by John Boyko
On December 19, Lyons arrived at Seward’s office and summarized Queen Victoria’s letter detailing Britain’s response to the Trent crisis. He wisely withheld the letter itself and explained that the clock would begin ticking once it was officially delivered. If after seven days the captives were not released and an apology offered, then he and the British legation staff would leave and war would ensue. Seward accepted an unofficial copy of the letter. Later that evening, the seemingly ubiquitous London Times correspondent Russell saw Seward at a dinner party and asked about the British response. Seward exploded and, as was often typical for the man, he blustered and said far more than was prudent. He shouted to Russell and his other guests: “We will wrap the whole world in flames. No power is so remote that she will not feel the fire of our battle and be burned in the conflagration.”101 Russell reported the conversation. More American troops were soon on their way to the Canadian border.
Seward spent the weekend consulting legal experts and meeting with cabinet colleagues. French minister to Washington Edouard-Henry Mercier told Seward that, although he didn’t have official instructions from Paris, the French government supported Britain and knew of British military preparations overseas and in Canada. He added that he believed Lyons would indeed break off diplomatic relations with the United States if demands were not met within the seven-day deadline.102 On December 23, Lyons was back in Seward’s office. The Queen’s letter was officially delivered, and the clock began to count the hours to war.
While families across Canada, the United States and Britain woke up on Christmas morning to celebrate the day, the latest British forces began arriving in Halifax, Saint John, St. Andrews and Quebec City from their trying journeys across a frigid north Atlantic. Eleven thousand troops arrived in eighteen ships. They were put up in makeshift quarters in warehouses, schools and church basements. Days later, their equipment arrived. There were fifty thousand new rifles with more than two million rounds of ammunition and sixteen batteries of artillery along with shells and powder. Four companies of engineers disembarked to join the eleven infantry battalions. It was an impressive display but it was doomed from the outset.
For years the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick governments had been arguing with London and themselves about the building of roads and railroads. Coincidentally, a delegation from the two colonies had arrived in London in November just as news of the Trent‘s fate had reached Westminster. Nova Scotia’s Joseph Howe and New Brunswick’s Leonard Tilley were there to encourage Russell to supply the money necessary to solve the transportation dilemma that was stymying economic development. In their delegation was Edward Watkin, general manager of the Grand Trunk Railway. The group met with political and business leaders and pressed the case that investment was needed to build an intercolonial railway not just joining Halifax, Fredericton and Saint John but also extending north to Quebec City and Montreal. The railway would bring benefit to Britain and the empire by bolstering New Brunswick’s wood and Halifax’s shipbuilding industries and linking them to Canada’s manufacturers.
Howe and Tilley had prepared their arguments carefully, but were quick to use the Trent crisis to their advantage. In meetings with officials and the press they spoke of the possibility of war and how the railway and road work would enable Britain’s colonies to better defend themselves against American aggression now and in the future. Howe and Tilley were also unapologetic in discussing their anti-American hopes for a Confederate victory.103
The Maritime delegation was correct that the railway was needed, but it was needed that very day. The large contingent of the newly arrived British soldiers had to get to Canada East and West, and there was simply no good or quick way for them to do so. Some of the hard-pressed British regulars and their equipment were loaded onto three ships. One hit a sandbar, while another found the sea too dangerous and turned back. Only one small ship struggled on through St. Lawrence winds and ice and finally arrived, battered and frozen, at Rivière-du-Loup. The six hundred troops were welcomed by townsfolk, who had been encouraged to do so by French-language newspapers and messages from the pulpit announcing that the young men were coming to save them from the American hordes who were prepared to visit unspeakable horrors upon the land.
Lt. General Williams undertook a number of actions to ready for the American attack that he presumed to be imminent. He believed that the most likely stratagem would be simultaneous attacks on Montreal and Prescott, with advances on Kingston and the Niagara Peninsula.104 Williams had artillery pieces stationed and reinforced at these positions. He decided that, to protect Montreal, the invaders needed to be kept on the south side of the river, and so he had ten large-calibre, rifled artillery pieces placed on St. Helen’s Island. Infantry was positioned near them and on both sides of nearby bridges.105 This aspect of the plan meant that the eastern townships would be sacrificed. Plans were also made to add artillery and infantry strength to Toronto, Hamilton, London and the Welland Canal. All territory west of London would be allowed to fall to the American invaders. Williams believed that Nova Scotia could and should be defended. He argued that Halifax, with its all-season harbour and access to the coal mines of Pictou and Sydney, should become the centre of maritime warfare, but that Americans would be allowed to take New Brunswick.106
Williams argued that the defensive plan suited the types of soldiers that would be fighting the war. Despite the large numbers of British regulars, both the American troops and the Canadian and Maritime militia would consist of untested and undertrained soldiers, and thus the advantage would go to the force with the best-prepared and thoughtfully chosen fields of battle. Williams agreed with Inspector General of Fortifications Sir John Burgoyne that the long and largely indefensible border would give way to guerrilla warfare, with marauding parties terrorizing civilians and inflicting damage on public, private and military infrastructures. All that would be needed, Burgoyne argued, was two or three successful repulses of such raids to, as he put it, “damp their ardour.”107 Thus, according to the military men planning it, the war would be costly, deadly and ugly—and offer no guarantee of victory.
On December 28, Macdonald finally convinced cabinet colleagues that there was a need for a minister of militia affairs to lead the war preparations. As he had already been acting the part, he appointed himself to the post and continued those efforts. Macdonald asked for more funds to bolster Toronto port defences, but dissuaded Lt. General Williams from dumping boulders into the harbour to trap American ships. He also requested funds to build more and better barracks, and handed over those already prepared to the lieutenant general in command of the recently arrived British troops. Macdonald also shifted the Canadian military leadership with a re-appointment of Lieutenant Colonel Duncan McDougall to be inspecting field officer of the militia. Macdonald had little money and he needed to work through Monck. Nevertheless, he played the few cards he had well.
Meanwhile, thousands of Canada-bound troops remained shivering in Saint John. Arrangements were finally made to gather sleighs and sleds. Soldiers and equipment were loaded, and beneath heavy buffalo robes they headed north behind draught horses lumbering through deep snow in sub-zero temperatures at about three miles per hour. A number of men suffered frostbite. Some deserted when the sorry procession neared the Maine border. After days of horrendous conditions they arrived at Quebec City. They regrouped and began to deploy along the border, with most being stationed at Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, Niagara and Windsor.
The British military staff who were arriving aboard the Melbourne had a particularly rough time when their ship encountered treacherous North Atlantic weather and nearly ran out of coal. It finally reached Halifax on January 5. Discouraged by the frozen St. Lawrence and the terrible land travel conditions, the men removed their military insignias, hid their papers, and took a mail ship to Boston, where they purchased Grand Trunk rail tickets for Montreal.
On the same Christmas day that saw the arrival of the British troops in Canada, Lincoln calle
d a cabinet meeting to order. He had been moving toward a decision regarding the Trent crisis in the same thoughtful and deliberate manner in which he made all decisions and which his cabinet secretaries were beginning to understand and respect. The five-hour meeting began with Seward reading the Queen’s letter and other dispatches that he and Lyons had exchanged, and letters that had arrived from Thurlow Weed in Paris and Adams in London. A consensus was quickly reached that war with England would be disastrous and would favour the Confederacy. Lincoln tipped his hand only in saying that he preferred to fight one war at a time.108
As the meeting was breaking up, Lincoln asked Seward to draft an argument supporting the release of Mason and Slidell, while he would write one suggesting that they remain prisoners. On December 26, the cabinet reconvened and Seward slowly read his twenty-six page draft. It was brilliant. He argued that in taking the two men, Captain Wilkes had acted on his own as no specific orders had been given, but that he had acted appropriately. He had erred only in not impounding the Trent and taking it to a Prize Court. Therefore, Seward concluded, Mason and Slidell should be released not because Wilkes had broken international law, which was largely unwritten, or that he had insulted British honour, which was irrelevant, but that the release would be consistent with American traditions, principles, and precedents. There would be no apology.
With some minor changes, Seward’s report became the official American dispatch to London. He later asked to read Lincoln’s argument, but the president admitted that he had struggled with it and in the end found it impossible to finish.109 He complimented Seward on his handling of the crisis and on the document he had constructed. The man who had for so long seemed to be itching for war ended up providing the graceful instrument through which two great powers could save face and withdraw from the abyss with honour intact and Canada saved.
Seward’s offer arrived in London on January 8. Until that point Palmerston had still been sure that war with America was a real possibilitty and preparations had been continuing.110 Palmerston took the offer to cabinet and the American terms were accepted. With that, the hollering for war subsided; at least to the level tolerated before the Trent had been boarded.
The British warship Rinaldo took Mason, Slidell and their secretaries first to Halifax and then to London. With their arrival, the British troops that had remained at their Canadian posts were finally allowed leaves. Men of the voluntary militia who had remained to bolster their units’ strength were finally told to return to their jobs, classrooms and farms.
Lincoln, meanwhile, made it clear that the British insults he had heard and the strategic military plans he had entertained were not forgotten. In an interview with newspaperman Horace Peters, the president said: “It was a pretty bitter pill to swallow but I contented myself with believing that England’s triumph in the matter would be short-lived, and that after ending our war successfully we would be so powerful that we could call her to account for all the embarrassments she had inflicted upon US.”111 It was an ominous statement, especially when matched with Lincoln’s comment about fighting one war at a time and his vague threats to Galt.
While war had been avoided, there was still danger ahead. Southern resentment of Canada had grown with the Underground Railroad. The tepid support for the Union, and then the Trent crisis had increased anti-Canadian sentiment in the North. Seward and Sumner still believed that all of North America should be American, and Lincoln’s “one war at a time” comment was both a momentary salve and a thinly disguised warning.
The threat of an American invasion of Canada may have ended for the moment, but the Civil War and Canada’s role in it had just begun. Having narrowly escaped the ravages of a war for British North America, most Canadians and Maritimers hoped for a return to relative peace. But others had something far different in mind. Thousands joined others who had already left, and headed south to fight both for the Union and for the Confederacy.
* Within the crowd watching the melée was a famous actor named John Wilkes Booth.
3
SARAH EMMA EDMONDS:
DONNING THE BLUE AND GREY
AN ARMY ON THE MOVE is a magnificent and horrible beast. It eats and drinks and defecates and fornicates. It can manoeuvre with poise and precision or lumber clumsily within a fog of contradictory information, cross purposes and logistical chaos. The beast is both hunter and hunted, existing to kill while offering itself up to be slain.
In July 1861, the beast that was the Union’s Army of the Potomac rose from crowded camps around Washington and slowly moved south and west toward the town of Manassas, Virginia. The Civil War’s first major battle, called Bull Run in the North and Canada, was nigh. The march was confusing from the start, with stragglers falling behind and others losing their units while searching for food or water. Many suffering from mumps, measles, typhoid fever and dysentery had left their cots to join the march. The troops were joyous about finally going into battle—a battle most, including those who watched as they picnicked on the hillside near the capital, believed would be the first and last big fight of the war. Songs filled the air, and “On to Richmond” was chanted again and again.
Among the untested army’s numbers was a young nurse named Franklin Thompson of the 2nd Michigan Volunteer Regiment’s F Company. There was more to Thompson’s story than met the eye, for he was actually a woman named Sarah Emma Edmonds. She was one of a great number of women who served in the Civil War and one of about 550 who did so disguised as men.1 Like men, women served for their own reasons but most were moved by a patriotic devotion to the cause, honour, duty, personal ambition, a yearning for adventure, or the chance to make a little money.2 Women served as cooks, couriers, flag bearers, nurses, spies and soldiers. As many as 60 women were killed in battle and buried as women, but the number who met their death with their male disguises undiscovered is unknown.3
Edmonds also concealed the fact that was that she was from New Brunswick. She was born Sarah Emma Edmondson in December 1841, into a large farming family in Magaguadavic, near Fredericton. The youngest of six children, she worked long hours with her four sisters on the farm, and her only brother, an epileptic, did what he could. Like many farm girls of her time, she dressed in what was traditionally men’s clothing, grew used to hard labour and was adept with firearms and horses. Her mother, Elizabeth, taught her the secrets of home remedies and she became quite skilled at tending illness and injury. Her father, Isaac, was an angry, embittered man who made life miserable for his children.
When Edmonds was seventeen, her father told her that she was to be married to a man nearly twice her age, whom she had never met. With her mother’s help, she fled. She assumed the name Emma Edmonds. Edmonds demonstrated her ability to be independent and self-sustaining, belying her age and the stereotypes attached to women of her time, by securing work first in a hat shop and then in a millinery in a small town ninety miles east of Fredericton.
When her father discovered her whereabouts, she fled again. This time she was assisted by a young man named Linus Seelye, who lent her some of his clothes and helped disguise her as a man to avoid detection and ease her travel. Edmonds settled in Saint John. She purchased more men’s clothing, cut her hair, applied dye to her face and hands to darken her complexion, and even had a mole surgically removed from her left cheek. She became Franklin Thompson.
Secure within her new identity, Edmonds found work as an itinerant Bible salesman and moved from town to town and farm to farm. After about a year, in 1860, Edmonds was swindled out of her savings. The brave and desperate nineteen-year-old gathered her last five dollars and moved to the United States to start again. She later claimed to have been motivated to emigrate not just for work but for educational opportunities. Her church pastor had written her a letter of introduction that noted a desire to do missionary work.
Edmonds answered an advertisement for a Boston publisher for “young men willing to hustle.” She was hired immediately and found a home in Hartford, Connecticut
, where she was soon back to selling Bibles. With a fifty-dollar advance in her pocket and a heavy valise across her back, she was moved to her company’s base in Halifax. Her disguise had become so effective that during a short visit home she even briefly fooled her mother and sisters.
In November 1860, she heard of opportunities in the west and took a similar job in Flint, Michigan. In the spring of 1861, as Edmonds was waiting for a train, she heard shouts from a New York Herald newsboy announcing that Fort Sumter had fallen and that Lincoln had called for 75,000 troops. She could have easily returned home and avoided the war, but instead decided to enlist.
Edmonds was moved by a desire to fight for the country she had adopted as her home. She later wrote of the war as, “a just cause—the cause of our country that we love; that we shrink from no sacrifice of money, time or life in order to maintain and perpetuate the beautiful Government that our fathers bequeathed to us.”4 She also wrote: “It was not my intention, or desire, to seek my own personal ease and comfort while so much sorrow and distress filled the land. But the great question to be decided was, what can I do? What part am I to act in this great drama?”5
She appeared at the 2nd Michigan Volunteers’ recruiting station in Detroit as Franklin Thompson. At five foot six, she was about the same height as the average soldier. She easily passed the medical examination, which consisted only of checking her sight and hearing, and making sure she had a trigger finger and at least two good teeth to rip open powder cartridges.6 On May 25, 1861, after telling the recruiter of her skills with basic medical procedures, she became F Company’s Field Nurse.*
