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

by Amanda Foreman

  3. The U.S. Capitol, Washington. Charles Dickens visited the capital in 1842 and thought the city had “Magnificent Intentions,” with “streets [a] mile long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants.” Fifteen years later, these intentions remained unfulfilled. A disagreement between the U.S. Federal government and a local landowner had stranded the unfinished Capitol building on top of a steep hill at the edge of town, facing the wrong way. The dome was finally completed on December 2, 1863.

  4. President Lincoln’s inauguration in front of the incomplete Capitol on March 4, 1861. In his inauguration speech, Lincoln tried to reassure the Southern states about his intentions toward slavery, but by then it was too late to stem the tide of secession: the war began six weeks later.

  5. The U.S. Senate. Here, on May 22, 1856, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina ambushed Senator Charles Sumner, who was sitting at his desk reading, and beat him with his cane. By Brooks’s own account, he struck Sumner thirty times before the cane splintered.

  6. President Abraham Lincoln (1809–65). Lincoln’s physical appearance astonished people. The British journalist William Howard Russell was introduced to him at around the time this photograph was taken in 1861: “There entered, with a shambling, loose, irregular, almost unsteady gait, a tall, lank, lean man, considerably over six feet in height, with stooping shoulders, long pendulous arms, terminating in hands of extraordinary dimensions which, however, were far exceeded in proportion by his feet. He was dressed in an ill-fitting wrinkled suit of black, which put one in mind of an undertaker’s uniform at a funeral.” By the end of the war, the world saw past Lincoln’s appearance to his humanity and magnanimity toward his foes.

  7. William Seward (1801–72), U.S. secretary of state, Lincoln’s rival for power before the war but who became his greatest ally during it. Seward’s frequent statements that Canada would one day belong to the United States, coupled with his unscrupulous playing to American Anglophobia, made him the most detested U.S. politician in Britain.

  8. London, view of the Royal Exchange. In 1861, Britain was the richest nation on earth. A trading country par excellence, its exports in the 1860s counted for a quarter of the world’s manufactured goods.

  9. Cambridge House, Piccadilly, where Prime Minister Lord Palmerston lived from 1855 to 1865. Sir George Trevelyan wrote of it: “Past the wall which screens the mansion / Hallowed by a mighty shade / Where the cards were cut and shuffled / When the game of state was played.”

  10. The chamber of the House of Commons. The pro-Northern faction of MPs led by William Forster and John Bright successfully prevented all attempts by pro-Southern MPs to persuade the house to vote in favor of recognizing Southern independence.

  11. Lord John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1792–1878), foreign secretary. A cultured and intellectual man, but an abrasive politician, Russell held thirteen political offices during his long career in politics and was twice prime minister. He and Palmerston were referred to by Queen Victoria as “those two dreadful old men.”

  12. Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865), prime minister, popularly known as “Lord Cupid” when young and “Pam” when an elder statesman. His dislike of the United States went back to the War of 1812, when he was secretary at war, and was exacerbated by America’s protection of the slave trade. Palmerston’s brinkmanship was successful during the Trent crisis of 1861, but his bluff was called three years later by the Germans.

  13. Charles Sumner (1811–74), senator for Massachusetts. Until the Civil War, he was the most revered U.S. politician in Britain on account of his unflinching campaigns to abolish slavery and win equal rights for blacks.

  14. Frederick Douglass (1818–95), writer, orator, and leading abolitionist in America. Douglass campaigned in Britain several times, and in 1859 briefly fled to London to avoid persecution after the radical abolitionist John Brown tried to start a slave uprising by raiding the armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

  15. Gideon Welles (1802–78), U.S. secretary of the Navy. Nicknamed “Father Neptune” by Lincoln because of his flowing beard, Welles was a lawyer and journalist with no maritime experience before his appointment. His loathing for William Seward, the secretary of state, interfered with their ability to work together.

  16. Salmon P. Chase (1803–73), U.S. secretary of the treasury. An effective treasurer who established a national banking system and paper currency—the greenback—he was also a schemer who tried to engineer the dismissal of William Seward in 1862 and the removal of President Lincoln from the Republican ticket in 1864.

  17. General George McClellan (1825–65), commander of the U.S. Army of the Potomac, 1861–62. He was removed by President Lincoln after the Battle of Antietam for being overly passive and cautious.

  18. The 69th New York Irish Regiment, the “Fighting 69th,” one of the five Irish-dominated regiments that made up the Irish Brigade of the Union Army of the Potomac. The regiment suffered disproportionate losses at the Battle of Fredericksburg.

  19. U.S. General William Sherman (1820–91). Sherman began the war in command of a single brigade (which included the “Fighting 69th”), but he so distinguished himself that General Grant gave him control over all the Union armies west of Virginia. Sherman implemented a policy of total war against the South during his march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, in 1864.

  20. William Howard Russell (1820–1907). “Russell of the Crimea” was the most famous journalist in the world when he arrived in the North to cover the Civil War. His unbiased reports for The Times were considered insufficiently favorable to the North and in 1862 he was harassed into leaving the country.

  21. Edward Dicey (1832–1911), pro-Northern English journalist for the Spectator. He published an account of his travels after his return home.

  22. The Hon. Francis Lawley (1825–1901), pro-Southern British journalist for The Times. The war gave Lawley a second chance to redeem himself after his gambling debts forced him into exile. He became so enamored with the South that he willingly misrepresented events to show the Confederacy in a better light.

  23. Frank Vizetelly (1830–83), British war artist and pro-Southern correspondent for the Illustrated London News. “He was a big, florid, red-bearded Bohemian,” recalled an admirer, “who could and would do anything to entertain a circle.”

  24. Confederate President Jefferson Davis (1808–89). Davis seemed an ideal choice for the Confederate presidency, having served as a senator for Mississippi and as secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce, but he was notoriously thin-skinned and incapable of delegating. Davis was shocked and disappointed when Britain failed to recognize Southern independence.

  25. The inauguration of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 18, 1861. Davis used his speech to prepare Southerners for war: “We have entered upon the career of independence and it must be inflexibly pursued.”

  26. The Confederate White House, Richmond, Virginia. The Davis family lived here from 1861 to 1865. Tragedy struck in 1864 when five-year-old Joe Davis was killed by a fall from a first-floor balcony.

  27. Richmond, Virginia, during the war. Known as the “City of Seven Hills,” it was named after Richmond in London because the view of the James River from its highest hill reminded the city’s founder, William Byrd, of the Thames from Richmond Hill.

  28. General Robert E. Lee (1807–70), Confederate commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. The South’s most famous general was admired by both sides during the war, and British travelers were invariably starstruck when introduced to him. Lieutenant-Colonel Garnet Wolseley of the British Army wrote that Lee was “a splendid specimen of an English gentleman, with one of the most rarely handsome faces I ever saw.… You only have to be in his society for a very brief period to be convinced that whatever he says may be implicitly relied upon.”

  29. General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (1824–1863), Confederate commander of the famous Stonewall Brigade, who earned his nickname du
ring the First Battle of Bull Run. He went on to form a successful partnership with Lee until his death from friendly fire at Chancellorsville in 1863. On hearing that Jackson’s arm had been amputated, Lee replied: “He has lost his left arm; but I have lost my right arm.”

  30. Arlington, Virginia, plantation home of General Robert E. Lee before the war, seized by the Union in 1861.

  31. General Josiah Gorgas (1818–83), Confederate chief of ordnance. He kept Southern armies supplied with arms throughout the war despite the blockade and an immense shortage of raw materials.

  32. Judah P. Benjamin (1811–84), Confederate secretary of state. Known as “Jefferson’s Pet Jew,” Benjamin served Davis unquestioningly and even took the blame for mistakes that were not his own. The blockade prevented him from directing an effective or timely foreign policy.

  33. Stephen Mallory (1817–73), Confederate secretary of the navy, one of the longest-serving members of President Davis’s Cabinet. Mallory’s strategy of building the Confederate navy in Great Britain almost brought the Northern and British governments to war.

  34. James Dunwoody Bulloch (1823–1901) (left), with his half-brother Irvine. Bulloch was the Confederacy’s chief secret agent in England and architect of the program to build Confederate commerce raiders in Britain and France. “He is the most dangerous man the South have here and fully up to his business,” claimed the head of the U.S. secret service in Europe.

  35. Henry Hotze (1833–97). Hotze was sent to England to be the chief Confederate propagandist in Europe and founded the pro-Southern journal Index. He was an expert at influencing public opinion: an editor “should see with the eyes of the public, and hear with the ears of the public, and yet have eyes and ears of his own.”

  36. James Murray Mason (1798–1871), Confederate commissioner in England. Mason and his fellow commissioner John Slidell were sailing to Europe to take up their posts when their ship, the British mail packet Trent, was stopped by Captain Wilkes of the U.S. Navy. Britain demanded an apology for the “attack” on her mail ship and the release of the two men. The Trent affair very nearly took the United States and Britain to war.

  37. John Slidell (1793–1871), Confederate commissioner in France. “He is an excellent judge of mankind, adroit, persevering, and subtle, full of device and fond of intrigue,” wrote William Howard Russell. If Slidell were shut up in a dungeon, he “would conspire with the mice against the cat rather than not conspire at all.”

  38. The shipyard of the Laird brothers, Liverpool, builders of the CSS Alabama. The cotton trade had helped to make Liverpool rich and had given it deep ties with the South. The majority of blockade runners sailed from Liverpool, and Fraser, Trenholm, the Confederacy’s bankers, had their offices at 10 Rumford Place. Lord Russell complained that the city was “addicted to Southern proclivities, foreign slave trade, and domestic bribery.”

  39. Federal troops marching through New Orleans. Before the war, New Orleans was the fourth largest city in the country and the South’s premiere port. It also had the largest immigrant population of the South.

  40. Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (1835–1915) (second from the right), the only son of Charles Francis Adams to volunteer during the war, who rose from 1st lieutenant of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry in 1861 to colonel of the 5th Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry in 1865 and led one of the first colored regiments through Richmond after its fall on April 3, 1865.

  41. Henry Adams (1838–1918). Henry accompanied his father, Charles Francis Adams, to London as his private secretary and later recorded his isolation and loneliness in The Education of Henry Adams. “Every young diplomat,” he wrote, “and most of the old ones, felt awkward in an English house from a certainty that they were not precisely wanted there, and a possibility that they might be told so.”

  42. Charles Francis Adams (1807–86), U.S. minister to Great Britain. Adams was the son and grandson of U.S. ministers and presidents. Though he was dutiful, honest, and hardworking, his family legacy cast a shadow over his entire life. “Charles Francis Adams naturally looked on all British [statesmen] as enemies,” wrote Henry Adams.

  43. Henry Feilden (1838–1921), British volunteer in the Confederate army. He was surprised to discover that he was not the only Englishman to offer his services to the South: “A good number have, prior to this, come out to this country,” he wrote in 1863, “and I believe have been obliged to serve as volunteers in the Army or on some General’s staff until they have proved themselves fit for something.”

  44. Francis Dawson (1840–89), British volunteer in the Confederate navy and subsequently the Confederate army. “My idea simply was to go to the South, do my duty there as well as I might, and return home to England.” In fact, Dawson stayed in the South after the war and became editor of the Charleston News and Courier.

  45. A colored regiment poses for the camera. By the end of the war, there were more than 180,000 colored troops serving in the Union army. Their entry into the U.S. Army was slow and difficult and did not begin until Congress passed an act in July of 1862 that allowed them to enlist.

  46. Group of “contrabands,” Cumberland Landing, Virginia. Escaped slaves were not sent back to the South because they were classed as “contraband of war,” meaning they were part of the Southern war effort and were therefore liable for “confiscation.” Thousands of slaves from Virginia fled to shanty towns around the outskirts of Washington.

  47. A slave auction house in Atlanta, Georgia.

  48. The Rohrbach Bridge. During the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, the bridge became known as Burnside’s Bridge after U.S. General Burnside ordered his men to cross it while being fired upon by the Confederates from the bluffs above the river.

  49. The dead after the slaughter at Antietam. The battle ended in a draw and was the single bloodiest day of the war. The two sides combined suffered more than 25,000 casualties.

  50. President Lincoln and U.S. General McClellan meeting after the Battle of Antietam. Lincoln was furious with McClellan for not pursuing General Lee and crushing the Confederate army while it was in retreat.

  51. General Ambrose Burnside (1824–81), commander of the U.S. Army of the Potomac for less than three months. His exuberant facial hair allegedly gave rise to the term “sideburns.”

  52. Fredericksburg. Confederate General Robert E. Lee won a stunning victory over Burnside at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862. Burnside ordered the Federal soldiers to charge across a plain overlooked by a seven-mile range of wooded hills filled with Confederate artillery. When asked if any more guns were needed, the artillery officer in charge replied, “A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it.”

  53. Marye’s Heights. The famous stone wall along the heights of Fredericksburg gave the Confederates perfect protection while they fired upon the Federals below. Burnside sustained 12,600 casualties to Lee’s 5,000.

  54. Admiral Raphael Semmes (1809–77), who commanded two commerce raiders of the Confederate navy. His exploits on CSS Alabama inspired the Junior United Service Club of Great Britain to present him with a “magnificent sword, which had been manufactured to their order in the city of London, with suitable naval and Southern devices.”

  55. Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806–73), Confederate navy, nicknamed “pathfinder of the seas” for his study of the ocean currents, which made travel easier and faster. Maury was sent to England during the war to purchase commerce raiders for the Confederate navy.

  56. Lieutenant James Morgan (1845–1928), Confederate navy, friend and future brother-in-law of the English Confederate volunteer Francis Dawson. Morgan served on Commander Maury’s commerce raider CSS Georgia, whose cruise ended in madness and savagery after only six months at sea.

  57. Colonel John Fitzroy De Courcy (1821–90), 31st Baron Kingsale (left), British volunteer in the Union army and colonel of the 16th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. In 1863 De Courcy captured the Cumberland Gap from the Confederates with a force less than half the size o
f his opponents by tricking them into believing they were surrounded by a huge army.

  58. Colonel Sir Percy Wyndham (1833–79), British volunteer in the Union army, knighted by King Victor Emmanuel for his services during the Garibaldi campaign to liberate southern Italy, and colonel of the 1st New Jersey Cavaliers. Sir Percy only ever twiddled his moustache when angry.