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

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  A thin, bearded man, Adams was one of those rare New Englanders you would naturally warm up to. “Well, I’ll tell you. You see, representing the United States in England has been the family business for eighty years now. It’s a legacy of sorts.” Dahlgren laughed. Adams father, Charles Francis Adams, Sr., had been ambassador to the Court of St. James, as had his great grandfather and grandfather, Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. “It’s expected. Why, even my little brother Henry has joined the family business though he’s going to help Meagher set up a new branch in Ireland.”

  “Fair enough, though I didn’t follow my father into the Navy and they don’t get much more Navy than he is.”

  “Well, why on earth, Ullie, with your father an admiral, did you end up in the Army?”

  Dahlgren laughed again. “The highest bid won. Gus Fox offered to appoint me as a ship’s master, but Stanton gave me an army captain’s commission on the spot. It helps to know the right people.” Or have the right father. Through Rear Adm. Dahlgren, Lincoln and had come to know Ulrich as did other senior members of the government. The young man had impressed them as a volunteer when he led naval gun crews to the defense of Harper’s Ferry and fell over themselves to give him a commission when expressed an interest in becoming an officer. As a nineteen-year-old captain he became an aide first to Major General Sigel then to Meade himself. He found himself in war, volunteering for every desperate mission. He led a cavalry raid into Fredericksburg. At Brandy Station he led a regiment after its commander was lost to cut its way through Stuart’s cavalry. Danger drew Dahlgren like a magnet attracted iron filings. Others might say like a moth to a flame.

  Adams had been struck by the young man’s intensity and concentration. Although Adams himself was only twenty-nine, Dahlgren was still only twenty-one (b. April 3, 1864), a hero twice over, and a full colonel. The confinement of the voyage had worn on him, but he filled the time as they were doing now with going over the operation again and again.

  He pointed to the town of Colchester on the map. “We’re in great luck that the only garrison in Essex is Colchester, and then it has only two depot battalions, caretaking and training of recruits. They’re not likely to field anything serious in time to bother us.” Adams mused out loud, “Colchester, you know, was ancient Camulodunum and became the Roman capital of the province of Britain until Boudicca’s revolt. It was rebuilt as Colonia Victricensis. They say Camulodunum is Arthur’s Camelot.” Dahlgren gave him a “what does that have to do with anything” look. He said, “Well, my brother used to write me of what he saw in Britain when he served as my father’s private secretary.”

  Then Adams remembered Wilmoth’s briefing on British strength. What bothered him was the number of Volunteer Rifle Corps and Yeomanry Cavalry squadrons that could suddenly come to life and throw their plans awry. He said as much to Dahlgren. Wilmoth’s order-of-battle for Essex had identified the location of twenty RVCs and three squadrons and two batteries of the West Essex Yoemanry Regiment.12

  “We’ll create so much chaos that they will run into each other rather than us.”

  “I’m not so sure. Even the smallest thing can knock this expedition into a cocked hat.”

  Dahlgren grew serious and thoughtful. “Yes, I know, Charlie, but we shall be at our objective before they even begin to realize we are there. Then we shall be back aboard ship while they are still hunting us where we are not.” He grinned again. “Remember, Charlie, in chaos there is profit. I remember George Sharpe using that expression at Gettysburg.”

  Adams gazed across the map. From the sea to Enfield and Waltham Abby and back looked an awfully long way.

  EPPING FOREST, ESSEX, ENGLAND, 2:30 P.M., SUNDAY, MARCH 27, 1864

  The seven hundred or so men of the 41st Middlesex (Enfield Locke) Rifle Volunteer Corps took its Sunday after church drills seriously. Most of them were employees of the Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield (RSAF) and had paid for their own green uniforms with red facings as well the fine Enfield Rifles they all carried. They took an extra pride in their weapons for they themselves had fashioned them. They were especially smart on parade that day. Col. Manly Dixon, Royal Engineers, and Superintendent of the RSAF was trooping the line along with the local military notable, Lt. Col. George Palmer, commander of the West Essex Yeomanry.13

  Palmer had ridden the five miles from his estate at Nazeing, a splendid example of Georgian architecture with its graceful Ionic columns. He was inordinately proud of his militia cavalry, having personally founded the unit; many of the men were his tenants or young gentlemen of the neighboring area. It was a very small regiment, but it had come to assume a larger and larger part of his life. With the war he had exercised the regiment regularly and secretly hoped for foreign service; there were rumors that yeomanry would be called. At the age of sixty-three his seat was still as perfect as any gentleman’s in England.

  Watching the parade among the other guests was a man who walked with a limp from a Russian ball at the battle of the Alma in the Crimea, and his left hand was missing two fingers from a Sepoy sword during the Great Mutiny. Sir Robert Wilson, VC, late captain of the 9th Lancers, had retired after the Mutiny and bought a fine house at Waltham Abbey. There were rumors that he had done quite well in the sack of Dehli and stories of rubies the size of pigeon eggs.14

  Monday early the men of the 41st would join the rest of the almost two thousand men that produced the 1853 pattern Enfield Rifle at the RSAF, just over the county border in Middlesex, in an endless stream that not only kept the British Army and the Rifle Volunteer Corps well-armed but had equipped much of the Confederate States Army as well.

  The factory had become the industrial showcase of Victorian England. The fact that it had been born in chaos was overlooked. The 1853 pattern Enfield had been introduced just as the Crimean War created a huge demand for small arms. Private contractors upon which the British Army relied for its weapons failed badly to meet this demand. The decision was made to rebuild the small government Royal Ordnance Manufactory at Enfield Locke in Middlesex as a major arms producer. The issue of meeting demand, however, would run into the same antiquated and time-consuming production methods that afflicted private contractors and in which the rifle parts were not interchangeable. A government factory would also have the advantage of labor peace. The workers at private contractors often used the opportunity of a new contract to go on strike for higher wages.

  In desperation the British sent a delegation to the United States to examine the American method of mass production and interchangeable parts. The U.S. government threw open the red carpet for them, and they toured not only Springfield and Harper’s Ferry Arsenals but private manufacturers such as Colt as well as non-weapons producers. They were profoundly impressed not only with level of American technological ingenuity in the creation of labor-saving machinery but the greater care American industry took of its workforce and wrote that “the Americans displayed a degree of ingenuity which English industrialists would do well to imitate.” Given carte blanche they bought American machinery to equip the rebuilt factory which went into operation just as the Crimean War ended. Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield (RSAF) was given its new name on July 21, 1855, amid the massive construction of its new facilities costing the immense sum of a quarter million pounds. Almost the entire workforce was replaced by new workers trained in mass production. By 1859 RSAF was producing five times as many small arms as all other sources combined, which forced private manufacturers also to switch to mass production methods. By 1860 the factory was turning out 1,774 rifles a week or over ninety thousand a year. Between 1859 and early 1864, RSAF produced almost a half a million small arms.15

  The heart of the factory was the large room (Machine Shop 1), measuring 500 by 180 feet, lit by saw tooth overhead windows, and packed with machinery for every stage of mass production—machines for rough boring and others of rifling barrels, copying lathes for fashioning gunlocks, shaping (or milling) machines, and dozens more filled the room between
iron columns and a web of pulleys and belts and the steam pipes that warmed the building. Power was provided by two 40-horsepower steam engines. The nearby barrel mill was powered by a 70-horsepower steam engine supplemented by water wheels. A smithy and a foundry were in separate buildings.16

  Ironically, the plant manager was an American named James McKee, a Southerner by birth. He had been hired away by the British commission from Springfield Arsenal at the time of their visit. He had succeeded the original American manager, James Burton, a Virginian and former chief engineer at Springfield Arsenal and later manager of the Richmond Armory for the Confederacy. Other Americans had come with him to work in management. Those of Northern sentiment had quit when the war broke out, but McKee had stayed on delighted to be serving both the Confederacy and his old employer at the same time.

  Those who stayed included Oramel Clark, who expertly managed the stocking department. His services had been critical to the entire production of the factory. His shop used twenty-three machines employing sixteen separate functions to produce two hundred stocks a day.17 The single greatest bottleneck in production had been the curing of the famed British black walnut stocks, which could take up to three years. In a separate building a special dessicating room twenty-four by fourteen feet and twelve feet high utilizing hot air had already been built at great cost, which reduced the drying time to four to five weeks.18 A third building stored completed stocks.

  No railroad ran to the RSAF, but bulk supplies came up the River Lee that flowed almost completely around the factory. About a mile further down the river was the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abby.19 It too had been rebuilt in the crisis of the Crimean War with steam-powered mills and now supplied both the army and navy with all their propellants and explosives as well as much of the domestic market for explosives. It too was supplied by barge from the River Lee, but in 1859 a special railroad system on 18-inch tracks had been built to move supplies and ammunition components within the grounds of the mills.

  Gunpowder had been produced at Waltham Abby since 1666; the mills were acquired by the Crown in 1787 and came to occupy 170 acres with buildings widely separated for safety reasons. Those housing the more hazardous processes were surrounded by brick or earth embankments called traverses.20 In a similarly protected building special research was being conducted on the use of gun cotton as a propellant by Frederick Abel, one of the leading British authorities on explosives and a member of the Royal Society who worked for Chemical Establishment of the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. He split his time between Woolwich and Waltham Abby. If he were to be found at the powder mills, his capture was a high priority that Lincoln himself had designated after Wilmoth’s research showed how critical he was to the development of this new propellant.21

  PORT HUDSON, LOUISIANA, 2:37 P.M., MONDAY, MARCH 28, 1864

  For two days barges unloaded regiment after regiment of Union cavalry at the Port Hudson docks. An entire division of six thousand men and their animals filled out the immense space within the lines of the fort as they set up camp.

  “I don’t intend for them to get too comfortable.” Major General Franklin had been an eager observer of the arrival of such an addition to his command. “I tell you, Grierson, people will forget your Newton Station raid after your boys get their teeth into what I have planned for them.” Maj. Gen. Benjamin Grierson was not a man to be frightened by such an announcement. In an age of beards, he had a particularly formidable one. He stroked it in satisfaction. He had been jumped to division command for that very raid Franklin had mentioned, a raid of such daring that it made him a national hero.

  While Grant had struggled to drop his army below Vicksburg in 1863, he had sent Grierson with his brigade on a diversion down into the heart of Mississippi to raise hell in the enemy rear. That he did in spades, leaving a trail of Sherman’s hairpins,22 burned rail yards and depots, and terrified civilians. He riveted the attention of the Confederate Command on himself and not on Grant, who successfully landed his army south of Vicksburg. Grierson brilliantly evaded every pursuer and finally led his exhausted command into Baton Rouge to the delighted surprise of the garrison. Now he was back in Louisiana with an entire division.

  Franklin introduced Grierson to Rear Adm. David Porter, who commanded the Navy’s Mississippi squadrons and then unfolded his map on a camp table. Port Hudson huddled against the Mississippi’s eastern shore. To the south were the camps of the besieging Franco-Confederate army. Technically it was not really a siege, because the fort was not surrounded. The Union Navy still controlled the Mississippi above Baton Rouge and its transports kept the garrison well-fed and supplied. To the east and north of the fort stretched an endless and almost roadless pine forest. Settlement had followed the river, the mightiest, easiest, and cheapest road to travel of all. The one road that mattered was the one from the railroad station at Ponchetoula forty-two miles due east from Baton Rouge. It was the Franco-Confederate main supply route.

  “This is the key, Grierson. The damned key to turning these Frogs and their Rebel lickspittles out of Louisiana. Because there is no direct railroad or even road from New Orleans to here, they must bring their supplies by rail to Ponchetoula and then by wagon to Baton Rouge, and from there to their camps here, another twenty-odd miles. Right below Ponchetoula the railroad crosses this endless swamp. Smash the station and tear up the track a mile into the swamp, and they’ll never get another croissant up from New Orleans. Think what fun you can have with that.”

  Grierson, of all people, realized what cavalry operations on the ground were like, despite neat map solutions. He was already weighing it. “I want to scout it out thoroughly first, of course. Tell me, how are they are defending their supply route?”

  “I’d say they have almost as many cavalry on that line as you have here and blockhouses every mile.” He smiled. “I’ve only had two cavalry regiments, but they’ve raised holy hell with them. So Bazaine has decided to give his cavalry and Taylor’s something to do. They patrol the line constantly. He is a formidable opponent; he understands logistics.”

  Porter had not said anything more than a few pleasantries but now grinned like a wolf. “I can give you all the diversion you want along the river.”

  THEATRE DE ORLEANS, BOURBON STREET, NEW ORLEANS, 9:42 P.M., THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 1864

  Bazaine was surprised. The music and the musicians were excellent and the audience refined. Of course, he thought, it was the French influence. His acceptance of an invitation had run through white New Orleans like the news of a breached levee. The author of the piece, The Quasimodo Symphony (Edmond Dédé), its conductor (Samuel Snaer, Jr.), the musicians, and the audience were what was called gens de couleur libre (free people of color) or colloquially, libres, the descendants of white fathers and black mothers over a hundred years. They were a distinct class between privileged whites and black slaves, a unique phenomenon in the South, especially in its prosperity.23

  In 1850 an overwhelming majority of the free Negro men in New Orleans worked as carpenters, masons, cigar makers, shoemakers, clerks, mechanics, coopers, barbers, draymen, painters, blacksmiths, butchers, cabinetmakers, cooks, stewards, and upholsters…. The 1,792 free Negro males listed in the 1850 census were engaged in fifty-four different occupations; only 9.9 percent of them were unskilled laborers. Some of them even held jobs as architects, bookbinders, brokers, engineers, doctors, jewelers, merchants, and musicians. 24

  New Orleans’s paternalistic and socially less rigid French and Spanish past had encouraged this community even to the creation of libre militia regiments. Benjamin Bulter had transformed those regiments into the first black units incorporated into the Union Army, known as the Corps du Afrique, which also recruited among freed slaves. The First Regiment had even retained its black officers. These were the men who had flung themselves at Port Hudson during the Union siege and earned the respect of the Army. The story of their repulse of the Sudanese earlier this month had excited their community, for many a son, brother, or hu
sband was with them.

  Bazaine and other French agents were making discreet but determined efforts to woo the libres. Again and again, he emphasized their French connection. For their part, they were startled and amused when he appealed to the French blood in their veins, a statement of family they never thought to hear from a white man. He spoke of the composer, Dédé, and how his talents had only been allowed to bear fruit in France, and he was only one of many such examples. To this he added many more names, such as Norbert Rillieux, who had also been educated and taught in France, a brilliant chemist whose discoveries revolutionized the distillation of sugar. Judah Benjamin, the future Confederate Secretary of War, had been an enthusiastic supporter. French incessantly repeated that slavery had been outlawed in the French Empire.

  French gold francs had also been spread among the libres as they had among elements of the white population of New Orleans, among gentle hints at the opportunities that beckoned if the Crescent City were once again French. Freedom and opportunity lay not only with a Union victory. His libre placée, the stunning beauty, Clio Dulaine, was both an advisor of uncommon political instincts and connections among her own people. She was the perfect mistress for a Frenchman—voluptuous, shrewd, and intelligent. She sat in his box, an open statement.

  It would have been immeasurably distressed Bazaine to know that she also worked for George Sharpe. She also took gold sovereigns from the British who wanted to stay informed of their French ally’s plotting, but with Sharpe she shared everything and for nothing.

  For Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, commander of the District of Louisiana, and son-in-law to President Jefferson Davis, Bazaine could have a hundred placées as far as he cared and parade them as well. It was the New Orleans style. Bazaine’s wooing of the libres had not gone unnoticed, though, nor had the sudden appearance of a large amount of French gold coin, not all of which could be accounted for by French military purchases in the city. And then there were the increasing number of symbolic displays that only a sovereign power could display, such as a guard of honor at St. Louis Cathedral. Their meetings had become increasingly tense, though Bazaine purred that these were simply marks of French affection for the city that was so French. That had not assured Taylor, who reported in detail to Davis. And that put Davis on the horns of a dilemma. No chief of state was more jealous of his country’s sovereignty than Jefferson Davis. At the same time, he recognized that British and French aid was vital to the establishment of the sovereignty of a free and independent Confederate States of America. He could therefore, remonstrate, insist, and deplore but he could not alienate the French. The great victory at Vermillionville and the recapture of New Orleans they owed to the French but that came with a price. There were now more French troops in Louisiana than Confederates.