The American Civil War...A Very British Affair

	Mr. Lincoln put out his hand in a very friendly manner, and said, 'Mr. Russell, I am very glad to make your acquaintance, and to see you in this country. The London 'Times' is one of the greatest powers in the world - in fact, I don't know anything which has much more power - except perhaps the Mississippi
	London 'Times' journalist William Howard Russell on meeting President Abraham Lincoln, March 1861

The War Between the States 1861-1865 was an almost entirely family affair. Not simply the fratricide of any civil war, but in that the majority of participants were of British stock. Given the nature of primary immigration into the United States before the 1870's this is not surprising. A glance at the histories of the War tells the story plainly with such names as Wright, Jackson, Sheridan, Grant, Lee, Thomas, Johnson, Smith, and Cleburne leaping from the page. Admittedly Van Dorn, Heintzelman and Hoke upset things a bit, but exceptions prove the rule.
 
To this litany of homely surnames can be added the British building and manning of commerce raiders, blockade running to Southern ports (and, hardly less, supply to the North's armies), pro-Confederate and anti-slavery movements and politicking in Britain itself, together with an unworthy desire to see Jonathan trip up and concern for the security of British Canada jostling for position simultaneously. On top of all this consider the many thousands of Britons who crossed the Atlantic to fight - Keogh, Currie, Morley, Jenkins, Wyndham, Gordon, Broud, Carwardine - some in blue some in gray, for motives good and better than good - there was little enough money to speak of and so many were left lying on fields where imagination should not tread. You have, in numerous ways, a very British affair.
 
This is not to take away the American-ness from this sad and strange conflict, for the tragedy was American and so was the nation-forging catharsis and reconciliation that followed. Still, the interest in the war on this side of the Atlantic is very real and very intimate. It is an interest for which many of our forbears paid in full measure, and the price extracted was blood.

James Falkner