Throughout August, every utterance and report from England was picked over and analyzed for clues. It was at this precise moment that the irascible John Roebuck decided to try his hand at Anglo-American relations. The Liberal MP was growing old, and change frightened him. Anything that retarded the modernizing, democratizing tendencies of the United States seemed like a cause worth supporting. Forgetting that the South was also a democracy, he championed its independence because separation would hurt the North. On August 14, Roebuck and Palmerston attended the same banquet in Sheffield. Knowing that the prime minister’s presence would ensure that the speeches were reported in the press, Roebuck theatrically turned to Palmerston and exhorted him to admit that the South’s time had come. “The North will never be our friends,” he bellowed, to a few “hear, hears.” “Of the South you can make friends. They are Englishmen; they are not the scum and refuse of Europe.” The mayor of Manchester leaped to his feet and shouted over the boos and cheers, “Don’t say that; don’t say that.” Roebuck responded: “I know what I am saying. [The South] are Englishmen, and we must make them our friends.”72
Reports of the Manchester banquet confirmed Northern fears and revived Southern hopes. Palmerston was no longer “considered [by Southerners] as the personal enemy of the confederacy—a most rabid abolitionist—who is suppressing the sympathies, which England would otherwise show for the south.”73 All over the South, people waited anxiously for foreign news, believing that their fate hung on his change of view.
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McClellan’s failure to capture Richmond had convinced Lincoln that there was no real substance or drive to the general. McClellan looked and talked the part, he realized, but lacked the will to act. Without even bothering to consult him, Lincoln announced McClellan’s demotion on July 11. He lost his position as general-in-chief of the U.S. armies, which was given to Henry “Old Brains” Halleck, whose commanders out west had produced the victories at Shiloh and Island No. 10; and he was ordered to merge his army with General John Pope’s army, which was fighting in northern Virginia. Pope, not McClellan, would command this new mammoth army.
Lincoln had to have a military victory; volunteering practically ceased after the Seven Days’ Battles, and the 600,000 extra soldiers he requested were not stepping forward without the lure of large bounties. Furthermore, he knew that if he played the emancipation card while the North appeared to be losing the war, it would be interpreted at home and abroad as the desperate move of a floundering government—in Seward’s words, “our last shriek on the retreat.”74 Lincoln had accomplished as much as he could for the moment: Washington was now in line with the rest of the North, free of the taint of slavery; among the recent bills passed by Congress was a law prohibiting the return of fugitive slaves to their masters, and another allowing “persons of African descent” to join the army. But Lincoln had not been able to persuade the border states to accept emancipation in return for compensation for their slaves; slavery remained legal in the United States.
Notwithstanding the installation of Henry Halleck as the new general-in-chief, August turned out worse for the North than July. Despite the capture of three important Southern ports, the “Anaconda” strategy of a total blockade of the South’s coastline was far from being achieved.12.4 Nor had the North (with the exception of New Orleans) been able to extend its control of the Mississippi River beyond the border states. Worse, even gains had slipped into losses. Kentucky and Tennessee looked vulnerable once more.
Jefferson Davis had replaced the popular General Beauregard following his retreat from Corinth with the widely disliked Braxton Bragg. At the end of July Bragg had taken his army on a seven-hundred-mile maneuver into Kentucky, where he intended to install a pro-Southern governor. If the Confederacy could secure this border state, he reasoned, the others might follow. Halleck had sidelined Grant after Shiloh and put his faith in General Buell, whose timely arrival on April 6 had saved the Federal army from defeat. But Buell was fretting uselessly, sending his troops hither and thither without actually trying to intercept Bragg. Robert Neve of the 5th Kentucky Volunteers had vivid memories of the relentless marching: of the thirst, the hunger, and the ever-present dust. He recalled with sadness a man they “found dead on the road who had died through excessive fatigue. As the army passed along there, he laid like a dog as if no one cared who he was. It was,” he wrote, “a bad sight to see a poor soldier die in such a way.”75 While Neve and thousands like him labored to keep moving under the broiling sun, Confederate raiders preyed on Buell’s weaker outposts.
On the far eastern side of Kentucky, the small Federal force that had wrested the Cumberland Gap from the Confederates was itself surrounded. Colonel De Courcy’s commander sent a desperate telegram to the War Department on August 10 warning that their supplies would last three weeks at best. That was his last communication with the outside world. A few hours later, Confederate guerrillas organized by John Hunt Morgan and his English staff officer, Colonel George St. Leger Grenfell, cut their telegraph line. The beleaguered Federals had no way of knowing whether help would come; still, when the Confederates ordered their surrender, they replied defiantly: “If you want this fortress, come and take it.”76 Morgan and his raiders ignored the challenge, confident that starvation would do the work for them.
Lincoln’s cabinet was grim when it learned that a Confederate army was marching unopposed toward Kentucky. As Lincoln’s frustration with Buell increased, he turned to General Pope to stop the run of bad news. Pope, at least, claimed to be thirsting for battle. The self-promoting victor of Island No. 10 had recently boasted to the press that his soldiers only ever saw the backs of the enemy. Pope liked to make “hard war.” Unlike McClellan, he was less concerned about keeping casualty figures to a minimum, nor did he believe in protecting civilians from the ravages of war. He wanted Southerners to suffer, because he thought it would make them more willing to surrender. But in one important sense, Pope was just the same as McClellan: he underestimated his opponent.
The Seven Days’ Battles had brought out the fighter in Lee. The once cautious officer had undergone a metamorphosis into a resolute and audacious general. He had private reasons, too, for wanting to throw the Federals out of Virginia. At the start of the war he had lost the family home of Arlington, across the river from Washington. Shortly after the Seven Days’ Battles, his other home, the White House plantation in central Virginia, was burned to the ground by Federal soldiers, forcing his wheelchair-bound wife, Mary, to seek refuge in Richmond.77
Lee divided his army of fifty thousand into two “wings” so that he could attack Pope from several directions, a risky tactic given his inferior numbers. Stonewall Jackson was given command of one, and General James “Old Pete” Longstreet, who had performed well during the Seven Days’ Battles, the other. Jackson’s division struck first, tearing into Pope on August 9. He launched another surprise attack against Pope two weeks later, and followed it up on the twenty-seventh with a raid on Pope’s supply depot at Manassas Junction. “Huzza,” crowed John Jones, the usually cynical clerk at the Confederate War Department. “The braggart is near his end.”78
Jackson’s raid gave away his position; Pope ordered his commanders to prepare the men for battle. The name Manassas conjured up dreadful memories for the North. “Everything is ripe for a terrible panic,” Charles Francis Adams, Jr., wrote to his father from Washington. “I have not since the war began felt such a tug on my nerves.”79 Pope had superior numbers to Jackson but not by an overwhelming margin. McClellan had played into Lee’s hands; mortified by his demotion, he had resisted for as long as possible Halleck’s orders to reinforce Pope. He knew that a battle was fast approaching and wanted to watch his rival “get out of his scrape by himself.” Among the reinforcements who did reach Pope, however, was Sir Percy Wyndham, who had been exchanged and was able to rejoin his regiment just in time to participate in the “scrape.”12.5
The Second Battle of Bull Run began piecemeal on August 28 an
d roared into life on the twenty-ninth. In the thirteen months since the first battle, the armies had grown in size and the men had become hardened and more experienced. Once again, Henry House Hill became the focus of bitter fighting, although this time it was the Federals who held the hill and the Confederates who were cut down trying to dislodge them. Pope had no idea that Lee and Longstreet had arrived with the other half of the Army of Northern Virginia. After the firing drew to a halt on the evening of the twenty-ninth, Pope was so confident he had won that he sent a dispatch to Washington announcing his victory. He was unprepared for the full Confederate assault the following day. At 7:00 P.M. on the thirtieth, a shocked and disconsolate Pope reluctantly ordered his army to retreat.
Map.10 Second Bull Run or Manassas, August 28–30, 1862
Click here to view a larger image.
Ill.22 The Federal army makes its stand on Henry House Hill, Second Bull Run, by Frank Vizetelly.
The 1st New Jersey Cavalry was massed behind a thickly wooded forest with orders to stop the retreat from turning into a rout, but as tens of soldiers became hundreds and then thousands, the regiment lost its cohesion. Stray gunfire contributed to the Cavaliers’ difficulties. Above the din came the order to fall back, which some of the riders interpreted to mean they could gallop off, touching a nerve with Sir Percy. The familiar twiddling of his mustache began. Threatening to shoot any man who disobeyed, he forced the men to bring their horses back into line and perform the action as though they were on parade. “The twirl of that long moustache,” wrote the regiment’s chaplain, “was more formidable than a rifle.”80
There were five thousand casualties at the first Battle of Bull Run; at the second, twenty-five thousand. Lee had lost proportionately more men, however, and his army was in no shape to pursue the Federals.12.6
Lincoln had eaten dinner at Secretary Stanton’s house on the thirtieth, thinking that Pope was his man. But by the time he retired to bed, the news had come through of the army’s defeat. Once again, the residents of Washington woke up to the sight of leaderless soldiers pouring through the streets, filthy, hungry, and clearly in search of a drink. Only this time, behind them came wagon after wagon of the wounded and dying. “So,” lamented the treasurer of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, George Templeton Strong, “after all this waste of life and money and material, we are at best where we were a year ago.”82
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12.1 In the same letter, Spence also suggested that the Southerners consider changing their name from Confederate States to “Southern Union,” which sounded better to English ears. When Mason forwarded his request to Benjamin, he asked the secretary of state not to take offense. Spence’s objection to the word “Confederacy” sounded lunatic, Mason admitted, but he was speaking “from an English business point of view.” He assured Benjamin that on all other matters Spence was a “man of large research, liberal and expanded views.” Moreover, he had close ties to The Times, and his book, The American Union, continued to outsell every other work on the subject.25
12.2 Le Constitutionnel was generally considered to be the mouthpiece of the French government. This “seems like a preparation of the public mind for a mediation on the part of France in the American conflict,” noted the diarist Henry Greville on June 2, “and to-day The Times has put forth a leader strongly advocating it.”38
12.3 Although the strike leaders Aitken and Grimshaw were able to call out large meetings all over Lancashire, achieving an unambiguous vote in favor of Southern independence was proving to be a considerable struggle. A meeting in Ashton, which was one of the most deprived towns in the area, ended with a resolution in favor of recognition for the Confederacy, but someone from the floor successfully tacked on an amendment that urged Britain and France to “crush the abettors of slavery and oppression.”41
12.4 Although General Winfield Scott’s “Anaconda Plan” to isolate and squeeze the South was never formally adopted, this effectively became the strategy of the war.
12.5 The North and South copied the European system of parole and exchange of prisoners. Prisoners gave their word—their parole—not to take up arms until they were formally exchanged for an enemy prisoner of equal rank. If the wait for exchange was going to take more than a few days, parolees could go home or to a parole camp and wait until they received notice that the paperwork had been completed.
12.6 Among the Confederate prisoners was the accident-prone Garibaldi veteran Lieutenant Henry Ronald MacIver, who had received a bullet in the wrist. An Irish Federal surgeon bandaged his arm with more skill than he could have hoped for, and afterward MacIver was transferred to Alexandria. He was, wrote his biographer, “somewhat dismayed to find himself face to face with his old jailer … he saw that the man recognised him as his former prisoner the instant they met.”81
THIRTEEN
Is Blood Thicker Than Water?
The possibility of intervention—Lee invades the North—Antietam, the bloodiest day—Dawson experiences Northern hospitality—The splendors and shortages of Richmond—Meeting the Confederate generals
“The suspense was hideous and unendurable,” Henry Adams recalled, as he waited for news from America.1 On September 9, 1862, came a telegram from Reuter’s agency announcing a victory for Union general John Pope at Bull Run. “This has been a Red Letter Day,” Moran wrote euphorically. “If this be true it is the beginning of the end.”2
Four days later, Moran learned they had been misled; Pope had been defeated, and the Confederate army was just twenty miles from Washington. “My heart sunk within me,” he wrote. “The rebels here are elated beyond measure. The Northern people are looked upon as cravens, and the Union is regarded as hopelessly gone.” He was alone at the legation; the Adamses were away and Charles Wilson had taken a leave of absence “for his health.” With no one to act as a moderating influence on his behavior, Moran happily insulted a British Army officer who called at the legation to volunteer for the Federal army; “they think we are unable to attend to our affairs, and that they can settle them,” he remarked testily.3
The Adams family said goodbye to their hosts and returned to London as soon as they heard the news. Mrs. Adams told Moran that it would have been “torture” to remain, since there were Confederate sympathizers among the house party. Henry suffered pangs of guilt that so many were risking their lives while he was fighting the battle of the drawing rooms. “After a sleepless night,” Henry subsequently wrote of his younger self, “walking up and down his room without reflecting that his father was beneath him, he announced at breakfast his intention to go home into the army.”4
Lord Russell had been wavering over whether Britain should intercede, until he received the reports about the Second Battle of Bull Run.5 Charles Francis Adams had come away from their meeting on September 4 thinking it was business as usual, since Russell had assured him “I [could be] quite at ease in regard to any idea of joint action of the European powers in our affairs. I laughed and said I was in hopes that they all had quite too much to occupy their minds … to think of troubling themselves with matters on the other side of the Atlantic.”6 But a day later, the Confederate commissioner in Brussels, Ambrose Dudley Mann, reported that he had just received a letter from his informant in London, “an influential Englishman,” who wrote that there was “a steady progress of opinion in one direction” regarding Palmerston and Russell. As to the latter, “I am informed upon the most credible authority, [Russell is] perfectly satisfied that there is not so much a shadow of a chance for the Yankees to overpower the united and resolute South, and that he would not be opposed to intervention if a reasonable hope could be entertained of its acceptance by the administration at Washington.”7
Whether or not Russell was “perfectly satisfied” before Second Bull Run, afterward he became a thorough convert to the idea that the war must be stopped. “I agree with you that the time is come for offering mediation to the United States Government, with a view to the recognition of the independence of the Confede
rates,” he wrote to Palmerston on September 17. “I agree further, that in case of failure, we ought ourselves to recognize the South States as an independent state.” Russell ordered their ambassador in Paris, Lord Cowley, to have a quiet word with the French foreign minister, Édouard Thouvenel, about cooperation from the emperor.8
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For the Confederates, Lee’s victory at Second Bull Run was the signal to begin creating a groundswell of public sympathy in favor of Southern recognition. In France, Confederate commissioner John Slidell had heard through intermediaries that the emperor would not state publicly that the Powers should intervene until he had received unambiguous reassurances from Britain that it would follow suit. Henry Hotze put his stable of writers to work. “Since one journalist usually writes for several publications,” he explained to the Confederate secretary of state, Judah P. Benjamin, “I have thus the opportunity of multiplying myself, so to speak, to an almost unlimited extent.” He was not worried about “the sympathies of the intelligent classes [which] are now intensified into a feeling of sincere admiration.” But James Spence’s failure to stir up unrest in the manufacturing districts made Hotze fear that the working classes were implacable enemies of the South. “I am convinced,” he admitted, “that the astonishing fortitude and patience with which they endure [the cotton famine] is mainly due to a consciousness that by any other course they would promote our interests.”9
Hotze was overestimating his success with the “intelligent” classes and underestimating the unpopularity of the North among the workers. But what united all the classes in England, regardless of his efforts, was an ingrained hatred of slavery; the institution was an insurmountable stumbling block. Slidell and Mason could and did mislead potential Southern sympathizers when the occasion demanded. Camouflaging the South’s total dependence on slavery was the only way, for example, that Slidell was able to persuade the veteran abolition campaigner Lord Shaftesbury to give them his support. Slidell had targeted Shaftesbury because “his peculiar position as the leader of an extensive and influential class in England, and the son-in-law of Lady Palmerston gives a value and significance to his opinions beyond that of a simple member of the House of Lords,” he explained to Benjamin. But the relationship almost foundered in September when Shaftesbury asked him, in all innocence, “if the [Confederate] President could not in some way present the prospect of gradual emancipation. Such a declaration coming from him unsolicited would have the happiest effect in Europe.” Slidell circumvented the question by replying that abolition was an issue for the individual states to decide and he could not speak for all of them.10 Slidell was grateful that Lincoln was still publicly maintaining an ambivalent stance on slavery.11 On August 19, Lincoln declared in a letter published by the New York Tribune, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it.”13.1 It enabled him to suggest to Lord Shaftesbury that the chances of emancipation “were much better if we were left to ourselves than if we had remained in the Union.”12
A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War Page 37