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

by Amanda Foreman

  61. The reality of the situation, however, was much more complicated than Moran or Dudley allowed. The U.S. consul in Dundee was probably closer to the mark when he wrote that it was more of a matter of who got to whom first. “I have reason to believe,” he told Seward on June 17, “that there are officials in HM govt that could be very easily induced to take service in the ranks of the U States or the so-called Confederate States quite indifferently.” NARA, M.T-200, roll 3, vol. 3, U.S. Consuls in Dundee, Consul J. B. Holderby to Seward, June 17, 1862.

  62. On May 1, 1862, Lord Russell told Lord Lyons that “separation would be best for the North as well as for the South … for the future welfare of the free, and for the future emancipation of the slave.” PRO FO/5/189.

  63. Philip Guedalla, Gladstone and Palmerston, Being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone, 1851–1865 (London, 1928), pp. 230–31.

  64. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 505–58, Hotze to Benjamin, August 6, 1862.

  65. George Douglas, Eighth Duke of Argyll (1823–1900): Autobiography and Memoirs, ed. the Dowager Duchess of Argyll, 2 vols. (London, 1906), vol. 2, p. 193, Argyll to Gladstone, September 2, 1862.

  66. David F. Krein, The Last Palmerston Government (Ames, Iowa, 1978), p. 65.

  67. Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, vol. 2, p. 112.

  68. Krein, The Last Palmerston Government, p. 66.

  69. New York Times, August 13, 1862.

  70. T. C. Pease and J. Randall (eds.), The Diary of Orville H. Browning, 1850–1881 (Springfield, Ill., 1925–31), p. 562, July 24, 1862.

  71. Charles P. Cullop, “An Unequal Duel: Union Recruiting in Ireland, 1863–1864,” Civil War History, 13 (1967), p. 104.

  72. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, vol. 2, p. 34, fn.

  73. Letters of Lord St. Maur and Lord Edward St. Maur, p. 250, n.d.

  74. David H. Donald, Lincoln (New York, 1995), p. 366.

  75. “The Journal of Robert Neve,” private collection, p. 53.

  76. Robert L. Kincaid, The Wilderness Road (Middlesboro, Ky., 1966), p. 246.

  77. Brian Holden Reid, Robert E. Lee (London, 2005), p. 106.

  78. John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, ed. Earl Schenck Miers (Urbana, Ill., 1958), pp. 95–96, 27, August 28, 1862.

  79. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, vol. 1, p. 177, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Adams, August 27, 1862.

  80. Edward G. Longacre, Jersey Cavaliers (Hightstown, N.J., 1992), p. 100.

  81. Captain W. D. L’Estrange, Under Fourteen Flags: The Remarkable True Story of a Victorian Soldier of Fortune (Newton Stewart, Wigtownshire, 1999), p. 80.

  82. George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865, ed. Allan Nevins (New York, 1962), p. 252, September 4, 1862.

  Chapter 13: Is Blood Thicker Than Water?

  1. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ed. Ernest Samuels (repr. Boston, 1975), p. 128.

  2. Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1948, 1949), vol. 2, p. 1068, September 9, 1862.

  3. Ibid., p. 1058, August 22, 1862.

  4. Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, p. 129.

  5. On September 2, the British ambassador in Paris, Lord Cowley, had heard that opinion in the cabinet was tilting “in favor of mediation in America,” and that if the emperor were to announce publicly what he was saying in private to the Confederates, England would probably go along with him. David F. Krein, The Last Palmerston Government (Ames, Iowa, 1978), p. 66.

  6. MPUS, p. 184, Charles Francis Adams to William Henry Seward, September 4, 1862.

  7. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 524, Ambrose Dudley Mann to Judah P. Benjamin, September 5, 1862.

  8. Sir Spencer Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, 2 vols. (New York, 1968), vol. 2, p. 349, Russell to Palmerston, September 17, 1862.

  9. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 535–36, Hotze to Benjamin, September 26, 1862.

  10. Ibid., pp. 546–48, Slidell to Benjamin, September 29, 1862.

  11. The Confederates in Europe were helped by recent reports in the European press that showed Lincoln in a poor light as far as abolition was concerned. One referred to Lincoln’s meeting on August 14 with a delegation of freedmen. The president had been frank about his fears for them, saying it would be best for everyone if the black population emigrated somewhere else, perhaps Central America. David H. Donald points out that, despite the message, the fact of the meeting was momentous—African Americans had always been barred from the White House. Donald, Lincoln (New York, 1995), p. 368.

  12. In London, William Gregory naively asked the Southern commissioners whether the Confederacy could not devise an education program for the slaves so that they might eventually earn enough money to buy their own freedom. He was offered many reasons why this was absolutely impossible. Brian Jenkins, Sir William Gregory of Coole: A Biography (Gerrards Cross, 1986), p. 154. The American consul in Bristol reported that Yancey had been flagrant in his promises, telling one author of a pro-Confederate article that Richmond had given him “full powers to pledge gradual emancipation to the governments of Europe on condition of their guaranteeing the independence of the Confederate States.” NARA, M. T-185, roll 7, vol. 7, Zebina Eastman to William Henry Seward, October 20, 1862.

  13. University of Southampton, Hartley Library, Palmerston MSS, GC/AR/25/1, Argyll to Palmerston, September 2, 1862.

  14. PRO 30/22/14D, Palmerston to Russell, September 22, 1862.

  15. Philip Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, Being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone, 1851–1865 (London, 1928), p. 232, Palmerston to Gladstone, September 24, 1862.

  16. Thomas Nelson Page, Lee, Man and Soldier (New York, 1911), p. 219, Lee to Davis, September 8, 1862.

  17. William Mark McKnight, Blue Bonnets o’er the Border: The 79th New York Cameron Highlanders (Shippensburg, Pa., 1998), p. 72.

  18. Shelby Foote, The Civil War, 3 vols. (New York, 1986), vol. 1, pp. 664–65.

  19. Wilbur D. Jones, Giants in the Cornfield (Shippensburg, Pa., 1997), p. 292.

  20. Russell Weigley, A Great Civil War (Bloomington, Ind., 2000), p. 148.

  21. OR, ser. 1, vol. 19/2, p. 218, McClellan to President, September 13, 1861.

  22. Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (eds.), Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (Secaucus, N.J., 1985), vol. 2, p. 660.

  23. Ibid., pp. 660–61.

  24. Captain W. D. L’Estrange, Under Fourteen Flags, Being the Life and Adventures of Brigadier-General MacIver (Newton Stewart, Wigtonshire, 1999), p. 83.

  25. Charles Augustus Fuller, Personal Recollections of the War (Fairford, repr. 2010), p. 40.

  26. James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (Oxford, 2004), p. 127.

  27. David L. Thompson, “With Burnside at Antietam,” in Johnson and Buel (eds.), Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 2, p. 556.

  28. Matthew J. Graham, The Ninth Regiment New York Volunteers (Lancaster, Ohio, 1997), p. 303.

  29. James M. McPherson (ed.), Battle Chronicles of the Civil War, 6 vols. (Lakeville, Conn., 1989), vol. 2, p. 252.

  30. New-York Historical Society, Narrative of Ebenezer Wells (c. 1881).

  31. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (London, 1988), p. 544.

  32. Devonshire MSS, Chatsworth, ser. 2 (340.180), Lord Hartington to Duke of Devonshire, September 29, 1862.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Donald, Lincoln, p. 375.

  36. Frederick Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward, 2 vols. (Gloucester, Mass., 1967), vol. 2, p. 338.

  37. Francis W. Dawson, Reminiscences of Confederate Service, 1861–1865, ed. Bell I. Wiley (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), p. 66.

  38. Ibid., p. 193, Dawson to mother, April 23, 1863.

  39. Ibid., p. 56.

  40. S. Frank Logan, “Francis W. Dawson, 1840–1889: South Carolina Editor
,” MA thesis, Duke University, 1947, p. 27.

  41. Dawson, Reminiscences, p. 69.

  42. Ibid., p. 190, Dawson to mother, November 22, 1862.

  43. Wolseley was not the only British soldier to request a leave of absence in order to observe the war. Captain Edward Osborne Hewett, RE, also traveled around the North during October and November 1862. He wrote a report for the army that is now lost. See R. A. Preston, “A Letter from a British Military Observer of the American Civil War,” Military Affairs, 16 (1952), pp. 49–60.

  44. James A. Rawley (ed.), The American Civil War: An English View (Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2002), p. xiii.

  45. Brian Jenkins, “Frank Lawley and the Confederacy,” Civil War History (March 1977), p. 149.

  46. William Stanley Hoole, Lawley Covers the Confederacy (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1964), p. 15.

  47. Ibid., pp. 20–21, The Times, November 4, 1862.

  48. PRO FO5.909, ff. 36–37, n. 5, Moore to Russell, January 11, 1863.

  49. Anon. (Wolseley), “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters,” Blackwood’s Magazine, 93 (Jan. 1863), p. 17.

  50. Captain Hewett wrote of Northern officers: “At the end of a day’s march the officers look out for themselves; never see that their men are properly and completely encamped, or fed, much less that the poor horses are fed or looked after; that the men’s arms, accoutrements, or artillery or cavalry harness is cleaned or repaired, or in fact anything at all till the general order to fall in for the next day’s march.” Preston, “A Letter from a British Observer,” p. 53. William Howard Russell had previously noticed that the social hierarchy of the South was replicated in the Confederate army, which shored up the chain of command between officers and men.

  51. Wolseley was surprised and amused by the ever-present immediacy of the Revolutionary War. Wherever an Englishman wanders, he wrote, “his fellow-passengers in railway carriages or stages will invariably begin talking to him about Smiths, Browns, and Tomkinses in the same strain that we are accustomed to hear allusions made to the Pitts and to Marlborough or Wellington … If this war has no other result, therefore, it will at least afford American historians something to write about, and save them from the puerility of detailing skirmishes in the backwoods or on the highlands of Mexico, as if they were so many battles of Waterloo or Solferino.” Anon. (Wolseley), “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters,” p. 16.

  52. Ibid., p. 14.

  53. Ibid., p. 18.

  54. Hoole, Lawley, pp. 31–32, The Times, December 30, 1862.

  55. G.F.R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (1898; repr. Cambridge, Mass., 1988), p. 554, fn.

  56. Anon. (Wolseley), “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters,” p. 21.

  57. The Times, December 30, 1862.

  58. If Wolseley had seen them in action, he might have revised his opinion. Another English observer thought that neither side was particularly adept at traditional cavalry engagements. “They approach one another with considerable boldness, until they get to within about forty yards, and then, at the very moment when a dash is necessary, and the sword alone should be used, they hesitate, halt, and commence a desultory fire with carbines and revolvers.… Stuart’s cavalry can hardly be called cavalry in the European sense of the word.” Quoted in Jay Luvaas, The Military Legacy of the Civil War (Lawrence, Kan., 1988), p. 21. On the other hand, both sides learned how to use their cavalry as effective scouts.

  59. Heros von Borcke had arrived in the Confederacy in early May, via a blockade runner named the Hero. He was a tall, strapping German with a shock of blond hair and an unintelligible accent. He had decided to volunteer out of boredom with garrison duty, or, according to another version, to annoy his father. He was close in age to Stuart, and they became friends immediately. Borcke wrote his own highly colored reminiscences of his Confederate career. Nevertheless, his wounds were real and a bullet remained permanently lodged in his lung. After his return to the ancestral castle, Borcke occasionally flew the Confederate flag from the turrets.

  60. William Stanley Hoole, Vizetelly Covers the Confederacy (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1957), pp. 58–59.

  61. Ibid., pp. 555–56, quoted from Heros von Borcke, “Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence,” Blackwood’s Magazine, 99 (Jan.–June 1866), p. 90.

  62. Anon. (Wolseley), “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters,” p. 24.

  63. Ibid., pp. 24–25, 29.

  Chapter 14: A Fateful Decision

  1. Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1948, 1949), vol. 2, p. 1076, September 30, 1862.

  2. Duncan Andrew Campbell, English Public Opinion and the American Civil War (Woodbridge, 2003), p. 103.

  3. Countess of Stafford (ed.), Leaves from the Diary of Henry Greville, vol. 4 (London, 1905), p. 73, September 29, 1862.

  4. Clare Taylor, British and American Abolitionists: An Episode in Transatlantic Understanding (Edinburgh, 1974), p. 491, George Thompson to William Lloyd Garrison, December 25, 1862.

  5. Howard Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2009), p. 232.

  6. He added: “Lincoln has a certain moral dignity, but is intellectually inferior, & as men do not generally measure others correctly who are above their own caliber, he has chosen for his instruments mediocre men.… I know the men at the head of affairs on both sides, & I should say that in energy of will, in comprehensiveness of view, in habits & power of command, & in knowledge of economical & fiscal questions, Jefferson Davis is more than equal to Lincoln & all his Cabinet.” Elizabeth Hoon Cawley (ed.), The American Diaries of Richard Cobden (Princeton, 1952), p. 75, Cobden to Bright, October 7, 1862.

  7. The Times, October 7, 1862. Even Liberal newspapers were shocked. The Morning Advertiser remarked on October 6: “We can give no credit to President Lincoln … the motive was not any abhorrence of Slavery in itself, but a sordid, selfish motive, nor can we approve the means to which he is prepared to resort.” For Britain, the atrocities committed in the Indian Mutiny were still fresh memories. The suggestion that Lincoln was trying to engineer similar mayhem and bloodshed in the South was enough to stir the public against him.

  8. E. D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (New York, 1958), vol. 2, p. 44. For an in-depth discussion of the “intervention crisis,” the following sources are indispensible: Robert Huhn Jones, “Anglo-American Relations, 1861–1865, Reconsidered,” Mid-America: An Historical Review, 45 (Jan. 1963), pp. 36–49; Martin P. Claussen, “Peace Factors in Anglo-American Relations, 1861–5,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 26/4 (March 1940), pp. 511–22; Henry Adams, “Why Did Not England Recognize the Confederacy?,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 66 (1972), pp. 204–22; Davis D. Joyce, “Pro-Confederate Sympathy in the British Parliament,” Social Science (April 1969), pp. 95–100; Kinley J. Brauer, “British Mediation and the American Civil War: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Southern History, 38/1 (Feb. 1972), pp. 49–64; Frank J. Merli and Theodore A. Wilson, “The British Cabinet and the Confederacy: Autumn, 1862,” Maryland Historical Society (Fall 1967), pp. 239–62; Robert L. Reid (ed.), “William E. Gladstone’s ‘Insincere Neutrality’ During the Civil War,” Civil War History, 15/4 (1969), pp. 293–307; Howard Jones, Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1992); Brian Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, 2 vols. (Montreal, 1974, 1980); and Charles M. Hubbard, The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy (Knoxville, Tenn., 1998).

  9. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, vol. 2, p. 45, Russell to Palmerston, October 2, 1862.

  10. Roy Jenkins, Gladstone (London, 1995), p. 472.

  11. George Douglas, Eighth Duke of Argyll (1823–1900): Autobiography and Memoirs, ed. the Dowager Duchess of Argyll, 2 vols. (London, 1906), vol. 2, p. 195, Argyll to Gladstone, September 2, 1862.

  12. Jenkins, Gladstone, pp. 472, 466.

  13. O
RN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 549–51, Ambrose Dudley Mann to Judah P. Benjamin, October 7, 1862.

  14. John Morely, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone: 1809–1872, 2 vols. (London, 1903), vol. 2, p. 536, and Henry Steele Commager (ed.), The Civil War Archive (New York, 2000), pp. 362–63.

  15. Harper’s Magazine, vol. 54, 1877, p. 111.

  16. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, October 5, 1862.

  17. D. P. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865 (New York, 1974), p. 266, November 8, 1862.

  18. The literature on the cabinet discussions during October and November is voluminous. See E. D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, vol. 2, p. 52, for a discussion on the memoranda wars.

  19. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ed. Ernest Samuels (repr. Boston, 1973), pp. 183–84.

  20. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, vol. 2, p. 54, Clarendon to Russell, October 19, 1862.

  21. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 560–61, Slidell to Benjamin, October 20, 1862.

  22. Virginia Mason, The Public Life and Diplomatic Correspondence of James M. Mason (New York, 1906), pp. 371–72, Mason to wife, January 18, 1862.

  23. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 565–67, Hotze to Benjamin, October 24, 1862.

  24. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, vol. 2, p. 56. In his memorandum, written on October 25, 1862, Gladstone insisted, somewhat improbably, that the Americans would not be able to resist “a general opinion on the part of civilized Europe that this horrible war ought to cease.”

  25. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, October 23, 1862.

  26. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, vol. 2, p. 56, Russell to Palmerston, October 24, 1862.

  27. West Sussex RO, Lyons MSS, box 300, Lord Lyons to sister, October 24, 1862.

  28. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 542–78, Slidell to Benjamin, October 28, 1862.

  29. G. P. Gooch (ed.), The Later Correspondence of Lord John Russell, 1840–1878, 2 vols. (London, 1925), vol. 2, p. 331, Russell to Grey, October 28, 1862.

  30. Sir Herbert Maxwell, Clarendon, 2 vols. (London, 1913), vol. 2, p. 265, Clarendon to Lewis, October 25, 1862.