The Civil War as Global Conflict , livre ebook

The Civil War as Global Conflict
THE CAROLINA LOWCOUNTRY AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD
Sponsored by the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World of the College of Charleston
Money, Trade, and Power Edited by Jack P. Greene, Rosemary Brana-Shute, and Randy J. Sparks
The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World Edited by David P. Geggus
London Booksellers and American Customers James Raven
Memory and Identity Edited by Bertrand Van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks
This Remote Part of the World Bradford J. Wood
The Final Victims James A. McMillin
The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Edited by Peter A. Coclanis
From New Babylon to Eden Bertrand Van Ruymbeke
Saints and Their Cults in the Atlantic World Edited by Margaret Cormack
Who Shall Rule at Home? Jonathan Mercantini
To Make This Land Our Own Arlin C. Migliazzo
Votaries of Apollo Nicholas Michael Butler
Fighting for Honor T. J. Desch Obi
Paths to Freedom Edited by Rosemary Brana-Shute and Randy J. Sparks
Material Culture in Anglo-America Edited by David S. Shields
The Fruits of Exile Edited by Richard Bodek and Simon Lewis
The Irish in the Atlantic World Edited by David T. Gleeson
Ambiguous Anniversary Edited by David T. Gleeson and Simon Lewis
Creating and Contesting Carolina Edited by Michelle LeMaster and Bradford J. Wood

2014 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Civil War as global conflict : transnational meanings of the American Civil War / edited by David T. Gleeson and Simon Lewis. pages cm. - (The Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61117-325-3 (hardbound : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-1-61117-326-0 (ebook) 1. United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Causes. 2. United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Political aspects. 3. United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Social aspects. 4. United States-History-Civil War, 1861-1865-Influence. I. Gleeson, David T., editor of compilation. II. Lewis, Simon, 1960-, editor of compilation.
E459.C59 2014 973.7-dc23 2013036702
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
David T. Gleeson and Simon Lewis
Why Civil War? The Politics of Slavery in Comparative Perspective: The United States, Cuba, and Brazil
Edward B. Rugemer
King Cotton, Emperor Slavery: Antebellum Slaveholders and the World Economy
Matthew Karp
If it is still impossible to advocate slavery it has become a habit persistently to write down freedom : Britain, the Civil War, and Race
Hugh Dubrulle
Two irreconcilable peoples ? Ethnic Nationalism in the Confederacy
James M. McPherson
Proving Their Loyalty to the Republic: English Immigrants and the American Civil War
David T. Gleeson
A new expression of that entente cordiale? Russian-American Relations and the Fleet Episode of 1863
Alexander Noonan
The Rhine River: The Impact of the German States on Transatlantic Diplomacy
Niels Eichhorn
Lex Talionis in the U.S. Civil War: Retaliation and the Limits of Atrocity
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Fulfilling The president s duty to communicate : The Civil War and the Creation of the Foreign Relations of the United States Series
Aaron W. Marrs
They had heard of emancipation and the enfranchisement of their race : The African American Colonists of Saman , Reconstruction, and the State of Santo Domingo
Christopher Wilkins
Nurse as Icon: Florence Nightingale s Impact on Women in the American Civil War
Jane E. Schultz
Race, Romance, and The spectacle of unknowing in Gone with the Wind : A South African Response
Lesley Marx
Coda: Roundtable on Memory
O. Vernon Burton, Edmund L. Drago, W. Eric Emerson, Joseph McGill, Theodore Rosengarten, Amanda Foreman
Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As directors of the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) at the College of Charleston planning our activities in the early 2000s, we both recognized that 2011 was going to be an important year for the city, state, region and nation in which we were based. Thus the conference that spawned this volume had long been in the hopper, and as a result we have had a lot of support, which we would like to recognize here. Our colleagues in the CLAW program, Lisa Randle and John White, were instrumental in helping pull off what became a large and important conference attracting scholars from all over the world and from all sections of the community. Heather Gilbert provided vital Web support. Our executive director, Dr. OrvilleVernon Burton, now of Clemson University, provided valuable advice and was instrumental in securing us prestigious plenary speakers. In the history department at the College of Charleston, Drs. Lee Drago and Bernard Powers helped both intellectually and physically with the conference. Dr. Scott Peeples, in the English department, gave us some good insights and sources. Administrative and graduate assistants Tara Miller, Maggie Lally, and Dana Woodcock did some excellent last-minute formatting for us. Also at the College, Deans David Cohen and Cynthia Lowenthal were always supportive of our efforts. We thank them for that. The 2011 conference received important financial support from the Humanities Council of South Carolina and the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Northumbria University in the UK. Professor McPherson s conference keynote lecture, revised and reprinted in this volume, was sponsored by the Wells Fargo [formerly Wachovia] Distinguished Public Lecture Series.
For the volume we acknowledge the continued guidance and advice from the staff at the University of South Carolina Press. We want to specifically recognize the hard work of Alex Moore, Linda Fogle, Karen Beidel, and Elizabeth Jones. All of our contributors have been excellent to work with and have helped us to put together this collection in a timely and efficient manner. We appreciate too the valuable suggestions for improvement made by the two anonymous reviewers for this project.
David Gleeson also particularly wants to recognize the support of his colleagues at Northumbria University in the British and Irish Worlds and U.S. history research groups, especially Professor Donald M. MacRaild, Dr. Sylvia Ellis, and Dr. Tanja Bueltmann. Department head Professor David Walker and Dean of Arts and Social Sciences Professor Lynn Dodd were also very supportive of this project. Gleeson s essay in this volume is a result of his involvement in the Locating the Hidden Diaspora: The English in North America in Transatlantic Perspective Project at Northumbria, which is funded in part by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Finally, we would both like to thank our families, Amy, Emma, and Aidan Gleeson, Janet Watts, and Megan, Zo , and Oliver Lewis, who have put up with the late-night edits, Skype calls, and so on inherent in a transatlantic collaboration. We truly do appreciate their continued patience and support.
DAVID T. GLEESON AND SIMON LEWIS
Introduction
The American Civil War is one of the most written-about events in history, and in many ways it is one that is the most thoroughly known already. If you go almost anywhere in the United States where there was a battle, you are almost certain to encounter someone who knows the terrain of that battlefield to within the last inch and who can tell you the precise development of the fighting to within a minute. Professional historians of the Civil War will all tell you stories of encountering phenomenally knowledgeable (and equally opinionated) audience members at public lectures they have given. In addition to having exhaustive knowledge of battles, campaigns, and strategies, we also know a very great deal about the individuals involved, particularly the political and military leaders. Prior to 2009, it was already claimed that Abraham Lincoln was the subject of more biographies than any other person in world history, and yet the bicentenary of his birth produced even more scholarly and popular analysis, notably Eric Foner s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (which won the Pulitzer Prize, the Lincoln Prize, and the Bancroft Prize) and O. Vernon Burton s The Age of Lincoln (which won the Heartland Prize). There is a similarly unquenchable interest in the foot soldiers, too, resulting, among other things, in extensive reenactment organizations. All too often in public consciousness, though, the laudable focus on soldiering leads to comparisons between the moral character and military skill of Billy Yank and Johnny Reb that can still in some circles feed into cycles of justification and recrimination. Periodic flare-ups of controversy over such perennially potent symbols as the Confederate flag illustrate just how deep sectional feeling can still run. Current antigovernment attitudes in the United States have given new life to anti-Union rhetoric all over the country as seen, for instance, in an op-ed by the veteran environmentalist and secession advocate Kirkpatrick Sale in the Charleston Post and Courier arguing that the war was not a civil war, second that it was the Union that started it, and third that it was not started over slavery. 1
Despite the apparently comprehensive coverage and interminable, seemingly intractable disagreement, it seems as if the public desire not just to revisit familiar territory but to discover new details or to explore new avenues o