Themes of the American Civil War
Introduction to the First Edition
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| Introduction to the First Edition JAMES MM bbCbbPHERSONbThis volume is truly a transatlantic tribute to Peter Parish. The authors of most of the essays are British scholars of United States history some are Americans who have benefited from a transatlantic perspective. Nothing could be more fitting, for Peter Parish has taught many of the authors and influenced all of them. His own writings have greatly enriched our understanding of the American Civil War, of slavery and emancipation, and of British–American relations in the nineteenth century. His magisterial account of The American Civil War remains one of the best studies of that conflict a quarter century after its original publication. That book offered incisive insights about the issues that are further explored by the essays in the present volume the roots of sectional conflict and secession the ideological and military mobilisation of North and South the leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis the will to fight command and strategy slavery and emancipation as war issues the role of blacks in both the Confederacy and Union the economic impact of the war the Constitution and civil liberties and the nature of Union and Confederate nationalism. Most important of all, perhaps, The American Civil War placed the conflict in its international setting. Parish’s chapter on The War and the World” is the most lucid and concise treatment of that theme in print. That chapter and the next, Oceans, Rivers and Diplomatic Channels narrate the largely futile Confederate efforts for diplomatic recognition and intervention by European powers, and the largely successful countermeasures of Union foreign policy. But The War and the World goes beyond traditional diplomatic history. “The issues at stake in the Civil War, wrote Parish, found echoes in Britain and France, Spain and Russia, Canada and Brazil, and many other lands.” These great issues included nothing less than slavery and freedom, democracy and privilege, self-determination and imperial ambition, majority rule and minority rights The United States was one of the few republics in the world in 1861, and by far the largest and most important one. Most republics through history had collapsed into tyranny or anarchy, or had been overthrown from without. France and the republics of Latin America provided a pointed contemporary object lesson. Would the great American experiment of republican government and democracy also collapse Those in the Old World, wrote Parish, who hated and feared the United States as the home of the demon democracy, and therefore as a dangerous example and incitement, welcomed what they took to be the total collapse of its political system in That is why Abraham Lincoln insisted that the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity . . . of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to breakup the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves Nor was this merely an American question, Lincoln said in his first message to Congress. It embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy . . . can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity.” 2 If the Union dissolved, the forces of conservatism in Europe would smile in satisfaction that the upstart republic of Yankee braggarts had gotten its comeuppance at last. Thus, as Parish noted, the president of the United States never doubted . . . that the conflict mattered for the whole world.” 3 Given the centrality in Parish’s book of the theme that Americas trial by battle was a test of what liberty, democracy, and power meant at different levels and in many different places this introduction to The American Civil Download 2.25 Mb. Share with your friends:
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