British Blockade Runners in the American Civil War

British Blockade Runners in the American Civil War

Author: Joseph McKenna

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2019-04-11

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1476636435

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Perhaps more than all the campaigns of the Union armies, the Union naval blockade--covering all major Southern ports along 3,500 miles of coastline for the duration of the war--brought down the Confederacy. The daring exploits of Confederate blockade runners are well known--but many of them were British citizens operating out of neutral ports such as Nassau, Havana and Bermuda. Focusing on British involvement in the war, this history names the overseas bankers and manufacturers who, in critical need of cotton and other Confederate exports, financed and equipped the fast little ships that ran the blockade. The author attempts to disentangle the names and aliases of the captains--many of whom were Royal Navy officers on temporary leave--and tells their stories in their own words.


Divided Hearts

Divided Hearts

Author: Richard J. M. Blackett

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2000-12-01

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780807126455

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Divided Hearts explores the passionate political strife that raged in Britain as a result of the American Civil War. Moving beyond Mary Ellison's 1972 landmark regional study of Lancashire cotton workers' reactions, R. J. M. Blackett opens the subject to a new, wider transatlantic context of influence and undertakes a deftly researched and written sociological, intellectual, and political examination of who in Britain supported the Union, who the Confederacy, and why. The American Civil War had a profound effect on Britain's political culture; no other event during that period -- not in Poland, Hungary, Italy, or British colonies -- compared. Blackett argues that the traditional historiographical assessments of British partisanship along class and economic lines must be reevaluated in light of the nature and changing contours of transatlantic abolitionist connections, the ways in which nationalism framed the debate, and the effect that race -- among other issues -- exerted over the British public's perception of conditions in America. Divided Hearts presents a compelling and innovative thesis, one sure to engage scholars in many fields of history.


Spain and the American Civil War

Spain and the American Civil War

Author: Wayne H. Bowen

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0826272584

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In the mid-1800s, Spain experienced economic growth, political stabilization, and military revival, and the country began to sense that it again could be a great global power. In addition to its desire for international glory, Spain also was the only European country that continued to use slaves on plantations in Spanish-controlled Cuba and Puerto Rico. Historically, Spain never had close ties to Washington, D.C., and Spain’s hard feelings increased as it lost Latin America to the United States in independence movements. Clearly, Spain shared many of the same feelings as the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, and it found itself in a unique position to aid the Confederacy since its territories lay so close to the South. Diplomats on both sides, in fact, declared them “natural allies.” Yet, paradoxically, a close relationship between Spain and the Confederacy was never forged. In Spain and the American Civil War, Wayne H. Bowen presents the first comprehensive look at relations between Spain and the two antagonists of the American Civil War. Using Spanish, United States and Confederate sources, Bowen provides multiple perspectives of critical events during the Civil War, including Confederate attempts to bring Spain and other European nations, particularly France and Great Britain, into the war; reactions to those attempts; and Spain’s revived imperial fortunes in Africa and the Caribbean as it tried to regain its status as a global power. Likewise, he documents Spain’s relationship with Great Britain and France; Spanish thoughts of intervention, either with the help of Great Britain and France or alone; and Spanish receptiveness to the Confederate cause, including the support of Prime Minister Leopoldo O’Donnell. Bowen’s in-depth study reveals how the situations, personalities, and histories of both Spain and the Confederacy kept both parties from establishing a closer relationship, which might have provided critical international diplomatic support for the Confederate States of America and a means through which Spain could exact revenge on the United States of America.


A World on Fire

A World on Fire

Author: Amanda Foreman

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2012-06-12

Total Pages: 1010

ISBN-13: 0375756965

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 10 BEST BOOKS • THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • 2011 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The New Yorker • Chicago Tribune • The Economist • Nancy Pearl, NPR • Bloomberg.com • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In this brilliant narrative, Amanda Foreman tells the fascinating story of the American Civil War—and the major role played by Britain and its citizens in that epic struggle. Between 1861 and 1865, thousands of British citizens volunteered for service on both sides of the Civil War. From the first cannon blasts on Fort Sumter to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, they served as officers and infantrymen, sailors and nurses, blockade runners and spies. Through personal letters, diaries, and journals, Foreman introduces characters both humble and grand, while crafting a panoramic yet intimate view of the war on the front lines, in the prison camps, and in the great cities of both the Union and the Confederacy. In the drawing rooms of London and the offices of Washington, on muddy fields and aboard packed ships, Foreman reveals the decisions made, the beliefs held and contested, and the personal triumphs and sacrifices that ultimately led to the reunification of America. “Engrossing . . . a sprawling drama.”—The Washington Post “Eye-opening . . . immensely ambitious and immensely accomplished.”—The New Yorker WINNER OF THE FLETCHER PRATT AWARD FOR CIVIL WAR HISTORY


Clad in Iron

Clad in Iron

Author: Howard J. Fuller

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2007-12-30

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0313345910

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This work addresses many persistent misconceptions of what the monitors were for, and why they failed in other roles associated with naval operations of the Civil War (such as the repulse at Charleston, April 7, 1863). Monitors were 'ironclads'- not fort-killers. Their ultimate success is to be measured not in terms of spearheading attacks on fortified Southern ports but in the quieter, much more profound, strategic deterrence of Lord Palmerston's ministry in London, and the British Royal Navy's potential intervention. The relatively unknown 'Cold War' of the American Civil War was a nevertheless crucial aspect of the survival, or not, of the United States in the mid 19th-century. Foreign intervention—explicitly in the form of British naval power—represented a far more serious threat to the success of the Union blockade, the safety of Yankee merchant shipping worldwide, and Union combined operations against the South than the Confederate States Navy. Whether or not the North or South would be 'clad in iron' thus depended on the ability of superior Union ironclads to deter the majority of mid-Victorian British leaders, otherwise tempted by their desire to see the American 'experiment' in democratic class-structures and popular government finally fail. Discussions of open European involvement in the Civil War were pointless as long as the coastline of the United States was virtually impregnable. Combining extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, this work offers an in-depth look at how the Union Navy achieved its greatest grand-strategic victory in the American Civil War. Through a combination of high-tech 'machines' armed with 'monster' guns, intensive coastal fortifications and a new fleet of high-speed Union commerce raiders, the North was able to turn the humiliation of the Trent Affair of late 1861 into a sobering challenge to British naval power and imperial defense worldwide.


Losing the Thread

Losing the Thread

Author: Jim Powell

Publisher:

Published: 2021-02-28

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1789622492

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This is the first full-length study of the effect of the American Civil War on Britain's raw cotton trade and on the Liverpool cotton market. It includes an analysis of primary sources never used by historians. Before the civil war, America supplied 80 per cent of Britain's cotton. In August 1861, this fell to almost zero, where it remained for four years. Despite increased supplies from elsewhere, Britain's largest industry received only 36 per cent of the raw material it needed from 1862-64. This book establishes the facts of Britain's raw cotton supply during the war: how much there was of it, in absolute terms and related to the demand, where it came from and why, how much it cost, and what effect the reduced supply had on Britain's cotton manufacture. It includes an enquiry into the causes of the Lancashire cotton famine, which contradicts the historical consensus on the subject. Examining the impact of the civil war on Liverpool and its raw cotton market, this thought-provoking book demonstrates how reckless speculation infested and distorted the market, and lays bare the shadowy world of the Liverpool cotton brokers, who profited hugely from the war while the rest of Lancashire starved.


American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832-1863

American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832-1863

Author: Peter O'Connor

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2017-11-13

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0807168157

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In American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832–1863, Peter O’Connor uses an innovative interdisciplinary approach to provide a corrective to simplified interpretations of British attitudes towards the United States during the antebellum and early Civil War periods. Exploring the many complexities of transatlantic politics and culture, O’Connor examines developing British ideas about U.S. sectionalism, from the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and the Nullification Crisis in South Carolina to the Civil War. Through a close reading of travelogues, fictional accounts, newspaper reports, and personal papers, O’Connor argues that the British literate population had a longstanding familiarity with U.S. sectionalism and with the complex identities of the North and South. As a consequence of their engagement with published accounts of America produced in the decades leading up to the Civil War, the British populace approached the conflict through these preexisting notions. O’Connor reveals even antislavery commentators tended to criticize slavery in the abstract and to highlight elements of the system that they believed compared favorably to the condition of free blacks in the North. As a result, the British saw slavery in the U.S. in national as opposed to sectional terms, which collapsed the moral division between North and South. O’Connor argues that the British identified three regions within America—the British Cavalier South, the British Puritan New England, and the ethnically heterogeneous New York and Pennsylvania region—and demonstrates how the apparent lack of a national American culture prepared Britons for the idea of disunity within the U.S. He then goes on to highlight how British commentators engaged with American debates over political culture, political policy, and states’ rights. In doing so, he reveals the complexity of the British understanding of American sectionalism in the antebellum era and its consequences for British public opinion during the Civil War. American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832–1863 re-conceptualizes our understanding of British engagements with the United States during the mid-nineteenth century, offering a new explanation of how the British understood America in the antebellum and Civil War eras.


France and the American Civil War

France and the American Civil War

Author: Stève Sainlaude

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1469649950

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France's involvement in the American Civil War was critical to its unfolding, but the details of the European power's role remain little understood. Here, Steve Sainlaude offers the first comprehensive history of French diplomatic engagement with the Union and the Confederate States of America during the conflict. Drawing on archival sources that have been neglected by scholars up to this point, Sainlaude overturns many commonly held assumptions about French relations with the Union and the Confederacy. As Sainlaude demonstrates, no major European power had a deeper stake in the outcome of the conflict than France. Reaching beyond the standard narratives of this history, Sainlaude delves deeply into questions of geopolitical strategy and diplomacy during this critical period in world affairs. The resulting study will help shift the way Americans look at the Civil War and extend their understanding of the conflict in global context.