Bayonets, Balloons & Ironclads: Britain and France Take Sides With the South

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  But it was Hooker who was much on Grant’s mind. He was not a subordinate man. Meade, on the other hand was exactly that. Grant had just come from his headquarters at the Army of the Potomac fully having intended to replace him with one of his own family of generals from the West. But Meade beat him to the point and graciously offered to step down so that Grant could have full confidence in the commander of the Army of the Potomac. Of course, Grant had declined to replace Meade after that act of selflessness.9

  It was vital that all his army commanders pull together as a team. He would trust Sherman with his life, Thomas was sound as a rock, and Meade was selfless and reliable. That left Hooker. He turned to Sharpe, the only other man to share his cabin. Lincoln trusted him implicitly and seemed to rely on him in countless ways. Only William Seward, the Secretary of State, shared such confidence. Grant was about to find what sort of man this nondescript man in his early thirties was: middle height, short dark hair on a round head, and drooping mustache. Not much to look at, but Grant, of all men, was not concerned about looks. What could the man do was the question he always asked. Grant had not batted an eye in dismissing old friends who were not up to the job. Weeks ago he had already answered his own question when Sharpe presented his first weekly intelligence summary to him in December after Chattanooga when Lincoln summoned him to Washington. Grant had never had such a comprehensive look at the enemy before. He had been happy in the past just to find the enemy and then hang on to the death. That had served as an army commander, but to lead a nation in war needed more, far more. And Sharpe spilled his treasures out every week for Grant.10

  One of the choicest gems had not cost the Treasury a penny but had been found right out in the open, fished out of the Library of Congress. The British very conveniently published with great regularity the United Service Magazine and Naval and Army Journal. Sharpe had brought in his order-of-battle office chief. In an army of young men, Grant was startled by how young this lieutenant colonel was. The only thing that marred his youthful appearance was the red gash of a scar across his forehead. Sharpe said, “General, may I present Lt. Col. Mike Wilmoth. He keeps track of the enemy for me.”

  Grant nodded and said, “Colonel, how old are you? And where are you from?”

  “Twenty-four, sir. Indiana.”

  Sharpe added, “Colonel Dahlgren is not even twenty-one, General. And like Dahlgren, his appointment is directly from the President for both valor and ability. I will tell you about that later, sir. Go on, Mike.”

  Wilmoth unrolled a large map of the British Isles. “General, the British print every few months a complete list of the stations of the British Army around the world. Our latest issue states the list is corrected to the twenty-seventh of August last [Appendix A]. It tells us where every battalion, battery, and engineer company was located at that time. The dots on the map represent infantry battalions. Most of their regiments consist of a single battalion numbering about a thousand men, a few have two battalions, and only a handful three or four. Cavalry regiments have only one battalion. So it’s easier just to show the battalions. Each dot indicates how many battalions are at each location. We count thirty-one cavalry regiments and one hundred fifty-two infantry battalions. Their distribution around the world tells us what they likely are able to send to North America.”

  He unfolded another chart. “In Great Britain and Ireland they had forty infantry battalions and thirteen cavalry regiments. The Mediterranean garrisons had thirteen infantry battalions, the West Indies six, Australia and New Zealand seven, Africa five, China three, and Mauritius two. In India and Ceylon there are fifty-two infantry battalions and twelve cavalry regiments. The establishments of these units appear to be smaller than those in Britain. But we assess that the British Army has two hundred twenty thousand regulars of which about one hundred thousand are in the British Isles.”

  Sharpe interrupted here. “What is important here, sir, is that almost half of the British Army is unavailable for use in North America. They won’t touch as much as drummer boy in their Indian garrison, not after having the bejezus scared out of them by the Great Mutiny just seven years ago. And just to make sure, our Russian friends are making mischief out there from their conquests in Central Asia. If there’s an ember of the Great Mutiny left in the subcontinent, the Russians will find it and blow gold dust on it. India is the famous jewel in the crown, the source of most of their imperial wealth, the lodestone of empire. They dare not risk it. Another large force is tied down with a very serious native revolt in New Zealand.” He nodded to Wilmoth to continue.

  “Before the war they had reinforced their forces in Canada to fourteen battalions, of which four were destroyed outright at Clavarack. Just before the battle, they landed another twenty thousand men through the captured ports of Maine, marched them around Portland to the Grand Trunk Railroad. That force consisted of thirteen battalions, two cavalry regiments, and two artillery brigades. The entire force was from the British Isles.” For the first time, Wilmoth glanced at his notes. “Yes, one of them is another battalion, the 2nd, of the Grenadier Guards.”

  Sharpe added, “Oh, yes, they took the loss of the 1st Battalion very, very badly. So the 2nd will have to go and wade through a river of Yankee blood to set the world right again.”

  Grant was soaking up every word as he calmly puffed on his ever-present cigar. He asked, “Well, where else can they find troops to send over here?”

  Wilmoth said, “Their Mediterranean garrisons can supply another half-dozen battalions since the main threat had been the French, and they are now allied with the British. Perhaps two from the West Indies, one from China, and one or two from Africa. Perhaps ten in all.”

  “Are they tapped out in the British Isles? Can they send more than what they already have?”

  “Yes, General, I believe they can. Late in the fifties there was another French invasion scare, and they created Rifle Volunteer Corps battalions. The public response was very enthusiastic. Even though each man had to supply his own uniform and rifle, they raised over two hundred thousand men in these units. They already had a hundred fifteen thousand or so in the Yeomanry, cavalry organized mostly around the tenants on the great estates, and the militia.11 Parliament recently passed a law allowing these RVC battalions to be deployed overseas in wartime.” He looked at Grant as if he were enjoying a private joke. “People think that only stolen secrets are valuable, but it is amazing what you can find right out there in the open in the Library of Congress.”12

  Sharpe laughed. “Didn’t have to pay a penny for that information, either.”

  Grant puffed an artful ring of smoke. “So the enemy is patriotic too. How unfortunate for us.” He smiled. “So, let me see if I read the implications here. They still have another twenty-seven battalions in the British Isles. Theoretically, they could send over the entire force and backfill it with these rifle corps. Right?”

  “Theoretically, yes, General. But they would never send all the royal guard regiments over.”

  Sharpe said, “Yes, they parade too well to actually get dirty. You’d have to scare them near to death, and that would take a Napoleon on the loose from Elba.

  “That brings me to the main purpose of our meeting, General. The President wants to scare them, yes, but in such a way that they keep everybody at home, regular and volunteer.”

  Grant put out his cigar and leaned forward.

  PLATTSURGH RAILROAD STATION, 12:10 P.M., FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1864

  “Damn.” Grant’s jaw set as his train rode into the station. He had informed Hooker that he most emphatically did not want any special military show for his visit. And there it was—an entire brigade drawn up as an honor guard and massed regimental bands thundering away. It was lost on him; he liked to say he could recognize only two tunes—one was “Yankee Doodle”, and the other wasn’t. More to the point, he hated to think how long the men had been there in the chill.

  He glanced at Sharpe, who just shrugged knowingly. Grant had asked Sharpe b
lunt questions about Hooker. It was Hooker as the new commander of the Army of the Potomac in February 1863 who had appointed to Sharpe to create something entirely new in the world of war, a professional organization devoted to the collection and analysis of intelligence, the Bureau of Military Information (BMI). It was Sharpe who handed Bobby Lee’s head on a silver platter to Hooker. Within two months of taking the job, Sharpe and his small staff had identified the location of almost every regiment in the Army of Northern Virginia, calculated its strength to within a handful of men, and put his finger on the miserable state of their logistics and communications. This was the genesis of the Chancellorsville campaign.13

  All Hooker had to do was execute his own plan boldly, but he hesitated while that man wild Jackson’s Second Corps had fallen upon his flank like the hounds of hell. Still he might have pulled it off. He rode bravely in front of his battle line on his white horse to rally the men. Yet the odds had lengthened when a cannon ball shattered the porch post next to him throwing half the bean to strike him along the length of his body, badly concussing him. He wandered in a daze into defeat.

  Again it had been Sharpe who had been first off the mark in discovering Lee’s movement to invade the North in June 1863. On Sharpe’s word, Hooker moved the Army of the Potomac so fast that it crossed the Potomac River ahead of the Army of Northern Virginia. But in the weeks that followed, Hooker’s confidence frayed, and he lashed out at everyone, saying things to Sharpe that all around them considered something no gentleman should endure.14 Hooker’s growing hysteria had alarmed Lincoln so much that when the general threatened to resign once too often, the President promptly accepted.

  This was the man who had left his command drenched in failure, drinking the dregs of humiliation both for his soldier’s pride and his overweening ambition. The irony was that he was a brave man and a good fighting general. When the British invaded upstate New York that September shortly after the war started, seized Albany, scorched the Hudson Valley, and threatened New York City itself, Hooker was in the city on leave. Two corps of Meade’s Army had just entrained to go to the relief of the Army of the Cumberland shut up in Chattanooga when they were diverted to New York and ennobled with the new name of the Army of the Hudson.

  The only man in New York with experience in commanding an Army was Hooker. Lincoln overcame his misgivings and his secretary of war’s opposition by shrewdly observing that Hooker of all men had something to prove, a mighty motivator. Indeed he did, promptly marched north to glory and victory near a tiny hamlet called Claverack. Only the sudden onset of an early blizzard had stalled his pursuit just south of the Canadian border.

  He spent the winter warmed with the glow of vindication, keeping court of sorts in Plattsburg for the throng of supporters who rushed there to feed his ambition. The hero of the Union, the savior and darling of New York, was thus shocked in February to read that Lincoln had appointed U.S. Grant as general-in-chief of the armies. His nose went noisily out of joint. Grant would have been deaf not to hear of it. More than a few men had pointed out that Hooker had formed just such a cabal to undermine his superior, Major General Burnside, after the battle of Fredericksburg.

  Now Grant was stepping off the train straight into the sort of military spectacle that he disliked and put on by the man who coveted his job. On the platform was Hooker standing ostentatiously by himself with his entire staff and all his senior commanders behind him as a silent Greek chorus in a sea of flags and bunting.

  Just then the honor guard shouted the first of three deafening huzzahs. Grant inwardly cringed but outwardly just hardened his face. Hooker and his entourage saluted. Grant returned the salute, and Hooker stepped forward to offer his hand. Grant took it and squeezed. Hooker returned the squeeze. The onlookers assumed the long handshake was sign of cordiality. They did not see the expressions on the two men as they kept on squeezing.

  “I thought I made it clear there was to be no ceremony, General Hooker.”

  That, and the blood loss to his hand, made it clear to Hooker that his gracious insubordination had been noted. He suddenly let go and smiled. “It is a great honor to have you here. Allow me to introduce my officers.”

  Sharpe had remained on the shadowed step of the railway car. His eyes scanned the crowd until he found Lt. Col. John McEntee, Hooker’s intelligence officer and Sharpe’s old friend. The two were Ulster men from the Kingston-Roundout area of New York fifty miles up the Hudson from the city. When Sharpe started up the BMI, he had asked for McEntee and made him his deputy, and an able one he had been, shrewd and active.15 When Lincoln brought Sharpe to Washington in July of the last year to create the NIB, McEntee had succeeded to his position with the Army of the Potomac. But Sharpe had pulled him out with a few order-of-battle clerks and a handful of good scouts to set up a BMI for the new Army of the Hudson. Because of McEntee and his team, Hooker had been able to fight Claverack with his eyes wide open. He owed no little thanks to them for the victory.

  McEntee waited on the platform until the bigwigs moved off. He walked right over to Sharpe, who reached down to shake his hand. “Come on in, John. We need to talk.” A big red-haired man had followed a few paces behind McEntee. Sharpe called out, “Sergeant Knight! Good to see you. Give the colonel and me a few minutes, then I want to talk to you.” Knight nodded.

  “Well, sit down, John.” McEntee was a sharp-faced, wiry man, the kind who came to the point. “George, something is up. And I don’t like it because I don’t know what for sure. The enemy might as well have thrown up the Great Wall of China across the border. It has been well nigh impossible to get my scouts through to take a look. Jeb Stuart could take lessons from the security they have up there.”

  Sharpe knew it had to be Wosleley, his shadowy counterpart. Before this war, they had met at the Ebbit’s Grill for dinner quite by accident and stared across the table, both pretending not to know who the other was. Wolseley had been playing the part of a British civilian visitor. By now Wilmoth had quite a dossier on him, savior of the beaten British Army at Clavarack and right-hand man to their new commanding general. He would have been disappointed if Wolseley did not have a thick file on him as well. Yes, it had to be Wolseley.

  He said so. McEntee replied, “Well, Wolseley may be pulling strings up in Montreal, and the one who’s closed the border, but it’s that bastard Denison who is giving me fits. His Royal Guides are constantly probing our lines, and I know they are getting through. We’ve killed a few who got careless, which is something they don’t often do. Knight can tell you about his run-in with them. But that’s not why I brought him along. He just got back in late last night.” He motioned through the window for Knight to come in. He looked at Sharpe. “There was a shootout, and they got young Hogan.” Sharpe sighed. Hogan was one of the best scouts the army had for all his only twenty-two years, and a cheery young man, the kind that lights up a room.

  Knight laid out a map. “We picked up the cipher from your agent outside Montreal.”

  McEntee pulled the cipher out of his coat pocket and gave it to Sharpe. “Hope you brought your cipher clerk? As you know, we don’t have the cipher for this level code.

  Sharpe looked around to the back of the car where a young corporal was sitting quietly. “Mason, time to do your magic.” The young man disappeared with the ciphered message.

  Knight went on, “It’s only thirty miles or so to Montreal from the border.” He smiled.”I wish Richmond had been as close to the Army of the Potomac. Most of the area on both sides of the border is thick forest, maple and oak. It opens out a lot with French farms and villages the closer you get to Montreal. But we stuck to the woods even though we were wearing civilian clothes.

  “General, for the last week, the Brits and Canadians have been moving south out of the Montreal area–horse, foot, and artillery. St. John is their headquarters, but they just kept moving south. There seemed to be a solid wall of pickets south of Lacolle and a lot of troops in the town too. Cavalry too, with lances. Never see
n such fancy uniforms.

  The locals all speak French. And since we don’t, it made it kinda hard to fool information out of them in their own language like we used to do in Virginia. Then again, it was easy to pass ourselves off as English-speaking Canadians. The Frenchies, those who spoke some English, confirmed that troops were moving everywhere south. Farm horses and corn and hay commandeered for Crown promissory notes. They weren’t too happy about that. A lot of them think those notes won’t be worth much soon.”

  Sharpe commented, “Yes, Jim McPhail’s network up there is reporting that there are a lot of hands eager for American gold, such as the agent you met. Still, the reporting is also worrisome. The peace element up there, especially the English-speaking part has shut up. And the French haven’t been too vocal either. Clavarack did something up there. It was like Fort Sumter for us. Fixed our resolve and put us in a fighting mood. You know, most of the English-speaking population is descended from Tories who fled after the Revolution. They may sound like us, but their attachment to the Crown is an inheritance they cherish.”

  McEntee laughed. “A lot of good it will do them. Come what may we will have Canada. The inhabited part doesn’t go on and on like the Confederacy. The people peter out fifty miles north of the U.S. border. You know, people say that even if we don’t subdue the South, we will have Canada as compensation.”

  Sharpe grew serious. “John, the people who have come to our country came because they wanted to be here, to be part of us. We’ve expanded across an almost empty continent that way, only a few Mexicans and Indians in the way. We’ve never attempted to conquer and incorporate three million people who never were and don’t want to be part of the United States. Yes, we can conquer Canada, but keeping it will be more trouble than it’s worth. We will be as popular as the English in Ireland. In any case, John, let’s not count our chickens before they’re hatched.”