, “The officers of the Army in numerous instances are believed to connive and share in the profits."
8 people found this helpful
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Jay Thornton
5.0 out of 5 stars A Story that Needs to be Told -- and Heard
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2018
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A superbly written account of an aspect of the War Between the States we never hear about. It shows the complexity of a war that too many want to simplify and boil down to a single issue. It was never that simple. Neither was it the high-minded, purely moral enterprise Union historians would describe in the decades that followed. The Union spent the war, and the years after, rationalizing the utter destruction of eleven Southern states by pretending that it was all a noble effort fought for a noble cause. This account shows otherwise. It is a refreshing and illuminating read, long overdue.
3 people found this helpful
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Roni Batzion
5.0 out of 5 stars A little-known but very important feature of the US Civil War (1861-65)
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2021
Verified Purchase
This was a gift given to a Civil War buff who is very knowledgeable, but never really explored this fascinating economic facet of America's civil war. He is enjoying it and says he's picking up a lot of new information he never knew prior to reading the book. Highly recommended.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars The only book written on the subject by a good writer. Phillip will be a presenter on the ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2014
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The only book written on the subject by a good writer. Phillip will be a presenter on the annual Sarasota Civil War Symposium in January, 2015. Lots of statistics of the back and forth trading of goods between the embattled North and South.
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James A. Moshier
5.0 out of 5 stars Needed conversation about Civil War North-South Commerce
Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2015
Verified Purchase
Very good work... highlights the little discussed commerce between the North and South throughout the war. It also points out much of the corruption that it bred into the war and later reconstruction.
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Amazon Kunde
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2017
Verified Purchase
Exceptional, should be mandatory reading for any serious historian of american history.
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robin friedman
5.0 out of 5 stars One Nation, And Not Two
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2014
It is valuable to find a little-explored path to understanding the American Civil War. Philip Leigh's book, "Trading with the Enemy: The Covert Economy During the American Civil War" (2014) provides fresh insights by exploring the nature and extent of "trading with the enemy" -- commerce between the Union and the Confederacy during the war. An engineer by training, Leigh writes frequently on the Civil War. At less than 150 pages, "Trading with the Enemy" is well-researched, succinct and clearly, if sometimes polemically, written. The material Leigh covers is addressed in longer, well-known studies of the Civil War, such as McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" but not with the focus or detail provided in this study.

Casual students of the Civil War might well be surprised at the extent of the trading between North and South and about why it took place. Much of the answer Leigh provides revolves around cotton and how cotton dominated the economies of both sections and of Europe. In the first and most important chapter of his book, Leigh discusses the cotton economy and how it made allies of Southern planters and New England textile mill owners and accounted for about two-thirds of American exports. During the War, the North continued to need a large supply of cotton, and it saw the need of getting a supply of cotton to Europe to prevent intervention on behalf of the Confederacy. Economic interconnection formed the basis for extensive trading during the Civil War. Leigh adopts a heavily economic theory for the origins of the conflict on both sides with the South fighting for slavery and the North fighting for continued economic domination. The book's focus on the economic nature of the North's war counters some overly-idealized portrayals of Union war aims.

Leigh then examines the laws and policies the Union and the Confederacy adopted about trading with the enemy and how their approached changed during the War. Broadly speaking, the South depended on the North for food, materials, and even weapons and often had to look the other way to allow the trading. Northern aims were more complex. They included avoiding a run on gold, providing Southerners an incentive to return to the Union, and getting a supply of cotton to support the economy. Different views arose on the desirability of trading. The applicable laws were complex, changing and full of loopholes. The nature of the laws and of the activity itself gave ample opportunity for corruption. Leigh thus argues that greed and the desire for gain were driving factors in the Union's trading with the enemy. He maintains that the Union trade policy allowed the Confederacy to prolong the War at the cost of many lives.

The remaining chapters of the book document trading between North and South at various times and theaters of the War. Leigh examines the failed "Port Royal Experiment" in the South Carolina Sea Islands under which the Union attempted to oversee the production of cotton by former slaves. Then, he examines both licit and mostly illicit trading at the small port of Matmoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville Texas. Leigh's examination of trading along the Mississippi River focuses on the corrupt activities of Union General Ben Butler in New Orleans. Among many other things, Leigh also considers Uysses Grant's notorious General Order No. 11 of December 17, 1862, banning Jewish traders from his military district. Leigh shows how Union shippers used a variety of stratagems to evade the Union blockade with respect to both import and export activities with the South. He discusses how Union control over the port of Norfolk, Virginia, led to opportunities for trading abuse, including the provision of food and weapons for Lee's army late in the war. In a lengthy chapter, Leigh discusses the trans-Mississippi theater of the War and the ways in which North-South trading impacted the United States' relationship with Mexico. Finally, Leigh describes how Congress attempted to tighten trading with the enemy policies late in the war and how the Lincoln Administration circumvented the restrictions.

Walt Whitman famously stated that the real Civil War never made it into the books. Leigh's book offers a largely unedifying picture of corruption and greed in his study of trading between the sections. With its hard-headed look at the War and its portrayal of economic opportunism, the book still reminded me that our country needs to be one and united. Leigh has written an excellent, unusual Civil War study for readers with a strong interest in the conflict. The author kindly provided me with a copy of this book for review.

Robin Friedman
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Milos Obilic
2.0 out of 5 stars becomes for him a revelation of the evil at the heart of the grand Federal conspiracy against the sweet, pastoral slave-owners
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2015
This was a disappointing, tendentious book. Leigh has an obvious agenda--he's a weirdly intense fan of the Confederacy--and every statistic he offers is carefully trimmed to fit his thesis that the Lost Cause was a noble one. To this end, the existence of wartime smuggling, a universal fact of life in every war since the dawn of time, becomes for him a revelation of the evil at the heart of the grand Federal conspiracy against the sweet, pastoral slave-owners. It would be laughable if not for the fact that so many Americans, ignorant of all history other than their own, really seem to believe this sort of thing.
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