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

by Amanda Foreman

  Despite Charles Francis Adams’s complaints to Russell, Bulloch knew better than anyone else the truth about the British government’s intentions. It “seems to be more determined than ever to preserve its neutrality,” he wrote in disappointment; “the chances of getting a vessel to sea in anything like fighting condition are next to impossible.” The fate of his prize cruiser under construction, Lairds’ Project No. 290, now preoccupied him. He had her moved to a private graving dock, where she would be masted and coppered out of sight of prying eyes. But with the Nashville captured and the Florida sailing off on a blind adventure, defenseless and without a real crew, Bulloch was beginning to wonder whether they were pursuing the right course of action. His anxiety was, for the moment, misplaced. Three days later, on April 14, Benjamin Moran recorded in shock: “It seems as though the Nashville was not captured at Beaufort, N.C., but escaped. This is one of the most mortifying events of the war to us. Our naval officers on the sea-board have covered themselves with disgrace.”24

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  “I cannot say that my value as a sailor had increased materially during the voyage,” wrote Francis Dawson after the Nashville arrived at Morehead City, North Carolina, on February 28. He was so relieved to be on dry land that it hardly mattered to him that he was homeless and friendless. Captain Pegram departed for Richmond as soon as they docked, bearing boxes of much-needed supplies, including stamps and banknote paper. Dawson was left to find his own lodgings. “I had determined to take my discharge from the Nashville, and decide, by tossing-up, which one of the various companies named in the newspaper I should join.” Pegram, however, made good on his promise. “I also wish to call specially your attention to the sacrifices made by Mr. Frank Dawson,” he wrote to Stephen Mallory in early March. The “young Englishman” had “left family, friends, and every tie to espouse our cause,” and, “not to be put off by any difficulties thrown in his way, insisted upon serving under our flag, performing … the most menial duties of an ordinary seaman.”25 On the strength of this recommendation, Dawson was appointed master’s mate, the lowest officer rank in the navy. Pegram personally gave him the news, “one furious cold morning,” while Dawson was “scraping the fore-yard, wet through with the falling sleet and intensely uncomfortable.”26

  Dawson’s orders were to report for duty at the Norfolk shipyard in Virginia. This was the same destination as Pegram, who was going to take command of a ship that was still in dry dock. “To crown my satisfaction,” Dawson recorded, “Captain Pegram told me that he intended to make a visit to his family, in Sussex County, Virginia, and would be glad if I should accompany him, and remain with him until it was necessary to go to Norfolk.” They left Morehead on March 10 and took the train up to Virginia. The young man was fascinated by the alien landscape that rolled past his window; there were no neat hedgerows and green pastures filled with sheep, only mile after mile of scrub and woodland. Dawson’s short stay at the Pegrams’ plantation exceeded his wildest expectations. The family adored him, and local worthies hailed him as a foreign knight come to their rescue. Dawson was already a convert to the Southern cause; all the attention he received gave him personal as well as fanciful reasons to embrace the Confederacy. “You may rest assured,” he wrote earnestly to his mother, “that while one of her children has power to wield a sword or pull a trigger, the South will never desist from her struggle against the Northern oppressor.”27

  Ill.19 The Confederate steamer Nashville, having run the blockade, arrives at Beaufort, North Carolina.

  On the day of Dawson’s departure, news reached the plantation of CSS Merrimac’s encounter with USS Monitor. The ships were the result of a frantic race between the North and South to construct the first American ironclads. The Confederates won (by twenty-four hours) when they launched the Merrimac (renamed CSS Virginia) on March 8, 1862. The vessel was an old U.S. warship that had been burned by Union sailors when they abandoned the Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia the previous summer. Since then, the Merrimac had been completely remodeled except for her engines, which the Confederates had not had time to repair. Engineers literally “clad” the Merrimac in iron plates and added a ram to the stem of the ship. Long and squat, she looked more like an iron champagne bottle than a ship. Her speed was terrible, but the armor plating made her invincible. When the Merrimac slowly steamed into Hampton Roads to confront the Federal blockading fleet, nothing like her had ever been seen before. Hampton Roads is a wide body of water where three large rivers converge before flowing into Chesapeake Bay and out into the Atlantic. The Union navy had been in control of the bay and Hampton Roads for almost a year. Stephen Mallory knew that it was vital for the Confederacy that he take them back, and as the wooden Union gunboats fired ineffectively at the Merrimac’s hull, it seemed as though he would.

  There was cheering in Richmond and hysteria in Washington after the battle. Lincoln called a special cabinet meeting at which the new secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, made a spectacle of himself, ranting that every city on the Eastern Seaboard would now be laid waste. The secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles, however, was unfazed. The newly clad and outfitted Monitor was already on its way to Hampton Roads, and he expected a more favorable outcome than the previous day’s rout. The secretary’s hopes were justified. The equally strange-looking Federal vessel, described by some as a “tin can on a shingle” (the tin can being a revolving turret that could fire in any direction), could not sink the Merrimac, but was powerful enough to pin her down. After four hours of point-blank firing, both ships withdrew, damaged but not inoperable. The possibility that the Merrimac might yet force its way to Washington had almost as powerful an effect on Edwin Stanton as the first Hampton Roads bombardment. To stop the Confederate monster, he wanted the main water channels to Washington blocked with sunken ships.

  Lord Lyons was fascinated by reports of the encounter between the two ironclads. “This is, I suppose,” he wrote to Lord Russell, “the severest test to which the system of coating vessels in iron armour has yet been exposed.” The officers of Admiral Milne’s North Atlantic squadron were equally agog. The ironclad warships in the British and French navies had, for obvious reasons, never been tested in the same way. Milne’s entire fleet would gladly have assembled to watch another encounter, but the coveted task was awarded to Commander William N. W. Hewett of HMS Rinaldo, who was told to loiter near Fortress Monroe (at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay) “in order to obtain as much information as possible.”28 Newspapers in the North and South were hailing the battle as a revolution in naval warfare, not to mention proof that America would one day rule the oceans.29 Francis Dawson saw the Merrimac when he reported to Norfolk Navy Yard. He noticed something that Commander Hewett had been too far away to see: that the vessel’s armor plating was actually railroad ties rolled flat.

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  Lyons was frustrated that he had no eyewitness reports of the battle to pass on to the Admiralty. None of the British journalists he relied upon for news had been present; increasingly of late, their applications for military passes were being turned down by the U.S. War Department. The worst affected was William Howard Russell. He had returned from a two-month sojourn in Canada on March 1, having failed to persuade The Times to release him from his contract. “I am writing to you, my dear Morris, as a friend,” he pleaded with the managing editor of the paper, Mowbray Morris. Russell listed all the reasons—family, finances, even life and death. “I have not met a man in Canada who has not declared to me he never thought I should have left the United States alive.… If you could see what I have had to bear in railway trains and in the street you would at least give me the credit of no common devotion.”30

  Russell’s fears were soon confirmed. It was useless to remain in Washington, he told Morris, because no one would speak to him. “They are determined, I hear, to throw every impediment in my way,” he wrote:

  McClellan is never to be seen by me, his staff are all surly … the officers I know are fearful of being attacked in the press if
they are pointed out for any civility to me. Therefore I never get any intelligence of what is going to be done and secrecy on all points is so well kept I don’t hear of any event coming off, and so cannot get a chance of describing it.31

  His friends were sympathetic, but there was nothing they could do to reduce the prejudice against him.

  The small band of British journalists in Washington had increased by two with the arrival of Edward Dicey of the Spectator and, recently, a freelance writer named Francis Lawley. They were liable to suffer the same penalty as Russell if they traveled together, but neither was as keen to see action as Russell: a little excursion to General Louis Blenker’s camp and back was sufficient war reporting for them. Blenker, a German exile from the Revolution of 1848, headed a division “filled with black sheep of every nation under the sun,” wrote Dicey. “The word of command had to be given in four languages, and the officers were foreigners almost without exception.”32 Francis Lawley was rather grateful for the opportunity to take things easy for a time. He had joined Anthony Trollope for part of his tour of the Midwest after Rose Trollope went home to England. Lawley and Trollope were friends and distant cousins, a tie that played an increasingly important role as the journey became more challenging. Neither was accustomed to traveling rough, and each thought the other was a ninny over the hardships they endured. After 120 miles on a provincial railroad, Lawley declared that an Englishman did not know discomfort until he had experienced a crowded American railway carriage going fifteen miles an hour across flat nothingness for an entire day.

  At thirty-six, Lawley was still young enough to retain the air of a man of promise. But by this stage in his life he had already taken that promise and squandered it several times over until it seemed to his friends and family that it would never be fulfilled. He was the youngest son of the first Baron Wenlock. Success had come to him easily. He was a fellow of All Souls College (the academic citadel of Oxford) at twenty-three, and an MP at twenty-seven. Six months later, in 1852, he achieved an even greater coup when the then chancellor of the exchequer, William Gladstone, made him his private secretary. In 1853 his name was put forward for governor-general of South Australia. To those who did not know him, it seemed as though he was leading a charmed existence. Only those closest to him knew his terrible secret: Lawley was a gambling addict.33 Ironically, the governorship, which he only accepted to escape his racing debts, proved to be his undoing. The colonial secretary objected to sending an unreformed gambler to govern the South Australians. This unexpected rejection led to some unsavory revelations. Since Lawley had already resigned his seat in Parliament, believing the post was his, he was suddenly faced with the loss of his reputation, his career, and his only source of income. He fled England to escape his creditors.

  Lawley made a new life for himself, of sorts, as a freelance writer in New York. He admired the energy and optimism of Americans, telling his close friend and fellow gambler William Gregory, “this nation is destined to be greater than the greatest.”34 When the war started, Lawley was able to increase his income slightly by writing articles for English newspapers. He was not sure it was gentlemen’s work. “It is hard,” he confessed to his family, “to write and enter into very minute details without trenching upon information gained in the familiarity of private conversation, and to this I have an intolerable aversion.” He was fortunate in that the Daily Telegraph took a relaxed attitude to the objectivity of its foreign reports. Lawley was resolutely pro-Northern and had no intention of touring the South: “I can do better as a correspondent in the North,” he wrote, “seeing it only and writing from a one-sided view, than if I saw both sides and was embarrassed thereby.”35

  Washington suited Lawley very well. His travels with Trollope had trained him to be less delicate about the presence of mud, and his chronic shortage of funds merely put him in a large enough company for it to go unremarked. The “Buccaneers” at the British legation welcomed him at once, and he was given a role in their production of a burlesque opera called Bombastes Furioso. A large part of the English community in Washington was in the play. William Howard Russell reported to Mowbray Morris that it “was a complete success at the legation and Shiny William, as I call Seward, complimented me immensely.”36 This was an impolitic admission for one who was seeking his recall on compassionate grounds. “It is your business to report the military proceedings of the Federal Army,” complained Morris, “and so I repeat: Go to the Front or come home.”37

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  Russell felt that neither Delane nor Morris understood his position or else they would not keep insisting that he go where he was barred from entering. Russell could not help worrying that he had made a mistake in returning to Washington. Vizetelly had decided to go west, and the idea no longer seemed so harebrained; a significant battle had taken place on March 7 at Pea Ridge, near the Arkansas-Missouri border. President Jefferson Davis had sent a new general, Earl Van Dorn, to take over the disorganized forces in the region. This much Van Dorn achieved. The little general with a large ego boasted to his wife that he would take his army all the way north to St. Louis in Missouri. His plan was simple: a Union army of only 11,000 men, under General Samuel R. Curtis, controlled the passage from northwest Arkansas into Missouri; Van Dorn would divide his own army into two forces, surround the Federals front and back, and then pounce in a surprise attack.

  William Watson, the Scotsman who had joined the 3rd Louisiana Infantry in New Orleans the previous summer, was at first relieved by Van Dorn’s arrival, but he soon developed misgivings over whether the new general understood the limitations posed by territory or was aware of the real condition of the Confederate army. Their supplies were already low when Van Dorn gave the order for every man to be ready to march with ten days’ rations in his haversack. But Union sympathizers had sent word to General Curtis of the Confederates’ approach: Curtis was waiting for them when they attacked.

  The Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, began on March 7 as the fog lifted from the trees to reveal a gray winter morning. Watson and his fellow soldiers had been marching through frost and snow with little sleep and no food for almost seventy-two hours. “Cold, hungry, and fatigued we moved sullenly along,” he wrote, “some of the lads almost sleeping on their feet.” They thought they had marched to the rear of the Federal forces only to discover “that they were also in our rear, and they had the advantage of being in a strong position.” Watson’s regiment had stumbled into the center of the waiting Federals; when the firing died down, the 3rd’s officers were all either dead or missing, except for one lieutenant. Fortunately, the sun was beginning to set, and the soldiers who had survived were able to creep away under the cover of darkness. The following morning, a Federal counterattack smashed the Confederates’ line and the rebels fled the battlefield, Van Dorn first. Watson and his fellow soldiers were left to fend for themselves. It was a ninety-mile march to the nearest Confederate stronghold, a trek through rattlesnake-infested country, without food or maps. Seven days later, Watson staggered into the border town of Van Buren, four hundred miles from Van Dorn’s stated destination of St. Louis. In retrospect, Watson admitted, “I never got what the Americans would call the ‘hang’ of this battle.… It was a mass of mixed up confusion from beginning to end.”38 Nevertheless the outcome was clear; the Confederates had suffered 2,000 casualties, the Federals 1,384, and General Curtis’s victory ensured that the key border state of Missouri would stay in Northern hands.

  This Federal victory in the west made General McClellan’s failure to commit the Army of the Potomac in a major battle look all the more inexplicable. Lincoln had tolerated the general’s arrogance (though he did not know that McClellan referred to him as “the gorilla”) and shown leniency when the army did not advance into Virginia on February 22 as directed. But his patience was now at an end. Lincoln ordered McClellan to have the Army of the Potomac in motion no later than March 18. Russell could hardly believe that something was finally going to happen after almost eight mon
ths of anticipation. He visited McClellan’s headquarters and asked permission to accompany the march. McClellan agreed, with the usual proviso that Russell first obtain the necessary pass from the War Department. As Russell busily wrote letters of request, reports began to filter through of a general retreat by the Confederate army. Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston had also heard of McClellan’s order to move south and had concluded that his own army of 40,000 men would be wiped out in its present position near Manassas. On March 8, Private Sam Hill and the 6th Louisiana were ordered to dismantle the camp that had been their home since July of the previous year and prepare to march twenty-five miles south of Manassas to the Rappahannock River. Leaving behind nearly everything of value, including precious batteries, food supplies, and arms, Johnston’s army trudged along single-track roads through incessant rain. Many fell sick with chills and diarrhea. “I remained doing what I could,” wrote Sam’s sister, Mary Sophia Hill, about her own activities during the dreadful trek through knee-deep mud. She had left the regiment in December in order to visit New Orleans “to see my sister, and get money from Ireland.” The blockade prevented her remittance from coming in, but Mary still raised $150 in donations for the regiment and obtained several boxes of clothes and medicines. Her efforts were for naught, however; by the time she eventually reached Virginia, all but one of her trunks had been stolen. The old civilities of the South were gradually giving way to a harsher reality. Richmond itself was under martial law.

  Sam Hill’s brigade finally reached its new camp on the south bank of the Rappahannock on March 17, acting as the rear guard while the rest of Johnston’s army continued on to Orange Court House, an Italianate building in a town of that name, with sweeping steps and a rectangular bell tower not unlike some of the grand residences in New Orleans. Mary managed to find rooms in a little cottage nearby. Here was a pleasant place to rest, even under the leaden skies of a wintry spring. Although the Louisianans were waiting for orders, Mary was kept busy with wounds and injuries, often the result of fighting among members of Major Chatham Roberdeau Wheat’s 1st Louisiana Special Battalion. The Louisiana “Tigers” were such a lawless lot that the commander of the Louisiana Brigade had two of them executed by firing squad. Major Wheat was a veteran of Garibaldi’s Sicily campaign, and in March he received a visit from a friend he had not seen since leaving Italy. The visitor was Henry MacIver, the young man who had annoyed William Howard Russell by asking for directions on how to sneak across Federal lines after Bull Run. MacIver had managed to escape his prison cell in Alexandria, steal the clothes and weapon of a Union soldier, and slip into Confederate territory. After being briefly detained as a Yankee spy, MacIver was finally able to achieve his wish and join the Confederate army. He was made a cavalry instructor with the rank of lieutenant and attached to General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s staff.