"Of late much interest has been shown in the public opinion and diplomacy of the period of the war of Southern independence. C.F. Adams, Jr., Henry Adams, E.D. Adams, J.F. Rhodes, J.M. Callahan, West, Jordan and Pratt, Bancroft and others have contributed to the literature of this subject. But with the exception of Callahan's pioneer work, the Diplomatic history of the Confederacy, written before any of the European archives for this period were opened, these writers have dealt only incidentally with Confederate diplomacy. None except C.F. and E.D. Adams has had access to the British Foreign Office papers, and none has had access to the French Foreign Office since it was only opened in the fall and winter of 1927-28. In view of these several facts, it seemed to the present writer that a diplomatic history of the Confederacy was not only desirable but essential to a clearer understanding of the history of this period... In dispatching diplomatic agents abroad the Confederate government approached England, France, Belgium, Spain and the Holy See in Europe, and Mexico in America. Quasi-diplomatic agents these we are only incidentally concerned. Lamar, who was to go to Russia, was recalled before he had done so. Belgium, Spain, and the Holy See were minor objectives. It was primarily England and France with whom Confederate diplomacy and propaganda were concerned, for these two maritime powers held the fate of the Confederacy in their hands -- and the Confederacy for over a year, because of its monopoly of the cotton supply upon which these two nations depended, believed that it held the fate of those two countries in their hands"--Preface.