Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History

by Peter G. Tsouras

  As to the front door, so audacious a plan could never have been attempted if the invasion had been on foot and horse. It would take a week of unopposed marching to reach either objective. The use of trains in the offensive had never been tried before. Trains had been used to rapidly move armies to their staging areas but never as the spearhead of invasion itself. It was the only way to deliver a knockout punch. If the element of surprise was maintained, a very big “if” indeed, then they would seize both cities by the next day. If not, they would detrain where necessary and press on by road. Maj. Gen. Lord Frederick Paulet had been given command of the twenty thousand men of the two mixed British-Canadian divisions, designated the Albany Field Force, that would strike for New York’s capital. The Guards Brigade was in the lead trains heading south to Albany. They had to be given pride of place in this operation. While the guards had burnished their battle honors in the Crimean War, they were not known for their dash or the quick thinking of their officers. Wolseley would have been happier with some of the scrappier line regiments with less social standing in the lead.

  Those regiments were heading toward Portland.

  CHATHAM ARCH, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, 3:00 AM, SEPTEMBER 30, 1863

  George Grenfell adjusted his cap in the mirror and took a moment to reflect how far he had come since he had set off for a life of adventure. His thoughts fled back to his days in the Moroccan Rif when the bloom of youth was on him. Now his hair was white, but he told himself, “Damned distinguished. Life’s not done with me yet.”

  John Hines was not so reflective. The wiry, little man had already put on his uniform and not once glanced in the mirror. He was spinning the cylinder on his pistol to make sure its action was still smooth. He spared a glance to Grenfell. “I swear, sir, you look the dandy, but find the time to admire yourself when we don’t have a fight to start.”

  Grenfell just smiled and ran his fingers under his fine, white mustache. “Now, Captain, you must allow yourself to savor a splendid moment. You never know when it will be your last.”

  “I’ll do that when the war is over.”

  Grenfell did not reply that too many men never lived that long.

  There was a knock on the door. They stopped still and glanced at each other and then toward the door. The last ten days had made them wary. That damned Major Cline and his band had dogged their heels far too closely. At times they despaired that their plan would disintegrate as Cline picked apart the pieces. Had he done so already? They had escaped him only by a hair on more than one occasion.

  Another knock followed by a muffled, insistent voice. “We’re ready.” Hines relaxed. Even through the door, he recognized Jim Smoke’s rasping voice. Hines let him in, and immediately the room filled with the big man’s menace. “We’re ready,” he said again. “My men are all in place.” Two hundred Copperheads were lying in wait around Camp Morton, the sprawling Confederate prisoner of war facility on what had been planned as Indianapolis’s fair grounds before the war. Three thousand veteran soldiers of the Confederacy were sleeping inside, or so their guards thought. Word had come to them just hours before to be awake and alert this night. Not that the guards would have picked up anything out the ordinary. The experienced regiment that had been the camp’s guard force had been transferred a week ago, their place taken by volunteer home guards. The new men were profoundly unaware of their duties.8

  UNION STATION, PORTLAND, MAINE, 4:10 AM, SEPTEMBER 30, 1863

  The city of Portland sits on a boot-shaped peninsula with the toe pointing northeast to the broad Casco Bay, sheltered from the Atlantic by a string of islands. Its harbor lay on the southern, or under side of the boot and made Portland one of the finest deep-water ports on the East Coast. The instep and big toe curled around Back Cove. The Fore River ran down the back of the foot and past the heel into the harbor. The town of some forty thousand souls occupied the peninsula from the toe to the heel. The Grand Trunk Railroad ran north to south down the western edge of the boot and curled east along the harbor to pass through the city’s Union Station and then ran north to Canada again. Most Maine men remembered the cool green lushness of the city whose every street but the smallest was lined with stately chestnuts and maples, earning Portland the title of the “Forest City.”

  For the Maine men arriving from the Army of the Potomac, the station meant hot food and coffee on a chilly morning from the attentive ladies of the Sanitary Commission who maintained a permanent facility to attend to military personnel in transit. Portland was not on a main troop transit route and the facility was small, but the people of Portland had turned the entire train station into a reception center for their heroes home to rest and recruit back their strength. Since midnight the trains had been arriving, not with a few Maine regiments but with Maine’s entire military contingent from the Army of the Potomac. Sharpe’s suggestion had started the ball rolling, and that ball had rolled right over Major General Meade’s loud protest to lose all his Maine regiments—3,241 men divided into one cavalry, ten infantry regiments, and three artillery batteries. Maine had taken 3,721 men into the battle of Gettysburg and lost 1,017. Since then hundreds of wounded and missing had returned to duty, but most of the regiments had been severely depleted even before Gettysburg. Had they been at full strength, the entire contingent would have numbered almost thirteen thousand men. It was an example of what wastage the Army had suffered in camp and in the field and of the failure to establish a regular replacement system (see appendix A).9

  Thus the story that they were returning home to recruit was entirely plausible. As a cover story, the public announcement had indicated only three regiments were returning. The governor had only been informed of the true extent of the troop movement the day before. The ladies of the Sanitary Commission had had to scramble, but when the trains began to arrive, they were ready with tables piled high with food and enough hot coffee to float a monitor.

  The trains had begun to arrive strangely enough about two hours before the Royal Marines had climbed into their boats to fall upon Fort Gorges. The train ride from Northern Virginia had been hurried, almost nonstop, but the men took the discomfort in stride as every uninterrupted mile took them closer to home. They had not bothered to ask why two brigade staffs had been attached to them, so intent were they for home. The gunners had brought their complete batteries to include horses, guns, limbers, and caissons as well as their supply and maintenance wagons. The cavalry had brought their horses as well. That raised questions, but they had been told there would be major parades in Portland, Augusta, and Bangor, and the idea of showing off to the local girls had disarmed any further curiosity. What no one bothered to note were the medical and supply units because they occupied the rearmost trains. It was an efficient logistical exercise, an area in which the Union excelled. It was also a clever strategic deception plan in operation. That was something the Union was now just beginning to excel at under the shadowy hand of Brigadier General Sharpe.10

  Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, of Gettysburg reknown, had been instructed to accompany the Maine contingent and assume “administrative” control of five infantry regiments, including his old 20th Maine and a battery. The other five regiments and another battery had been similarly brigaded under another able Maine officer, Col. Ephraim Harper. Another battery and a cavalry regiment rounded out the Maine units (see appendix A).11 Chamberlain and Harper had been briefed on their mission before leaving Washington along with Brig. Gen. Neal Dow. Known as a temperance fanatic, “the Napoleon of Temperance” was a brave man withal. People had not forgotten the heavy hand with which he had put down the Portland Rum Riot of 1855 during his time as mayor. Chamberlain and Harper winced when Halleck explained that in case of war, Dow would assume command of the “Maine Division” with the mission of defending the state and cutting the New Brunswick Road to sever communications between Canada and the Maritimes. Nobody liked Dow, which is not necessarily a requirement for successful command, but his constant emphasis on temperance was bound to
alienate the troops. The men were aware that Dow had ordered his own 13th Maine to sign the temperance pledge. It was not something Chamberlain would have tried with his own 20th Maine despite the men’s affection for him.12

  Since Little Round Top, Chamberlain had become something of a legend not only in the Army of the Potomac but also in Maine, where he was now the shining hero. That desperate bayonet charge downhill that had swept the 15th Alabama away had swept him up to glory. Command of a brigade had followed, and he was among those few identified for stars in the future. A gifted college professor who had abandoned the classroom for the camp to serve his country in this great struggle for freedom, he had truly found himself in the Army. Inside that mild-mannered bookworm was a fighting man whom other men rushed to follow. Campaigning had worked the softness of academe out of him and replaced it with a lean, almost leopard-like presence. The sun had bleached his blond hair even fairer, and his drooping mustache set off his long face with its penetrating blue eyes. He was the natural warrior with an innate sense of Mars’s three gifts of the art of war—”quick grasp, speed, and shock.”

  Word had spread of the arrival of the troops, and thousands of townspeople had left their warm beds to greet friends and relatives. Hundreds of lanterns were bouncing through the fog that drifted up from the harbor to gather around the station whose own lights were struggling with the wet, floating gloom. Inside the station, the men were finishing their meals. Dow was conferring with Chamberlain and Harper when a familiar, whistling noise stopped every mouth. The shell crashed through the roof and exploded among the dining tables, scattering blue-clad bodies every which way and killing three Sanitation Commission ladies carrying coffee and doughnuts. More shells followed, turning the main hall into a shambles as the troops and civilians rushed for the exits, but they found no safety. More shells were falling into the crowd, which had turned into a terrified beast, screaming in fear.13

  With Fort Gorges fallen, British ships had crept slowly into the harbor, drawn by the dull glow of light at the railroad station. His Copperhead informant had told the squadron commander aboard the frigate HMS Bacchante that the glow was the railroad station on the edge of the city. The officer ordered his shell guns to fire on the center of the glow. HMS Diadem followed with its own broadside battery. Here was an economic target important to the ability of the Americans to make war, he thought, disregarding Admiral Milne’s instructions not to fire on coastal towns. For this he would be relieved, but not before his 8-inch shells piled the bodies of women and children up in the station and surrounding streets and gave the Americans an immortal battle cry—“Remember Maine!”

  Temperance fanatic notwithstanding, Dow was quick witted and decisive in an emergency and ordered Harper to assemble and double-time his regiments to the docks to repel any possible landing. If they were close enough to bombard Union Station that meant they had bypassed or seized the harbor forts. He instructed Chamberlain to hold his regiments in reserve and ensure that the trains were speedily unloaded to support combat. The gunners and the cavalry did not wait to be told; these were veteran troops and were already unloading their equipment and horses. The infantry regiments were equally in hand as soon as they had evacuated the now burning wooden station house. The smoke from that inferno mixed with the thick fog to wrap the city in a blur. The men of Harper’s regiments moved easily through the streets of the city that was the hometown of many, their tread propelled by a deepening anger. Frightened night watchmen from the docks intercepted the columns and directed them to Smith’s Wharf, where hundreds of the “Peacemakers” from the 1/16th Foot from the Halifax garrison were hustling down the gangplanks from the Dromedary onto its broad surface with its double rail lines. Wolseley’s reconnaissance had picked the best landing spot. Light boat guns with their Royal Marine crews rolled down the gangways to clack with their iron wheels over the granite paving of the wharf. Boats from the bombarding ships carrying detachments of armed naval ratings clustered along the edge of the wharf, adding men in white and blue to the crimson mass moving down the wharf.

  Lt. Col. Charles Langely, commanding the Peacemakers, was more than anxious after the Navy had started a bonfire whose dull red eye glowed even through this horrendous fog. The essence of a coup de main is stealth and silence, and now they had neither. He had hoped to be in control of the city as it woke to the morning and present its citizens with an accomplished fact that common sense would force them to accept. Now, thanks to the Navy, all would be chaos. He could not see but could hear the Dromedary pulling away from the wharf to pick up the Royal Marines at Ft. Gorges as a further reinforcement for Langely’s command. “Thank God,” he murmured to himself. “There are almost no troops in the town.”14

  There were only 112 men left in the 3rd Maine after it had watered the fields of Pennsylvania with its blood, but they double-timed up York Street as if they were the full thousand men that had left home two years ago. They turned right on Maple and crossed Commercial Street, which put them on the edge of the docks between Deakes and Brown’s wharves. Even through the fog, the activity could be sensed and heard more than seen. The colonel stopped them only long enough to fix bayonets. The watchmen lifted their lanterns and pointed down the street to Smith’s Wharf. Then he led them forward. Shots rent the fog; the colonel fell, but the 3rd Maine kept moving. Shouts in British English cut through the night. More shots came and more men pitched into the gutter. When a picket line emerged from the fog, too close to run, too few could survive the moving blue column that stabbed with bayonets and struck with rifle butts. The column broke onto the Smith’s Wharf as the British firing line cut loose. The first blue ranks fell, but the rest broke into a run over the short space and closed with the Peacemakers before they could reload. Now it was man to man. The gunpowder and technological revolutions of the time disappeared as men fell into the ultimate savagery with bayonets and rifle butts, teeth and bare hands.

  More companies of the 1/16th rushed into the fight as they clambered onto the wharf while the 4th and 5th Maine pushed in from the town. Soon the entire fog-blanketed wharf was a seething mass of fighting men with so little room that only pistols were of any use. There was no time or space to reload a rifle. Once fired, it became a spear.

  There were no tougher professionals in that age than the British infantry, but even their toughness was no match for the veteran courage and rage of the Maine men, whose homes had been violated and their women and children murdered. The outnumbered redcoats were being pushed back down the wharf as bodies carpeted the planking or fell off the sides into the water. Lieutenant Colonel Langely’s body was among them as it slipped beneath the murky harbor water. He would become a legend in the history of the regiment, likened to Horatio at the bridge. No Army but that of the British can wring so much glory and inspiration from a death. With two bayonet men on either side, he had fought in the front rank with rifle and bayonet, prodigiously lethal in his own right. There was very little scope to command with men packed so tightly on a narrow front. At that moment, an example was all the command his men had needed. He had finally gone down in that blur of bayonets and crack of pistols as the Maine men shoved them back and back again.15

  The rear American companies peeled off left and right to fire into the enemy on the wharf. They were joined by the 5th Maine Battery, which sent canister into the British and into the boats clustered at the end of the wharf. A British corvette, HMS Pylades, steamed up to fire into the struggling mass but killed as many of its men as the Americans it cut down. The battery turned its guns on the ship, sweeping the decks this time with case shot, killing the captain and helmsmen, and leaving its upper decks a splintered shambles.

  The Peacemakers, mixed with naval ratings and Marines, were backed down the wharf, step by step, begrudging every bloody inch until the last of them were clustered at the end of the wharf as dawn began to burn off the last of the thinning fog. The corvette had drifted away, its engines now holed by a solid shot from the battery. Three hundre
d fifty-three were left of the nine hundred British who had set foot on the dock. Their backs to the water, the Dromedary gone, and their boats smashed, they fought on. Suddenly the fighting stopped. Both groups just stood there on the planking strewn with dead and dying men, mingled equally in Union blue and Her Majesty’s crimson. Ten feet of silence separated the panting, blood- and sweat-soaked groups. The inner fires banked. An officer in blue stepped forward and demanded their surrender. A sergeant in red threw down his rifle, for there was not an officer on his feet; then the others followed. But the battle for Portland had only just begun.16

  CAMP MORTON, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, 4:15 AM, SEPTEMBER 30, 1863

  Two hours before dawn when most of the guards at Camp Morton slept, the three thousand men inside the prisoners’ barracks were awake. The word had gone out after midnight to rouse the men in silence. In the officers’ section of the camp, John Hunt Morgan waited more intently than any of them. It was to him that Hines had sent word. He had shared it with only three of his officers, but at his command the camp had quietly stirred itself. He would have taken heart in these early hours suspended between night and day when courage is weakest if he had known that of the thousands of expectantly waiting men there was one who had clutched a camp-made battle flag, the square-shaped stars and bars, that he had painstakingly assembled from what bits and pieces of colored cloth had come his way. Such flags, “the damned red flags of rebellion,” had quailed many a Northern heart in the past. This one was waiting to do so again.