Editing Arms trafficking (section)

===United States===
{{Further information|Blockade runners of the American Civil War}}
During the [[American Civil War]] (1861–1865), the [[Confederate States of America|Confederacy]] lacked the financial and manufacturing capacity to wage war against the industrial and prosperous [[Union (American Civil War)|North]]. The [[Union Navy]] was enforcing [[Union blockade|the blockade]] along 3,500 miles of coast in the Southeast and Gulf of Mexico to prevent the smuggling of any material from or into the South. In order to increase its arsenal, the Confederacy looked to Britain as a major source of arms. British merchants and bankers funded the purchase of arms and construction of ships being outfitted as [[blockade runner]]s which later carried war supplies bound for Southern ports. The chief figures for these acts were Confederate [[foreign agent]]s [[James Dunwoody Bulloch]] and [[Charles K. Prioleau]] and Fraser, Trenholm and Co. based in [[Liverpool]], England<ref>{{cite web|url=https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/liverpools-abercromby-square/abercromby-southern-club/embassy-confederacy|title=Liverpool's Abercromby Square and the Confederacy During the U.S. Civil War|publisher=Lowcountry Digital History Initiative|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230410173112/https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/liverpools-abercromby-square/abercromby-southern-club/embassy-confederacy|archive-date= April 10, 2023}}</ref> and merchants in [[Glasgow]], Scotland.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/history/running-blockade-how-clyde-shipyards-18722461|title=Running the blockade – How Clyde shipyards supported Confederacy and slavery in the American Civil War|author=Christina O'Neill|date=24 September 2020|publisher=Glasgow Live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201029023514/https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/history/running-blockade-how-clyde-shipyards-18722461|archive-date= October 29, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://glasgowmuseumsslavery.co.uk/2018/08/14/glasgows-role-in-the-american-civil-war/#:~:text=The%20City%20of%20Glasgow%20profited,squeeze%20the%20rebels%20into%20submission.|title=Legacies of Slavery in Glasgow Museums and Collections|date=August 14, 2018|website=www.glasgowmuseumsslavery.co.uk|archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20230518140517/https://glasgowmuseumsslavery.co.uk/2018/08/14/glasgows-role-in-the-american-civil-war/#:~:text=The%20City%20of%20Glasgow%20profited,squeeze%20the%20rebels%20into%20submission.|archive-date=May 18, 2023|access-date=April 8, 2023|url-status=live}}</ref> The smuggling of arms into the South by blockade runners carrying British supplies were easily facilitated using ports in the [[Canada and the American Civil War|British colonies of Canada]] and the [[Bahamas and the American Civil War|Bahamas]], where the Union Navy could not enter.<ref name="BGWADA">{{cite web|url=http://www.cfhi.net/WilmingtonsWartimeCanadianConnection.php|title=Wilmington to Canada: Blockade Runners & Secret Agents|publisher=Cape Fear Historical Institute|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230408011242/http://www.cfhi.net/WilmingtonsWartimeCanadianConnection.php|archive-date= April 8, 2023}}</ref> A British publication in 1862 summed up the country's involvement in blockade running:

<blockquote>
Score after score of the finest, swiftest British steamers and ships, loaded with British material of war of every description, cannon, rifles by the hundreds of thousand, powder by the thousand of tons, shot, shell, cartridges, swords, etc, with cargo after cargo of clothes, boots, shoes, blankets, medicines and supplies of every kind, all paid for by British money, at the sole risk of British adventurers, well insured by [[Lloyds Bank|Lloyds]] and under the protection of the British flag, have been sent across the ocean to the insurgents by British agency.<ref name="Peter Andreas 159">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N39oAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA159|title=Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America|author=[[Peter Andreas]]|page=159|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|date=January 16, 2013|isbn=9-7801-9930-1607}}</ref>
</blockquote>

It was estimated the Confederates received thousands of tons of gunpowder, half a million rifles, and several hundred cannons from British blockade runners.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling|last1=Gallien|first1=Max|last2=Weigand|first2=Florian|page=321|date=December 21, 2021|publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]]|isbn=9-7810-0050-8772}}</ref> As a result, due to blockade running operating from Britain, the war was escalated by two years in which 400,000 additional soldiers and civilians on both sides were killed.<ref name="DWAD">{{cite web|url=https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/alabama-claims.htm|title=Alabama Claims, 1862-1872|website=[[GlobalSecurity.org]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230402225553/https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/alabama-claims.htm|archive-date= April 2, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/historians-reveal-secrets-of-uk-gunrunning-which-lengthened-the-american-civil-war-by-two-years-9557937.html|title=Historians reveal secrets of UK gun-running which lengthened the American civil war by two years|author=David Keys|date=24 June 2014|work=[[The Independent]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230408152902/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/historians-reveal-secrets-of-uk-gunrunning-which-lengthened-the-american-civil-war-by-two-years-9557937.html|archive-date= April 8, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=The Confederate Blockade Runners|url=https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1933/april/confederate-blockade-runners|author=Paul Hendren|date=April 1933|publisher=[[United States Naval Institute]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326231456/https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1933/april/confederate-blockade-runners|archive-date= March 26, 2023}}</ref><ref name="BGWADA"/> Under U.S. law and Article 10 of the 1842 U.S.–UK [[extradition]] treaty ([[Webster-Ashburton Treaty]]) at the time, President [[Abraham Lincoln]] had the power to prosecute gunrunners (Americans and foreigners alike) and request Britain to hand over its arms traffickers engaged in "[[Piracy]]", but the British Ambassador to the U.S., [[Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons|Lord Lyons]], threatened retaliation if British smugglers were subject to criminal prosecution. As a result, Lincoln was forced to release the captured British blockade runners instead of prosecuting them to avoid a diplomatic fallout, a move that led to the released crew joining another blockade-running expedition.<ref name="Peter Andreas 159"/>

[[Ulysses S. Grant III]], President of the [[American Civil War Centennial]] in 1961, remarked for example:

<blockquote>
[B]etween October 26, 1864 and January 1865, it was still possible for 8,632,000 lbs of meat, 1,507,000 lbs of lead, 1,933,000 lbs of saltpeter, 546,000 pairs of shoes, 316,000 blankets, half a million pounds of coffee, 69,000 rifles, and 43 cannon to run the blockade [[Wilmington, North Carolina in the American Civil War|into the port of Wilmington]] alone, while cotton sufficient to pay for these purchases was exported[. I]t is evident that the blockade runners made an important contribution to the Confederate effort to carry on.<ref name="BGWADA"/>
</blockquote>