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“We Are Threatened with…Anarchy and Ruin”: Fear of Americanization and the Emergence of an Anglo-Saxon Confederacy in England during the American Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2017

Hugh Dubrulle*
Affiliation:
University of Puget Sound
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Extract

In an October 1861 letter to Charles Sumner, the prominent Republican Senator from Massachusetts, William Howard Russell, The Times’ correspondent in America, explained England’s attitude toward the American Civil War: “In England we are threatened with Americanization which to our islands would be anarchy & ruin, & the troubles in America afford our politicians & writers easy means of dealing deadly blows at Brightism which is often attacked under the guise of war & the troubles in America.” Indeed, as Russell claimed, the conflict allowed those who identified the radicalism of John Bright with Americanization and disorder to present a plausible case to the English public. Americans, so this argument went, were but Englishmen transformed by Americanization, a social and political process that fostered a licentious individualism and a pernicious egalitarianism. This transformation had not only precipitated disorder in America, but the deterioration of civilization. England could also succumb to Americanization if it allowed Brightism to achieve dominance by extending the suffrage and introducing a radical, middle-class Parliament. The consequent implementation of free trade and destruction of privilege would lead to political and social democracy, making Americans of the English in England. From this perspective, Bright was an American in the most pejorative sense of the word.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 2001

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Footnotes

*

Portions of this article were presented to the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies on March 18, 1998. I would like to thank Douglas Haynes, John E. Talbott, Kenneth Mouré, Robert Woods, Joseph Fracchia, and David Smith for reading various incarnations of this essay.

References

1 Russell, William Howard, William Howard Russell’s Civil War: Private Diary and Letters, 1861-1862, ed. Crawford, Martin (Athens, GA, 1992), p. 155.Google Scholar

2 Interestingly enough, the Standard asked, “Is it, then, that Mr. John Bright…feels himself to be not an Englishman, but in heart and mind a Yankee? That we might believe.” The more liberal Spectator thought Bright sounded “like a Yankee defending Yankees.” Standard, 2 November 1864, p. 4; Spectator, 7 December 1861, p. 1332.

3 This view argues the Emancipation Proclamation led to a great pro-Northern swing in English opinion. See Adams, Ephraim Douglass, Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (New York, 1925)Google Scholar; Crook, D. P., The North, the South, and the Powers (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Jenkins, Brian, Britain and the War for the Union, 2 vols. (Montreal, 1974—1989)Google Scholar; Jones, Howard, Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 1993)Google Scholar; Berwanger, E. H., The British Foreign Service and the American Civil War (Lexington, KY, 1994)Google Scholar; May, Robert D., ed., The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim (West Lafayette, IN, 1995).Google Scholar

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9 Popular works of this sort included Thomas Hamilton’s Men and Manners in America (1833), Charles Dickens’ American Notes (1842), James Silk Buckingham’s Eastern and Western States of America (1842), Frederick Marryat’s A Diary in America (1842), Alexander Mackay’s The Western World (1848), and Thomas Colley Grattan’s Civilized America (1859).

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18 Shain, “The English Novelists,” p. 402.

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20 The Times, the Standard, the Daily Telegraph, The Economist, the Saturday Review, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, the Edinburgh Review, Fraser’s Magazine, the Quarterly Review, and the National Review all displayed varying degrees of hostility to Americanization.

21 [William Rathbone Greg], “Three Men and Three Eras: Washington, Jackson, Buchanan,” National Review 12 (April 1861): 499-500.

22 See the Standard, 2 April 1861, p. 4.

23 For a typical commentary on the Federal government’s handling of the Fort Sumter episode, see the Standard, 30 April 1861, p. 4. Earl Russell’s reaction to the Northern defeat at Bull Run proved common: “the defeat of Manasas or Bull’s Run seems to me to show a great want of zeal for I cannot believe the descendants of 1776 & indeed of 1815 to be totally wanting in courage.” Russell to Lyons, 16 August 1861, Russell Papers, PRO 30/22/96. Compiled by William Howard Russell, a list of the Federal government’s violations of civil liberties included: “confiscation, martial law, suspension of habeas corpus, coercion of judges, the overthrow of the courts of law, abrogation of trial by jury, paper money, forced contracts, and conscription, and lettres de cachet.” Army and Navy Gazette, 9 August 1862, p. 501. For analysis of the shift in the British press, see the Standard, 2 April 1861, p. 4; Daily Telegraph, 5 July 1861, p. 4 and 9 September 1861, p. 4; Army and Navy Gazette, 26 July 1862, p. 468.

24 For an example of British disappointment concerning slavery, see Daily Telegraph, 6 December 1861, p. 4. For a typical reaction to the Trent affair, see the Saturday Review, 30 November 1861, p. 550.

25 For English perceptions of mob rule in the North, see Russell to Lyons, 26 October 1861, Russell Papers, PRO 30/22/36; Saturday Review, 7 December 1861, p. 572.

26 For instance, in his popular Letters from the Slave States, James Stirling stated, “The American Government is one half democratic, one half aristocratic. There is a bonâ-fide Democracy in the North, founded on a material equality of condition; but the South is a downright Oligarchy.” Stirling, Letters from the Slave States (London, 1857), p. 60.

27 See Jenkins, Brian, “William Gregory: Champion of the Confederacy,” History Today 28 (May 1978), pp. 322–25Google Scholar; Gregory, William, An Autobiography (London, 1894), pp. 185200Google Scholar; SirFergusson, James, Notes of a Tour in North America in 1861 (Edinburgh, 1861)Google Scholar; [Sir James Fergusson], “Some Accounts of Both Sides of the American War,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 90 (December 1861); 768-79.

28 See [ Hamley, Edward Bruce], “Trollope’s North America,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 92 (September 1862): 386–87.Google Scholar

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30 MThe Times, 9 October 1861, p. 6.

31 For contemporary comment, see [Seymour, Edward Adolphus], “Ten Days in Richmond,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 92 (October 1862): 396Google Scholar. See also Jones, Howard, Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 1992), p. 127Google Scholar and Vanauken, Sheldon, The Glittering Illusion: English Sympathy for the Southern Confederacy (Washington, DC, 1989), p. 4142.Google Scholar

32 Blanc, Louis, Letters on England, 2nd Ser., 2 vols. (London, 1866), 1st Ser., 1: 287.Google Scholar

33 For comments representing such infatuation, see Hammond to Layard, 17 August 1862, Layard Papers, British Library, Add. Mss. 38,951; Stuart to Russell, 26 October 1862, Russell Papers, PRO 30/22/36.

34 To counter this onslaught, the Americanizers could only rely on a few newspapers and journals, such as the Daily News, the Morning Star, and the Spectator. Louis Blanc, Letters on England, 2nd. Ser, 2 vols. (London, 1866), 2nd Ser., 1: 120 and Ibid., 1st Ser., 2: 306.

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37 Houghton, Walter, “Periodical Literature and the Articulate Classes,” in The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings, eds. Shattock, Joanne and Wolff, Michael (Buffalo, 1982), p. 7Google Scholar. See also Lee, Origins of the Popular Press, p. 76.

38 In a letter to Charles Mackay, The Times’ New York correspondent, Morris outlined editorial policy concerning foreign correspondence. John Delane, the editor, determined what would go into the paper or not, basing his decision on whether the correspondence was good enough and important enough. Morris to Mackay, 4 September 1863, The Times Archive, Morris Letterbooks, Box 12.

39 In such a manner, pieces by Robert Bourke, Sir James Fergusson, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur James Lyon Fremanfle, Edward St. Maur, and Lieutenant Colonel Garnet Wolseley appeared as articles in his magazine. He also published a long series of articles by Fitzgerald Ross and Heros von Borcke. Fremantle, Ross, and Borcke eventually wrote books about their experiences for Blackwood as well. Blackwood also probably published Sir James Fergusson’s Notes of a Tour in North America (Edinburgh, 1861) which was printed for private circulation. August 1862 found Blackwood anxiously asking Robert Bourke, “Do you hear of any Englishman coming home who has been among them [the Confederates] [?]” Blackwood to Bourke, 6 August 1862, Blackwood Papers, National Library of Scotland, MS 30,360.

40 See Sala, George, The Life and Adventures of George Augustus Sala, 2 vols. (New York, 1895), 2: 19.Google Scholar

41 Lawley to Hartington, 14 June 1863, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth, 340.199.

42 Morris to Lawley, 24 September 1863, The Times Archive, Morris Letter Books, Box 12.

43 Indeed, John Walter (the proprietor), John Delane (the editor), and Mowbray Morris (the business manager) all despised the North. See The Tradition Established 1841-1884, vol. 2 of The History of The Times (London, 1939), pp. 365-66. See also Brown, Victorian News and Newspapers, pp. 87-88.

44 Burnham, Lord, Peterborough Court: The Story of the Daily Telegraph (London, 1955), p. 163.Google Scholar

45 Not only did the Morning Herald and the Standard share the same proprietor (James Johnstone), they had the same editor-in-chief (Thomas Hamber). Most of the big press empires—including those of William Blackwood & Sons, the MacMillans, Richard Bentley, and John Murray—published both periodicals and books.

46 When he went to the United States, Edward Dicey served simultaneously as the correspondent for MacMillan’s Magazine (a monthly) and the Spectator (a weekly). Between 1860 and 1865, George Sala founded (as well as edited and owned) the monthly Temple Bar, produced leaders for the Daily Telegraph, served as that newspaper’s American correspondent, and wrote a book about his Civil War experiences (published by Tinsley Brothers).

47 Oliphant, Margaret (Wilson), Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and His Sons, Their Magazine and Friends, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1897), 2: 469.Google Scholar

48 Blackwood to Delane, 31 December 1862, Blackwood Papers, National Library of Scotland, MS 30,360.

49 Wolseley, Field-Marshal Viscount, The Story of a Soldier’s Life, 2 vols. (Westminster, 1903), 2: 128.Google Scholar

50 Denby, Edwin and White, Harry Kidder, ed., Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, 2nd ser., 3 vols. (Washington, 1922), 3: 346.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., 3:535, 710.

52 Ibid., 3:346, 400.

53 The Times paid Spence to write a number of influential letters about the war before offering him a position as its New York correspondent in January 1862 (Spence declined). John Blackwood also offered space in his magazine for articles by Spence on several occasions. See Morris to Spence, 9 January 1862 and 22 August 1862, The Times Archive, Morris Letter Books, Box 11; Blackwood to Spence, 3 December 1862, Blackwood Papers, National Library of Scotland, MS 30,360.

54 See Fremantle to Blackwood, 3 October 1863, Blackwood Papers, National Library of Scotland, MS 4180.

55 Lawrence, George Alfred, Border and Bastille (New York, 1863), pp. vix, 130–66, 215–16.Google Scholar

56 I refer to those who put their experiences in print: Robert Bourke (son of the Earl of Mayo), Edward Seymour (son of the twelfth Duke of Somerset, First Lord of the Admirality, 1859-1866), Frank Lawley (The Times’ Southern correspondent and son of Baron Wenlock), Sir James Fergusson (M.P. and former army officer), Lieutenant Colonel Henry Charles Fletcher (Scots Guards), Lieutenant Colonel Arthur James Lyon Fremantle (Scots Guards), Lieutenant Colonel Garnet Wolseley (Assistant Quartermaster-General in British North America, later Commander-in-Chief of the British Army), Fitzgerald Ross (a gentleman of independent means serving as a captain in the Austrian cavalry), the Reverend William Wyndham Malet (the High Anglican brother of Sir Alexander Malet, H.M.’s ambassador to Frankfort, uncle of Sir Edward Malet, second secretary at the American legation, and uncle of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Charles Eden Malet of the Scots Guards), Reverend T. D. Ozanne (an Anglican rector), William Howard Russell {The Times’ American correspondent) Samuel Phillips Day (The Standard’ s Southern correspondent), and Frank Vizetelly (the Illustrated London News’s Southern correspondent).

57 Jenkins, Brian, “Frank Lawley and the Confederacy,” Civil War History 23 (1977): 144–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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59 Berwanger, Eugene, The British Foreign Service and the American Civil War (Lexington, 1994), pp. 129–42.Google Scholar

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62 Hobart-Hampden, Sketches from My Life, p. 127.

63 [Fletcher, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Charles], “A Run Through the Southern States,” Cornhill Magazine 7 (April 1863), p. 507.Google Scholar

64 In his public correspondence for The Times, Lawley refused to consider the possibility of Southern defeat until 1865. Privately he felt quite differently. In June 1863 letters to William Gregory and Lord Hartington, Lawley not only admitted he had misrepresented the fighting qualities of Northerners, but conceded the South “was labouring amidst heavy seas.” He further conceded that if Vicksburg (the South’s last major strong point on the Mississippi River) fell, the Confederacy’s “fortunes will be zero.” Vicksburg surrendered three weeks later on July 4, 1863. See Jenkins, “William Gregory,” p. 33; Lawley to Hartington, 14 June 1863, Devonshire Collections, 340.199.

65 Fremantle to Blackwood, 3 October 1863, Blackwood Papers, National Library of Scotland, MS 4180.

66 For English ignorance of the South, see Crawford, Martin, The Anglo-American Crisis of the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Times and America, 1850-1862 (Athens, GA, 1987), pp. 1314.Google Scholar

67 The Times, 16 September 1862, p. 6 and Saturday Review, 6 July 1862, p. 267.

68 Although Gladstone was no egalitarian, many persisted in seeing him as an Americanizer. See, for example, [Cecil, Robert], “Democracy on Its Trial,” Quarterly Review 110 (July 1861), pp. 283–85.Google Scholar

69 Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, pp. 1-23.

70 For discussions of romantic medievalism and the Gothic revival, see Girouard, Mark, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven, 1981)Google Scholar; History and Community: Essays in Victorian Medievalism, ed. Florence S. Boos (New York, 1992); Strong, Roy, Recreating the Past: British History and the Victorian Painter (London, 1978).Google Scholar

71 Industrialists also used these ideas. See Roberts, David, Paternalism in Early Victorian England (New Brunswick, 1979), pp. 171–83Google Scholar and Delheim, Charles, “Interpreting Victorian Medievalism,” History and Community: Essays in Victorian Medievalism, ed. Boos, Florence S. (New York, 1992), pp. 3955.Google Scholar

72 See Roberts, Paternalism in Early Victorian England, pp. 2-6.

73 See MacDougall, Hugh, The Racial Myth in English History: Trojans, Teutons, and Anglo-Saxons (Hanover, 1982), pp. 3291Google Scholar. For a discussion of how racial Anglo-Saxonism could also legitimate more democratic values, see the discussion of Edward Freeman’s views in Burrow, J. W., A Liberal Descent (New York, 1981), pp. 155–73, 188–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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77 See Bush, M. L., The English Aristocracy: A Comparative Synthesis (Manchester, 1984), p. 77Google Scholar. For other views, see also Wiener, English Culture, pp. 7-16; Morgan, Marjorie, Manners, Morals and Class in England, 1774-1858 (New York, 1994), pp. 36, 119–22, 147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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79 Gilmour, The Idea of the Gentleman, pp. 98, 166.

80 The Times, 6 December 1861, p. 6; Daily Telegraph, 9 December 1861, p. 4. See also the Standard, 17 April 1865, p. 4.

81 For example, see [SirWolseley, Garnet], “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 93 (January, 1863): 25Google Scholar. For a thorough treatment of this idea, see Day, Samuel Phillips, Down South, or an Englishman’s Experience at the Seat of the American War, 2 vols. (London, 1862), 1: 177, 188–89.Google Scholar

82 Marquess, of Lothian, The Confederate Secession (Edinburgh, 1864), p. 174Google Scholar. For a variation of this argument, see Ozanne, T. D., The South as It Is, or Twenty-One Years’ Experience in the Southern States of America (London, 1863), pp. 54, 69.Google Scholar

83 Reverend Malet, William Wyndham, An Errand to the South in the Summer of 1862 (London, 1863), p. 211.Google Scholar

84 For a classic statement relating blood to institutions, see Fletcher, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Charles, History of the American War, 3 vols. (London, 1865), 1: 9.Google Scholar

85 See [Caffey, Thomas], Battle-fields of the South, from Bull Run to Fredericksburg; With Sketches of Confederate Commanders, and Gossip of the Camps, 2 vols. (London, 1863), 1: 297.Google Scholar

86 The Times, 28 May 1861, p. 9; Russell, William Howard, My Diary North and South (Boston, 1863), p. 131.Google Scholar

87 Fergusson, Notes of a Tour, p. 28.

88 [Bourke, Robert], “A Month with the ‘Rebels’,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 90 (December 1861): 764.Google Scholar

89 Fletcher, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Charles, History of the American War, 2: 161Google Scholar; CaptainChesney, Charles Cornwallis, A Military View of Recent Campaigns in Virginia and Maryland (London, 1863), p. 146.Google Scholar

90 Fremantle, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur James Lyon, Three Months in the Southern States, April-June, 1863 (Lincoln, NE, 1991), p. 201Google Scholar. See also [Fergusson, ], “Some Accounts of Both Sides of the American War,” p. 778; Standard, 28 December 1861, p. 4.Google Scholar

91 Hartington to 7th Duke of Devonshire, 21 January 1863, Devonshire Collections, 340.18.

92 Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, p. 143. See also Lord Harrington’s speech to his constituents in The Times, 26 March 1863, p. 7.

93 Daily Telegraph, 5 November 1862, p. 4; The Times, 27 December 1862, p. 7.

94 See [Fletcher], “A Run Through the Southern States,” p. 515.

95 Bagehot, , The English Constitution (Ithaca, 1981), p. 61Google Scholar. For example, Corsan, W. C., a visiting English merchant, reported that the regard Southerners had for their statesmen and generals “almost amounted to idolatry.” [Corsan, ], Two Months in the Confederate States, Including a Visit to New Orleans Under the Domination of General Butler (London, 1863), p 206.Google Scholar

96 [Wolseley,] “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters,” p. 18. For like-minded views of Lee, see Fremantle, , Three Months in the Southern States, p. 248Google Scholar and Lawley, Frank in The Times, 30 December 1863, p. 7.Google Scholar

97 Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden wrote that Jefferson Davis “gave one the idea of a thorough gentleman.” Fremantle agreed, claiming Davis “looked what he evidently is, a well-bred gentleman.” Hobart-Hampden, Sketches from My Life, p. 166; Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, p. 211.

98 See Saturday Review, 30 May 1863, pp 689-90.

99 [Corsan], Two Months in the Confederate States, p. 130.

100 The Times, 10 September 1861, p. 8. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Malet put it more bluntly when he wrote that in the Southern army, “the Regimental Officers are mostly men of Known families in the districts from whence the regiment is raised and the ‘mean whites’ look up to and obey the sons of the Great Planters.” Malet to Layard, 27 December 1862, Layard Papers, British Library, Add. Mss. 39,104.

101 See Saturday Review, 20 September 1862, p. 338, and 29 June 1861, p. 654. See also Lothian, Confederate Secession, pp. 113-15.

102 When Cecil employed the expression “constitution,” he meant not a formal political arrangement, but an informal social one. [Cecil], “The Confederate Struggle and Recognition,” p. 554-55. See also Chesney, A Military View of Recent Campaigns, p. 17.

103 The Times, 4 November 1862, p. 9.

104 For English attempts to claim that the ends (a successful and stable Confederate society) justified the means (slavery), see The Times, 30 December 1862, p. 9 and Lothian, Confederate Secession, p. 165.

105 For a contemporary discussion of the factors behind this change, see the Saturday Review, 18 January 1862, p. 62.

106 In particular, see the discussion of Chartism and Henry Mayhew’s work on the poor in Himmelfarb, Gertrude, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (New York, 1985), pp. 253–69, 323–56Google Scholar. See also Thompson, Dorothy, The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1984), pp. 237–70.Google Scholar

107 For discussion of these phenomena, see Lorimer, Douglas, “Race, Science, and Culture: Historical Continuities and Discontinuities, 1850-1914,” in The Victorians and Race, ed. West, Shearer (Brook-field, VT, 1996), p. 23Google Scholar and Lorimer, Douglas, Colour, Class, and the Victorians (New York, 1978), pp. 92114, 119–29.Google Scholar

108 Carlyle, Thomas, “Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question,” Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Vol.. 4 of The Works of Thomas Carlyle in Thirty Volumes (London, 1900), p. 371.Google Scholar

109 Ibid., pp. 354-59.

110 Ibid., p. 373.

111 Ibid., pp. 349, 381.

112 Ibid., p. 360.

113 Mitchell, D. W., Ten Years Residence in the United States (London, 1863), p. 246.Google Scholar

114 Ozanne, The South as It Is, pp. 22-23, 74, 158. For a romantic comparison of slavery to a Waverley-like image of Scottish clans, see also Ross, Fitzgerald, Cities and Camps of the Confederate States (Urbana, 1958), p. 84.Google Scholar

115 Ozanne, The South as It Is, pp. 23-24 and Spence, James, The American Union; Its Effect on National Character and Policy, With an Inquiry into Secession as a Constitutional Right, and the Causes of the Disruption (London, 1862), p. 122.Google Scholar

116 Day, Down South, 1:19. See also Sala, My Diary in America, 1:38 and Mitchell, Ten Years Residence, p. 230.

117 See Mitchell, Ten Years Residence, p. 61.

118 Malet, An Errand to the South, p. 155. Wolseley wrote “the word slave…is never used by Southerners in alluding to them; that of servant being substituted universally.” Wolseley, “A Month’s Visit,” p. 11.

119 Lempriere, Charles, The American Crisis Considered (London, 1861), p. 49Google Scholar. Carlyle himself described the black man as “a swift, supple fellow; a merry-hearted, grinning, dancing, singing, affectionate kind of creature, with a great deal of melody and amenability in his composition.” Carlyle, “Occasional Discourse,” in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 4: 357.

120 The Times, 6 June 1861, p. 12.

121 For typical negative reactions to the Emancipation Proclamation, see the Daily Telegraph, 6 October 1862, p. 4 and 7 October 1862, p. 4; Standard, 7 October 1862, p. 4, 8 October 1862, p. 4, and 21 September 1864, p. 4; The Times, 24 September 1863, p. 6 and 2 January 1863, p. 9; [E. W. Head], “The American Revolution, “Edinburgh Review 116 (October, 1862): 556; [Cecil], “The Confederate Struggle and Recognition,” pp. 536-37.

122 See Army & Navy Gazette, 14 February 1863, p. 97; The Times, 7 October 1862, p. 8; [R. H. Patterson], “The Crisis of the American War,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 92 (November 1862): 636.

123 For discussions concerning the consequences of this race war, see The Times, 19 September 1862, p. 6 and Russell to Gladstone, 26 January 1862, Gladstone Papers, British Library., Add. Mss. 44,292.

124 Lawrence, Border and Bastille, p. 279. See a similar statement in Ozanne, The South as It Is, pp. 114-15.

125 Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians, p. 210-11.

126 These and other epithets come from Carlyle, “Occasional Discourse,” in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 4: 354, 360.

127 The Times, 17 December 1861, p. 6. See also [Cecil], “Democracy on Its Trial,” p. 274.

128 Blanc, Letters on England, 1st Ser., 2: 209.

129 The Spectator admitted that due to the South’s “sacrifices and its courage, the ability displayed by its leaders and the military aptitude shown by its people,” the “educated million in England…have become unmistakably Southern.” Spectator, 11 October 1862, p. 1124. See also Blanc, Letters on England, 1st ser., 2: 178.

130 Daily News, 5 November 1864, p. 5.

131 Cobden to Bright, 30 October 1864, Cobden Papers, British Library, Add. Mss. 43,652.

132 Mill, John Stuart, Autobiography (New York, 1989), p. 199.Google Scholar

133 These developments partially account for Matthew Arnold’s observation (made in 1868) that the middle class had split in two, with the professional half identifying with the aristocracy. See Wiener, English Culture, p. 16.

134 Standard, 25 April 1865, p. 4.

135 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Ser., vol. 183 (1866), col. 71. Accusations of this sort appear frequently in Hansard. See statements by Edward Horsman, General Jonathan Peel, Viscount Cran-bourne, a Mr Grant, Sir Thomas Bateson, and a Colonel Edwards in ibid., vol. 182 (1866), cols. 98, 107 p. 1204; vol. 183 (1866), cols. 18, 21, 44, 71, 1855; vol. 185 (1866), col. 202.

136 See, for instance, ibid., vol. 183 (1866), cols. 103, 110, 112, 119.

137 Lowe, who led the Liberal rebellion (the “Cave of Adullam”) that joined the Conservatives in destroying the bill, had served as a leader writer at The Times since 1850. Circumstantial evidence points to him as the author of many of that newspaper’s Anti-Americanizing editorials during the Civil War. Gregory, one of the Confederacy’s most important supporters in the House of Commons, served as Lowe’s chief lieutenant in the Cave of Adullam. Lawley, formerly The Times’ Southern correspondent, served as Gladstone’s intermediary in negotiations with Lowe. “The Tradition Established,” The History of The Times 1841-1884, vol. 2 (London, 1939), p. 130-31; Matthew, Gladstone 1809-1898, p. 163-64.

138 Cowling, Maurice, Disraeli, Gladstone, and Revolution (New York, 1967), p. 24, 4750, 58.Google Scholar

139 Ibid., p. 25.

140 Goldwin Smith believed the Jamaica uprising served as a “corollary of the question between slavery and freedom in America.” The historian Christine Bolt saw a certain consistency in the English press during the 1860s. Those who defended the North during the Civil War also supported the rights of blacks during Reconstruction and opposed Governor Eyre. Partisans of the South during the American conflict invariably championed a minimal Reconstruction and upheld Eyre. See Bolt, Christine, “British Attitudes to Reconstruction in the United States, 1863-1877,” (D. Phil, diss., University of London, 1966), pp. 33, 43, 247, 386.Google Scholar

141 Semmel, Bernard, Jamaican Blood and Victorian Conscience (Westport, CT: 1976), p. 123.Google Scholar

142 Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866 and 1867, 2 vols. (London, 1868), 1:25.Google Scholar