This seems to be a somewhat less than fair statement Mr. Featherstone. The 1832 Reform act was a long time ago. Chartism has been and gone but the Reform league is going strong and in 1859 the Liberals were formed. Marx found it possible to write and publish the Manifesto in Britain, could the same have been said of the USA in this period. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were released in 1836 and Unionism (real Unionism not support for the USA) is growing. The franchise in the USA covers no greater percentage of the population than it does in Britain. So I suggest your argument that this period predates true mass politics does not really hold water.
I’m well aware of the limitations of using newspapers- I notice you’ve made no suggestion as to what we should replace them with. You can use public meetings, but given what I pointed out with Manchester I’d suggest they’re hardly an impartial source of evidence on public opinion. Alternatively you can look at the views of individuals on what public opinion was at the time: those are just as biased as those of newspaper editors, but without the incentive of circulation figures to persuade them to get it halfway right. Incidentally, exactly which axe do you think the Illustrated London News have to grind?Except that you're making a claim about the British public from newspapers in an era that still predated true mass politics in the British isles, and when newspapers were emphatically not so much voices of the masses as miniature political machines in their own right.
I could offer a trenchant defence of Palmerston’s conduct towards China, but why bother? It’s got nothing to do with what we’re talking about. The fact is that, excluding the period between 24th September 1862 (“It seems to Russell and me that the Time is fast approaching where some joint offer of Mediation… might be made with some Prospect of Success”, Palmerston to Gladstone) and 22nd October 1862 (“I am however inclined to agree with Lewis that at present we would take no steps nor make any communication of a distinct proposition with any advantage”, Palmerston to Russell) Palmerston holds a consistent course of non-intervention towards the American Civil War. That was not only the right course, but it was the popular one- and the public weren’t backward in making this known. Two extracts from a report of Palmerston’s speech to a group of working-men (make of that definition what you will) at Glasgow:And claiming Palmerston as some voice of reason is rather hilarious, we're talking a guy who waged a narco-war on a society just because it didn't want anything the British Empire was offering it, on the basis that "uppity foreigners" shouldn't back-talk their "British superiors".
Returning more directly to the topic- OP, your video misstated the case. The approach was never going to be Britain and France, because, as Gladstone explained in the memorandum he submitted to cabinet in October:I was recently at the Antietam site, and the movie that played there claimed largely that if the Union strategically as well as tactically lost Antietam, Britain and France were likely to attempt to mediate the American conflict, and recognize the CSA, giving the South its independence.
I’m well aware of the limitations of using newspapers- I notice you’ve made no suggestion as to what we should replace them with. You can use public meetings, but given what I pointed out with Manchester I’d suggest they’re hardly an impartial source of evidence on public opinion. Alternatively you can look at the views of individuals on what public opinion was at the time: those are just as biased as those of newspaper editors, but without the incentive of circulation figures to persuade them to get it halfway right. Incidentally, exactly which axe do you think the Illustrated London News have to grind?
The focus in this thread on fractions of the electorate entitled to vote is a bit bizarre- it reminds me of the debate over £6 rental vs rating franchises in 1867. Nobody seems to appreciate that by disregarding the mechanical issue of suffrage you come to understand Britain as a mass participatory political society in which actual voting is the final, not the only, stage of the process. The reason that voting isn’t by ballot is because individuals are responsible to the community for their vote as well as to their own conscience. By getting down to the grassroots and looking at the role non-electors play, you understand that they’re highly active, organised, and integrated into contemporary political machines. They share platforms, they organise meetings, they canvass, they take part in the initial poll by voice- and they’re just as ready to threaten local shop-owners with sanctions as landowners are ready to threaten their tenants with expulsion for voting the wrong way.
I could offer a trenchant defence of Palmerston’s conduct towards China, but why bother? It’s got nothing to do with what we’re talking about. The fact is that, excluding the period between 24th September 1862 (“It seems to Russell and me that the Time is fast approaching where some joint offer of Mediation… might be made with some Prospect of Success”, Palmerston to Gladstone) and 22nd October 1862 (“I am however inclined to agree with Lewis that at present we would take no steps nor make any communication of a distinct proposition with any advantage”, Palmerston to Russell) Palmerston holds a consistent course of non-intervention towards the American Civil War. That was not only the right course, but it was the popular one- and the public weren’t backward in making this known. Two extracts from a report of Palmerston’s speech to a group of working-men (make of that definition what you will) at Glasgow:
“There are some who wish success to the North, there are others who desire to see the separation of the South from the North. It is not fitting or becoming that the British nation as a nation should take part in that contest (loud cheers)”
“We should be most happy if it had been in the power of this country, by amicable interposition, to reconcile these conflicting parties; but we felt, and we know that any attempt of that kind, in the existing state of things, would have an effect the very reverse of that which was intended (hear, hear)” (Caledonian Mercury, April 1st 1863)
Perhaps you are right, though, in that I shouldn’t portray Palmerston as the voice of reason. After all, it’s hardly the act of a rational man to unilaterally declare that Portuguese captains carrying slaves will be hung as pirates, to tell the Portuguese that they can declare war if they choose, and then quietly extend the rule to include Brazil several months later. It doesn’t make sense to station a fleet at great expense off the West African coast when any ship can hoist an American flag and avoid being searched, and it isn’t particularly rational to station a fleet off the coast of Cuba and almost provoke a war by searching slave ships bearing the American flag. It’s even less rational, when a Royal Navy captain lands a small force at Gallinas to liberate 841 slaves and destroy four Spanish slave barracoons in probable violation of international law, to write to the Admiralty accepting full responsibility and recommending that the captain be promoted. Perhaps what Palmerston should have looked at the situation, said “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so”, and left it at that.
The average Briton in all probability simply put didn't give two shakes of a rat's ass about a civil war in the United States. They had more pressing matters in the countryside and in the hellholes that were early Victorian factories to worry about from day to day.
“Crowds gathered daily to get news of the war. In Stalybridge, for example, they met at the railway station and various newsagents to read about the latest developments…. Years later, Samuel Fielden, one of the Haymarket martyrs, recalled that every night during the summer, crowds would gather in the small textile town of Todmorden, which straddled Lancashire and Yorkshire, ‘discussing the latest news and forecasting the next, and in these groups there was always to be heard the advocates and champions of both sides’.” RJM Blackett, Divided Hearts, p143.Most Britons, however, were too busy trying to eke out a living in the great Victorian nightmare to worry about who did what to whom in the US Civil War. It was as irrelevant to them as the Congo War is to people in the UK and USA today
Try reading what I said. Did I claim that the Union and the Confederacy were moral equals- or did I say the contemporary British view was that they were?But I'm also neither blessed with the time nor the patience to inform people who refuse to listen as to the reality of claiming the Union and the Confederacy were moral equals on the matter of slavery.
Unless this is a different poster with the same username, yes, you said exactly that:That’s a hell of a lot of bile but not an awful lot of content. About the only things to respond to are:
“Crowds gathered daily to get news of the war. In Stalybridge, for example, they met at the railway station and various newsagents to read about the latest developments…. Years later, Samuel Fielden, one of the Haymarket martyrs, recalled that every night during the summer, crowds would gather in the small textile town of Todmorden, which straddled Lancashire and Yorkshire, ‘discussing the latest news and forecasting the next, and in these groups there was always to be heard the advocates and champions of both sides’.” RJM Blackett, Divided Hearts, p143.
Try reading what I said. Did I claim that the Union and the Confederacy were moral equals- or did I say the contemporary British view was that they were?
Unless this is a different poster with the same username, yes, you said exactly that:
However, the contemporary attitude was very much that both sides were as bad as the other and there wasn't much to gain from being involved- an attitude that Palmerston shared.
You missed the point, so let me spell it out for you: just because I argue that the contemporary view was that the Union and Confederacy were moral equals doesn't mean that I believe the same thing. If we'd been talking about Victorian views of disease, would you have assumed that I wasn't aware of germ theory and thought that illnesses were caused by bad smells?Unless this is a different poster with the same username, yes, you said exactly that:
If we go by white male suffrage the USA had universal male suffrage long before the UK did.
Same as I asked 67th Tigers can I have some evidence for this please?
I also want to know why you think it is acceptable to exclude non-whites and females from the count?
Um, because everybody did so at the time? Only the UK and USA had universal suffrage for white people before WWII
This is not true consider for example New Zealand which had Universal Sufferage long before this.
Where by contrast the UK adopted universal suffrage for men over the age of 21 in the year 1918.
OK I have looked at all of your linkys and they do not help to answer my question one way or another. However, I did at least find out from the information you present that around 1.15M voted in the 1828 election in the USA and I looked up the population of the USA in 1830 and found it was 12.8 million, so roughly between one sixth and one quarter of the male population voted. So it would apear on the basis of this very meager evidence that in 1832 with the arrival of the reform act a greater proportion of Britons are eligible to vote than Americans.
Unfortunately, we are dealing with the 1860s and not the 20s/30s so basically all we have is your assertion and no evidence at all.
This is frankly disenegenuous as we are not dealing with 1918 we are dealing with the 1860s.
Where by contrast the UK adopted universal suffrage for men over the age of 21 in the year 1918.
1918 eh? Let me know when the USA catches up....
Well Snake your latest linky was well written and argued, I learned a lot from it. Unfortunately it neither supports your assertion nor refutes it. There are two problems with it and they have been the same problems with everyting you have posted. First, it only addresses the USA not a comparison of the USA and Great Britain. Second, where are the numbers, the numbers are what will either prove or disprove your assertion and they are simply not being presented in any of the linked articles you have presented.
Your assertion may well be right, I am begining to lean that way BUT as it stands no hard evidence has been presented one way or the other. I am intrigued...
Tigers, at least Snake has tried to present evidence supporting his position. Where did you get your information from?