The Anglo-Confederate mercantile house of Fraser, Trenholm and Company played an important, even vital role in the Confederate war effort. Recognizing its inferiority to the North in terms of manufacturing facilities, capital, and foreign trade, the Southern Confederacy relied upon British commercial interests and an ideology of free trade to overcome this disadvantage. Fraser, Trenholm and Company was a driving force in the formulation of this unique alliance between the Confederate government and private British business interests. The wartime experience of Fraser, Trenholm and Company illustrates the fundamental flaws in Confederate financial policy. The blockade running trade, the outward manifestation of the Anglo-Confederate alliance, although successful, could not be controlled by the Confederacy, and the free trade ideology prevented reform of the trade until it was too late. / Department of History