| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War. By R. J. M. Blackett. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. xvi, 273 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8071-2595-4. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-8071-2645-4.)

Divided Hearts might more appropriately have been subtitled "British popular opinion and the American Civil War." In fact, so single-minded is the author's concern with popular attitudes that practically nothing else is mentioned. We are not told how the cabinet viewed matters or even how susceptible it was to extraparliamentary pressure. Did popular opinion, as opposed to strategic considerations, have any influence at all on policy? It can, of course, be argued that these are questions that have been discussed elsewhere. Nevertheless, the failure to deal with them here is a source of weakness, for without a clear understanding of the broader context it is hard to see what the significance of the popular debate was other than a largely spontaneous outpouring of often ill-informed beliefs about the war and its causes. . . .

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