Overview

"In this comprehensive examination of British sympathy for the South during and after the American Civil War, Michael J. Turner explores the ideas and activities of A.J. Beresford Hope - one of the leaders of the pro-Confederate lobby in Britain - to provide fresh insight into that seemingly curious allegiance. Hope and his associates cast famed Confederate general Thomas J. ""Stonewall"" Jackson as the embodiment of southern independence, courage, and honour, elevating him to the status of a hero in Britain. Historians have often noted that economic interest, political attitudes, and concern about Britain's global reach and geostrategic position led many in the country to embrace the Confederate cause, but they have focused less on the social, cultural, and religious reasons enunciated by Hope and ostensibly represented by Jackson, factors Turner suggests also heightened British affinity for the South. During the war, Hope noticed a tendency among British people to view southerners as heroic warriors in their struggle against the North. He and his pro-southern followers shared and promoted this vision, framing Jackson as the personification of that noble mission and raising the general's profile in Britain so high that they collected enough funds to construct a memorial to him after his death in 1863. Unveiled twelve years later in Richmond, Virginia, the statue stands today as a remarkable artifact of one of the lesser-known strands of British pro-Confederate ideology. Stonewall Jackson, Beresford Hope, and the Meaning of the American Civil War in Britain serves as the first in-depth analysis of Hope as a leading pro-southern activist and of Jackson's reputation in Britain during and after the Civil War. It places the conflict in a transnational context that reveals the reasons British citizens formed bonds of solidarity with the southerners whom they perceived shared their social and cultural values."

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9780807171080

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Reviews

In a thoughtful and well-researched work that is thoroughly contextualized by references to the latest historiography, Turner investigates why so many Britons sympathized with the Confederacy during the Civil War.--Hugh Dubrulle, author of Ambivalent Nation: How Britain Imagined the American Civil War Michael J. Turner's new work brings together the prevailing trends within the study of the American Civil War in an international context while adding additional layers to our understanding.--Peter O'Connor, author of American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832-1863 This magisterial study of the Confederacy's British partisans reminds us that Britain had its own traditions of liberalism, democracy, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism through which it saw the conflict. This is a long-overdue corrective to less rigorous scholarship.--Duncan Andrew Campbell, author of English Public Opinion and the American Civil War

Author Information

Michael J. Turner is the Roy Carroll Distinguished Professor of British History at Appalachian State University. He has published widely in the fields of British-American interaction, reform politics in nineteenth-century Britain, and modern British foreign policy.

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