A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War

by Amanda Foreman

  Lord Lyons’s dislike of change, particularly with regard to his own staff, made him prickly toward Malet at first, even though the young attaché’s background echoed his own. Malet’s father, Sir Alexander, was currently serving his tenth year as minister to the German Federation, placing upon his son the same burdens of expectation and family tradition that had overshadowed Lyons’s early career.4 This unacknowledged connection between them may have been another reason why Lyons was so much harder on Malet than on the others. Malet often had his draft letters returned for rewriting, accompanied by such acerbic comments as “Brevity is the soul of wit, but I object to absolute nonsense—L.”5

  Malet found that Kennedy had not been exaggerating about the long hours. “I have only visited one American house,” he wrote to his mother after a month in the capital. The glorious days of the “Buccaneers” were already over. Rarely stopping for lunch, the attachés’ first break from their desks came at 7:00 P.M., when they dashed to Willard’s to gulp down as many cocktails as they could before returning to the legation at eight for dinner with Lyons. In addition to the daily bundles of diplomatic correspondence that required copying and filing, the attachés were also handling hundreds of cases on behalf of British subjects who were seeking redress or protection from various authorities; and in the past year a large number of cases had arisen that concerned missing, conscripted, injured, or dead British volunteers. Most weeknights Malet was obliged to return to the chancery after dinner and continue working until past midnight. But his situation was different from Henry Adams’s in one important respect: the presence of ten bachelors gave the legation in Washington a rather hearty feel, not unlike an undergraduate college or an officers’ mess. There was none of the poisonous claustrophobia that infected the legation in London. Nor did Malet have to live with his parents; he was able to rent a spacious house with Kennedy just down the street from the legation, at 227 H Street North. It came with a garden and entertaining rooms large enough to inspire him to try his hand at decorating. He was quite pleased with the results: one room was pink with gold buds, the other white “with lots of small gold stars.”6 All that was lacking were the people to fill them. Malet passed his precious spare time wandering up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, watching “the queerest figures I ever saw in my life—and nearly always troops of prisoners being taken from one place of confinement to another.”7

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  The latest prisoners to arrive in Washington were Confederates captured during a skirmish on November 2, 1862, at Snickers Gap, one of the three main passes in the Blue Ridge Mountains that linked the eastern part of Virginia with the Shenandoah Valley. General McClellan’s new plan involved advancing along the base of the Blue Ridge, methodically taking each gap, until he reached the Manassas Gap railroad. Once there he intended to decide whether to attack a portion of Lee’s army that was known to be only twenty-five miles away, or to avoid a fight and march east to the town of Fredericksburg, which lay along the bank of the Rappahannock River, sixty miles due north of Richmond. In his telegram to Lincoln that afternoon, McClellan made his usual plea for more men and cavalry, though “I will do the best I can with what I have got,” he added.8

  Lincoln was no longer interested in McClellan’s best. He had already made up his mind to dismiss the general after the midterm elections and appoint a successor who was less preoccupied with maneuvering and more interested in attacking. On the night of November 7, McClellan was writing a letter to his wife when two visitors knocked at his door. Snow covered their clothes and their faces were raw from the cold; McClellan realized that this was not a courtesy call. The older of the two, General Catharinus P. Buckingham, had come by special train from Washington to deliver the order from Lincoln removing McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac and replacing him with General Ambrose Burnside. “I read the papers with a smile,” wrote McClellan, and “turned to Burnside [who was standing next to Buckingham] and said, ‘Well Burnside, I turn the command over to you.’ ”9 McClellan told his wife, “They have made a great mistake,” and in his heart Burnside suspected it, too. Although his victory at Roanoke the previous spring had raised his reputation with Lincoln, Burnside’s limitations as a military leader had been revealed by his muddled thinking during the Battle of Antietam. Many soldiers broke ranks and tried to touch McClellan’s boots as he rode out of the camp and into retirement on November 9. He had failed to lead them to victory, but his commitment to their welfare had touched their lives in ways that only the soldiers themselves could appreciate.

  Sir Percy Wyndham was disgusted by what he considered to be incompetent army management by the War Department. He had been assigned against his wishes to General Franz Sigel’s XI Army Corps in early September and was given temporary command of the cavalry brigade, which was on guard duty in northern Virginia.10 Bored by his new command, Sir Percy asked General Samuel P. Heintzelman of the III Army Corps for his help in obtaining a transfer. He was especially annoyed that connections seemed to count far more than merit: “The names of a great many Colonels in the service have been recommended to the President for Promotion,” he wrote, but “I, not being acquainted with any political parties of person of influence, naturally have no chance of being recommended in like manner. I would consider it a lasting favour if you would use your influence in obtaining me a position, and if possible in your own command.” Heintzelman was experiencing his own difficulties with the high command and had no influence to spare; so bitter were the rivalries in Sigel’s corps that a jealous officer sabotaged Sir Percy Wyndham’s request by accusing him of disloyalty. “I hear it from a field officer of cavalry that Wyndham said to him in the presence of a private of his Regiment that he would soon as leave to fight for the Confederates as for the Union, and that he would if our Government did not give him what he wanted,” claimed the embittered informer.11

  Even the jovial English lieutenant of the 9th New York Volunteers, George Henry Herbert, was becoming disillusioned, despite his recent promotion to ordnance officer for the division. “The system is radically wrong,” he complained. “With the exception of a few regiments, officers and men treat one another as equals, no punishments are inflicted. The private under you today may, if a friend of his gets into office, be a Colonel in another regiment tomorrow.”12 Herbert’s experience was confirmed by an English military observer who was fascinated by the different styles of leadership of the two armies. In the South, though many officers were just as unqualified as their Northern counterparts, the plantation system fostered a strong sense of social hierarchy. “The Regimental Officers are mostly men of Known families in the districts from whence the regiment is raised,” he wrote, “and the ‘mean whites’ look up to and obey the sons of the Great Planters.” In the North, it was not uncommon for the soldiers to disregard “their Captains and their Lieutenants, whom they regard as equals.”13

  Herbert had just returned from Washington after requisitioning stores for the regiment when he heard the news about General McClellan. Apart from General George Getty, the commander of his division, who was a professional soldier, Herbert had little faith in his superiors, and certainly none in General Burnside after Antietam. “Everything is rotten to the core,” he repeated to his brother Jack. “Generals are appointed, I guess, on account of incapacity. Most or at least many are such as no gentleman can serve under and retain self-respect.”14

  Burnside decided to head straight for Fredericksburg and use pontoon bridges to cross the Rappahannock River. With luck he would be on the other side before Lee even knew where the Federal army had gone. From there it would be a straight movement along the Richmond–Fredericksburg railroad. Each regiment was to have twelve days’ rations, which Burnside considered more than sufficient for the enterprise. Lincoln had some misgivings about a plan that placed so much emphasis on timing, but he acquiesced, only urging Burnside to move as quickly as possible.

  First nature and then Washington, however, began to thwart Burnside at every tur
n. As soon as the soldiers began their march, the clouds gathered and dumped a steady, hard rain on their heads. “Talk about roads,” Herbert commented to his brother; “it would do your heart good to see this specimen of a Virginia dirt road. I suppose you have often heard of mud knee deep. You will find it literally deeper than that. It took me 2½ hours to ride seven miles. This is a singular soil. It is a crust of clay over quicksand. As soon as it is thoroughly wet the sand settles, and the first thing you know you break through the crust and down you go four or five feet.”15 Nevertheless the Army of the Potomac managed to arrive at Fredericksburg in good time on November 20, only to find that the pontoons were notably absent. Burnside refused to consider an alternative plan, and so the entire army waited for the missing pontoons for the next two weeks. Herbert was furious: “All this time was spent by the rebels in fortifying the hills in rear of the town, mounting heavy guns, etc. And a splendid job they made of it.”16 Meanwhile, the soldiers used up their rations and discovered that administrative bungling meant no more were coming. Herbert’s New York Zouaves celebrated Thanksgiving on November 27 with a feast of water: even the hardtack and coffee had run out. The misery of the army’s situation led to pilfering and fights between regiments. Ebenezer Wells’s Highlanders had a vicious struggle with the 2nd Michigan for the last remaining wooden fence in the vicinity, each desperate to chop it up for firewood.17 There was so much sickness in the camps that Herbert wondered if more than half the army was actually present for duty.

  Behind the Confederate lines, Francis Dawson reported to General James “Old Pete” Longstreet’s headquarters on December 6, and realized after his brief and unceremonious meeting with the general that his history as an English volunteer held no interest for him. Longstreet maintained a professional relationship with his staff members, which, for a junior officer such as Dawson, meant almost no personal contact at all. Adding insult to his lowly status was the discovery that he was expected to do the work of three men: “Colonel Manning had no taste for anything but marching and fighting, and Lieutenant Duxberry was too fond of pleasure and show to be of much practical use,” wrote Dawson. “The whole responsibility in the Ordnance Department of Longstreet’s Corps devolved upon me.”18

  Lee was incredulous that Burnside was still seriously contemplating Fredericksburg as a crossing place. He ordered Longstreet’s First Corps into position along a seven-mile range of wooded hills that overlooked Fredericksburg and the Rappahannock River. The batteries were clustered thickly, ready to fire on the plain below. When Longstreet asked his artillery commander whether any more guns were needed, the officer replied, “A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it.”19 The Confederate army was so well entrenched above the town that a Federal advance seemed completely implausible. Yet “the Yankees were in plain view on the other side” of the area and “evidently very active,” wrote Heros von Borcke, Jeb Stuart’s Prussian volunteer aide, after his reconnaissance. Union general Edwin Sumner sent orders to the mayor to evacuate all civilians. The majority of the inhabitants of the eighteenth-century town were women and children. “I never saw a more pitiful procession than they made trudging through the deep snow,” wrote a Southern artilleryman.

  There were women carrying a baby in one arm, and its bottle, its clothes, and its covering in the other.… Most of them had to cross a creek swollen with winter rains, and deadly cold with winter ice and snow. We took the battery horses down and ferried them over, taking one child in front and two behind, and sometimes a woman or a girl on either side with her feet in the stirrups, holding on by our shoulders. Where they were going we could not tell, and I doubt if they could.20

  Sheet ice coated the roads, making the horses fearful and skittish. Reconnaissance “was anything but pleasant,” wrote von Borcke.21 But the atmosphere at General Stuart’s camp remained almost festive. The Maryland journalist William W. Glenn had sent across two more English visitors to the Confederacy. Captains Lewis Phillips and Edward Wynne had succumbed to the temptation that was affecting so many British officers in Canada, to slip through Northern lines for a peek at the Confederate army.22 Wynne fell ill when they reached Richmond, leaving Phillips to continue by himself. Phillips found the Confederate officers touchingly keen to demonstrate to him the quality of their men. Borcke recalled the Englishman watching a shabbily dressed South Carolina brigade parade before him in a marching style that would have earned swift punishment if performed on British soil, and pronouncing with perfect sincerity that he was impressed.23

  The picket lines of the two armies had come so close to each other that rebel and Federal soldiers could jokingly trade insults across the river. Sam Hill’s regiment, the 6th Louisiana, enjoyed a brief bartering system with unknown Union pickets, exchanging letters and tobacco for coffee and old editions of Harper’s Magazine. One letter actually reached its destination in New Orleans.24

  On the night of December 10, word spread through the Confederate camp that ammunition was being doled out among the Yankees, indicating that a battle was imminent.25 The officers at Stuart’s headquarters nonetheless decided that there was time to take Captain Phillips to a country ball that was being held nearby. The ten-mile wagon ride to the plantation was a rash and dangerous journey to attempt—several of the Confederates were flung with their musical instruments into a snowbank when the wagon veered off the frozen road, but, laughing and bleeding, they righted the vehicle and continued. After another hour of bumps and near misses, they arrived at the house. Borcke recalled that “the mansion was brilliantly lighted up, many fair ones had already assembled and the whole company awaited, with impatience and anxiety, the arrival of their distinguished guests and promised music.” They danced quadrilles and Virginia reels until the small hours. “Our English captain,” wrote von Borcke, “entered into the fun quite as heartily as any of us.”26 By the time they had returned to camp it was almost daybreak, and muffled sounds were coming from the Federal lines.

  General Burnside had ordered his engineers to begin throwing pontoons across the Rappahannock. Fog emanating from the river gave them some cover, but the soldiers remained at the mercy of Confederate sharpshooters. Burnside’s response was to shell the town, giving those who had refused to leave their homes a taste of what was to come. Having fiddled and fretted for more than two weeks, he was now impatient to move. His intelligence reports wrongly implied that Lee’s army was in poor condition, lacking in artillery and at only half its normal 72,000 strength. The Army of the Potomac was, on paper at least, almost twice its size and equipped with 350 heavy guns. Burnside’s natural optimism increased as his army began crossing the river. Lee could hamper the Federals’ progress but he lacked the firepower to mount an effective counteroffensive.

  Burnside thought he could surprise Lee with a brilliant, sweeping attack.27 Lee, on the other hand, was confident that the Federal advantages in troops and artillery were more than offset by his own high defensive position above the town; all he had to do was wait for the Army of the Potomac to expose itself on the plain. By nine o’clock on the evening of December 12, George Herbert and the 9th New York Volunteers were among the fifty thousand Union troops in control of the town. Herbert was shocked to learn that a family friend was among the five hundred Confederate prisoners, but he was unable to speak to him before they were transported to the rear.28

  The following morning, December 13, Captain Phillips solemnly shook hands with Jeb Stuart’s officers and set off in search of Robert E. Lee. In the meantime, the two journalists Lawley and Vizetelly were having breakfast with the general and his staff. Lee appeared calm while they waited for the dawn mist to clear from the plains below. His hat and coat were spotless and, as always, the only sign of his rank was the three stars on his collar. After breakfast, the party rode the length of the Confederate line, looking down at the Federals below as they prepared to march out of Fredericksburg. Longstreet’s First Corps remained spread out, but his artillery was massed in tight formation along a low
ridge called Marye’s Heights, which faced the center of the town. The gently sloping plain would provide little cover for the Federal advance. Lawley told his readers, “It is no wonder that every Southerner from the Commander-in-Chief down to the youngest drummer-boy, understood the strength of the ground, and contemplated the coming shock of battle with serene confidence and composure.”29

  As soon as the shelling began, the skyline of Fredericksburg was transformed from quaint rooftops and spires into a broken, flaming ruin. In a letter to his brother, Herbert tried to describe what happened next: “Two miles back of the town, the ground rises gradually and forms a semi-circular range of hills somewhat in this form.” He drew a rough sketch. “This semi-circle was a mass of guns. The fire of which crossed in every direction and completely swept the plain.” The range was Marye’s Heights, and at its base lay a sunken road behind a four-foot-high stone wall. Impregnable to rifle fire, the wall provided almost total cover to the Confederates crouching behind. Regiment after regiment was sent up the plain without adequate protection as generals tried to interpret Burnside’s confused battle plan. One body of soldiers crammed into the relative safety of an isolated house. When it became full, those forced outside tried to create a protective barrier with human corpses, or took refuge behind dead horses.30

  Map.13 Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862

  Click here to view a larger image.

  “General George W. Getty, my division commander, and myself,” wrote Herbert’s brigade commander, Colonel Rush Hawkins, “were on the roof of the Slaughter house, a high residence at the lower end of the city.… From this prominent position our repeated repulses and the terrible destruction of the Union troops had been witnessed.” At three o’clock, the two officers were ordered to send in Getty’s division. “The order was obeyed but not until I had tried to induce General Getty against its obedience and general waste of life.”31 The instructions became muddled, however, as couriers failed to return and anyone with a horse was commandeered to deliver messages. Ebenezer Wells happened to be at headquarters and was beckoned over by a general. Someone handed him field glasses, and a distant spot was pointed out on the plain. He was so shocked by what he saw that he almost stumbled. “I was ordered to go and deliver my verbal despatch … and if shot it was to be my dying words for it to be carried on,” he recalled.32 Wells was one of the few who returned unscathed, but the fate of his message is unknown. George Herbert’s regiment misinterpreted their orders to mean they were to advance to a nearby battery rather than toward Marye’s Heights. As it turned out, this saved their lives—the only instance of Burnside’s inability to communicate with his officers proving to be fortuitous. The moral, declared a young British Army officer who studied the battle twenty years later, was “Let your instructions be explicit, plainly-worded and capable of no double construction.”33