Great Britain and the American Civil War (review)

Book Reviews125 pointless bureaucratic footnotes whüe omitting domestic history of interest. Item: "I sympathize with Fannie in the grief natural on such an occasion; but really, the death of the cat in such times as these is a great relief to me, as he was maintained at the cost of not less than $200 per annum." If not the "drama on a grand scale" which is (misleadinghy) advertised on the dust jacket, such simple entries are often more pointed and meaningful than the fumbling Big Picture from the war office. James B. Stronks Chicago, Illinois. Great Britain and the American Civil War. By Ephraim Douglass Adams. (New York: Russell and Russell. 1958. 2 volumes bound as one. Pp. viü, 307; vü, 340. $10.00. ) when this work was first published in England twenty-three years ago, it received unqualified praise by reviewers. Today it stfll remains the most significantstudyofthis critical period inAnglo-Americanrelations. TheRusseU and RusseU publishing company is to be congratulated for making this classic avaUable to readers under one cover. In this book, E. D. Adams presented a number of theses: 1) British Liberals generaUy were sympathetic to the North because of their antipathy to slavery; 2) the British government extended belligerent rights to the Confederacy only because the Ministry was convinced that the Union could not be restored, and therefore long-range British economic interests demanded strict neutrality; 3) British recognition of Southern belligerent rights was in accordance with accepted diplomatic procedure and not a hostile act toward the United States; 4) for the most part, British leaders were scrupulous in their efforts to maintain neutrality; 5) the loss of Southern cotton did not greatly affect British government policy because there was a cotton surplus in England in 1861, and during the war British textile workers were proNorthern ; 6) Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation convinced British public opinion that the Union cause was just, and this prevented any government moves toward intervention after the spring of 1863; 7) American public opinion misconstrued British neutrality as hostility, and this caused strained relations between the two countries in the postwar period; and 8) the victory of the Northern army aided the eventual triumph of democracy in Britain. Although the main points of E. D. Adams' book are well known and have passed into standard American history texts, students of American and British history can profit by reading this classic. They wül admire the author's readable style, his gift of organization, and the masterly use of primary and secondary source material to document and add interest to the narrative. It appears thatfor a long time to come, anystudent interested in British attitudes toward the American Civil War will have to commence his research with E. D. Adams' masterpiece. Lawrence J. McCaffrey Iowa City, Iowa. ...