A World on Fire Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War [Paperback]

Amanda Foremanis a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. She won the Whitbread Prize forGeorgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, which was adapted for the screen asThe Duchess. Educated as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College and with master’s and doctorate degrees in history from Oxford University, she is now married with five children and lives in New York.one

The Uneasy Cousins

Britain and America-Divisions over slavery-Lord Palmerston-Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Stafford House Address-Charles Dickens's disappointment-The caning of Charles Sumner

For seventy-five years after the War of Independence, the British approach to dealing with the Americans had boiled down to one simple tactic: to be very civil, very firm, and to go our own way. 1 During the late 1850s, the prevailing view in London was that Washington could not be trusted. These Yankees are most disagreeable Fellows to have to do anything about any American Question, the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, had complained in 1857 to Lord Clarendon, his foreign secretary, fourteen months before Lord Lyons's arrival in America. They are on the Spot, strong . . . totally unscrupulous and dishonest and determined somehow or other to carry their Point. 2 It went without saying that the Foreign Office expected Lyons to be on guard against any American chicanery.

One of the legacies of the War of 1812 was a British fear that the United States might try to annex British North America (as Canada was then known), accompanied by a conviction among Americans that they should never stop trying. It was neither forgiven nor forgotten in England that precious ships and men had had to be diverted from the desperate war against Napoleon Bonaparte in order to defend Canada from three invasion attempts by the United States between 1812 and 1814. London regarded the burning of Washington and the White House by British soldiers in August 1814 aslÃ)