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

by Amanda Foreman

  It then dawned on Grant that all he had to do was be patient and starve out the inhabitants. Inside the town, no one believed such a calamity would come to pass. General Pemberton and his men were waiting for General Johnston to lead his army to their rescue. But the cantankerous Johnston had warned Pemberton not to retreat to Vicksburg, and now that it had happened he wrote off the town and the army as lost. Nothing, not even the urgent telegrams from President Davis and Secretary of War Seddon, could make Johnston change his mind and risk his small force of 24,000 men against a Federal army three times the size. His one concession was to send out a request for volunteers to sneak supplies through the Federal lines into Vicksburg. Vizetelly accompanied some of the missions. These forays were exceedingly dangerous. The scouts had to crawl on their hands and knees in the dark for miles, “avoiding every gleam of moonlight, and prepared at any moment to use the revolver or the knife.” Many previous attempts, Vizetelly informed his readers, had ended with the volunteers being either captured or shot. During one particular mission, the intrepid band scrambled along gorges and through pathless woods until they were twelve miles from Vicksburg. There they left Vizetelly and disappeared into a ravine. “As I lay on the ground in the calm, quiet night I could distinctly hear sounds of musketry between the loud booming of mortars,” he wrote. Whether that meant success or failure he could not tell and would not know until the next day.19

  Shells continually rained down on Vicksburg, shaking nerves and buildings alike. Parishioners of St. Paul’s Catholic church attended mass even though the church was dangerously situated on one of the highest points of the town. On one occasion a shell crashed through a window and exploded above the altar. Stunned but unhurt, Father John Bannon calmed his screaming congregation and continued with the service.20 The townspeople retreated to their cellars and to caves dug deep into the hillside, but there was no respite from the thunderous noise. Afterward, witnesses wrote in wonder at the little touches of comfort people added to their caves. As the siege went on, rugs, chairs, even beds were dragged underground. But bravado, enterprise, and fortitude ultimately gave way to hunger, fear, and despair.

  The barrage was not all one way. As long as they had shells, the gunners in Vicksburg had their choice of sitting targets outside. Each time he led his wagon trains out to forage, Ebenezer Wells, the English wagon master of the 79th New York, bade farewell to his friends. On several occasions he returned to camp with bullets lodged in his saddle and blanket. “Our over-tasked mule-teams,” wrote an officer, “were obliged to drag all the supplies under a broiling sun from the reeking banks of the Yazoo, or over the long road that wound through the hilly and desolate region.”21 Sometimes Wells’s teams made it back to the camp but not the sorely needed supplies, which had to be left behind along with the wounded or dying mules.

  Among the Federal soldiers who held their breath as cannonballs whizzed over their heads was the British doctor Charles Mayo. He was furious to be at Vicksburg. One of his former patients, Major General George Hartsuff, had invited him to join his headquarters at Louisville, Kentucky. Mayo received permission for the transfer and was set to leave when he discovered that a clerk had written down the wrong department on his orders, sending him to General Grant instead of General Burnside. Hartsuff advised Mayo to go to Vicksburg anyway and wait for him to sort out the clerical error with the surgeon general.

  Mayo caught typhus as soon as he arrived on June 1. He put on a brave face for his family’s sake, telling them that he had a nice tent “pitched with that of the Medical Director of the Corps, under a pair of fine beech-trees on a hill,” neglecting to mention that there were nine others in the tent. He had been placed as staff surgeon-major and medical inspector of the XIII Army Corps, with 25,000 men under his care. Mayo found the survivors of the May 22 assault in a miserable state, many having been left to the care of unwilling and unsympathetic civilians. Ever practical, he immediately set about imposing some order on the shambolic situation. He had all the wounded collected and placed together under an open shed made of rough poles and boards. For beds, he copied an innovation found in a deserted Confederate camp and used cane poles and strips of bark braided together to make a mat. The contraption was strong enough to support a man’s weight and flexible enough to conform to his body.

  Ill.38 Confederate scouts with percussion caps for the garrison of Vicksburg, running the Federal pickets, by Frank Vizetelly.

  The army medical department was more of a hindrance than a help to him. But “we had one excellent and trustworthy friend,” he wrote, “namely, the Sanitary Commission.” The volunteer organization had depots and agents for every army in the field. “The principal agent with Grant’s army was a thoroughly good fellow, and consequently was of very great use to us, indeed without the aid of his supplies the sick must have suffered far more than they did,” Mayo wrote. The medical department always had an excuse, and whatever it did send was never enough. By contrast, the Sanitary Commission agent was so determined to secure the very best for the injured that he even managed to haul ice from Cincinnati to the camp, an unimaginable luxury in the searing heat. “But no man alive could have counteracted the effects of that climate,” wrote Mayo. “Malaria, salt pork, no vegetables, a blazing sun, and almost poisonous water, are agencies against which medicine is helpless. They soon began to tell on myself, as they did on others much more nearly accustomed to the climate. The hope of being recalled also vanished.”22

  Mayo’s sense of duty kept him at his post, but by the middle of June he realized that if he did not do something about his situation he would be dead by the autumn. He had become used to the constant shelling, but the malarial conditions were sapping his strength. “Vicksburg still holds out,” he wrote miserably to his sister on June 19. A week later, Mayo had become so desperate that he sent a plea for help to Lord Lyons. It embarrassed him to write to the minister, particularly as Lyons had urged him not to accept an officer’s commission since it would put him beyond the help of the legation: “I was led to believe that I should have no difficulty in getting an order of transfer to a climate in which I could be of some use; if I had thought that they had intended to leave me here I would have left the service rather than come. Now, however, I cannot pass the lines of the army.” Mayo begged Lyons to give his letter of immediate resignation to the secretary of war.23

  While Mayo looked to Washington for deliverance, the wilting Federal army turned its eyes to the South. Grant had been expecting General Banks to steam up the Mississippi River; he was meant to have taken Port Hudson by now and opened the way for joint river operations against Vicksburg. Where was he? Washington had been asking the same question. General Henry Halleck sent two angry letters to Banks, expressing his disappointment “that you and General Grant are not acting in conjunction.”24 Banks had captured Alexandria, the state capital of Louisiana, but Halleck dismissed this as a selfish quest for glory. The judgment was unduly harsh; Banks was trying to devise a way of capturing Port Hudson that did not require a river attack. His first attempt on May 27 had resulted in almost 2,000 casualties compared to a Confederate loss of only 235. The total repulse mirrored Grant’s disaster at Vicksburg a few days earlier, but Banks, at least, was prompt in retrieving the wounded.

  Staff at Banks’s headquarters noticed a precipitous drop in morale after the failed attack. The men had lost faith not only in their general but also in themselves. Banks, on the other hand, saw no reason why he should not be more successful the second time around. He brought in additional artillery so that by June 11 he had more than 130 guns. Ever punctilious, he sent a letter to Confederate general Franklin Gardner inside the fort at Port Hudson suggesting that he surrender to “avoid unnecessary sacrifice of life.” Gardner declined even though his men were already exhausted and starving.

  On the fourteenth, Banks attacked Port Hudson for the second time. Colonel Currie’s luck ran out at a place called Priest Cap. His division commander, General William Emory, was hit first;
the Englishman took his place, shouting “Get on, lads” as he ran toward the fort. Within minutes Currie was struck by bullets in both arms. Almost a hundred members of the 133rd went down behind him. Some four thousand Federals were either killed or wounded that day.

  Currie was rescued by his own men and dragged back to safety. His wounding came as a terrible blow to the regiment. He was no longer considered alien but eccentric; his English manner of speaking was regarded as quaint rather than foreign. A hospital ship transported Currie down to New Orleans, where he remained for a few weeks until he was well enough to be sent to Philadelphia to recuperate. It would be several months before he rejoined his regiment.

  The survivors of the 133rd went about their duties without enthusiasm. “I think the hope of taking the port without force is a forlorn one,” wrote the regiment’s assistant surgeon. “General Banks has offered a promotion and medals to one thousand who will volunteer to storm their works.… We can see their camps and their soldiers and also the Secesh flag very plainly. We have the Fort completely surrounded but I suppose they have enough provisions inside to last them probably a year.” When the regiment left Baton Rouge there were 800 men and officers; “now we scarcely number 400.”25 But Banks had no intention of withdrawing until Port Hudson surrendered.

  The Northern and Southern forces remained in their respective fortifications, slowly shrinking through disease and malnutrition. The only general with the ability to move was the Confederate Joseph Johnston, and he was in a state of passive dejection. He had repeatedly urged Pemberton to evacuate Vicksburg, arguing that the town could always be retaken but his army was irreplaceable. Grant’s siege made escape impossible now; an English army officer traveling through Mississippi asked Johnston about his plans. The general “was too weak to do any good, and he was unable to give me any definite idea as to when he might be strong enough to attack Grant.”26 The officer, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, had arrived in the South on April 8. This was the first time he had encountered anything less than total confidence and determination from a Confederate general. Fremantle’s initial response to the war had been one of casual interest. “In common with many of my countrymen, I felt very indifferent as to which side might win,” he wrote, “but if I had any bias my sympathies were rather in favour of the North, on account of the dislike which an Englishman naturally feels at the idea of slavery.” His support for the North did not, however, survive Seward’s early misfires in international diplomacy: “Soon a sentiment of great admiration for the gallantry and determination of the Southerners, together with the unhappy contrast afforded by the foolish bullying conduct of the Northerners, caused a complete revulsion in my feelings, and I was unable to repress a strong wish to go to America and see something of this wonderful struggle.”27

  The twenty-six-year-old officer applied for a leave of absence from his regiment, the Coldstream Guards, which had been stationed in Canada since the Trent affair. In contrast to many of his fellow officers, Fremantle was prepared to enter the South only in a manner that did not violate the rules of neutrality. This ruled out running the blockade or slipping through Federal lines from the North. Such circumspect behavior was typical of the young man. A keen sense of military honor was engrained in the Fremantle family; his grandfather and father had both served in the army, and all his brothers were officers, too.

  Fremantle had been posted to Gibraltar as the assistant military secretary to the governor when the U.S. Navy chased Commander Raphael Semmes in his first commerce raider, CSS Sumter, into port in January 1862. Semmes vividly remembered their meeting. The governor had sent Fremantle to present a memorandum to Semmes that outlined the strict rules of neutrality the authorities intended to observe toward both navies while the Federals and Confederates remained at Gibraltar. Having warned Semmes that no breach would be tolerated, Fremantle then confessed to him “that he was an ardent Confederate, expressing himself without any reserve, and lauding in the highest terms our people and cause. He had many questions to ask me, which I took great pleasure in answering.”28 Semmes probably gave Fremantle the idea of reaching the Confederacy via Mexico, where there was no blockade and therefore no laws against crossing into Southern territory.

  Map.15 Vicksburg campaign, May 18, 1862–July 4, 1863

  Click here to view a larger image.

  The route from Matamoros through the Texas desert to San Antonio was exceptionally arduous. Fremantle might have chosen the most honorable way, but it was also the most dangerous. The law, where it existed at all, was rough and imprecise, and Fremantle was careful to travel in company. His first act on reaching San Antonio was to sell his heavy trunk, along with most of his belongings. It made him less likely to be robbed, and it was obvious he was not going to need any formal attire.

  Fremantle was ninety miles from Alexandria on May 10 when he encountered a pathetic trail of refugees fleeing the city after its capture by Banks. Having grown anxious that he might become trapped on the west side of the Mississippi, he made a dash across the river. A Confederate steamboat took him part of the way, but for the final thirty miles he had to paddle upstream in a skiff with six other men. Fremantle finally reached Jackson on May 18. By now he had only a small bag and the clothes on his back. As he walked past the still smoldering Catholic church and the ruins of what had once been Jackson’s principal hotel, he fell into the hands of local vigilantes who were eager to hang someone. Fremantle was saved by an Irish doctor who pushed his way through the crowd, saying, “I hate the British Government and the English nation, but if you are really an officer in the Coldstream Guards there is nothing I won’t do for you.”29

  Once the mob was satisfied that Fremantle was not a spy, he was allowed to continue on his way. He reached General Johnston’s headquarters a couple of days after Grant’s first assault on Vicksburg. Johnston seemed a little detached: “He talks in a calm, deliberate and confident manner,” wrote Fremantle; “to me he was extremely affable, but he certainly possesses the power of keeping people at a distance when he chooses, and his officers evidently stand in great awe of him.” When Johnston told Fremantle that they had nothing compared to the Federals, the British officer realized that he was speaking the literal truth. “At present his only cooking-utensils consisted of an old coffee-pot and frying pan—both very inferior articles.” When they sat down to eat, Fremantle discovered “there was only one fork (one prong deficient) between himself and Staff, and this was handed to me ceremoniously as the ‘guest.’ ”30

  Fremantle encountered the same polite behavior wherever he went. The Confederates were curious about him, and he was constantly peppered with questions, such as whether the Coldstream Guards really wore scarlet into battle. Inevitably someone would ask him whether he thought British soldiers could fight as well or better. During one train journey there was a lively debate in the carriage as to whether the British could have defeated Lee at Fredericksburg.

  It was May 28 when Fremantle arrived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where General Bragg and his long-suffering army were encamped. He was not the only visitor at Bragg’s headquarters. The staff introduced Fremantle to an unexpected guest: three days earlier, Clement Vallandigham, the dissident Democrat and leader of the so-called Copperheads, had been unceremoniously dumped in front of Confederate pickets and ordered by his Federal guards not to turn back.

  The exiled politician was outraged at his treatment by the U.S. government. On May 1 he had attended a rally in Ohio where he gave one of his usual antiwar speeches. It was a deliberate provocation, and General Burnside—who had been transferred to run the Department of Ohio, which oversaw all military matters across seven states from Wisconsin to West Virginia—fell into the trap. On May 4 Burnside sent soldiers to Vallandigham’s house in Dayton. They smashed down his back door and dragged the politician off to a waiting train. Vallandigham’s arrest had the effect that he was hoping for: newspapers throughout the Midwest declared him a martyr to free speech and freedom of con
science. Burnside hastily assembled a military tribunal of eight army officers to “try” the case. It was a farce, Vallandigham indignantly told Fremantle; one of the officers was not even American. (The unknown officer was Colonel John Fitzroy De Courcy, who had returned to duty and was anxious to be of use to Burnside in the hope it would lead to his reinstatement with the 16th Ohio.)

  The tribunal listened to the evidence for two days and came to a unanimous agreement on the defendant’s guilt. They had more difficulty deciding what to do with him. One thought he ought to be shot; another suggested exile; eventually they agreed he should be imprisoned in a fort somewhere.31 But the ensuing national uproar over Vallandigham’s trial severely embarrassed the administration, and Lincoln swiftly commuted the sentence to banishment. But Vallandigham had no more wish to be in the South than the rebels had to receive him. He had been made, in Fremantle’s words, “a destitute stranger” in his own country. General Bragg was puzzled as to how to treat his reluctant visitor; Vallandigham’s platform of compromise and reunion was no more popular in the South than Lincoln’s policy of forced reunion. He was relieved to learn that Vallandigham wished to travel to Bermuda, where it would be possible for him to take a ship to Canada. Vallandigham preferred not to mix with his hosts while they waited for permission from Richmond to allow him to travel to Wilmington. He did not consider himself a Confederate sympathizer and was not interested in meeting foreign supporters of the South; he politely declined an introduction to the sole English volunteer on Bragg’s staff.