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

by Amanda Foreman

  33. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, p. 149.

  34. Ibid., pp. 149–50.

  35. Ibid., p. 164.

  36. Ibid., p. 180.

  Chapter 21: The Eve of Battle

  1. Henry Vane, Affair of State (London, 2004), p. 65.

  2. Patrick Jackson, The Last of the Whigs: A Political Biography of Lord Hartington, Later 8th Duke of Devonshire (London, 1994), p. 33.

  3. “Bow down ye ignoble hard-working members!,” the Earl of Kimberley wrote sarcastically in his diary, who thought the position should have gone to him. Journal of John Wodehouse, First Earl of Kimberley (Cambridge, 1997), April 20, 1863. When Lawley heard the news of Hartington’s promotion he sent him the official report on the U.S. attack on Charleston on April 7. “A printed copy of it was handed to me as a favour, and I was told that I might make any use of it in Europe which I tried, short of its publication.”

  4. Frances Leigh Williams, Matthew Fontaine Maury (Piscataway, N.J., 1963), p. 409. Maury learned of his son’s disappearance on April 8, 1863.

  5. Merseyside Maritime Museum, Fraser, Trenholm MSS, B/FT box 1/7, Bulloch to Prioleau, April 20, 1863.

  6. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, April 7, 1863.

  7. Martin Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, p. 305.

  8. W. C. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 1, p. 275, Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., April 23, 1863.

  9. The inscription on the plaque reads: “Presented by English gentlemen, as a tribute of admiration for the soldier and patriot, Thomas J. Jackson, and gratefully accepted by Virginia in the name of the Southern people. Done A. D. 1875, in the hundredth year of the commonwealth. ‘Look! There is Jackson, Standing like a Stone-Wall.’ ” The Beresford Hope quotation is from his The Results of the American Disruption (London, 1862), p. 44.

  10. Charles P. Cullop, “English Reaction to Stonewall Jackson’s Death,” West Virginia History, 29/1 (Oct. 1967), pp. 1–5.

  11. James M. Morgan, Recollections of a Rebel Reefer (Boston, 1917), p. 126.

  12. Library of Congress, Mason Papers, James Spence to Mason, June 16, 1863.

  13. Harriet Martineau: Selected Letters, ed. Valerie Sanders (Oxford, 1990), p. 201, Martineau to Henry Bright, May 3, 1863.

  14. Brian Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, 2 vols. (Montreal, 1974, 1980), vol. 2, p. 50.

  15. Joyce Miank Lierley (ed.), Affectionately Yours: Three English Immigrants, the American Civil War and a Michigan Family Saga (Omaha, Nebr., 1998), p.166, Mary Ann Rutter to brother, September 24, 1863.

  16. John Bailey (ed.), Diary of Lady Frederick Cavendish, 2 vols. (New York, 1927), vol. 1, p. 161. The future Lady Frederick was also Gladstone’s niece, which no doubt played a role in her early political education.

  17. Wilbur Devereux Jones, “The Confederate Rams at Birkenhead,” Confederate Centennial Studies, 19 (Wilmington, N.C., 2000), p. 47.

  18. Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1948, 1949), vol. 2, p. 1178, June 27, 1863.

  19. F. L. Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy (2nd ed., Chicago, 1959), p. 450.

  20. Ibid., p. 461.

  21. Herman Ausubel, John Bright: Victorian Reformer (New York, 1966), p. 136.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ed. Ernest Samuels (repr. Boston, 1973), p. 187.

  24. Emory M. Thomas, Bold Dragoon: The Life of J.E.B. Stuart (Norman, Okla., 1999), p. 226.

  25. Devonshire MSS, Chatsworth, 2nd series (340.195), Lawley to Hartington, June 14, 1863.

  26. Edward G. Longacre, Jersey Cavaliers (Hightstown, N.J., 1992), p. 144.

  27. OR, ser. 1, vol. 27/1, doc. 39, p. 966, June 10, 1863.

  28. OR, ser. 1, vol. 27/1, doc. 43, p. 1054, June 10, 1863.

  29. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, vol. 2, p. 32, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Henry Adams, June 14, 1863.

  30. Thomas, Bold Dragoon, p. 226.

  31. British Library of Political and Economic Science, LSE, Farr MSS, GB 0097 Farr/vol. 10, Add. 2, ff. 5–25.

  32. PRO FO282/10/d.211, ff. 104–11, Archibald to Lyons, July 8, 1863.

  33. PRO FO 114/402, f. 1038, Lyons to Revd. W. E. Hoskins, December 3, 1863. Lyons also passed on two letters from his brother officers, testimonials to how bravely Hoskins fought and died.

  34. PRO FOI 15/394, f. 100, Miss Hodges to Lord Lyons, June 8, 1863. Many years later, Hoskins’s family erected a gravestone on his burial plot.

  35. West Sussex RO, Lyons MSS, box 301, Lyons to sister, June 16, 1863.

  Chapter 22: Crossroads at Gettysburg

  1. Devonshire MSS, Chatsworth, 2nd series (340.195), Lawley to Hartington, June 14, 1863.

  2. Arthur J. L. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States (Lincoln, Nebr., 1991), p. 220. The quotation in the first footnote on this page is from p. 191.

  3. Ibid., p. 208.

  4. Ibid., p. 211.

  5. According to William Torens, Davies was sent to the 7th Tennessee Infantry first, from August 1863 to November 1864, and then became a lieutenant and AAIG to Heth on November 30, 1864.

  6. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, p. 211.

  7. Justus Scheibert wrote eloquently about such damaged terrain: “Only grunting swine wandered around on level ground, often rooting at the shallow graves and gnawing on bodies which stared with distorted horrible expressions at persons who rode by.” Justus Scheibert, Seven Months in the Rebel States During the North American War, 1863, trans. Joseph C. Hayes, ed. William Stanley Hoole (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2009), p. 33.

  8. W. C. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 2, pp. 36–37, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Henry Adams, June 19, 1863.

  9. Emory M. Thomas, Bold Dragoon: The Life of J.E.B. Stuart (Norman, Okla., 1999), p. 241.

  10. Francis W. Dawson, Reminiscences of Confederate Service, 1861–1865, ed. Bell I. Wiley (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), p. 91.

  11. Morris to Lawley, June 25, 1863, quoted in Brian Jenkins, “Frank Lawley and the Confederacy,” Civil War History, 23 (March 1997).

  12. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, p. 177.

  13. Fitzgerald Ross, Cities and Camps of the Confederate States, ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell (Champaign, Ill., 1997), p. 42.

  14. Historians have since exonerated Ewell. He had less than an hour to get his troops into line and charge the ridge before Federal defenders received thousands of reinforcements. James M. McPherson (ed.), Battle Chronicles of the Civil War, 6 vols. (Lakeville, Conn., 1989), vol. 3, p. 69. But when Francis Lawley wrote his report of the day’s fighting he repeated without examination the accusation that Ewell had lost the battle through his bungling.

  15. Ross, Cities and Camps, p. 48.

  16. Joseph E. Persico, My Enemy, My Brother: Men and Days of Gettysburg (New York, 1988), p. 135.

  17. The Times, August 18, 1863.

  18. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, p. 260.

  19. The Times, August 18, 1863.

  20. Susannah Ural Bruce, The Harp and the Eagle (New York, 2006), p. 163.

  21. Jeffry D. Wert, The Sword of Lincoln (New York, 2006), p. 294.

  22. “Rebel Without a Cause—From Shakespeare Country,” Crossfire: The Magazine of the American Civil War Round Table, 48 (April 1993).

  23. Dawson, Reminiscences, p. 95.

  24. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, p. 190.

  25. Dawson, Reminiscences, p. 96.

  26. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Charles Francis Adams, 1835–1915: An Autobiography with a Memorial Address (New York, 1916), p. 151.

  27. Somewhere in the stream was Lieutenant Colonel George T. Gordon of the 34th North Carolina Infantry. He had arrived in the South six months earlier, a fugitive from British and Canadian justice. An accomplished fraud, he tricked the authorities into awarding him
the rank of major. To his surprise, the war exposed a hitherto completely hidden layer of decency. Promotions followed and by Gettysburg he was a brigade commander. After the war, however, he returned to his old ways.

  28. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, p. 267.

  29. Dawson, Reminiscences, p. 96.

  30. Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, ed. Gary Gallagher (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989), p. 266.

  31. Adams, Charles Francis Adams, 1835–1915: An Autobiography, p. 151.

  32. John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, ed. Earl Schenck Miers (Urbana, Ill., 1958), p. 286.

  33. Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 268.

  34. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, p. 274.

  35. James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox (New York, 2004), p. 361. Longstreet added: “It is simply out of the question for a lesser force to march over broad, open fields and carry a fortified front occupied by a great force of seasoned troops.” Longstreet was stung by the criticisms of his own actions at Gettysburg and energetically defended himself against charges that ranged from treason to arrogance.

  36. William Stanley Hoole, Lawley Covers the Confederacy (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1964), p. 63.

  37. The Times, August 18, 1863.

  Chapter 23: Pressure Rising

  1. Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 171, cols. 1827–28, June 3, 1863, John Bright.

  2. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ed. Ernest Samuels (repr. Boston, 1973), p. 187.

  3. F. L. Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy (2nd ed., Chicago, 1959), p. 461.

  4. E. D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. in 1 (New York, 1958), vol. 2, p. 172.

  5. Ibid., p. 173.

  6. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, no. 25, pp. 839–40, Hotze to Benjamin, July 11, 1863.

  7. Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1948, 1949), vol. 2, p. 1183, July 14, 1863.

  8. Francis Galton (ed.), Vacation Tourists, 1862–1863 (London, 1864), p. 412.

  9. New-York Historical Society, Narrative of Ebenezer Wells (c. 1881).

  10. William L. Shea and Terrence J. Winschel, Vicksburg Is the Key (Lincoln, Nebr., 2003), p. 185.

  11. Sheffield Archives, WHM 461 (24), Hampson to Lord Wharncliffe, January 17, 1865.

  12. PRO FO115/395, f. 60, Mayo to Lyons, July 24, 1863.

  13. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, vol. 2, p. 179.

  14. Historical Collection, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, vol. 29 (Lansing, Mich., 1900), p. 604.

  15. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, no. 26, pp. 849–51, Hotze to Benjamin, July 23, 1863.

  16. W. C. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 2, p. 59, Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., July 23, 1863; Economist, August 1, 1863, quoted in Hugh Brogan, “America and Walter Bagehot,” Journal of American Studies, 11/3 (Dec. 1977), p. 340.

  17. Charles Vandersee, “Henry Adams Behind the Scenes: Civil War Letters to Frederick W. Seward,” 71/4 (1967), p. 259.

  18. Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, pp. 204–55.

  19. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, vol. 2, p. 32, Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., July 23, 1863.

  20. Ibid., p. 54, Charles Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., July 24, 1863.

  21. Norman Longmate, The Hungry Mills: The Story of the Lancashire Cotton Famine, 1861–5 (London, 1978), p. 205.

  22. Lance Davis and Stanley L. Engerman, Naval Blockades in Peace and War (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 128–29.

  23. Wallace and Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, vol. 2, p. 1188, July 27, 1863.

  24. Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, 4 vols.; vol. 2: War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863 (New York, 1960), p. 120.

  25. Susannah Ural Bruce, The Harp and the Eagle (New York, 2006), p. 177.

  26. Edward Robb Ellis, The Epic of New York City (New York, 2005), p. 298.

  27. Sarah Forbes Hughes (ed.), Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, 2 vols. (New York, 1900), vol. 2, p. 49.

  28. Arthur J. L. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States (Lincoln, Nebr., 1991), p. 300.

  29. Ellis, The Epic of New York City, p. 305.

  30. The description of the draft riots is largely taken from the following sources: Ellis, The Epic of New York City; Joel Tyler Hedley, The Great Riots of New York, 1712–1873 (New York, 1873); David Barnes, The Draft Riots of New York, July, 1863: The Metropolitan Police; Their Service During Riot Week (New York, 1863); Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham (New York, 1999), pp. 888–99.

  31. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (London, 1988), p. 610. The Gatling gun had been patented in 1862.

  32. George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865, ed. Allan Nevins (New York, 1962), p. 339, July 15, 1863.

  33. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, p. 303.

  34. Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots (Oxford, 1990), p. 17.

  35. George Rowell, “Acting Assistant Surgeon,” Nineteenth Century Theatre Research, 12 (1984), p. 33.

  36. Strong, Diary of the Civil War, p. 341, July 17, 1863.

  37. Ellis, The Epic of New York, p. 315.

  38. PRO FO282/8, ff. 325–28, Archibald to Russell, July 18, 1863.

  39. PRO FO282/10, ff. 126–27, d. 238, Archibald to Lyons, July 20, 1863.

  40. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (New York, 2005), p. 536.

  41. Northumberland RO, 2179/1, C. A. Race to Father, July 24, 1863. Another lost soul in the Federal army was thirty-four-year-old Theodore Lee. Unhappy at home and beset by financial problems, he had fled England because “I wanted a radical change.… I needed a change to prevent both mind and body being comfortably boxed up at the expense of my friends.” Joining the Federal army as a substitute had seemed his only option. So far his life was tolerable, he wrote to his brother and sister in England, except that “the mosquitoes and bugs are terrible at night.” Leicestershire RO, D3796/6, Theodore Lee to his brother and sister, August 16, 1863.

  42. British Library of Political and Economic Science, LSE, Farr MSS, Add. 2, J. G. Kennedy to William Farr, August 9, 1863. Sometimes, the case was reversed and the legation was pitted between a penitent son and his furious family. Charles Race, an English sergeant stationed at Fort Monroe, needed all his courage to inform his father that he was still alive: “With feelings of sorrow which it is utterly impossible for me to describe, I take my pen in a trembling hand to write and let you know where I am,” he wrote on July 24, 1863. “I went as you are aware to London and, after passing a few miserable days there, a burning sense of shame at the idea of looking anybody in the face again combined, I now think with a kind of insanity, I formed the idea of coming to America.… I left England whether ever to see you again or not, God only knows.”

  43. PRO FO115/395, f. 73, Belshaw to Lyons, August 14, 1863.

  44. Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (Boston 1911), vol. 1, pp. 409–10, August 21, 1863.

  45. University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y., Rush Rhees Library, Seward MSS, Lyons to Seward, July 20, 1863.

  46. PRO FO5/892, ff. 17–24, Lyons to Russell, August 3, 1863.

  47. PRO 30/22/37, ff. 133–36, Lyons to Russell, August 7, 1863.

  48. PRO 30/22/37, ff. 143–46, Lyons to Russell, August 14, 1863.

  49. PRO 30/22/37, ff. 147–59, Lyons to Russell, September 2, 1863.

  50. PRO 30/22/22, ff. 255–57, Palmerston to Russell, September 14, 1864.

  51. C. Vann Woodward (ed.), Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven, 1981), p. 664.

  52. Justus Scheibert, Seven Months in the Confederate States During the North American War, 1863, trans. Joseph C. Hayes, ed. William Stanley Hoole (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2009), pp. 132, 140.

  53. PRO FO5/907, ff. 179–88, Stuart to Rus
sell, August 15, 1863.

  54. Cornhill Magazine, 10 (1864), pp. 99–110.

  55. Fitzgerald Ross, Cities and Camps of the Confederate States, ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell (Champaign, Ill., 1997), p. 107.

  56. Merseyside Maritime Museum, Fraser, Trenholm MSS, B/FT box 1/107, Thomas Prioleau to Charles K. Prioleau, September 9, 1863. The comment by Lawley in the footnote on this page is taken from Alan Hankinson, Man of Wars: William Howard Russell of “The Times,” 1820–1907 (London, 1982), p. 182.

  Chapter 24: Devouring the Young

  1. North Carolina State Archives, Private Collections, PC 1226, Rose O’Neal Greenhow MSS, London Diary, p. 3.

  2. The Private Journal of Georgiana Gholson Walker, ed. Dwight Franklin Henderson, Confederate Centennial Studies, 25 (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1963), p. 53.

  3. Ann Blackman, Wild Rose: Rose O’Neale Greenhow, Civil War Spy (New York, 2005), p. 267.

  4. Warren F. Spencer, The Confederate Navy in Europe (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1983), pp. 144–76. In addition to Spencer, the other invaluable works on this subject are King Cotton Diplomacy by Frank Owsley (2nd ed., Chicago, 1959) and Great Britain and the Confederate Navy by Frank J. Merli (Bloomington, Ind., 1965).

  5. David Hepburn Milton, Lincoln’s Spymaster: Thomas Haines Dudley and the Liverpool Network (Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2003), p. 107.

  6. Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (Boston, 1911), vol. 1, pp. 428, 437.

  7. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, August 28, 1863.

  8. PRFA, 1 (1864), p.367, Adams to Russell, September 5, 1863.

  9. MHS, June 1914. “Argyll Letters, 1861–1865,” pp. 66–107, Duchess of Argyll to Sumner, July 23, 1863, p. 81.

  10. “Letters of Richard Cobden to Charles Sumner,” American Historical Review, 2 (1897), p. 312, Cobden to Sumner, August 7, 1863. Cobden continued: “Had England joined France they would have been followed by probably every other State of Europe, with the exception of Russia. This is what the Confederate agents have been seeking to accomplish. They have pressed recognition on England and France with persistent energy from the first.”

  11. PRO 30/22/22, f. 243, Palmerston to Russell, September 4, 1863. In fact, he expected them to lose the case: “I think you are right in detaining the iron clads now building in the Mersey and the Clyde, though the result may be that we shall be obliged to set them free—There can be no doubt that ships coated with iron must be intended for warlike purposes, but to justify seizure we must, I conceive, be able to prove that they are intended for the use of the Confederates and to be employed against the Federal government, and this may not be easy as it will be to lay hold of them.”