A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War

by Amanda Foreman

  85. The British Stonewall Jackson Memorial, Richmond (Library of Congress)

  List of Maps

  Click on the map numbers below to navigate to each map. You can then click the map number beneath the image to navigate back to this section.

  map.1 The United States of America and the Confederate States of America

  map.2 Virginia and the Washington area

  map.3 Mississippi River to Virginia

  map.4 The Carolinas

  map.5 Washington

  map.6 London

  map.7 First Bull Run or Manassas, July 21, 1861

  map.8 Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, April 6–7, 1862

  map.9 The Seven Days, June 25–July 1, 1862

  map.10 Second Bull Run or Manassas, August 28–30, 1862

  map.11 Antietam or Sharpsburg, September 17, 1862

  map.12 Richmond

  map.13 Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862

  map.14 Chancellorsville, May 2–6, 1863

  map.15 Vicksburg campaign, May 18, 1862–July 4, 1863

  map.16 Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863

  map.17 Chickamauga, September 20, 1863

  map.18 Chattanooga, November 24–25, 1863

  map.19 The Wilderness and Spotsylvania, May 5–12, 1864

  map.20 British North America and the United States

  map.21 Petersburg and Appomattox, March 25–April 9, 1865

  Preface

  Some years ago, while researching the life of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, I learned that her great-nephew, later the eighth Duke of Devonshire, had spent Christmas Day 1862 making eggnog for the Confederate cavalry officers of General Robert E. Lee’s army. “I hope Freddy [his younger brother, Lord Frederick Cavendish] won’t groan much over my rebel sympathies, but I can’t help them,” he wrote to his father three days later. “The people here are so much more earnest about the [war] than the North seems to be.”

  I was aware that the American Civil War had sharply polarized public opinion in Britain (my original doctoral thesis had examined attitudes toward race and color in pre-Victorian England), but it was still a shock to discover that the heir to the greatest Liberal peerage in England thought the slaveholding South had the moral advantage over the antislavery North. Understanding how the Confederacy had managed to achieve this ascendancy, not only with the duke but also with people who might generally be considered as belonging to the “progressive” classes in Britain—journalists, writers, university students, actors, social reformers, even the clergy—became one of the driving obsessions behind this book.

  My original intention was to write a history of the British volunteers who fought in the Civil War. I had assumed that by examining their reasons for joining the Union or Confederate armies, I would gain an insight into the forces that had shaped public opinion. But once I began, the book refused to stay within its intended confines, especially as it became clear that these volunteers were part of an Anglo-American world that was far greater and more complex than I had ever imagined. It gradually became a biography of a relationship, or, more accurately, of the many relationships that together formed the British-American experience during the Civil War.

  The war began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate troops fired on the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. The ensuing four-year struggle would lead to the freedom of 4 million slaves and cost the lives of more than 620,000 soldiers and 50,000 civilians. President Abraham Lincoln responded to the attack on Fort Sumter by calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers and declaring a blockade of Southern ports. Across the Atlantic, however, Lord Palmerston’s Liberal government was chiefly concerned with ensuring that Britain did not become embroiled in the conflict. There was too much at stake: the livelihoods of nearly a million workers depended on Southern cotton, while British investors held $444 million worth of U.S. stocks and securities. On May 13, reflecting a rare moment of unanimity between Parliament, the press, and the public, Queen Victoria issued a proclamation of neutrality, which recognized that a state of war existed between the Union and the Confederacy and forbade British subjects to take part. But this well-meaning act had precisely the opposite effect of what was intended. Each side accused Britain of favoring the other: the North threatened to invade Canada in retaliation, the South used every legal loophole to build its warships in British dockyards, and Britons ignored the injunction against interfering and volunteered by the thousands in the Union and Confederate armies. Twice in four years Britain and the North were on the brink of war: the first time, in December 1861, British troops were halfway to Canada by the time the two governments backed down.

  Biography is a subset of history, yet it stands independently, too. The most obvious difference is that biographers delve deeply into individual lives and the influences that shaped them, whereas for historians it is the sum of individual experiences that is important. In A World on Fire I have tried to combine both approaches. I decided from the beginning to treat each of the significant figures in the story, and many of the lesser ones, as though he or she was the principal subject of the book, so that I could understand the antecedents of their motives and decisions during the Civil War. This not only added several years to the project but also created the problem of how to construct a single narrative out of competing points of view within a time frame that encompassed multiple simultaneous events. The challenge seemed insurmountable, until one day I remembered having seen Trevor Nunn’s 1980 Nicholas Nickleby, an extraordinary “theater-in-the-round” production that brought together a vast panoply of characters through a combination of three-dimensional staging, shifting scenes, and running narratives that created an all-enveloping experience for the audience. This memory became my guide and inspiration, and I set about writing a history-in-the-round in the hope of immersing the reader inside the British-American world of the Civil War. I was fortunate that many areas of this world had already been researched by Brian Jenkins, Howard Jones, R.J.M. Blackett, Charles Hubbard, D. P. Crook, Frank Merli, Warren F. Spencer, Norman Ferris, and others. My debt to their pioneering work cannot be overstated; any omissions or errors in the book are mine alone.

  I am deeply grateful to Eve and Michael Williams-Jones, Hugh Dubrulle, Jonathan Foreman, Brian Jenkins, James McPherson, Christopher Mason, Michael Musick, Fredric Smoler, and Richard Snow for their help and criticisms of early versions of A World on Fire. The book took twelve years to complete, and I owe heartfelt thanks to Andrew Wylie, Sarah Chalfont, and Jeffrey Posternak of the Wylie Agency for their loyalty during all that time. True to the spirit of the book, A World on Fire was simultaneously edited by Susanna Porter at Random House in New York and Stuart Proffitt at Allen Lane in London; it has been a profoundly rewarding and intellectually satisfying process to work with them both. Over the years I have benefited enormously from the help and guidance provided by librarians and archivists all over the world, and they are thanked by name in the acknowledgments section. My family have been a tremendous support to me, but there is one person who, above all, made this book possible, and that is my husband: the center of my world.

  Dramatis Personae

  AMERICANS

  Diplomats, Commissioners, and Agents

  Charles Francis Adams (1807–86) UNION—Minister at the U.S. legation in London, 1861–68; son of President John Quincy Adams; grandson of President John Adams; married Abigail Brooks and had six children: John Quincy, Charles Francis Jr., Louise, Henry, Mary, and Brooks.

  Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (1835–1915) UNION—Captain in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry; later colonel of the 5th Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry; son of Charles Francis Adams.

  Henry Adams (1838–1918) UNION—Author, journalist, and historian; private secretary at the U.S. legation in London to his father, Charles Francis Adams.

  Edward Anderson (1813–82) CONFEDERATE—Purchasing agent for the Confederate navy in England, 1861.

  William H. Aspinwall (1807–75) UNION—Northern shipowner, sent to England t
o prevent the Confederacy from purchasing ships.

  August Belmont (1813–90) UNION—New York financier and U.S. agent for the Rothschilds.

  John Bigelow (1817–1911) UNION—U.S. consul in Paris, 1861–64; minister at the U.S. legation in Paris, 1865–66.

  Irvine Bulloch (1842–98) CONFEDERATE—Youngest officer on CSS Alabama; half brother of James Dunwoody Bulloch.

  James Dunwoody Bulloch (1823–1901) CONFEDERATE—Chief Confederate secret service agent in England and architect of the Confederate naval acquisition program in Europe.

  Clement Claiborne Clay (1789–1866) CONFEDERATE—U.S. senator from Alabama, 1853–61; Confederate senator from Alabama, 1862–64; Confederate commissioner in Canada, 1864–65.

  George Mifflin Dallas (1792–1864) UNION—Minister at the U.S. legation in London, 1856–61.

  William Lewis Dayton (1807–64) UNION—Minister at the U.S. legation in Paris, 1861–64.

  Edwin De Leon (1818–91) CONFEDERATE—U.S. consul in Cairo, 1853–61; Confederate propagandist in England and France, 1862–64.

  Thomas Haines Dudley (1819–93) UNION—U.S. consul in Liverpool, 1861–65; co-head of the U.S. secret service with Freeman H. Morse.

  Ambrose Dudley Mann (1801–89) CONFEDERATE—U.S. assistant secretary of state, 1853–55; Confederate commissioner to Belgium, 1861–65.

  William Maxwell Evarts (1818–1901) UNION—New York lawyer, sent to England to liaise with Crown prosecution lawyers in the Alexandria trial in 1863.

  John Murray Forbes (1813–98) UNION—Influential businessman; sent to England to prevent the Confederacy from purchasing ships.

  Rose O’Neal Greenhow (1817–64) CONFEDERATE—Washington society leader and Confederate spy.

  James Holcombe (1820–73) CONFEDERATE—Confederate commissioner in Canada, 1864; former law professor at the University of Virginia.

  Henry Hotze (1833–87) CONFEDERATE—Confederate propagandist, sent to England in 1862; editor of the pro-Southern Index.

  Caleb Huse (1831–1905) CONFEDERATE—Purchasing agent for the Confederate army in England.

  Colin McRae (1813–77) CONFEDERATE—Confederacy’s chief financial agent in Europe, 1863–65.

  James Murray Mason (1798–1871) CONFEDERATE—Senator from Virginia, 1847–61; Confederate commissioner in Britain, 1861–65; with Slidell, one of the two subjects of the Trent affair.

  Benjamin Moran (1820–86) UNION—Assistant secretary at the U.S. legation in London, 1857–64, and secretary, 1864–74.

  Freeman Harlow Morse (1807–91) UNION—U.S. consul in London, 1861–69; co-head with Thomas Haines Dudley of the U.S. secret service.

  John Lothrop Motley (1814–77) UNION—Historian; U.S. minister to the Austrian Empire, 1861–67.

  Pierre Adolphe Rost (1797–1868) CONFEDERATE—Confederate commissioner to France, 1861, and to Spain, 1862–65.

  Henry Shelton Sanford (1823–91) UNION—Minister at the U.S. legation in Brussels; set up U.S. secret service operations in England and then in Belgium, 1862–65.

  John Slidell (1793–1871) CONFEDERATE—Confederate commissioner to France; captured, with Mason, aboard the Trent.

  Jacob Thompson (1810–85) CONFEDERATE—Colonel in Confederate army; head of clandestine operations in Canada.

  Norman Walker (1831–1913) CONFEDERATE—Major in Confederate army; shipping agent in Bermuda; husband of Georgiana Walker.

  Thurlow Weed (1797–1882) UNION—Adviser to Seward; unofficial envoy to France with Archbishop Hughes, Bishop McIlvaine, and General Winfield Scott, 1861.

  Charles Wilson (1818–78) UNION—Illinois newspaper editor; secretary to the U.S. legation in London, 1861–64.

  William Lowndes Yancey (1814–63) CONFEDERATE—Confederate commissioner to Britain and France, 1861–65.

  Military

  Nathaniel Prentice Banks (1816–94) UNION—Commander of the Department of the Gulf, 1862–64.

  Braxton Bragg (1817–76) CONFEDERATE—Principal Confederate commander in the Western theater of the war; commander of the Department of Western Florida and the Army of Pensacola, 1861; commander of the Army of the Mississippi and the Army of Tennessee, 1862–63; chief military adviser to Jefferson Davis, 1864–65.

  John Yates Beall (1835–65) CONFEDERATE—Confederate privateer.

  Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (1818–93) CONFEDERATE—First prominent general of the Confederacy, 1861–65; hero of Fort Sumter and First Battle of Bull Run; commander in the defense of Charleston.

  Ambrose Everett Burnside (1824–81) UNION—Brigadier general and commander of the Army of the Potomac, 1861–63; commander of the Department of the Ohio, 1863–64; his prodigious whiskers allegedly inspired the word “sideburns.”

  Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818–93) UNION—Commander of Fort Monroe, 1861; administrator of the occupation of New Orleans; commander of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, 1863, later designated the Army of the James, 1864.

  Josiah Gorgas (1818–83) CONFEDERATE—Chief of the Confederate Ordnance Bureau.

  Ulysses S. Grant (1822–85) UNION—Commander of the Army of the Tennessee, 1862–63, and the Military Division of the Mississippi, 1863–64; commanding general of the U.S. Army, 1864–69. Known as “Unconditional Surrender Grant” because of the terms he offered to the defeated Confederates at Fort Donelson.

  Henry Wager Halleck (1815–72) UNION—Commander of the Department of the Missouri, 1861–62, and the Department of the Mississippi, 1862; general-in-chief of all Union armies, 1862–64; chief of staff, 1864–65; known as “Old Brains” for his treatise on military theory.

  John William Headley (1841–1930) CONFEDERATE—Captain in General John Hunt Morgan’s brigade; participated in the plot to bomb New York in 1864.

  Thomas Henry Hines (1838–98) CONFEDERATE—Spy sent to Canada, via Chicago, to recruit propagandists and fighters for the South.

  James Longstreet (1821–1904) CONFEDERATE—Commander of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, 1863; commander of the Department of East Tennessee, 1863–64; principal subordinate to General Lee, who called him “Old War Horse.” Also known as “Old Pete.”

  Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson (1824–63) CONFEDERATE—Commander of the 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign; corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee, 1862–63; nicknamed “Stonewall” after the First Battle of Bull Run.

  Albert Sidney Johnston (1803–62) CONFEDERATE—Commander of the Western Department, 1861; led the Army of the Mississippi to defend Confederate lines from the Mississippi River to Kentucky and the Allegheny Mountains.

  Joseph Eggleston Johnston (1807–91) CONFEDERATE—Commander of the Army of the Shenandoah, 1861; commander of the Army of the Potomac (later rechristened the Army of Northern Virginia), 1862; commander of the Department of the West, which gave him control over the Army of the Tennessee and the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana.

  Fitzhugh Lee (1835–1905) CONFEDERATE—Rose from lieutenant colonel of the 1st Virginia Cavalry to major general, 1861–65; nephew of Robert E. Lee.

  Robert Edward Lee (1807–70) CONFEDERATE—Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, 1862–65; general-in-chief of Confederate forces, 1865.

  George Brinton McClellan (1826–85) UNION—Commander of the Department of the Ohio, 1861; commander of the Department of the Potomac, July 1861–November 1862; general-in-chief of the Union army, November 1861–March 1862.

  Irvin McDowell (1818–85) UNION—Commander of the Army of Northeastern Virginia, 1861; commander of the Army of the Potomac, 1861–62.

  George Gordon Meade (1815–72) UNION—Commander of the Army of the Potomac, 1863–65; defeated General Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg; nicknamed “The Old Snapping Turtle” for his hair-trigger temper.

  George Washington Morgan (1820–93) UNION—Commander of the 7th Division of the Army of the Ohio, 1862–63; commander of the 3rd Division of the Union army’s XIII Corps, 1863.

  John Hunt Morgan (1825–
64) CONFEDERATE—Colonel and brigadier general, 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, 1862–64; commander of the Trans-Allegheny Department, 1864; known for instigating “Morgan’s raid.”

  John Singleton Mosby (1833–1916) CONFEDERATE—Commanded the 43rd Battalion, 1st Virginia Cavalry (known as the Partisan Rangers), 1863–65; nicknamed the “Gray Ghost.”

  John Pope (1822–92) UNION—Commander of the District of North and Central Missouri, 1861–62; commander of the Army of the Mississippi, 1862; commander of the Army of Virginia, 1862.

  Winfield Scott (1786–1866) UNION—Commanding general of the U.S. Army, 1841–61.

  Phillip Henry Sheridan (1831–88) UNION—Commander of the 3rd Division, XIV Corps, Army of the Cumberland, 1862–63; commander of the 2nd Division, IV Corps, Army of the Cumberland, 1863–64; commander of the Army of the Shenandoah, 1864–65.

  William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–91) UNION—Brigadier general in the Army of the Tennessee, 1862; commander of the Department of the Tennessee, 1863–64; commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi, 1864–65.

  James Ewell Brown (“Jeb”) Stuart (1833–64) CONFEDERATE—Commander of the 1st Virginia Cavalry Regiment, 1861; commander of the Virginia Cavalry Brigade, 1861–62; commander of the Virginia Cavalry Division, 1862–63; commander of the Virginia Cavalry Corps, 1863–64.

  Politicians

  Judah Philip Benjamin (1811–84) CONFEDERATE—The second Jewish senator in U.S. history; Confederate attorney general, 1861; secretary of war, 1861–62; and secretary of state, 1862–65.

  John Cabell Breckinridge (1821–75) CONFEDERATE—Confederate secretary of war, 1865.

  Salmon Portland Chase (1808–73) UNION—U.S. secretary of the treasury, 1861–64.

  Jefferson Davis (1808–89) CONFEDERATE—President of the Confederate States, 1861–65.

  John Adams Dix (1798–1879) UNION—Military governor of New York.

  Edward Everett (1794–1865)—U.S. secretary of state, 1852–53; U.S. senator from Massachusetts, 1853–54; celebrated educator and orator, famous for his two-hour speech before Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.