5. Cv Racoon
6. Cv Challenger
7. Cv Cadmus
8. Sl Bulldog
9. Gb Alacrity
Second Divison
10. IF Resistance
11. SL St. George
12. SL Donegal
13. Fr Shannon
14. Fr Ariadne
15. Fr Melpomene
16. Cv Jason
17. Sl Desperate
18. Sl Barracouta
19. Gv Algerine
U.S. NAVY’S SOUTH ATLANTIC BLOCKADING SQUADRON (ADMIRAL DAHLGREN)*
Charleston Battle Line
a. IM Lehigh
b. IM Montauk
c. IF New Ironsides
d. IM Nahant
e. IM Catskill
f. Fr Powhatan
g. Sl Canandaigua
h. Submersible tender
i. Fr Wabash
j. IR Atlanta
k. Sl Pawnee
l. Sl Housatonic
Port Royal Contingent
m. IM Patapsco
n. IM Weehawken
o. IM Passaic
p. IM Chippewa
q. IM Nipsic
Gunboat Flotilla in Stono Inlet
r. Gb Seneca
s. Gb Conemaugh
t. Gb Mahaska
u. Gb Sonoma
v. Gb Ottawa
w. Gb Cimarron
x. Gb Paul Jones
y. Gb Unadilla
Key:
IF
Ironclad frigate
IM
Ironclad monitor
IR
Ironclad ram
SL
Ship of the line
Fr
Frigate
Cv
Corvette
Sl
Sloop
Gb
Gunboat
Gv
Gun vessel
NOTES
CLARIFICATIONS
Although this tale is an alternate history, it is its own complete reality. As such, it would have created its own literature and records reflected in the endnotes, which normally would be found in a history. Endnotes are the sources of additional information of interest that are not part of the narrative. The use of alternate history endnotes, of course, pose a risk to the unwary reader who may make strenuous efforts to acquire a new and fascinating source such as Alfred Thayer Mahan, Crossing the T at Charleston: Dahlgren and the Revolution in Naval Tactics (New York: The Neale Publishing Co., 1895), p. 163.
To avoid an epidemic of frustrating and futile searches, these “alternate” endnotes that reflect the path not taken are indicated by an asterisk after the number. The reader is asked to enjoy these embellishments of a time that exists only in this telling.
INTRODUCTION
1. Samuel Johnson, “Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland Islands” (1771), Political Writings, vol. 10, 365–66, cited in Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Phillip II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 293.
2. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 1999), 150.
3. Burton J. Hendrick, Statesmen of the Lost Cause: Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (New York, 1939), 278.
4. Mahin, One War at a Time, ix.
5. Ephraim Douglass Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, vol. 2 (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1925), 144. Adams’s most serious competitor in this regard is surely Adlai Stevenson and his remark at the United Nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, that he was waiting for a reply from the Soviet ambassador “until hell freezes over.”
6. Mahin, One War at a Time, 181.
CHAPTER ONE: COSSACKS, COPPERHEADS, AND CORSAIRS
1. Donald Dale Jackson, Twenty Million Yankees: The Northern Home Front (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1985), 103–10.
2. *”The Sacrifice of Willie Washington: A Hero of the New York Draft Riots,” Leslie’s Illustrated, July 25, 1863.
3. Daniel Farber, Lincoln’s Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 118.
4. James D. Horan, Confederate Agent: A Discovery in History (New York: Fairfax Press, 1954), 26.
5. Horan, Confederate Agent, 29.
6. Rear Adm. M. Abramov and Capt. 2nd Rank M. Kozhevnikov, “To the Shores of North America,” Morskoi Sbornik 3 (1989): 18–23.
7. Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakoff, My Musical Life (New York: Tudor Publishing, 1936), 43.
8. Michael Cavanaugh, Memoirs of Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher, Comprising the Leading Events of His Career Chronologically Arranged (Worcester, MA: 1892), 369, 370–71.
9. Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds. Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 39.
10. Letter from Lamson to his fiancée, April 30, 1863, cited in James M. McPherson and Patricia R. McPherson, Lamson of the Gettysburg: The Civil War Letters of Lieutenant Roswell H. Lamson, U.S. Navy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 103.
11. McPherson and McPherson, Lamson of the Gettysburg, 103.
12. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, letter to Lamson, May 4, 1863, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies of the War of Rebellion (hereafter O.R. Navies), series I, vol. 8 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1889), 789–90.
13. McPherson and McPherson, Lamson of the Gettysburg, 147.
14. James Tertius deKay, The Rebel Raiders: The Astonishing History of the Confederacy’s Secret Navy (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002), 169.
15. Ibid., 174. “Here comes the Alabama, the Alabama comes over the sea.”
CHAPTER TWO: RUSSELL AND THE RAMS
1. The Civil War Museum in Charleston contains half a shell from a Whitworth described as being fired from a gun that was given as a gift from the London Chamber of Commerce—the author.
2. David Hepburn Milton, Lincoln’s Spymaster: Thomas Haines Dudley and the Liverpool Network (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003), 7.
3. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 42.
4. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 1999), 177. These ships were armed with steel rams, hence the name.
5. Milton, Lincoln’s Spymaster, 91.
6. Mahin, One War at a Time, 33.
7. Charles Sumner to Richard Cobden, April 26, 1863, in The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner, ed. Beverly W. Palmer (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), vol. 2, 161.
8. *Edward Maitland, Lincoln, Russell, and Emancipation (New York: The Neale Publishing Co., 1900), 83.
9. Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds., Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 370.
10. Anthony Gross, ed., The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: The Best Stories by and About America’s Most Beloved President (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1994), 149–50.
11. Fehrenbacher and Fehrenbacher, Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, 436.
12. Howard Jones, Union in Peril: The Crisis Over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 182. Gladstone stated that the Southerners “have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made what is more than either—they have made a nation.”
13. Mahin, One War at a Time, ix. The Trent Affair referred to the incident in December 1861 in which the commander of the USS San Jacinto had stopped a British mail packet, the Trent, off Havana and seized two Confederate commissioners intended as ambassadors to Great Britain and France. The manner of the seizure was a technical violation of international law. Britain, whose rise to empire employed just such measures, was outraged and threatened war. It also quickly developed a war plan to break the blockade, counterblockade the North, and invade Maine. The Russian Foreign Ministry, whose good offices the United States had come to r
ely on, strongly urged that the commissioners be returned. The seizure of the commissioners had been wildly popular in the North, but Lincoln knew that the United States could “fight only one war at a time.” He ordered the release of the commissioners, who proceeded to Britain and France.
14. When the United States huddled along the eastern seaboard early in the nineteenth century, the area that would become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan was referred to as the Northwest. As the country’s territory and settlement expanded westward, the current term of “Midwest” came into use.
CHAPTER THREE: GEORGE THE CONTRABAND AND ONE-EYED GARNET
1. *George H. Sharpe, Conversations With Abraham Lincoln, 1863–1868 (Philadelphia: L. B. Lippincott, 1886), 22–25.
2. “Story by General Sharpe,” Weekly Leader (Kingston, New York), June 14, 1902.
3. *George Morgan, “Jumping on the Freedom Train,” Freedman’s Weekly, April 5, 1882.
4. William B. Feis, Grant’s Secret Service: The Intelligence War From Belmont to Appomattox (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 260–61.
5. Frederick Douglass (1818–95) was an ex-slave and a leading abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman, and reformer.
6. *Sharpe, Conversations With Abraham Lincoln, 27.
7. Edwin C. Fishel, The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996), 437–40.
8. *Morgan, “Jumping on the Freedom Train.”
9. *William A. Coleridge, Snakes in the Grass: Revolt in the Old Northwest (Chicago: Michigan Avenue Press, 1912), 24.
10. Eleanor Ruggles, Prince of Players: Edwin Booth (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1953), 157.
11. Ibid., 157.
12. Raymond Lamont Brown, Carnegie: The Richest Man in the World (Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2005), 37, 53.
13. *Arthur G. Stone, Andrew Carnegie and the Mobilization of a Nation (Philadelphia: Freedom Publishers, 1917), 47.
14. *Alexander C. Rutledge, Spymaster of the Republic: The Life of George H. Sharpe (New York: Excelsior Press, 1934), 219.
15. Regis A. Courtemanche, No Need of Glory: The British Navy in American Waters, 1860–1864 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1977), 33. The British embassy in Washington at this time did not have permanent naval or military attachés. Milne characterized Hancock as “an officer of discreet and sound judgment.” J. J. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy From the Fifteenth Century to the Present (London: Greenhill Books, 2003), 165. The Immortalité was a new wood screw frigate built in 1859, measuring 251 by 56 feet.
16. Garnet Wolseley to Colonel McCade, August 13, 1899, Maurice Papers, cited in Joseph Lehmann, The Model Major-General: A Biography of Field-Marshal Lord Wolseley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964), 121.
17. James A. Rawley, ed., The American Civil War: An English View—the Writings of Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley (Mechanicsville, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002), 40.
18. Col. Richard Sharpe, 1777–1860.
19. Lehmann, The Model Major-General, 24.
20. Ibid., 24.
21. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy, 352.
22. *George H. Sharpe, “My Meeting With Wolseley,” New York Herald, October 23, 1880. This entire meeting is based on Sharpe’s recollection in this article he penned for the Herald. Wolseley mentions the meeting though not in as great detail in his book on the war. *Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, The Great War in North America (London: Longmans, Green & Company, 1890), 92.
CHAPTER FOUR: GALLANTRY ON CRUTCHES
1. Anthony Gross, ed., The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: The Best Stories by and About America’s Most Beloved President (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1994), 185.
2. Spencer Tucker, Arming the Fleet: The U.S. Navy Ordnance in the Muzzle-Loading Era (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), 204–5.
3. William H. Roberts, Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2002), 165.
4. Robert V. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1956), 81.
5. J. B. McClure, ed., Anecdotes & Stories of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: Rhodes & McClure, 1888), 182–83.
6. Jospeh Lehmann, The Model Major-General: A Biography of Field-Marshal Lord Wolseley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964), 117.
7. Angus Konstam, Duel of the Ironclads: USS Monitor & CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, 1862 (London: Osprey Publishing, 2003), 92–94.
8. “Early Ironclad Battleships of the Royal Navy” is an excellent, comprehensive site: www.colonialwargamers.org.uk/Miscellany/Warships/Ironclads/EironcladsRN.htm.
9. David Pam, The Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield and Its Workers (published by author, 1998), 50–55.
10. Regis A. Courtemanche, No Need of Glory: The British Navy in American Wars, 1860–1864 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1977), 56–60.
11. Rear-Admiral Dahlgren, Memoir of Ulric Dahlgren (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1872), 159–76. Edward G. Longacre, The Cavalry at Gettysburg: A Tactical Study of Mounted Operations During the Civil War’s Pivotal Campaign, June 9, 1863–July 14, 1863 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 208–10.
12. Dahlgren, Memoir of Ulric Dahlgren, 174–77.
13. William “Willie” Wallace Lincoln, December 21, 1850– February 20, 1862, died of typhoid in the White House.
14. *George H. Sharpe, Conversations With Abraham Lincoln, 1863–1868 (Philadelphia: L. B. Lippincott, 1886), 30–35.
15. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 1999), 104–5.
16. Harold Holzer, ed., Lincoln as I Knew Him: Gossip, Tributes & Revelations From His Best Friends and Worst Enemies (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1999), 71.
17. Edwin C. Fishel, The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996), 291.
18. *Sharpe, Conversations With Abraham Lincoln, 45–48. Sharpe’s recollections, vouched by contemporaries as precise, are one of the great primary sources on Lincoln. From the first day he met Lincoln, Sharpe made it a habit to commit each day’s conversations to paper in the shorthand he learned in law school.
19. The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (hereafter OR), series 3, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1899), 589–90.
20. Ibid., 591.
21. Ibid.
22. *George Hancock, Memoirs of the American War (London: Marchand & Biddle, 1879), 87–90.
CHAPTER FIVE: SERGEANT CLINE GETS A NEW JOB
1. Robert V. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1956), 112.
2. Ibid., 23.
3. Ibid., 110–11.
4. The Spencer repeating rifle, designed by Christopher Spencer in 1860, was a manually operated, lever-action, repeating rifle fed from a seven-round tube magazine in the stock. It fired the revolutionary rimfire .52-caliber metal cartridge. The Blakeslee cartridge box contained up to ten tube magazines. The Spencer was noted for its simplicity of design, ease of manufacture, and reliability. It also used many interchangeable parts with the already more common Sharps Rifle and was the cheapest repeater on the market. Armed with a Spencer and ten full magazines, the rifleman could fire twenty to thirty aimed shots a minute compared to two to three with a muzzle-loading Springfield or Enfield rifle.
5. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, 114.
6. Ibid., 119.
7. J. B. McClure, ed., Anecdotes & Stories of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: Rhodes & McClure Publishing Co., 1888), 162.
8. Charles M. Evans, The War of the Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning During the Civil War (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002), 285–87.
9. Mary Hoeling, Thaddeus Lowe: America’s One-Man Air
Corps (New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1958), 23–24.
10. Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. (1910–11). The Dreyse needle gun (German Zündnadelgewehr or figuratively “needle-firing-rifle”) was a military breech-loading rifle. Famous as the main Prussian infantry weapon it was adopted for service in 1848 as the Dreyse Zündnadelgewehr, or Prussian model 1848. Its name comes from its 0.5-inch needle-like firing pin, which passed through the cartridge case to impact a percussion cap at the bullet base. The Dreyse rifle was also the first breech-loading rifle to use a bolt action to open and close the chamber.
11. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War, 257.
12. *George H. Sharpe, Conversations With Abraham Lincoln, 1863–1868 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1886), 53–57.
13. *Arthur H. Trumbull, Wolseley and the American War (London: Constable & Company, 1915), 111.
Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History Page 31