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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
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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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).
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93 Daily Telegraph, 5 November 1862, p. 4; The Times, 27 December 1862, p. 7.
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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.
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111 Ibid., pp. 349, 381.
112 Ibid., p. 360.
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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.
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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.
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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, 47–50, 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
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