Content area
Full Text
One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War. By Dean B. Mahin. (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, Inc., 1999. Pp. 342. Cloth, $27.95; paper $21.95.)
The Blessed Place of Freedom: Europeans in Civil War America. By Dean B. Mahin. (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, Inc., 2002. Pp. 298. Cloth, $27.95.)
By writing One War at a Time and The Blessed Place of Freedom, Dean Mahin has undertaken two very large and complex tasks. In the former work, he seeks to capture the international impact of the Civil War while stressing the role of Abraham Lincoln in guiding Federal foreign policy. With the latter, he attempts to examine the part Europeans played in the conflict and dwells on their Civil War experiences. The war's global impact, particularly the British public's opinions about the conflict, has already inspired much strong scholarship. D. P. Crook's The North, the South and the Powers, 1861-1865 (1974) remains an excellent overall survey of the international diplomacy associated with the war while R. J. M. Blackett's Divided Hearts (2001) is perhaps the best study of British attitudes. Mahin's ambitions, however, are surely justified when dealing with Europeans' participation in the Civil War. Not since Ella Lonn's Foreigners in the...