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

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  Another such thorn was Maj. Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler, who commanded the Army of the James, which included X and XVIII Corps, over thirty thousand men, which garrisoned Fort Monroe and the James Peninsula as well as across Hampton Roads south of Suffolk, an area that also contained the Norfolk Navy Yard.4 Another Massachusetts politician, Butler was always eager to assume authority in the absence of official instructions. Early in the war this had been a godsend when he had effectively suppressed Baltimore’s secessionist mobs to ensure the arrival of troops to garrison Washington and then had detained the state legislature to prevent it to vote secession. As commander of Fortress Monroe early in the war he had refused to return runaway slaves on the grounds that they would be used to support military operations as laborers, describing them as contraband of war, the first form of freedom slaves had been given. Lincoln supported this measure, which would be of immense future value in undermining slavery.

  He had been Banks’s predecessor in New Orleans and put his political talents to immediate use by effectively suppressing open support for the Confederacy. When the ladies of New Orleans took to insulting Union soldiers, Butler threatened to treat them as women of the town, earning the epithet of Beast Butler. An enterprising merchant had had Butler’s portrait painted on the bottom of a shipment of chamber pots and sold out in an hour.

  As useful as those political talents had been, it was ultimately his military talents that were vital, and of these, he had pitifully few. Louisiana and the James Peninsula had been military backwaters. Now they were critical, active theaters of war. The British desperately wanted Norfolk Navy Yard as a forward operating base for their blockade. Wilmington in North Carolina was the closest important Southern port. The Royal Navy did not have another base between it and Martha’s Vineyard, which they had seized earlier off the coast of Massachusetts.

  “I have no confidence in Butler either, Mr. President.”

  “Then in whom do you have confidence for such a post?”

  “Maj. General William Smith.”

  Lincoln glanced at Stanton, who nodded approval, but he had already made up his mind. He no longer needed to curry support with the abolitionist crowd. The war with Britain had brought unanimity of support.

  William Farrar “Baldy” Smith had opened the “cracker line” over steep mountains to keep the Army of the Cumberland fed and fit as it prepared to break out of siege at Chattanooga. Grant had been enormously impressed with Baldy’s determination, innovation, and drive, which burnished his reputation as a brilliant engineer. He was just the man to hold a desperate post. In fact, Smith had been Grant’s choice to replace Meade in command of the Army of the Potomac, but he had been moved by the latter’s selflessness in the service of his country and retained him in command. Still, he had insisted on Smith’s promotion to major general, which Congress had approved on March 9.

  It had required his insistence. Smith had left a bad taste in a lot of mouths in Washington. After the bloodbath at Fredericksburg in December 1862, Smith had moved with Maj. Gen. Franklin, now commanding at Port Hudson, to remove the commander of the Army of the Potomac, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, who, of course, needed removing. The man was honest, loyal, and just out of his element as the commander of large formations, and bad luck stuck to him like tar. Still, for Smith and Franklin, it was professional ruin. Burnside was relieved, but so were they. The Army instinctively recoils from officers who conspire to remove their commander. Now fate, luck, good timing, what have you, had restored both officers to critical commands, commands of great peril.

  Lincoln said, “Stanton, you will take care of this.”

  HORSEGUARDS BARRACKS, LONDON, 7:15 P.M., SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1864

  Prince George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge and general commander-in-chief of the British Army, had been a very busy man since the war had started. Few men of his rank had such an encyclopedic knowledge of the army as he did, which was of great value in marshalling the forces of the empire. Unfortunately, a goodly part of that knowledge concerned the social standing of the officers, which he much preferred to brains. Disraeli had let out a long sigh when he was told of the duke’s retort to one of his more intelligent subordinates. “Brains? I don’t believe in brains! You haven’t any, I know, sir!”

  Even the prime minister would find it beyond his powers to remove him. He was a cousin of Victoria’s, a grandson of George III. Neither was he an outright amateur; he had been a soldier all his life and had ably commanded the 1st Division, made up of the Guards and Highland Brigades, in the Crimean War, and had fought well at the Alma, Inkerman, Balaklava, and Sevastopol and he had only been invalided home when his health broke. To his credit, he had an intense interest in the welfare of the soldier and technological innovation in artillery and small arms. He was also oblivious to the intellectual and doctrinal changes those innovations would require. At that time, 75 percent of military literature came from Germany, 24 percent from France, and only 1 percent from Britain. Unintentionally, he explained the intellectual stagnation in British military thinking when he said famously, “There is a time for everything, and the time for change is when you can no longer help it.”5

  At the age of forty-five he was in his prime—experienced, energetic, and devoted to the army. The loss of the 1st Battalion, the Grenadier Guards, at the battle of Clavarack, had sent him into a frenzy of activity to avenge that loss by sending the strongest possible force to North America. When he had wanted to strip the Mediterranean garrisons, Disraeli had asked him, “And what proximate reserve, my Lord, would we have should the Russian bear lunge southward again?”

  “Prime Minister, I do not doubt that the drubbing they received ten years ago still is all too fresh in their minds, treaty or no treaty with the Americans.”

  Disraeli sighed again.

  FORTRESS PORTLAND, 2:22 P.M., SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1864

  Chamberlain sat in his bombproof listening to the exploding British shells and feeling the vibrations ripple through the ground. Every shell seemed to sprinkle dust from the heavy beams in the ceiling. He looked up at the ornate carving of the beams and reflected that once they had graced some fine mansion.

  The British siege artillery and the guns of the Royal Navy’s ships in the harbor kept up an almost constant shelling that kept the garrison under cover. Things had only gotten worse in the last month, despite the occasional arrival of one of Professor Lowe’s marvelous new balloons to carry out the wounded. It was their only link to the outside world and news of the war elsewhere. The garrison had been buoyed by the news of the victory at Clavarack in late October and lately of Port Hudson’s survival of the latest French attacks, and the fighting at Chazy, of which they did not know the outcome. But there had been little else of hope except the constant admonition to hold on.

  That was becoming harder and harder. The winter had been brutal. Casualties had grown, and now the sick list was growing alarmingly as food was running low. The same sudden warm weather that had halted the fighting in New York had washed over Portland’s ruins as well turning everything to mud. The sudden change of weather had also added to the sick list. Despite the bombardment, Chamberlain faithfully toured the fighting positions to keep up the spirits of his men, but today the shells rained much too heavily even to think of leaving the bombproof.

  Adding to his problems was the tightening British security. His scouts now found it impossible to slip out of the city and observe the enemy.

  AT SEA IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC, 2:27 P.M., SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1864

  The Russian squadron and its transports had taken a more indirect route than the Dahlgren expedition after their breakout through the blockade. The latter had a longer distance to go to reach the coast of Essex. Both groups sailed out of normal shipping lanes, under false colors (British), to avoid even the sparse winter traffic that might betray them to watchful eyes. Even that tactic was not enough to avoid other ships. Admiral Lisovsky took no chances on the three occasions when sails were sighted. His squa
dron pounced on them. Two were British and one was Dutch. The enemy ships he sank, and the Dutchmen he put a crew aboard to accompany them home slowly.

  To all of this Meagher was an interested observer, drawing special pleasure in seeing the British merchant colors slip under the water. But he was drawn back to the final review of the plans of his expedition by his staff.

  Dublin was the prize. She was the golden key to Ireland. Ironically she was built by King John to be the first fetter of the island. With one blow that fetter would be struck off in the same place by the sons of Ireland returned in Union blue. The New Sod would come in liberation of the Old Sod. More than a few of the men in the Irish Brigade had been born in America.

  But high talking and low planning had been the bane of every Irish patriotic rising in the last five hundred years. Grant had picked Meagher’s staff, not all of them Irish, but hardheaded Yankees, who knew a thing or two about the details of getting things done. And Sharpe had emptied his cornucopia of intelligence to aid them. Col. Patrick Kelly, commander of the 88th New York, had been promoted to brigadier and given command of the brigade itself. Kelly was an immigrant from County Galway and had fought with the brigade in every one of its engagements. He had led the brigade’s six hundred survivors into the attack at the Wheat Field at Gettysburg after the famous benediction and absolution by Father Corby, the brigade chaplain. Acknowledged as a superb leader, Kelly, as one officer noted, “was not lavish with praise. When he did bestow it, the few words went a long way…. ‘Well done, my brave byes,’ to the little remnant of the (Irish) Brigade at the battle of Bristoe when they went through the manual (of arms) under fire at Coffee Hill …’ was worth as much as five hundred.”6

  Meagher and many of his men had an intimate knowledge of Dublin, but that was not enough. All he had to do was look at the detailed map of the city prepared by Wilmoth and his staff. Every barrack and its garrison marked out—Royal, Richmond, Marlborough, Islandbridge, and Beggar’s Bush. And not least of all the military posts was the Magazine Fort. Meagher laughed to himself as a remembered a few lines from Jonathan Swift.

  “Now’s here’s a proof of Irish sense

  Here Irish wit is seen

  When nothing’s left that’s worth defence,

  We build a Magazine.”7

  Wilmoth’s order-of-battle also revealed that two of the four infantry battalions garrisoning the city had already departed for Canada, as did most of the artillery brigade One cavalry regiment and two infantry regiments remained at the great training ground of the British Army in Ireland, the Curragh Plain, north of Dublin, after a like force had also been sent to Canada. The only other British troops in Ireland were two cavalry regiments at Cahir in south Tipperary and Dundalk to the north in County Louth. Other than these, there were nine battalion depots in Ireland, essentially recruiting and training centers for deployed regiments.

  If the barracks and magazine the keys to military power, then Dublin Castle, a vast pile in the middle of the city, was the seat of British rule of Ireland. Take that seat and any British immediate reaction would be paralyzed. With luck they would snatch the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn, there. It was his official residence, usually occupied during the social season from January until St. Patrick’s Day. With any luck they would still find him there. 8 If not, he would likely be found not far away in the Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park, its ten-mile (sixteen-kilometer) perimeter wall enclosing 1,750 acres (707 hectares) of grass, tree-lined avenues, and monuments. 9

  His thoughts turned to the men in the transports. Leaning against his cabin bulkhead was the old battle-stained color of the 69th New York, the core of the brigade, given him when he had resigned. He had wept when saw after Gettysburg how few remained with the colors, and those of the 63rd and 83rd New York and 28th Massachusetts, and 116th Pennsylvania. Ah, but that clever rascal Sharpe had come up with a solution. Volunteers of Irish descent were called for from the entire Union Army for an undisclosed but hazardous mission. Now there was no better way to attract the Irish than to mix a bit of mystery with danger. Sharpe had gone that one better and let it be put about that they would be formed into a special corps that would lead the way for the conquest of Canada. And Canada would be traded to England for the liberty of Ireland. And by the thousands they volunteered until he could have filled up an entire corps not just a brigade.

  Every man had been vetted both by Sharpe and the Free Ireland movement, and none were told the mission as they disappeared into the armed camp of instruction on Long Island, New York. There Meagher and his officers had trained them hard all through the winter with promises to explain all when the time came. There was no leave granted at all. No one but Meagher and a few officers were allowed out of the camp, which was patrolled by a cavalry and two other infantry regiments. Security was as tight as men could make it. But it needed one thing more—example. Meagher formed the brigade in a horseshoe one frozen January day and shot three men who had deserted. A week before their departure, a new unit arrived to join the brigade—a company of Colonel Lowe’s Balloon Corps.

  The day they embarked, Meagher had addressed them all in a grand formation with all the eloquence of a fabled king of old in the telling of the bards. They cheered until the very angels wept. Then Father James Corey stepped forward, and the entire brigade knelt as he made over them the sign of the cross and exclaimed, “Te absolvo!”

  Meagher in the remembering of that divine moment was swept away with what lay ahead. With any luck, Meagher thought, with any luck …

  AT SEA IN THE NORTH SEA, 2:45 P.M., SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1864

  While Meagher was lost in his reverie, a thousand miles away, USS Kearsarge and SS Vanderbilt plowed through the heavy late-March seas to pass the Orkneys into the North Sea. Kearsarge’s engines had to strain to keep up with the huge liner.

  When she was built in 1855, she was the fastest, largest steamship in the world, a world record-breaker. Vanderbilt was chosen for the Dahlgren expedition because of that very speed. Dahlgren’s expedition had farther to go than Meagher’s, and if both groups were to strike the same day, then Dahlgren’s ships had to be veritable greyhounds of the sea.

  Vanderbilt was far more than speed. When built she was described in awestruck terms as a leviathan, the largest ship ever built. When most large steamships had three decks, she had five. At an enormous length of 335 feet with a cargo capacity of five thousand tons, she was indeed a monster of the sea. Her twin sidewheels measured forty-two feet in diameter. Sixty tons of bolts and ninety-four of wrought iron straps reinforced her enormous wooden beams. Her twin engines each generated 2,500 horsepower, and her four boilers weight sixty-two tons apiece. Those engines gave her the power to race at sustained high speeds. To keep pace, Kearsarg’s engines had been replaced with the latest high horsepower cross beam models from Cornelius Vanderbilt’s own shipyard.10

  Vanderbilt had already gone to war two years before when, in the crisis of the CSS Virginia’s revolutionary threat, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the great tycoon, had patriotically offered her to the nation. He said to Lincoln that he “was determined that I would not allow myself to do anything by which I could be ranked with the herd of thieves and vampires who were fattening off the government by means of army contracts.” He rushed to New York, saw to the strengthening of the ship’s prow with a ram and iron plating, and then sailed her directly to Hampton Roads. His plan was simply to ram and swamp the Merrimac with the vast bulk of his ship. The captain of the Virginia took the threat so seriously that he refused to venture out into waters deep enough for the Vanderbilt to fight, but the new USS Monitor arrived to pursue it into shallow waters for their epic duel.11

  She now carried the one thousand men of Dahlgren’s expedition—six hundred men of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, three hundred Marines, and a battery of Mr. Gatling’s guns. Every cavalryman and Marine was armed with the new Spencer rifle. And there was only a single horse for a raid whose final dash would r
equire six hundred of them. A two-week sea voyage in winter weather does much to debilitate horses, the worst of which is brine rot, the sores of stressed confinement at sea. Men can stay fit through exercise about a large ship, but cavalry horses need daily exercise impossible onboard, and even if they had been walked healthy down the gangplanks, they would not be fit for sudden exertion. But there was an exception in the fine black reserved for Dahlgren. A large cargo area had been left empty for her exercise, and she was sleek and eager to kick back her heels. A natural and graceful horseman, even after the loss of his leg from his Gettysburg wound, Ulrich spent hours every day with the black, riding her slowly around the cargo bay and seeing to her care.

  Though bold of action, his was a precise mind. Again and again he went over his plan with Adams. It was a mission to make the hair stand on end. So every detail had to be checked and gone over until the entire operation became almost a motor reflex.

  The maps of Essex and Middlesex lay on the table in their cabin held down against the heaving power of late March seas by books on eastern England, railway timetables, and horse farms. Circled in red were Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield and the Royal Gunpowder Mills at nearby Waltham Abby. Dahlgren threw down a pencil and leaned back in his chair, a twinkle in his eye. “Charlie, Meagher’s got the easier mission by far. He intends to stay where he is. We have to get out when we’re done. You know how harebrained this scheme is. I know why Alexi volunteered.” Ensign Rimsky-Korsakov, the representative of His Imperial Majesty’s Navy, was tinkling away on a tiny piano he had brought aboard. “He volunteered because Admiral Lisovsky had ordered him to, and Tsar Alexander II had ordered Lisovsky to be helpful. But, Charlie, why on earth did you volunteer?”