British Press Responses to the American Civil War: A Case Study of The Times, The Economist and The Spectator, 1860 - 1862

This study investigates the formation of the editorial stances of three British newspapers, The Times, The Economist and The Spectator towards the American Civil War, beginning with the election of President Lincoln in November 1860 and ending two years later on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation. The stances they adopted reflected the range of opinions which the British public held about the conflict. All three newspapers condemned the act of secession as illegitimate and expressed abhorrence for the institution of slavery which the secessionists sought to protect. However, their stances diverged markedly once secession appeared to have become irreversible without resort to civil war. Through a close analysis of the editorials in each newspaper, the study plots the trajectory of this divergence and analyses the reasons for it. It shows how, like much of the British press, The Times and The Economist came to see the American Civil War as a futile war of conquest on the Federal Government's part, which directly threatened Britain's cotton manufacturing industry, and appeared to be motivated by a desire to preserve the Union rather than to contain the extension of slavery. The only solution, in their view, was to allow the Confederacy to separate from the Union. This viewpoint had become entrenched by the time of the first major battle of war at Bull Run in July 1861 and was unaffected by Lincoln's Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (PEP) the following year, which was seen as a cynical act of desperation. In these views, The Times and The Economist were closely in line with British government thinking, and, in spite of feeling that the conditions for recognition of the Confederacy had largely been met, they supported the Cabinet's decision in November 1862 not to intervene in the war with an offer of mediation. The Spectator, on the other hand, was in a minority of newspapers in Britain which supported the Union's right to use force to quell secession and never doubted that the issue of slavery was what the war was all about. While its support for the Washington government was not uncritical, and it shared some of the reservations of the other two newspapers about the PEP, it was firmly of the view that moral right in the conflict lay with the Union. For that reason, The Spectator opposed recognition on principle. Underlying explanations for the differences in viewpoint are considered, including differing perceptions of where British interests lay, misconceptions about American politics and constitutional law, and changing attitudes to emancipation and race towards the end of the antebellum period.