Robert E. May

The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim

These four essays by Howard Jones, R. J. M. Blackett, Thomas Schoonover, and James M. McPherson reconsider why the Confederacy never received the foreign aid that it counted on, and trace the wars impact upon European and Latin nations and dependencies. The book provides fresh perspectives regarding Britains refusal to recognize the Confederacy, the role abroad of pro-Union African-American lecturers, French emperor Napoleon IIIs intervention in Mexico, and the Civil Wars meaning to peoples all over the world.

Culture Wars: The U.S. Art Lobby and Congressional Tariff Legislation during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1

From 1883 to World War I, disputes over art tariffs roiled Americas art community, drawing preeminent painters, sculptors, architects, and illustrators into national lobbying campaigns. This essay exposes artists’ agency in tariff politics, illuminates their ideologies, and explains congressional debates, legislation, and diplomacy regarding U.S. art schedules, while demonstrating how the art tariff imbroglio often challenged longstanding partisan patterns in Washington with respect to tariff protectionism. It also contributes to Atlantic world studies by exploring how artists’ anti-tariff positions derived from transoceanic systems of art pedagogy and exhibitions and by showing how protectionists (including a minority of artists) capitalized upon persistent popular stereotypes of national cultural inferiority. Finally, this essay argues that growing disparities of wealth and class sensitivities increasingly affected turn-of-the-century tariff discourse. Protectionists demanded punitive retribution against the international collecting activities of Americas ostentatious plutocrats; free-art proponents craved tariff reforms for the didactic purpose of elevating popular taste through exposure to European masterworks.