Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History
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22. Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1952), 140. * Harper’s Weekly, September 17, 1863, 661–62.
23. Thomas L. Harris, The Trent Affair (1896), 208–10. *Stefan Lisovsky, “Voyage to America,” Morskoi Sbornik, December 20, 1870, 37–38.
24. *Henry Adams, The Russian Alliance in the Great War (New York: The McClure Company, 1880), 132.
25. M. Bowden, The Life and Archaeological Work of Lt. General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers DCL FRS FSA (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 7.
26. James D. Horan, Confederate Agent (New York: Fairfax Press, 1954) 107.
27. *Edgar L. Steinhalter, “The Davis-Grenfell-Wolseley Conspiracy,” Midwest Historical Journal, vol. 87, 89–93.
28. OR, vol. 41, part 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1890), 151.
29. *Alfred Thayer Mahan, Gunsmoke Across the Upper Bay: The Battle for New York (Boston: Concord Press, 1890), 199–205. This volume was the first of five in which Thayer wrote the definitive accounts of the major naval battles of the Great War.
30. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy, 39, 328. The Dauntless was a small, older frigate launched in 1847 at 2,520 tons and measuring only 219 by 40 feet and armed with four 10-inch rifles, two 68-pounders, and eighteen 32-pounders. By contrast the Topaze was launched in 1858 at 3,915 tons and measured 235 by 50 feet and was initially armed with thirty 8-inch guns, one 68-pounder, and twenty 32-pounders. By this time, each ship was armed with at least one Armstrong gun.
31. *John L. Hunter, Kearsarge Gunner: The Life of John W. Dempsey (Cleveland, OH: Ohio River University Press, 1986), 89.
32. *Paul R. Catlett, Winslow and Lamson: Saviors of New York (Boston: A. M. Thayer and Company, 1890), 262–65.
33. *John Welbore Sunderland Spencer, Pursuit of the Kearsarge (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1872), 297–305. This book was Spencer’s public explanation of why he did not ensure the destruction of the Kearsarge. A court of inquiry charged him with “failing to do his utmost.” He was tried by court-martial, but in the face of both public outcry and the Queen’s disapproval of the proceedings, he was acquitted. He never held command again.
34. *Winslow Carter, Battle of the Upper Bay (New York: The Century Company, 1895), 216.
35. *Lyons to Russell, September 24, 1863, in William Delancey, The Diplomacy of Lord Lyons, vol. 2 (London: Sampson Low, 1913), 395.
36. *John W. Wilson, William H. Seward in War and Peace (New York: The McClure Company, 1892), 187.
37. *Cassius Clay, Forging the Alliance: My Two Years in Russia (Lexington: Blue Grass University Press, 1932—reprint of the 1869 edition), 278. News of the battle, deemed a Russian naval victory over the British because of the sinking of Dauntless and Gannet, sent Russia wild with joy as the church bells rang from the Baltic to the Pacific. Revenge for the humiliations of the Crimean War seemed at hand. Ambassador Clay was cheered by throngs everywhere he went in St. Petersburg. Lisovsky was promoted and ennobled. For once the Russian Imperial Navy had put the Army, its immense sister service, in the shade.
38. *Andrei N. Medvedev, The Russo-American Alliance in the World War (St. Petersburg: Kronstadt Publishers, 1880), 136.
CHAPTER TEN: A RAIN OF BLOWS
1. Http://royalengineers.ca/Bazalgette.html. Bazalgette had fought with distinction in the Anglo-French punitive expedition against China in 1857, as had Wolseley. The family name was probably pronounced “Basiljet.” The Pig War was the dispute that arose over San Juan Island between modern British Columbia and Washington State in 1859 that resulted in a military confrontation between Britain and the United States. An American shot a pig belonging to the Hudson Bay Company that was rooting in his garden on the island. The British threatened to arrest him, and the local Americans appealed for help to the Army, which sent a company of infantry commanded by Capt. George S. Pickett. The British sent three warships. Neither side would back down, and Pickett became a national hero. Cooler heads eventually prevailed to defuse the issue. The British built the “English Camp” on the island. Bazalgette commanded the Royal Marine Light Infantry Company in garrison. There was so little of a military nature to occupy him there that he designed and built a perfect replica of an English garden for his wife and children.
2. Angus Konstam, American Civil War Fortifications (1): Coastal Brick and Stone Forts (London: Osprey, 2003), 60.
3. *“Bazalgette Mentioned in Dispatches for Seizing Fort Gorges,” Halifax Gazette, October 8, 1863. Halifax took great pride in the feat of its native son, who was born there while his father served as adjutant general of Nova Scotia.
4. *Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, First Blow: The British 1863 Campaign in North America (London: Collins, reprint of 1901 edition), 101.
5. Kenneth Bourne, “British Preparations for War With the North, 1861–1862,” English Historical Review 76, no. 301 (1961): 631.
6. Joseph Lehmann, The Model Major-General: A Biography of Field-Marshal Lord Wolseley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964), 30.
7. Bourne, “British Preparations for War,” 631.
8. *William F. Clarkson, The Life of a British Adventurer: George Grenfell (New York: The McClure Company, 1904), 382. This account comes from the recollections of John Hines.
9. John W. Busey and David G. Martin, Regimental Strengths and Losses at Gettysburg (Hightstown, NJ: Longstreet House, 1994), 241–63. At Gettysburg, of 3,721 present for duty on 30 June, Maine lost 130 killed, 649 wounded, and 238 missing for a total of 1,017.
10. *John C. Miller, “The Initiative That Saved Portland,” North American Historical Review 21, no. 24 (1922): 43.
11. *Quincy M. Adams, The First Battle of Portland (New York: Dodd, Meade, 1877), 45. Chamberlain: 10th, 16th, 17th, 19th, and 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry and Maine Light 2nd Battery; Harper: 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Maine Volunteer Infantry and Maine Light 5th Battery. Reserve: 1st Maine Cavalry and Maine Light 6th Battery.
12. Dow was a Quaker, tanner, and lumber magnate. He was also an ardent abolitionist, women’s suffragist and, most important, prohibitionist. As mayor of Portland in 1851 (and again in 1855) he passed the “Maine Law,” the nation’s first prohibition law. Twelve states followed suit with their own prohibition laws—basically using the same wording as Dow’s—within a decade. The Volstead Act, which outlawed alcohol nationally in 1919, was also based on Dow’s Maine Law.
13. *“Massacre in Portland: Slaughter of Women and Children at the Train Station,” New York Tribune, October 1, 1863, 1.
14. Sylvanus Urban, The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review XIL (January–June 1862): 213.
15. *“Langely of the 16th Foot to Receive Posthumous VC,” Edinburgh Disptach, March 5, 1863, 6.
16. *Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, “The Fight for the Portland Docks,” September 30, 1882, speech on the anniversary of the First Battle of Portland, given in Portland, Portland Intelligencer, October 1, 1882, 2.
17. *Arthur P. Valentine, “The Assault on Camp Morton,” Historical Review of Indiana 23 (October 12, 1899): 112.
18. Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, The Story of a Soldier’s Life (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd., 1903), 322–23.
19. Peter G. Tsouras, ed., The Greenhill Dictionary of Military Quotations (London: Greenhill Books, 2000), 266.
20. *George Denison, History of the Canadian Armed Forces (Toronto: St. George’s Press, 1890) 176. These Canadian battalions had only recently been independent companies but were formed into battalions in the months before the war and given intensive training with their British mentor battalion, the 62nd Foot. Long-range planning had not anticipated their formation before late 1866, but Wolseley’s emphatic advocacy of their immediate activation was decisive in convincing Lieutenant General Williams to apply sufficient pressure on Canadian authorities to approve and even finance such a move. It was one of the few remarkable examples of civilian forethought on military matters in Canadian his
tory.
21. “British Army Nicknames—AWI” at http://ageod.com. The 62nd was also known as “the Springers” from their service as light infantry in 1776 in the War of American Independence. Arthur Swinson, ed., A Register of the Regiments and Corps of the British Army: The Ancestry of the Regiments and Corps of the Regular Establishment (London: The Archive Press, 1972).
22. *Daring Raid on Camp Morton,” Indianapolis Star, October 1, 1863. Jeremiah Wilkins, Copperhead Rebellion: The Democrat Stab in the Back (Chicago: Prairie State Press, 1870), 92. Of the force of 211 Copperheads, eighty-two were killed and fifty-seven were captured, of whom twenty-seven were wounded. Another thirty-two were captured in the days after the attack. Cline’s only comment on the high proportion of Copperheads killed to wounded was that “it was not due to their courage.” Of the prisoners in the camp, forty-seven were killed and 180 were wounded.
23. *Wilson Eaton, “The First Maine Cavalry at the First Battle of Portland,” Journal of the Historical Society of Maine 12 (October 2, 1915): 42.
24. *Chamberlain, “The Fight for the Portland Docks.”
25. *“Epic Charge of the Splashers Drives Americans From the Field,” London Intelligencer, October 9, 1863, 1.
26. *Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, “Honor to Honor,” speech on Memorial Day 1880, Portland, Maine. Chamberlain never lost his admiration for the imperial infantry, and his evocative and chivalrous description of the bayonet fight was proudly incorporated by the 62nd Foot as part of its official history.
27. *Morris Atherton, Chamberlain: Hero of Portland (New York: C. L. Webster, 1885), 177.
28. *“Albany Burned to the Ground,” New York Tribune, October 2, 1863, 1. “Thousand Flee Ahead as British Ravage Upstate,” New York Herald, October 2, 1863, 1.
29. *Sir Rupert Jackson, “The British Forces in the Great War in North America,” Military Historical Review 10 (1983): 27–30.
30. Kevin E. O’Brien, ed., My Life in the Irish Brigade: The Civil War Memoirs of Private William McCarter, 116th Pennsylvania Infantry (Campbell, CA: Savas Publishing Company, 1996), 70–71.
31. *“Meagher’s Speech Draws Thousands to Enlist,” New York Tribune, October 2, 1863, 2.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: TREASON, FROGS, AND IRONCLADS
1. *John R. Clinton, Edwin Stanton and the Crisis of 1863 (New York: Van Nostrand, 1877), 45. Clinton makes the point that the closer the fighting or direct threat to Washington got, the more nervous and panicky Stanton became. A case in point was the threat of the CSS Virginia in April 1862 when Stanton was so distraught that he was going to block the navigation of the Potomac with a barrier of stones, an idea that Secretary of the Navy Welles put a stop to.
2. Peter Cozzens, The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1994), 2.
3. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911), 443.
4. *Charles Dana, Greatness in Crisis: Abraham Lincoln (Philadelphia: D. Appleton, 1880), 93–95.
5. *William Taylor, Lee and the Battle of Washington (Richmond: Cavalier Press, 1885), 93.
6. *Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., ed., The War Diary of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1890), 5. Roosevelt senior’s war record and subsequent but brief political career left his sickly son in the father’s shadow for the rest of his life.
7. The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review 12 (January–June 1862): 211–12. This issue listed the strength upon embarkation for Canada of the Grenadier Guards (874), the Scots Fusilier Guards (919), the names of the brigade staff, as well as the strength of the 2/16th Foot (901), the 18th Co. Royal Engineers (120), and a military train (317).
8. *Thaddeus Lowe, Phoenix: The Rebirth of the Balloon Corps (Boston: Houghton, Osgood, 1990), 37–40.
9. *Michael D. Wilmoth, School of Intelligence: History of the CIB’s Academy (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1896), 11. Wilmoth would stay with the CIB after the war. He rose quickly to become Director of Analysis, Dean of the CIB Academy, and eventually filled Sharpe’s shoes, succeeding McEntee in 1886.
10. *“Our French Allies Arrive,” Brownsville Gazette, October 5, 1863, 1. “God Bless the French!” Austin Dispatch, October 6, 1863, 1.
11. *Edwin Swinton, Smiles and Lies: The Franco-Confederate Alliance in the Great War (London: Ballard & White Co. Ltd., 1910), 89.
12. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 1999), 136.
13. Ibid., 223–24.
14. *Pierre de Lury, Bazaine: The Duke of New Orleans (New York: The Century Company, 1896), 47.
15. *Abraham Lincoln to Admiral Dahlgren, October 2, 1863, The Correspondence of Admiral John A. Dahlgren (Annapolis, MD: Naval Academy Press, 1888), 377. Dahlgren would always treasure this letter in which Lincoln gave an intimate and tender account of Ulric’s condition and hopes for recovery.
16. Rear-Admiral Dahlgren, Memoir of Ulric Dahlgren (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1872), 178.
17. OR Navies, series 1, vol. 15 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1902), 26–27. These included the 2,592-ton double-turretted Onondaga (2 x XV-inch guns and 2 x 8-inch rifles), and two Canonicus class ships, the Canonicus and Tecumseh at 2,100 tons (2 x XV-inch guns), and the Passaic class Sangamon (one XI-inch and one XV-inch gun), which was at Newport News at the time.
18. OR Navies, xv–xvi, 7, 113–14.
19. *Jackie Fisher, “Adm. Milne’s North American and West Indies Station in the Great War,” Journal of the Royal Navy 24, no. 11 (December 1885): 50–52.
20. Benson J. Lossing, The Hudson: From the Wilderness to the Sea (New York: Virtue and Yorston, 1866).
21. Robert V. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1956), 187–88.
22. *Hiram Van Renssalaer, The Burning of Upstate New York: British Depredations and Atrocities in the Great War (New York: Smith & Brenner, Inc., 1871), 107–9.
23. OR, series 1, vol. 31, part 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1890), 801. Hooker’s command at this point comprised 15,897 men. Both XI and XII Corps had only two of their normal three divisions.
24. Peter G. Tsouras, ed., The Greenhill Dictionary of Military Quotations (London: Greenhill Books, 2000), 478.
25. OR, series 1, vol. 29, part 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1881), 226. At this time, Meade’s Army of the Potomac consisted of the I, II, III, and V Corps. The XI and XII Corps had already been detached for service in the relief of Chattanooga and then diverted to form the Army of the Hudson. The VI Corps had been detached for the relief of Portland. Counting cavalry and artillery also sent, that left Meade with barely sixty thousand men.
CHAPTER TWELVE: COLD SPRING AND CROSSING THE BAR
1. *“Terrified Refugees Pour Into the City,” New York Tribune, October 5, 1863, 1. In the few days since Albany had fallen, more than three hundred river craft had fled to the city loaded with refugees to join the thousands more who came by train or wagon. Mayor George Opdyke rallied the Tammany Hall organization to find accommodations for what was estimated as 120,000 people. He was quoted as saying that “upstate is pouring into the City.”
2. *Michael R. Flannery, “Meagher’s Defense of the Cold Spring Foundry,” Journal of the Great War 42 (July 18, 1975): 22.
3. *“Goddess of Erin Sees Meagher Off at the Docks,” New York Herald, October 7, 1863, 4. The story of Libby Meagher at the docks became one of the great legends of New York City. A statue in bronze exists today at the New York Harbor Authority headquarters showing Libby rushing forward with the flag.
4. *John R. Kennedy, Meagher of the Sword (New York: Charles B. Richardson, 1872), 173–76.
5. *Ibid., 180.
6. *Arthur C. Wallace, The Hudson Valley Campaign of 1863 (New York: Wilson & Hurlow, 1949), 129. The enemy detachment co
nsisted of the 3rd Company, Scotts Fusilier Guards, and the 1st Company of the 3rd Battalion Victoria Volunteer Rifles of Montreal.
7. Mark K. Ragan, Union and Confederate Submarine Warfare in the Civil War (New York: Da Capo Press, 1990), 134–37.
8. Ian W. Toll, Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 414.
9. Often incorrectly referred to as the “Channel Fleet,” the Channel Squadron became a permanent formation in 1858 whose primary mission was to defend the British Isles from the French Navy. London Times, April 13, 1858, citing the House of Commons’ Naval Estimates of April 12.
10. London Times, July 8 and 31, 1863. The Times listed the following ships: the screw iron frigates HMS Warrior, Black Prince, Resistance, Defence; the screw ironclad (over wooden hull) frigate Royal Oak; and the wooden screw frigates Emerald and Liverpool, the latter of which had been sunk in the Battle of Moelfre Bay. J. J. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy From the Fifteenth Century to the Present (London: Greenhill Books, 2003), 51, 95, 272, 352. Armament of Black Prince consisted of ten Armstrong 110-pounders (7-inch), twenty-six 68-pounders, and four Armstrong 70-pounders. The armament of the Resistance consisted of seven Armstrong 110-pounders, ten 68-pounders, and two 32-pounders. The Defence was similarly armed.