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

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  To the north, Col. David Ireland’s brigade at Chazy was completely unaware of the commotion in either direction. The first they knew was the firing from the bridge guards when the 9th Lancers rode them down and clattered over the bridge in the dark to raid into the village where the men in blue were also lining up for dinner at dozens of company messes, their weapons stacked in front this barn or that church where they had been billeted to shelter the Upstate winter. Without their weapons at hand, they were speared by the score as the Lancers rode through the small town streets and the camps chasing the Americans from tent to wagon. It would give birth to a new regimental motto, “The Dinner Guests.”

  Ireland had burst out of his own headquarters in the local hotel to see the Lancers race past him down the street spearing a crowed of unarmed men fleeing ahead of them. One of them spurred his horse onto the wooden sidewalk and drove his lance into Ireland’s aide. The general leaped up and grabbed the man by the collar off his horse before he could pull his lance from the dead man. A headquarters guard bayoneted him and then fell as a Lancer officer shot him with his revolver as he rode by. Another Lancer charged onto the sidewalk and drove his lance clear through the colonel’s body. He too was too was dragged off his horse by a half-dozen men and his head bashed in by rifle butts.

  More and more men rallied to this half dozen. Many had found their way back to their own and other quarters to snatch rifles and cartridge belts and formed into fragments of their units. By instinct they gathered in larger groups until enough armed men were organized into a skirmish line to drive the Lancers from the camp. Infantry well in hand were more than a match for cavalry that did not have a good field to charge over. The bugles sounded recall to the Lancers who fell back to the bridge. Now all they could do was hold until relieved. They barricaded the bridge and dismounted to hold it with their carbines. They looked into the gloom to see the flames from buildings in Chazy that had caught fire.

  CHAZY, NEW YORK, 6:32 P.M., FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1864

  The senior regimental commander in Ireland’s Brigade pulled the shattered command together in the light of Chazy’s burning buildings. Fire crackled from the area around the bridge where he had sent several companies to prevent the enemy from crossing again.

  Col. Paul H. Vivian was in a bloody-minded mood as he took the report of the other regimental commanders. This graduate of Union College in Schenectady, New York, was a good soldier and had marched off with his militia regiment when Lincoln had first called for volunteers after Fort Sumter. He had risen from captain to colonel in the three bloody years since. He loved his regiment in that way that only soldiers know, men from all over the state, the 78th New York, self-styled the Cameron Highlanders. He had risen by astute leadership and a good-hearted concern for his men that won their respect and admiration. He had been especially solicitous of the hundred or so young men, volunteers from Union College who had signed up after the British attack last September and been assigned to his regiment as replacements. They had seen the elephant for the first time that night, and some lay scattered around bearing those gaping lance woods, others pulled into the brigade hospital, and dozens missing. Vivian felt a special responsibility for them.9

  Union College had been a center for abolitionism in the North before the South seceded, and no institution had been more dedicated to the end of slavery. So it was no wonder that graduates like Vivian, who had become prosperous in middle age, had joined the colors. He did not have the time to reflect on the irony that a nation that abhorred slavery and been the first to abolish it in the Western world had been so adept at riding down and spearing his poor boys in whom antislavery ardor had burned so bright.

  The men of the brigade, New Yorkers all, were also in a bloody-minded mood. They did not like the idea of having been chased through the streets by enemy cavalry spearing them as if on the hunt. They were veterans, and it had scalded their pride. They would get even. Vivian’s job was to direct that bloody-mindedness like the tip of a spear. He surveyed the scene around the bridge and ordered up two guns to make sure any Lancers who tried to cross the bridge again would do so only through a hail of canister.

  Then he assembled his shrunken brigade. He intended to take the brigade and drive off the enemy cavalry, but charging across a defended bridge in the dark was not his idea of sound tactics, especially since canister could go both ways across the bridge. He just could not risk that there was artillery on the enemy side hidden among the trees and buildings.

  In the light of his headquarters he examined Ireland’s map of the area. He turned to the acting commander of the 60th New York and said, “Bring up H Company.” As he waited, he said, “Gentlemen, the enemy is holding the bridge, but nature has already given us a continuous bridge over the river—the ice.” The winter had been hard and had frozen the water deep, but a warm spell had melted enough of the ice to form pools of water; then another cold snap had covered the surface again with ice.

  The men of H Company trotted up, and Vivian said, “Gather round, boys.” When they had crowded around him in a tight semicircle, he said, “Boys, I know this is your home county. Some of you even are from Chazy, and so you know this ground. Put your heads together and find me away across the river so we can take the British in the rear at the bridge.”

  The cold was also on the mind of McBean as he marched the 78th south. He had shuddered to think how the 93rd would have fared if they had been brought from the heat of India to the cold of North America as quickly as the Highlanders of the 78th. He mentioned this to Hope Grant, who rode at his side, but got only a grunt of agreement in reply. After a few miles, they were met by a patrol of Lancers. The young subaltern in command informed Grant of the raid on the enemy’s camp at Chazy and that the Lancers were holding the bridge. Grant turned to McBean and only said, “Press on, McBean. Press on,” as he spurred his horse down the road followed by the Lancers.

  RAILROAD BRIDGE OVER GUAY CREEK, NEW YORK, 6:43 P.M., FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1864

  The train engineer saw the unmistakable glow of a fire down the track and slowed his engine until it was clear one of the bridges was ablaze. He pulled to a stop. Hooker bounded out of his car demanding of the engineer the reason for their halt. The man spat a wad of tobacco and pointed up ahead. Hooker asked, “How far to the bridge over the Little Chazy?”

  “Oh, about four miles or so,” the engineer answered. “Mighty cold for a walk; gonna get worse as the night wears on.”

  Hooker was already sending aides down the length of the train to order the men to detrain and form up. U.S. Grant had climbed down to hear all this and stood there chewing on a cigar. He had to admit that Hooker, when he was roused, was a man of action, clear-headed action.

  Hooker looked around and found McEntee at hand. “Scouts out, now.”

  “Knight and the others are already out, General.” McEntee held open a map as a private held a lamp over it. “Chazy’s only four miles away. The road crosses the river near the town. That is the fastest route to the border.”

  By this time Brig. Gen. Ruger and his brigade was ready to march. “Get on the road immediately and force march your men to Chazy. Secure the bridge and wait for further orders. I will ride ahead with my staff and escort to see what is up.” He turned to Grant. “With respect, General, I suggest you return to Plattsburgh when this train departs.”

  “I never go back, General.” Grant’s stance told Hooker that it was useless to argue with a man who would ride over the roughest ground simply to avoid backtracking. Hooker’s staff and hundred man cavalry escort were ready. Hooker charged his escort commander to remember that the general-in-chief of the armies was riding with them and to put his protection first and foremost in his mind. Then he spurred forward into the dark.

  UPSTREAM, LITTLE CHAZY RIVER, 7:32 P.M., FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1864

  The H Company boys had been quick to find just the crossing point that Vivian had in mind, two miles upstream. It was a natural ford, shallow and frozen to the bottom, a
place where in the fine Upstate summers they had fished and swum as little boys. Now they strung themselves out through the night with lanterns to guide the rest of the brigade. Vivian pulled his men out of their warms barns and other buildings where their cooks had fed them from what food they could salvage from their overrun kitchens. The colonel wanted them warm until the moment they had to march. He was not a one for having men just stand around, and in this weather he felt no one needed to practice to be miserable. As soon as the last man joined the ranks, he gave the command. Two thousand men did a left face with a hard snap. They were eager to go.

  The men crossing points had only one fault. No horse or wheel would be able to get up the far bank’s winding foot paths. Without a thought Vivian ordered the 3-inch battery back to help defend the bridge. The coffee mill battery sent their horses and limbers back as well, but the pieces were light enough for the crews to carry and manhandle up the bank. Then they would drag them along. Some of the infantry was detailed to carry extra ammunition.

  At that moment, Hope Grant and his escort rode up to the bridge. Grant took the report from the commander. A shell crashed over the bridge from the American side, shot at random to keep the British down. Grant grumbled, “Have to do something about that.” In half an hour the hard-marching 78th Highlanders arrived, having outdistanced the rest of its brigade. With them came a battery of Armstrongs, which were immediately sited to defend the bridge. For artillery the best defense was essentially offensive—firing its guns was the same in the attack or defense. Soon British shells were shrieking through the night to keep the Americans down.

  One of those shells landed amidst Hooker’s party as he rode into town guided by the firing at the bridge. Before exploding it decapitated a horse and split its rider in two. Its burst killed four more men and several horses. More were wounded, and there was nothing so hysterical or heart-rending as the panicked pain of a dumb beast. The rest of the men dismounted and got off the road. Twenty of the cavalry dismounted and moved forward on foot in a skirmish line. The burning buildings in the town offered just enough light at this distance so they would not fall into any holes.

  Soon they were met by guards who directed them to the bridge. Hooker found a captain who laid out what had happened to the brigade. Ireland was dead, Vivian had taken the brigade off into the night, and there were only four hundred men to hold the south side of the bridge against God knows what on the other side. It would be an hour before the brigade behind them caught up and morning at least before other brigades would arrive from Plattsburgh. All he could do was wait. Wait for the scouts to come back. Wait for the brigade to arrive. Wait to hear what that damned fool Vivian had done. He was not a happy man.

  McEntee asked the officer, “Did you take any prisoners?”

  “I think we took some wounded prisoners. A handful maybe, but they’re back in town.” He then proudly produced a Lancer’s helmet.

  McEntee took it and held it up to the light. “Well, Wilmoth’s order-of-battle was spot on. He told us the 9th Lancers were south of Montreal.” He handed it to Hooker.

  “Just what I need, another souvenir.” Then he brightened, thinking of the nickel-plated Royal Guides helmet McEntee had given him just as Clavarack was about to kick off. “Well, McEntee, maybe this will bring good luck, like last time.” He tossed it to his orderly. The captain’s face fell as his prized souvenir disappeared.

  Vivian was a pretty thick-skinned sort and would not have cared even if he had heard Hooker. Right now he was intent on picking his brigade down frozen roads and fields. His Chazy boys were in the lead, so they wasted no time in the dark. In fact the moon had climbed into the sky on this clear starry night. Its ambient light was just enough to cast pale shadows over the way.

  It was not moonlight that alerted them, though. It was the tramp of boots. Vivian was up with the Chazy boys when he heard the tread of hundreds of men and horses and the creek and crunch of artillery pieces, caissons, and limbers over the frozen road. They crept closer to hide behind a field stone wall and watched the almost ghostly procession in heavy greatcoats, its frozen breath floating above as the moonlight washed the color from the faces of men only intent on putting one foot before the other. For ten minutes he watched as the endless column marched on. He did not know that these were the last three Imperial regiments of the brigade that had fought at Prospect Hill or that behind it was a third brigade of another four thousand men and a half-dozen more batteries.10 It was clear, though, that there were enough to force the bridge and scatter the few companies he had left to guard the south side of the river. He would have to give them something else to think about.

  He hurried back to the head of his column, which was perpendicular to the road the enemy was marching on. It would take time to maneuver two thousand men into line and more so in the dark. But then the column might have passed. One of the Chazy boys had thought the thing through himself. He touched Vivian on the shoulder. “Sir, you know, the road loops around to the right not too far from where we are. That means our men are parallel to that road.”

  Vivian could have kissed him. Now all he had to do was order a right face and his brigade would be on line facing the road. His regimental commanders were waiting where he had left them at the head of the column. A few hurried orders and they were racing to their units to gather their company commanders. Vivian could hear the click of bayonets recede down the dark column. Twenty minutes later his two thousand men were crossing the hard furrows of a wheat field and through a small apple orchard. The brigade’s coffee mill battery was carried by its crews. Quiet was the word. No shouted commands. Now was when discipline and habit kept a unit together in the moon-dappled dark.

  At last a moving dusky beast appeared flowing along to the accompaniment of the rattles and creaks of a moving column, here and there a glint from the moonlight off a shiny piece of metal. Otherwise they were quiet, also the sign of a discipline of long-service men conserving their strength, but the tramp of their boots on the hard ground muffled the noise of the approaching enemy. The Americans halted in fits and starts as the command was whispered along the ranks. The command to prepare to fire followed in a hush with the plea to “for God’s sake, fire low.” Vivian had told his commanders to attack as soon as they came within undetected range. That meant close range.

  But the enemy in some sense would need to cooperate with those plans. Up to now they had been. A British courier had left the crowded road to cut across the field over which the Americans were marching and trotted right into them. Quick-witted, he turned his horse and spurred it to the wall, shouting an alarm. Heads in the British column turned.

  The commander of the 102nd New York bellowed through the dark, “Fire!”11

  THE BRIDGE AT CHAZY, NEW YORK, 7:35 P.M., FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1864

  Until his follow-on brigade arrived, Hooker decided that the best thing he could do was to keep the enemy occupied. He had the four companies Vivian had left behind to deliver a hot fire across the bridge and along the banks. When the battery of 3-inch guns arrived, he put them right into the fight to send shell and case shot into the dark. It was not dark too long, for the guns had set several buildings on fire, illuminating the night. Hooker roamed the firing positions of his few hundred men to encourage them with the presence of their army commander. Besides, he was enjoying the hell out it even as another aide was killed at his side.

  McEntee was in town interrogating the least seriously wounded of the dozen Lancers in the brigade hospital. It was a more innocent age, and most were willing matter-of-factly to tell him what he wanted to know. None would have knowingly betrayed their mates, but it never occurred that army gossip could hurt anything. So he pieced together a reasonable enemy order-of-battle. Sharpe, with nothing to do, had helped and, if anything, had extracted more information. George H. Sharpe was every inch the gentleman, the scion of Hudson River gentry, cosmopolitan from his years in Europe. The effect on the British prisoners made them even more forthcoming. />
  The two compared notes and then compared them to the order-of-battle that Wilmoth had pieced together from agent network the CIB had set up in Canada. When they were satisfied, they sought out Hooker. They found him in a small house behind some trees that sheltered them from the bridge. He was giving orders to a gaggle of captains. U.S. Grant sat quietly in a chair by the fireplace smoking another in his inexhaustible supply of cigars.

  Hooker saw them come in and dismissed the captains with, “To your posts.” He looked expectantly at McEntee.

  “General, we have information from the prisoners. It appears that the enemy general Grant has at least a full British division against us. That is four brigades plus artillery and this one regiment of cavalry. With auxiliary Canadian battalions, he should have at least fifteen thousand men across the border by now.”

  “What’s across the bridge now?”

  “These men only knew about their own regiment being here but expected to be relieved by infantry and artillery.”

  Just then, a solid shot shattered a tree in the grove outside, shattering a window with splinters. “I would say they have artillery by now,” Hooker laughed. “But it’s the infantry I’m worried about. And I don’t think they have any yet. The only small arms fire we are getting are from cavalry carbines.”

  McEntee added, “I sent Knight and his scouts across the river downstream to see what else he could find.”

  Then outside a voice said, “I must find General Hooker!” Then a man came through the door. It was Brigadier General Ruger, commanding the XII Corps’ First Division. “General, my lead brigade has arrived. The next two should be here by morning.”

  Hooker made his decision. “I can’t wait for the scouts. Ruger, take that bridge immediately. They’ve only got dismounted infantry and few guns. Once the enemy infantry arrive, we will never get across it.” U.S. Grant just watched.