The Civil War Abroad

The Civil War Abroad: How the Great American Conflict Reached Overseas.  By Charles Priestley (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2022), 219 pp.

Charles Priestley’s The Civil War Abroad: How the Great American Conflict Reached Overseas is a well-researched and informative reminder of the global impact of the Civil War.  Priestley makes no claim to writing a diplomatic history or standard monograph.  He advances no tightly focused thesis that unites the book’s disparate chapters.  Instead, Priestley offers what he calls a collection of “snapshots or vignettes which, when looked at together, may add some pieces to the overall jigsaw puzzle” of the Civil War abroad.

Priestley divides his book into fifteen chapters.  Many of these chapters have appeared in earlier versions as either conference presentations or published articles in various magazines.  Individual characters and personalities drive the narratives of most chapters.  The men who populate these pages range from the high born to the common folk.  There are thus articles on European politicians, soldiers, adventurers, and propagandists.  There are articles on American diplomats and soldiers from both the Union and Confederate armies.  Some of these soldiers would eventually serve in the post-Civil War armies of foreign potentates.  There are still more articles that parse first-hand accounts in search of new ways to think about well-known events or historical problems.  Such is the case with Priestley’s use of an article from the Burnley Advertiser to provide a more nuanced understanding of British labor and its support for the Confederacy.  In similar fashion, Priestley’s coverage of the Battle of Cherbourg, which pitted the CSS Alabama against the USS Kearsarge, includes the printing of three very different first-hand accounts.  Priestley offers no direct commentary on the accounts, allowing the reader to understand, if not the fog of war, the historian’s difficult task of reconstructing a coherent narrative from divergent perspectives and recollections.  The best, or most fascinating, chapters will depend upon the reader’s interests and tastes. 

For this reviewer, Chapter 15 best represents the author’s forensic methodology as seen in the rest of the book, while also presenting a surprising conclusion.  Ironically, the subject of the chapter has nothing to do with the Civil War abroad other than the British author’s purchase of a letter written by Private George R. Adderton of the 63rd North Carolina to his wife.  That letter, written on November 25, 1863, sparked an interest in Priestley to discover more about its author.  The document seemed an ordinary letter of a common soldier.  In almost indecipherable spelling and grammar, Adderton noted that he was well, inquired of the family’s health and crops, and requested specific family members write to him soon.  What follows then is both Priestley’s personal tale of historical investigation and a fairly detailed reconstruction of Private Adderton’s life and times.  Using the Official Records, US Census data, estate files, pension applications, and randomly discovered personal letters, Priestley recounts Adderton’s movements with the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia.  When the historical record is blank for Adderton, the author capably fills in the gaps with descriptions of the actions of the 63rd North Carolina as it participated in numerous battles and skirmishes.  In a story typical of a Confederate cavalryman, Adderton would lose his horse and be furloughed to procure another.  He survived the war physically unscathed.  It is therefore a standard tale of an enlisted Confederate soldier, but Priestley closes his account with a surprising twist.  With the aid of the 1870 U.S. Census, Priestley discovered that the people named in Adderton’s original letter, and those he wanted to write him back, were actually the family’s married slaves.  Priestley further determined that Adderton, upon his death in 1893, left the bulk of his property to the family of his former slaves.  As Priestley notes, the Adderton story “reminds us that nothing involving human relations is ever quite as simple and straightforward as it may appear on the outside.”(196)  This statement applies well to the institution of slavery with all of its complexity.

Charles Priestley has written a fine book.  Its various stories add texture to our understanding of the era of the Civil War.  Priestley is meticulous in his research and logical in his analysis.  Civil War enthusiasts and scholars will be rewarded by reading his book.

Kyle S. Sinisi

The Citadel

Charleston, SC

This review appeared in Crossfire, No. 135, Summer 2024