Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History

by Peter G. Tsouras

  It occurred to Wolseley that the Army had had a similar experience with this American talent. During the Crimean War, when the production of the new Enfield rifled musket could not meet the war demand, the British Army had to swallow its pride and send an ordnance delegation to the United States. They toured the War Department’s Springfield Arsenal and observed the “American method” of mass production. The Army immediately put in an order for comparable American-made machinery to completely reequip the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield. They also hired an American to manage the factory. The Royal Small Arms Factory had been transformed by its American additions into the pride of British manufacturing. The production of the superb Enfield rifle was more than sufficient to completely equip the British Army and its territorial forces as well as sell hundreds of thousands to both the Confederacy and the Union before the latter’s production increase by this time made imports unnecessary.9

  “There’s more, Wolseley. Are you aware that Adm. Sir Alexander Milne developed a war plan against the United States during the Trent Affair? He proposed to break the Union blockade at two points. Charleston, of course, would be the main effort, with a secondary effort to open a port such as Galveston, Texas. He also proposed to counterblockade the ports of the North and to sail up the Chesapeake Bay and attack Washington itself. At that time, we could have easily done it. I understand Admiral Milne says that today he would find such a plan most risky.”10

  “But, Hancock, given the neutrality of Her Majesty’s government, the risk of war seems highly unlikely, does it not?”

  “Not as unlikely as you think. London does not understand the deep anger the North feels toward Great Britain. British commerce keeps the Confederacy alive through our blockade-runners. Our Foreign Enlistment Act is so flimsy that British shipyards have produced a squadron of commerce raiders that is ruining the American merchant navy and whaling fleet with disastrous effects in the ports and businesses of the North. The press feeds the public’s anger. Too many Americans already feel that we are secretly at war with them now. Adding constant insult to injury is our open partiality for the South. Such articles as yours in Blackwood’s, I must say, Wolseley, are exactly what feeds anti-British sentiment. I cannot count the number of Americans of consequence who have angrily asked me to explain the advocacy of Her Majesty’s Assistant Quartermaster General of Canada for British alliance with the Confederacy.”

  Before Wolseley had time to come to his own defense, Hancock exclaimed, “It’s frightfully hot even here in the shade. Let’s go indoors. Besides, I have something to show you that may be of interest.”

  4½ STREET, S.E., WASHINGTON, D.C., 11:15 PM, AUGUST 7, 1863

  The carriage had only a few blocks to go as it trundled out of the Navy Yard gate. Lincoln explained that the object of their visit was a gallant young soldier—Col. Ulric Dahlgren, son of the admiral, who was recuperating at his father’s home. Ulric had lost his leg while pursuing Lee after Gettysburg. Sharpe looked forward to the visit. Young Dahlgren and he had been appointed on the same order to Hooker’s headquarters. It was a small headquarters, and the two were easily drawn to each other. Captain Dahlgren had been a twenty-one-year-old, handsome, lithe, blond beau sabreur, with a taste for daring forays into the enemy, and Sharpe had been the homely looking colonel with a master’s touch for intelligence. It was this relationship that had led to the incredible raid that captured Jeff Davis’s dispatches to Lee on July 2 at Gettysburg. Sergeant Cline had brought the information of the courier’s route and timing, and Sharpe had organized the raid with Dahlgren in command. It had been the stuff of legend as Dahlgren led his band of fifteen men into a surprise attack on the courier escort and a passing Confederate wagon train in the middle of Greencastle. It was Cline who had seized the couriers with a cocked pistol at their heads. Dahlgren immediately rode the thirty miles for Meade’s headquarters at Gettysburg and arrived at midnight to put the dispatches into Meade’s hands. They were wired to Washington the next day; their content exposed the strategic weakness of the Confederacy in detail. Meade asked Dahlgren how he could reward him, and the young man said to give him a hundred men and send him out again. He had his wish. As he harried Lee’s rear as it crossed the mountains, a bullet had shattered his foot. The wound went bad, and the leg below the knee had to be taken off.11

  A look of sadness came across Lincoln’s face. “I wanted you both to meet Ulric; in the two years that I have known his father, the boy had become almost like one of my own sons. It distressed me deeply to see the best this country has maimed.”

  Sharpe knew that Ulric’s first visitor had been the President, who sat for hours by his bedside as the young man hovered near death. “Sir, Colonel Dahlgren and I are old friends. The staff of the Army of the Potomac is a small family, and we joined it at the same time last year. He is very much liked and very much missed.”

  Pleased, Lincoln said, “He seemed to have taken the operation in stride, but he went quickly into such a decline that we thought we would lose him. When Secretary Stanton had come to present him with his commission to colonel, the boy was too sick to even recognize him. Stanton then closed the street to wheeled traffic so as not to disturb his rest. He posted that guard,” Lincoln pointed to the soldier lounging by the door of a small house, “to refuse admittance to anyone but doctors.”12 The soldier saw the carriage and grew bug eyed as he recognized the tall man in the stovepipe hat getting out of the carriage. He immediately presented arms.

  A maid answered, curtsied, showed them to the parlor, and disappeared. Moments later an elderly gentleman, obviously not in the best of health, came in. Lincoln presented Mr. Lawrence, Ulric’s uncle who had come from Connecticut to supervise his care. “How is our boy today?” Lincoln asked.

  “Ever so much better, Mr. President. He will be delighted to have company. He is itching to get out of that bed and try that cork leg you had made for him, but I fear he has many weeks more to go.”

  A clear, strong tenor voice called down from the upstairs. “Uncle, do we have visitors?”

  Sharpe saw Lincoln’s face brighten as he walked into the hallway and looked up the stairs. Ulric was standing at the top of the landing, teetering on a pair of crutches. His uncle hurried over, clearly distressed. “Ulie, you must stay in bed. The doctors said you are not ready to try the crutches.”

  “Let the brave lad be, Mr. Lawrence. It is his nature.” Then glancing at Sharpe, he said, “My boy Willie would have been like him.” A look of grief passed over his face. “Stay there, my boy. We’ll come up to see you.” He took the steps three at a time to throw his long arms around Dahlgren. Sharpe noticed Dahlgren’s look of delight when he recognized Lincoln. This was a mutual affection.13

  When Sharpe and Lamson reached the top of the stairs, Lincoln had helped Dahlgren to a chair in the small upstairs sitting room and pulled another up close. Dahlgren recognized Sharpe and tried to rise, “Colonel Sharpe, what a surprise!” He reached out his hand, and Sharpe grasped it. Ulric’s handshake was as firm as ever.

  “Well, Colonel Dahlgren,” he said emphasizing the rank, “I’m glad to see you doing so well. We were worried about you. I will have to tell everyone that the bold twinkle has not left your eyes.” He was telling the truth. Dahlgren was thinner than he remembered; his brush with death had shrunk some of the flesh from his already thin body. He had been a splendid horseman and reputedly the best dancer in Washington. The girls would miss him on the dance floor. But he had lost none of the spirit Sharpe remembered. His fine fair hair was neatly cut and combed, his face shaved, and his small goatee trimmed.

  Lincoln introduced Lamson, and while the two were talking, he said in a low voice to Sharpe, “I like to put my thoroughbreds in the same pasture on occasion. It convinces each to run a bit faster.” Sharpe could see what Lincoln meant. One fair and one dark, the two were deep in conversation. They had instantly recognized the same thing in each other. Lincoln interrupted to say, “I’ll wager you two have no idea what you hav
e in common.” They looked at him. “Why, it’s Gettysburg! Dahlgren covered himself with glory there, and I’ve just named Lamson’s new ship after that battle, at the suggestion, I might add, of Colonel Sharpe.”

  Lincoln went on to describe Lamson’s mission to intercept the Laird rams, drawing a parallel between Dahlgren and the dispatches and Lamson and the rams. Both required both boldness and brains. He remarked on the importance of luck, though to him the luckiest men were the best prepared. “That reminds me of story about Napoleon. Whenever a man was recommended for promotion, he would always ask, ‘But is he lucky?’ Seems the little Corsican knew what he was talking about, at least some of the time.”

  UNITED STATES BOTANICAL GARDEN, MARYLAND AVENUE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 12:30 PM, AUGUST 7, 1863

  After dropping Lamson back at the Yard, Lincoln and Sharpe went to the Conservatory, a great glass botanical garden at the base of Capitol Hill on Maryland Avenue. As they walked through the gorgeous plant-filled corridors, each with a different grouping of the most exotic plants and flowers, Lincoln found a bench and motioned for Sharpe to sit. “Sometimes a soul just needs to rest, Colonel. Can you think of a better place?”

  “No, sir, there’s nothing else like it in this country. Kew Gardens in London is even larger, and the French have wondrous gardens, too, but give us time.”

  “Yes, dear God, give us time. That is what I am about. To give this country time. Every day I do my best to make sure that we have time for all that the future has in store for us. This war cannot be our end of times. We are a new start, proof that man’s history is not confined to an endless rut of tyranny and misery.

  “And I come here because my boys loved to play here. I’m afraid they were a trial to the conservators, racing around and plucking their choicest flowers. I had not the heart to stop them. Mary always said I was too indulgent. Now my Willie is gone.” His ungainly body slumped in the iron bench as he put his face in his hands and wept.

  Sharpe’s heart went out to this man who with all the weight of the world on his shoulders suffered that indescribable grief. Lincoln said, “We have words for those who have lost parents and a husband or wife, but we do not have a word for those who have lost a child. There is just no word capable of such a meaning.”

  He paused and looked at Sharpe. “Is there a word for a people who have let their country die or, worse, helped kill it?”

  “Copperhead.”

  “Yes, Sharpe, that is why I keep you in Washington. I can feel a great underground seething in the North, as if this fanged and perverse serpent is uncoiling itself, feeling its strength, readying itself to strike. At least the South is honest in its rebellion—man to man in the open field—but these Copperheads cover themselves with the Constitution while they seek to destroy it. They are abetted by the radical civil libertarians who insist on making the government too weak to defend itself. Thank God Carrington is doing such a good job keeping a finger on their pulse. His man, Stidger, has been a godsend. I truly fear that we would be in far greater danger without his intimate intelligence of their activities.”

  He paused to reach out and run his long fingers gently over the flowers of a clematis vine. “I know how much you contributed to the victory at Gettysburg, Sharpe. It is not your fault that more was not made of it. I have been thinking that we may need your talents in organization for a secret service here. I’m not talking of what Mr. Baker is doing in chasing spies, but something larger and more comprehensive that gathers together all of the strands of what we must know about not just the rebels but about all of our enemies.

  “I’m almost as worried about Louis Napoleon and his ambitions in Mexico as I am about the British and their rams. He conducts his foreign policy simply as a means to strengthen his hold on power in France. As a monarch he feels no affection for our experiment in government by the people. As a monarch of the French, he must consider the affection of the French people for the United States and their decided dislike of slavery. Now he’s got himself stuck in Mexico. He thinks that if the South wins, the Monroe Doctrine will be a dead letter, and he will be allowed to keep what he has stolen. He doesn’t know our Southron countrymen,” he said mimicking the Confederate transformation of the word “Southern.” He went on. “It would not take them long to cast covetous eyes on Mexico. But what he thinks is more important than what is. If we win, he knows that we will not let him keep his Mexican Empire. On his own, he will do nothing.14

  “Adams in London and Drayton in Paris have kept us informed of his attempts to organize the great powers to force an end to our war on terms that would ensure Southern independence. Last year the Russians turned him down, and the British were not eager to be led in anything by the French. So he waits. Mr. Drayton pointedly asked the French foreign minister, Drouyn de Lhuys, what the Emperor’s current policy was toward the United States. The Frenchman must have been at his wit’s end to actually blurt out the truth. ‘He has none. He awaits events.’15

  “I’m just afraid that in order to keep his Mexican spoils, Louis will get in deeper than he can handle. That reminds me of a story. In early days, a party of men went out hunting for a wild boar. But the game came upon them unawares, and scampering away they all climbed the trees save one, who, seizing the animal by the ears, undertook to hold him, but despairing of success cried out to his companions in the trees, ‘For God’s sake, boys, come down and help me let go.’ So far John Bull and the Czar are still up in those trees.”16

  Sharpe smiled. “Mr. President, the French are eminently an idealistic people. They will fight more for ideas than interests, and if the Emperor can convince them that France has been grossly insulted by an affront to French glory—glory simply does not translate fully into that concept the French feel for themselves as expressed by their word ‘gloire’—if he can tie Mexico to gloire, then the leash on his action is slipped. But I don’t think he will act without Britain, and Britain will not be pushed into it.”

  Lincoln leaned forward intently, “Exactly why I told you of our plan to stop the Laird rams from getting out to sea. I have taken you into my confidence on this matter, Sharpe, because we may well have need of the sort of intelligence on the great powers that you have been putting together about the rebels.”

  He leaned back on the bench, one arm draped over the back. “The job is yours, Sharpe. You will report to me alone. I will have a chat with Seward, Stanton, and Welles to make sure they realize that you will not be stepping on any toes.”

  “Mr. President, I am truly honored,” Sharpe said. Yet he hesitated at the enormity of the offer. Although seconded to Meade’s staff, he was still the official commander of the 120th NY and took a deep concern in the welfare of the regiment. Every month the men gave him their pay. He traveled to Washington to deposit it in the Rigg’s Bank and sent a check to his uncle’s bank in Kingston. His uncle then paid the money out to the families of the soldiers. It was the only regiment in the Army that had such an efficient way to care for the families of the men.17 It was a small consideration compared to the power of the position he was offered, but these men were his neighbors. To come to Washington, he would have to resign his commission and abandon his men. He explained his concern.

  Lincoln, rather than seeing an obstruction, was moved by Sharpe’s concern for his men. “I’ll tell you what, Sharpe. You will not need to resign. I would prefer you kept your commission, and I will see about getting your Kingston boys duty in the garrison of Washington. Some of these big artillery regiments are getting fat in the forts here and could use some exercise with the Army in the field.” He offered his hand. “Deal?”

  Sharpe took it. “Deal.”18

  BRITISH EMBASSY, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1:10 PM, AUGUST 7, 1863

  Captain Hancock shut the door to his office as he motioned Wolseley to a seat. He opened the safe in the corner and drew out some papers that he handed his guest. “The assistant quartermaster general of Canada should find this most interesting. We have a prolific source in the Americ
an War Department who copied this for us.”

  Wolseley’s single eye raced across the pages. It was a letter from the governor of Maine, Israel Washburn, to Lincoln and dated October 1861. He realized it was a very important document and nothing less than a shrewd and insightful assessment of the strategic importance of Maine and an appeal for resources to properly defend the state.

  Portland should be made the great naval depot of the United States on the Atlantic Ocean. Its geographical position commands Canada on the north and the lower provinces on the east, if properly fortified, as lines of railway… radiate from it to Quebec and Montreal and to Saint John and Halifax.

  The harbor is one of the finest on the Atlantic Ocean, or in the world, and can easily be so fortified as to be as impregnable as Gibraltar, and far stronger than Quebec, Sebastopol, or Cherbourg.

  Halifax Harbor, the great British naval depot on the American continent, is now occupied by the combined fleets of England and France. Close the outlet of the great gulf lying between Cape Cod and Cape Sable, and unless Portland is defended the whole peninsula east of Lake Champlain is easily subjected to foreign control.

  If Great Britain held the harbor of Portland and the line of railway to Montreal and Quebec she would drive American commerce from the ocean and the great lakes.19

  Wolseley glanced up and shook his head. Hancock said, “I thought you would be impressed. But do read on.”

  An enemy in possession of Portland would find it to be the terminus of the longest line of railroad in the world. The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada embraces a line of 1,131 miles… It extends from the Atlantic Ocean at Portland to Lake Huron, a distance of 794 miles, with a branch to Detroit of 59 miles, a branch to Quebec of 96 miles, and to the River du Loup of 118 miles.