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I've stated this before, so forgive me. European professional military and historians consider the ACW as the last "musket war." unlike Americans who stress its modern aspects. Certainly there was much the Prussians would have wished to avoid, mainly the indecisive nature of many of the bloody battles. Unfortunately in WWI they got the nightmare of the Civil War, mass armies, blockades, stalemate, attrition and the slow costly grinding down of the smaller opponent by the bigger. "Berlin(or Paris) by Christmas" sounds a awfully lot like "On to Richmond."
"There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army. They are making, it appears, a navy. And they have made what is more then either-they have made a nation...We may anticipate with certainity the success of the Southern States as far as regards their seperation from the North."
William Gladstone, then Cabinet minster, future Prime Minister.
Of course wrong on certainity, but right on the others. This was before the news of Antietam, probably the closest the British came to intervening in the war.
Trollope notes an anti American attitude in many Englishmen, which he attributes to the English distaste for American boasting. Trollope sums this attitude up with the phrase "Brag's a good dog, but Holdfast's a better one."
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, October 1861, unsigned.
"That men of this class(American gentlemen) should countenance the violent measures of the North is at first sight unaccountable. It is difficult to imagine that intellectual men should either be friendly to a system which extends its theory of equality to intellect, and thus neutral.ises their natural superiority--or should wish to establish, in its grossest form, the supremacy of a numerical majority, bvy the forcible subjugation of the great minority which constitutes the South....
Mrs Beecher Stowe is a very clever woman, and has written a very clever novel; but she is, by the success of that novel, committed to sentiments more adapted to fiction than to politics. She evidently looks on the South as a vast confederation of Legrees, keeping millions of virtuous Uncle Toms in horrible subjection; and quotes Mr Wendell Phillipps as if she believed that mischievous monomaniac to be an inspired apostle. But statesmen must ask themselves how the difficulty presented by the condition of the African race would be solved by setting them free. What is to become of the liberated slaves?....we must not expect a crazy Abolitionist to answer...such considerations do not occur to those enthusiastic philanthropists...."
I love the phrase mischievous monomaniac, and that he courteously refers to even people he despises as Mr or Mrs.
"We do not think that even now, when Mr. Lincoln plays his last card(the Emancipation Proclaimation) it will prove to be a trump. Powerful malignity is a dreadful reality, bu timpotent malighnity is apt to be a very contempitble spectacle. Here is a would-be conqueror and a would-be extirpator who is not quite safe in his seat of government, who is reduced to such straits that he accpets a defeat as a glorious escape, a capitulation of 8000 men as an umimportant event, a drawn battle as a glorious victory, and the retreat of an invading army which retires laden with plumder and rich in stores as a deliverance. Here is a President who has just, against his will, supplied his antagonists with a 120 guns and millions of stores, and who is trembling for the very ground on which he stands. Yet, if we judged only by his pompous proclamations, we should believe that he had a garrison in every city of the South. This is more like a CKhinaman beating his two swords together to frighten his enemy than like an ernest man pressing on his cause in steadfastness and truth."
The Times and other English papers were fairly proSouth, or at least anti US in sentiment.
I've stated this before, so forgive me. European professional military and historians consider the ACW as the last "musket war." unlike Americans who stress its modern aspects. Certainly there was much the Prussians would have wished to avoid, mainly the indecisive nature of many of the bloody battles. Unfortunately in WWI they got the nightmare of the Civil War, mass armies, blockades, stalemate, attrition and the slow costly grinding down of the smaller opponent by the bigger. "Berlin(or Paris) by Christmas" sounds a awfully lot like "On to Richmond."
One of the examples of European military attitudes about the war I like best comes from the French.
The first French official observers came over in 1864, to see the Union side. From the timing, everyone believes they came to see just how tough a proposition they'd face if the Confederacy lost the war and the US started applying pressure over Mexico.
The team consists of two officers (and looks like something in a spy farce movie). The senior member is a French colonel, almost a caricature of a French colonial officer, who doesn't speak English (despite being married to a woman from Baltimore). The junior member did speak English and is thought to have had ties to the French intelligence/secret police types; in after years he was sent to buy weapons in America (1870) and seems to have arrived to meet every US officer who arrived in France.
They arrive in New York and the Lincoln administration leaves them cooling their hills up there for a while. They do get to inspect West Point and come away very impressed (the colonel insists on sending back measurements on the buildings and the open areas in his report; they comment on the curriculum, etc.) Finally, they are allowed to go to Grant, who has arrived at Petersburg by then, so they miss the entire Overland Campaign.
Down there, they seem to spend a lot of time on anything but combat capabilities. The public part of their report talks about horses (they did a study of the cavalry horses with the AoP, noticed the lack of back problems, and recommended the French Army adopt the McClellan saddle -- which McClellan apparently brought back from Europe after the Crimean War), hygenics (recommended the adoption of the US Army system for organizing camps and sanitary measures as superior to the French Army system -- egads!), etc. Not much about the fighting or combat capabilities of note in that.
Of course, there was a secret portion of the report as well. It seems to be still classified today. No one really knows what that said, but there was a rumor mill about it. At some point after they returned, they made a presentation to the influential French Artillery Committee that was described as creating "a sensation". My guess is that they described the power and potential of US artillery, the speed and accuracy with which it was used. I think what they were telling their government was something like "we really don't want to get involved in a big fight with these guys, particularly not in their back yard".
It was right after they returned that Louis Napoleon started pulling the rug out from under the ArchDuke in Mexico.
Regards,
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Thanks, Blue. Figured you would have it at your fingertips. Cobden's speech was more a "state of the Union" address, but it is a fine picture of the world situation drawn by a statesman.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
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