—
Lee could not afford to let the near debacle at Brandy Station slow the momentum of his army. The departure for Maryland proceeded as planned. The Second Corps under Ewell headed toward the lower Shenandoah Valley, with Longstreet following close behind. On June 13 the Third Corps quietly slipped away from Fredericksburg, leaving their Federal opponents to discover that the weeklong sparring had simply been a feint rather than the preparation for a large battle. General Hooker realized he had been tricked, but his latest intelligence told him only that the Confederate army was somewhere in the Shenandoah Valley. The best he could do was to keep the Army of the Potomac moving north while protecting Washington against surprise attacks.
The skirmishing at Fredericksburg had been a gentle introduction to warfare for Company F of the 7th Maine Infantry, a unit of new recruits that arrived in Virginia on May 23, 1863. Walking fresh into a battle-hardened regiment was not usually a pleasant experience for recruits. But the newest and youngest member of Company F had no difficulty in endearing himself to his comrades. Nineteen-year-old Frederick Farr was a runaway from England who had enlisted under the alias Frederick Clark. His father was the celebrated epidemiologist William Farr, who pinpointed the cause of the great cholera epidemic of 1848. The last that Farr Sr. had heard from his son was in January, when Frederick wrote to say he was studying hard for his civil service exams. Three weeks later, on February 26, Frederick had secretly boarded the Anglo-Saxon for Portland, Maine.
Back at home, Dr. Farr called at the American legation to swear an affidavit that Frederick was underage and had enlisted without his parents’ permission. He also fired off letters to his Northern friends in the U.S. Sanitary Commission and the Statistics Office begging for their help. Joseph Kennedy of the Census Bureau petitioned Seward, Lyons, and even General Hooker on Farr’s behalf. Kennedy tried to have Frederick transferred to General Pleasonton’s staff, where his own son was an aide, and he engaged a local lawyer in Maine to visit the boy. The lawyer returned with unexpected news: the youth had only ever wanted to be a soldier and had refused his help. “He is very popular with his superior officers and is as disinclined to leave the service at present as they are indisposed to part with him.” All the lawyer could do for now was ask the regiment’s colonel and the governor of Maine (both of whom were personal friends) to take an interest in Frederick’s welfare.31
On June 8, Joseph Kennedy cornered Lord Lyons at a ball given by the Brazilian minister. Kennedy continued pressing Farr’s case until Lyons explained that even in the best circumstances—when the law had been clearly transgressed—his appeals to Seward often failed to win a release.32 That day, Lyons had been shown one of the saddest letters yet received by the legation. A Miss Hodges in Baltimore had written about her fiancé, Bradford Smith Hoskins, who had been killed on May 30, during a skirmish between Federal cavalry and Mosby’s Rangers. Hoskins had been in America for less than six months, and with Mosby for only six weeks. Federal troopers had carried the mortally wounded officer into a nearby farmhouse belonging to the Green family, who took pity on the Englishman dying so far from home and buried him in their family plot in the cemetery across the way. Unfortunately, the Federals’ magnanimous gesture was undermined by the theft of his personal effects. Miss Hodges begged Lord Lyons to track down the missing articles and have them returned to Hoskins’s father in England. The minister dutifully began the laborious task of finding the thief.21.5 34
Lyons was longing for a respite from the daily grind of appeals and rejections. He half hoped that the rumors of an imminent attack by the Confederates were true. “There is some chance of communication between Washington and the North being interrupted, as it was at the beginning of the war,” Lyons wrote to his sister on June 16. “The interruption of my correspondence for a few days would be a most enjoyable relief to me.”35 But he suspected there was no real danger, except to Lee. Lyons thought the general had made “a perilous move” by launching another invasion, even though the mere suggestion of his coming had created panic in Washington. Sir Percy Wyndham was ordered out of his bed and told to round up all available horsemen for the city’s defense.
* * *
21.1 It was the second tragedy to strike the Lewis family. Lewis’s daughter had died in childbirth some weeks before, leaving the infant son to be brought up by her grieving husband, William Vernon Harcourt. The double loss (Lewis had been like a father to Harcourt) led to Harcourt’s temporary withdrawal from public life. He stopped writing his pro-Northern essays, which had appeared in The Times under the pen name “Historicus,” and remained a widower until 1876, when he married Elizabeth Motley, the daughter of the American historian John Lothrop Motley.
21.2 John had disappeared while leading a reconnaissance mission at Vicksburg. A friend on the Federal side made inquiries but could find no record of his capture. An investigation after the war found evidence that he had run into a Federal scouting party, which shot him and dumped his body.
21.3 The wealthy Beresford Hope and his brother-in-law Lord Robert Cecil, the future Marquis of Salisbury and prime minister, were both haunted by the fear that American-style democracy might one day infect British politics. But whenever Beresford Hope adopted a cause, he embraced it with fanatical intensity. He romanticized the South to an absurd degree, publishing three pamphlets in support of its independence. “I honestly and entirely believe,” he wrote, “that the cause which will tend to the confirmation of all the evils of slavery, is that of the North, and that the cause which is most likely to prove a benefit to the slave, and in the end relieve him of his shackles, is that of the South.” A. Beresford Hope, The Remnants of the American Disruption, p. 44 (London, 1862). The statue of Stonewall Jackson was not finished until 1874, but Beresford Hope had remained committed to the project and paid the shipping costs. The unveiling ceremony took place in Richmond, Virginia, the following year in front of fifty thousand people, including many survivors of Jackson’s cavalry.9
21.4 Forbes and Aspinwall were two wealthy businessmen and philanthropists who had arrived in the spring bearing $10 million in government bonds. Seward had sent them to England on a secret mission to purchase any ships that could be used by the Confederates for their navy. Only a handful of people were meant to know the details, but Forbes and Aspinwall had been in England for less than a week when The Times received a tip-off. Thwarted by their exposure, they gave a considerable portion of their money to Consuls Dudley and Morse for their espionage operations—with more immediate and probably far more effective results.
21.5 Several months went by as the case moved slowly down the chain of command until it reached the colonel of the 5th New York Cavalry. He discovered that it was one of his troopers who had taken the bag. The article was proffered up, with Hoskins’s belongings still inside, and passed back up the chain to Washington. It was a melancholy triumph for Lyons, but he was glad to inform the Reverend Hoskins in Kent that his son’s belongings were on their way home.33
TWENTY-TWO
Crossroads at Gettysburg
The anguish of Charles Francis Adams, Jr.—Colonel Fremantle meets Robert E. Lee—The view from the oak tree—The Federals hold—Lawley’s painful duty
The train carrying the English colonel Arthur Fremantle pulled into Richmond on the morning of June 17, 1863, while more than a hundred miles away the Army of Northern Virginia was crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley. Francis Lawley had already left Richmond, hoping to reach Lee before the army disappeared entirely. Lawley was weighed down by a sense of foreboding, even though his reports maintained their jaunty tone. His boast that “Vicksburg will never fall” was simply propaganda, he had admitted to the Marquess of Hartington in a confidential letter of June 14. It looked increasingly doubtful that the besieged town could withstand Grant for much longer. “If it falls the Confederacy may hold out and will strive to hold out for years,” he wrote. “But bisected & perforated everywhere by its enemies its fortunes will
be at zero. No successes which Lee can gain in Virginia will be set off against the fall of Vicksburg.” Mindful of Hartington’s new position as undersecretary for war, Lawley appealed to his military instincts, urging him to lobby for Southern recognition so that Britain would have an ally if the North turned its million-strong army toward Canada.1
“I hear everyone complaining dreadfully of General Johnston’s inactivity in Mississippi, and all now despair of saving Vicksburg,” Fremantle wrote in his diary. He had spent his first day in Richmond visiting with as many government officials as would receive him.22.1 2 He eventually managed to gain access to the Confederate secretary of state, Judah P. Benjamin—“a stout dapper little man” in Fremantle’s opinion—whose anteroom was crowded with supplicants waiting for an audience. Benjamin gravely pressed upon him England’s moral responsibility in allowing the bloodshed to continue—one word about recognition and the war would end, he claimed. When Fremantle brought up the specter of Britain’s losing Canada if she grappled with the North, Benjamin laughed at the possibility: “They know perfectly well you could deprive them of California … with much greater ease.” This was a novel idea that Fremantle was too polite to pursue.3
After their interview, Benjamin escorted Fremantle to Davis’s house. The president served him tea, the first that Fremantle had seen during his travels, while they discussed the risks to England if she supported the Confederacy. Although Davis avoided talking about the current fighting, he alluded bitterly to the suffering wrought by Union armies. His own family had been made homeless after Federal soldiers torched his brother’s plantation in Mississippi, having forced the tearful occupants out onto the lawn to watch the destruction. He defended the behavior of Confederate soldiers and denied that they shot men who surrendered. (The fate of Negro regiments at Charleston and also Port Hudson in 1864 would put the lie to this claim.) This gave Fremantle the opportunity to question him about Colonel Grenfell’s legal trouble with the state authorities. “He was very sorry when I told him,” wrote Fremantle, as “he had heard much of his gallantry and good services.”4 But Davis was not unduly troubled by Grenfell’s departure; there seemed to be no shortage of foreign volunteers.22.2
“When I took my leave about 9 o’clock, the President asked me to call upon him again,” wrote Fremantle. He felt sorry for him; Davis looked much older than his fifty-five years. He face was lined and emaciated, his eyes were evidently hurting him, yet “nothing can exceed the charm of his manner, which is simple, easy, and most fascinating.”6 This was an uncharacteristic description of a man who was generally considered to be haughty and cold, and too enamored of his military record during the Mexican-American War to listen to the advice of his generals. On the night of June 19 there was an explosion of thunder and lightning over Richmond. The clattering of rain followed by a rush of cool air made a pleasant end to Fremantle’s last hours in the city. He was packing in preparation for a dawn departure by train to Culpeper, where he hoped to obtain a horse and ride to Lee’s headquarters at Berryville.
The drought also broke at Middleburg, near the northern Virginia border, finally ridding the countryside of its pervasive smell of rotting horses.7 Water flowed through the camp of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, flooding the tents, many of which stood empty. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., was alone in his, struggling to make sense of the past forty-eight hours. Only four days ago he had been studying William Howard Russell’s published diary for accuracy and bias, wondering if the authorities had forgotten the regiment’s existence. After the Battle of Brandy Station, General Pleasonton had ordered the cavalry to pursue the Confederate army into the Blue Ridge Mountains and bring him definitive intelligence of its direction. Jeb Stuart had placed his troopers in front of the three mountain gaps to hold the Union cavalry off. Both he and his men were trying to blot out their recent near humiliation; Pleasonton’s cavalry were no less determined to prove that they were the Confederates’ equals or better. The 1st Massachusetts Cavalry had always previously ended up on the sidelines or been held in reserve, but this time they were assigned to Kilpatrick’s brigade and sent to break the Confederate hold at Aldie, the northernmost gap in the Blue Ridge. They roared into the village on the morning of the seventeenth, easily driving off the rebel pickets, but when they turned back for another sweep, they were hit by a countercharge of Confederate reinforcements. Charles Francis Jr.’s squadron became trapped at the foot of a hill. “My poor men were just slaughtered and all we could do was to stand still and be shot down,” he wrote in anguish to his brother Henry. “In twenty minutes and without fault on our part I lost thirty-two as good men and horses as can be found in the cavalry corps. They seemed to pick out my best and truest men, my pets and favourites. How and why I escaped I can’t say, for my men fell all around me.”8 He was racked by guilt and grief over his losses. The army’s leaders were butchers, he wrote bitterly to Henry; the “drunk-murdering-arson dynasty” of Hooker and the rest had to be expelled before they did Lee’s work for him.
Ill.41 General Longstreet’s corps crossing the Blue Ridge from the Shenandoah to the Rappahannock, by Frank Vizetelly.
Jeb Stuart succeeded in driving the Federals away from the passes, but he could not prevent General Pleasonton from obtaining the information sought by Hooker. By June 22 the Federals knew for certain that Pennsylvania and not Washington was Lee’s objective. Stuart was unsure what Lee wished him to do in the face of so many threats—should he guard the gaps, follow the Confederate army up the Shenandoah Valley, or create a diversion and try to maintain the deception that the capital was in danger? Lee sent him two notes, on June 22 and 23, which the cavalry commander interpreted to mean that he could use his own judgment, provided he rejoined the main body of the army in good time. Stuart decided to go riding and raiding in between the Federal army and Washington.9
Fremantle at last arrived at Lee’s headquarters at 9:00 A.M. on June 22. He recognized the general immediately but refrained from going up to him; the expression on Lee’s face discouraged frivolous interruption. Instead, Fremantle asked a member of the staff where he might find Francis Lawley. After introducing him to Lee’s aides, Lawley invited Fremantle to join them for breakfast. There was another guest at the table, a Prussian captain named Justus Scheibert, who was an official observer from the Royal Prussian Engineers. The conversation centered mostly on Jeb Stuart and his successful repulse of Pleasonton’s cavalry at the mountain passes. For the moment, at least, Stuart’s reputation was on a reprieve. But he had lost one of his most popular volunteers—the Prussian soldier Heros von Borcke, who had been severely wounded at Aldie.
Lawley understood Fremantle’s desire to meet Lee, but persuaded him to wait until the atmosphere was less frenetic. He suggested they leave the camp and deposit themselves ten miles farther north, at Winchester, where there would be decent lodgings and a blacksmith for Fremantle’s suffering horse. They spent the next couple of days together, exploring the battle-scarred countryside and staying out of the Confederates’ way. The houses looked bleak and dilapidated, with those still inhabited being used as hospitals for the wounded. The travelers visited the mud hole that had once been Commissioner Mason’s elegant plantation. “Literally not one stone remains standing upon another,” wrote Fremantle, surprised at the vitriol behind the Federal attack.
On June 24, leaving Lawley to write his Times dispatch, Fremantle went foraging for their horses without success. He eventually found virgin grass four miles outside town, but all the hay and corn had been seized long ago. He was experiencing on a small scale one of Lee’s greatest anxieties: how to feed his army. As usual, Lawley hid the situation from his readers. He conceded that the Southern army was “still ragged and unkempt” but declared that all had good shoes and that the animals were “for the most part sleek and fat.” Lawley was unable to finish his report that day or the next. He became so ill, probably with dysentery, that they had to stay behind in Winchester even though the Confederate army had resumed its northw
ard progress. On June 25, Lawley forced himself to mount his horse and they rode all day in the rain, trying to catch up with Lee. They managed to pass some divisions of Longstreet’s corps, but the generals had already crossed the Potomac.
“It was a dreary day! The rain was falling in torrents,” recalled Francis Dawson. “General Lee, General Longstreet and General Pickett were riding together, followed by their staffs. When we reached the Maryland shore we found several patriotic ladies with small feet and big umbrellas waiting to receive the Confederates who were coming a second time to deliver downtrodden Maryland.” One of the four women held an enormous wreath that had been intended to adorn the neck of Lee’s horse, Traveler, but its size frightened the animal and it was handed to one of the general’s aides to carry. More ladies greeted them at Hagerstown, just south of the Pennsylvania state line. This time one of them asked for a lock of Lee’s hair, which he refused, offering one of General George Pickett’s instead. “General Pickett did not enjoy the joke,” wrote Dawson, “for he was known everywhere by his corkscrew ringlets, which were not particularly becoming when the rain made them lank in such weather as we then had.”10
Lawley and Fremantle rode into Hagerstown late at night on Friday, June 26. They had almost caught up with the army, but Lawley was so weak that he slumped alarmingly on his horse. Fremantle’s had gone lame; “by the assistance of his tail, I managed to struggle through the deep mud and wet,” he wrote, until after seventeen very long miles they bribed a Dutchman with gold to let them stay the night. “I dared not take off my solitary pair of boots, because I knew I should never get them on again,” recorded Fremantle. Twenty-four hours earlier, in England, the Times’ managing editor, Mowbray Morris, was writing optimistically to Lawley to keep going just a little bit longer. The only real hardship was the blockade, he asserted; once that was raised, “your position will be comparatively easy and your work pleasant.”11
A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War Page 57