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

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  Ruger was a good soldier, but he recognized a forlorn hope. He left quietly to organize the attack. Hooker followed to observe when Grant called him back.

  “General, I must caution you to wait for reinforcements or the enemy will beat you in detail. With one brigade, you are only striking with an open hand. Wait for the rest of the corps and you can strike with a closed fist.”

  Hooker was not about to be thwarted. “I must not give them time to reinforce the bridge, General.”

  To Sharpe’s surprise, Grant merely said, “As you wish, General. I will not interfere with your immediate conduct of this battle.” Hooker stormed off. It occurred to Sharpe that Grant had just given Hooker the rope to hang himself with.

  NORTH OF THE CHAZY, 8:45 P.M., FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1864

  Fire! The volley from the 102nd New York flared in a searing flash, and the column on the road opposite flew apart. Then Vivian’s old 78th NewYork stopped and fired. The 60th New York had only just come through the apple orchard when it stopped and fired as well. Then they charged the road. They had struck half of the 29th Foot and part of the 1/10th Foot. The road was filled with dead and dying, but the survivors moving by instinct of long, hard service automatically formed a firing line, often only one man deep, and fired in the direction of the volley flash. But the Americans were upon them as their ramrods shot down the barrels of their rifles as they tried to reload. Bayonet to bayonet now it was. And the thin red line buckled and lurched back and then disappeared in the dark-blue tide, though there was not a soldier of the Queen who did not sell himself dearly. They died, but they died hard.

  Vivian found the coffee mill battery lurching behind the attack over the hard-rutted field. “Off to the right, boys! Set up so they can’t come back down the road on us.” He clapped their captain on the shoulder and pointed in the direction he wanted them to go. The moon was high and speckled the ground with shadows, just enough light to see a few dozen yards. They rushed off and had not even set up when they saw coming out the dark a line of bayonets.

  “Oh my God!” shouted one of the gunners and fled into the night. The rest of the men were frozen in surprise for only a moment until the voice of their senior sergeant bellowed through the night. “To your guns!” They flew to their pieces, unlimbered, and swung them around.

  Too late, too late. A volley from the dark cut down half the men. Then there was a shout as the British charged. But unlike an artillery piece, a coffee mill gun needed only one man to turn the crank to fire it. And two men sprang over the bodies of the dead and wounded to do just that. Click-bang, click-bang… they sputtered to life, then rose to that steam hammer staccato as waves of bullets raked back and forth across the charging British front. The men in front tumbled down, but those behind came on jumping over the fallen right into the bullet stream until they were among the guns stabbing the gunners. The battery was gone, but almost fifty British soldiers had been killed or wounded in that short charge.

  On the road Vivian was trying to put his regiments in some order. He heard the coffee mills come to life and then stop suddenly. The enemy was firing back down the road at both ends of their severed column. Then from the northern end a gun barked and a shell came straight down the road bowling over twenty-three men. Case shot followed. “Off the road, boys, off the road!” Vivian shouted, the command relayed down the line. His brigade ran into the field on the other side of the road.

  The British had reacted with practiced instinct to the blow out of the dark and counterattacked against both ends of where they thought the Americans had come. So it was that the surviving companies of the 29th had wrapped around the American right flank and straight into the coffee mills. To the south the 1/10th did the same, followed by most of the 45th Foot. They barely avoided shooting into each other when they met.

  The dark made the simplest maneuver excruciatingly slow and multiplied the already awful terrors of the battlefield. Vivian was having the same problem on the other side of the road as men got lost or wandered away into the night. At least they could watch the sputtering fuses of the British shells streaking down the empty road thankful that they were no longer in the way. Vivian was thinking to himself, “How the hell did I get myself into this mess?” His counterpart on the other side of the road was in a similar quandary. They had found no Americans. “Where in bloody hell are they?” They called it the fog of war.12

  CHAZY RIVER BRIDGE, NEW YORK, 9:30 P.M., FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1864

  If Ruger was going to send his brigade over that bridge and into the mouth of hell, he wanted to throw some hell of his own. He added a battery of six bronze Napoleons to the 3-inch battery that Vivian had sent to send a sheet of shell and case shot over the bridge. That was all he could do. The rest of it was up to the brigade commander. But this was Ruger’s old brigade, the 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, XII Corps. Now he could only watch as they went across that awful hundred feet of death. The men lay or knelt in the road to avoid the shells crashing through the darkness. The 107th New York would lead; he walked over to them and saw that many had their names and next of kin written on pieces of paper and pinned to their backs. The Catholics were saying their rosaries. He could hear snatches of “Our Father,” but most were silent. He was heartsick.

  Tearing himself away Ruger crept up to the wrecked house across from the bridge to find the brigade commander and his staff making final preparations in the shelter of a stone root cellar. He found Grant and Sharpe outside and was struck at how calm Grant was as the cannon barked and jerked in the very yard. A yellow lantern glow came out of the cellar entrance. He stepped inside to find Hooker giving the brigade commander minute orders on the organization of the attack. “General,” he said, “Col. Hamilton knows his brigade well. It were best he worked out these details himself.”

  Hooker gave Ruger a hard look and turned to the other officer.“Colonel, you have your orders.” Hamilton and his staff left quickly, not wanting to be around when generals locked horns.

  Even in the lantern light, Hooker’s face was flushed. “Ruger, don’t get in my way. No one will say I was drunk in this battle.” He pushed Ruger aside and left the cellar. Ruger paused a moment to calm himself when a shell burst outside, blowing the cellar door off its hinges. He rushed out. The shell had burst right over Hooker, and the jagged steel had torn his left arm off. Ruger pulled out his field tourniquet and tightened it around the stump.

  Then he looked up. The same shell had also killed Hooker’s orderly and aide and struck down Grant. Sharpe was kneeling next to him as he sat on the ground holding his head in both hands as blood poured through his fingers. Ruger ran over. Sharpe looked up, and said, “You are senior officer on the field, Ruger. I suggest you cancel that attack.” A medical orderly ran up and took one look at Grant. Kneeling down, he gently pried off Grant’s fingers. Sharpe looked at Ruger again. “Man, save your men.” Ruger ran off in the direction of the brigade.

  The orderly said, “Thank God, just a scalp wound. They bleed like hell and look worse than they are.” He pressed a lint bandage to Grant’s forehead, then unwound another bandage to tie it on. “Don’t worry, General. You’ll be fine, up and about in a few days.”

  Grant threw his arm up. “Let me up, Damnit!”

  “General, you should stay still till we can get you to the hospital.”

  “Soldier, I thank you, but I have work to do.” He struggled to his feet steadied by Sharpe and the orderly. He swayed a bit and said, “Where is my cigar?” He took two steps and fainted.13

  It was only then that Sharpe realized that he himself and not Ruger was the senior officer on the field.14

  The other Gen. Grant would have been infinitely relieved to know the effect of that British shell on the American side of the bridge. The sudden increase in artillery fire had signaled only one thing—the Americans were going to rush bridge, and all he had was one battery and a few hundred dismounted Lancers with poor carbines. The artillery slackened unexpectedly. What on earth was going on? McBe
an arrived just then with his Highlanders and more artillery. Grant sketched the situation to him. The Scotsman said, “Aye, sir, sounds a bit strange, but I would be more wurri’d aboot the battle goin’ on behind us.”

  NORTH OF THE CHAZY RIVER, 9:52 P.M., FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1864

  That battle had turned into a temporary standoff separated by a road filled with dead and wounded. The British and American brigades stood to in the cold and dark, their freezing breath hanging like a mist over them as every man wondered what was next. Both commanders sent out skirmish lines to feel for the enemy. They found each other at the road coming out the gloom like wraiths, no one knowing for sure until up close who was who, made more difficult by the fact that each side wore dark-blue greatcoats. Their voices were more likely to betray them, flat American a’s against the burr of Scotland, or the swallowed final syllables of Essex, or “friend” against “mate.” Fists and bayonets were used as often as firearms. The commanders heard the crackle and flash of gunfire between them.

  That was enough for the British brigadier. He bawled out, “The brigade will advance.”

  Vivian heard the faint echo of the command and the rustle as several thousand men started to advance. His own skirmishers were running back to rejoin their regiments. He noticed a knot of prisoners behind herded to the rear. A voice next to him said, “And General Sharpe will be mighty pleased of that present.” Vivian turned to see a large man in civilian clothes and a pair of revolvers stuck in his belt. He recognized the Chief of Scouts of the Army of the Hudson. “I bet you had a grand time getting here, Colonel, but I don’t think you want to stay much longer. The country between here and the river is crawling with the English. Hooker sent me to scout out places to cross the river on the ice, and I thought he would appreciate it if I looked deeper into things.”

  Vivian’s relief was immense. Knight filled him in on what he knew until he had gone scouting, which to Vivian was more than enough—Hooker was concentrating the Army of the Hudson and was in person at Chazy. But what to do? It was after midnight. If Sergeant Knight’s observations of the enemy in the area were correct, and they always were, then the sunrise would put paid to his command. “Sergeant Knight, I have some local boys who know this area like the backs of their hands. If you need them, they are yours, but get us to one of those crossings.”

  The tail of Vivian’s command had just disappeared through the line of trees between two fields, when the British skirmishing line swept over the spot where they had waited only minutes before. They moved on and caught up with the American rearguard in a sharp firefight, but the Americans pulled out and disappeared into the dark. The brigadier rode up and called them back. It was bad enough to fight a battle in the dark with an enemy that stayed in one place. It was entirely foolhardy to go hunt him in the dark in strange country.

  The Americans trudged on through the night. On the way they picked up Geary and his party trying to make their way to Chazy. Geary did not know how close he came to being shot in the dark by very nervous men. He was elated to have found one of his own brigades and listened intently to Vivian’s account of his nighttime adventures. “I have you to thank for rescuing some part of the day. You are all that is left of the division. I’ve had a bad day, Colonel, a bad day. I had to stand by, no hide, while Cobham’s Brigade was surprised and routed. I don’t know what had happened to Candy’s. The last I saw they were attacking the enemy.”

  4

  An Arithmetic Problem

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, DC, FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1864

  Lincoln had been spending all day between the War Department and Central Information Bureau waiting for every telegram that trickled in over the wires of the unfolding British attack. The chief telegrapher at the War Department watched the look of shock spread over the President’s face as he read the telegram relating Hooker and Grant’s wounding. One shell had taken out the Union’s two most victorious generals. Lincoln fell into the big stuffed chair that was normally reserved for him. He leaned his head into one hand. Stanton read it next. His face set like stone. He scribbled out a message on a telegram blank. “Send it now,” he ordered. The message crackled over the lines to Sherman.

  An hour later Lincoln crossed the street back to the White House, the weight of the world ready to break his back. An hour later James McPhail, Gus Fox, and Andrew Carnegie, the members of the War Production Board (WIB), sat silently as Lincoln read their joint report. McPhail was Sharpe’s deputy and represented the CIB while his boss was on the border with Grant. McPhail had been the Provost Marshal of Maryland before Sharpe asked him to help found the CIB. As the Romans used to say of a man, “You can trust him in the dark.”1 It was just the quality that Sharpe needed in the man who ran his agent lines in Canada and the Confederacy.

  Gustavus Fox was there representing the interests of the Navy since so much of the work of the WIB concentrated on organizing the resources to build the monitors. He was Mr. Navy, officially the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and in effect, its chief of naval operations in modern terms. No man was more receptive to new technologies, opportunities, and talent. Much of the Navy’s success in the war was due to his foresight and energy.

  Carnegie was there as board chairman. Lincoln had commissioned the WIB shortly after the war began. Carnegie’s task was one that had never been set before another American—to organize the factories, foundries, workshops, shipyards, and mines of the country to withstand the enormous struggle with the greatest industrial power the world had known. Carnegie at age twenty-eight had already made his mark. In the opening days of the Rebellion when Washington was defenseless, he pushed the trains to bring the first troops to the capital, and then at First Bull Run had organized the hospital trains that saved so many lives. He was a man who could get things done by the uncanny welding of the ability to see the essence of a problem or opportunity and then finding the talented men to turn that vision into reality. Born in Scotland into a family of poor weavers, the man was as true an American patriot as any whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. He had left poverty in Scotland, despising the British establishment and particularly the royals. Like so many millions of other Britons and Irish, he had found an opportunity here that was simply nonexistent in the lands of their birth.2

  Lincoln sat at his desk, his glasses low on his nose as he read their report. Every few minutes he would stop and write a note on as slip of paper. Finally, he put the report down and said, “Let me see if I can summarize the problem, boys.” He got up to pace the room in his slippers. “We have gone to war with the greatest industrial power in the world in the midst of a major expansion of that industry.”

  Carnegie nodded. “Aye, sir.”

  “And they are completely self-sufficient in the needs of their industry. Food and raw materials, like cotton, make up ninety-five percent of imports.”

  Carnegie nodded again. He had heard how Lincoln studied a problem until he knew it inside and out.

  “They are building almost three hundred steamships a year, and British ships carry a quarter of the world’s trade.”

  Another nod.

  “And the Library of Congress tells me that the British census of 1860 counted 27.8 million people.” He rummaged through the papers in the alcoves above his desk and pulled out a paper. “Yes, England has 18.8 million, Scotland three million, and Wales one million. And, of course, Ireland has five million. There used to be over three million more Irish.3 And there are three million Canadians We must not, of course, forget the French. Their 1861 census counted 37.4 million Frenchmen.4 And the Secretary of the Interior has informed me that our own 1860 census counted 20.5 million free persons in the loyal states.

  “Now, boys,” he said, as he stood over them, “We already had our hands full with our wayward Southern friends. It seems to me that we have a serious arithmetic problem. If my ciphering is right, the British, French, and Confederates have about eighty million people against our twenty million. But our Rooshan friends, who are ta
king their sweet time to declare war, have about seventy-four million people.5 That may sound like a big deal, boys, but I have my doubts. Most of those people are ignorant peasants; how useful are they going to be? The British and French thumped them pretty good in their own backyard ten years ago. The difference is that our army reads. Every other man in the British Army is illiterate and about ninety percent of the Rooshans. This is the first time in history where almost the entire army knows how to read and write. Free, literate men fight hard because they know what they’re fighting for.”

  Lincoln scratched his thatch of unruly hair and sat down. “Literacy aside, the numbers still don’t add up. What I need from you boys is how we are going to solve this arithmetic problem.”

  Fox was first off the mark. It was a Navy issue, and no one would speak but him. Carnegie’s great talent was recognizing talent and harnessing it to his object. Fox was all talent, and his devotion to the Navy and innovation fit perfectly within that plan. They moved in tandem.

  “Mr. President, we’ve got ‘em beat!” Lincoln rocked back in his chair as Fox stood up to emphasize what he had just said. “The Royal Navy used to be the greatest Navy on the seas, but the Admiralty will now pay for its refusal to jump out of the rut of tradition.

  “When the Royal Navy decided to build ironclads they did so with as little imagination as possible. They kept to the broadside design that had stood their wooden fleet well for centuries. Except for the all-iron Warrior and Resistance classes, they simply have cut down wooden ships-of-the-line and added iron plates. They did not have the crisis of our war and the imminent threat of the Confederate ironclad Virginia to sharpen our wits.

  “We were at that point, as Mr. Johnson put it, where the prospect of being hanged concentrates the mind wonderfully. It was then that Mr. Ericsson’s genius and the crisis met to create our all-iron monitor fleet with its revolutionary turret and low freeboard hull design.