Union in Peril

The Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War. By Howard Jones. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Most serious students of the Civil War are familiar with the historical possibility of Great Britain recognizing and intervening on behalf of the Confederacy but generally as only one of the Confederacy’s many dashed hopes and one of the many unanswerable “what ifs” of the Civil War. Conventional wisdom holds that the strategic defeat of Lee’s 1862 invasion of Maryland and the subsequent issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation quashed the chances of foreign intervention by providing a badly needed Union victory and by Lincoln adding the moral virtue of ending slavery to his Union war. Prolific diplomatic historian Howard Jones (University of Alabama) vigorously contests this assumption in The Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War, which, as the title suggests, the specter of British intervention amounted to a substantial threat to the Northern war effort, the chances of which actually increased in the short term wake of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Jones concisely puts forward at least five notable contentions. First, Chancellor of the Exchequer William E. Gladstone, Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell, and other interventionists assumed ultimate Confederate independence was a foregone conclusion. Second, Russell was the Palmerston ministry’s primary intervention advocate, rather than Prime Minister Lord Palmerston (as Ambassador to Great Britain Charles Francis Adams, Sr., assumed). Third, Britons suffered from “a limited understanding of the war,” underestimating Northerners’ earnestness and fervor for the Union cause. Fourth, the Emancipation Proclamation intensified for a time British ministers’ prospects for intervention, fearing it presaged violent slave revolts in the South. Fifth, Jones argues that “the great majority of British interventionists were not malevolent persons who wanted the American republic to commit national suicide…they wanted to stop the war for the sake of humanity in general and British textile workers in particular.” Additionally, Jones concludes that the opposition of Secretary for War George Cornewall Lewis represented the greatest obstacle in Britain to intervention (8-9).

U.S. relations with Britain got off to a rocky start early in the war. The Lincoln administration hoped Britain and her fellow European powers would adopt its own stance that the Confederacy constituted a politically illegitimate insurrection, but on May 13, 1861, Queen Victoria “infuriated the Union government by issuing a proclamation of neutrality that automatically granted belligerent status to the South” (27). This moral victory for the Confederacy fell short of complete recognition of a Southern nation, which would have been its top diplomatic victory, but belligerent status bestowed political legitimacy on the Confederacy and gave it access to British goods, particularly weaponry and ships. Anglo-American relations were also complicated by the Union’s top diplomats, Secretary of State William Seward and Ambassador Charles Francis Adams, both highly intelligent and capable men but stubborn and prickly as well.

The type of intervention generally favored by the Palmerston ministry stopped short of Royal Navy ships breaking the blockade or redcoats landing on American shores, though those might have been unintended consequences of their plans. They generally favored diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy and mediation of the conflict by Britain and possibly France and Russia (the former sympathetic to the South; the latter, to the North). Britons consistently misunderstood the nature of the Union cause, assuming the Lincoln administration contested secession simply out of stubbornness, whereas most Northerners understood that secession represented a dire blow to the integrity of the Union and the Constitution. (Lincoln and his allies, in trying to assure Southerners they did not seek to make war on slavery, inadvertently convinced many foreign observers that slavery was not at the heart of the war.) This commitment promised that any British intervention would quite likely lead to war. The British assumption that the South would ultimately prevail created a true catch-22 for the Union: Britons saw every Confederate victory as justification for their optimism but every Union victory as merely delaying the inevitable.

The Union faced two primary crises which chanced British intervention: the Trent Affair and the Emancipation Proclamation. The first case arose when the captain of the USS San Jacinto stopped and boarded RMS Trent and seized two Confederate diplomats, an international incident which was resolved when the Lincoln administration released the agents. Lincoln’s freeing of slaves in rebellious quarters of the South aroused the moral furor of Britons, who assumed it would inaugurate bloody race war in the South. This reaction, perhaps the high water mark of interventionist designs, began to subside in November 1862. Crucial was a lengthy and articulately argued memorandum issued to the Palmerston ministry by Secretary for War Lewis, in which he outlined the inexactness of determining when a nation had achieved de facto independence, numerous thorny questions a peace conference and armistice in America would entail (such as the status of slavery, and the historically bad track record for third party nations intervening in civil conflicts. Interventionism further waned in the following months as bloody slave revolts failed to materialize and the Union won notable victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, suggesting the Union could in fact attain final victory.

Jonathan Steplyk Texas Christian University

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Union in Peril: The Crisis of British Intervention in the Civil War. By Howard Jones. (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1997).

Howard Jones explores why Britain did not intervene in the American Civil War in Union in Peril. His history charts British-U.S. relations between the Confederate rebellion in 1861 and the British decision not to mediate in 1862. According to Jones, Parliament believed that peace in the United States would ultimately benefit the Isles. The Union blockade impacted trade while general turbulence in the United States threatened to upset the status quo in the New World (7). Thus, Victorian humanity, economic considerations, and geo-political factors determined the direction of London’s involvement.

Jones asserts that this book, while running counter to the grain of traditional scholarship, will illuminate various points pertaining to Anglo-American relations during the Civil War. First, Jones states that British foreign secretary Lord John Russell and William E. Gladstone believed that southern separation was a “fait accompli” (8). As a result, both politicians demanded that the war of Union subjugation end quickly and with minimal damage incurred. Subsequently, Jones states that Russell, not Prime Minister Palmerston, emerged as Britain’s primary political advocate of intervention. In short, the latter hesitated to meddle in U.S. affairs for fear of provoking the Union into a third Anglo-American war. Next, and most important, Jones accurately states that London pondered intervention because the majority of Parliament remained ignorant of the nature of the American Civil War. Jones goes on to proffer that the battle of Antietam and the subsequent Emancipation Proclamation fueled Russell’s insistence on British intervention. His multifaceted theses ends with a postulation that the Trent Affair proved a British diplomatic victory that enabled Prime Minister Palmerston to veto British intervention. Furthermore, he portrays Secretary of War George Cornwall Lewis as the most outspoken MP who helped keep Britain from meddling in U.S. affairs (2-9).

The most problematic segment of the book revolves around Jones’s interpretation of the Antietam campaign and its impact on British-Union relations. Traditionally, historians such as James McPherson and Stephen W. Sears have suggested that the strategic Union victory at Antietam and Lincoln’s subsequent preliminary Emancipation Proclamation deterred British intervention. Jones attempts to counter this point stating the battle and following Union bid for emancipation actually heightened British interest in mediation. According to Jones, “Despite the long-standing belief that the Union victory at Antietam, followed by the preliminary proclamation of emancipation, had halted a move toward British intervention, the truth is that the coming of the battle only put on hold a mediation procedure that was well matured . . . the battle and proclamation did not shake interest in Russell, Gladstone, and numerous others outside the ministry in mediation. Antietam and the proclamation combined to raise the specter of a war of subjugation made more horrible by a certain slave uprising” (180). Further commenting on the proclamation’s impact he writes, “because the Union victory at Antietam was so thin, the British denounced the proclamation as an exploitative move against slavery that would escalate the war” (179). Unfortunately, he does not provide enough evidence to turn the tide of existing scholarship.

Yet, to Jones’s credit, he does make some thought provoking observations. For example, he believes that the nature of British-Union tension resulted from the former’s inability to ascertain the nature of the war. British inability to recognize that slavery and the fate of the Union were synonymous forced England to perceive the war through a distorted prism. London subscribed to Lincoln’s early war rhetoric of preserving the Union at face value and failed to see the larger connection between human bondage and secession. In addition, Britain’s neutrality proclamation, though designed as a measure to stay out of American affairs, angered the Union. English attempts to categorize the conflict as a war between belligerents vexed the Lincoln administration as, “From the Union’s perspective, neutrality seemed tantamount to favoring the South” (108).

Unfortunately, the conclusion compliments the more unorthodox points that Jones emphasizes throughout the book. He continues to challenge the significance of Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation stating that Lincoln’s measure renewed the debates surrounding intervention, “because of the widespread fear of slave revolts and race war”(225-226). Finally, Jones overstates the significance of the British question suggesting that, “Had the British chosen to intervene, the South would doubtless have won recognition . . . [received enough war material and aid] to prolong its existence and perhaps to have won independence” (229). Regrettably, this hypothetical transcends historical proof. Nevertheless, this book provides a fresh interpretation of U.S.-British relations during the Civil War.

Texas Christian University Justin S. Solonick

Union in Peril: The Crisis Over British Intervention in the Civil War. By Howard Jones. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 1992)

During the American Civil War, it remained unclear of the intentions of the European powers. Foremost of concern to the Union and Confederacy, was Great Britain. Would Britain remain neutral in the conflict, or would they formally recognize the Confederacy, thus causeing a confrontation with the United States? In his work, Union in Peril: The Crisis Over British Intervention in the Civil War, Howard Jones investigates this subject thoroughly. Jones follows the footsteps of other notable historian, most notably Jay Monaghan, and presents an updated version of his earlier work. In his book, Jones attempts to look at all possible means of British intervention, including recognizing the Confederacy, acting as mediators between the two parties, using military force against the union blockade or engaging in direct war with the United States.

Jones begins his work by looking at the time of succession and the British attitude towards the crisis. He begins by looking at the Queen’s proclamation of neutrality in May of 1861. The Lincoln administration became irate after this proclamation was released, because it felt that it gave some validity to the rebels. Lincoln threatened to wage war against the British if they did not back down. According to Jones, the British never really understood the nature of the war. It was difficult for the British to comprehend how northerners felt about the Union. It also seemed difficult for the British to understand how the issue of slavery became intertwined within the Civil War and how slavery could tear apart the union. According to Jones, the act of neutrality assisted the Union although the British never saw it that way. The south, on the other hand, believed that they deserved British recognition, as the English were the main importers of Southern cotton. The Confederacy knew that it was imperative that they receive European recognition to survive the war.

According to Jones, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston helped to keep the British government neutral and out of the war. Jones points out that the United States held an army and navy that outclassed the British and this probably worried the prime Minister. Many historians have made a point to show that the outcome of the battle of Antietam and Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation steered the British away from southern recognition. Jones disagrees with this hypothesis. He believes that the British saw the Emancipation proclamation as an attempt to appear as though the Unionist were true abolitionist, in the eyes of the British. The British saw this as a hypocritical move and only heightened sympathies for the south.

Eventually, the issue of intervention came before the British Parliament, under the direction of William Lindsey. George Cornewall Lewis, the Secretary for War, circulated a petition that urged the other cabinet members to not intervene in the Civil War. Lewis argued that the south could not be supported or recognized due to international law. In his opinion, the south’s independence had not been sufficiently justified. William Gladstone, Chancellor of Exchequer, took the opposing role and rallied for southern recognition. With the support of Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, neutrality became policy. Jones concludes that Lord Palmerton's fear of intervention my have stemmed from a fear of war with America, especially the possibility of an invasion of Canada. In Jones’s opinion, the non-intervention of Britain can be attributed to Lord Palmerston and George Lewis.

Overall Jones has done an outstanding job of researching and writing this work. It is incredibly interesting and enlightening to the reader. Although for the most part Jones’s argument is persuasive, this reviewer had difficulty accepting his ideas on the Battle of Antietam and the preliminary Emancipation proclamation. It appears that these two events would have had some effect on the British. Having seen the failure of the south to achieve victory on northern soil and Lincoln’s intentions to abolish slavery, the British would have become more proUnion. Other then this argument, Jones does an excellent job of conveying the situation between Britain, the United States and the Confederacy. This work should remain important for diplomatic and Civil War historians for years to come.

Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War. By Howard Jones. (Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Pp. 300. Cloth.)

Civil War history is best known for its detailed battle monographs and biographies as the buffs who dress up to reenact the events and portray the personalities of America’s deadliest conflict seek immersion in the details. While these enthusiasts are undeniably passionate about their subject, they generally have trouble looking beyond the boundaries of traditional Civil War history. Professional historians, on the other hand, understand that there is more to the Civil War than simply battles and dates. While sharing a passion for knowledge about the war with their amateur brethren, professional historians tend to look beyond the minutiae and seek a deeper understanding of the conflict. Despite their training, however, even professional Civil War historians are guilty of being overly American-centric, but such a revelation should not necessarily come as a shock; after all, the war was fought in America by Americans. Consequently, only a few historians have elected to analyze the global ramifications of the American Civil War, and “American readers . . . have little understanding of the important international repercussions” of the conflict (p. 1). In 1992, Howard Jones, a professor of history at the University of Alabama, sought to remedy this problem somewhat when he published Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War, a book which explores some of the more intriguing questions concerning American foreign relations during the 1860s.

Americans on both sides of the Civil War believed strongly that European intervention in their domestic conflict could easily swing the tide of victory to whichever side received the most support from the Old World, and according to Jones, the “Lincoln administration’s greatest fear in foreign affairs was that England would extend diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy” (p. 1). Examining the period from Lincoln’s election in 1860 to Britain’s last serious consideration of intervention in November 1862, Jones endeavors to explain “why the British did not intervene in the Civil War” (p. 2). Jones argues that the British under the guidance of Prime Minister John Temple Palmerston sought to remain neutral during the conflict. Although sympathetic to the South, Palmerston did not wish to get involved directly in the bloody war despite constant pressure to do so. He saw the South’s secession as a fait accompli, a Latin phrase meaning irreversible that Jones uses ad nauseam, and he adopted a wait-and-see attitude, electing to await a grand Southern victory or some other calamitous event that would require the Americans to seek European mediation and accept foreign peacemaking efforts. Others in the British government did not agree with Palmerston’s decision to delay recognition of the Confederacy, and motivated by commercial interests and humanitarian concerns, a faction of the British government led by British foreign secretary Lord John Russell tried fervently to adopt a more active stance regarding the Civil War.

While dealing with their own internal divisions over the issues at stake in the American conflict, both British factions, those who espoused the wait-and-see approach and those who supported immediate intervention, dealt with a number of crises that threatened to take away their agency and force them to act. Chief among these crises was Union Captain Charles Wilkes’s seizure of Confederate emissaries James Mason and John Slidell from the British steamship Trent in international waters on 8 November 1861. The Trent Affair sparked a diplomatic firestorm that nearly led to open war between Britain and the United States as the British sent troops to Canada and issued an ultimatum to Washington demanding the release of Mason and Slidell and calling for a public apology. Luckily, reason ultimately prevailed, war was avoided, and both sides were able to maintain their honor.

Another important event that affected the diplomatic relations between the British and Americans was the battle of Antietam and subsequent Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. Russell, along with most British politicians, were appalled by the massacre near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and believed that Lincoln’s decree to free the slaves in the South was hypocritical. Deeming the Proclamation an immoral attempt to incite servile insurrection in the South, Russell tried to unite Britain, France, and Russia in an effort to end the fighting and mediate negotiations between North and South. His efforts failed, however, when British Secretary of War George Cornewall Lewis, delivered a cogently argued memorandum in November 1862, exposing the legal complexities and inherent dangers of intervention. As a result, the British remained neutral, and although they continued to make noises indicating a desire to mediate the dispute, Jones maintains that they never seriously considered intervention after the winter of 1862.

Howard Jones’s Union in Peril is a well-researched and thought-provoking treatise on Anglo-American relations during the first two years of the American Civil War. Relying principally on primary sources, Jones captures the complexities of diplomatic relations during domestic disputes, dealing with issues concerning blockades, belligerency status, and neutrality laws. He also challenges a number of traditional assumptions about the Civil War, including the common postulation that the Confederate defeat at Antietam and President Lincoln’s release of the Emancipation Proclamation diminished Britain’s aspirations to recognize the Confederacy and intervene in the conflict. Union in Peril is a solid work of diplomatic history, and Jones has provided his audience with a composition that is both readable and interesting.