Volume 49, Number 12 · July 18, 2002
The Terrible Cost of Reconciliation
By David Brion Davis
Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War
by R.J.M. Blackett
Louisiana State University Press, 273 pp., $49.95; $24.95 (paper)
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
by David W. Blight
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 512 pp., $29.95; $16.95 (paper)
Americans could never have won their national independence in 1783 without the naval and military aid of France. Similarly, the Union could not have been preserved in the Civil War if England and France had carried out a tempting and much-debated proposal to recognize the Confederacy and impose a truce that would break the Union's naval blockade of the South. France's Emperor Napoleon III strongly favored such joint action with Britain, and both Lord John Russell, England's foreign minister, and William E. Gladstone, chancellor of the exchequer, advocated recognition of the Confederacy, which, as Gladstone asserted in October 1862, had by a series of military triumphs already 'made a nation.'[1]
Review, 4309 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |