Recent approaches to Civil War history have called for broadening the spatial lens beyond United States national borders. Historians such as Don H. Doyle, Edward Rugemer and Michael Woods have emphasized the international influence on American tensions leading toward the Civil War and Emancipation. The transnationalist perspectives have added a layer to the abundant Civil War scholarship by demonstrating that international influence was not limited to Manifest Destiny and the Mexican American War—there are several other events that shaped the American conflict both in the Atlantic and abroad.

Michael E. Woods’ Civil War literature review in the Journal of American History is a strong introduction to recent trends in Civil War historiography. He sheds light on three evolving trends: the geographic and temporal boundaries of the sectional conflict, the relationship between sectionalism and nationalism, and the impact of race and class in sectional politics. Doyle and Rugemer contribute to the scholarship highlighted by Woods’ by taking their studies beyond the confines of the United States. Neither historian is explicitly concerned with the origins of the Civil War but more so with the notion that international events permeated U.S. borders during the nineteenth century and affected American public opinion about slavery and emancipation before, during, and after the war.

Doyle’s The Cause of All Nations is a part of historiography’s transnational turn—illuminating facets of the American Civil War that have previously been neglected or overshadowed. His monograph is noteworthy for illustrating how the influence of the war reached European governments and commoners alike. The Cause of All Nations reveals that several countries felt invested in the war because they believed the Union’s cause for liberty, freedom, and the preservation of democracy was the “cause of all nations.” Doyle describes how “recruitment posters, broadsides, and speeches at rallies employed an array of languages, often mixing several, and made use of universally recognized iconography to call on immigrant soldiers to fight for their adopted country” (161). It becomes increasingly evident that the conflict was one that permeated beyond the boundaries of the United States, North and South America. While Doyle widens his scope toward Europe, Rugemer highlights the significance of the Caribbean, particularly the British West Indies.

Rugemer’s The Problem of Emancipation asserts that American abolitionists and slaveholders shaped their arguments for and against slavery based, in part, on their observations of occurrences in the British Caribbean including the Haitian Revolution, Barbados Rebellion in 1816, Demerara Rebellion in 1823 and most importantly, the British abolition of slavery in 1833. He cites two realities that explain why his Atlantic approach is critical to understanding the antebellum United States: first, “[n]ews, goods, money, people, and ideas of transatlantic origin entered the United States through various channels on a regular basis,” thus U.S. boundaries were permeable; second, “American society had much in common with the societies of the Atlantic world, especially their divisive struggles over slavery and its abolition” (7). Rugemer demonstrates the ways in which American slaveholders and abolitionists learned from the experiences in the British West Indies. Specifically, American slaveholders learned “that abolitionist agitation led directly to slave rebellions” and American abolitionists “learned that agitation led to abolition” (9). Each side took from Caribbean events what best suited their political and economic interests.

Despite burgeoning transnational studies, not all historians are convinced that the Civil War era needs to be expanded across national borders. Stanely Harrold, for instance, contends in Border War that tensions leading to the Civil War were deeply rooted in the United States Border States. The borderland was divided between “border free states” and “border slaves states.” The free states included New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and by 1846, Iowa; the slave states included Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri. He argues that the borderland was central to the nation’s struggle over slavery and “helped shape the sectional struggle, the Civil War, and how that war proceeded” (xii). Thus, international events hold little sway in Harrold’s argument, if any at all. Can Harrold’s perspective be merged with Doyle and Rugemer’s? If so, how?

I think Doyle and Rugemer would be open to merging their international perspectives with the national narrative. Neither historian is disregarding the sectional tensions that existed within the United States—they are, rather, interested in showing that these tensions were not exclusive or limited to the United States. Other countries were invested in the outcome of the American conflict and other countries impacted American political thought that exacerbated sectional differences. By combining the transnational point of view with the national narrative, one gets a more well-rounded understanding of the multiple factors which shaped the nineteenth-century United States. As Rugemer succinctly stated, “the “road to disunion” cannot be fully mapped within the confines of national history” (6).