A World on Fire

I've read many books on the Civil War, but I haven't read one like Amanda Foreman's A World on Fire before, because it is the story of the American Civil War through the prism of the British. Foreman, in telling a big story, has written a big book that entails the entire spectrum of the war as it relates to Britain--from the Prime Minister to ambassadors in Washington and London to the Confederate attempts to acquire British recognition and aide to the British citizens who fought on either side of the war.

Some of the details of Foreman's book, particularly the information about battles, may seem overly familiar to Civil War buffs. Certainly some of it was to me, but I chose to approach it from what must have been Foreman's target audience: the British themselves. Just as Americans don't know British history beyond Henry VIII having six wives and King George going mad, so too might the average British reader know the name Gettysburg, but not what it meant, or who exactly Stonewall Jackson or William Sherman were, and what they did.

But the richest part of Foreman's work is her telling the story of what went on between the two (or three) nations. The United Kingdom was put in a tough spot from the get-go, and the public split in its sympathies. Many favored the North because of the slavery issue. Books like Uncle Tom's Cabin had fueled the British hatred of slavery: "In 1852, its first year of publication, the book sold a million copies in Britain--compered to 300,000 in the United States." British actress Fanny Kemble, who lived for a time on a Georgia plantation, also wrote a memoir detailing the cruelties of slavery. But, as Foreman writes, "Northern supporters were not allowed to claim that the war was to end slavery, and Southern supporters naturally could not say, as John Stuart Mill had so trenchantly put it in an essay published shortly before the debate, that the South was fighting for the right 'of burning human creatures alive.'"

The sympathizers for the South in Britain seemed to be so for one of two reasons. The more noble was rooting for the underdog, for a nation yearning to break free. But this seems to be overwhelmed by the economic reason: cotton. Foreman quotes a Senator Wigfall of Texas declaiming, "'Cotton is King...He waves his sceptre not only over these thirty-three states, but over the island of Great Britain.' Queen Victoria herself, Wigfall roared, must 'bend the knee in fealty and acknowledge allegiance to that monarch.' The South could turn off the supply of cotton and cripple England in a single week."

But Britain would never take an official stance on the war. It never recognized the Confederacy, no matter the pleading of various envoys. I was surprised to learn that at the end of the war Jefferson Davis promised to abolish slavery if the British recognized the South. Davis had longed for this: "Recognition, in legal terms, meant granting the South the status of a sovereign country. The North would not only then suffer a psychological blow but might also find itself facing a united Europe that was prepared to protect the supply of cotton at the point of a gun."

The North was not pleased with some things that went on in Britain, though. Ships were built that managed to fall into Confederate hands, none so important as the CSS Alabama, captained by the able Raphael Semmes, which wielded much mayhem against Union merchant ships around the world before finally being sunk in a fierce battle in the English channel. The Union claimed that the British looked the other way in allowing the Alabama to sneak out of a British port and be turned over to Confederate hands in neutral waters. In fact, there was still bickering and legal wranglings years after the war ended determining the damages the British owed the U.S. for the havoc the Alabama did.

The U.S. and Britain were also constantly flirting with war. Secretary of State William Seward was obstreperous in the beginning, making constant noise about invading Canada (it was only when Canada proclaimed itself a dominion in 1867 that most of this talk ended, but even then many held a dream that the U.S. would one day encompass all of North America).

Then there was the Trent Affair. Two Confederate envoys to England were seized when a U.S. ship stopped a British mail ship. The British cried foul, and tensions mounted until the U.S. finally released them. I find it interesting that the common story about what Abraham Lincoln said about this: "One war a time," he was said to have joked, insisting that the envoys be released, is not in Foreman's book. In fact, she makes it sound as if Lincoln was reluctant to let them go.

In addition to Seward and Lincoln, other dignitaries make prominent characters in Foreman's book. The British legation to Washington was led by Lord Lyons, a man whose patience slowly drained over the course of the war, to such an extent that he finally left shortly before the war ended. He had to deal with British citizens being conscripted into both sides of the struggle, and also had to deal with Seward. Though, Foreman relates that "Lyons' regard for Seward...had matured from barely concealed contempt to admiration. After an acrimonious beginning, each had learned and benefited from their forced collaboration. The politician had become a true statesman, the diplomat a true ambassador."

In London, Charles Francis Adams, son and grandson of presidents, was the American ambassador. Foreman notes that he was not much for small talk, an odd disability for a diplomat, "he is usually praised on the unfounded assertion that he prevented Britain from supporting the South, whereas his real triumph--when he transcended his own limitations and acted with visionary patriotism--was his brave decision to intervene at the Alabama tribunal in June 1872." His assistant, Benjamin Moran, provides vibrant copy with entries from his diary, where he notes triumphs and disappointments throughout the war with vehemence.

Foreman also discusses the British press. The most famous war correspondent in the world, William Howard Russell, was ousted from his post after writing even-handed articles. The Times was pro-Southern, and ended up using Francis Lawley, who doctored his accounts to make the South sound stronger. Frank Vizetelly was also sympathetic to the Southern cause, but drew magnificent renderings of the scenes of war, many of which are reprinted in the book. Foreman includes an amusing anecdote about a member of Lincoln's cabinet: "The secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, was an avid reader of the English press, particularly those journals that were sympathetic to the South. Stanton would shut his office door, settle down on the sofa, and spend the afternoon discovering from Britain's finest journalists why the North deserved no pity and why he, especially, was the worst sort of bungler. According to one his clerks, it was almost a form of relaxation for him."

Foreman's most sympathetic writing is for the lowly British fighting men who were involved in the conflict. One fellow, Sam Hill, gets drafted against his wishes, and his sister, Mary Sophia Hill, begins a long and terrifying odyssey trying to get him out, and then ends up suing the government after she is deported. Henry Morton Stanley, whom Foreman labels a "serial deserter," has a number of posts in the Union Army, while Robert Livingstone will fight and die for the South. Of course, Stanley would later become world famous for finding Livingstone's father, David, in the African jungle. Foreman also doesn't spare her opinion of some of the sad sacks of the fight: "Twenty-year-old Alfred Rubery was one of life's nincompoops."

I even learned some things about the American side of things I never knew before. For example, Foreman notes that Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois threatened to lead a second secession from the United States, which would make its own peace with the South. Also, we learn that Seward approached the Italian hero Garibaldi to lead the U.S. Army, but Garibaldi made ending slavery a condition of his employ.

The richest stew to savor in Foreman's book is the complicated relationship between the U.S. and England, which still wasn't solid. "'Why,' wrote a nineteenth-century American journalist, 'does America hate England?' He answered: 'Americans believe that England dreads their growing power, and is envious of their prosperity. They detest and hate England accordingly. They have 'licked' her twice and can 'lick' her again."

But Ulysses S. Grant, writing his memoirs at the end of his life, comes to a realization. When he became president, he was cool toward England, but then wrote, "England's course towards the United States during the rebellion exasperated the people of this country very much against the mother country. I regretted it. England and the United States are natural allies, and should be the best of friends. They speak one language, and are related by blood and other ties. We together, or even either separately, are better qualified than any other people to establish commerce between all the nationalities of the world."