ENGLISH PUBLIC OPINION and the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR Studies in History New Series Editorial Board
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ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY STUDIES IN HISTORY New Series ENGLISH PUBLIC OPINION AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR Studies in History New Series Editorial Board Professor David Eastwood (Convenor) Professor Michael Braddick Dr Steven Gunn Dr Janet Hunter (Economic History Society) Professor Colin Jones Professor Mark Mazower Professor Miles Taylor Dr Simon Walker Professor Julian Hoppit (Honorary Treasurer) This series is supported by an annual subvention from the Economic History Society ENGLISH PUBLIC OPINION AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR Duncan Andrew Campbell THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY THE BOYDELL PRESS © Duncan Andrew Campbell 2003 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2003 A Royal Historical Society publication Published by The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydell.co.uk ISBN 0 86193 263 3 ISSN 0269–2244 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Campbell, Duncan Andrew, 1968– English public opinion and the American Civil War / Duncan Andrew Campbell. p. cm. – (Royal Historical Society studies in history. New series, ISSN 0269–2244) Based on author’s thesis (doctoral) – Cambridge University, 1997. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0–86193–263–3 (Hardback : alk. paper) 1. United States – History – Civil War, 1861–1865 – Foreign public opinion, British. 2. Public opinion – Great Britain – History – 19th century. I. Title. II. Series. E469.8.C36 2003 973.7’1 – dc21 2002155075 This book is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Contents Page Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1 Differences of opinion 17 2 The Trent outrage 61 3 Observations from experience 96 4 The political debate 134 5 The Confederacy’s partisans 162 6 Who supported the Union? 194 Conclusion 234 Appendix 1. MPs’ proclivities during the Civil War 247 2. Aristocratic proclivities during the Civil War 250 Bibliography 253 Index 261 Publication of this volume was aided by a grant from the Scouloudi Foundation, in association with the Institute of Historical Research. Acknowledgements This book is based upon the doctoral dissertation I wrote at Cambridge, completed in early 1997, and considerably revised since. From those days to the present, many kind and thoughtful individuals have greatly contributed to the process of thought and research that this work has entailed. I owe a debt of deep gratitude to Professor Miles Taylor, of the University of Southampton, who, from my time as a PhD candidate, through the revising of this manuscript for publication, could always be counted upon for insightful counsel and invaluable advice. For all of his help, I am profoundly thankful. I am very grateful to my former supervisor, Dr Gareth Stedman Jones of King’s College, Cambridge, for listening to and critiquing my ideas and argu- ments, as well as reading the numerous drafts with which I presented him. Gratitude is also owed to Dr Ann Robson, at whose stimulating graduate course at the University of Toronto, the seed of this book was planted and I first became interested in, and in some cases introduced to, many of the people examined within it. From my days at Cambridge, I should like to thank Dr Mike Sewell, Dr Beau Riffenburgh, Dr Derek Beales and Dr Graham Storey, who all provided me with information that I would never have come across on my own. At the University of Wales Swansea, I should like to express my apprecia- tion to my colleagues in the American Studies Department who listened to my paper on this subject and weighed in with their intelligent and perceptive comments. I would especially like to thank Dr Craig Phelan, who has listened to my ideas with a patience that goes beyond the point of collegial courtesy. I am further grateful to the Royal Historical Society for publishing this book, particularly Professor Martin Daunton, Professor Peter Mandler and Mrs Christine Linehan, the executive editor, all of whom have helped improve this work immeasurably. I should also like to thank Bobbie Jo for patiently putting up with this apparently never-ending project. I owe her a major debt of gratitude. It remains to be noted that although this book could never have been started, never mind completed, without the help of everyone named above, they are in no way responsible for any errors or omissions; these are entirely my own. Finally, I should like to thank my parents Dr Neil and Mrs Sheila Camp- bell, without whose support and attention this book could not have been written. It is to them that this work is dedicated. Duncan Andrew Campbell vii TO MY PARENTS Introduction Introduction The last Confederate unit that lowered its flag did so, not in the United States, but in Britain. This was the southern raider, the CSS Shenandoah that, whilst cruising off the Californian coast, encountered the British ship Barra- couta, on 2 August 1865 and learned of the collapse of the Confederacy and the capture of its president, Jefferson Davis. Deciding against the risks of surrender at an American port, the Shenandoah’s captain, James Waddell, instead set sail for Liverpool some 17,000 miles away. Evading a United States navy searching for her, the vessel travelled around the horn of Africa and, on 6 November 1865, sailed up the Mersey to Liverpool. There, to quote Shelby Foote, ‘she lowered her abolished country’s last official flag’.1 In a sense, it was a homecoming for the ship; Liverpool had been the centre of Confederate naval operations in Europe. It was here that the Shenandoah had been purchased, re-christened and re-launched. The story of the Shenandoah serves to represent Britain’s significance to both combatants in the American Civil War. On the diplomatic front, the Union anxiously wanted to ensure its neutrality, while the Confederate States desperately urged it to interfere on their behalf. Both sides needed to purchase materials from Britain, such as munitions, especially the South. Indeed, according to Richard Lester, had it not been for the success of their commercial activities in Britain, the Confederate cause would probably have lasted only months instead of years.2 These same activities, as well as conflicts over maritime and neutral rights, brought Britain to the brink of war with the northern states on at least one occasion, and seriously damaged Anglo- American relations for years to come. As it was, the war ended with Britain despised by both sides – in southern judgement, for not helping them enough, and in northern opinion, for helping the former too much. The Union and the Confederacy were as divided on British neutrality as they were about everything else. If neither belligerent could agree on the nature of British neutrality, however, nor have historians since. For although the diplomacy of the period has been comprehensively researched, less examined is its foundation: British opinion regarding the conflict. Despite the basis of a traditional interpreta- tion, a revisionist critique and a counter-reaction against the latter, the nature of British sentiment remains unclear. This work re-examines the nature of British public and political opinion on the war in order to better 1 Shelby Foote, The Civil War: a narrative, New York 1958–74, iii. 1031. 2 Richard Lester, Confederate finance and purchasing in Great Britain, Charlottesville 1975, pp. ix–x. 1 ENGLISH PUBLIC OPINION AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR understand what factors were essential to its development and its ultimate effect on Anglo-American relations. In order to place the arguments of this work in context, however, a brief synopsis of the debate until now is required, with emphasis upon the arguments of the major contributors. A modern historiography of Anglo-American relations during the Civil War essentially begins with two studies: E. D. Adams’s two-volume Great Britain and the American Civil War (1925) and Donaldson Jordan’s and Edwin J. Pratt’s Europe and the American Civil War (1931).3 Although others had, to an extent, proposed similar arguments before, most notably Henry Adams in The education of Henry Adams (1907), Brougham Villiers and W. H. Chesson in Anglo-American relations 1861–1865 (1919) and George Macaulay Trevelyan in British history in the nineteenth century, 1782–1901 (1922), E. D. Adams’s and Jordan and Pratt’s works were the first modern, full-scale studies of the topic. Barring a few minor differences, these studies form a largely harmonious model of British attitudes towards the conflict which has since come to be called the traditional interpretation and, despite the attack to which it has been subjected ever since, this version of events has proven remarkably resilient. So durable has it proven, in fact, that every examination of the subject since has been in reaction to this interpretation. Thus, when tracing the course of the debate on British attitudes and opinions, one has to begin with this traditional interpretation. According to this model, the British aristocracy, the upper-middle class and political conservatives were solidly pro-South while radicals, the lower-middle and working classes were firmly pro-North. The radicals, repre- sented largely by John Bright (and, to a lesser extent, by Richard Cobden), viewed America as the bulwark of democracy, and thus its promotion, not to say its survival, depended upon a Union victory – an idea supposedly shared by the lower-middle and working classes.