Laboulaye, a notable scholar of the history of law, long admired the United States and its political institutions, and, though he never visited the United States, wrote extensively on American history and government. He was a 19th-century liberal who favored the victory of the North in the American Civil War. Indeed, along with like-minded intellectuals and opinion-makers, he played a significant role in keeping France neutral in that conflict. He saw the Northern victory as a vindication for the Utopian or visionary view he entertained of the United States. The fervor of his sentiments is vividly reflected in the following extract from a letter he wrote to an American friend in Boston in November 1864: