Book Review

This summation of the diplomatic aspect of the struggle for Southern independence will be a useful resource for students and general readers. It provides a convenient synthesis of literature on the subject. As executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Museum in Tennessee, Charles M. Hubbard has had ample opportunity to think and talk about the Civil War. He speaks of the South as a nation and analyzes why it did not achieve independence, emphasizing the failure of its diplomats. William Yancey, Pierre Rost, and Ambrose Mann certainly were bunglers, and James Mason and John Slidell produced no great results for Jefferson Davis and Judah Benjamin. Their problems are clearly explained. Hubbard deals with the initial attempt at peaceful separation from the Union and the different tactics used to try to gain recognition or even intervention by England and France, where pro-Southern sentiment could be found. The Union blockade was a great obstacle in addition to the various "burdens" Hubbard sees—those of slavery, miscalculations about cotton as king, multiparty diplomacy, and "Southern honor." Lack of money and supplies were at the heart of the matter, whether Confederate armies were winning or losing. He links the complications introduced by the French intervention in Mexico to the eventual collapse of the whole war effort. Indeed, "confederate diplomacy failed to overcome a host of burdens."

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