Custer lead his old Michigan Brigade into a charge on the Canadian 5th only to see them stand fast and deliver a volley that sent the front rank of his cavalry crashing into the ground. He immediately dismounted his men to use their repeaters that quickly began to thin the Canadian ranks. On the other flank Davis’s Brigade had come in behind the 6th Canadian and caught it unprepared. The battalion came apart as it was struck by 1,200 cavalry.
Seeing the enemy flanks coming apart, Chamberlain rode along the division front through the shell and rifle fire shouting, “Bayonets!” Behind him the long blued blades came out of their scabbards and snapped onto their rifle muzzles. “Charge!”
HANOVER ACADEMY, VIRGINIA, 9:15 A.M., SUNDAY, MAY 8, 1864
The academy building had not been improved by the fighting that had swirled around it the day before and had ended up in Union hands. Early that morning soldiers hurriedly cleaned it up as much as possible. Grant and Hancock were waiting in the master’s large book-lined study.
The man who rode up with a single aide and a color bearer wished with all his heart that he had fallen yesterday. Robert E. Lee could not avoid the inevitable, though every atom of his warrior spirit rebelled against. But even a blind man could see the game was over. He had fewer than thirty thousand men left and was surrounded by almost five times that number. Hancock had barred his way to Richmond while Meade had fallen upon his rear and overrun his trains. There was no hope. He had told his staff that night when he had accepted Grant’s invitation to discuss terms of surrender, “There is nothing left me, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”25
Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker at the height of his glory before the battle of Chazy (author’s collection)
Lieut. Gen. James Hope Grant, Commander of Her Majesty’s Forces in North America (author’s collection)
Maj. Gen. George H. Sharpe, Chief, Central Information Bureau (CIB), John C. Babcock, Lieut. Col. Michael Wilmoth, Lieut. Col. John McEntee (author’s collection)
Brig. Garnet Wolseley, later in his successful career as the greatest of Victoria’s generals (author’s collection)
Col. George Denison, Commander, Canadian Royal Guides (author’s collection)
Col. William McBean, Commander, 78th (Highland) Foot (author’s collection)
Officers of the 60th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment (author’s collection)
Vivian’s Brigade on the opening night (18-19 March) of the battle of Chazy (author’s collection)
Army of the Hudson in the night combat crossing of the Little Chazy River on the night of March 22 (author’s collection)
A Scot Fusilier Guards sergeant. The Scots and Grenadier Guards closed the battle of Chazy with their counterattack, March 23 (author’s collection)
Maj. Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher, liberator of Dublin (author’s collection)
Adm. Stepan Lisovsky, Russian Imperial Navy, Commander of the Baltic Squadron (author’s collection)
Col. Ulric Dahlgren, leader of the great raid into England (author’s collection)
Lieut. Col. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Commander, 1st Massachusetts Cavalry (seated in rocker) (author’s collection)
Lieut. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Imperial Russian Navy, musical genius and Col. Dahlgren’s aide (author’s collection)
Co. C., 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, the men who made the Great Raid (author’s collection)
The Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield, the maker of the superb Enfield Rifle for the British Army (author’s collection)
Frederick Douglass, the lion of emancipation and Lincoln advisor (author’s collection)
A commanding officer of a British Volunteer Rifle Corps (VRC) (author’s collection)
British Yeomanry cavalry and Militia infantry (author’s collection)
Maj. Gen. Robert Napier, the shrewd Commander of the Dublin Field Force (author’s collection)
Maj. Gen. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Hero and Avenger of Portland (author’s collection)
Marshall of France François Achille Bazaine, Commander, French Forces in North America and the Armée de la Louisiane (author’s collection)
French infantry of the Armée de la Louisiane (author’s collection)
Elizabeth Van Lew, the great Union spymistress of Richmond (author’s collection)
US Colored Troops (USCT) at the Second Battle of Big Bethal (author’s collection)
Capt. Cowper Coles, Commander, HMS Prince Albert, and advocate of turreted warships for the Royal Navy (author’s collection)
HMS Prince Albert with its four turrets (author’s collection)
The great cavalry battle at Hanover Junction, May 6, 1864 (author’s collection)
“General Lee to the Rear” – at the battle of Hanover Academy, May 7, 1864, Lee’s troops would not attack if Lee exposed himself (author’s collection)
Rear Adm. David Farragut, commander of the U.S. First Fleet at the battle of the Chesapeake, May 7, 1864 (author’s collection)
Capt. Will Cushing, Commander, US Naval Aeronautic Service (NAS)
Lieut. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, General-in-Chief, Armies of the United States (author’s collection)
Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, commander of the Army of the Rappahannock at the decisive battles of May 7, 1864 (author’s collection)
USS New Ironsides, Farragut’s heavily gunned and armored flagship at the battle of the Chesapeake, May 7, 1864 (author’s collection)
USS Dictator, John Ericksson’s behemoth monitor, the largest and most powerful ship in the U.S. Navy (author’s collection)
USS Alligator, the original submersible that lead to a entire new dimension of naval warfare (author’s collection)
HMS Warrior, the first of the Royal Navy’s ironclads, the largest ship in the fleet and its pride and joy (author’s collection)
One of the floating batteries of the Royal Navy’s Great Armament brought across the Atlantic to pound Fortress Monroe into submission (author’s collection)
The 11th Hussars and the 9th Lancers, were the cream of British cavalry and the only mounted regiments in British North America (author’s collection)
Maj. Gen. John Logan, commanding XI Corps at the battle of Saco against the desperate attack of the British 12th Brigade, May 7 (author’s collection)
EPILOGUE
FORD’S THEATER, WASHINGTON, DC, THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1864
Edwin Booth had played for Lincoln before, but this night was special. The country had gone wild when Richmond had fallen so soon on the heels of the victories of the Glorious 7th of May, and Hamlet had been a command performance for the president. All the talk was of the sudden collapse of the Confederacy—Lee’s surrender, the fall of Richmond, and Davis’s capture all in one calamitous day had stunned the South and taken the heart out of the rebellion. Longstreet had fallen back on Richmond only to see the Stars and Stripes raised by Weitzel over the Davis’s presidential mansion. Caught between Union-controlled Richmond and the armies of Meade and Hancock, Longstreet, ever the realist, briefly weighed his options, realized the game was up, and surrendered. General Joseph Johnston surrendered his Army of Tennessee to Maj. Gen. Thomas outside of Atlanta as soon as he heard of Longstreet’s surrender and Davis’s capture.
After a sharp battle, Sickles had taken Montreal on May 12. Quebec, to which Hope Grant had retreated with the Guards Brigade, was expected to capitulate any day now, and Sherman had just put Halifax under siege. Washington was almost giddy with excitement as events unfolded with amazing speed.
Miss Van Lew did get to spread her giant American flag over her roof as Richmond fell. When her neighbors threatened to burn her house, she defied them from the porch pointing them out by name and threatening retribution from the Union troops when they arrived. The crowd then thought better of it. Grant’s first order to reach Weitzel was to put a guard on her house. Grant himself called on her on his return from the Hanover Academy. He would appoint her as postmistress of Richmond for both his terms as president (1869–1877).1 He then we
nt to see Davis, who had been confined to the mansion to inform him of the President’s order to send him to Washington.2 Grant then took the first steamer back to the capital and was now in the box with the Lincolns. The President had insisted. His only other guest was Sharpe.
Despite all the celebrations, Edwin Booth was not happy. He had agreed to give the part of Hamlet to his younger brother against his better judgment. John had threatened a family row if Edwin had not given in. Edwin was the greatest tragedian of the age, and Hamlet was his part. No one could play it better, and he was jealous of his hold on it. The play was a charity event for the Sanitary Commission, and at least, Edwin thought, his difficult younger brother would get no box office from it. The rehearsals had not gone well. John was flamboyant and physical, but had not the slightest clue how to plumb the depths of the Danish prince. It was the greatest part in the English language, and John simply had no respect for it. Edwin had cringed but carefully coached John, who seemed to miss the whole point; he had carried himself on the family name and his famous good looks. Such people did not easily take advice.
The play had stumbled through to Scene IV, and George Sharpe had excused himself from the President’s box to get a glass of champagne at the lobby bar. He had rarely scene Hamlet played so clumsily. “Poor Edwin,” he thought, “must be cringing.” As he proffered the glass for a refill, Tom Ford came up to him. “Enjoying the play, General?”
Sharpe arched one eyebrow, and Ford looked a bit crestfallen. “You don’t have to say anything.” He got a glass himself. “You remember when you came through looking for the bomb and asked to see everyone who worked here?”
Sharpe gave him his complete attention.
“Old John Peanut was not here. Well, he just arrived and is working here tonight.” He pointed to the man at the small concession stand. “Oh, John, come over here.”
Peanut came over, a look of confusion on his face. “The general here has a question for you.”
“What do you know about the bomb that was planted under the stage?”
“Oh, sir, nothing at all. “I left here on May the fourth to go see my ailing sister in Fairfield, sir, I did.”
As Sharpe talked with Peanut, Edwin was watching from stage left as his brother, now alone on the stage, began one of the most famous soliloquies in the play in Act IV.
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Lincoln bent over the railing of his box to hear it all. He had been disappointed in the hash John was making of the lead. He would much rather have seen Edwin play MacBeth, but Mrs. Lincoln had insisted. Young John Wilkes made the ladies swoon. Lincoln thought to himself as Booth butchered those immortal lines, “What do I not do to indulge this woman?”
In the lobby, Sharpe asked Peanut if shortly before he left Washington had Edwin Forrest escorted into the theater someone he did not know carrying anything bulky. “No, sir, I did not see much of Mr. Forrest. He had not been well.”
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
Grant was not enjoying himself much either. The play did not appeal to him. He could not abide a ditherer. Mrs. Grant had pleaded a sick headache. She did not like Mrs. Lincoln, but he could not refuse the presidential invitation. So he just squirmed and looked about the audience to see if there were any officers he knew.
Sharpe was about to thank Peanut for his help, when the old man said, “No, sir, Mr. Forrest was seldom about. But Mr. Booth came in one afternoon with a man carrying a leather trunk. It looked heavy. Mr. Booth said it was for his dressing room.” The champagne glass fell from Sharpe’s hand as he dashed for the stairs. 3
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do;’
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake.
Lincoln was surprised at the venomous looks that Booth was throwing up at him. He brazenly made eye contact over and over again. The audience had begun to sense it too, and faces followed those looks up to Lincoln to see his reaction. Edwin was appalled. He could only think that John’s Southern sympathies had got the better of him.
How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain?
Sharpe ran down the hallway leading to the president’s box. The two guards from his 120th NY leveled their bayonets until they recognized him. “Open the damn door!” he shouted at the very moment Booth stopped, swept his eyes across the audience, and almost shouted the last lines.
O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
With that he strode across the stage to stand almost under Lincoln’s box, reached into his doublet, pulled out a small revolver. Pointing it straight at Lincoln, he screamed, “Sic semper tyrannis!” and fired.
As he shouted, the door to the box flew open. Sharpe saw Booth pointing a pistol up from the stage. He grabbed the back of Lincoln’s rocker and pulled it back just as Booth fired. Lincoln disappeared from view. He fired again at Grant, who had twisted around to grab Lincoln. The railing splintered. Mrs. Lincoln screamed and broke the tension of disbelief; the audience bolted to its feet, women screaming, men shouting. Booth turned to run backstage, but Edwin had run out onto the stage and grabbed him. John was much the stronger man and struck his brother over the head with the revolver, but still Edwin would not let go. Before John Wilkes could escape he was overwhelmed by men from the audience who had flooded onto the stage. It was all Grant could do to keep him from being beaten to death as he shouted commands down to the stage.4
In the box Lincoln looked up from the floor to see Sharpe peering at him. His wife’s shrill, unending scream had brought him back. He felt a great pain in his shoulder. “Mother, for the love of God, be still! I am all right.” He winked at Sharpe. “I tell you, General, I have been shot more often in this war more than most soldiers. I should apply for a pension.”5
Booth’s capture and interrogation led to the unraveling of the entire Confederate Secret Service plot to assassinate the President, although Jefferson Davis could not be directly tied to it. Lincoln was much-criticized for the personal interview he gave Davis in the White House before his declaration of a general amnesty, but for the President, the gesture at the reconciliation of the nation was paramount. His statement, “Let us have peace,” was long remembered. He was disappointed at Davis’s unbroken intransigence. The rest of the world simply marveled that he had not been hanged.6 The Confederacy that Davis continued to insist was a reality, however, had disappea
red completely by Independence Day. By Christmas Day, the Stars and Stripes once more flew over the entire length and breadth of the Old Union.
By Christmas the Stars and Stripes also flew throughout British North America from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic, except for Quebec City, which held out until the armistice. Halifax had fallen to Sherman after a siege of six months. The country was in no mood to give any of it back.
The shock wave of disaster had stunned the British. Disraeli’s government barely withstood a no-confidence vote in which a hundred of its own backbenchers voted against it. He was forced to form the first modern British war cabinet by sharing power with the Liberals in a coalition government. That it brought William Gladstone into the cabinet was gall and wormwood to Disraeli, but it did mean that the country would be politically united. It also removed the corrosive embrace with the now expiring Confederacy and the cousins war that had so disquieted millions of households. English-speaking people would no longer be killing each other. A united Britain could now face the other and far more important threat.
The Russians were finding willing allies in Europe. Prussia signed a secret treaty almost immediately. In St. Petersburg, a final ball was thrown for the officers of the army soon to march on Constantinople and place anew the Cross on the dome of the Hagia Sophia. Czar Alexander II used the occasion to present Colonel Dahlgren with the Cross of St. George and approve his participation on the campaign. He also ordered a Cossack escort for the young officer.7
Bayonets, Balloons & Ironclads: Britain and France Take Sides With the South Page 45