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The American Civil War in British-American Relations
Phillip E. Myers
The Kent State University Press 2008.
The research is superb. It makes clear the difference between a trained historian and the out of context nonsense that gets pedaled on the internet.
His Chapter 4 Averting Crisis in 1862 at p. 89 is an excellent explanation of how wars are avoided. As the crisis unfolded and unraveled it would have been possible for the British to miscalculate the determination of the US not to allow the nation to divide into two permanently warring countries constantly at odds in the Far West, in the Gulf of Mexico, the Carribean and South America.
It would also have been possible for the British to misunderstand how much progress the US had already made in seizing future control of the entire continental mass of the US by late Summer of 1862.
His excerpts on George Cornewall Lewis illustrate that PM Palmerston always had a conservative voice within his own cabinet advising against intervention.
Myers also mentioned that the actual Conservatives led by Edward Stanley avoided making intervention a party issue, but they were awaiting any stumble by the Palmerston government.
The other value of Myers' reworking of the modern scholarship is that it de-emphasizes the Trent affair. From the start of the US Civil War there were always disputed issues between Great Britain and the US. Some of them were resolved, some were postponed and some created high level intervention. But there was always a large amount of private diplomacy concealed from the public on both sides of the Atlantic.
Phillip E. Myers
The Kent State University Press 2008.
The research is superb. It makes clear the difference between a trained historian and the out of context nonsense that gets pedaled on the internet.
His Chapter 4 Averting Crisis in 1862 at p. 89 is an excellent explanation of how wars are avoided. As the crisis unfolded and unraveled it would have been possible for the British to miscalculate the determination of the US not to allow the nation to divide into two permanently warring countries constantly at odds in the Far West, in the Gulf of Mexico, the Carribean and South America.
It would also have been possible for the British to misunderstand how much progress the US had already made in seizing future control of the entire continental mass of the US by late Summer of 1862.
His excerpts on George Cornewall Lewis illustrate that PM Palmerston always had a conservative voice within his own cabinet advising against intervention.
Myers also mentioned that the actual Conservatives led by Edward Stanley avoided making intervention a party issue, but they were awaiting any stumble by the Palmerston government.
The other value of Myers' reworking of the modern scholarship is that it de-emphasizes the Trent affair. From the start of the US Civil War there were always disputed issues between Great Britain and the US. Some of them were resolved, some were postponed and some created high level intervention. But there was always a large amount of private diplomacy concealed from the public on both sides of the Atlantic.
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