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American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832- 1863

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American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832- 1863 ‘The Inextinguishable Struggle Between North and South,’ American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832- 1863 Peter O’Connor PhD 2014 ‘The Inextinguishable Struggle Between North and South,’ American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832- 1863 Peter O’Connor A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Northumbria for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Research undertaken in the School of Arts and Social Sciences February 2014 Abstract of Thesis Working within the field of nineteenth century transatlantic history this thesis takes as its starting point British attempts to engage with the American Civil War. It emphasizes the historiographical oversights within the current scholarship on this topic which have tended to downplay the significance of antebellum British commentators in constructing an image of the United States for their readers which was highly regionalized, and which have failed to recognize the antebellum heritage of the tropes deployed during the Civil War to describe the Union and Confederacy. Drawing on the accounts of over fifty British pre-war commentators and supplemented by the political press, monthly magazines and personal correspondence, in addition to significant amounts of Civil War propaganda this thesis contends that the understanding of the British literate classes of the conflict was part of a continuum. It equally emphasizes that by measuring the reception of texts among the literate public it is possible to ascertain the levels of British understanding of different aspects of the American nation and its sections in this period. It aims to demonstrate that any attempt to understand the conflict in a British context must adequately reflect the long-standing image of the United States as being characterized by discrete regions with particular social, cultural, economic and political identities. At the same time, it makes clear that pre-war discussions of the United States as a nation did not preclude the use of sectional identities; in fact the tropes of the pre-war United States themselves came to be highly sectionalized during the conflict. This thesis, therefore, places the American Civil War in both a transatlantic framework and emphasizes the extensive chronological span of British engagements with American sectionalism in order to explain the occasionally counter-intuitive and often confusing attitude of the British towards the conflict. Contents Introduction ‘The Inextinguishable Struggle Between North and South,’ American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832-1863- 1 Chapter One: ‘A Blight Over Everything’ Race and Slavery in British views of the American Sections- 20 Chapter Two: ‘Specimens of the Old English Gentlemen, descendants of the old English families’: Seeing Britain in the American Sections- 87 Chapter Three: ‘If you ask me if I am an American my answer is, no Sir, I am a South Carolinian’: Interpreting the Politics of American Sectionalism- 127 Chapter Four: ‘Dam [sic] the Federals. Dam the Confederates. Dam You Both!’: Britain and the American Civil War- 181 Epilogue- 258 Bibliography- 265 Contents of Illustrations Figure One: Punch, ‘The American Twins, or North and South’ (27th September 1856)- 127 Figure Two: Punch ‘Waiting for an Answer’ (14th Dec 1861)- 217 Figure Three: Punch ‘Looking Out for Squalls’ (7th Dec 1861)- 217 Acknowledgments On the basis that few people will have the time or inclination to read this thesis from cover to cover, I want to offer my thanks up front to those who have continually kept me going and enabled me to convert my thesis from an idea to an object. The first thanks must of course go to my supervision team. Both prof. David Gleeson and Dr. James McConnel have been supportive and enthusiastic. Together they provided me with thoughtful and detailed comments keeping my research progressing in the right direction and showing remarkable patience in reading draft upon draft. More broadly I would like to offer my thanks to the academic staff at Northumbria University, who were always prepared to offer a helping hand when needed. I must also thank many members of the postgraduate community at Northumbria University whose friendship not only created an enjoyable environment within which to work, but whose breadth of knowledge ensured that the answer to any question (however obscure it might have seemed) was only an e-mail away. At the risk of overlooking some I will offer my thanks to Jen Kain, Stephen Bowman, Andre Keil, Mark Wilson, Sarah Winter, Lee Collins, Maria Cannon, Sarah Lill, Paul Simpson, Stan Neal, Brian Langley, Liam Temple, Jonathan Coburn and David Hope. They assisted me with everything from Latin translations to information on the Victorian theatre and Anglo-American drinking clubs as well as proof reading final drafts. Outside of academia I would be remiss if I failed to mention the SASC administrative staff who provided excellent research support despite being stretched to the limit by financial cuts and the redundancies which came with them. I also wish to tip my hat to the staff of the various archives used during this study, I found them to be enthusiastic, knowledgeable and helpful beyond anything I could have expected. Finally I would like to thank my family. My parents, Alma and Steven who supported me through my studies at all levels as well as my grandparents Jimmy and Alma, my Uncles Raymond and Peter and my Auntie Christine. Finally I wish to give particular thanks to my partner Carly Simpson. Declaration I declare that the work contained in this thesis has not been submitted for any other award and that it is all my own work. I also confirm that this work fully acknowledges opinions, ideas and contributions from the work of others. Any ethical clearance for the research presented in this thesis has been approved. Name: Signature: Date: Word Count- 85,468 ‘The Inextinguishable Struggle Between North and South,’ American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832-1863, An Introduction On the 7th October 1862 William Ewart Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, gave a speech in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne which caused a political and diplomatic furore. Despite the moves against slavery made by the Union in the summer and early autumn, and its victory at the Battle of Antietam three weeks before, Gladstone told those listening that Confederate President Jefferson Davis, had ‘made a nation,’ implying that it was time for Her Majesty’s government to recognise that fact.1 Given the backdrop of this speech it is natural to ask why Gladstone, the doyen of mid-Victorian liberalism and an avowed opponent of slavery, would come out in favour of the Confederacy being admitted into the family of nations given its status as a slaveholding state. Diplomatic and political historians have combed the archives for information on the Anglo-American relationship during the US Civil War and have advanced a variety of explanations for the views held by members of the British government and the British people. In doing so they have considered tariffs, national pride, the demand for cotton and, of course, slavery as central to the British understanding of the conflict. However, if we are to comprehend Gladstone’s apparently contradictory reactions to the war we need to look elsewhere. Furthermore, understanding this speech can shed light not only on Gladstone but also on the Anglo-American relationship more broadly since he was a genuinely representative figure. In fact, Gladstone was simply the most visible advocate of a set of complex British ideas about the United States which contributed to the British reaction to the Civil War; recognition of which should force historians to re-think the Anglo-American connections of the period. 1 Thesis title quotation taken from John F.T Crampton to Lord Clarendon, 7th Feb 1853 in James J. Barnes & Patience P. Barnes (eds.), Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to The Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844-67 (London & Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993); Morning Post, 9th October 1862; Whether or not Gladstone was aware of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation when he made his Newcastle speech is difficult to ascertain. The first press reports of Lincoln’s announcement appear on the same day that Gladstone’s speech was given (7th October) however his diary makes no note of having read these reports; Gladstone had a family connection to the slave trade see Roland Quinault, ‘Gladstone and Slavery,’ The Historical Journal, 52.2, (2009), 363-383; Quinault does make clear that Gladstone was no pro-slavery advocate and leaned towards a gradualist abolitionism from the 1840s. 1 This thesis therefore undertakes the task of re-thinking the Anglo-American relationship by giving a broader and deeper scope to the study of Britain and the American Civil War, emphasizing that British understanding of the American North and South was part of a continuous discourse which predated the conflict by at least thirty years. This British discourse of American sectionalism had been constructed by a disparate group of intellectuals from across the middle and upper echelons of Victorian society and drawn from across the nation. In this period these men and women produced travel narratives about, set novels in, and published philosophical musings on, the United States. It is in the pages of these works and by considering their reception by readers that we can discover the depth of British engagement with sectionalism and begin to comprehend how it was that Gladstone could adopt a position of opposing slavery but supporting the Confederacy. This study will ultimately explain more fully the British reaction to America’s bloodiest conflict; a reaction which was often as puzzling and contradictory as Gladstone’s own. The investigations of historians and literary scholars into British cultural products dealing with the United States during the Victorian era all indicate the existence of a culturally constructed ‘America’ in the British mind.
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