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

by Amanda Foreman

  The secretary of the legation, Joseph Burnley, dismissed Burley as an undeserving case, just as he had done with the Chicago conspirator Colonel Grenfell. “If my cousin Charles would use his influence with Lord Lyons it might be of use to me,” Grenfell had written in December to the chief clerk of the family firm, Pascoe Grenfell and Co., in London, unaware that Lyons was about to return to England. “I cannot say more at present. I know not a soul here nor have I a friend.” He ended the note pathetically: “I leave it to you to inform my girls of my situation or not, just as you like.”39 Grenfell’s cousin, Charles Grenfell, MP, did ask for help from the Foreign Office, which in turn ordered Burnley to raise the case with Seward. The legation secretary doubted they could do anything for Grenfell, whose guilt was so obvious that “everything seems to militate against him,” but he asked the British consul in St. Louis, Mr. Wilkins, to make discreet inquiries.40 “You seem to be on such good terms with the Authorities,” he explained, “that I dare say you may be able to effect something privately when I should most likely fail officially.”41

  Grenfell’s former commanding officer, General Joseph Wheeler, later claimed that the Englishman was innocent of the charges. Of the more than one hundred Confederate conspirators who had been arrested in November, only eight were put on trial in January, and Grenfell was one of them. “The trial of your grandfather, you must recall,” Wheeler wrote to Grenfell’s family, “was a time when there was most extreme and bitter partisan feeling, and the officials had around them a number of spies who were dishonorable men in the extreme, and who would commit any perjury to secure convictions.”42 Grenfell was in the most trouble because of the way he had tried to deceive the war secretary, Edwin Stanton, and his treatment in prison was undoubtedly the harshest, but he made his predicament far worse by his arrogant behavior. One of Grenfell’s greatest weaknesses—the reason his life had been a catalogue of disappointments and bitter feelings—was his delusion that he was a prince among pygmies. He believed he was more intelligent than everyone else, braver, more principled, and certainly more deserving of special treatment. Occasionally, he impressed people with his bravado, but more often he turned them into inveterate foes. If the judge advocate had any animus against Grenfell before the trial, it was increased tenfold after Grenfell mocked him with a silly salute when stating his “not guilty” plea.

  But Grenfell’s British nationality would have worked against him even if he had been a model prisoner. Edwin Stanton wanted Britons in the Confederacy to suffer the same retribution as Southerners. Gideon Welles agreed and was disgusted with Seward’s reluctance to sanction the seizure of British property in Savannah. Stanton told Welles not to worry: Sherman was taking a robust approach toward British cotton merchants who were trying to protect their cotton by “asserting it had the British mark upon it.” Sherman told them in reply he had “found the British mark on every battle-field. The muskets, cartridges, caps, projectiles were all British and had the British mark upon them.”35.7 43

  There were only eight objections to the resolution when the U.S. Senate voted to rescind its trade treaty with Canada on January 12, 1865. Charles Sumner’s anti-British rhetoric was incomprehensible to his friends in England, particularly his slurs against Lord Russell, which were so outrageous that John Bright was forced into the unfamiliar posture of defending the foreign secretary’s integrity.44 But Sumner’s position did not seem unreasonable, or unjust, to a Northern public still terrified that there were arsonists and insurgents ready to strike without warning.

  When Davis’s envoy, Duncan Kenner, reached New York on February 6 after a hazardous trek through the back roads of Virginia and Maryland, he discovered that the slavery issue had been taken out of his hands. On January 21, the U.S. House of Representatives had finally voted—by 119 to 56—to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, thus abolishing slavery on American soil. The Confederate Congress, on the other hand, had voted against Davis’s proposal to arm the slaves. Kenner also learned that the two governments had engaged in halfhearted peace negotiations on February 3—known as the Hampton Roads Conference—which collapsed on the first day. These were all good reasons for him to give up, but he was determined to see the mission through to completion. He boarded the Southampton-bound America on February 11, posing as a Frenchman in order to confuse the detectives standing guard at the pier. Kenner believed the fate of the Confederacy lay in his hands: Wilmington was gone, Charleston was tottering, and Richmond was surrounded. But if Lord Palmerston could be persuaded that there was no longer any moral impediment to Southern recognition, Kenner still had faith that the combination of Britain’s navy and Confederate courage would win independence for the South.45

  * * *

  35.1 With great difficulty and expense, Jacob Thompson managed to send a message to Richmond using the latest techniques in photography. The message—a request for written evidence of Burley’s naval commission—was written in extralarge letters and photographed, and the negatives were reduced to the size of five thumbnails, which were then placed under the cloth covering of the messenger’s jacket buttons. “I (afterwards) met J. Davis at a dinner,” recalled the photographer. “I asked him if he remembered the button message, and he seemed much pleased to meet the author of it.” Stephen Mallory and Jefferson Davis both supplied the affidavits requested by Thompson. Davis claimed to have ordered the Philo Parsons expedition, and Mallory provided proof of Burley’s naval commission.

  35.2 Only one of the arsonists was caught and tried for the crime: Robert Cobb Kennedy, an Irishman, who was picked up by detectives in Detroit on December 29, 1864. He was tried in New York and sentenced to hang on March 25, 1865. Kennedy went to the gallows insisting that the plot was a legitimate act of war in retaliation for Northern atrocities, and that he had intended to destroy buildings rather than kill civilians.7

  35.3 Anti-British feeling reached new heights. In Washington, for example, two policemen ambushed Arthur Seymour, one of the junior assistant secretaries at the legation, beating him almost senseless. The two policemen—and the magistrate who acquitted them—were caught in a lie when they claimed that Seymour admitted in court he was drunk that evening. Seymour had actually just finished work and was on his way to dinner.

  35.4 Cleburne was the first Southern general to argue that the slaves should be promised their freedom if they fought in the army. On January 2, 1864, he wrote to General Joe Johnston: “Our country has already some friends in England and France, and there are strong motives to induce these nations to recognize and assist us, but they cannot assist us without helping slavery, and to do this would be in conflict with their policy for the last quarter of a century. England has paid hundreds of millions to emancipate her West India slaves and break up the slave trade. Could she now consistently spend her treasure to reinstate slavery in this country? But this barrier once removed, the sympathy and the interests of these and other nations will accord with our own, and we may expect from them both moral support and material aid. One thing is certain, as soon as the great sacrifice to independence is made and known in foreign countries there will be a complete change of front in our favor of the sympathies of the world.”20

  35.5 Kenner was the largest slave owner in the Confederate Congress, but this had not prevented him from trying to persuade Davis in early 1863 to ask Britain for recognition in return for gradual emancipation. Like General Patrick Cleburne, Kenner had realized that no British government would sully its antislavery record by recognizing the South while she remained a slave-owning nation. In 1863, when her fortunes were at the high-water mark, he believed the South could have made the offer from a position of strength and probably dictated her own terms.

  35.6 Jacob Thompson tried to obtain copies of their commissions, just as he had done Burley’s, but none of his messengers had succeeded in reaching Richmond.

  35.7 General Grant made a similar complaint to Seward, forwarding to him “specimens of fuses captured at Fort Fisher … and the statement of Col
. Tal P. Shaffner that the same were manufactured at the Woolwich Arsenal, England, an arsenal owned and run by the British Government.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  “Richmond Tomorrow”

  The truth cannot be hidden—A late success for Bulloch—Hysteria over Canada—Arrival of Davis’s envoy—A hard line—Lord Lyons retires (temporarily)

  Lord Lyons had been miserable for much of the journey home. Almost worse than the headaches was the persistent feeling that he had failed. He feared that he had ruined his prospects by leaving Washington and doubted that the relationship of mutual respect he had built laboriously between the legation and the State Department would survive his absence. Lyons’s former attachés were also anxious about their chief’s legacy undone. The “Buccaneers,” as they had once styled themselves, had complained constantly of overwork while they were there, but their new assignments made them miss the camaraderie of the legation. “When we were very jolly in the evening we always used to sing, ‘yonder lies the whiskey bottle empty on the shelf,’ ” sighed Malet.1

  Lyons looked so ravaged when he arrived at the Foreign Office on Christmas Eve 1864 that Lord Russell was startled. He promised Lyons that his post in Washington would remain open until either his health was restored or he chose to give it up of his own volition. This reassurance lifted a great weight off Lyons; for the first time in many weeks he did not feel as though he had thrown away his career in a moment of weakness. A few days after the interview, Lyons composed his final report on American affairs, and wrote letters of recommendation for his long-suffering staff. There was much he regretted about the war, but it had served a purpose, he told Russell. Amid all the horrors and iniquities “there appears to be one gleam of consolation,” he thought, for “slavery seems to be doomed.”2

  The Southern Independence Association was delighted that the South was finally coming around to Britain’s way of thinking, and they composed a congratulatory address to President Davis on his boldness. To many people, however, the idea seemed far-fetched: nothing but sheer desperation would make them relinquish “the services” of their slaves, Lord Palmerston told John Delane, the editor of The Times, “but one can hardly believe that the South [sic] men have been so pressed and exhausted.” Delane was inclined to agree, until he learned that General Sherman had reached the outskirts of Savannah. “The American news is a heavy blow to us as well as to the South. It has changed at once the whole face of things,” Delane wrote to his deputy editor on December 25. “I have told Chenery to write upon it.” The next day, he sent another note: “I am still sore vexed about Sherman, but Chenery did his best to attenuate the mischief.”3 James Spence also tried to play down the news, telling Lord Wharncliffe on January 5, 1865, to look out for his article in The Times: “You will find I do not attempt to deny the Federal success in Tennessee or the danger of Savannah, which I assume to be likely to fall [the news of Christmas Eve had not yet reached Britain], but I hope to show that public opinion overestimates the importance of the events and that upon the whole the year’s campaign is a failure on the part of the Federals.” Spence disliked writing such obvious propaganda for the South, “but then,” he reasoned, “it is at such a time—the hour of need—that a friend is of value. When the South is victorious they can do without one’s aid.”4

  The fall of Savannah was not the only disaster that James Spence was trying to present in a more favorable light. His Confederate prisoners’ bazaar had inspired the London office of the U.S. Sanitary Commission to publish a pamphlet on Southern prison conditions.5 Neither Spence nor Wharncliffe had stopped to consider whether highlighting the plight of Confederate prisoners might backfire if anyone queried the South’s own record, though their campaign had worked so well at first that Mrs. Adams asked Charles Francis Jr. whether it was official policy to mistreat Confederate prisoners.6 Lord Wharncliffe tried to calm the public outcry by forwarding letters to the press from English volunteers who had suffered in Federal prisons, but it was too late to reverse the damage.36.1 7 Families with relatives in Southern prisons, including Dr. Livingstone, began to insist that as British subjects they should be released at once under the prisoner exchange system.8 Another father with a missing son in the Union army, Thomas Smelt, wrote directly to Abraham Lincoln, begging him “as a parent from a parent, that my son may be sent back to me, he has surely fought well and suffered much for your cause and deserves so much.”9

  James Spence did not realize how badly the Southern cause had suffered until The Times began to turn down his propaganda articles without explanation. After being met with silence for more than a week Spence conceded that his influence with the paper was at an end. “I doubt if they will insert anything more on the subject,” he wrote to Lord Wharncliffe on January 16. “I see but one thing now that can save the South and that is arming the negroes. Tho, I have always expected they would do it, I am growing fearful lest they invited those fatal words—‘too late.’ ”10

  —

  James Bulloch did not accept that time had run out on the Confederacy, especially since—after the disappointments of the previous year—he was experiencing a late surge of success.11 The Ajax, one of two river steamers he had commissioned to defend the entrance to Wilmington, sailed from Glasgow undetected in the second week of January. “It is quite impossible to predict what may have transpired when you reach Nassau,” Bulloch told the captain of the vessel, Lieutenant John Low. “Should [Wilmington] have been taken by the enemy … you will then proceed with the ship to Charleston, SC.… You may find Charleston itself closed to you, in which case there will remain no port on the Atlantic coast of the Confederate States into which you can take the Ajax.” But even then Bulloch wanted Low to find a way to use the ship against the North: at the very least she could bring cotton out from Texas or Florida.12

  He was already thinking of weapons other than cruisers to send across the Atlantic. His two remaining blockade runners, for example, were useless for fighting but could easily be deployed as rocket launchers against fishing towns in New England.13 Bulloch had also managed to buy back one of the French ironclads that had been sold after the emperor ordered the secret construction program to end.36.2 The cruiser, which he had decided to christen the Stonewall, was coming from Copenhagen, and Bulloch had arranged for a ship with a crew and arms to meet her in neutral waters. After waiting two weeks for news that the transfer had taken place, Henry Hotze suggested to Bulloch on January 25 that they should go ahead and announce the existence of CSS Stonewall. It would, he argued, cause panic on the East Coast and force the U.S. Navy to send ironclads to New York, opening the way for the Stonewall when she reached Wilmington.14 Hotze’s Index had been heavily advertising the Shenandoah’s last known captures for that very reason, unaware that the raider was now anchored at Port Phillip Bay, four miles from Melbourne, bereft of coal and in serious need of refurbishment. The Australians were delighted to be front-row spectators for a change, and thousands were visiting the Bay in the hope that the notorious Captain Semmes of the Alabama was the new commander of the Shenandoah.15

  The diehards had no trouble accepting Hotze’s propaganda. His own staff believed him. John Thompson wrote in his diary: “Am told we shall soon hear something of importance. I think it refers to an ironclad from Europe to attack Boston and New York.”16 The shipping owner Alexander Collie ridiculed James Spence for being “blue.” “We might be prepared to hear of Wilmington and Charleston being captured, and of Richmond being evacuated,” Collie wrote to Wharncliffe on January 23, “but, in spite of it all, the South will wear the North out and gain its independence.” In the meantime, he was expecting his steamers to begin taking “three or four cargoes monthly for the next four months.”17

  The Stonewall was in greater danger than either Bulloch or Hotze knew. Her arrival at Quiberon Bay, on the south coast of Brittany, on January 24 was telegraphed to the U.S. minister in Paris. William Dayton was no longer in charge of the U.S. legation in France, having died under mysteriou
s circumstances in December; John Bigelow, the consul in Paris, had been promoted to his place. A man of far greater intelligence and vigor than Dayton, Bigelow almost succeeded in scuttling the mission by his protests to the French authorities. But one of the worst storms in recent memory ultimately achieved his work for him; on January 29, only a day after the Stonewall sailed from Quiberon, the ship’s bridge was smashed to pieces by giant waves. Unable to sail on to Wilmington, Captain Page took the damaged vessel to Ferrol, on the Spanish coast, and waited for repairs. Twenty-four hours later, Europe learned that the Federals had captured Wilmington’s only defense, Fort Fisher.

  “Glorious news reached us today,” Benjamin Moran wrote in his diary on January 30, 1865. “The rebels are tired and will come back [into the Union] soon.” Bulloch pressed on, however, and sent an engineer to Ferrol to oversee the Stonewall’s repairs. “The fall of Fort Fisher seriously deranges our plans for sending supplies, but all of us who are charged with such duties will speedily consult and make new and suitable arrangements,” he promised Mallory.18 Mason was also defiant, telling Benjamin that the Southerners in England approved of the Confederate Congress’s declaration on December 13, 1864, to fight on “at whatever cost or hazard.”19