Investigating the War of 1861 Part 2
By Jim Jester
Empire
A correspondent for Macmillan’s Magazine did a thorough job investigating the war while in America. He talked with hundreds of people, from all walks of life, in the North and was convinced that slavery had nothing to do with Northern motives for war. He summarized the answers he was given with the words, “We do not claim to be carrying on a war for the blacks, but for the whites…. The object of the war is to preserve the Union…. It was for clear matter-of-fact interests.” When he tried to pin down these interests, the answers did not show any moral or legal justification for a war of aggression with the carnage that was taking place. Noble principles are rarely involved in warfare. What really were involved were trade, money, and empire building. He came to the same conclusion as many foreign correspondents did, that preserving the American empire was at stake. The Quarterly Review (London) analyzed “The American Crisis” in these words:
For the contest on the part of the North is now disguisedly for empire. The question of slavery is thrown to the winds. There is hardly any concession in its favor that the South could ask which the North would refuse, provided only that the seceding States would re-enter the Union…. Away with the pretence on the North to dignify its cause with the name of freedom to the slave!
It became clear to the majority of British writers that preserving the Union really meant preserving the empire. The thinking of the 19th century was to conquer and explore. America was building an empire across the continent, with Alaska, Canada, and Cuba on the list, and this is what Europeans saw as a very understandable reason to preserve the Union. The Athenaeum (6 May 1865), a highly respected British weekly, wrote:
Many different motives urged her [the North] to begin the work on which she lavished blood and treasure. She fought… for all those delicious dreams of national predominance in future ages, which she must relinquish as soon as the union is severed…. They saw the necessity for an undivided nation: they knew that banded together they might achieve all their promises and predictions, but that their historical pre-eminence would be sacrificed as soon as they consented to a dissolution of partnership.