History

The article centres around the climate of British public opinion during the American Civil War, specifically how it came about that the British ended up supporting the North and how the Emancipation Proclamation factored into this choice. The British public opinion was neither steady nor unanimous during the Civil War, as the article enumerates the different events and personas that swayed and divided British support. The Emancipation Proclamation, though not immediately accepted, once proved sincere made the Civil War into an unquestionable issue of slavery thus solidifying the choice to support the Union over the Confederacy.

The article first lays out the initial division of public opinion, between the British Liberals and Conservatives. Support lay mostly with the North, as the Southerners were considered barbarous due to their maintenance of slavery, and even before the war this issue led many Britons to believe that slavery would inevitably separate the North and South. The article then describes how the support changed in favour of the Confederacy after the initial aggressive campaign and the failure of such a move as the Confederates won the first battles. This direction of opinion was heightened during the event of the Trent Affair, which was deemed an insult to the British since the Trent was a British vessel. Further aggravating the cause of British Union supporters was the emergence of the Morill Tariff, reminding Britons of what had been an economically advantageous relationship with the South and painting the Union as arrogant and tyrannical. The most convincing argument against the Union though, were not only the independency propaganda the Confederates generated around this time, but Lincolns downright denial that emancipation was an aim in the war during his March 1861 inaugural address. The article explains the domestic reasons for this disavowal though, but these reasons seemed to have been overcome as the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in September 1962. The Proclamation was initially regarded with suspicion though, and seen as a last-ditch effort to garner foreign support in a losing war, but many attested to its sincerity. Choosing a side to support in the Civil War then became a question of pro or anti-slavery, thus effectively throwing out the Confederacys initially claimed cause of wanting independence.

Contrary to the trend of most historical discussions on the Civil War, the author takes on a novel approach by dissecting the effect of the events on an outside perspective. Britain then was still considered an influential power over the States and its choice of who to support in a civil war could tip the balance, this is usually all but forgotten in Civil War recollections. The Confederacy actively vying for British public opinion to recognize its independence also attests to the influence of Britain at the time. The story-telling tone of the article as it chronicled the back and forth changes in favour, makes the article an interesting read. The events are very detailed, and the quotations provided give clear insight into the mindsets of people of the time from the skilfully-weaved pro-Confederate arguments of Spence, to the racist quotations from Union soldiers, to the short snarky poems of the magazine Punch. A few quotations only account for the medias opinion though, and not the majority of the British publics. A few questions also linger, such as how the racism of the Union soldiers was overcome for them to continue fighting after the Proclamation. Overall though, the writer builds a thoroughly convincing, interesting, and well-referenced history. And the abrupt assertion of the last sentence, though a stark contrast to the easy flow of the rest of the article, effectively leaves the reader nodding in agreement.