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

by Amanda Foreman

  The plan went awry from the beginning. Culverwell had arrived without letters of introduction; they were offered to him, including one to General Nathaniel Banks, but he had turned them down, believing they would not be needed in the egalitarian New World. Not knowing what else to do, Culverwell parked himself in the public sitting room at Willard’s Hotel and placed his illustrated book on surgery on his knees. He sat there reading for two days, hoping that someone would ask him if he was a doctor. At the end of the second day he noticed an elderly gentleman being approached by autograph seekers. He recognized the face but could not recall the name; however, this was enough to give him courage. His heart beating with excitement, Culverwell went up to him and asked for help. The stranger politely declined. Not knowing what else to do, Culverwell returned to the public room the following day. This time, the elderly gentleman sought his eye and asked him:

  “How was it you were so foolish to come to America without letters? They are absolutely indispensable here.” I explained to him that I was stupid enough to believe America different from other countries, and the mere fact of introductions being used in Europe stamped them as superfluous here. I told him that a letter to General Banks which had been offered to me, I had even refused to wait for, as it had come from Paris. “I know General Banks,” he replied; “I’ll give you a letter to him if you like, but I shall be bound to say I know nothing about you.” “So long as I am able to get to him,” I said, “I should ask for nothing more.”6

  Culverwell discovered that the kind stranger was none other than the impresario P. T. Barnum. His letter opened the way to an appointment as acting assistant surgeon, a position that allowed the holder to resign and rejoin at will. But Barnum’s influence evidently had its limits: Dr. Culverwell was sent to one of the “contraband camps” near Alexandria, the most unpopular posting in the medical corps. He lasted two weeks in the pestilential and stinking shantytown that contained the South’s runaway slaves.17.3 His request for a transfer resulted in the army’s second most unpopular assignment: duty at Camp Convalescent, Fort Ellsworth, known locally as “Camp Misery,” where wounded soldiers too sick to be discharged instead died of neglect. “We don’t get any vegetables at all,” wrote an inmate of Camp Convalescent. “We are in tents, five in each tent, no beds.… We don’t get our cooking done … it is one of the meanest places I have come across.… They need not talk of the misery of the rebels, let them come down here and it will open their eyes.”7 Culverwell lasted for two months there before he could stand it no longer and again asked to be transferred. This time the authorities were merciful, and on January 20, 1863, he was sent to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri, one of the largest military hospitals outside Washington.

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  It was not only the sick who suffered deprivations. Theft and bureaucratic incompetence were so widespread throughout the army that the soldiers were often short of basic supplies such as fuel, blankets, and fresh food. Lorenzo D. Sargent, the new colonel of Charles Francis Adams, Jr.’s regiment, the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, exemplified one of the criticisms made by British military observers of the Northern system of command: he fraternized with the lower ranks as a way of showing solidarity with the men, but failed to concern himself with their physical or moral welfare. “He considers himself a tactician and yet he could not drill a corporal’s guard without making ludicrous blunders,” Charles Francis Jr. wrote to his family. “His mistakes on the drill ground, his theories of war and his absurdities in camp are … the laughing stock of the regiment.… He has already cost us the best officers in our regiment, and we all fear that he will ultimately ruin it.”8

  Charles Francis Jr.’s frustration with the lack of accountability in the army was a common complaint among the soldiers; recruits were deserting in Virginia at the rate of a hundred a day. There were frequent fights and disturbances in the camps. Percy Wyndham’s cavalry brigade was in a state of uproar after he gave the colonel of one of his regiments a ferocious beating and threatening to shoot him if he continued to disobey orders. The officers in the brigade retaliated by petitioning the War Department for the right to wear sidearms in his presence. Disgusted with his men and with the failure of leadership from above, Sir Percy resigned his command on January 18, 1863.9 But General Heintzelman considered his skills and experience too precious to lose. “Colonel Wyndham is such an excellent Cavalry officer when under the orders of a suitable commander and has behaved so gallantly on frequent occasions,” he wrote, “that I would most reluctantly see his resignation accepted. His service with the main army in the front would I am satisfied be eminently valuable.”10 The army accepted his suggestion of returning Wyndham to the 1st New Jersey Cavalry, where he was still liked and admired.

  General Burnside knew that his generals were conspiring against him and he had to act swiftly before his army disintegrated. To save his command and the army’s morale, he decided to challenge the Confederates again, but from a different vantage point several miles north of Fredericksburg. George Herbert predicted disaster. Yet the weather seemed to favor the general, remaining cold and dry while the troops packed their belongings and tore down the camps. In the predawn hours of January 20, the men stood in smart rows with three days’ rations in their packs, ready to march across the Rappahannock. However, by midafternoon they felt the first spots of rain on their heads; by late evening they were struggling against a steady downpour. “In two hours the roads were impassable,” wrote Herbert.11

  George Herbert watched as mules sank up to their necks in mud. Every few yards, the New York Zouaves had to dig themselves out and then attempt to free the artillery, which was mired in three or more feet of icy sludge. Ebenezer Wells of the 79th Highlanders watched helplessly as a loaded wagon slid off a cliff, pulling six horses to their death. “We let it go for it was bitter cold,” he recalled. The men concentrated on survival: “I was nearly frozen to death, if I had have given way to sleep which seemed to almost overpower me I never should have felt any more pain. I cut my thumb thinking it would cause circulation,” he wrote. “I felt as though I could cry aloud in despair.” To survive, Wells lay down next to his horse, Bill, who had been trained to perform circus tricks, “putting my feet between his hind legs, my body against his and my face in his breast.”12

  Burnside admitted defeat after forty-eight hours and ordered his men to return to their original campsites. Dubbed the “Mud March” by the army and the press, this was Burnside’s final debacle as commander of the Army of the Potomac. By January 27, the general and a few loyal staff members were on a train bound for New York. General “Fighting Joe” Hooker (a nickname that would return to haunt him) took Burnside’s place. Hooker’s intrigues against Burnside had been notorious throughout the army. When George Herbert learned the news, he put the promotion down to “right smart bobbery” and thought his “appointment will create a great disturbance.”13 Charles Francis Adams, Jr., told his brother Henry that Lincoln had created more problems for himself by selecting a man “who has not the confidence of the army.”14

  Hooker was a heavy drinker, and although his name did not inspire the slang term for prostitute, as is popularly believed, his headquarters often resembled a saloon bar in the worst part of town. The qualities that had caught Lincoln’s attention were his energy and ambition, on display as soon as he took control of the Army of the Potomac. On February 5, the soldiers learned that they were being divided into eight numbered corps, each with its own badge and insignia. Hooker also created a separate cavalry corps under General George Stoneman, just as Lee had done with Jeb Stuart. In one stroke Hooker eliminated the muddles and regimental rivalries that had driven Percy Wyndham into an armed standoff against his fellow officers. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., revised his earlier opinion, writing happily, “At last we are coming up and winning that place in public estimation which we have always felt belonged to us of right.”15

  Dr. Mayo visited the Army of the Potomac during Hooker’s reorganization. He had
been promoted from assistant to staff surgeon, and now served on the three-member board that certified volunteer surgeons. Mayo was interested to see how Hooker was managing the health of the soldiers. “I was here able to see how the wheels of the medical department of an army of more than a hundred thousand men are kept in motion by their chief director, Dr. Letterman—an able manager, if ever an army had one.” With Hooker’s support, Dr. Jonathan Letterman instigated a new, healthier regime. The railway line was repaired and supplies were being brought quickly and efficiently to the front. “The army was now therefore pretty comfortable,” wrote Mayo.

  All had tents, or shelter of some kind, and plenty of rations.… Almost all had built themselves fireplaces and chimneys … and had plenty of fuel to keep themselves warm. In fact, as camp life goes, there was little to complain of but the mud, which was certainly some of the dirtiest (always excepting that of Washington), brownest, deepest, stickiest, and most ubiquitous that can be conceived.16

  He could not say the same for the inhabitants of Fredericksburg, who were surviving on twice-weekly handouts of food. Mayo watched as huddled figures, including children, sat for hours in the snow on the banks of the river, a fishing rod in one hand and a bucket in the other. Before Mayo returned to Washington, he paid a visit to the Irish Brigade. So many of its officers had passed through his care after Fredericksburg that he felt a special affection for the men. It was melancholy for him to walk through the half-empty camp. Fewer than 600 of the 1,100 remained; yet they were, he wrote in astonishment, “as jovial and hospitable as ever.” The marked lack of bitterness among the brigade even extended to its wounded.17.4

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  Aside from the downpours and sticky sludge, the chief impediments to Hooker’s massive reorganization were the Confederate raids on outlying camps. They occurred without warning, and though little was taken except for a few wagons or an unlucky soldier on picket duty, the effect on Federal morale was severe. Hooker had been in command for less than a week when, on January 29, 1863, a small force led by one of the most effective Confederate outfits—John Singleton Mosby and his Partisan Rangers—pounced on the Federal pickets guarding Percy Wyndham’s base around Fairfax Court House. Nine horses and their riders were captured. Wyndham ran to his horse and marshaled two hundred cavalrymen to chase after Mosby, but the raiders had vanished into the darkness. The raids against the Federals had made Mosby a hero among Virginians, which surprised everyone who had known him before the war. A lawyer by profession, he was small and thin, slightly hunched, and very plain with strawlike hair and a narrow hatchet face. He looked more like nineteen than his real age of thirty, but his unprepossessing exterior belied a superior ability to infiltrate enemy lines and cause mayhem. His surprise attacks were forcing Federal authorities to divert large numbers of troops into wasteful defensive operations.

  On the evening of March 8, Mosby and twenty-nine volunteers set off toward Fairfax Court House. He had devised a plan to sneak into Wyndham’s headquarters and kidnap him from his bed. Mosby had not told the men what he aimed to do, since he reasoned that they would undoubtedly have refused so suicidal a mission. It was a frosty, pitch-black night, which helped the marauders slip past Federal pickets. Mosby knew exactly where to find the gaps in the line. “We passed along close by the camp-fires, but the sentinels took us for a scouting party of their cavalry,” he wrote. “I had felt very cold in the early part of the night, but my blood grew warmer as I got farther in the lines, and the chill passed away. I had no reputation to lose by failure but much to gain by success.” It was midnight when they reached the village of Fairfax. Mosby’s men were shocked when they realized where they were, but not more so than the Federal guards, who at first refused to believe what was happening.17

  Mosby quickly organized his men into raiding parties; one to gather the prisoners, the other to collect the horses. The telegraph lines were cut and the operator subdued. The Confederates moved stealthily from house to house, rousing officers from their beds with the warning that they would be shot if they made a noise. Mosby waited impatiently for Wyndham to appear. “But for once fortune had been propitious to him,” recalled Mosby. Wyndham had taken the train to Washington that afternoon. The raid on his house produced only two sleepy staff officers and Wyndham’s uniform, which Mosby decided to keep as a trophy. As he prepared to leave with his dumbfounded prisoners, who outnumbered the Confederates four to one, Mosby was told that Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton was billeted in the town.18

  The twenty-five-year-old Stoughton was as famous for his unlikely promotion as he was for his high living. He should not have been in Fairfax at all, since his brigade was five miles away, but the general liked his independence. The two-story brick house that served as his headquarters was never empty or silent. Unable to resist the challenge, Mosby tricked his way inside by claiming to have a dispatch from the 5th New York Cavalry. He then grabbed the surprised Union officer, “whispered my name in his ear, and told him to take me to General Stoughton’s room. Resistance was useless and he obeyed.” Stoughton was sleeping off a rowdy night. Mosby woke him by spanking his bottom. “He asked in an indignant tone what all this meant. I told him that he was a prisoner, and that he must get up quickly and dress. I then asked him if he had ever heard of ‘Mosby,’ and he said he had. ‘I am Mosby,’ I said.” Stoughton intrigued his captor by taking such inordinate care in getting dressed that one of the Confederates standing guard politely handed him his watch after he left it on the bureau.19

  Sir Percy Wyndham was humiliated. It hardly mattered that he was in Washington at the time. He felt unable to face his men again. For three weeks he hid himself away, ignoring orders to return to his regiment, the 1st New Jersey Cavalry. A final order, underlined “commendatory,” roused him from his funk. Still preoccupied with thoughts of revenge, Wyndham sought permission to form his own regiment of ranger scouts. When his request was denied, he asked for and obtained a leave of absence.

  Abraham Lincoln apparently laughed when he heard about Stoughton’s capture, joking, “I can make a better general in five minutes, but the horses cost one hundred and twenty-five dollars apiece.”20 Yet behind the ludicrous picture of a general being taken from his own bed was the worrying possibility that anyone could be Mosby’s next victim. The military authorities ordered a thorough review of Washington’s defenses. New men were put in command; the outposts were strengthened and pulled closer together; a new system of passwords was introduced. Just in case Mosby had designs on the capital, troops guarding the Chain Bridge, the chief bridge linking Washington with Virginia, were ordered to remove the planks every night.

  The authorities suspected that Mosby was receiving local assistance. Fearing that it could be anyone and everyone in Virginia, they issued a blanket warning to commanders to have their men on high alert at all times. Sentries had strict injunctions to reject “It’s me” or “We’re with the Fourth” and other such casual identifications. Any information that might be helpful to the enemy, such as duration of stays and destinations, was deliberately withheld from the troops. The tightening net closed on the two British captains Lewis Phillips and Edward Wynne during their return journey to the North. Phillips’s luck had always been better than his companion’s, and he made it through to Maryland; Wynne was caught while crossing the Potomac River. The legation learned of his arrest a few days later. “He seems to have behaved very foolishly,” wrote the new attaché, Edward Malet. “He gave himself up to the federal pickets … being brought before the commanding officer seems to have chaffed him and [he] tried to carry matters with a high hand.”21 Wynne maintained that he had said nothing objectionable beyond admitting he had been “very well treated whilst in the South” and was therefore grateful to its people. It is unlikely he stopped there, however, since he was soon brought under guard to the Old Capitol prison in Washington.

  Ill.32 The Chain Bridge across the Potomac above Georgetown, looking toward Virginia, by Frank Vizetelly.

 
Lord Lyons forbade the attachés to write to Wynne or make it seem as though the legation had any interest in his release. He had “had some trouble,” explained Malet to his family, “as the government are very much put out at our soldiers going South and then returning rampant secessionists and now that they have caught one they wish to make an example of him.” The Old Capitol prison was a decaying, makeshift jail in the middle of Washington. Once the temporary meeting place of the U.S. Congress, then a school, and later a boardinghouse, it had become an unsavory haven for snakes and vermin when the authorities began using it to house political prisoners. Nothing was done to delouse or repair the inside; the windows were simply boarded up and a fence erected at the back. Smugglers, blockade runners, suspected rebel sympathizers, spies, and the odd Federal military offender soon joined the political prisoners. They smoked and played cards all day long, waiting to be charged, or released, or sometimes executed. Captain Wynne was “prisoner no. 6.” Malet visited him several times, bringing him cigars and newspapers. He tried to cheer him up, pointing out that the officials had allocated Wynne a private room. His efforts had little effect; Wynne shunned the other prisoners, preferring to sit in his cell plotting his escape.