However, there were men of courage.
ROYAL NAVY DOCKYARD, IRELAND ISLAND, BERMUDA, 2:00 PM, OCTOBER 1, 1863
The entire ironclad strength of the Royal Navy—the HMS Warrior, Black Prince, Defence, and Resistance—steamed through the narrows of Ireland Island to the Royal Navy dockyard. The forts lining the thousand-yard passage fired their salutes to the iron might of the British race. At 9,200 and 6,100 tons the two pairs were the largest warships in the world and had come to reinforce Admiral Milne’s North American and West Indies Station. They had not come alone. The Channel Squadron had been stripped in an unprecedented move to dispatch five ships of the line and fifteen frigates, sloops, and corvettes, not to mention the dozen or so support and supply ships. The British had not suddenly lost their ancient fear of unchecked French power in the English Channel that they would send Milne so much of its striking power. Intense discussions with Napoleon III had resulted in the simultaneous dispatch of strong French squadrons to Mexico at the same time.
The Royal Navy dockyards in Britain had worked miracles to prepare such a strong force. Instructions had gone out immediately after Moelfre Bay for the Navy to prepare for major operations. The order to depart had followed the dispatch of the declaration of war only by hours. Similar orders had gone to the Army at the same time. Now twenty thousand British troops were sailing behind the warships in a half dozen convoys. The garrisons of the British Isles, particularly Ireland, had been stripped to gather such an expeditionary force to reinforce British North America. Not a man from the large force in India was taken. The memory of the mutiny still oozed fear and caution. Haste had been the watchword. Britain must strike her crippling blows before the winter closed operations until spring. Another convoy was heading north from Barbados with four thousand men of the British West Indies garrison, primarily men of the black West Indian Regiment.
Milne’s combined force now assembling at Bermuda was the strongest in sheer power that the Royal Navy had ever assembled. Many of these same wooden ships had only been converted to steam since the Crimean War. Moelfre Bay had imbued both officers and below decks with a righteous cause, though few bothered to consider that the Americans might describe the action as just desserts.29
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, 2:20 PM, OCTOBER 1, 1863
The Western Union boy did not often come to this modest neighborhood and was surprised when the missus of the house actually gave him a nickel tip.
“Michael,” she said in the lilt of Ireland as she came into the kitchen, “it’s a telegram for you.” Michael William McCarter took it in his left hand. The strength had not come back to his right arm. It was the wound he took at Fredericksburg charging up Marye’s Heights with the Irish Brigade that had put his soldiering days behind him. He could use the arm, but its old strength was gone.
The telegram was addressed to Sgt. William McCarter. He opened it expectantly. MICHAEL STOP PUT ON THE BLUE STOP REPORT TO ME IN NEW YORK STOP MEAGHER. His eyes moistened. “Katie, he needs me again.” Memories welled up of the man he considered a paragon of manly and martial virtues. The memories of Meagher’s intemperance flitted over his mind as well and fell away, as McCarter saw him again on the fields of Antietam and Fredericksburg, always at the front in the thickest fire and framed by the regimental Green Flag of Ireland and the Stars and Stripes, or nursing the wounded in his own tent, wrapping them in his own blankets as he sat with them through the night. McCarter had come to know Meagher better than any other enlisted man and most of his officers. As a guard assigned to his tent, he had saved a besotted Meagher from falling into the fire. In gratitude, Meagher assigned him to his own headquarters and discovered his considerable administrative talents.30 McCarter finally broke from the arms of memory to shout, “Woman of the house, shake the mothballs from my uniform!”
At that very moment, Meagher was standing in a wagon in the streets of New York, holding in thrall a crowd of thousands of his fellow Gaels. Many of them had taken part in the riots only a few months before, diehard Democrats who would not fight for the Union. All that was swept away when the Royal Navy had entered the Upper Bay and especially now that the redcoats had followed them to this new land, hovering to strike from barely a hundred miles up the Hudson Valley. Many had accepted the new land and worn the blue, but many had not and nursed the resentments of poverty. The British hammer had now forged ancient grievance to new affection for the land that sheltered them. Their ambivalence had burned away. They were ready to fight.31
11.
Treason, Frogs, and Ironclads
THE WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., 11:50 PM, OCTOBER 1, 1863
It was in times of unending crisis and disaster that Edwin McMasters Stanton became a truly great man. He remained a rock of confidence in a sea of troubles, and from his office a stream of telegrams sung over the wires, bringing order and marshaling the power of the federal government. Autocratic, vengeful, ruthless, relentless, and inexhaustibly energetic, he set about the task of defeating the invasion and preparing for the counterblow that would make the British pay dearly, unaware that a raging fire had been kindled in the Union rear.
If he took a moment for reflection, it was to lament the fact that he had been warned about Albany’s vulnerability and to resent Sharpe for the warning. However, he was a man who could eat his revenge cold. He took some small satisfaction that Sharpe had been wrong about the threat from the Great Lakes; there was comfort in that everyone had been fooled there. Then again Sharpe’s ploy to get the Maine regiments home under the cover of recruiting had obviously come as a painful surprise to the British and saved Portland, for the moment at least.
The problem at hand was to save New York and Boston from attack. New York, especially, was the economic and financial heart of the Union. At all costs it must be saved. The arrival of the rest of the Russian squadron and the strengthening of the harbor forts would relieve him of worry of another attack by sea and give him a free hand to deal with the British in Albany. Hooker’s XI and XII Corps had entrained for their transfer to the relief of the Army of the Cumberland two days before. They would be turned around, and every other train would be sidelined to give them priority to New York City. Until then, they would have to rely on whatever forces were at hand to stop any British advance down the Hudson River Valley.1
A silver lining of the draft riots was that a number of regiments that had been sent to suppress them were still in the city. The city’s remaining militia regiments were more experienced than would have been apparent. Many of them had served early in the war and had experienced men on their rolls. He ordered a call to all veterans not in the militia to reenlist and join the forces in the city. He was surprised to read in a telegram that Meagher had signed up more than ten thousand men from the Irish in one day, but they would not be ready in time to deal with this crisis. He did take time, though, to dictate to a clerk approval and praise of Meagher’s actions and his appointment as a brevet major general with instructions to telegraph it immediately.
As if to prove the aphorism “It never rains but that it pours,” one of the Union’s major field armies had found itself trapped in Chattanooga whence it had fled after its defeat at Chickamauga. It was obvious Rosecrans was in a funk, or he would not have let that old woman Bragg finally get up the gumption to follow him much less put him under siege. And now the men were beginning to starve. If “Old Rosy” gave up at a time like this, then the entire line of the Ohio would fall. He could not pluck any more units from Meade’s Army of the Potomac or Lee would be in Washington at the drop of a hat. The only other major source of troops was Grant’s command, but much of that concentration had been nickel-and-dimed to tidy up a number of small problems Halleck’s too orderly mind had obsessed about and to reinforce Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks for a Texas expedition that Lincoln favored.2 Stanton would have immediately called Grant to the scene, but the man was barely able to move after his horse had fallen on him in New Orleans. Stanton knew his options were running thin
.
That dilemma came down to a choice between New York and Chattanooga. The XI and XII Corps could not be in both places at once, and to send one to each crisis would do little good in either place. In the end, Lincoln made the decision—New York. Rosy would have to hang on and wait for Grant. That night Hooker received a telegram that appointed him to command the new Army of the Hudson. The corps would be diverted to New York immediately.
The lights burned late at the Navy Department as well. Gideon Welles may not have had Stanton’s greatness in a crisis, but he was steady and a superb administrator. Backed up by a fighting assistant secretary, Gus Fox, he bent to his work. On his own, Fox had immediately dispatched ships to carry the news of war to the naval forces in Hampton Roads and the two blockading squadrons at Wilmington and Charleston.
In many ways the Navy faced a greater challenge than the Army did. Only a small part of the Army would or could be devoted to the British war. Most of it was locked in a struggle with the rebels and would have to remain so. Almost the entire Navy, save its riverine forces, would be going into harm’s way. Britannia’s mighty fist, its Royal Navy, would do everything in its power to bring the war home to America.
Already in Europe, American shipping was desperately sailing for neutral ports. Those that had not had the good sense to depart British ports after Moelfre Bay had already been seized. The Navy could do little to protect American commerce on the seas when it found strained to the breaking point to defend American harbors. Memories of the outrages perpetrated by the Royal Navy on the ports and coastal towns of the North sent a chill down the spine of every American. Those memories were also a spur to the naval service to see that they did not happen again. This time, the game was not so completely in the Royal Navy’s favor. But the chancelleries of Europe would have given the U.S. Navy only the longest of odds.
Certainly the Quay d’Orsay did not. What Napoleon III would not dare to do on his own, he would be glad to do now that the British led the way. The French ambassador, Count Edouard-Henri Mercier, delivered the emperor’s declaration of war the day after the British announcement, citing truly ludicrous justifications. Seward almost laughed in his face. Stanton and Welles could only count the addition of the French fleet and especially its large Army in Mexico to the order of battle of their country’s enemies.
The Russian alliance, when it became known, would serve to complicate British-French plans wonderfully. Forces that would have gone to North America would have to be diverted to bottling up the Russians again in the Baltic and Black seas. But this time, the cat was out of the bag. The presence of two Russian squadrons in American ports was proof the Russians were not about to repeat the errors of the Crimean War. The strong Russian squadron in New York was a vital addition to the protection of the port. For good reason that night Welles wrote in his diary, “God bless the Russians.”3
Towering over them was Lincoln, who rallied the English language in its majestic cadences drawn from the Bible and Shakespeare to the defense of the nation. Men are moved by words and define themselves by words. While his secretaries of war and the Navy organized the nation’s defenses, Lincoln gathered and arrayed his words for battle. He addressed a joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against the British Empire in terms that riveted every member, Republican and Democrat alike. It was not a long speech, but expressed with a simple dignity, its elemental truth and directness had the members soaring. His words bound up all the hopes of the American democracy as the foundation stone, not only of the progress of the American people, but of all mankind. It was a speech for the ages, and men who had been with Lincoln since the beginning said it bested even his speech at the Cooper Union in Boston when he was seeking the nomination, the speech that had thrilled and moved his skeptical Eastern audience to set his feet on the road to the presidency. His words sang over the wires throughout the North and by ship across the seas to Europe and the Americas.4
A copy rapidly found its way to the tent of Robert E. Lee, who gave it his complete attention. The news of the British invasion had sparked a general celebration of deliverance across the South, but in his tent Lee read Lincoln’s speech. The man whose heart had broken in the choice between Virginia and the United States clutched the paper in his hand and wept.5
And well he might, for the Union people were tinder into which a match had been thrown. Doubts, demoralization, political differences were being consumed in the fire of an anger that had stirred them to their depths. A foreign invader on American soil, especially in a red coat, come to support the rebellion destroyed all restraint. The people were uncoiling their strength. Where the draft had failed to extract men, now volunteers flooded recruiting stations. New York State and the city, particularly, answered the call. It was not only the Irish who had done a volte-face. Patricians like Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., who had stood above the war and bought substitutes, now presented themselves for duty. Roosevelt organized a new brigade and commanded it through the rest of the war. His veterans remember that he came to the recruiting station with his little boy Teddy in tow.6
OFFICE OF THE CENTRAL INFORMATION BUREAU, LAFAYETTE PARK, WASHINGTON, D.C., 12:05 AM, OCTOBER 2, 1863
Sharpe’s office was deluged with reports that overwhelmed his order-of-battle analysts, even the imperturbable, tireless Wilmoth. At least they had had a good understanding of the British forces before the war. The difficult part now was trying to identify where the different regiments were showing up and to put the operational puzzle together. The problem was that it was far too early in the game to get any results. They had only the wildest rumors from a few militiamen who had fled Albany, and their reports reeked more of hysteria than careful observation. Sharpe had to admit that they had absolutely no idea what was going on in Maine. There were rumors that the Guards Brigade was in Albany and that thirty thousand men were coming by train from Montreal. That latter tale was absurd; the British didn’t have thirty thousand men in all of their North American possessions. Even with the Volunteer Militia, they couldn’t put that many men together for one operation. It was not long before Wilmoth was pulling a few rabbits out of hats. While everyone had been focused on agent reports, he found some useful information in the British Gentleman’s Magazine on the strength of the imperial battalions sent to Canada, specifically a complete order of battle of the Guards Brigade. Sharpe shook his head, laughing to himself at how often open sources trumped the most carefully held secrets.7
But Sharpe needed time, and he needed a commander on the scene who understood the value of intelligence. He had been immensely relieved to find out that Hooker was commanding the new Army of the Hudson. There was no better friend of military intelligence, and he and Sharpe had parted on good terms when the former had been relieved as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Hooker and Lowe had also been on the best of terms. For those reasons, Sharpe had sent a company of Lowe’s Balloon Corps to support the new field army.
In the seven weeks since he had assumed control of his beloved Balloon Corps, Lowe had worked miracles. Luckily, there had been six superb silk balloons and their gas-generating equipment in storage in the Washington Arsenal. Six more had been recently delivered. With Sharpe’s support, Lowe had reassembled the military personnel he had worked with before and the civilian aeronauts who had flown the balloons for him. The latter were now commissioned officers in the new Balloon Corps flush with money, equipment, and personnel. He had organized the corps into six companies built around pairs of balloons, with gas generators, crews, and support staffs. Two or more companies formed a battalion. Sharpe had been very clear that these companies could be attached to various field armies as were Signal Corps personnel, but their organization and support were in the hands of the Balloon Corps, which reported to him. Lowe’s confidence was now unbounded that he had a resolute patron in Sharpe. It did not hurt that Sharpe had an even more resolute patron in Lincoln.8
Sharpe also plucked Capt. John McEntee from Major General Meade’s st
aff with the Army of the Potomac. McEntee had been one of Sharpe’s deputies when he ran the Army’s Bureau of Military Information as well as a fellow native of Kingston. He would set up a similar bureau on Hooker’s new staff. With him Sharpe sent an able lieutenant and a half dozen order-of-battle analysts, all recently pushed through the CIB’s new school in Georgetown. The Signal Corps had howled when Sharpe had raided its own Georgetown “camp of instruction” for bright young men. He had an ulterior motive as well, to acquire trained signalmen and cipher clerks.9
Meade would loudly protest the loss of McEntee, but he was getting a lot of practice at that. Poor George Meade. His war after Gettysburg had been far from satisfying. Lee had led him in a fruitless dance of maneuver across Northern Virginia, running out the clock on the last of the year’s campaigning season. Now his Army of the Potomac would suffer the death of a thousand cuts, supplying forces for the crises that were busting out all over the place. First the division from VI Corps had been sent to Buffalo, the three thousand Maine men had been detached, and then XI and XII Corps had been started north to Albany—a day late and a dollar short, to be sure, but still lost to Meade’s command. Now the rest of John Sedgwick’s VI Corps was heading north to save Portland. VI Corps was the core of the Army now after Gettysburg and Big John Sedgwick Meade’s most reliable commander; his corps had been held in reserve and hardly engaged at all. Every other corps, except XII Corps, had been badly cut up and the finest combat commanders killed or wounded at Gettysburg. Reynolds of I Corps fell on the first day, Sickles of III Corps lost a leg on the second day, and the day after Hancock of II Corps had been wounded severely in the thigh. Meade would have to go on the defensive and hope he could find a position as good as Gettysburg’s hills and ridges, for “Bobby Lee” could smell opportunity better than any man alive and would come sniffing right soon around his flanks.
Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History Page 25