by John Boyko
With his goals for the Confederacy and Britain set and his long-term designs on Canada still clear, Seward’s bluffing, threatening, manipulating tactics came into play. At one moment he appeared to be a ruthless warmonger and at the next an inspired peacemaker. At his frequent dinner parties, no one quite knew when he was joking or stating policy. Through it all, he was Lincoln’s most valuable asset in dealing with Britain, Europe and Canada.
On April 16, just days after Sumter’s fall, Seward’s fears were realized when a motion was introduced in the British House of Commons supporting the recognition of the Confederacy. Foreign Secretary Russell managed to have debate delayed. But he also met unofficially with Confederate agents. Days later Davis announced that he would issue letters of marque to any sailor with a vessel who applied, thereby affording legal sanction for a navy of privateers charged with the task of disrupting Northern trade and, more important, running Lincoln’s porous blockade. Things were happening quickly and nothing was going as Seward had hoped. He needed to stop reacting and regain the initiative.
RISING TENSION ON THE BORDER
Seward knew about the military preparations in Canada and heard rumours of Canadians not only sympathizing with the Southern cause but acting to help it by harbouring ships and supplying arms. He needed to know more. At an April 12 cabinet meeting, Seward was given permission to appoint former Massachusetts congressman George Ashmun as a secret agent. For ten dollars a day plus expenses, Ashmun was asked to travel to Canada on a three-month mission to determine Canada’s views on the war and to influence those views while also checking on material support for the South.
Ashmun was qualified for the job, as he knew Canada well and had just the month before visited Quebec City as a representative of the Grand Trunk Railway. While there, he had met with Governor General Sir Edmund Head. Having served as governor general for five years, Head was accustomed to dealing with the tangle of inoperable parts that was Canada’s government and the coiled spring that was its neighbour. Head worried about Seward. He had written to London regarding his suspicion that Seward would seek to indemnify the United States by annexing Canada or by waiting to take Canada once the problems with the South were solved. 27 But Head was a cautious, professional man and so kept those suspicions to himself when meeting with Ashmun.
Ashmun had also met with a number of Canada East’s business elite and with political leaders such as Montreal financier, railway man, Macdonald’s minister of finance and future Father of Confederation, Alexander Galt. The two had spoken mostly about Canada’s desire to protect the Reciprocity Treaty, which had made steps toward free trade between Canada and the United States.
Ashmun left for Quebec City in mid-April, but while he was en route the New York Herald heard what he was up to and in a front-page article characterized his activities as a propaganda mission.28 Lyons, the British minister in Washington, went to Seward and insisted that his sending agents to Canada was an insult to Anglo-American relations, and demanded that Ashmun be recalled. Seward assured Lyons that there were no others like him in Canada and that Ashmun would indeed be asked to return home.29 Communications were such, however, that Seward’s note to Ashmun was a long time arriving. Even after receiving it, he remained in Canada as a private citizen doing much as he would have done had his intent not been discovered. He met again with Head and members of the cabinet, including Galt and the increasingly powerful leader of Canada East, George Étienne Cartier. Ashmun left shortly afterward with nothing of value to report to Seward, who had been embarrassed by the entire debacle.
Shortly after having seen Ashmun, Governor General Head learned of rumours regarding talk of Canada’s annexation, complete with plans as to how it would come about and the work to be done once it was accomplished. According to reports, Seward was purchasing Canadian newspapers to promote the idea, believing that, once they were persuaded of the benefits of annexation, Canadians would ask to become Americans: Canadian businessman Hamilton Merritt would become the Canadian territorial governor in control of Canada, and New Brunswick’s Israel Andrews would lead a Maritime territory.30 The rumours were rubbish but nonetheless resulted in Head’s requesting additional military support for the attack that he believed to be inevitable.31
From London, Palmerston responded with an order to send another three regiments to Canada armed with modern artillery. A garrison was moved from China to British Columbia, and Queen Victoria issued a rare statement noting, “it is of great importance that we should be strong in Canada.”32
British Rear Admiral Sir Alexander Milne was told to bring an additional eight vessels to the American coast to prepare for possible engagement with the Americans in the defence of Canada. Milne reported that the British fleet was superior in both the quality of its ships and armaments, and in sheer numbers, to anything the Americans could throw at it. He developed a plan whereby the ships blockading Southern ports would be destroyed, and attacks on American commercial shipping would ensue.
Palmerston realized that the additional troops and naval preparations were still wholly inadequate should the United States invade, but these measures were meant to dissuade Lincoln and Seward while encouraging Canadians to increase their efforts at defending themselves.33 There was also a feeling among most in the British cabinet that, should war actually come, it was the navy’s to win. Either that or, if Canada ended up falling to American troops, it could be retaken or negotiated for after the war’s end.34
While these preparations were being made, the British consul in Chicago informed Head that a group of men had entered Canada to buy weapons for Illinois regiments and noted that he hoped the weapons would be supplied. American consul J.E. Wilkins added that arms sales such as this would help Canada maintain good relations with the United States, and threatened that if the arms were not forthcoming the western states would reconsider their practice of shipping western grain through the St. Lawrence.35 Head ignored the threat and on April 21 told local authorities that there must be no arms sales. The next day, a gentleman named Amaziah Jones arrived in Head’s office at the behest of New York governor, E.D. Morgan, and politely asked to purchase fifty thousand Canadian rifles for use by New York regiments. The day afterward, the governor of Ohio asked to buy weapons. Head again refused to sell the arms, stating that it was against Canadian law to take arms meant for the Canadian militia out of the country and, besides, the militia barely had enough weapons as it was.36
Seward heard of the attempted purchases and wrote to Lyons demanding an explanation as to why they were not allowed. With a copy to Head, Lyons responded with a stern letter to Seward asking him again to keep agents out of Canada and repeated Head’s insistence that no surplus weapons existed and that even if they did, none would be sold to either the North or South.37 Attempts to procure arms from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia had met with similar rejections. Head’s strong stance and the cooperation of Canadian businesses who could have turned a profit but, for the time being at least, refused to involve themselves in the American war, demonstrated to Seward and the Northern press that Canada would not simply do as America wished.
Meanwhile, Palmerston and his cabinet struggled to determine Britain’s official position with respect to what had clearly become a civil war. The cabinet decision was finally announced on May 13, 1861, with Queen Victoria’s Proclamation of Neutrality. Britain would stay out of the fight. Further, the proclamation brought the Foreign Enlistments Act of 1818 into effect, meaning that no British subject, including Canadians, could legally enlist in the Union or Confederate armies or navies, or help outfit either side with armaments of any kind. The proclamation also named the Confederate States of America as a belligerent. This designation was important. According to international law and precedent, a belligerent could arrange loans from foreign governments and get fuel and supplies from neutral ports, including those in Canada. France, Russia and Belgium quickly followed with their own similarly worded declarations of neutrality.
Seward was outraged and made no attempt to hide it. Massachusetts senator and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Charles Sumner, later wrote that he had never seen Seward “more like a caged tiger, or more profuse of oaths in every form that the English language supplies, than when prancing about the room denouncing the Proclamation of Belligerency, which he swore he would send to hell.”38 The proclamation flew in the face of everything that Seward had been diplomatically demanding, and on which Lincoln had been politically insisting; for, in naming the Confederacy as a belligerent, Britain was stating that there was indeed a Confederate States of America with its own army and navy. The Proclamation was rightly interpreted as just short of official recognition.
Britain’s action was doubly insulting to Seward in that Palmerston had not even waited for the new American minister to London, Charles Francis Adams, Jr. to arrive and present his credentials. As the son and grandson of presidents, and having spent his formative years in British schools, Adams was uniquely qualified for his job, but the timing of the announcement had not allowed him to do it. He had arrived in Liverpool on the morning the proclamation was released and found out about it through reading a newspaper while on a train to London.
Lincoln said nothing publicly about Britain’s affront to everything he believed so vitally important, but there were heated debates in the White House and halls of Congress. Senator Sumner ensured that his many British contacts heard everything that was being discussed. Sumner hated Seward. His personal disdain was darkened by professional jealousy. He shared Seward’s goal of annexing Canada to bolster America’s economic future, but the two seldom agreed on tactics. Sumner and others thought Seward was unnecessarily leading the United States into war with Britain in Canada and he relayed those opinions to a number of British correspondents as disparate as Queen Victoria’s daughter Louise, the Duchess of Argyll, and London Times journalist William Russell. Sumner’s frequent and gossipy letters derided Seward as reckless, sinister and dangerous.39 A Sumner letter that ended up with Lord Lyons reported that at a dinner at Seward’s home, the secretary of state had become enraged when speaking of Canada and Britain and at one point snapped, “God damn ’em. I’ll give ’em hell.”40
Lyons reported to Lord Russell that, according to Sumner, there was uncertainty as to whether Lincoln or the cabinet were willing to stand up to Seward and temper his aggressive tendencies. Seward’s profane declaration might, Lyons speculated, be the final insult that could lead to war with America and the invasion of Canada.41
The preparations to meet that invasion continued. The first British regiment departed for Canada in May. In early June the other two were sent, this time aboard the Great Eastern, the fastest vessel in the British fleet. The use of that ship was designed to impress and possibly intimidate the Americans in that it crossed the Atlantic in only eight days. A large crowd at the Quebec City docks welcomed the red-coated soldiers with hearty cheers.
The British troops arrived amid new, swirling rumours of war. The always truculent New York Herald reported that a group calling itself the 69th Irish Reserve was assembling in Buffalo and preparing to attack Canada to promote independence for its beleaguered people. It then published gossip to the effect that an armistice between the American North and South was apparently imminent, with both sides agreeing to jointly attack Central America and Canada.42 These and other rumours were soon dismissed, but because the Herald was widely read in Canada and Britain, they added to the already palpable tension. Palmerston had by this point already sent three thousand troops to Canada. He ordered more. He wanted at least ten thousand soldiers on the Canadian border, bolstered by modern artillery.43
While British troops were settling into their quarters and preparing to take on their new mission, the mistrust that had brought them across the ocean grew even greater. The steamer Peerless was resting in Toronto’s harbour, having just been purchased from the Bank of Upper Canada by J.T. Wright of New York. Word leaked out that it was being outfitted with armaments and about to be sold to the South to be used as a blockade runner. Hearing those rumours, Massachusetts governor John Andrew wrote to Governor General Head demanding that he stop the purchase.44 Seward met with Lyons on May 1 and supported that demand. Seward wanted Head to detain the ship, seize and search its papers, and then report to him regarding its ownership and mission. If the Canadians would not seize the ship, Seward threatened, then he would have Americans do it. Lyons told Seward that such actions could lead to war and telegraphed Head to warn him of coming trouble.45 He also sent a message to Lord John Russell stating that Seward looked prepared to violate Canadian territory.”46 Seward carried through and issued commands to American warships to watch for the Peerless in the mouth of the St. Lawrence and to capture it regardless of which flag it might be flying.
On May 10, with the Union Jack crackling in the morning breeze, the Peerless left Toronto. Head had ordered Lt. General Sir William Fenwick Williams, the British commander of Canadian forces, to place armed guards along its route with special attention to the canals where the ship would be most vulnerable to American attempts to board her. It stopped in Montreal where its mast was temporarily removed to allow it to pass under the Victoria Bridge. It then sailed on to Quebec City, where Wright tried to secure registration as an American ship. The U.S. consul seized her and a bureaucratic stand-off ensued. American consular authorities were finally convinced to allow the Peerless to be on its way if captained by a Nova Scotian named McCarthy. American naval vessels allowed it to pass.
The Ashmun and Peerless episodes were blemishes on Seward’s career. He had gained only suspicion and derision, and afforded Head yet another reason to ask for British reinforcements and Palmerston another reason to send them. Seward’s reputation as a hot-headed bully whose actions and attitudes might yet bring Britain and America to war was solidified in the minds of many.47
Throughout the gathering storm, American minister to London Charles Adams and his son Henry, working as his secretary, carried on regular correspondence with family back in America. Henry wrote to his brother in June 1861: “I believe that our Government means to have a war with England; I believe that England knows it and is preparing for it; and I believe it will come in the next two months.… Wait for a Canadian campaign.”48
Like Adams, Head and Lyons remained convinced that the United States was moving inexorably toward an invasion of Canada, and that because the war against the rebellious South would be over quickly that invasion would be coming sooner rather than later.49 Canadians, reading their newspapers and seeing the British soldiers gathering in their midst, could not help but share those fears.
FIRST MANASSAS AND THE STING OF REALITY
Bells jangled and jaunty carriage tassels swayed as freshly groomed horses trotted southwest from Washington on the Warrenton Pike. Hundreds of congressmen, bureaucrats and businessmen, joined by their wives and children, had their hearts set on adventure that gleaming Sunday morning of July 12, 1861. They were drawn by the widely held belief that the battle about to take place a mere twenty miles away could be the first and last with the rebel South. It was not to be missed. Picnics were laid out. They squinted to see the black smoke rising from the distant battlefield as Union troops advanced in ragged lines just a couple of miles away. They gasped at the echoing thunder of artillery and puffs of musket-fire. A British reporter heard a woman squeal: “This is splendid. Oh my! Is not that first rate? I feel we will be in Richmond this time to-morrow.”50 It did not work out that way.
Union troops had advanced toward Bull Run Creek at three in the morning. Their feints at two spots were immediately seen as such and Confederate troops shifted to stop the main assault coming on their left. Artillery roared from both sides. The Washington voyeurs cheered from the hill.
There was no questioning the courage of the men, but neither side had a consistency in vocabulary and so orders were often misunderstood—when orders came at all. More confusion was caused by the lack of unity in
regiment and state flags and the wild mix of state-issued and home-made uniforms that saw many Southerners in blue and Northerners in grey. There was even a New York and an Alabama Fire Zouave unit, both decked out in bright red baggy pants and white turbans.
After a series of charges and counter-charges, the Union looked as if it was about to take the field, for its advance up the Henry House hill had broken the Confederate units—except for one. Confederate Colonel Thomas Jackson, dressed in his blue Virginia Military Institute uniform, ordered his troops to scream while attacking down the hill, firing first and then plying bayonets. For the first time, Union forces heard the bloodcurdling rebel yell. And they ran. Jackson had held the line long enough for reinforcements to surge forward.
The Union lines broke, with soldiers turning to run and many dropping their muskets to run faster. In no time they became entangled with the civilians who had been frantically rolling blankets and gathering their children. Ohio Senator Benjamin Wade and Michigan Senator Zachariah Chandler grabbed up discarded weapons and, along with a handful of other steadfast men, tried to block the road, bellowing at panicking soldiers to return and fight. But there was no stopping them.