The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War

Following British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston’s dictum that “Opinions are stronger than armies,” Doyle, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina, offers an intercontinental history of the Civil War that emphasizes diplomacy and ideology over military tactics. Doyle (Secession as an International Phenomenon) sees the Civil War as a global referendum on the viability of republicanism and mass suffrage following the failure of the revolutions of 1848—a referendum acted out on a radically new field of battle thanks to the development of an international press. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy comes out looking good in Doyle’s account: the South’s struggle for recognition was hampered by incompetent diplomats; the North, insisting to Europeans that the war was precipitated by a legalistic disagreement about constitutional law, failed to capitalize on the powerful antislavery sentiments across the Atlantic until it was nearly too late. Throughout, Doyle lucidly contextualizes these dueling diplomatic missions within the larger machinations of European rulers: to quell dissent at home and reignite their own imperialist ambitions across the Atlantic. Doyle’s account, while lacking in organization, is nonetheless a readable and refreshing perspective on a conflict too often understood through a purely domestic context. [em](Jan.) [/em]