Queen Victoria’s Speeches to Parliament: The Role of the Civil War in British Politics
At the opening of each Parliamentary session, the British monarch delivers a policy statement crafted by the Prime Minister, explaining the cabinet’s plans for the forthcoming sitting of Parliament. With Parliament prorogued until October 14, 2019, when Queen Elizabeth II is supposed to read Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s agenda to ...
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Secession and Slavery in Great Britain II: John Lothrop Motley and the Causes of the Civil War in The Times of London
To read Part I of my analysis of this debate, click here. Part I discusses two articles by Cassius Clay, an antislavery Kentuckian and U.S. Minister to the Russian court, and Edwin DeLeon, a secessionist and former U.S. minister to Egypt. British neutrality inspired Clay and DeLeon to present their ...
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Secession and Slavery in Great Britain: Cassius Clay and Edwin DeLeon debate in The Times of London
On May 13, 1861, Queen Victoria announced Great Britain’s neutrality in the Civil War, which raised Southern hopes of recognition and Northern fears of the same. The Queen’s proclamation and public reaction to the outbreak of hostilities were the result of long-standing assumptions about the sectional division in the United ...
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Lessons in Diplomacy: Reassessing the Trent Affair
As the saber rattling and awkward gestures toward friends and foes alike continue to come from Washington, and the loose finger of the president drifts between Twitter and nuclear war with potentially Iran and North Korea, escaping to the diplomacy of the American Civil War provides a reminder that brinkmanship ...
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