In scholarship on the Civil War there is generally a lack of emphasis placed upon the significance of transatlantic diplomacy. However, much of the literature that is devoted to this subject does little to draw the importance of diplomatic and domestic histories together. This thesis uses British Foreign Office papers to discuss the role of Her majesty’s consuls, and the importance of resident persons of British nativity, especially within the Confederacy, during the war. It argues that the struggle between the Union and the new Confederacy affected diplomatic relations not only in the geo-political sense, but directly and personally through the fate of foreign individuals residing within America. Political theory and the semantics of ideology will be cross-examined against British, Confederate and Union government documents and correspondence in order to develop a deeper understanding of the flexibility and malleability of the concept of sovereignty, and its role in Civil War diplomacy.