Bluff, Bluster, Lies and Spies: The Lincoln Foreign Policy, 1861–1865 by David Perry (review)

David Perry's Bluff, Bluster, Lies and Spies: The Lincoln Foreign Policy, 1861–1865 is the work of an enthusiast writing for other enthusiasts. While Perry's devotion to the subject is commendable, his work is idiosyncratic and perhaps not ideally suited for his intended audience.

Instead of producing a thesis at the beginning of the book, Perry presents a series of questions. What they amount to is the following: why did peace persist between Britain and the United States during the Civil War years, and who was primarily responsible for maintaining it? As he addresses these questions, Perry finds himself repeatedly and understandably drawn to the "enigma" of William Henry Seward, who becomes the focus of the book (p. 19). The interest in Seward, however, does not necessarily supply the work with the coherence that a thesis could provide. Moreover, Perry's writing is characterized by so much foreshadowing, flashback, and digression that the narrative thread and the argument are difficult to follow. Within the nonlinear narrative, many events are visited repeatedly in passing but never receive the systematic treatment they deserve (for example, the Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality and the belligerent status it conferred on the Confederacy). Others are mishandled (such as the Trent affair, particularly the application of law to the incident). Still others are entirely neglected (like the impact of the Morrill tariff on Anglo-American relations).

The British side of the story does not receive the attention it warrants, nor is it represented in the same kind of detail as the North's policy. To name one important omission, Perry never mentions the British cabinet's discussion concerning mediation that took place in the fall of 1862. For sure, Perry's book is ostensibly about the Federals' foreign policy, but asking who was responsible for keeping the transatlantic peace during the war requires a comprehensive study of the United States' prospective foes. At the same time, Perry more or less represents the Confederacy as having no foreign policy aside from King Cotton diplomacy. While Confederate diplomats may have played their few cards badly, it is not entirely fair to characterize them as entirely bereft of policy.

A number of these issues stem from a lack of profound engagement with the existing historiography, which has repeatedly tackled the same questions that Perry poses at the beginning of his book. Another factor that accounts for these difficulties is the overreliance on certain types of primary sources—mainly American documents and published collections. The work is lightly sourced; endnotes often provide elaborations on points in the text instead of references to sources.

In the end, while responding to the same question as Perry, David Paul Crook claims that the neutrality of Britain and France during the Civil War was "the product of contingency, cynical self-regard and moral hesitations" (Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865 [New York, 1974], 371). Readers intrigued by the issues Perry raises could do much worse than picking up Crook's book. Those interested in reading a more recent interpretation of Anglo-American relations during the conflict should take a look at Howard Jones's Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations (Chapel Hill, 2010). Finally, those who would like a clear, accessible, informed, and recent work on the Civil War's international dimension should try Don H. Doyle's The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War (New York, 2014).