The Civil War marked a significant turning point in American history—not only for the United States itself but also for its relations with foreign powers both during and after the conflict. The friendship and foreign policy partnership between President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Henry Seward shaped those US foreign policies. These unlikely allies, who began as rivals during the 1860 presidential nomination, helped ensure that America remained united and prospered in the aftermath of the nation's consuming war. In Lincoln, Seward, and US Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, Joseph A. Fry examines the foreign policy decisions that resulted from this partnership and the legacy of those decisions. Lincoln and Seward, despite differences in upbringing, personality, and social status, both adamantly believed in the preservation of the union and the need to stymie slavery. They made that conviction the cornerstone of their policies abroad, and through those policies, such as Seward threatening war with any nation that intervened in the Civil War, they prevented European intervention that could have led to Northern defeat. The Union victory allowed America to resume imperial expansion, a dynamic that Seward sustained beyond Lincoln's death during his tenure as President Andrew Johnson's Secretary of State. Fry's analysis of the Civil War from an international perspective and the legacy of US policy decisions provides a more complete view of the war and a deeper understanding of this crucial juncture in American history.

“A heartening reminder that politicians, at their best, can rise above petty rivalries and jealousies to serve a larger cause.” —Don H. Doyle, author of The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War The Civil War marked a significant turning point in American history—not only for the United States itself but for its relations with foreign powers both during and after the conflict. The friendship and foreign policy partnership between President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Henry Seward shaped those US foreign policies. These unlikely allies, who began as rivals during the 1860 presidential nomination, helped ensure that America remained united and prospered in the aftermath of the nation’s consuming war. In Lincoln, Seward, and US Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, Joseph A. Fry examines the foreign policy decisions that resulted from this partnership and the legacy of those decisions. Lincoln and Seward, despite differences in upbringing, personality, and social status, both adamantly believed in the preservation of the union and the need to stymie slavery. They made that conviction the cornerstone of their policies abroad, and through those policies, such as Seward threatening war with any nation that intervened in the Civil War, they prevented European intervention that could have led to Northern defeat. The Union victory allowed America to resume imperial expansion, a dynamic that Seward sustained beyond Lincoln’s death during his tenure as President Andrew Johnson’s Secretary of State. Fry’s analysis of the Civil War from an international perspective and the legacy of US policy decisions provides a more complete view of the war and a deeper understanding of this crucial juncture in American history.

From one of our most acclaimed new biographers--the first full life of the leader of Lincoln's "Team of Rivals"--William Henry Seward, one of the most important Americans of the nineteenth century.

A captivating look at how Abraham Lincoln evolved into one of our seminal foreign-policy presidents—and helped point the way to America’s rise to world power. Abraham Lincoln is not often remembered as a great foreign-policy president. He had never traveled overseas and spoke no foreign languages. And yet, during the Civil War, Lincoln and his team skillfully managed to stare down the Continent’s great powers—deftly avoiding European intervention on the side of the Confederacy. In the process, the United States emerged as a world power in its own right. Engaging, insightful, and highly original, Lincoln in the World is a tale set at the intersection of personal character and national power. Focusing on five distinct, intensely human conflicts that helped define Lincoln’s approach to foreign affairs—from his debate, as a young congressman, with his law partner over the conduct of the Mexican War, to his deadlock with Napoleon III over the French occupation of Mexico—and bursting with colorful characters like Lincoln’s bowie-knife-wielding minister to Russia, Cassius Marcellus Clay; the cunning French empress, Eugénie; and the hapless Mexican monarch Maximilian, Lincoln in the World draws a finely wrought portrait of a president and his team at the dawn of American power. Anchored by meticulous research into overlooked archives, Lincoln in the World reveals the sixteenth president to be one of America’s indispensable diplomats—and a key architect of America’s emergence as a global superpower. Much has been written about how Lincoln saved the Union, but Lincoln in the World highlights the lesser-known—yet equally vital—role he played on the world stage during those tumultuous years of war and division.

An in-depth illustration of shifting Civil War alliances and strategies and of Great Britain’s behind-the-scenes role in America’s War Between the States. In the early years of the Civil War, Southern arms won spectacular victories on the battlefield. But cooler heads in the Confederacy recognized the demographic and industrial weight pitted against them, and they counted on British intervention to even the scales and deny the United States victory. Fearful that Great Britain would recognize the Confederacy and provide the help that might have defeated the Union, the Lincoln administration was careful not to upset the greatest naval power on earth. Bluff, Bluster, Lies and Spies takes history buffs into the mismanaged State Department of William Henry Seward in Washington, DC, and details the more skillful work of Lords Palmerston, Russell, and Lyons in the British Foreign Office. It explains how Great Britain’s safety and continued existence as an empire depended on maintaining an influence on American foreign policy and how the growth of the Union navy—particularly its new ironclad ships—rendered her a paper tiger who relied on deceit and bravado to preserve the illusion of international strength. Britain had its own continental rivals—including France—and the question of whether a truncated United States was most advantageous to British interests was a vital question. Ultimately, Prime Minister Palmerston decided that Great Britain would be no match for a Union armada that could have seized British possessions throughout the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, and he frustrated any ambitions to break Lincoln’s blockade of the Confederacy. Revealing a Europe full of spies and arms dealers who struggled to buy guns and of detectives and publicists who attempted to influence opinion on the continent about the validity of the Union or Confederate causes, David Perry describes how the Civil War in the New World was determined by Southern battlefield prowess, as the powers of the Old World declined to intervene in the American conflict.

The book explores how emancipation, nationhood and nationalism, and the spread of market capitalism--all central to U.S. Reconstruction--were interwoven with patterns of post-Civil War global political, social, and economic developments.

A discussion of foreign relations during the Civil War in the United States.