The Confederate commander of the Virginian forces, General Lee, had responded to the increased activity in the north of the state by ordering the Forty-fourth Virginia Regiment, under Colonel William C. Scott, to reinforce the rebel troops on Rich Mountain, and two more regiments were also on their way north from Richmond. In addition, Lee ordered Wise to move from Charleston upon Parkersburg in a divisionary attack that would relieve the pressure on the men on Rich Mountain.
Wise’s orders from Lee were the ones Pryce Lewis had strained to hear through the keyhole of the Kanawha House Hotel in the early hours of July 11. Lewis ruminated on the disclosure over breakfast. On the one hand, with a bit of luck, Union troops might soon be marching through Charleston, but then again, the town might soon be rejoicing to the news of rebel triumph. Either way, Kanawha County was now at war, and the countryside would be crawling with soldiers of gray and blue, most of whom would be frightened and inexperienced, more likely to shoot first and question later.
C H A P T E R N I N E
“I See You Are a Stranger in These Parts”
OVER BREAKFAST ON JULY 11, 1861, Lewis decided that the time had come to implement Bridgeman’s plan: they would leave Charleston and ride east along the road to Richmond until they reached Browntown; there they would take the rough trail south through Boone County and on to Kentucky. All he needed was a pass that would allow him to travel east to Browntown. After breakfast Lewis knocked on landlord Wright’s door and asked if he would be so good as to introduce him to the colonel. Presently Lewis was shaking hands with Tompkins, whom he found to be “a fine-looking, middle-aged man—a free and easy Virginian.”
The pair chatted for a while, and then Lewis, having established that Wise had told Tompkins nothing about his story, explained that he was eager to press on to Richmond, but alas, General Wise had refused to issue him a pass. Might the colonel see his way to authorizing a pass? wondered Lewis with a most ingratiating smile.
Tompkins looked surprised. A pass isn’t required for Richmond, he said, explaining that the roads in that direction were open. General Wise must have misunderstood. Lewis feigned bafflement and blustered that indeed the general must have thought he wanted a pass north through Confederate lines. Tompkins agreed. Lewis searched the colonel’s face for suspicion, but there was none. It appeared Tompkins believed his story. Nevertheless, said Lewis, couldn’t he have a pass to be on the safe side?
Tompkins shook his head and said he wasn’t authorized to issue passes, but told Lewis not to fret. There were hardly any Confederate troops east of Charleston, and those that were there were at Gauley Bridge. If they should accost Lewis (and there was no reason why they should), he should simply mention the colonel’s name—and he would be free to continue.
Not wishing to appear in too much of a rush to leave Charleston, Lewis thanked the colonel and told him he would set off in a day or two, whenever he felt inclined. Having instructed Bridgeman to prepare the horses for an early start the following morning, Lewis spent the day in his room, praying that General Wise wouldn’t return to discover his convoluted story. The sound of every gallop brought him running to the window, and the day dragged interminably. Supper came eventually, and afterward Lewis knocked on Mr. Wright’s door and explained he would be off early the next day. Wright told him he’d have some breakfast ready. They settled the bill there and then: twelve nights’ stay for Mr. Lewis, his servant and two horses—a total of $35.75.
Lewis rose at dawn, and after a breakfast heavy with nerves, he and Bridgeman bade good-bye to the Kanawha House Hotel and set off east in the direction of Browntown.
There wasn’t much to Browntown except a couple of salt furnaces, an old tavern and a few other ramshackle buildings at the intersection of the road to Richmond and the turning south toward Kentucky. The carriage slowed, and Bridgeman looked around him, checking for signs of human life. Lewis, too, glanced surreptitiously from side to side, aware that the moment they turned off the Richmond road their cover was in danger of being blown. If they encountered any rebel soldiers who recognized them from Charleston, they would have some explaining to do.
For the next hour or two the carriage jarred and jolted, tossing Lewis from side to side as they negotiated “a rough road through a hilly country … there were long stretches crossed with deep gullies and ruts filled with stones.” Toward noon they stopped alongside a farmhouse, one of the few inhabited dwellings they’d encountered on the track, where they were warmly welcomed by the farmer and his wife. After an abundant lunch they continued north toward the village of Logan Courthouse.
There was a fort at the entrance to Logan Courthouse, so they pulled in and the blacksmith shod the tired horses. Word of the strange arrival at the smithy filtered back to the villagers, and by the time they stopped in front of Logan’s solitary hotel a curious crowd had assembled, “most of whom were rough-looking soldiers … [with] looks of suspicion or hostility in their faces.” Bridgeman helped Lewis out of the carriage as a man in black broadcloth pushed his way to the front of the mob. He asked where he’d come from.
Charleston, replied Lewis. The man had more questions, but the Englishman wasn’t in the mood. He wished him a curt good day and walked into the hotel. As he signed the resister he felt a hand upon his arm. Turning he saw an old gentleman, more refined and not so rough as the men outside.
“I see you are a stranger in these parts,” he said, with a polite smile. Lewis nodded.
The man wondered what a cultivated gentleman was doing in the backwoods of Virginia, so far from the civilization to which he was accustomed. Lewis already had an explanation, a new story to fit their changed circumstances.
Lewis explained that his family owned several cotton mills in the north of England and it was his job to investigate the feasibility of shipping Southern cotton across the Atlantic. His first destination was Louisville, where he had an appointment with the British consul, and from there he intended to visit Washington.
The man gave a perfunctory nod of his head, but he wasn’t much interested in Lewis’s background. He was the Logan meddler, a man who had an opinion on everything. With the conviction of the know-it-all he told Lewis his carriage wouldn’t stand the journey. Lewis thanked him but said he would give it a go. The man sighed at the Englishman’s obstinacy. In that case, he advised, Lewis should meet Major Browning, the commander of the local militia. He knew the region like the back of his hand, and if anyone could plot a course through the mountains the major could.
Lewis accompanied the man across the street and into a saloon. A group of soldiers was propped against the bar and “among them was a little old man in blue jean overalls and checked shirt, with an old-fashioned, very narrow brim stovepipe hat.” He removed his hat and introduced himself as Major Rees Browning, the officer commanding the Logan militia.
He was sixty years old, a wealthy farmer and former sheriff of the county, whose family was one of the most prominent in the region. Browning had little hard military experience, but he had influence, which was why he was in charge.
He listened to Lewis’s story and then waved a hand dismissively and said it would be no problem to reach Kentucky. What was more, he would be happy to take Lewis to his office and sketch a map of the best route through the mountains. Lewis was delighted. Excellent news, he exclaimed, tapping the floor with the tip of his walking cane. He bought the major a whiskey for his trouble, and the village busybody, too, and then threw a handful of coins on the counter and told the bartender to buy a round for everyone in uniform.
Lewis accompanied Major Browning to his office a short walk from the saloon. A short while later he had a detailed map of the route into Kentucky and a letter of introduction from the major to a friend whose farm lay on the trail. As Lewis tucked the letter into the pocket of his frock coat, the major “sat back in his chair, stretched out his legs, looked at me attentively and said ‘what do you think of the war?’”
Like all educated Southerners in the summe
r of 1861, Browning hoped one morning to hear the news that Great Britain had recognized the independence of the Confederate States. In May a delegation of rebel commissioners, headed by William Lowndes Yancey, had arrived in London for an audience with the British foreign secretary, Lord John Russell. The rebels took great heart from what was said. Russell had discussed the constitutional rights of secession, and Yancey had pledged the South’s desire for free trade, reminding the British minister of the importance to his people of Southern cotton. Russell’s principal concern, however, was the issue of the African slave trade. He had heard that the Confederate government was keen to restore this abomination. Was this true? Yancey reassured Russell that the South “had prohibited the slave-trade, and did not mean to revive it.”
Lord Russell was in a tricky position, as were all the members of the British government. Though they opposed slavery, there wasn’t a true democrat among them, not in the mold of Abraham Lincoln. A “rail-splitter” like him could never have risen to become a British minister; to be that, one had to have been born into privilege, with wealth and property the only prerequisites. The members of the British government believed in “aristocratic government,” and anyone who challenged them was crushed mercilessly, as the Chartists had discovered a generation earlier. By temperament and political philosophy, therefore, ministers such as Lord Russell and the prime minister, seventy-seven-year-old Lord Palmerston, had more in common with the Confederate government than they did with the Federal. Lincoln’s administration believed in equal rights and espoused the cause of the workingman, themes that were anathema to the British government. Lord Russell’s nickname was “Finality John,” a moniker bestowed in 1832 when he proclaimed the Reform Act of that year would be Britain’s final concession to democracy.
The mouthpiece of the British establishment was the Times of London. Its views were followed by men of power and privilege on both sides of the Atlantic. In the months between Lincoln’s election victory in 1860 and his inauguration on March 4, the Times had been his supporter, praising his commitment to the antislavery cause and condemning the people of the Southern states as a “poor, proud, lazy, excitable and violent class, ever ready with knife and revolver.” But when Lincoln used his inauguration address to reassure Americans he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists,” the Times began to revise its opinion. If it wasn’t a dispute about slavery, it asked, then what was it about? The outbreak of war, and Lincoln’s order on April 19 for Federal ships to patrol the 3,500 miles of Confederacy coastline and seize all vessels entering and leaving, confirmed the Times’ view that the North was going to war not out of any righteous cause but to seize control of the South’s cotton fields (whence came 75 percent of the world’s cotton supplies and as much as 84 percent of Britain’s), thereby posing a serious threat to Britain’s economic stability.
The South was sure that cotton would win British support for its cause, if not militarily, at least diplomatically. As early as March 1858, Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina had asked, in an address (that became known as the “Cotton Is King” speech) to the U.S. Senate, about the consequences if the Southern states ceased to produce cotton for any length of time. “I will not stop to depict what everyone can imagine,” he said, “but this is certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her, save the South. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king. Until lately the Bank of England was king; but she tried to put her screws as usual, the fall before last, upon the cotton crop, and was utterly vanquished. The last power has been conquered. Who can doubt, that has looked at recent events, that cotton is supreme?” Two years later Hammond’s belief in the influence of cotton had grown still further, and he pompously declared that “the slave-holding South is now the controlling power of the world.”
Taking its lead from Senator Hammond, South Carolina’s Charleston Mercury predicted that “cotton would bring England to her knees,” and there was much evidence to back up such dramatic claims. In 1861 the London Times estimated that one fifth of the British population was dependent, directly or indirectly, on the success of the cotton districts. As the overwhelming bulk of the cotton was imported from the Southern United States, they were thereby reliant on this region for their existence. The situation was especially acute in the north of England, Britain’s industrial heartland, where all but 500 of the country’s 2,650 cotton factories were located. Half a million men and women were employed in these factories, and the consequences of widespread redundancy terrified the British government, which envisioned social unrest leading to revolution.
But by a quirk of fate, the 1860 cotton crop in America had been the largest ever—four million bales—and of the three and a half million shipped abroad, most went to Britain, which carefully husbanded the surplus bales, mindful of the economic depression of 1857 that had affected supplies. When war began the British government was naturally concerned about the impact on the cotton trade, but not as much as the South thought, certainly not enough to forcibly remove the Federal blockade as De Bow’s Review had foreseen in January 1861. This Southern journal, with its emphasis on agricultural and industrial progress, wrote that “the first demonstration of blockade of the Southern ports would be swept away by the English fleets of observation hovering on the Southern coasts, to protect English commerce, and especially the free flow of cotton.” The British government had no choice, concluded De Bow’s, for a disruption to the cotton trade “would produce the most disastrous political results—if not a revolution in England.”
. . .
Following his interview with Yancey in May 1861, Lord Russell reported to the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, and the rest of the cabinet. Though there were aristocratic murmurings of sympathy for the Southern states, and splutterings of indignation at their uncouth Federal counterparts, it was agreed that Britain would refuse, for the time being, to recognize Southern sovereignty. As the Times wrote in its editorial of May 9, while the war appeared to be “a conflict where there were in fact no such ideals involved as had been earlier attributed to it … Southern rights are now more clearly understood, and in any case since war, though greatly to be regretted, was now at hand, it was England’s business to keep strictly out of it and to maintain neutrality.” Five days later, on Tuesday, May 14, Queen Victoria, on the advice of her prime minister, issued Britain’s “Proclamation of Neutrality.” The proclamation was avidly reported in the American press, with Harper’s Weekly summarizing it in its edition of June 8. “The proclamation of the Queen has been issued by the Privy Council at Whitehall, warning all British subjects from interfering, at their peril, with either party in the American conflict, or giving aid and comfort in any way, by personal service and supplying munitions of war, to either party. The proclamation announces it as the intention of the British Government to preserve the strictest neutrality in the contest between the Government of the United States and the Government of those States calling themselves the Confederate States of America.”
In its editorial of the same issue, the Union-supporting Harper’s criticized Britain for its proclamation, for it recognized the 750,000 square miles of the Confederacy as a belligerent power, which allowed Davis’s government under international law to do business with other nations; business such as the purchase of armaments and ships. Harper’s was piqued that the British government had given succor to the rebels when it prided itself on the ruthless alacrity with which it crushed its own rebellions, such as the one in India four years earlier.*
Nonetheless, Harper’s Weekly crowed that Britain’s Proclamation of Neutrality was a devastating blow for the Confederacy because “the whole rebellion has rested upon two points: first, that the North was cowardly and divided, and then that England, which must have cotton, would open the Southern Ports. But the traitors forgot how much the one depended upon the other. If England had
seen the Slave States united in the movement, and the Free States hesitating and divided, she would doubtless have taken some more decided action. But she has seen just in time, in the Free States, an enthusiastic unanimity unparalleled in history—all the vast resources of a great, intelligent, skillful, industrious, and wealthy people, she has seen heaped and lavished in the measures of defense against this conspiracy.”
Lewis knew the words Major Browning wanted to hear and so told him that “England is bound to have the cotton in the south. Millions of English operatives depend on it. Without it there will be famine and revolution [and] England will risk ten foreign wars to prevent a civil one. She must and will open the Northern blockade with her immense fleet.” To heighten the dramatic effect of his words, Lewis banged his fist on the major’s desk and cursed the Yankees. Browning jumped to his feet, and the pair shook hands on behalf of their respective nations. Lewis suggested they retire to his hotel and seal their fidelity in champagne.
The champagne led to supper and the subsequent revelation from the major that early the next day he and his men were moving northeast to reinforce General Wise. He thought Lewis such an accomplished “speechifier” that he requested the Englishman say a few words to his boys; most had never been in action, and it would do their morale a power of good to know that England would soon be their ally in war.
Lewis shook his head regretfully and told the major he couldn’t possibly accept the invitation because Queen Victoria had issued a proclamation against any of her subjects interfering in the American dispute. Lewis explained to Browning that if word reached Washington that he had give a speech in support of the Confederacy “it might prevent my getting a permit to move the cotton, and compromise all our interests.”
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