Anonymous

For Europeans, the Civil War offered great political and military interest. The United States represented an experiment in democracy still largely untried in Europe—and the success or failure of the young nation foretold the problems and possibilities of that experiment in the rest of the world. A key problem for Europe's political leaders was whether or not to recognize the independence of the Confederacy and thus doom the Union. Although powerful landowners and nobility supported the slaveowning South, the European working class by and large supported the industrialized North. The Civil War therefore had a reflection in the old class contests of Europe.

Above it all stood the exciting drama of war itself, which sparked the public's fascination on a continent that had been largely at peace since the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. Leading European journals sent their...