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

by Amanda Foreman

  31. Brian Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, 2 vols. (Montreal, 1974, 1980), vol. 2, p. 333.

  32. A week later, one of the Phaeton’s lieutenants was kidnapped and crimped while on shore leave. Consul Bernal eventually rescued him from trench duty outside Baltimore.

  33. New-York Historical Society, Narrative of Ebenezer Wells (c. 1881), June 9, 1864.

  34. OR, ser. 1, vol. 36/4, soc. 64, p. 138, Canby to Major General A. J. Smith.

  35. Thomas E. Pemberton, Sir Charles Wyndham: A Biography (London, 1904), p. 21.

  36. James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., Pretense of Glory (Baton Rouge, La., 1998), p. 211.

  37. Edward Lyulph Stanley, 4th Baron Stanley of Alderley, letters from America, Royal Commonwealth Society Library, Cambridge, Stanley to Blanche, May 21, 1864.

  38. Ibid., Stanley to Kate, June 9, 1864. When Stanley visited General Banks at his office on June 3, the general showed no embarrassment over his recent demotion, though he admitted his frustration with the slow pace of change for former slaves. His main source of pride was the number of negroes entering the army. The Louisiana Native Guards who fought at Port Hudson had been the first black regiment officially mustered into the army. Since then another thirty black regiments had been formed, with at least 18,000 black recruits, and more were coming.

  39. Ibid., Stanley to Blanche, May 12, 1864.

  40. Mary Sophia Hill, A British Subject’s Recollections of the Confederacy (Baltimore, 1875), p. 90.

  41. Ibid., p. 62. The source for the footnote is PRO FO5/906, ff.104–7, d. 2, Coppell to Lord Russell, May 20, 1864.

  42. Hill, A British Subject’s Recollections of the Confederacy, p. 63.

  43. Belle Boyd, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison (New York, 1865; repr. Baton Rouge, La., 1998), p. 197.

  44. Ruth Scarborough, Siren of the South (Macon, Ga., 1997), p. 157.

  45. Boyd, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison, pp. 200–203.

  46. Stephen Z. Starr, Colonel Grenfell’s Wars (Baton Rouge, La., 1971), p. 126.

  Chapter 30: “Can We Hold Out?”

  1. University College of North Wales, Bangor, Evans MSS 2854, ff. 63–69, c. June 1864.

  2. PRO FO5/1258, n. 73 enc. 2, Mary Sophia Hill to Lyons, June 17, 1864.

  3. PRO FO5/1258, n. 73 enc. 1, Coppell to Lyons, July 1, 1864.

  4. E. Milby Burton, The Siege of Charleston (Columbia, S.C., 1982), p. 285.

  5. Just fifteen blockade runners had been able to get out in May, but Feilden was able to put a few cotton bales on one of them for his own account. “All my English friends in the Blockade runners came to me for assistance and it was no great return if a bale of cotton was now and again taken out for me,” Feilden wrote later. South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS, (11), Feilden to Julia, May 23, 1864.

  6. Ibid., (12), Feilden to Julia McCord, May 28, 1864.

  7. Ibid., (14), Feilden to Julia McCord, June 18, 1864.

  8. Ibid., (16), Feilden to Julia McCord, June 30, 1864.

  9. Jubal A. Early, The Campaigns of Gen. Robert E. Lee: An Address by Lieut. General Jubal A. Early, Before Washington and Lee University, January 19th, 1872 (Baltimore, 1872), p. 42

  10. Brian Holden Reid, Robert E. Lee (London, 2005), p. 219.

  11. W. C. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 2, p. 154, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Charles Francis Adams, June 19, 1864.

  12. James Pendlebury MSS, private collection, p. 7.

  13. Francis W. Dawson, Reminiscences of Confederate Service, 1861–1865, ed. Bell I. Wiley (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), pp. 195–96, Dawson to Mother, June 1, 1864. His letters occasionally assumed a finality in their tone: “I feel how much I have sinned against your tender care and loving kindness!” he wrote. “Forgive me, my dear Parents, every unkind word and harsh thought.”

  14. Illustrated London News, August 6, 1864.

  15. Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate (New York, 1907), p. 564.

  16. OR, ser. 1, vol. 40/2, doc. 81, order from Secretary of War, June 25, 1864.

  17. Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden, Hobart Pasha (New York, 1915), p. 176.

  18. Ibid., pp. 180–81.

  19. A. S. Lewis (ed.), My Dear Parents (New York, 1982), p. 92.

  20. University College of North Wales, Bangor, Evans MSS 2854, ff. 74–75, July 4, 1864.

  21. PRO 30/22/38, f. 71, Lyons to Russell, July 15, 1864.

  22. West Sussex RO, Lyons MSS, box 302, Lord Lyons to Augusta, July 13 and 15, 1864.

  23. Ibid., Lyons to Augusta, June 2, 1864.

  24. University College of North Wales, Bangor, Evans MSS 2854, f. 82, July 21, 1864.

  25. Mark E. Neely, The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York, 1991), pp. 110–11.

  26. PRO 30/22/38, f. 74, Lyons to Lord Russell, July 22, 1864.

  27. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (New York, 2005), p. 646.

  28. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, vol. 2, pp. 168–69, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Henry Adams, July 27, 1864; Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Henry Adams, July 22, 1864.

  29. OR, ser. 1, vol. 40/3, doc. 82, p. 489, General Birney to Foster, July 26, 1864.

  30. PRO FO/1281, Memorial of Edward Sewell; Private Sewell of the 93rd New York Volunteers was recovering from dysentery in a military hospital when he had heard from other patients “that we were likely to have liberty to go to New York to vote for the President.… I at once conceived the notion of escaping and gave my name and represented my state to be New York. On the fifth passes were given to us, and on the sixth I and many others went to New York by Railway. I arrived at New York on the seventh. I immediately went to the house of a friend named Eiglaugh. I told him my story and arranged with him, to obtain me a Berth on board a steamer for England.”

  31. Howard Westwood, Black Troops, White Commanders, and Freedmen During the Civil War (Carbondale Ill., 1992), p. 32; Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln’s Generals (New York, 1995), p. 147.

  32. Alexander, Military Memoirs, p. 569.

  33. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (New York, 2003), p. 505.

  34. The Times, August 23, 1864.

  35. Frederick W. Seward (ed.), Seward at Washington (New York, 1891), p. 238, Seward to Frances, August 5, 1864.

  36. Grant, Memoirs, p. 506.

  37. Adam Badeau, Military History of Ulysses S. Grant, 3 vols. (New York, 1885), vol. 2, p. 502.

  38. Richard Bache Irwin, History of the Nineteenth Army Corps (New York, 1892), p. 442.

  39. Dawson, Reminiscences, p. 123.

  40. Ibid., p. 201, Dawson to mother, August 7, 1864.

  41. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, vol. 2, p. 181, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Henry Adams, August 13, 1864.

  42. Lewis (ed.), My Dear Parents, p. 92.

  43. Timothy Holmes (ed.), David Livingstone: Letters and Documents, 1861–1872 (London, 1990), pp. 85, 73, Livingstone to James Young, February 19, 1862, Livingstone to James Young, c. July–August 1863. The source for the footnote is George Seaver, David Livingstone: His Life and Letters (London, 1957), p. 453.

  44. William Garden Blaikie, Personal Life of David Livingstone, p. 339.

  45. Holmes (ed.), David Livingstone: Letters and Documents, p. 96; David Livingstone to Charles Livingstone, September 2, 1864.

  46. The Times, September 20, 1864.

  47. Frank E. Vandiver (ed.), The Civil War Diary of Josiah Gorgas (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1947), p. 132, August 8, 1864.

  48. The Times, September 24, 1864.

  49. Vandiver (ed.), The Civil War Diary of Josiah Gorgas, p. 137, August 29, 1864.

  Chapter 31: The Crisis Comes

  1. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (London, 1988), p. 751.

  2. OR ser. 1, vol. 35/2, doc. 66, p. 615, Feilden to Gorgas, August 20, 1864.

  3. South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS (22), Feilden to Julia McCord, September 1, 1864.

&nb
sp; 4. Ibid., (20), Feilden to Julia McCord, August 26, 1864.

  5. John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, ed. Earl Schenck Miers (Urbana, Ill., 1958), p. 414, August 25, 1864.

  6. Philip Van Doren Stern, When the Guns Roared: World Aspects of the American Civil War (New York, 1965), pp. 314–15.

  7. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 1202, Benjamin to Colin McRae, September 6, 1864.

  8. John Bierman, Dark Safari: The Life Behind the Legend of Henry Morton Stanley (New York, 1990), p. 38. See also Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr. (ed.), Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Confederate (Baton Rouge, La., 2000), pp. 150–54.

  9. July 12, 1864, and August 6, 1864; quoted in James McPherson, Tried by War (New York, 2009), pp. 231–32.

  10. PRO 30/22/38, ff. 91–94, Lyons to Russell, August 15, 1864, and f. 95, August 23, 1864.

  11. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 1032, Benjamin to Slidell, February 19, 1864. The Knights of the Golden Circle also boasted Harpending and Rubery—the California raiders—as members. Other members included Jesse James, John Wilkes Booth, and the rampaging Quantrill’s Raiders in Missouri. The secretive order answered only to itself, but its aims included an independent South, the protection of slavery, and the acquisition of territory from Mexico.

  12. OR, ser. 4, vol. 3, pp. 585–86, Clay to Benjamin, August 11, 1864.

  13. The Confederates had initiated the contact; it was the idea of Confederate gadfly and sometime agent George N. Sanders, whose dreams and schemes were forever ending in disaster. However, his powers of persuasion were legendary and—to the other Confederates’ dismay—Sanders had no sooner arrived in Canada when he latched on to Clay and Holcombe and brought them completely under his sway. He played them like puppets, thoroughly enjoying his power to script the occasion. “In my long life I have known no counterpart to this man,” recorded an observer. “He was a constant menace to the interests for which the commissioners were responsible.” Adam Mayers, Dixie and the Dominion: Canada, the Confederacy, and the War for the Union (Toronto, 2003), p. 65.

  14. Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 2008), vol. 2, pp. 669–70.

  15. George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865, ed. Allan Nevins (New York, 1962), p. 474, August 19, 1864.

  16. W. C. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 2, p. 182, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Charles Francis Adams, August 20, 1864.

  17. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York, 1995), p. 529.

  18. George Congdon Gorham, Life and Public Services of Edwin M Stanton, 2 vols. (New York, 1899), vol. 2, p. 149.

  19. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (New York, 2005), p. 648.

  20. Library of Congress, Papers of Abraham Lincoln, “Blind Memorandum,” August 23, 1864.

  21. PRO 30/22/38, ff. 95–97, Lyons to Russell, August 23, 1864.

  22. PRO 30/22/38, ff. 85–90, Lyons to Russell, August 9, 1864.

  23. PRO FO5/1258, n. 73, Mary S. Hill to Lord Lyons, August 20, 1864.

  24. Widow of Andrew Cunningham, late a British subject: Correspondence between the State department and the British legation, relative to the claim of the widow of the late Andrew Cunningham, a British subject, improperly enlisted into the military service of the United States, March 5, 1866 (39th Congress, Hse Rep., 1866). Seward promised Lyons that Cunningham’s widow would receive his bounty and army pay without delay. But the War Department ignored his repeated requests.

  25. BDOFA, part 1, ser. C, vol. 6, p. 313, Monck to Cardwell, September 26, 1864.

  26. Fitzgerald Ross, Cities and Camps of the Confederate States, ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell (Champaign, Ill., 1997), p. 228.

  27. Duane Schultz, The Dahlgren Affair (New York, 1998), p. 209.

  28. Mabel Clare Weaks, “Colonel George St. Leger Grenfell,” Filson Club History Quarterly, 34 (1960), p. 11, Grenfell to Mary, July 18, 1864.

  29. K. W. Wheeler, For the Union: Ohio Leaders in the Civil War (Columbus, Ohio, 1968), p. 50.

  30. The “Northwest” encompassed Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Iowa, states that not only felt little cultural or political affinity with New England, but also felt unfairly targeted by the tax system. The Knights of the Golden Circle had changed its name first to the Order of the American Knights, and then in 1864 to Sons of Liberty. Its membership remains impossible to determine, but at its height may have been as many as 300,000. The sons claimed to have a membership closer to a million.

  31. ORN, ser. 1, vol. 3, p. 714, Thompson to Benjamin, December 3, 1864.

  32. William Tidwell, April ’65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War (Kent, Ohio, 1995), p. 130.

  33. Weaks, “Colonel George St Leger Grenfell,” p. 10, Grenfell to “Hunter,” July 31, 1864.

  34. John W. Headley, Confederate Operations in Canada and New York (New York, 1906), p. 225.

  35. Oscar A. Kinchen, Confederate Operations in Canada, p. 58.

  36. Stephen Z. Starr, Colonel Grenfell’s Wars (Baton Rouge, La., 1971), p. 172.

  37. James Horan, Confederate Agent: A Discovery in History (New York, 1954), p. 129.

  38. D. Alexander Brown, “The Northwest Conspiracy,” Civil War Times Illustrated, 10 (May 1971), p. 16.

  39. Weaks, “Colonel George St. Leger Grenfell,” p. 11, Grenfell to William Maynard, August 31, 1864.

  40. ORN, ser. 1, vol. 3, p. 714, Thompson to Benjamin, December 3, 1864.

  Chapter 32: The Tyranny of Hope

  1. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 1162–63, Hotze to Benjamin, July 4, 1864.

  2. W. C. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 2, p. 165. Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., July 8, 1864. Edward Chalfant, Better in Darkness (New York, 1991), p. 79.

  3. On June 28, 1864, Rose recorded the following conversation in her diary: “Called upon Lady Chesterfield. Lady Derby was there, Marchioness of Ailesbury also came in. Much talk upon politics.… I asked, ‘Will ministers go out?’ Answer, ‘No.’ The radicals have promised to support the Gov. in their peace policy and there will be a division of 25 or 30 in support. Lady C: ‘I don’t believe they can have such a majority, not more than five or 6.’ In that case it will be a defeat. Then they will dissolve Parliament and go to the country. They love office too well to go out. Lady C: ‘They will be hard pressed.’ Lady A: ‘Yes but you will see, they will manage it.’ The discussion is put off for Monday. Lord Derby will man it in the House of Lords. Mr. Disraeli in the Commons.” North Carolina State Archives, Private Collections, PC 1226, Rose O’Neal Greenhow Papers, London Diary, p. 103

  4. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, July 8, 1864.

  5. Greenhow, London Diary, p. 111, July 8, 1864.

  6. William Flavelle Monypenny, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, vol. 3 (London, 1916), p. 405.

  7. Mary Ellison, Support for Secession (Chicago, 1972), p. 153.

  8. Greenhow, London Diary, p. 119, July 21–24, 1864.

  9. The Times, July 26, 1864.

  10. PRFA, 1/2, (1864), p. 229, Adams to Seward, July 28, 1864.

  11. Ibid., p. 223, Adams to Seward, July 21, 1864.

  12. Ibid., p. 250, Adams to Seward, July 29, 1864.

  13. Greenhow, London Diary, p. 115, July 14, 1864.

  14. Ibid., p. 123, August 7, 1864.

  15. Diane Fontaine Corbin, A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury (London, 1880), p. 223.

  16. Greenhow, London Diary, p. 122, August 1, 1864. The Private Journal of Georgiana Gholson Walker, ed. Dwight Franklin Henderson, Confederate Centennial Studies, 25 (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1963), p. 94, May 16, 1864. Rose procured the best ophthalmologist in London for Georgiana’s child, who pronounced the condition to be incurable.

  17. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 1184, Mason to Benjamin, August 4, 1864.

  18. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, August 1, 1864.

  19. The Letters of Henry Adams, vol. 1, p. 44
1, Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., July 1, 1864.

  20. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, July 30, 1864.

  21. Greenhow, London Diary, p. 123, August 7, 1864.

  22. Ibid., p. 128, August 10, 1864.

  23. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 1143, Hotze to Benjamin, June 3, 1864.

  24. Library of Congress, Hotze Papers, private letterbook, Hotze to Witt, June 18, 1864.

  25. Punch, August 6, 1864.

  26. Andrew Ross, David Livingstone: Mission and Empire (London, 2002), p. 190.

  27. Timothy Holmes, ed., David Livingstone, Letters and Documents, 1861–1872 (London, 1990), p. 100, Livingstone to W. C. Oswell, October 21, 1864.

  28. Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, vol. 2, p. 1327, September 16, 1864.

  29. Ibid., p. 1329, September 22, 1864.

  30. NARA, M. T. 185, roll 8, vol. 8, Consul Eastman to Seward, August 24, 1864.

  31. PRFA, 1/2, (1864), p. 313, Charles Francis Adams to Seward, September 29, 1864.

  32. The Duchess of Sutherland’s antislavery petition of 1852, “The Affectionate and Christian Address of Many Thousands of Women of Great Britain and Ireland to Their Sisters, the Women of the United States of America,” was signed by more than 500,000 British women. It caused considerable offense in both the North and the South. But at least that petition was addressed to the citizens of the United States. Kershaw’s intention to present the petition to the Northern government was both preposterous and presumptuous.

  33. Library of Congress, Hotze Papers, private letterbook, Hotze to Benjamin, September 2, 1864.

  34. Belle Boyd, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison (New York, 1965; repr. Baton Rouge, La., 1998), p. 206.

  35. Ibid., p. 208; Wallace and Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, vol. 2, p. 1317, August 25, 1864.

  36. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, September 5, 1864.

  37. Army and Navy Gazette, September 3, 1864. Not everyone doubted the news. Northern supporters in Perth, Scotland, celebrated Sherman’s victory by flying the American flag and firing the town cannon.