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

by Amanda Foreman

  Lyons cited as an example the case of sixteen-year-old Henry Usher, the grandson of Admiral Usher, who was kidnapped by crimpers while on his way to a job interview at the British consulate in New York. With the legation’s help, Consul Archibald had eventually tracked Usher down in Beaufort, South Carolina, where the boy had been enlisted in the 5th New York Heavy Artillery as “John Russell.”28 This had been in January, and four months later the War Department was still dragging its feet.

  If it required strenuous efforts for the overworked legation to rescue a British subject from the armed services, the circumstances had to be extraordinary for a Briton to be released from prison—such as the presidential pardon given to Alfred Rubery in December. Rubery’s guilt in the attempted seizure of the J. M. Chapman in California was undeniable, but the request to Federal authorities for his release had come from John Bright, whose photograph was currently hanging above the mantelpiece in Lincoln’s office. The official decree announcing the pardon declared that the president’s decision should be regarded “as a public mark of the esteem held by the United States of America for the high character and steady friendship of the said John Bright.” The unabashedly pro-Southern Rubery also had his $10,000 fine commuted so long as he left the country within thirty days and made no attempt to help or enter the Confederacy.28.5

  Lyons would never have championed Rubery’s release if it had been up to him; as a rule, he refused to bother Seward with cases involving self-described British Confederate volunteers. “To do so,” Lyons told Lord Russell, after the Foreign Office forwarded a protest from Private Joseph Taylor, a Yorkshireman who had been incarcerated in Fort Delaware since Vicksburg, “could in fact hardly fail to cause annoyance. There are, I am sorry to say, a very large number of British Subjects who are Prisoners of War as Mr. Taylor is, and who, like him, entered the Confederate Service in disobedience to the Queen’s commands, and in defiance of Her Majesty’s warning that they would do so at their peril.”30 However, Seward was not entirely deaf or blasé about the myriad injustices created by the war. British prisoners of war in Federal hands were given the option of swearing an oath of allegiance to the United States in exchange for their release.28.6 31 Hundreds of British prisoners took advantage of the oath.

  Lyons suspected that forced enlistments in the Federal army would continue until the War Department ceased to regard the practice as a necessary evil to make up for the shortfalls in the draft. But there were signs that the sheer volume of crimping was beginning to have an adverse impact on the army. After watching the execution of two such victims for attempting to desert, General Isaac Wistar sent a protest to General John Dix in New York about the dishonest recruiting practices in the city:

  Nearly all are foreigners, mostly sailors both ignorant of and indifferent to the objects of the war in which they thus suddenly find themselves involved [he wrote]. Two men were shot here this morning for desertion; and over thirty more are now awaiting trial or execution. These examples are essential as we all understand but, it occurred to me, General, that you would pardon me for thus calling your attention to the great crime committed in New York of kidnapping these men into positions where, to their ignorance, desertion must seem like a vindication of their rights and liberty.28.7 32

  The lax discipline and poor attitude of the new recruits and draftees was also a problem for the Federal army. “If I was in England or in the English service I should consider that it was a shame and a sin to desert,” wrote the English volunteer James Horrocks. But here, “in the land of Yankee doodle,” desertion is “regarded universally as a smart thing and the person who does it a dem’d smart fellow.”33 Yet Horrocks was a soldier of uncommon ability and rectitude compared to James Pendlebury, who enlisted as a private in the 69th New York Infantry on January 27. Pendlebury was an unemployed mill worker from Lancashire with a family, a drinking problem, and a gamey leg. At home he used to spend every night in the pub boring the regulars until “one day I was talking energetically about the Slaves and full of fire when my comrades said I ought to go to America,” recalled Pendlebury. “One said he would give me twopence if I would go and others also offered pennies.”34

  Pendlebury collapsed upon arriving in New York and spent several weeks in the hospital. After his discharge he was arrested for drunkenness in Jersey City. The judge agreed to waive the fine if Pendlebury enlisted: “A policeman came with me to see that I really did enlist. However, when I went under the standard, I was too short. They … ran me down to Williamsburg and there I was big enough to join the 69th New York Irish Brigade.… On joining I got 400 dollars down, so I thought I would send it home.” Instead, he spent it on whiskey. When the money ran out, Pendlebury’s ailments returned. The members of the Irish 69th were familiar with the problem:

  Now if there is a drinker here [wrote Pendlebury], he will know how dreadful he feels after a spree, when he is nearly dying and can’t get any more drink—that was how I felt. When [the guard] answered I looked up into his face and said, “Can you save a life because I fear I shall be dead before morning.” He asked me what I meant, so I told him. He then poured me a tea cup of whisky and I drank it and fell asleep.35

  Pendlebury had found a home for himself, and despite his English nationality, his Irish comrades accepted him among their ranks, finding an alcoholic volunteer preferable to a reluctant conscript.36

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  Edward Lyulph Stanley, the headstrong younger son of the British postmaster general, Lord Stanley, arrived in Washington on April 14, 1864, having spent three weeks in New York listening to strangers make pointed comments about England’s treachery.28.8 He had not been the slightest bit fazed, being able to hold his own in any arena. According to family lore, when young Lyulph was five years old, “he was one day naughty and scolded by his mother; when she had finished, he said, ‘Proceed, you interest me.’ ”38 “Stanley is a clever young man,” wrote Lord Wodehouse after being introduced to him in 1862, “& will be very pleasant when he has rubbed off a little juvenile conceit, which however is pardonable, as he has just taken a first class at Oxford. He is a staunch Northerner which is singular and a finer Radical. I like to see a young man begin with rather extreme opinions. They ‘tone’ down fast enough.”39 But Stanley was showing no signs of toning down. He visited the Adamses before his departure and exhausted them all with his rapid, earnest talk about American politics.40

  Seward was treated to a similar verbal onslaught when he invited Stanley to dinner on April 17. In contrast to Lord Edward St. Maur, Stanley saw no need to be circumspect simply because of his father’s position in Palmerston’s cabinet, and he grilled Seward on every subject that arose. “Mr. Seward struck me as sharp and on the whole a kindly amiable man,” wrote Stanley after the encounter, “but rather shrewd than really able or wide in his views, and prone to be captious and technical instead of statesmanlike in his way of handling great questions.” He was far more impressed by Lincoln, who, he wrote, “spoke very reasonably and without any vulgarity tho’ with some quaintness and homeliness of expression.”41 The president obviously warmed to the Englishman, since he allowed his private secretary John Hay to take the next morning off to show Stanley around Washington. (They went to General Lee’s former home, Arlington, which by Stanley’s standards was “dirty and small.”) Hay’s opinion of England had been colored by Lawley’s reports, Stanley noticed with regret. He discovered, like every visitor before him, that “Americans see hardly any English newspaper but The Times, which is considered here as the true exponent of English opinion.”

  Stanley had come to America to learn how British supporters might help the soon-to-be-emancipated slave population, but he was not averse to visiting the front lines, too. On Friday, April 22, he took the train to Brandy Station in Culpeper County, Virginia, to visit the Army of the Potomac. Waiting for him at the station was Charles Francis Adams, Jr. Captain Adams’s contempt for his commanding officers had finally made him accept a transfer to General Meade’s cavalry e
scort, which meant that he was in a position to introduce Stanley to both Meade and General Grant. The former, wrote Stanley, was “a thorough gentleman and very captivating,” the latter “very modest and unassuming in manner” but clearly a man of “character and a will of his own.” In conversations about the future of Negroes in the army, Grant was honest about his initial doubts and why he had changed his mind in their favor after observing how well they fought as soldiers at Vicksburg.

  Stanley spent two days with Charles Francis Jr. The monotony of camp life surprised him: the soldiers’ daily routine seemed cheerfully domestic, and wintertime relations between the Federal and Confederate armies were strangely cordial. “I am told there is a most friendly feeling between the [opposing] armies,” wrote Stanley; “it is almost impossible to prevent their mixing, and exchanging coffee and tobacco and playing cards together, though there are very strict orders against it.”28.9 42 Unlike every other visitor to the Army of the Potomac before him, he had no interest in staying to watch it fight. He was anxious instead to visit New Orleans to see how the city’s emancipated blacks were faring under Northern rule. He left Meade’s headquarters as hundreds of covered supply wagons were being assembled in long lines.

  Charles Francis Jr. was not sure whether they were preparing to attack Lee or taking precautionary measures in case of a sudden move by the Confederates. “The feeling about Grant is peculiar,” he noticed; “a little jealousy, a little dislike, a little envy, a little want of confidence.” A “brilliant success will dissipate the elements,” he thought, but until then Grant would be regarded as an interloper.43 Grant was also taking over at a time when the term of enlistment for thousands of soldiers was about to expire. The 79th Highlanders had only two weeks more to serve, and their dress uniforms had already been bought for the parade up Broadway. They were furious at being sent to Virginia; during a parade review, the regiment marched past Grant in silence, refusing to answer the call for three cheers.

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  Banks was still struggling against the Red River when Grant decided that the spring campaign should be directed against the South’s two largest armies, Lee’s and Johnston’s. There were to be no more uncoordinated battles in various parts of the South. On April 3, 1864, he ordered Sherman to leave Chattanooga and head with his 98,000 men for Atlanta, Georgia. “You, I propose to move against Johnston’s army,” Grant told Sherman, “to break it up and get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.”44 Once Atlanta had been taken, Sherman was to march across the state to Savannah and then up the coastline through the Carolinas to Virginia, where he was to join Grant at Richmond.

  Theoretically, Grant had 185,000 soldiers with which to attack Lee, but political considerations had whittled down that number to a little over 100,000. The secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, insisted on keeping back 20,000 for the defense of Washington; and a further 65,000 were divided between the Army of the James, led by General Butler (of the New Orleans “Woman Order” fame), and the Army of West Virginia, under the command of the German general Franz Sigel. To his frustration, Grant discovered that these “political” generals not only owed their rank to Lincoln but were also protected by him and could not be shunted aside, despite their proven inability in the field.

  Grant tried to limit their potential for disaster by giving Butler and Sigel mere supporting roles in his spring campaign. Their objective would be to deprive the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia of its supplies, while Grant went after Lee himself. “Beast” Butler started out first on May 3 with 30,000 soldiers, along with their horses and heavy guns, crammed into an assortment of steamboats and ferries for the two-day journey up the James River toward Richmond. As there was only a light smattering of Confederates forces south of Richmond, there was no reason why Butler could not disembark his army at one of the many landings along the river and march unmolested all the way to the capital. Grant wanted Butler to plant his forces just below Richmond, blocking every route from the south and west. If Butler had been acting solely at his own discretion, Grant might have worried. But two veteran commanders had been appointed as Butler’s subordinates to prevent him from wrecking the venture.

  The 5th Battery, New Jersey Artillery, containing the English private James Horrocks, was among the units placed under Butler’s command. When Horrocks saw Butler in person he was startled by his notorious ugliness. “Imagine a bloated-looking bladder of lard,” he wrote to his parents. “Call before your mental vision a sack full of muck … and then imagine four enormous German sausages fixed to the extremities of the sack in lieu of arms and legs.”45 Butler had been ordered to drive hard toward Richmond, smashing the rail link between Petersburg and Richmond as he went. But Horrocks did not notice any particular sense of urgency after his regiment arrived on May 5 at a deserted City Point, less than twenty-five miles from the Confederate capital.

  The day was warm and sunny, far too pleasant to waste idling on the banks. “I took a walk with another fellow,” wrote Horrocks. “We passed several little shanties, and at every one the soldiers … were ransacking and taking everything worth taking.” Horrocks and his friend hurried on. “We walked on about a mile and a half and then came to a fine residence of a planter, in which about a dozen soldiers were making free with everything.” As they approached the gate, a couple of soldiers came out laden with struggling livestock. A headless lamb was slung over the shoulder of one, its neck still dripping with blood. The gray-haired owner of the house sat hunched on the doorstep, moaning as Horrocks stepped around him. Once inside, he heard screams and the crashing of wood as soldiers forced open every door and cupboard. The black house servants were cowering in the corner of the parlor while the elderly wife of the owner shouted hoarsely at the men to leave. Horrocks walked down the hall to escape the noise. “In the next room, which was extremely well furnished, was a piano. I sat down and played Home, Sweet Home! with variations.” The playing soothed him, and without another thought, he joined in the looting. “I took a flute and a package of beautiful wax candles and a piece of scented soap.” He also found a wad of Confederate notes, which he was about to pocket when the old lady entered the room and shamed him into putting them back. Suddenly, Horrocks wished to slip away as quickly as possible.

  The troops were starting to move out when Horrocks returned to the landing place. No one had missed him. They marched for several hours through thick piney woods. “Every now and then we passed some poor fellow who had given out and lay on the side of the road with his knapsack and musket alongside of him and then we passed portions of their kit … scores of blankets and overcoats, and boots and shoes.” Like Frederick Farr, these men had been left behind, “thrown away,” in Horrocks’s words, “in order to lighten the load.”46 Horrocks promised his parents that he would take the greatest care with his life; he expected to be fired at soon and was curious how it would feel. “When I have felt it, I will tell you how it is.”47

  Horrocks’s eagerness to encounter Confederate bullets was delayed by General Butler, who, instead of blocking the approaches to Richmond from the south and west, had become diverted by the nonexistent need to build fortifications and trenches, giving the Confederates enough time to insert General Beauregard’s small force of 18,000 men between the Union Army of the James and the capital. Butler’s failure to reach Richmond meant that Grant would be setting his spring campaign into motion with his plan damaged from the outset.

  The Army of the Potomac began moving on May 4. If Grant’s ultimate objective was to reach Richmond, Lee’s was just as straightforward: to hold down the enemy long enough to convince the Northern public to vote for a pro-peace president in the November election. He was relieved when his scouts confirmed that the Federals had crossed the Rapidan River and were marching along the Germanna Plank Road. The route Grant had chosen passed through the Wilderness, whose dense wasteland had helped to give the Confederates their victory at the Battle
of Chancellorsville in 1863.

  Instead of marching quickly through the Wilderness, the Federal commanders took a leisurely pace, so that by midnight the advance of the army was still less than halfway through. In the darkness, there was many a startled yell as an accidental kick or stumble over a mound of leaves revealed human remains beneath. Many soldiers were too frightened to sleep that night, but not the new volunteer James Pendlebury, who lay down on the ground curled up like a dog. Pendlebury had made the beginner’s mistake of throwing away his knapsack during the hot and tiring march. “In throwing away the knapsack I also threw away my cartridge box,” he wrote. During the night, his captain “came and wakened me with his foot, and, handing me a cartridge box, said, ‘Here take that, and don’t ask any questions.’ He had stolen it from one of the other men because he was so fond of me.”48

  Pendlebury’s regiment was part of General Hancock’s II Corps, one of the first to enter the Wilderness on May 4. There was no possibility he would be able to hide from the fighting once it began. “This was my first battle and I can’t say that I was a brave man, for I wished I was at home,” he wrote in his memoir. “But after I had fired a few times I began to get accustomed to the work and soon I had no fear about me.” His baptism started at 4:00 P.M. on May 5. Lee had succeeded in placing two of his three corps inside the Wilderness even though General Longstreet was still a day’s march away. Forty thousand Confederates pitched into seventy thousand Federals. Just as Lee had hoped, the Union regiments lost their sense of direction, firing wildly into the trees and charging hither and thither. At sunset many soldiers had no idea where they were and resorted to lying behind improvised breastworks. There was nothing to see except the outlines of tree trunks. But the noises coming from the woods were terrifying. As at Chancellorsville, stray sparks lit the dry underbrush, and fires spread along the forest floor, burning everything in their path.