65. Wallace and Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, vol. 2, June 25, 1861, p. 834.
66. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, June 18, 1861.
67. Wendy Hinde, Richard Cobden (New Haven, 1987), p. 305. “As for the separation of the States,” he wrote, “if I were a citizen of a free state, I should vote with both hands for a dissolution of partnership with the slave states.”
68. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 163, col. 192, May 28, 1861.
69. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, vol. 1, pp. 13–15, Charles Francis Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., June 21, 1861.
70. J.A.V. Chapple and Arthur Pollard (eds.), The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell (New York, 1997), pp. 654–58, Gaskell to Charles Elliot Norton, June 10, 1861.
71. Belle Becker Sideman and Lillian Friedman (eds.), Europe Looks at the Civil War (New York, 1960), p. 62, Darwin to Asa Gray, June 5, 1861.
72. Clare Taylor, Britain and American Abolitionists: An Episode in Transatlantic Understanding (Edinburgh, 1974), p. 407, R. D. Webb, July 16, 1861.
73. February 2, 1861. But far more inflammatory had been Seward’s recent note, sent to all foreign governments, asking them to refuse asylum to escaped slaves.
74. Englishwoman’s Journal, June 1861.
75. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 202, Yancey, Rost, and Mann to Toombs, July 15, 1861.
76. William L. Yancey Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Yancey to R. Chapman, July 3, 1861.
Chapter 5: The Rebel Yell
1. Martin Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War: Private Diary and Letters, 1861–1862 (Athens, Ga., 1992), p. 58, May 21, 1861.
2. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Philadelphia, 1988), ed. Eugene H. Berwanger, p. 172, June 1, 1861.
3. Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War, p. 59, May 24, 1861.
4. Ibid., p. 58, May 25, 1861.
5. Out of a total population of 168,675, 66,268 were immigrants.
6. Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War, p. 62, May 29, 1861.
7. The Times, May 22, 1861. For a fascinating discussion on the ethnic components of Louisiana’s regiments, see Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill, N.C., repr. 2001), pp. 100–113.
8. PRO FO5/788, f. 171, Mure to Lord John Russell, July 9, 1861.
9. Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 166, May 27, 1861.
10. William Watson, Life in the Confederate Army: Being the Observations and Experiences of an Alien in the South During the Civil War (London, 1887; repr. Baton Rouge, La., 1995), pp. 122, 397.
11. Pembrokeshire RO, HDX/559/52, William Benyon to brother Thomas in Wales, May 15, 1861.
12. Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr. (ed.), Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Confederate (Baton Rouge, La., 2000), p. 95.
13. The other problem for Mure was the harassment of black British subjects. He arranged for a black Crimean War veteran to be spirited out of the city, and paid $17.40 from consulate funds to secure the release of Alexander White, another black British subject languishing in jail. PRO FO5/788, f. 171, Mure to Lord John Russell, July 9, 1861. Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 171, June 1, 1861.
14. Mary Sophia Hill, A British Subject’s Recollections of the Confederacy (Baltimore, 1875), p. 7, June 8, 1861.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., p. 60.
17. Ibid., p. 8, June 20, 1861.
18. Columbia University, Blackwell MSS, Elizabeth Blackwell to Barbara Bodichon, April 23, 1861.
19. William Quentin Maxwell, Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel (New York, 1956), p. 6.
20. Ibid., p. 8.
21. Columbia University, Blackwell MSS, Elizabeth Blackwell to Barbara Bodichon, June 6, 1861.
22. Ibid.
23. Dorothy Clarke Wilson, Lone Woman (Boston, 1970), p. 388.
24. Columbia University, Blackwell MSS, Elizabeth Blackwell to Barbara Bodichon, June 6, 1861.
25. Wellcome Institute, Verney MS 8999/24, Florence Nightingale to Sir Henry Verney, June 11, 1861.
26. Columbia University, Blackwell MSS, Elizabeth Blackwell to Barbara Bodichon, June 6, 1861.
27. Henri Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years in the Secret Service: The Recollections of a Spy (16th edn., London, 1893), p. 10.
28. PRO FO282/6, ff. 350–51, d. 20, Archibald to Lord Lyons, April 29, 1861.
29. PRO 33/22/39, f. 71, Archibald to Lord John Russell, April 24, 1861.
30. PRO FO282/6, ff. 335–46, Archibald to Lord John Russell, April 24, 1861.
31. Some, like Mr. Murphy from Petersfield, England, were running away from debts, wives, and other burdens. His wife tried everything to locate him, even writing to President Lincoln to ask “Your Majesty” for help since “myself and dear baby are starving.… Should he be with any of your magistys [sic] regiments will you send the word.” NARA, RG94, entry 416, box 47, 1861 E–K, S. 396, Mrs. E Murphy to President Lincoln, August 29, 1861.
32. Corcoran’s insubordination led to his arrest and appearance before a court martial. He was in limbo, still under arrest but with no trial in sight, until the Battle of Fort Sumter. Corcoran immediately offered the services of the 69th. This posed an uncomfortable dilemma for the authorities until Governor Morgan issued a pardon and the charges against Corcoran could be dismissed.
33. Richard Demeter, The Fighting 69th: A History (Pasadena, Calif., 2002), p. 59. The 69th’s flag boldly proclaimed the allegiance of its members. Made of green cloth, at the top was the Fenian symbol of the sunburst, in the middle a golden harp, and along the bottom a wreath of shamrocks.
34. BL Add. MS 415670, f. 214, Herbert to mother, July 18, 1861.
35. Wiltshire and Swindon RO, 2536/10, Edward Best to Aunt Sophie, May 10, 1861.
36. PRO FO282/8, ff. 22–24, Edward Archibald to Lord John Russell, April 26, 1861.
37. The best history of the British origins of the 36th New York Volunteers can be found at http://www.conversantcomm.pl/36thNY/History2.htm.
38. Boston Herald, April 20, 1861, p. 4, col. 1.
39. Albion, May 25, 1861.
40. New-York Historical Society, Narrative of Ebenezer Wells (c. 1881), n.pp., c. June 2, 1861.
41. Ibid.
42. Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 376.
43. Roxbury City Gazette, June 27, 1861, p. 2.
44. Illustrated London News, July 6, 1861, p. 22.
45. James M. Perry, A Bohemian Brigade: The Civil War Correspondents (Hoboken, N.J., 2000), p. 190.
46. Illustrated London News, August 3, 1861, p. 121.
47. Ibid., July 6, 1861, p. 22.
48. Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War, p. 74, Russell to J. C. Bancroft Davis, June 22, 1861.
49. Russell, My Diary North and South (London, 1863), p. 377. Berwanger’s 1988 abridged edition does not include this observation.
50. Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War, p. 80, Diary, July 4, 1861.
51. Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Berwanger, p. 429.
52. Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War, p. 79, Diary, July 3, 1861.
53. Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Berwanger, p. 227.
54. W. C. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 1, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Charles Francis Adams, July 2, 1861.
55. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (New York, 2005), p. 364.
56. PRO 30/22/35, Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, July 20, 1861.
57. Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, 4 vols.; vol. 1: The Improvised War, 1861–1862 (New York, 1959), p. 214.
58. William Mark McKnight, Blue Bonnets o’er the Border: The 79th New York Cameron Highlanders (Shippensburg, Pa., 1998), p. 23.
59. Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Berwanger, p. 240, July 13, 1861. He also doubted that any army could reconquer so vast a territory as the South. “It is one thing,” he opined in The Times, “to drive the rebels from the south bank
of the Potomac, or even to occupy Richmond, but another to reduce and hold in permanent subjection a tract of country nearly as large as Russia.” The Times, July 18, 1861.
60. John Bakeless, Spies of the Confederacy (New York, 1970), p. 10.
61. The value of her work has since been questioned, but there is no doubt that she was able to send advance warning to General Beauregard to prepare for the imminent arrival of the Federal army in Virginia. Edwin Fishel, The Secret War for the Union (New York, 1996), p. 59.
62. Hill, A British Subject’s Recollections of the Confederacy, p. 8, July 4, 1861.
63. Russell, My Diary North and South (London, 1863), p. 438. Berwanger’s 1988 abridged edition does not include this exchange.
64. Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Berwanger, p. 266.
65. Ibid.
66. The Times, August 6, 1861.
67. Illustrated London News, August 10, 1861, pp. 143–45.
68. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (London, 1990), p. 342.
69. McKnight, Blue Bonnets o’er the Border, p. 27.
70. Ibid., p. 28.
71. Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Berwanger, p. 268.
72. New-York Historical Society, Narrative of Ebenezer Wells.
73. The Times, August 6, 1861.
74. Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Berwanger, p. 277.
75. Hill, A British Subject’s Recollections of the Confederacy, p. 10.
Chapter 6: War by Other Means
1. The Times, August 6, 1861.
2. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Eugene H. Berwanger (New York, 1988), p. 278.
3. Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, 4 vols; vol. 1: The Improvised War, 1861–1862 (New York, 1959), p. 221.
4. The Confederates suffered 400 killed and 1,600 wounded, and the Federals 625 killed, 950 wounded, and 1,200 captured. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (London, 1988), p. 347.
5. James McPherson, Tried by War (New York, 2008), p. 41.
6. New-York Historical Society, Narrative of Ebenezer Wells (c. 1881), n.pp., August 15, 1861.
7. Martin Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War: Private Diary and Letters, 1861–1862 (Athens, Ga., 1992), p. 110, August 26, 1861.
8. Camille Ferri Pisani, Prince Napoleon in America, trans. Georges Joyaux, (Bloomington, Ind., 1959), p. 100.
9. Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War, p. 100, August 7, 1861.
10. West Sussex RO, Lyons MSS, Box 299, August 5, 1861.
11. Pisani, Prince Napoleon in America, p. 113.
12. Ibid., p. 130.
13. Jeff Kinard, Lafayette of the South (College Station, Tex., 2001), p. 19.
14. PRO 30/22/35, Lord Lyons to Lord Russell, September 6, 1861. Bunch had been entrusted with secret negotiations between the South and Britain and France to end privateering. This too was exposed in the diplomatic bag.
15. Another piece of bad luck was Robert Mure’s surname—the same as the consul’s in New Orleans. U.S. newspapers erroneously claimed that the two men were related, which made it look as though the British consuls in the South were in cahoots with one another against the North.
16. West Sussex RO, Lyons MSS, Box 299, Lord Lyons to sister, August 23, 1861.
17. Alan Hankinson, Man of Wars: William Howard Russell of “The Times,” 1820–1907 (London, 1982), p. 170.
18. Russell, My Diary North and South, pp. 301, 305.
19. The letter was purportedly from an English soldier, R. Young Atkins, “late of the Garibaldi Brigade,” who fought at Bull Run. The real Atkins was from Cork, his name was Richard Goring, and whether he wrote any of the rubbish in the letter remains doubtful.
20. C. Vann Woodward (ed.), Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven, 1981), p. 159, August 23, 1861.
21. Brian Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, 2 vols. (Montreal, 1974, 1980), vol. 1, p. 154. It was a coincidence that John Bright broke his public silence about the Civil War just three days before the news of Bull Run. Neither the timing nor his views found favor with the voters of Rochdale and the Radical candidate lost the election.
22. Stanley Morison, The Times: The History of The Times; The Tradition Established, 1841–84 (London, 1939), p. 367.
23. Durham University, General Charles Grey MSS, GRE/D/VI/6, General Grey to 3rd Earl Grey, August 31, 1861.
24. Susan St. John Mildmay and Herbert St. John Mildmay (eds.), John Lothrop Motley and His Family: Further Letters and Records (London, 1910), p. 112.
25. BL Add. MS 415670, f. 216, George Henry Herbert to Jack, October 12, 1861.
26. He had allowed his mind to wander during drill practice. Unfortunately, wrote the regimental historian, when the order to march was given he “failed to move, and as a consequence the regiment ‘stood fast’ while all the other regiments moved off. For an instant the General seemed paralyzed with astonishment.” He then bellowed at the top of his voice, “ ‘Move! Move! For God’s sake, you little bandy-legged man, move!’ Herbert moved.” When the practice was over, five hundred men turned in Herbert’s direction and shouted in unison, “Move! Move, you little bandy-legged man!” Matthew J. Graham, The Ninth Regiment New York Volunteers (Lancaster, Ohio, repr. 1997), p. 66.
27. BL Add. MS 415670, f. 216, Herbert to Jack, July 18, 1861.
28. Sarah Forbes Hughes (ed.), Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, 2 vols. (Boston, 1900), vol. 1, pp. 234–35, Charles Francis Adams to J. M. Forbes, August 30, 1861.
29. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vol. 76, August 6, 1861.
30. Deborah Logan (ed.), The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau, 5 vols. (London, 2007), vol. 4, p. 283, Martineau to Henry Reeve, July 28, 1861.
31. Morning Star, July 15, 1861.
32. Letters, Speeches, and Addresses of August Belmont (n.p., 1890), p. 77, Belmont to Seward, July 30, 1861.
33. Illustrated London News, August 10, 1861.
34. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 247, Lord Russell to Yancey, Rost, and Mann, August 24, 1861.
35. James D. Richardson (ed.), A Compilation of Messages and Papers of the Confederacy Including the Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Nashville, Tenn., 1905), vol. 2, p. 53, Yancey and Mann to Robert Toombs, August 1, 1861.
36. Charles McCaskill, “An Estimate of Edwin DeLeon’s Report of His Service to the Confederacy,” MA thesis, University of South Carolina, 1950, p. 24.
37. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 233, Mann to Toombs, August 3, 1861. Mann continued: “The modus operandi would be this: That you should employ a strictly trustworthy individual to prepare a short statement of the most important occurrences, and transmit it per Cunard steamer to us, under cover to ‘M’Iver, agent Cunard Packets, Queenstown, Ireland.’ Reuter will give him directions to telegraph the contents to us the moment the steamer touches at that place. If it were deemed important to communicate twice a week, then a dispatch might be sent to ‘Joseph Sharpe,’ Southampton, England.”
38. Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1948, 1949), vol. 2, pp. 868–69, August 26, 1861.
39. NARA, M.T-396, roll 4, vol. 4, U.S. consul in Leith to Seward, August 29, 1861.
40. For example, Edward Anderson complained, “I called last night on Mr. Yancey to protest against his recommendation of English adventurers for appointment in the Confederate Army. The case in point was that of a young man who for some days had been hanging around my quarters seeking to get a recommendation to the authorities in Richmond, and who from all I could gather was an unprincipled trifling fellow. I had refused to endorse him and he went from me to Yancey who, without any knowledge whatever of the man, gave him letters to the Secy of War which procured him employment as an officer. I subsequently learned that this fellow turned out a Yankee spy.” W. S. Hoole, Confederate Foreign Agent: The European Diary of Major Edward C. Anderson (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1976), pp. 43–44, August
7, 1861.
41. Joseph A. Fry, Henry S. Sanford: Diplomacy and Business in Nineteenth-Century America (Reno, Nev., 1982), p. 50.
42. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 318.
43. Frank J. Merli, Great Britain and the Confederate Navy (Bloomington, Ind., 1965), p. 17.
44. R. I. Lester, Confederate Financing and Purchasing in Great Britain (Charlottesville, Va., 1975), p. 148.
45. James D. Bulloch, The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe, 2 vols. (New York, 1884), vol. 1, p. 32.
46. McCaskill, “An Estimate of Edwin DeLeon’s Report of His Service to the Confederacy,” p. 22.
47. At 10 Rumford Place.
48. David Hepburn Milton, Lincoln’s Spymaster: Thomas Haines Dudley and the Liverpool Network (Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2003), p. 29.
49. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 2, pp. 83–87, James Bulloch to Mallory, August 18, 1861.
50. Fry, Henry S. Sanford, p. 37.
51. Harriet Chappell Owsley, “Henry Shelton Sanford and Federal Surveillance Abroad, 1861–1865,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 48 (Sept. 1961), p. 212.
52. Ibid., pp. 212–13.
53. Anderson never told Huse that his original mission had been to report on the latter’s operations and, if necessary, send him home. Huse’s determination to beat out Federal competition looked like reckless spending to the Confederate authorities, who had no idea of the obstacles impeding their agent. Some even suspected him of harboring Union sympathies because he did not hate all Northerners. But after three weeks’ acquaintance Anderson was able to report that Huse’s only defect was that he sometimes lacked discretion.
54. Neill F. Sanders, “Consul, Commander and Minister: A New Perspective on the Queenstown Incident,” Lincoln Herald, 81/2 (1979), pp. 102–15, at p. 103, Sanford to Seward, July 4, 1861.
55. Owsley, “Henry Shelton Sanford and Federal Surveillance Abroad,” p. 214.
56. Hoole, Confederate Foreign Agent, p. 64, September 26, 1861.
57. Ibid., p. 36, July 25, 1861.
58. Samuel Bernard Thompson, Confederate Purchasing Operations Abroad (Gloucester, Mass., 1973), p. 16.
59. Owsley, “Henry Shelton Sanford and Federal Surveillance Abroad,” p. 214.
60. Warren F. Spencer, The Confederate Navy in Europe (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1983), p. 18.
A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War Page 100
