PLan_D, the Emancipation Proclimation in 1862 made it impossible for the English to intervene. As long as the war was politically defined as a war against slavery, then the UK was going to stay on the sidelines. QUOTE]
Sys has it pretty neatly summerized. Foriegn countries weren't coming into this fight due to the Emmancipation Proclamation. Before the Proclamation, the argument that the South was fighting a war to be free of the North in the way the Colonies seperated from England. After it, there was no way anyone was going to get involved in a war to continue Slavery. That was the true brilliance of Lincoln. He changed a war to seperate the states into a war against Slavery.