Divided Hearts

Divided Hearts explores the passionate political strife that raged in Britain as a result of the American Civil War. Moving beyond Mary Ellison's 1972 landmark regional study of Lancashire cotton workers' reactions, R. J. M. Blackett opens the subject to a new, wider transatlantic context of influence and undertakes a deftly researched and written sociological, intellectual, and political examination of who in Britain supported the Union, who the Confederacy, and why.Blackett argues that the traditional historiographical assessments of British partisanship along class and economic lines must be reevaluated in light of the nature and changing contours of transatlantic abolitionist connections, the ways in which nationalism framed the debate, and the effect that race -- among other issues -- exerted over the British public's perception of conditions in America. He conducts a detailed study of the meetings, lectures, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and other means that friends of the protagonists used to shape the public's view of the war. Both sides, he shows, operating on the assumption that in a democracy pressure from without can and frequently does sway the government's action, made every effort to win widespread support for their position.The American Civil War had a profound effect on Britain's political culture; no other event during that period -- not in Poland, Hungary, Italy, or British colonies -- compared. "The Civil War in the United States affects our people more generally even than the Indian Mutiny", the London Times asserted in 1862. In his superb delineation of the arguments that British citizens of every rank employed to justify positions taken on the war, Blackettbroaches the provocative question of the degree to which this involvement redirected their gaze toward political reform at home, resulting in an extension of the franchise among other things. Divided Hearts presents a compelling and innovative thesis, one sure to engage sc