Dixie Victorious: An Alternate history of the Civil War

by Peter Tsouras

  General Robert E. Lee. His victories ensured that the Confederacy would achieve its independence.

  McClellan had his weaknesses, but few called his organizational skills into question, nor doubted the magic his name invoked with the soldiers he led.

  The Confederacy’s leaders always hoped to gain foreign support because they believed that economic considerations would outweigh opposition to slavery. Here the cartoonist has the British stereotype John Bull comparing the supposedly “woolly hair” of a slave with the quality of the cotton in the bale.

  A cartoonist’s view of argument and indecision among the North’s leaders.

  General Albert Sidney Johnston.

  Johnston’s serious wound at Shiloh allowed Grant the chance to survive the Confederate onslaught.

  Brigadier General Wade Hampton, C.S.A.

  Major General J.E.B. Stuart, C.S.A.

  Union Blockhouse at Bridgeport captured by Jenkins’s Brigade on September 30, 1863.

  Union wagons captured at Bridgeport on September 30, 1863.

  Cleburne’s Corps was the breakthrough formation in the decisive Second Battle of Kenesaw Mountain on August 5, 1864. Here his old division breaks a desperate Union counterattack after Sherman’s death. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Major General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, Savior of the Confederacy, 1828–1922. His son, Joseph Patrick Cleburne, commanded the Confederate Expeditionary Force to France in the First World War. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Cleburne’s Division saved the Army of Tennessee in its flight after the crushing defeat at Chattanooga by delivering a severe beating to Joe Hooker’s pursuing corps at Ringgold’s Gap on November 27, 1863. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Edmund Kirby Smith, assertive commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department.

  Major General Banks with his staff in New York prior to embarking on their expedition to New Orleans.

  Union Cavalryman: By the time of the Valley campaign, the Union cavalry were equal, if not superior to, their Southern opponents.

  Confederate Cavalryman: The Southern horse soldier was one of the best light cavalrymen in the world during 1862–63.

  News of the Peninsular debacle shocked the North, and when it reached Europe,26 it emboldened the pro-Southern forces. The French Emperor, Napoleon III, received Confederate envoy John Slidell on July 16, and three days later sent a telegram to his foreign minister, who was then in London, instructing him to ask the British if it were not now time to recognize the South.27

  A British Member of Parliament who supported the Confederacy offered a resolution that the British government should cooperate with the French in an offer to mediate between the North and the South. The resolution seemed certain to pass when it was scheduled for debate on July 18, but Prime Minister Palmerston’s speech opposing the resolution and calling for trust in the government to decide when the right time would come for such an action caused the resolution to be withdrawn without a vote.28

  Rather than resting and refitting after Second Manassas, Lee made the decision to turn north. His men began crossing the Potomac into Maryland on the night of September 4–5, 1862.29 He moved the Army of Northern Virginia up to Frederick, where he decided to stand and make McClellan attack him across the Monocacy River.

  News of Second Manassas reached Europe just as the Battle of Frederick was being fought. Pro-Confederate leaders were elated, while Union legations despaired. British Prime Minister Palmerston, who had stood in the way of the drive to offer to mediate between the North and South in July, was now in the process of changing his mind. He wrote to his Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell, wondering if another Union disaster would signal that the time had come to think again.30

  On September 24, Palmerston set a meeting of the British Cabinet for early October to discuss the subject upon Russell’s return from traveling with Queen Victoria. The proposal would be to offer to both sides mediation on the basis of an armistice and cessation of blockades with a view to negotiations on the basis of separation to be followed by diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy.31

  When Lee defeated Burnside in front of Frederick on the 13th, Walker halted Couch at the Monocacy aqueduct on the 14th, and McClellan did not mount a successful assault across the Monocacy, action favorable to the Confederacy at last began. News of Frederick reached Europe on September 28, setting events in motion.

  Confederate envoys John Slidell and James Mason were told by well-connected Britons that their hopes were about to be realized.32 On October 2, Palmerston wrote to Russell, directing him to engage in discussions with the French, based upon the “South’s great success against the North.”33

  Palmerston convened the cabinet meeting he had scheduled on October 9. Only one voice was raised against making an offer of mediation, that of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, the Secretary for War. He was concerned that, if the Union rejected the mediation proposal and determined to fight on, the British Navy would be called upon to break the blockade, and the British Army would be called upon to defend Canada, which he believed was certain to be attacked by Union forces once hostilities began. He doubted that Britain could successfully defend Canada.

  Lewis did not carry the day. The British and French decided to take coordinated action. They each summoned the respective American ambassadors to their foreign ministries, where the diplomats were presented on Monday, October 13, with the not-unexpected offer of formal mediation. News of this action rocketed around Europe with telegraphic speed. Of the European powers, only Russia stood fast against the offer of mediation.

  Charles Francis Adams, the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St James, put the text of the mediation offer and his views on the situation onto the fastest ship available heading for New York. Making a quick crossing, the news reached New York on the 23d. Transported by rail overnight, the urgent diplomatic dispatches were in Secretary Seward’s and President Lincoln’s hands on the morning of Friday 24th.

  Lincoln had waited for military operations to stabilize and the Army of the Potomac to dig in thoroughly, re-supply, and reorganize before sacking McClellan. On October 8, he had relieved McClellan and replaced him with the only senior general at hand, General Halleck. Halleck was not well-liked by the troops, and was not known as a field commander.34 McClellan’s relief, despite the Frederick disaster, was greeted with unrest in the army.

  Worse, the military issue was what to do about the Army of Northern Virginia, which was building winter quarters north of the Union capital, in a position to threaten a variety of economically and politically critical Northern centers. Any attempt directly to attack the Army of Northern Virginia would have to be made from some direction other than across the Susquehanna River. An opposed crossing of the Susquehanna was considered militarily impossible.

  Halleck, confronted with a dispersed and disaffected Army of the Potomac, concluded that his only avenue for offensive action was to assemble a force in Baltimore and move northwest to cut Lee’s supply lines, hoping that this would then allow him to turn northeast and pin Lee against the Susquehanna. He feared, however, that Lee would not remain in his York fortifications, but would take the field and engage him in a battle of maneuver.

  With this strong probability in mind, Halleck demanded that more reinforcements be provided. He argued that the force he would take north from Baltimore must not be outnumbered by the Army of Northern Virginia, despite the fact that the Army of the Potomac would have to continue to cover Harrisburg, Baltimore, and the eastern bank of the Susquehanna, all in sufficient force to halt a determined attack by the entire Army of Northern Virginia.

  Secretary of War Stanton and President Lincoln agreed to Halleck’s demand. The problem was that additional forces had to be raised, armed, and trained, and this would take time. Lincoln issued a call for the states to provide an additional 300,000 men, and received authority from Congress to take state militia units into federal service for as long as nine months (the previous limi
t had been three months).

  News of the formal offer of international mediation struck official Washington like a thunderbolt. It could not be kept quiet, because it had become public in Europe the day after it was made, and was widely reported in European papers. The Administration knew that these papers were crossing the Atlantic right behind Adams’s official dispatches.

  Lincoln summoned the cabinet to discuss this critical development.35 Seward brought home the gravity of the situation, explaining that the next step after an offer of mediation was rejected could well be direct intervention by the British Navy to break the blockade. Stanton responded that, if Britain opened hostilities, Canada would shortly belong to the United States, because Britain did not have forces in Canada large enough to defend it, and could not get them there soon enough to prevent its capture. Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, immediately pointed out that the entire Union merchant fleet, spread around the world engaged in trade vital to the North, would become a legitimate target for the British and possibly the French fleets and any privateers Britain and France authorized. The Union Navy would be focused on fighting the forces seeking to break the blockade and could offer no protection to these merchant vessels.

  At this point, Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, raised the issue of the impact of a wider conflict on commerce and industry in the North. He pointed out that the Midwest was politically shaky. The Peace Democrats enjoyed rising political power, boosted by the loss of the Mississippi River grain trade with the now-Confederate states and by the threat working men felt freed black slaves would pose to their employment. They had made significant inroads in those states where congressional elections had already been held.

  Chase said the likely loss of the U.S. merchant fleet would deal a devastating blow to the economy. He worried that paying for the war would become impossible. He said that “Greenbacks,” the Union paper currency launched to provide liquidity in the North,36 would probably fall steeply in value, and the sale of Union war bonds would become difficult. He noted that a significant share of those bonds had been purchased by European interests. With access to that source of capital cut off, bond prices would drop and interest rates would skyrocket. Without financing, he could see no way to continue the war.

  At the close of the meeting, Lincoln stated that his position was to continue with the war to restore the Union. He would tell the press as much, as soon as the story on the mediation offer became public. He said that he would announce that he would not, however, formally respond to the joint British and French offer until after he had taken more time to consider it.37

  News of the joint British and French offer of mediation took longer to reach Richmond. Mason in London and Slidell in Paris were both summoned to the respective foreign ministries and informed of the offer. Because of the Union blockade, the Confederate agents’ ability to send news of the offer home was more limited. They placed dispatches on fast British ships heading for the Bahamas.

  At Nassau, Mason’s dispatches were transferred to one of the fastest blockade runners, the screw-driven S.S. Peterhoff. The Peterhoff left Nassau early on the 25th for Wilmington, North Carolina. The Peterhoff successfully negotiated the Union blockade during the hours of darkness late on the 26th, and entered Wilmington on the 27th. Slidell’s dispatches never made it home, captured by the U.S.S. Victoria onboard the ill-fated S.S. Theodora.

  News of the mediation offer, however, first reached Richmond through copies of the Washington Post’s Monday, October 27 edition which carried the earliest public word of the offer. The Post’s story was based on British newspapers received by ship in New York on the 26th. The Post’s New York bureau had urgently telegraphed the news to Washington. Confederate sympathizers quickly smuggled copies through the Union lines south of Washington, and the critical news was on the telegraph to Richmond before noon on the 27th.

  Rumor did not wait for the next day’s papers. News of the reported mediation offer spread swiftly through Richmond, igniting an impromptu public celebration that would not be equaled until Armistice Day. Citizens flooded the streets, cheering and shouting. Cannon fired in celebration, and a few hoarded fireworks joyously flew up into the evening sky.

  Confederate President Jefferson Davis reacted cautiously to the reports. He appeared on the porch of the Confederate White House to the cheers of the crowd. He proclaimed the reports good news, but said his government as yet had no official word of the offer. He stated his belief that word would come shortly, and that, if the offer was as reported, it was very positive news indeed.

  Davis did not have long to wait. Mason’s dispatches reached him on the 28th, rushed by railroad from Wilmington. Dispatches in hand, Davis called an immediate meeting of his Cabinet.38 Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin had been closeted with Davis studying Mason’s dispatches with great care prior to the cabinet meeting. Davis turned to him to open the meeting.

  Benjamin was measured in his assessment of the development. He stated that the offer to mediate was genuine, and the terms were exactly what the South had sought. The proposal to begin with an armistice and a cessation of the blockade would offer immediate relief to the Confederacy. Following those steps with negotiations for separation and with foreign recognition of the legal independence of the Confederacy would secure for them their war aims.

  The next to speak was Secretary of the Treasury George A. Trenholm. He stated that the first steps in the proposed mediation process would essentially solve the Confederacy’s increasingly difficult financial problems. It would make the Confederate dollar strong and vastly ease the sale of Confederate war bonds, especially in Europe. Until now, Confederate bonds had had to offer high rates of interest and were regarded as speculative investments in Europe. With an armistice, interest rates would drop dramatically and, likely buoyed on the tide of pro-Confederate sentiment in Europe, bonds would sell quickly. The infusion of capital produced by these two events would substantially strengthen the South.

  George W. Randolph, Secretary of War, spoke next. He stated that, with renewed trade with Europe and sound finances, the serious material shortages that had plagued Confederate forces could be made good in a short period of time. This would enable the South to continue its military operations if the armistice were to fail. However, he said that the most critical need was for industrial equipment to enable the South to meet vital needs from its own resources, otherwise a renewal of the war would swiftly exhaust stockpiles built up during an armistice.

  Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory then stated that the most important step that could be taken was to attempt to secure an alliance with Great Britain. The British Navy would serve to keep Southern ports open and trade flowing even if war were renewed. While the recent loss of New Orleans stung, the Confederacy still held Mobile, Alabama, Savannah, Georgia, Charleston, South Carolina, and most important, Wilmington, North Carolina. An armistice and an end to the blockade would not, by its terms, reopen ports now held by Union forces, but would allow a free flow of trade through those remaining major ports and many smaller harbors still in Confederate hands.

  President Davis turned to Benjamin and directed him to convey to the governments of Britain and France the Confederacy’s acceptance of the offer of mediation. He also directed that Confederate envoys explore with the British and French the possibility of alliances and the possibility of immediate material support, if formal alliances did not seem feasible.

  Davis said that he planned to make a public announcement of the Confederacy’s acceptance of the offer of mediation. He thought that this would put increased pressure on the Lincoln Administration also to accept the offer. He noted that Republican losses in the early stages of the 1862 U.S. Congressional elections had been severe, and he expected those losses to worsen as voting continued. If the Republicans were to lose control of the House, they would be unable to continue the war. He was going to do everything that he could to make the prospect of immediate peace appealing to Northern voters
, and seek to end the war through Congressional action even if Lincoln rejected the European offer of mediation.39

  Davis asked Secretary Randolph to redouble his efforts to keep the Army of Northern Virginia well supplied and to make up losses in manpower as much as possible. General Lee in York with a strong, healthy army hopefully would make irresistible the argument for peace in the North.

  Monday, October 27, 1862, forever after known as “Black Monday,” dawned in New York City with newspaper headlines shouting the news from Europe of the offer of mediation. The stock market, when it opened, reacted with frenzied selling, causing the prices of shares to crash. By noon, the New York Stock Exchange was considering closing early to stem the rout. Some businesses began refusing to accept Greenbacks, or took them only at a discount against specie.

  Telegraphed reports of this financial carnage forced a hasty meeting between President Lincoln and Secretary Chase. Lincoln had drafted a short statement on the mediation offer. He was planning to make the statement on Monday, and decided that it needed to be made public immediately. He directed Chase to telegraph New York financiers and ask for their help in stabilizing the market. He authorized Chase to offer Treasury support for that effort.

  Lincoln then summoned reporters to the White House and made one of the most important statements of his political career. He began,