Free A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman Page A

though he or she was the principal subject of the book, so that I could understand the antecedents of their motives and decisions during the Civil War. This not only added several years to the project but also created the problem of how to construct a single narrative out of competing points of view within a time frame that encompassed multiple simultaneous events. The challenge seemed insurmountable, until one day I remembered having seen Trevor Nunn’s 1980 Nicholas Nickleby, an extraordinary “theater-in-the-round” production that brought together a vast panoply of characters through a combination of three-dimensional staging, shifting scenes, and running narratives that created an all-enveloping experience for the audience. This memory became my guide and inspiration, and I set about writing a history-in-the-round in the hope of immersing the reader inside the British-American world of the Civil War. I was fortunate that many areas of this world had already been researched by Brian Jenkins, Howard Jones, R.J.M. Blackett, Charles Hubbard, D. P. Crook, Frank Merli, Warren F. Spencer, Norman Ferris, and others. My debt to their pioneering work cannot be overstated; any omissions or errors in the book are mine alone.
    I am deeply grateful to Eve and Michael Williams-Jones, Hugh Dubrulle, Jonathan Foreman, Brian Jenkins, James McPherson, Christopher Mason, Michael Musick, Fredric Smoler, and Richard Snow for their help and criticisms of early versions of A World on Fire. The book took twelve years to complete, and I owe heartfelt thanks to Andrew Wylie, Sarah Chalfont, and Jeffrey Posternak of the Wylie Agency for their loyalty during all that time. True to the spirit of the book, A World on Fire was simultaneously edited by Susanna Porter at Random House in New York and Stuart Proffitt at Allen Lane in London; it has been a profoundly rewarding and intellectually satisfying process to work with them both. Over the years I have benefited enormously from the help and guidance provided by librarians and archivists all over the world, and they are thanked by name in the acknowledgments section. My family have been a tremendous support to me, but there is one person who, above all, made this book possible, and that is my husband: the center of my world.

Dramatis Personae
     

A MERICANS
     
    Diplomats, Commissioners, and Agents
     
Charles Francis Adams (1807–86) UNION —Minister at the U.S. legation in London, 1861–68; son of President John Quincy Adams; grandson of President John Adams; married Abigail Brooks and had six children: John Quincy, Charles Francis Jr., Louise, Henry, Mary, and Brooks.
Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (1835–1915) UNION —Captain in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry; later colonel of the 5th Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry; son of Charles Francis Adams.
Henry Adams (1838–1918) UNION —Author, journalist, and historian; private secretary at the U.S. legation in London to his father, Charles Francis Adams.
Edward Anderson (1813–82) CONFEDERATE —Purchasing agent for the Confederate navy in England, 1861.
William H. Aspinwall (1807–75) UNION —Northern shipowner, sent to England to prevent the Confederacy from purchasing ships.
August Belmont (1813–90) UNION —New York financier and U.S. agent for the Rothschilds.
John Bigelow (1817–1911) UNION —U.S. consul in Paris, 1861–64; minister at the U.S. legation in Paris, 1865–66.
Irvine Bulloch (1842–98) CONFEDERATE —Youngest officer on CSS Alabama; half brother of James Dunwoody Bulloch.
James Dunwoody Bulloch (1823–1901) CONFEDERATE —Chief Confederate secret service agent in England and architect of the Confederate naval acquisition program in Europe.
Clement Claiborne Clay (1789–1866) CONFEDERATE —U.S. senator from Alabama, 1853–61; Confederate senator from Alabama, 1862–64; Confederate commissioner in Canada, 1864–65.
George Mifflin Dallas (1792–1864) UNION —Minister at the U.S. legation in London,