UCL Americas seminar: The American Civil War and Canadian Confederation

The American Civil War, Thomas D'Arcy McGee declared in 1864, is 'a true continental crisis; it is a Canadian crisis as well as a Republican crisis, and we can no more escape from its consequences than we can throw up a Chinese wall of exclusion instead of the existing boundary lines'. This paper examines the influence of the American Civil War on the creation of the Canadian Confederation, with particular reference to two historiographical schools of thought.