Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (review)

346CIVIL WAR HISTORY South's own vision in a series of industrial expositions. In these there were, no doubt, some continuity of leadership and rhetoric. But the New South generally offered itself as a bounty for the nation to exploit, and only rarely as a victim of Northern animosity, as their antebellum antecedents had seen it. In different ways, each of these books makes useful additions to our understanding of social classes and business elites whose leadership and power was constructed—and reconstructed—before and after the Civil War. Don H. Doyle Vanderbilt University Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War. By Howard Jones. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Pp. xiv, 300. $34-95) There was a time when Americans could hardly imagine any honest reason for British intervention in the American Civil War. The Union cause in 1861 seemed so self-evident and true that only selfish designs or mischievous intrigue could explain John Bull's interest in encouraging a settlement. Confronted in 1993 with a Serbian "cause" that produces unspeakable atrocities while frustrating all suggestions of effective intervention, perhaps we can recover some perspective on the British dilemma in the face of unfolding American madness. Howard Jones's detailed study of Great Britain's response to the "American war" opens a window on the problem of watching the United States engage in total, suicidal war for reasons that third parties never found proportionate to the carnage. Jones's approach is that oftraditional diplomatic history, carefully charting the actions and communications of government officials as they schemed for formal and informal advantages. Familiar players here recreate their roles in patient (sometimes tedious?) detail. Lincoln, Seward, and Charles Francis Adams define the conflict as domestic insurrection (denying the existence of the Confederacy) then declare the blockade of the South (implying belligerent status to the "nation" thus blockaded). In Great Britain, the Palmerston government adopts a neutral pose, intentionally playing for time but unavoidably extending to the South some cause to hope for recognition. Presented with novel claims about sovereignty and international law, lacking a clear sense of the Union's objectives (especially relative to slavery), and not wanting to back the wrong horse, Palmerston and Lord John Russell watch the indecisive fighting in 1861 and 1862 with mounting horror and frustration. Jones finds that Lincoln's 1862 proclamation of emancipation actually increased rather than decreased the risk of British intervention to impose a separation and prevent the horrible race war which many foreigners thought Lincoln was inciting . Finally in July 1863, Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg convinced Britain that the North could subjugate the South: Confederate hopes for recognition collapsed. book reviews347 Readers well acquainted with this story may wonder what is new in this account, while Americanists in a hurry to explain the Civil War may wonder what is relevant in all this posturing among nations. Gradually, however, there emerges from Jones's telling of the tale a picture of Americans inexplicably determined to destroy one another while the great powers of the day found themselves surprisingly powerless to act. The Americans seemed motivated by abstract fidelities quite out of proportion to their rational interests. Had Britain or the concerted powers of Europe tried to impose a settlement, what would it be? Who would enforce it? And how long would any settlement hold? Jones builds relatively little on this central insight (228), but one can extrapolate some of the early signs of the limits of power that confronted modern states once their people became mobilized either in making war or shaping national political identity. John Lauritz Larson Purdue University The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text. Edited and with an introduction by Harold Hölzer. (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. Pp. xvii, 384. $27.59.) Here, for the first time under one cover, is the "unexpurgated" text of the Lincoln-Douglas debates—unexpurgated in the sense that the speeches of the protagonists were drawn from the opposition press. While the Chicago Daily Press and Tribune polished what Lincoln said, it printed Douglas's speeches in the form taken down by the stenographer on the scene; and the pro...