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

by Amanda Foreman

  After breakfast on November 24, Thompson returned to Fort Wood to watch the second day of the Battle of Chattanooga. Bragg had managed to recall one of the two divisions sent to Knoxville—General Patrick Cleburne’s—and had placed it at the far end of Missionary Ridge to shore up his right. Grant’s overall plan for the day was simple: to capture the extreme ends of Bragg’s position and then take the middle. “Fighting Joe” Hooker’s day had come.

  I began to think nothing was doing [wrote Thompson] when at about midday, when I was dividing my lunch with one of the gunners on the fort, heavy reports of cannon and musketry from Lookout Valley made all of us hurry to that side of Fort Wood. I joined two officers looking through telescopes towards Lookout Mountain and we soon saw Hooker attacking, his men plainly visible to us sweeping round the steep face of Lookout.

  Close by me was General Grant in a black surtout with black braid on and quite loose, black trousers and a black wideawake hat and thin Wellington boots. He looked clean and gentlemanly but not military having a Stoop and a full reddish beard, the moustache much lighter than the ends which were trained to a peak.

  We saw Hooker’s men fall back once—then they advanced again. After some little suspense we saw the Rebels run round the face of Lookout near the top and Hooker’s line advance after them, rifles popping all along the face of the mountain and guns shelling the retreating Rebels from Moccasin Point and Fort Negley. An officer beside me with a telescope cried out: “There they are and the Rebels are running.” His glass was pointed to the steep face of Lookout more than half way up—and there sure enough, just three miles from us along the sparsely wooded face of the mountain, we saw a running fight with the Rebels retreating before Hooker’s men.

  When Hooker’s men planted that large U.S. flag near the top of the mountain, the whole of the troops, and the people in and around Chattanooga, who must number some 60,000 at least, seemed to hurrah together.

  The only man who seemed unmoved was General Grant himself, the prime author of all this hurly burly. There he stood in his plain citizen’s clothes looking through his double field-glasses apparently totally unmoved. I stood within a few feet of him and I could hardly believe that here was this famous commander, the model, as it seemed to me, of a modest and homely but efficient Yankee general. I stood next to General Grant for quite some time. If the battle had been a pageant got up for my benefit I could not have had it better.29

  Map.18 Chattanooga, November 24–25, 1863

  Click here to view a larger image.

  Thompson had witnessed the “Battle Above the Clouds,” so called because a light fog had formed on parts of the mountain during the fight, obscuring the valley below. Hooker’s victory had been achieved with surprisingly little cost; his casualties, including those missing and captured, were fewer than two thousand. The following day, the twenty-fifth, was supposed to be Sherman’s turn for glory. Grant expected his man, who had served him so well at Vicksburg, to complete the rout and drive the Confederates off Missionary Ridge. But Sherman’s adversary was General Patrick Cleburne, a former corporal in the 41st (Welsh) Regiment of Foot, who was the best commander in the Army of Tennessee. Cleburne’s new British volunteer aide-de-camp, Captain Charles H. Byrne, who had accompanied Ross and Vizetelly on their journey from Charleston in September, described the fight for his friends. “Three times did they charge our position, and three times were they repulsed,” he wrote. “The third charge was the most determined of the lot. They managed to reach the crest of the hill, and there they fought us for about two hours at a distance varying from twenty to thirty paces;—so close were they that our officers threw stones.”30 Byrne’s horse was shot in the neck. Rather than abandon his comrades, he chose to remain and fight on foot.

  The bravery and sacrifice of Cleburne’s soldiers became immaterial after Grant exploited the fact that Bragg had allowed the center of the Confederate line to thin dangerously during the fight to only fifteen thousand men. At Gettysburg, the Confederate charge at Meade’s center had proved fatal because Lee had failed to dent the Federal strength; but here there was a genuine weakness and Grant prevailed. General Thomas’s division of twenty-five thousand rose from the base of Orchard Knob and smashed through the Confederate defenses at the top of the Ridge. No one had ordered the men to go that far; rage and madness simply took hold of them. “We had all got mixed up,” wrote Robert Neve. “Every man done as he liked, firing to the best advantage until we got twenty yards from the top. Someone cried out, ‘Fix bayonets!’ and ‘Forward to the charge.’ ” The Confederates ran, “leaving cannon, wagons, horses, tools and everything. It was a perfect rout.”26.2 31 Four thousand Confederates were captured on the Ridge, twice the number of casualties for the battle.

  Bragg was powerless to halt the men as they came hurtling down the other side of the mountain toward Ringgold. Sam Watkins saw him ride. “Bragg looked scared. He had put spurs to his horse, and was running like a scared dog.… Poor fellow, he looked so hacked and whipped and mortified and chagrined at defeat, and all along the line, when Bragg would pass, the soldiers would raise the yell, …‘Bully for Bragg, he’s hell on retreat.’ ”32 The only division that did not panic was Cleburne’s, which held off the Federals long enough to enable the bulk of Bragg’s army to escape off the mountain. The Confederates managed to stay ahead of their pursuers, crossing through Ringgold Gap into Georgia toward the station town of Dalton. Grant did not have the wagons and supplies for an incursion into enemy country, and he forbade his generals to pursue the Confederates past Ringgold.

  Henry Yates Thompson explored Bragg’s deserted headquarters two days after the battle, on November 27. Since the twenty-fifth he had been helping Dr. Newberry by identifying the dead and pinning their names to their jackets. The first slain Federal he found turned out to be named John Bull. As Thompson wandered among the bullet-scarred trees, picking up souvenirs, he stumbled across a pile of bodies. He had not noticed them at first because their faded uniforms were the same color as the leaves. They had no hats or shoes.

  I went on to a knoll commanding the ridge in both directions [he wrote]. I found two Rebels—one dead and one just alive unattended since the battle. I gave the wounded man what brandy I had left in my flask and he spoke a little. His brains were protruding—the wound was in the back of his head. He seemed thankful for the brandy. I minced and mixed some meat, onions and biscuit and put water with them. He tried to eat but could not chew. A Federal came to help and washed his face.

  While combing through the field, Thompson had a second shock. He saw two children, a little girl and boy, scavenging among the dead. They were collecting bullets. “The little girl said she lived ‘over there,’ pointing to Bragg’s headquarters. She had been in the house all through the battle,” he wrote. No one seemed to be responsible for them. The children seemed unaware of the danger that had passed over their heads, or of the perilous future that awaited them once the soldiers were no longer around to share their rations.33 The pageantry Thompson had seen from afar had darkened to a scene of gore and horror. “The impression left on me by my walks the next day through those blood-stained woods,” he wrote later, “fixed a conviction in my mind, a conviction of the absolute and essential wickedness of those who talk lightly of war and still more of those who lightly begin a war.”34 Thompson was ready to return home. “Now I am tired to death,” he wrote. His ship was not leaving until December 23, but Thompson felt he had witnessed enough suffering and intended to spend the final weeks of his stay in America visiting friends and enjoying himself as a tourist. His opinion of the North had grown higher still now that he understood the great suffering endured by its people.

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  “God be praised for this victory, which looks like the heaviest blow the country has yet dealt at rebellion,” George Templeton Strong wrote in New York after hearing the news from Chattanooga. “Meade’s army again reported in motion and across the Rapidan,” he added to his diary entry. “The nation ne
eds one or two splendid victories by its Eastern armies to offset those gained in the West.”35

  Two days later, on November 29, General Longstreet received a wire from Jefferson Davis confirming the Confederate defeat at Chattanooga and ordering him to abandon his siege at Knoxville so that he could provide support to Bragg. The telegram had come an hour too late for eight hundred Confederate and thirteen Federal soldiers. One of the worst-planned assaults of the war had just taken place in front of Burnside’s defenses. Francis Dawson was so sickened by the fiasco that he could not bear to write about it in his memoir. All he could say about the twenty minutes of slaughter was that Longstreet’s attack “failed utterly.”

  The Confederates began to march away from Knoxville on December 4. Fearing that General Sherman was on his way to help Burnside, Longstreet decided it would be safer to retreat farther east rather than head south toward Georgia. “The men suffered frightfully,” wrote Dawson. “It is no exaggeration to say that on such marches as they were obliged to make in that bitter weather they left the bloody tracks of their feet on the sharp stones of the roads.” Longstreet, stricken with remorse and self-doubt, wished to be relieved of command. His request was denied, but President Davis did accept General Bragg’s resignation. The general blamed the defeat on the cowardice of his troops and the personal animosity of his commanders without ever examining his own part in either cause. President Davis had no other alternative than to recall his stubborn opponent General Joe Johnston and order him to take command of Bragg’s Army of Tennessee.

  In the Federal army, General Burnside, too, asked to be relieved. He was satisfied that his reputation as a commander had been redeemed by the capture of the Cumberland Gap and the defense of Knoxville. No longer would he be known solely for the disaster at Fredericksburg and the humiliating “Mud March” of January 1863. The real victor of the Cumberland Gap, Colonel De Courcy, was also determined to leave the army. The War Department, not interested in deciding the contest between a departing general and his disgruntled colonel, had never responded to De Courcy’s complaints. He was saved from becoming bitter by the loyal support and admiration of the soldiers who had been with him on the campaign. “It was the unanimous opinion of the officers in De Courcy’s brigade that this trouble actually grew out of jealousy caused by the brilliant result of De Courcy’s tactics,” Lieutenant Colonel McFarland of the 86th Ohio Infantry later claimed. “It will be borne in mind that 2500 men, well protected by rifle-pits, forts, and cannon, had surrendered to 800, who were without effective support of any kind.”36 The injustice meted out to De Courcy so grieved his old regiment that on December 19 the officers and men of the 16th Ohio Volunteer Infantry presented him with a commemorative sword, sash, and belt. Captain Hamilton Richeson declared:

  Officers there are who command the confidence of those under them, but who cannot win their respect. Others have the respect of the men but not their confidence. You, sir, not only possess the confidence, but also the respect of the soldiers of your regiment.… Indeed, through all the vicissitudes, dangers, privations and vexations of a soldier’s life, while you were with the regiment you made so perfect, your conduct was admirable.37

  De Courcy had always hoped that he would win their respect, though devotion had seemed out of the question because of his famously disciplinarian style. The 16th’s parting gift demonstrated that he had achieved far more than he had believed possible. “If I did well it was because they did better,” he replied. “Under fire they were ever firm, cool and self-reliant.” De Courcy’s Civil War experiences had been harsh and frequently heartbreaking, but were by no means in vain. The soldiers he had tried so hard to mold into idealized versions of British troops remained proudly and defiantly true to their American roots; rather, it was De Courcy himself who was transformed into an officer and leader worthy of his men.26.3

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  General Meade had suffered the misfortune of embarking on his new campaign against Lee the day after eastern newspapers reported Grant’s boast that his army was “driving a big nail in the coffin of the rebellion.” Meade had learned that the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, which was little more than half the size of the 80,000-strong Army of the Potomac, was encamped in two separate locations some thirty miles apart. His plan was to creep across the Rapidan River, strike at one Confederate corps with all his might, and then quickly go after the other. But gross incompetence by one of his generals, who became lost, and miserable weather, which slowed down the others, wrecked Meade’s beautiful design. By the time all the Federals were across the river and in place, Lee had his full army ready and properly entrenched. The area, known as Mine Run, was only eight miles from Chancellorsville. It was a thickly wooded area divided by a stream that ran into the Rapidan River. When Meade surveyed his army’s position on November 30, he knew in his heart that he had failed. Though Lee had fewer than fifty thousand men at his disposal, they were expertly placed behind impregnable defenses. A soldier from Massachusetts looked across at the Confederate works and “felt death in my very bones.”39

  Meade made the courageous decision to call off the attack, though he knew he would be dubbed a coward by the Northern public, and quietly pulled his army back over the Rapidan. During the retreat a sudden freeze almost paralyzed the Army of the Potomac. The 7th Maine Infantry, young Frederick Farr’s regiment, suffered its worst night of the war as it crossed the Rapidan on December 1. “We halted after marching for a short time, and the night being intensely cold we made fires,” wrote a friend of Frederick’s. “This was the last that has been seen or heard of him. It is supposed that wearied out by the exceptional hardships he had undergone, he fell asleep by one of the fires and did not awake till the rebel cavalry came up to him and took him prisoner, as the Rebs followed close at our heels.”40 No one had received word from Frederick, but it was assumed that he was in one of the prisons near Richmond.

  The Army of the Potomac retired to its winter camps, which were spread out between the two “Raps,” the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers. The Army of Northern Virginia followed suit on the other side of the Rapidan, and out west, the opposing armies under Grant and Johnston did the same. There would be no more fighting until the spring. Although the Federal offensive in Virginia had not materialized, it was Lee rather than Meade who was on the defensive, and the same pattern was being repeated all over the South. Charleston held, despite the continued bombardment of its forts, but the question was for how much longer. Wilmington was still open, but Mobile and Galveston, though nominally under Confederate control, were receiving only a trickle of blockade runners. John Jones, the War Department clerk in Richmond, had heard that the capture rate was one in four blockade runners; “we can afford that,” he wrote.41 But Jones had also heard in the War Department that soldiers were threatening to desert in order to feed their families and protect their farms. Grant’s victory at Chattanooga had given the Union a base from which to attack not only the heart of the South, but also its munitions and gunpowder factories in Georgia.

  Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Chickamauga—the three Confederate victories in 1863—had not taken the South one step closer to independence, whereas Gettysburg had restored the morale of the Northern public, and Vicksburg had showed that victory was possible. “The signs look better,” Lincoln wrote after the Mississippi River was reopened to travel and commerce. “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.” Much of Mississippi, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Virginia north of Fredericksburg were under Union control; the Gulf and Atlantic coasts were also closed off from the Confederacy; and Texas, Arkansas, and most of Louisiana were inaccessible to Richmond. But these advantages seemed less certain when the core of the Confederacy—Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama—remained intact; two formidable Confederate armies and the great Robert E. Lee were at Davis’s disposal; and the fighting spirit of the South remained unbroken.

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  26.1 Unwilling to volunteer for the regular Conf
ederate army, Burley briefly tried his hand at journalism before turning to the stage. He joined the New Richmond Theatre, run by the British theater manager Richard d’Orsay Ogden. Burley’s first role was a small part in the aptly named The Guerrillas, a Confederate melodrama set during Stonewall Jackson’s military campaign in 1862.

  26.2 This was also Robert Neve’s final day of the war. Already sick with dysentery, he was sent to the hospital after the battle and was never again well enough to fight. He mustered out of the army in September 1864 and returned to England. His health permanently damaged by the war, he died in his mid-thirties in 1879, and his wife, Charlotte, successfully applied to Washington for a widow’s pension.

  26.3 In early 1864, De Courcy submitted his resignation. He received an ordinary discharge on February 19, which, after protests, was amended to an honorable discharge on March 3. He was forty-four years old. More than half his life had been spent in the service of one army or another, and he could not imagine beginning a new life in business or farming. De Courcy chose to go home to England. His future prospects were slim. But there was still one career open to him: he could marry well. On May 10, 1864, De Courcy married Elia, Comtesse du Bosque de Beaumont, a French widow of independent means.38

  PART III

  IF ONLY WE