There was strong support for the insurgency among the English aristocracy, who identified with the highly class-structured Southern society and its controlling slaveholder elite. British diplomatic recognition of the rebels, with subsequent financial and military aid, would almost certainly have won the Confederacy’s independence, just as the American Revolution would have failed without French economic aid and military intervention. Southern strategists counted on the enormous value of cotton to clinch British support for their cause. Cotton was the U.S.'s most valuable export commodity and was in great demand in English textile mills, yet Southerners were unaware of the fact that "King Cotton" had been dethroned by 1861. English merchants had already begun growing short-strand cotton in the Empire's Egyptian and Indian possessions, and as valuable as cotton was to the American economy, it amounted to only 10% of the nation's agricultural output. In addition, British trade with the northern manufacturing states was more lucrative than that with the cotton states - and perceived economic advantages are always the root cause of participation in or refraining from armed struggle.

     Britons of all classes were solidly opposed to human slavery, which England had abolished throughout her vast empire in 1834. Working people in particular supported the Union war effort, despite the cost to themselves. Literally millions of mill workers faced destitution, as British mills cut back production during early wartime cotton shortages. Southerners cynically hoped that the spectre of class warfare in Britain would frighten the leaders of the world’s mightiest superpower into alliance with them. Lincoln’s brilliant stroke of turning the war to preserve the Union into a campaign to end slavery was aimed primarily at Great Britain, and doomed Southern hopes of support from that nation, as well as from France and Russia, whose governments her diplomats had also courted.

     British newspapers are generally strongly pro-Confederate and hostile to the United States' leaders and war effort. They contain splendid perspectives on the conflict that are not to be found in any other contemporary accounts. Their correspondents traveled and marched with rebel forces and sent home vivid pictures and words of what life was like in "rebeldom." The English pictorial newspapers, chiefly the great Illustrated London News, the world's first pictorial newsweekly, contain the highest quality wood engravings of American news. They are very similar in style to the American Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's, and offer glimpses into life in the South and the North, the like of which are not to be found elsewhere. For this reason I am proud to include these often overlooked treasures among my Civil War catalog offerings.

The Finest View of the Unfinished U.S. Capitol in the Contemporary Media
C6-000 . [SINGLE ISSUE]. THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, May 25, 1862. [Complete issue of 24 pages, large quarto size, published at London, England, by George Leighton]
The prized doublepage centerfold print of this classic issue is a high quality woodcut view of "The City of Washington, With the Capitol in the Foreground," a superb panorama of the city and the Capitol Building with the great dome and the western wing still under construction, and in the distance, Confederate Virginia across the Potomac River. No finer view appeared in any U.S. newspaper. Pictorial coverage headed "The Civil War in America" includes a fullpage view of men studying recruiting posters at New York firehouses for the famous "New York Fire Zouave" regiment. Other views are of U.S. forts "recently captured from the United States by the Secessionists" in Virginia and Arkansas. On the cover is a fine view of Harper's Ferry. Lots of news items from America as well. Small view of Livingstone's African expedition, much more . Extra domestic postage for this issue is 45˘
Condition is very fine, the centerfold tipped in with no binding damage; slight fold creasing easily straightened for framing the magnificent print. The camera flash exaggerates the fold line browning, which is not objectionable. . . . 55.00

The Day The World Changed
C6-004. [SINGLE ISSUE]. THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, April 5, 1862. [Complete issue of 32 pages, large quarto size, published at London, England, by George Leighton]
Excited Page One Headline "THE NAVAL REVOLUTION" over a superb action woodcut of new ironclad CSS Virginia ramming and sinking the wooden frigate USS Cumberland. In this one day, all the world's wooden navies became obsolete, including mighty England's Royal Navy. Inside is a graphic half-page woodcut of the combat of the rebel ironclad with USS Monitor, quite the most unusual sight ever seen in the annals of naval warfare. Full article on these amazing events. These views are like none published in America. Fullpage woodcut of federal supply wagons struggling in the Virginia mud at the start of the great Spring offensive against Richmond. Also, three pages of views in Egypt, include the pyramids, the Sphinx and other ancient monuments, on the occasion of the Prince of Wales' visit. Three pages of views in England's huge Woolwich Arsenal, of casting and finishing heavy cannon, perhaps reassure English readers after the frightening news from across the ocean. Extra domestic postage for this issue is 45˘
Condition is very fine . . . 75.00

       

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