Title: Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union & Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War
Abstract: Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union & Slavery Diplomacy of Civil War. By Howard Jones. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. 277 pp., $29.95.) If there is such a thing as a field study of American Civil War, it is diplomatic history. Its once sturdy presence has diminished recent years. Thus 1960 classic Why North Won Civil War included as one of its five essays Norman A. Graebner's Northern Diplomacy and European Neutrality. By contrast, Writing Civil War: The Quest to Understand, edited by James M. McPherson and William J. Cooper, Jr., and published 1998, surveys modern Civil War historiography twelve essays, none of which deals centrally with diplomatic history. The index does not include entries for Great Britain or France, let alone for Lord John Russell or Edouard Thouvenel, foreign ministers of those great powers. There are several references to War with Mexico that preceded Civil War by fifteen years but none for dangerous attempt to make Maximilian emperor of Mexico during Civil War. Diplomatic history has fallen hard times. When whole literature is surveyed, of course, it would be difficult to describe as neglected or on hard a field which includes such durable tomes as Frank L. Owsley's King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of Confederate States of America (1959) and Lynn M. Case and Warren F. Spencer's The United States and France: Civil War Diplomacy (1970). Still, diplomatic history has hardly kept pace with prodigious output of Civil War works last thirty years. Among diplomatic historians who recent times have been producing work Civil War is Howard Jones, whose most recent book is Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union & Slavery Diplomacy of Civil War. The point of book is to emphasize role of President Lincoln as a diplomatist and of slavery as a world issue reevaluating European decision not to intervene American conflict. Altering focus of traditional diplomatic history proves a difficult task. Abraham Lincoln paid scant attention to foreign relations. And it is a stubborn fact, which resists Professor Jones's attempt to change focus, that Lincoln committed his greatest foreign policy gaffe course of writing Emancipation Proclamation. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862, ordered the executive government of United States, including military and naval authority thereof to do no act or to repress slaves reached by proclamation in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. Europeans heard that passage an infamous invitation to servile insurrection, which at once made Union cause appear desperate and ruthless. The British charge Washington, William Stuart, called attention to Lincoln's direct encouragement to servile Insurrections and warned that we may see reenacted some of worst excesses of French Revolution. It confirmed Foreign Secretary Russell's fears that acts of plunder, of incendiarism, and of revenge would ravage American continent. Lincoln's cabinet recognized mistake and made certain he revised language final proclamation issued January 1, 1863. …
Publication Year: 2000
Publication Date: 2000-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
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