Great Britain and the American Civil War | Page 3

MASON . . . . . . . . . . " 206 From a photograph by L.C.
Handy, Washington
"KING COTTON BOUND" . . . . . . . . " 262 Reproduced by permission
of the Proprietors of "Punch"
GREAT BRITAIN AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
CHAPTER I
BACKGROUNDS
In 1862, less than a year after he had assumed his post in London, the
American Minister, Charles Francis Adams, at a time of depression and
bitterness wrote to Secretary of State Seward: "That Great Britain did,
in the most terrible moment of our domestic trial in struggling with a
monstrous social evil she had earnestly professed to abhor, coldly and
at once assume our inability to master it, and then become the only
foreign nation steadily contributing in every indirect way possible to
verify its judgment, will probably be the verdict made against her by
posterity, on calm comparison of the evidence[1]." Very different were
the views of Englishmen. The historian, George Grote, could write:

"The perfect neutrality [of Great Britain] in this destructive war appears
to me almost a phenomenon in political history. No such forbearance
has been shown during the political history of the last two centuries. It
is the single case in which the English Government and
public--generally so meddlesome--have displayed most prudent and
commendable forbearance in spite of great temptations to the
contrary[2]." And Sir William Harcourt, in September, 1863, declared:
"Among all Lord Russell's many titles to fame and to public gratitude,
the manner in which he has steered the vessel of State through the
Scylla and Charybdis of the American War will, I think, always stand
conspicuous[3]."
Minister Adams, in the later years of the Civil War, saw reason
somewhat to modify his earlier judgment, but his indictment of Great
Britain was long prevalent in America, as, indeed, it was also among
the historians and writers of Continental Europe--notably those of
France and Russia. To what extent was this dictum justified? Did Great
Britain in spite of her long years of championship of personal freedom
and of leadership in the cause of anti-slavery seize upon the opportunity
offered in the disruption of the American Union, and forgetting
humanitarian idealisms, react only to selfish motives of commercial
advantage and national power? In brief, how is the American Civil War
to be depicted by historians of Great Britain, recording her attitude and
action in both foreign and domestic policy, and revealing the principles
of her statesmen, or the inspirations of her people?
It was to answer this question that the present work was originally
undertaken; but as investigation proceeded it became progressively
more clear that the great crisis in America was almost equally a crisis in
the domestic history of Great Britain itself and that unless this were
fully appreciated no just estimate was possible of British policy toward
America. Still more it became evident that the American Civil War, as
seen through British spectacles, could not be understood if regarded as
an isolated and unique situation, but that the conditions preceding that
situation--some of them lying far back in the relations of the two
nations--had a vital bearing on British policy and opinion when the
crisis arose. No expanded examination of these preceding conditions is

here possible, but it is to a summary analysis of them that this first
chapter is devoted.
* * * * *
On the American War for separation from the Mother Country it is
unnecessary to dilate, though it should always be remembered that both
during the war and afterwards there existed a minority in Great Britain
strongly sympathetic with the political ideals proclaimed in
America--regarding those ideals, indeed, as something to be striven for
in Britain itself and the conflict with America as, in a measure, a
conflict in home politics. But independence once acknowledged by the
Treaty of Peace of 1783, the relations between the Mother Country and
the newly-created United States of America rapidly tended to adjust
themselves to lines of contact customary between Great Britain and any
other Sovereign State. Such contacts, fixing national attitude and policy,
ordinarily occur on three main lines: governmental, determined by
officials in authority in either State whose duty it is to secure the
greatest advantage in power and prosperity for the State; commercial,
resulting, primarily, from the interchange of goods and the business
opportunities of either nation in the other's territory, or from their
rivalry in foreign trade; idealistic, the result of comparative
development especially in those ideals of political structure which
determine the nature of the State and the form of its government. The
more obvious of these contacts is the governmental, since the attitude
of a people is judged by the formal action of its Government, and,
indeed, in all three lines of contact the government of a