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

by Amanda Foreman

  The Confederates waited uneasily for the sun to set. Outside, excited crowds tramped to and from the convention hall. Vallandigham avoided Richmond House: he was far too busy squeezing and working the delegate system. Prison breaks and political assassinations could not have been further from his mind. Only Charles Walsh, the leader of the Chicago chapter of the Sons of Liberty, and a couple of sidekicks bothered to return to Hines’s rooms. He did not have five hundred men, or one hundred men, or even fifty men, although he thought he might be able to find twenty-five if given enough time. When the Confederates insisted this was not enough, Walsh suggested November 8—the day of the election—as the new date for the prison liberation. Hines agreed through gritted teeth, swearing he would hold them to that day no matter what the cost. Once the Sons of Liberty left, the Confederates passed the rest of the night pondering their options. The snippets of news that filtered along the corridors of the hotel indicated that Vallandigham had failed to derail McClellan’s bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination. Just about every expectation held by Hines, Grenfell, and the rest had turned out to be wrong. There was no seething undercurrent of revolution, no paramilitary organization of well-armed fighters, no willingness in any quarter to take risks.

  It was too dangerous for the Confederates to remain in Chicago. Hines outlined their choices during a noisy meeting of the disappointed volunteers: they could use their tickets to return to Canada, attempt to sneak home, or stay with him and hide out in southern Illinois until November 8. Twenty chose Canada; another twenty-five said they would go south. The rest agreed to help Hines build a force from scratch among the Illinois members of the Sons of Liberty. Grenfell, as usual, made a fourth choice. He would maintain the hunting charade and shoot prairie chickens around Carlyle, Illinois, until called to duty.38 “Tell the girls I am alive and well, although engaged in rather dangerous speculations, which you will know more of, probably, bye and bye,” he wrote on August 31 to the Grenfell family business manager in London.

  The North West states are ripe for revolt. If interfered with in their election they will rise. All this is in favour of the South.… We are on the eve of great events. Abe Lincoln will either have made peace, or made himself a military dictator, within the next two months. In the latter case the N. W. Provinces secede, and there comes a row. Either course aids the South.39

  Jacob Thompson shared Grenfell’s delusion that the Northwest was smoldering with revolutionary aims. The Copperhead leaders were cowards, he claimed to Judah Benjamin, but “the feeling with the masses is as strong as ever. They are true, brave, and, I believe, willing and ready.”40 Indeed, Thompson was angry with Hines for giving up so quickly on the Chicago expedition. He refused to work with the Confederates who returned to Toronto, calling them “deserters.” Thompson blamed everyone for the mission’s failure, including Clay and Holcombe, whom he accused of weakening the Copperheads’ resolve by having dangled the prospect of a negotiated peace at the Niagara Falls conference in July.

  Thompson had become a bitter and vengeful man since his arrival in Canada; during his absence from home, Federal soldiers had burned his Mississippi plantation and assaulted his wife. Isolated from friends and family and surrounded by like-minded fugitives, Thompson turned his personal grievances into an excuse to inflict the greatest possible suffering on the North, and in particular on Northern civilians. Nothing, he complained to Clay, should distract the Confederates from delivering the message of violence.

  * * *

  31.1 Stanley had returned to the North from Wales in January 1863, having failed to reconcile with his family or to find satisfactory employment. But he had fared no better in America, and after working at various jobs he joined the U.S. Navy on July 19, 1864. He was assigned to USS Minnesota as a ship’s clerk, a light position that would expose him to danger only if the vessel received a direct hit. Otherwise, he anticipated a summer of little excitement other than the occasional chase of an unarmed blockade runner.8

  31.2 On December 7, 1863, seventeen Confederate sympathizers—many of them British—had boarded the steamer Chesapeake in New York and hijacked it once they were in international waters. The intention was to turn the vessel into a privateer, but the adventure quickly degenerated into farce. The Chesapeake ran out of coal and most of the crew deserted. The vessel was captured by a U.S. warship and towed into Halifax harbor on December 15. Once it became known that a Canadian was among the prisoners, a furious crowd took over Queen’s Wharf, determined to free him. Five more U.S. Navy ships appeared in the harbor and a tense standoff ensued. Finally, on December 19, the U.S. naval officers bowed to pressure and all the prisoners were rowed to shore, whereupon the crowd “rescued” the Canadian. Holcombe had been ordered to find any legal argument, no matter how weak, to claim the Chesapeake as a Southern prize. But to his embarrassment he discovered that none of the Chesapeake privateers were actually from the South, and the Confederates had no claim to their services or the vessel.

  31.3 The victim was Andrew Cunningham, a British subject who had been kidnapped and forced into the 39th New York Volunteers on January 8, 1864. Lyons was alerted to his plight on February 11 and immediately petitioned for his release. The facts regarding Cunningham’s kidnapping were never in dispute, but even so the usual delays followed. Finally, on June 7, 1864, after considerable nudging from Lyons, Seward gleaned from the War Department that Cunningham’s release had been ordered. Six weeks went by without further communication on the subject. Seward had completely forgotten about Cunningham when, on July 23, 1864, he received a sheepish note from Charles Dana, assistant secretary of war. They had been unable to find Private Cunningham because he had been killed in battle on May 10, 1864, four weeks before his discharge.24

  31.4 The Confederate government believed there were four hundred escaped prisoners of war hiding out in Canada and Nova Scotia. James Holcombe had been ordered to advertise in local newspapers that he had the means to pay for their passage home. But his efforts to locate the missing four hundred yielded only six Confederates. Hines, on the other hand, had no trouble locating the survivors of Morgan’s brigade, whom he trained for his operations against the North.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Tyranny of Hope

  Clinging to power—How to orchestrate a public protest—Rose Greenhow makes her decision—Petitioning for peace—Atlanta

  Lord Palmerston was facing the prospect of defeat in the twilight of his parliamentary career. “They [the opposition] have had their Meeting and have agreed upon a vote of Censure,” Palmerston wrote to Gladstone on June 28, 1864, after Lord Russell’s peace conference in London ended embarrassingly for the British government, without an armistice agreement between Germany and Denmark. Palmerston could not escape the truth that it was his own pugnacious declaration the previous July—that Denmark could always rely on Britain’s support—that had started the government’s woes. The Danes had believed him; the French resented him; and the Germans had known he was bluffing—even if it was some months before Palmerston realized it himself.

  There was a national uproar after Palmerston and Russell announced that Britain would not fight alongside the Danes after all. Whether the government’s course was right or wrong mattered less than the obvious fact that it was a complete reversal from the one originally proposed. On July 4, Disraeli introduced in the House of Commons the motion against the government. “Yet I am more than doubtful about the result,” the Southern propagandist Henry Hotze reported to Judah Benjamin. He considered the Tory Party to be destitute of policies; “the chief end of its tactics is to get into office without committing itself on either of the two great questions … the American and the Danish.” This, feared Hotze, could be their undoing.1

  Henry Adams was tickled to be so close to and yet untouched by the Liberals’ political crisis. “Everyone who has an office, or whose family has an office, is in a state of funk at the idea of losing it,” he chuckled to Charles Francis Jr. Recently he had been feeling fla
t and “more and more doubtful every day as to what life is made for,” he had confided to his brother. “I am getting old, and must be at work. The chef can do without me, if he only tries.”2

  The parliamentary debates on the censure continued for four days. Gladstone’s speech in the Commons sealed his position as the undisputed leader-in-waiting of the Liberal Party, although it was not strong enough to silence the government’s critics. “I wish either that one could put one’s nerves into one’s pocket … or that one could run away from the future,” Henry wrote to his brother on July 8. “The division takes place tonight, and the excitement in society is tremendous.” Their father had heard that the government was down to a majority of two or four votes in the Commons. He was surprised to find himself hoping the Liberals would prevail.

  The Confederate commissioner James Mason was still waiting for the interview with Palmerston that William Schaw Lindsay had promised in June. The prime minister had played his part with finesse, making no commitments to the pro-Southern faction in Parliament while ensuring that the Tories could not offer them anything that was not already under discussion. Rose Greenhow, who had become close to the opposition through a fortuitous friendship with the Tory hostess Lady Chesterfield, was convinced that the Confederates were wasting their time with the Liberals.3 Despite telling Mason everything she heard in Lady Chesterfield’s drawing room, she could not shake his faith in Palmerston. “Saw Mr. Mason who was very busy,” Rose wrote on July 8. “He does not think we have anything to gain by a change in ministry. [For] Queens sake!”

  Adams finished his work early that night so he could go to the House of Commons and watch the government fight for its life. He squeezed into the Strangers’ Gallery at 5:00 P.M. and sat through seven speakers while waiting for Palmerston to make his stand. It was past midnight when the prime minister finally rose to address the House. “He is not a good speaker, his manner is hesitating,” Adams wrote in his diary, which was true of Palmerston at the best of times. “And yet I cannot doubt,” he added reluctantly, “that he makes the only real leader now to be found in English politics.”4 The division took place at half past two in the morning, with the Tories confident that they had the votes. Mrs. Greenhow waited impatiently at her lodgings: “I am anxious for news from Parliament,” she wrote in her diary. “I am afraid the Government will have a majority.”5 Both Houses divided at the same moment. The peers went against the government by a majority of 9 votes; but in the Commons, the Tories discovered that a handful of MPs had switched sides during the debate, uneasy that the price of government would mean effectively declaring that Britain was no longer a Great Power but a feeble, blustering bully. The Liberals survived by a majority of 18 votes.

  “Had the scale turned the other way, the scene would have been worth staying to see,” wrote Adams, who left before the result was called. His early departure meant that he missed a first in the history of the Commons.6 As soon as the numbers were called, Palmerston clambered up the stairs on his gouty foot to the Ladies’ Gallery to embrace his wife in plain view of the House. She cared as much as Palmerston himself that when he did go out of politics, it would be on his own terms.

  —

  With the parliamentary crisis safely behind them, the Confederate lobby at Westminster stepped forward to claim its reward from Palmerston. Lindsay’s resolution for mediation was to be the climax of a week of carefully orchestrated events. The Confederate lobby had reasoned—justifiably—that the previous failures in the Commons had been exacerbated by the problem of individuals acting on their own. In order to succeed, they had to appear united, representative of the entire country, and popular among MPs of all persuasions.

  For several weeks, Spence’s Southern Independence Association had been distributing petitions throughout England calling for British intervention in the war. These were intended to represent the voice of the ordinary public—some of them, like the Manchester petition, contained more than five thousand signatures.7 Next, Mason was to have his interview with Palmerston, followed by the deputation from the Reverend Francis Tremlett’s peace society. Separately, representatives from the cotton factories were to deliver a 90,000-signature-strong petition to Russell. Only then, after the government had heard from the rich and the poor, from manufacturers and merchants, all demonstrating that the country desired action on behalf of the South, would Lindsay put forward his resolution.

  The plan began well. At Henry Hotze’s instigation, The Times reported that the Northern armies had been checked on every front. Lindsay took Mason to see Palmerston at Cambridge House on July 14: “I was received with great civility, and after the ordinary topics of salutation Lord P. commenced the conversation,” Mason wrote afterward to Judah Benjamin. Palmerston seemed interested in the South’s military options, but he became evasive when Mason asked him for a definite answer as to whether Britain would join with Napoleon in offering to broker an armistice. (If Mason had paid any attention to recent debates in Parliament, he would have realized that the idea of an Anglo-French alliance on practically any issue was preposterous.) He tried not to be disappointed by the interview, but it hardly seemed worth the seven-week wait.

  Palmerston was no less opaque when Francis Tremlett and James Spence arrived the following day with the delegation from the Society for Promoting the Cessation of Hostilities in America. Tremlett had collected an impressive group that included six MPs and the president of the Royal College of Surgeons. Palmerston listened politely but quipped, “Those who in quarrels interpose / Will often wipe a bloody nose” and sent them on their way. Lord Russell presented a more sympathetic demeanor to the factory workers who visited the Foreign Office on July 18. Their petition described the poverty and hunger endured by those in the once profitable cotton trade and begged Russell to “enter into concert with other European powers, with a view to restore peace on the American continent.” But he was just as vague as Palmerston over when international mediation might be appropriate.

  It would have been sensible for Lindsay to retreat at this moment, but the dogged MP would not give up, knowing that if he withdrew his resolution now, there would not be another opportunity to debate intervention for several months. While Lindsay pondered how best to use the limited means at his disposal, Rose Greenhow continued to plead with every member of the government who happened to come her way. She cornered Gladstone at a dinner given by Lord Granville on July 21 and reminded him that less than two years ago he had declared the Confederacy a nation. “Your sympathies have been with us of the South, but your Government have aided the Yankees,” she scolded. “Your neutrality is a farce.” Gladstone parried her accusations with a mixture of humor and obfuscation. Recognition, he told her, would not help the South and would only make the North angry. Rose tried again on July 24 when Lady Chesterfield brought her to Lady Palmerston’s final party of the season and introduced her to the prime minister. Rose was annoyed that he used the same arguments as Gladstone. “Talked a good deal with him,” she wrote in her diary. “He asked me how I got over. I said, ‘Run the blockade.’ ”8

  The next afternoon, Lindsay finally raised the subject in the House of Commons, though he was now certain of the answer. He did not bother trying for a resolution, but simply asked Palmerston the same question put by Mason during his private interview eleven days earlier: whether the government had any intention of ending the war in America. The curt response he received was the same: there was “no advantage to be gained” by doing so, even though “Her Majesty’s Government deeply lament the great sacrifice of life and property in America and the distress which that war has produced in this country.”9

  —

  “Thus has terminated an operation which has cost much labor and money to somebody or other” was Charles Francis Adams’s sarcastic epitaph.10 He had paid little attention to the Confederates after Palmerston’s successful repulse of the Tory attack, being more concerned with the worsening asthma of his daughter Mary. He blamed the London fogs for unde
rmining her health, adding the crime of bad weather to the long list of malicious and treacherous acts that Britain would one day be called upon to answer.11 Adams also seemed to draw comfort from his belief that the British upper classes were united in favor of slavery and injustice. He wasted considerable time and effort in July arguing with Lord Russell, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the rescue of the Alabama’s officers had been prearranged with the owner of the Deerhound. Adams was so intent on proving a conspiracy that he neglected to make capital out of the genuine scandal surrounding the Alabama: that Southern officers had saved one another and left the English seamen to drown. Adams also squandered an opportunity to undermine accusations of Northern arrogance and hypocrisy when on July 28 the Commons debated the problem of British workers being kidnapped or tricked into the Federal army. Instead of supplying Northern supporters with information on the latest efforts to stop the abuse, Adams took umbrage against the tone of the complaints and insisted it proved the intent of “the higher classes” to destroy the Union.12

  Rose Greenhow suffered from the same willful blindness as Adams, though she confused sympathy for Southern suffering (her own in particular) with acceptance of Southern slavery. Few people had the nerve or desire to challenge her fantasy, though the Duchess of Sutherland snubbed Rose in the most pointed manner possible when Lady Chesterfield introduced them at the Kensington horticultural show. Rose was able to comfort herself with the observation that the duchess’s girth and “gaudy apparel” compared badly with her own remarkably youthful appearance. She had greater trouble putting aside her embarrassment at an incident during a dinner given by Lord Granville’s sister, Lady Georgiana Fullarton. An unnamed earl had pressed her relentlessly on the subject of slave families until she lost her temper and shrilly revealed the ugly prejudices of her native country. Rose sensed the alienation of her audience and was furious. It was at moments like this that she hated the English almost as much as she hated the North.13