Bayonets, Balloons & Ironclads: Britain and France Take Sides With the South

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  Copyright © 2015 by Peter G. Tsouras

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Owen Corrigan

  Cover photo: The Monitor and Merrimac: The First Fight Between Ironclads by Louis Prang & Co.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-462-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-867-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  This book is dedicated to the English-speaking Fighting Man, American, Briton, Irishman, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealander, Liberator and Breaker of Tyrants.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Maps

  Dramatis Personae

  CHAPTERS

  1. “I’ve Been Turned into a Complete American Now”

  2. “I Can Hang You”

  3. “Press on, McBean, Press on!”

  4. An Arithmetic Problem

  5. Breaking Out

  6. “We Cannot Lose a Fleet”

  7. Philosopher Generals

  8. Vae Victis

  9. General Grant’s Army of Invasion

  10. “Old Soldiers of the Queen”

  11. “Just Pitch into Him!”

  12. A Long Shot With a Limb in Between

  13. Running the Roads

  14. “We’ve Got ‘em Nicked!”

  15. “I would Rather Die a Thousand Deaths”

  Epilogue

  Appendix A: Order-of-Battle at the Battle of Chazy, 18–23 March 1864

  Appendix B: Stations of the British Army

  Appendix C: National Intelligence Assessment 12: British Ironclads as of 15 March 1864

  Appendix D: Report of the War Production Board on Ironclad Production March 15, 1864

  Appendix E: Order-of-Battle of the Cavalry Action at Hanover Junction

  Notes

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  The eruption of war in September 1863 between the British Empire and the United States struggling in its own Civil War should have spelled the collapse of that Union. With ten times the industrial capacity of the Northern states, a larger population, and a world-dominating fleet, a British victory should have been inevitable. If that were not enough, Louis Napoleon brought France immediately into the war against the Union. At the same time British and French logistics and financial support of the Confederacy revitalized its armed forces, doubling their combat potential. The Union’s cup of misery ran over when a major revolt in the Midwest by antiwar Democrats, the Copperheads, broke out in deadly earnest as British troops burnt the Hudson Valley and threatened New York City.

  Victory should have been inevitable—famous last words. The Union found itself in the condition described by Samuel Johnson, in which the prospect of being hanged concentrates the mind wonderfully. That concentration and a lot of hard fighting gaffed off disaster in the opening months of the war as told in the first two volumes of this trilogy, Britannia’s Fist and A Rainbow of Blood. It was the considered opinion of the neutral great powers that the weight of British, French, and Confederate power would undoubtedly shift the balance in the next year and grind the Union down.

  This final volume relates the history of the continuation of that struggle to its end. The Americans were able to bring four combat multipliers to their aid that gave them a fighting chance against the weight of their enemies’ power. The first was the establishment at Lincoln’s direction of a national intelligence organization, the Central Information Bureau (CIB), to bring under one hand all the localized and uncoordinated efforts that had arisen. This was the creation of Maj. Gen. George H. Sharpe, who had created from a standing start the first all-source intelligence organization in history upon his appointment by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker in February 1863 as the Army of the Potomac’s chief of the new Bureau of Military Information (BMI). Sharpe’s efforts were decisive in the Union victory at Gettysburg and came to the attention of President Lincoln, who had become intensely dissatisfied with the haphazard and unproductive use of military intelligence. It became quickly known that Sharpe had the full backing of the President as well as a secret and bottomless purse.

  Sharpe quickly built an effective national organization and replicated the BMI for every field army. Information flowed in all directions so that no command lacked for current intelligence. The motto of the CBI was “Share Information,” with all commands of the Army and Navy and with any of the civilian agencies that had a need for such information, such as the State Department and Treasury.

  Sharpe also, at Lincoln’s direction, resurrected the Army Balloon Corps, which had been allowed to fall into disuse, and incorporated it into the CBI, giving it an aerial reconnaissance capability. Companies of the Balloon Corps were assigned to the BMI of every field army. The use of telegraphers in the balloons gave commanders real time intelligence.

  The core of the CBI was its analysis department headed by the talented young officer, Lt. Col. Michael D. Wilmoth, who repeatedly demonstrated that the organized collection and evaluation of information, much of it from open sources, would precisely inform the sword where to strike and the shield where to block. Additionally, Sharpe created a cipher and telegraph department. Cipher clerks from the CBI accompanied every commander of a field army. Another department controlled agent networks not only in the Confederacy but in Canada and Europe as well. Still another capability was special operations, largely the realm of the 3rd Indiana Cavalry Regiment that had been assigned to the BMI. These operations were run by the Army of the Potomac’s former chief of scouts, the redoubtable red-haired Maj. Milton Cline.

  The totality of the CBI’s efforts was a great combat multiplier for the Union, allowing its government and armed forces to focus its resources and efforts where they would do the most good. Sharpe excelled in this role. He was one of the best-educated men in the country, had served overseas as U.S. counsul in Vienna and Rome, spoke fluent French, and had a very cosmopolitan outlook. His training as a lawyer organized his mind and gave him the skills of a master interrogator who never had to employ harsh methods, proving in that business that honey does catch more flies than vinegar. Lincoln came to rely on Sharpe more and more, not just for advice on intelligence matters, but on larger issues of policy as well. They hit it off personally as well. Sharpe was almost as good a storyteller as Lincoln.

  The second combat multiplier for the Union was the array of new weapons and ordnance technologies that had emerged in the war but had been poorly exploited if not outright sabotaged up to time of war with Britain. For the Army these included repeating small arms and the first of what would later be called machine guns. Lincoln had been a great friend of technology and personally ordered
the creation of the Army Balloon Corps and on his own authority had bought the first machine guns, which he christened the coffee mill gun, for its ammunition hopper that so resembled a coffee mill. About sixty such guns were eventually bought. The even more effective gun created by Richard Gatling had been twice tested by army boards, which enthusiastically called for their purchase, but the arch-conservative chief of the army’s Ordnance Bureau, Brig. Gen. James Ripley (called Ripley van Winkle by his staff) was so opposed to what he called “newfangled gimcracks” that he did everything in his power to ensure that such weapons were not acquired. This included repeating small arms of which a number of excellent models, such as the Sharps, had been developed by Americans and were available. Ripley was not replaced until shortly before the outbreak of the war with Britain.

  The removal of Ripley and the crisis of the war now allowed if not demanded the full rationalization of the production and employment of such weapons. Ripley had argued that the ammunition expenditure of such weapons was not sustainable, failing to comprehend that the seven-to-one firepower advantage of repeating small arms would be crushing on the battlefield. You would not have to fight many battles with that sort of advantage. The decision was made to standardize the small arms of the army with the new Spencer rifle, considered the best, as well as the Sharps, which was already in production and was an excellent weapon. The Colt Small Arms Company subcontracted to produce the Spencer in its huge factory. The coffee mill gun and the Gatlings were also ordered in large numbers and organized into batteries for the field armies. Interestingly, none of these types of weapons were being produced or even developed in Great Britain at the outbreak of the war. At that time the British were contracting with an American inventor to use his copyrighted conversion kit to turn their Enfield rifle into a single-shot breechloader.

  The Navy had been more technology friendly as befitted the nature of its service. Rear Admiral John Dahlgren in his long service with naval ordnance had developed the most effective muzzle-loading smooth bore gun in the world at that time. The Dahlgren gun, the first to be developed on scientific principles, threw a 440-pound shot or 400-pound shell, the largest projectiles in the world. No Dahlgren gun ever burst, and their striking power was such that the Royal Navy had attempted to buy them before war. The contest then between the U.S. and Royal Navies would consistently find the Americans with the heavier, more destructive guns. The Royal Navy, on the other hand, had a huge advantage in number of ships and with the seizure of Martha’s Vineyard off Massachusetts was able to support a major blockade of the Northern coast, though not without great difficulty, and cut the United States off from world trade as well as hunt American shipping from the high seas.

  The Navy’s advantage in new technology lay in the development and production of the new monitor-type ironclads. The Passaic-class monitors followed the victory of the USS Monitor over the CSS Virginia broadside ironclads at the battle of Hampton Roads in 1862. It was these monitors that were decisive in defeating the Royal Navy’s attempt to break the Union blockade of Charleston. A follow-on class, however, ran into crippling production problems that made the vast expense in financial and industrial resources a complete failure. A good part of that failure was the cutthroat competition among producers for scarce resources and skilled labor as well as insufficient government funding. The federal government at the outbreak of the Civil War was a very small organization whose peacetime responsibilities had been small; it simply had not been organized for world war and its economic demands.

  The third combat multiplier addressed just this problem. The industrial base of the United States was essentially self-sufficient, but the production of the means of war was not a coordinated effort, resulting in great waste and lost opportunities. The President appointed the young Andrew Carnegie to head the new War Production Board (WPB) to bring order to this chaos. Carnegie’s great talent was in seeing emerging technologies and ideas and propelling them forward by hiring the best people and giving them great initiative. He was responsible for persuading Colt to produce the Spencer rifle. Spencer had the superior weapon, and Colt had the factory to produce it. His genius was to put the two together in a happy marriage. Under his leadership the WPB coordinated the allocation of war materials, labor, and funds to ensure the efficient and maximum production of the nation’s needs for war.

  The fourth combat multiplier was the alliance with Russia. Nothing filled the British elite with more apprehension than Russian ambitions in the Balkans and Middle East which would take them over the corpse of the Ottoman Empire to Egypt itself. That would allow them to put a boot on British communications with India, the richest source of Imperial wealth. The British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, was particularly sensitive of this threat.

  He should have been. Russia wanted revenge. The British and French had humiliated Russia in the Crimean War, and the Russians believed the greatest threat they faced in the future was British world hegemony. They also saw the growing power of the United States as the only possible counterweight and so did everything they could with diplomatic advice and support to help the Union survive, especially against British and French efforts to force a mediation that would surely have resulted in Southern independence. A British attack on the United States while it was locked in its Civil War was sufficient cause for the Russians to form an alliance. They would never have a better chance to clip Britain’s wings. That opportunity also fed their national ambition to champion the Orthodox Christian populations of the Balkans and the Middle East under the Turkish yoke and especially to plant the cross once again on the dome of the Orthodox Cathedral of the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople after its four-hundred-year profanation as a mosque.

  Against these desperate American efforts to even the score, the British Empire had immense resources to draw upon. Great Britain’s industrial base was ten times that of the Northern states and produced four times as much iron. The British merchant fleet dominated the seas until just before the war when the American merchant marine narrowly edged it out in the carrying trade of the world. Whereas the American government lived hand-to-mouth financially, the British economy was the major source of capital in the world. Additionally, the Empire itself generated immense wealth. Truly, the British had the three most important things necessary to make war: money, money, and more money.

  All that money paid for the Royal Navy with its unbroken traditions of victory and its unparalleled professionalism and skill, as well as new ironclads being built in every shipyard. It also paid for an army whose infantry battalions, the thin red line, were world famous for their adamantine stubbornness and ferocity in battle. Great commanders such as Lt. Gen. James Hope Grant, the best of Victoria’s generals had been sent to command the British forces in North America and within a day of his landing had crushed the American VI Corps at the battle of Kennebunk. The rising star of the British Army, Brevet Brig. Gen. Garnet Wolseley, had saved the British army defeated at Clavarack that same month and organized an intelligence operation that dueled with Sharpe’s along the American-Canadian border. That first clash of Empire and Republic welded the peoples of the Canadian provinces into a nation more than a hundred years of peaceful development would have done; their militia battalions fought alongside the British Imperial battalions with great resolve and courage.

  The French Empire also had immense financial and military resources to throw into the scales. In itself it would have been a major threat to the United States. Louis Napoleon had promptly signed an alliance with the Confederacy, which the British had been more hesitant to do because of the intense domestic antipathy to slavery, preferring the status of co-belligerent rather than formal ally, to the intense bitterness of Jefferson Davis. Whatever the diplomatic nicety described the relationship between Britain and France and the Confederacy, their loans filled the Confederate treasury and their war material flooded into Southern ports.

  The first phase of the war had ended in a state of tense expectation. The U
nion had survived, barely survived, the first onslaught of the might of Britain and France in league with the Confederacy. The British had overrun Maine and besieged the vital port of Portland, the terminus of the Grand Trunk Railway that ran through upper New England to Quebec and the rest of Canada. It was the lifeline of British North America, and the British would hold Maine and the railway at all costs. A coup de main against Portland, a vital link in that railway, nearly succeeded and turned into a hard siege. The British defeated the relief of Portland in the battle of Kennebunk.

  The British also had struck down from Montreal to seize Albany and terrorize the Hudson Valley, hoping to paralyze the most important industrial state of the North. Almost simultaneously with their defeat at Kennebunk the Americans defeated the British army in New York at the battle of Claverack and drove it back into Canada. The battle had turned on not just hard fighting and leadership but on the coffee mill gun.

  The Royal Navy’s attempt to break the blockade at Charleston resulted in the first fleet engagement in which ironclads were the chief combatants. In that battle, the American monitors proved superior to the British broadside ironclads, and the Royal Navy suffered its most catastrophic defeat at sea in three hundred years.

  A French fleet destroyed the U.S. Navy’s two light Gulf blockading squadrons. Out of occupied Mexico marched a reinforced veteran army commanded by the able Maj. Gen. Achille Bazaine, who promptly defeated the American army under Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks at the battle of Vermillionville in western Louisiana in conjunction with Confederate forces. New Orleans fell to the new allies as their combined armies marched up the Mississippi to besiege Port Hudson. The fall of New Orleans once again severed the Mississippi’s outlet to the sea for the Union.

  On the same day as Clavarack the Army of Robert E. Lee attacked Washington in conjunction with the Royal Navy’s attack up the Potomac. The attack was defeated only by the narrowest of margins, and those were due to the employment of the Balloon Corps and the coffee mill gun. Nevertheless, the attack left Alexandria and much of Washington in ruins, including the Washington Arsenal and the Washington Navy Yard, the largest of either kind in the country. It was a severe blow to the country’s war effort. Yet all through the winter, the factories, mills, and shipyards of the North worked through the day and night producing the new means of war. Women flooded into the workforce to replace the men who had volunteered for the Army and Navy. Across the Atlantic, the factories, mills, and shipyard of Great Britain also worked unceasingly. Britons too felt the power of patriotism, and their army and navy did not want for volunteers either as the country’s new reserve forces, the Rifle Volunteer Corps (RVC), also swelled in number and drilled with a new sense of purpose.