The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim (review)

book reviews187 The book merits a mixed review from the standpoint of its usefulness in the classroom. Although instructors and students alike will find it an easy read, the chapter organization may cause headaches. Whatever its ability to neatly conceptualize four centuries of Southern history, the organizational scheme ill-fits the semester calendar. In one-semester survey courses, assigning the traditional standard of one chapter per week clearly will not do. But assigning topical sections within chapters risks sacrificing precisely the interpretive unity that the chapter organization intends to achieve. This criticism stands in sharper relief regarding two-semester surveys: for the half covering the South since the Civil War, the first ofthe two relevant chapters is the one titled "The Colonial South," a guaranteed source of confusion. On balance, though, the narrative strength outweighs the organizational weakness. The South Through Time is a sure hit. Joseph P. Reidy Howard University The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim. Edited by Robert E. May. (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1995. Pp. ix, 169. $24.95 cloth; $12.95 paper.) The four essays in this interesting collection originated as the 1994 Louis Martin Sears lectures at Purdue University. Bringing them together here provides a wonderful opportunity for scholars ofthe Civil War and U.S. diplomatic history alike to reconsider old topics in new ways. Although each essay takes a decidedly different tack, all force a redefinition of the concept of foreign relations and pave the way for future research. Howard Jones comes down squarely in the revisionist camp. In examining the question of British intervention in the Civil War, Jones asserts that the Union victory at Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation heightened, rather than diminished, the chances of British involvement. This was so, he claims, because both events portended a longer, bloodier, and more dangerous struggle than had previously seemed to be the case—Antietam by hinting that the war might become a stalemate, the Emancipation Proclamation by increasing the chances of a full-scale race war in the United States that might pull Britain into its maelstrom. To avert either catastrophe, many in London, including Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell and Chancellor of the Exchequer William E. Gladstone, came to favor the idea of benevolent British mediation to end the carnage. Ultimately, though, the anti-interventionists, led by Secretary for War George Cornewall Lewis, stymied all efforts at British intervention, and the war dragged on until the spring of 1 865. R. J. M. Blackett also explores the question of British intervention, but from a different perspective—the propaganda campaigns waged by freed slaves working to win popular support for the North and Confederate agents seeking i88civil war history support for the South. Two things stand out about Blackett's essay. One is its assertion that "governments could be forced to act if organized and sustained public pressure were brought to bear on them" (77). In recognizing the influence of working-class Britons in the policy-making process, Blackett's essay is part of the new social history, with its focus on non-state actors and its effort to write history from the bottom up. Blackett's essay is also noteworthy for highlighting the role African Americans played in appealing to the higher moral consciousness of British workers, especially in the economically ravaged cotton districts. James McPherson is interested in what influence, if any, America's image as "the last best hope" of the world had on European, especially British, thinking regarding intervention in the War Between the States. Although he asserts that national self-interest rather than ideology determined European policy, McPherson acknowledges the power of public opinion, particularly regarding the question of slavery. Once emancipation became a Union war aim, workingmen in England, he notes, lined up solidly behind the North, thus indicating their support for the American values of freedom and democracy. And while their opinions "did not determine British foreign policy," they did help to "shape the context" in which that policy was made (145). McPherson's essay complements those of Jones and Blackett, which also eschew a preoccupation with policymaking elites for an examination of nongovernmental actors. Thomas Schoonover's essay is perhaps the...