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

by Amanda Foreman

  The empty Georgia crept out of Cherbourg on a moonless night and arrived in Liverpool on May 2. “She was a poor miserable little tin kettle of a craft, but I loved her,” wrote Lieutenant James Morgan. “My life, as the youngest of her officers, and the only one of my grade, had been very lonely, still she had been the only home I had known for thirteen months.”6 On his first night ashore he went to the theater; “as soon as my gray uniform was noticed a whisper went through the audience that the Alabama had arrived in the port. Someone proposed three cheers for the Alabama, and they were given with a will.”7 An evening of applause—and then only because of mistaken identity—was Morgan’s chief reward for the nine vessels captured by the Georgia. The ship was decommissioned on May 10. The crew assembled on the quarterdeck as the Confederate flag was lowered for the last time. “We bade good-bye to our shipmates,” wrote Morgan, who was more determined than ever to return home, “many of us never to meet again.”8 James Bulloch sold the Georgia for £15,000.29.2 It was not a bad sum, considering his options. He planned to purchase several more blockade runners with the money, hoping that the vessels would pay for themselves after a couple of runs or else be converted by Southern engineers into gunships.9

  Ill.50 The Confederate cruiser Georgia.

  The faithful William Schaw Lindsay, MP, wrote to James Mason after the Georgia’s sale begging him to return to England. The movement was adrift without him, he confided. Lindsay tried to instill a sense of urgency in his friend: “Matters seems to be coming to a crisis on the other side of the Atlantic … the question is quite ripe for fresh agitation, and from experience I find that that agitation must be started by a debate in Parliament.”10 The British government’s majorities in both houses were so slim that Palmerston was desperately casting about for allies. Two weeks later, Lindsay sent Mason stunning news. The prime minister had invited him to a private meeting on May 26 to discuss the wording of a resolution to offer mediation between the warring states. Lindsay never considered whether Palmerston might be trying to buy off the pro-Southern MPs in Parliament. “You should come here as soon after receipt of this letter as possible,” Lindsay begged Mason. Palmerston had even indicated he was open to a meeting with the Confederate commissioner, but Mason refused to come to London unless summoned by the prime minister himself.

  The Confederate commissioner’s obduracy was shaken by a letter from the Reverend Francis Tremlett, the vicar of St. Peter’s, Belsize Park. Tremlett reminded Mason that he had started the Society for Promoting the Cessation of Hostilities in America a few months before, and “as you were good enough to get us a good lift some little time since … I feel that you would naturally like to know what we have been doing with the money.” Mason hardly remembered Tremlett, although the vicar kept open house for any Confederate in need. Tremlett’s organization was not lobbying MPs and peers for Southern independence per se; the vicar knew that such activity would imply an acceptance of slavery. Instead, the Society presented itself as a religious body whose sole aims were peace and the revival of Lancashire’s cotton trade. Mason was astonished to learn that the Society was organizing a deputation to meet Lord Palmerston.11 He also discovered that Tremlett had been working with Commodore Matthew Maury for several months until illness had curtailed Maury’s activities. The vicar was intending to lead deputations to Russell as well as Palmerston; “of course I shall have enough to do to look up influential people to form the Deputation, but if I can’t find these, I will go even if I have to go alone,” he told Maury.12

  Mason left Paris within a day of receiving Tremlett’s letter and arrived in London on June 5. As soon as Palmerston learned of Mason’s presence, he knew that the Confederacy’s supporters in Parliament would not dare risk their chances of a pro-Southern resolution by voting with the Tories to bring down the government. He now strung them along, continuously requesting delays to Lindsay’s resolution for British mediation in the war. The Confederate lobby nervously discussed the import of this tactic and decided that the prime minister was waiting for news from Virginia. They were also reassured by Henry Hotze, who had heard from a source that the opposition was again considering its own motion for Southern recognition. “Indeed, I am satisfied that so general, almost universal, is popular sentiment in England with the South,” Mason wrote to Judah P. Benjamin on June 9, “the ministry, even if disposed to resist, would have to yield to the popular sentiment.”13

  During the second week of June, the reports from America seemed to confirm Mason’s optimism. He regularly called at Rose Greenhow’s lodgings in Mayfair to discuss the latest telegrams. “He agrees perfectly with me in considering the news excellent,” she recorded in her diary after they read in the press that Grant and Lee had clashed again on June 3, just south of Spotsylvania at a crossroads called Cold Harbor.14 According to the reports, seven thousand Federals had been killed in less than an hour while trying to drive the Confederates from their fortified trenches.29.3 Mason did not bother with Tremlett’s group after he learned about Grant’s setback even though Lord Russell had agreed to meet with the vicar’s “deputation.”

  The Confederates noted every utterance and passing remark that indicated a politician’s preference for one side or the other, while remaining blind to the obvious pressures squeezing the government. For the past six weeks a conference of nine European powers had been meeting in London to try to settle the dispute between Germany and Denmark over the sovereignty of Schleswig-Holstein, but Lord Russell’s efforts to impose a resolution were going so badly that Britain was suddenly looking less like a Great Power that could dictate the destiny of other nations than an inconsequential island nation. “A few feeble barks [by the Confederates] have been raised against us, but without much effect as far as I can see,” Henry Adams wrote airily to Charles Francis Jr. on June 10.16

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  The Alabama was spotted outside Cherbourg harbor on June 10, 1864, having spent six months in the Far East followed by a return visit to Cape Town. The ship looked battered and dirty. “Our bottom is in such a state that everything passes us,” Captain Semmes had written in his journal on May 21. “We are like a crippled hunter limping home from a long chase.”17 The last four months of her two-year voyage had pushed the vessel and her crew past endurance. The Alabama’s seams were opening; damp and mold had invaded every corner, including the magazine that housed Semmes’s dwindling supply of gunpowder. The repairs would take at least a month, provided he had the cooperation of the French, and he was worried that they were going to turn him away. “The last batch of newspapers captured were full of disasters,” Semmes wrote in his memoirs. “Might it not be, that, after all our trials and sacrifices, the cause for which we were struggling would be lost? … The thought was hard to bear.”18

  The French port admiral informed Semmes that he had made a mistake in choosing Cherbourg over Le Havre. Cherbourg was a naval station and subject to government oversight; Le Havre was a commercial port with many private docks where the Alabama could have settled without interference. The admiral could not allow Semmes to dry-dock his ship without permission from the emperor, who was enjoying a brief sojourn in the country. While they waited for the emperor’s return to Paris, USS Kearsarge sailed into view. (The American legation in Paris had alerted Captain Winslow to the arrival of the Alabama.) Although Captain Winslow led his crew in a rousing cheer when he announced they were going to fight the Alabama at last, he was feeling as exhausted as Semmes. “I find I have not the health that I had,” he wrote on June 13. “I am fast running down hill.”19

  “Here we are,” wrote Semmes’s English assistant surgeon, David Herbert Llewellyn, to one of his old colleagues at Charing Cross Hospital. “An enemy is outside. If she only stops long enough we go out and fight her. If I live, expect to see me in London shortly. If I die, give my best love to all who know me.”20 Semmes could have waited for the emperor’s permission to dry-dock, but he deliberately chose to fight the Kearsarge. “The two ships are so equally matched
that I do not feel at liberty to decline it,” Semmes wrote in his journal, ignoring the difference between the Kearsarge’s spruce condition and the Alabama’s dilapidated state.

  Accordingly, on Sunday morning, June 19th, between 9 and 10 o’clock [recalled Lieutenant John Kell], we weighed anchor and stood out of the western entrance of the harbor, the French iron-clad frigate Couronne following us. The day was bright and beautiful, with a light breeze blowing. Our men were neatly dressed, and our officers in full uniform. The report of our going out to fight the Kearsarge had been circulated and many persons from Paris and the surrounding countryside had come down to witness the engagement.21

  Seven miles beyond French waters, the Kearsarge floated quietly while Captain Winslow carried out the Sunday inspection of the ship and crew. The routine seemed no different from the week before, except that today the guns were loaded and, perched high above the deck, special lookouts were scanning the horizon.22 The Alabama sailed into view with a growing flotilla of spectator ships behind her. A band aboard one vessel played “Dixie”; on another the crew gave “three cheers for the Alabama.” In the few moments left before battle stations, Semmes made his final speech to the crew, telling them:

  Remember that you are in the English Channel, the theatre of so much of the naval glory of our race, and that the eyes of all Europe are at this moment, upon you. The flag that floats over you is that of a young Republic, who bids defiance to her enemies, whenever, and wherever found. Show the world you know how to uphold it!23

  When the two ships were a mile apart, they turned broadside to broadside and began firing at each other in classic dueling fashion. On the Alabama, Dr. Llewellyn was operating on a wounded sailor when a shell burst open the wardroom, sweeping the table and patient from under him.24 Two more shells struck the pivot gun, killing its crew. Just one of the Alabama’s guns scored a direct hit on the Kearsarge—a shell landed on the sternpost—but it failed to explode. The Kearsarge demolished the Alabama in less than an hour. Only when the vessel was clearly listing did Semmes give the order to abandon ship. Nine of the crew were dead; at least two dozen more lay wounded about the deck. Dr. Llewellyn came up to help load the worst injured onto a dinghy. The master’s mate, George Fullam, was ordered to row to the Kearsarge and request assistance. According to eyewitnesses, an uninjured sailor tried to leap into the dinghy but was held back by Llewellyn: “ ‘See,’ he said, ‘I want to save my life as much as you do, but let the wounded men be saved first.’ ” He refused the occupants’ offer to row him over with them to the Kearsarge. “ ‘We can make room for you,’ ” argued Fullam. “ ‘I will not peril the wounded men,’ was his reply.”25

  Once Captain Winslow accepted that the white flag was not a trick, he dispatched two boats to rescue the survivors before they were dragged under by the vortex swirling around the stricken ship. Two French boats also arrived to help, as did the Deerhound, an English pleasure yacht. They were unable to save seventeen of the crew, including two of the black sailors serving on board, nor Dr. Llewellyn, who was last seen clinging to two cartridge boxes.26 Captain Semmes was among the forty-two survivors rescued by the Deerhound. The Kearsarge picked up another seventy, three of whom died soon after being brought on deck. One of the French boats delivered its human cargo to the Kearsarge; the other headed to shore. But the owner of the Deerhound asked Semmes for directions, to which he managed to splutter “any part of Great Britain.” Captain Winslow was outraged when he realized that she was sailing toward England, but there was nothing he could do to prevent the Confederates’ escape.

  The Alabama’s crew received a heroes’ welcome on their arrival at Southampton. “One thing is very noticeable, that the destruction of the Alabama is much lamented by a majority of this people,” Consul Zebina Eastman remarked crossly to Seward. “The London Standard says, ‘Every TRUE Englishman will regret to learn that the gallant Alabama has gone to her last resting place.’ ”27

  The cabinet’s view regarding the Alabama’s demise was more practical. Lord Russell hoped that Adams would cease making claims for compensation, though he doubted the Northerners would be bought off that easily. Palmerston, as usual, asked what lessons could be learned for the navy: “The Fate of the Alabama certainly shews that the days of unprotected wooden ships are fast fading away, and it makes one rather uneasy about the fore and aft unprotected parts of the [iron-hulled, armor-plated warship HMS] Warrior,” he warned the Duke of Somerset.28

  Henry Adams was disgusted with the way the papers were “trying to make a sea-lion of this arrant humbug.”29 On June 24 an advertisement appeared in the Telegraph asking for contributions from army and navy officers to a fund to replace the sword lost by Semmes when the Alabama went down. The press interest was so great on both sides of the Channel, and the reports so detailed and numerous, that Édouard Manet was able to paint a depiction of the battle that persuaded people he had witnessed it himself.29.4 30 Captain Semmes and Lieutenant Kell recuperated at the Reverend Francis Tremlett’s vicarage while the papers debated the significance of the Alabama’s role in the war. In two years the cruiser had captured or destroyed a total of sixty-five U.S. ships, causing more than $5 million worth of losses to the Northern merchant marine trade. Had Britain behaved with propriety, was she blameless over the existence of the Alabama, asked several newspapers. The Duke of Argyll pressed the cabinet for an answer. “It will be found important to be able to say that we did our best to protest against the legitimacy of such proceedings,” he had warned shortly before the duel. Otherwise, “in the first war in which we are engaged, ‘Alabamas’ will certainly be fitted out against us from neutral ports.”31

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  When news of the Kearsarge’s victory reached Washington, Gideon Welles ordered the Navy Department to fly its largest Union flag. In Baltimore harbor, U.S. troopships sailing past HMS Phaeton hooted and chanted the Alabama’s name.32 Glad to have something other than casualty lists and homecoming parades to report, The New York Times discussed the sinking of the Alabama for several weeks.29.5

  The best that could be said for Grant in June was that he remained undaunted despite having lost 55,000 men since May. But the sheer fact he was still marching forward was vitally important for Northern morale in light of the humiliating end to General Banks’s Red River campaign. Lincoln’s ability to shield his friend did not extend to outright disaster, and Banks’s replacement to lead the XIX Corps, Major General Edward Canby, was appointed even before the defeated Federals arrived back in New Orleans.

  Banks retained his title of commander of the Department of the Gulf, but his role was purely administrative. General Canby began a complete reorganization of his army. Among the changes was the formation of a “marine brigade” under Colonel L.D.H. Currie, whose task was to guard the Mississippi River from guerrilla attacks.34 Dr. Charles Culverwell, however, chose to return to his family. May was the start of the sickly season, when swarms of mosquitoes rose like shimmering clouds out of the swamps. But the only assignment that would take him back to New York was escort duty for eleven soldiers who had become insane during the Red River campaign. Only seven survived the journey. Culverwell could cope no longer. Shortly afterward he resigned from the army and returned to England, never again to repeat the experiment of military life or indeed of being a doctor.29.6

  The return of General Banks to New Orleans coincided with Edward Lyulph Stanley’s arrival in the city. The Englishman was told that Banks had been laboring hard to improve the condition of freed slaves, having established nine military schools to teach literacy to the black recruits and ninety-five regular schools for black children.36 But Stanley quickly realized that the white population were putting up a fierce resistance to Banks’s reforms. “The whites here have been accustomed to maltreat the negroes without any notice being taken of it,” he observed to his family on May 17.37 He went to a supposedly well-run plantation—the same one visited by William Howard Russell in 1861 and the Marquis of Hartington in 1862—an
d thought it exposed the myth of “the contented slave.” He was appalled by the dirty state of their hovels, by their despair, and by their fear of him as a white man. “I am quite satisfied that [the plantation] is being very badly managed in the interest of the negro,” he declared.38

  Stanley doubted how much more Banks could achieve without the wholehearted support of his staff. One New Orleans resident admitted to Stanley that she preferred the certainty of Butler’s misrule to the arbitrary and capricious administration that now governed the lives of ordinary citizens. Banks had little control over his subordinates, she complained; rather than step in to curb abuses, “he was so undecided and would keep putting you off, and giving you no satisfactory answer.”39

  Mary Sophia Hill, the former British schoolteacher who had become a Confederate nurse after her twin brother, Sam, enlisted in the army, was one of the victims of General Banks’s poor administration. She had left the South after the Battle of Gettysburg to visit relatives in Britain. But on her return to New Orleans in the spring of 1864, she had found herself under increasing scrutiny from Federal officials. “Imagine how my English blood boiled with indignation at being treated like a criminal,” she complained to her brother on May 20. “I will never forget it [sic] to the Yankees—never; not that it would be possible for me to hold them in greater contempt than I do at present.”40

  Mary had attracted attention because she always seemed to have a letter or parcel to deliver to someone in the city. She received two visits from a stranger named Ellen Williams, who offered to convey any letters to the South since she was departing for Galveston. Ellen also tried to give her a note from Confederate general Dick Taylor addressed to a Mrs. Hill, which Mary refused to take: “I told her I was not Mrs. Hill and the letter was not for me.” But Mary injudiciously gave her three letters, including one for Sam. A few days later, on May 26, Mary came home to find a Captain Frost from the provost office waiting in the parlor. He bundled her into a cab and drove her to the women’s prison on Julia Street.