The Glittering Illusion

Book excerpt: "Mr. Sheldon Vanauken has shown a singular consistency in pursuing an idea that was originally the subject of his graduate research at Oxford University to its presentation in this volume. Mr. Vanauken believes -- and there is a good deal of evidence to support him -- that English sympathies during the American Civil War were largely on the Southern side of the conflict. British intervention would have secured a Southern victory which might have suited British commercial interests and British conceptions of the balance of power and put an end to American hopes of annexing Canada. Support for the South would have conformed to the general British disposition to give credence to struggles for national self-determination. Why then, did Britain not intervene as at one moment she seemed on the point of doing? Mr. Sheldon Vanauken dismisses the view that British anti-slavery sentiment and hence popular support for the Northern cause was the root of the matter and plumps for what he calls the 'glittering illusion' namely the belief that Southern military skills, and in particular the generalship of Robert E. Lee, were thought to make a Southern defeat unthinkable, so that the South could win its independence without the foreign assistance that the American colonies had enjoyed in winning their independence from the British Empire in the war of the American Revolution. It is an interesting idea and one that challenges many accepted beliefs. Interesting also are Mr. Vanauken's subsequent speculations on what would have happened if the South had actually won and as he believes would have followed had freed its slaves of its own violation"--Preliminary page.