Great Britain and the American Civil War: All Volumes Paperback – 26 Nov 2015

This is a fascinating and authoritative account of the relationship between the US and Great Britain before during and after the American Civil War. I thought I'd be able to dip in and out but it proved to be a real page-turner. The book details the twists and turns of the official and unofficial communications between the governments of the US, Great Britain, France and the 'belligerent' States of the Confederacy against the backdrop of the British 'public view' from newspaper campaigns and reports of public meetings.Interestingly Abraham Lincoln doesn't seem to come out too well from this narrative. Initally nobody could believe that secession would result in Lincoln declaring war, which would surely be at terrible cost. (The latest estimate is that 750,000 died.) It seems clear that Britain would have come out decisively in favour of the Federal Government early in the war if only Lincoln had been able/willing to make clear the war was about slavery and it seems possible that this could have lead to an earlier ending to the war, with many lives saved.

This was not an easy read for me. I struggled most of the way through it forcing myself to finish all of it. It was repetitive to say the least and a lot of the time, plain boring. The writer, who I assume is American is very much biased on the side of Britain and the Northern Federals and the whole story is based around Britain and the northern states with very little input of the southern viewpoint. The author paints Britain as whiter than white during this war and not for a second can I believe this. I'd have liked a less biased and true historical version of what went on beween Europe and USA during this Civil War. Nonetheless, some interesting material here.

As I say, detailed but dull, however maybe I've just picked it up at the wrong time. Do the machinations of diplomacy ever make for an intense reading experience?However the author has obviously done a great amount of research, and for that one can only be grateful.

Really enjoyed this book as it was very informative on many aspects of British involvement in the war between the states. Things that you would not normally find in mainstream history books but which are totally relative.

Published 100 years ago this book is an excellent analysis of how the British media handled the Civil War. Well written with a lot of source references. Well worth the read.

It's great to have these type of books available on Kindle as I need them as reference all the time.

Learnt quite a lot about this time in History and found it most interesting. A different perspective to the usual books on this subject.

Just great