The dispatches from Lord Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, Second Baron,
British Envoy Extraordinary in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War
offer insight into contemporaneous Anglo-American relations. The
five-year period covered in these three volumes witnessed the fierce and
deadly battles of the war fought both in the North and in the South, the
shifting moods of public opinion and patriotic fervor, the changing
economic conditions, and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
The three volumes of The American Civil War through British Eyes make
available important, previously unpublished documents that fill a void
for students and scholars of the war. Lyon's dispatches offer a unique
perspective on America during its bitterest test of national unity.
Through them the Civil War unfolds not in retrospect but through the
eyes of a contemporary observer.