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

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  9. *Edmund St. Clair, John Bright and the Slavery Question in the Great War (London: Mayfair Publishers, 1922), p. 233.

  10. The USS Wyoming was a screw sloop launched in 1859, 1,480 tons, crew of 198, and mounting two 11-inch Dahlgren guns. She had been assigned to the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Squadron just before the Civil War began. Until the war with Britain began, she had fought a battle against a local Japanese warlord at Shimonoseki in May 1863 and then cruised the Far East in search of the Confederate commerce raider, CSS Alabama, once passing barely twenty-five miles from her. *She got news of the war while in the Dutch East Indies. Ironically, her new mission was to raid British commerce, and the pickings were rich from India to Hong Kong.

  11. Gavin Mortimer, Double Death: The Truce Story of Pryce Lewis, the Civil War’s Most Daring Spy (New York: Walker & Company, 2010), p. 216.

  12. Holzer, p. 235.

  13. Eleanor Rugles, The Prince of Players: Edwin Booth (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1953), p. 171.

  14. William A. Tidwell, Confederate Covert Actions in the American Civil War (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1995), pp. 118–23.

  CHAPTER TWO: “I CAN HANG YOU”

  1. *Judson Knight, “Scouting for Hooker,” National Tribune, June 17, 1888.

  2. *Arthur Freemantle, “The Prisoner of War Cartel in North America During the Great War,” Monograph, Royal Staff College Camberley, June 2, 1882. After the battles of Charleston and Claverack, the British and Americans established a cartel for the exchange of prisoners. Colonel Denison was the first senior officer they requested to be exchanged; such was the political pressure applied by the Canadian government.

  3. *Major Anthony C. Torcelli, Scouts of the Bureau of Military Intelligence, monograph, U.S. Army Command & General Staff College, 17 February 1972.

  4. *Field Marshall Viscount Wolseley, The Great War in North America (London: Longmans, Green, 1890), pp. 122–25.

  5. Irving A. Buck, Cleburne and His Command (Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Co., 1995), pp. 188–90. Cleburne was Anglo-Irish and had served four years in the British Army, reaching the rank of corporal; he emigrated to the United States after the famine, settled in Arkansas, and became a U.S. citizen. He was elected captain and quickly rose because of his natural talent for command and his very rare military experience to become possibly the finest division commander on either side.

  6. *Frederick Williamson, “British and French Aide to the Confederacy in the War,” Annals of the Confederacy, Vol. XVIII, July 24, 1884. The Confederacy imported during the period November 1863 to May 1864, 273 locomotives and 120,000 rails in addition to several hundred thousand miles of telegraph wire. The British and French supplied enough uniforms to give every Confederate soldier a new set of clothing.

  7. *James Longstreet, From Chickamauga to Appomattox, Vol. 2, A Memoir of the War (New Orleans: St. Louis Press, 1886), p. 167.

  8. Paul Wagner, “The First Engagement of the New Airfleet,” Great War History Magazine, July 24, 1987, p. 27. The Washington barely made it to its landing field in a park in Portland, it had lost so much gas. However, in earlier flights by the older balloons, the parts of a hydrogen gas generator were sent and assembled to ensure that there would be enough gas for return flights. Chamberlain ransacked the ruins of Portland for anything that might help patch the Washington’s balloon. The Washington was able to limp away a few nights later and safely made it back to Boston.

  9. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Selected Letters 1839–1865 (New York: The Library of America, 1990), pp. 470, 770.

  10. *Michael D. Wilmoth, The Life of George H. Sharpe (Philadelphia: D. Appleton Publishers, 1890), p. 238. Wilmoth’s biography was an honest account of Sharpe’s contribution to the war effort, but it was also a work of devotion to someone he obviously admired.

  11. Colburns United Service Magazine and Naval & Military Journal, 1866, Part III (London: Hurst Blackett Publishers), p. 421. Apparently, although the militia strength was 120,000 (80,000 for England, 10,000 for Scotland, and 30,000 for Ireland), at most 60,000 would be forthcoming in an emergency.

  12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Force_(Great_Britain), accessed 11 Mar 11. In 1862, a royal commission chaired by Viscount Eversley was appointed “to inquire into the condition of the volunteer force in Great Britain and into the probability of its continuance at its existing strength.” According to the report, as of 1 April 1862, the Volunteer Force had a strength of 162,681 consisting of:

  • 662 light horse

  • 24,363 artillery

  • 2,904 engineers

  • 656 mounted rifles

  • 134,096 rifle volunteers, of whom 48,796 were in 86 consolidated battalions and 75,535 in 134 administrative battalions.

  13. Peter G. Tsouras, “Major General George H. Sharpe,” Armchair General, July 2008. pp. 26–28; “Gettysburg Intelligence Coup,” Armchair General, January 2009, pp. 26–27.

  14. Tsouras, “Gettysburg Intelligence Coup,” Armchair General, January 2009, pp. 26–27.

  15. Edwin G. Fishel, The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1996), pp. 293–94.

  16. *The War in North America, Vol. V (London: Her Majesty’s Printing Office, 1910), pp. 272–75. Hope Grant organized the 12th and 15th Brigades to concentrate the hitting power of his new Imperial battalions. Each brigade had three imperial and two experienced Canadian battalions and numbered about four thousand men each. The 1st Montreal Brigade, with its one Imperial and three Canadian battalions, he left intact because of its record at the battle of Clavarack and the fighting retreat back to Canada.

  17. Chazy was settled around 1763 by Jean Laframboise, who is also credited with introducing apple growing to the area. Chazy is named after a French Lieutenant de Chézy, who was killed by the Iroquois.

  18. Fully ten thousand of the replacements for the Army of the Hudson came from the fifteen thousand Irishmen recruited by Thomas Francis Meagher the day after the Royal Navy’s surprise attack on New York City.

  19. *Edmund Winslow, British Military Intelligence in the American War (London: Her Majesty’s Printing Office, 1912), pp. 104–06.

  20. *Robert M. McArthur, Defeat and Victory: Chancellorsville to Chazy, the Life of Joseph Hooker (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1937), pp. 312–14.

  21. *William Reese, “Send in the Tartan, Man!” The Leadership of Lt. Col. William McBean at the Battle of Chazy, Journal of the Highland Regiments, 12 May, 1966, p. 89.

  22. *Alexander McKenzie, A History of the 78th Foot (Edinburgh: John Masters Publisher, 1889), p. 216.

  23. *Wilson Franklin, “The Opening Round of the Battle of Chazy,” Journal of American Military Historians, 7 January 1999, pp 37–39.

  CHAPTER THREE: “PRESS ON, MCBEAN, PRESS ON!”

  1. The Russian Baltic squadron consisted of the steam screw frigates Aleksandr Nevsky (50), Peresvet (51) Osliablia (45), steam screw corvettes Variag (18) and Vitiaz (18), and steam screw clipper Almaz (7). The U.S. Navy had replaced half of Aleksandr Nevsky’s older guns with Dahlgren 9-inch smoothbores.

  2. Peter Tsouras, Britannia’s Fist: Civil War to World War (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008), pp. 49–50. USS Gettysburg originally was a fast British mail packet captured by Lamson as it tried to run the blockade. It was refitted as a warship with Dahlgren guns and commissioned as the USS Gettysburg.

  3. Tsouras, Britannia’s Fist, Chapters 8 and 9.

  4. Sister ship to HMS Black Prince was HMS Warrior, the first ironclad built by the Royal Navy, begun in 1859 and launched in 1861. She represented a number of innovations, such as armored bulkheads and the first all-steel breech-loading guns (Armstrong 110-pounders or 7-inch), but retained the traditional broadside configuration which resulted in her size of 9,200 tons, making it the largest warship in the world. However, the Armstrong guns for all their speed and accuracy were hugely outclassed in destructive power of the 11- and 15-inch Dahlg
ren guns of the new American monitors.

  5. David Power Conyngham, The Irish Brigade and its Campaigns (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), p. 75.

  6. Thomas T. Ellis, Leaves from the Diary of an Army Surgeon (New York: John Bradburn, 1863), p. 54.

  7. Today Meagher might be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD).

  8. Maj. Gen. Alpheus Williams, advanced to (XII) corps command after the battle of Clavarack, had been absent on leave at this time. Ruger had succeeded to the position of First Division commander. Geary as senior division commander was actually acting corps commander, which was why he had been at Fort Montgomery on his corps forward position.

  9. *Vivian’s great grandson, named after his ancestor, distinguished himself in the Normandy Campaign as a junior officer in the 120th Infantry Regiment. Peter G. Tsouras, Disaster at D-Day: The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944 (London: Greenhill Books, 1994), ff. p. 223.

  10. The Dublin Brigade consisting of regiments from the garrison of Ireland: 1/10th, 29th, and 45th Regiments of Foot.

  11. *Paul H. Vivian, The Chazy Boys: Ireland’s Brigade at the Battle of Chazy (Schenectady, NY: Union College Press, 1879), p. 82.

  12. *Vivian, The Chazy Boys, p. 87.

  13. *Joseph M. Kelly, The Battle of Chazy (New York: D. Appleton, 1878), pp. 110–14. Keely’s work was one of the of books in the popular Appleton series Battles of the Great War.

  14. *Sharpe’s commission as a brigadier general was dated August 3, 1863; Ruger was promoted to brigadier after the battle of Clavarack in December 1863.

  CHAPTER FOUR: AN ARITHMETIC PROBLEM

  1. Peter G. Tsouras, A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2010), pp. 195–98.

  2. *William R. Mathis, Andrew Carnegie: The Organizer of Victory (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1889), p. 14. This work describes in detail the work of the War Industries Board and the increases in production by category.

  3. Brian Moynahan, Looking Back at Britain: Peace and Prosperity 1860s (London: Reader’s Digest, 2009), p. 28.

  4. “The Demographics of France,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France. Retrieved 4 Sep 2010.

  5. “The Social and Economic Structure of Tsarist Russia,” Wikipedia, http://www.blacksacademy.net/content/3750.html. Retrieved 4 Sep 2010.

  6. *Richard Pittman, “The War Production Board in the Great War,” American Historical Journal, Vol. XXV, 10 November 1916, p. 38.

  7. Fox to Dupont, 3 June 1862, Confidential Correspondence of Gustavus Vasa Fox, I:126–28.

  8. B.R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of Cambridge University, 1988).

  9. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. 50, December 1874–May 1975 (Harper’s Magazine Making of America Project), p. 718.

  10. A.J. Youngston Brown, The American Economy 1860–1940 (New York: The Library Press, 1951), p. 42.

  11. Robert V. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1956), pp. 145–47, 211–14.

  12. Hudson was the river port in upstate New York for the storage and transshipment of whale oil for most of the Northern states. It had been burned during the Clavarack campaign.

  13. Psalms 91, The Holy Bible (King James version).

  14. Pslams 18:32–40, The Holy Bible (King James version).

  15. Pslams 19:2, The Holy Bible (King James version).

  16. “Conservative Government 1866–1868;” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Government_1866%E2%80%931868; accessed September 18, 2010.

  17. John Stauffer, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (New York: Twelve, 2008), p. 248.

  18. David Herbert Donald, Charles Sumner, vol. II (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), pp. 88, 129.

  19. Peter G. Tsouras, Britannia’s Fist: From Civil War to World War (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008), pp. 124–28.

  20. Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Boston: De Wolfe & Fisk, 1892), p. 408.

  21. Ephraim Douglas Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, vol. I (New York: Longman Green & Co., 1925), p. 79.

  22. Isaac N. Arnold, Abraham Lincoln: A Paper Read Before the Royal Historical Society (Chicago: Fergis, 1881), p. 190.

  23. A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery of Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), p. 233.

  24. A.N. Wilson, The Victorians (W.W. Norton & Company, New York), p. 395.

  25. Christopher Hibbert, Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister (New York: Palgrave, 2006), p. 362.

  26. Gabor S. Boritt, “War Opponent and War President,” in Lincoln: The War President: The Gettysburg Lectures (New York: Oxford University press, 1992), pp. 190–192.

  27. * John Hay, American Diplomacy in the Great War (Boston: Beacon Hill Publishers, 1895), p. 188. The plans for Passaic class monitors had been sent to Russia the previous year in thanks for their successful efforts to forestall the creation of a coalition to force mediation on the Union and Confederacy, which would have, in effect, guaranteed the independence of the latter.

  28. Alexander William Kinglake, The Invasion of the Crimea, vol. 1 (London: 1863), p. 43.

  29. Even to this day many Greeks will not conduct serious business on Tuesdays, so unlucky is the day considered.

  30. At this time Greece was not even half its present size, and a majority of the Greeks still lived under Muslim rule either in the parts of present Greece still under Ottoman control or in Anatolia. The South Slav subjects of the Turks in the Balkans included the Serbians, Montenegrans, and the Bulgarians.

  CHAPTER FIVE: BREAKING OUT

  1. Rear Admiral Dahlgren, Memoirs of Ulrich Dahlgren (Philadelphia: J.B. Lipponcott & Co., 1872), p. 159–76.

  2. Peter G. Tsouras, Britannia’s Fist: Civil War to World War (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2008), p. 50. In July 1863, Lamson had brought a prize he had captured off Wilmington running the blockade to the Navy Yard. Gus Fox had suggested it be reconfigured as a warship and sent off to intercept the Laird Rams should they try to escape from Liverpool as had the infamous Confederate commerce raider, the CSS Alabama. Lincoln had come down to see how the work was progressing and wondered what new name the ship should bear. George Sharpe had been with him and suggested Gettysburg. Lincoln had instantly approved.

  3. Of course, the great Dutch admiral Michael DeRuyter sailed up the Thames as far as Gravesend to administer a drubbing to the Royal Navy at the battle of the Medway in June 1667 by attacking their major naval base at Chatham. The Dutch burnt thee capital ships and ten others, and carried away two capital ships to include, HMS Royal Charles, the flagship of the Royal Navy. It was the greatest defeat in the history of the Royal Navy.

  4. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., was the son of Charles Francis Adams, who had been U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James until the outbreak of war and was the older brother of Henry Adams. Before the war, he had been William Sewards’s campaign manager for the 1860 presidential nomination. He proved an able and bold cavalry commander after joining the 15th Mass. Vol. Regt. and served with great distinction at Antietam and Gettysburg.

  5. T.J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), pp. 277, 288.

  6. George Jeffries, first Baron Jeffreys (1644–1689). He is known as Hanging Judge Jeffreys because of the punishment he handed out at the trials of the supporters of the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. James II sent Judge Jeffreys (and a couple of others) to try the defeated rebels; the resulting “Bloody Assizes,” especially as written up by Macaulay would make Jeffreys’s reputation odious in history.

  7. HMS Nile, commanded by Capt. E.K. Barnard, was laid down in 1839 and converted to steam in 1854; she was 2,598bm, measured 205x54 ft, and carried 10-8in, and 68-32pdr. HMS Jason was a wood screw corvette, commanded by Capt. E.P.B. von Donop, was launched in 1859; she was 1,711bm or 2.431 tons, measured 225X41 ft, and car
ried 16-8in, 1-7in, and 4-40pdr. J.J. College, Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present (London: Greenhill Books, 2003), pp. 173, 228. Colburn’s United Service Magazine and Military and Naval Journal, 1863, Part III (London: Hurst & Blackett Publishers), p. 606. College and the United Service Magazine disagree on the number of guns on HMS Nile; therefore, the number given by the contemporary latter source is used.

  8. *Alfred Thayer Mahan, Gustavus Fox, William Cushing, and the Founding of the Naval Aeronautical Service (Boston: Graham & Sons, 1912), p.153.

  9. *The USS Dictator had been rushed to completion in the frenzied acceleration of construction that immediately followed the outbreak of war. That completion was only made possible by the efforts of the War Production Board (WPB) to rationalize and prioritize war production. John P. Ayers, The War Production Board in the Great War (New York: Abbot & Sons, Publisher, 1899), pp. 87–92.

  10. In addition to the USS Catskill taken by Major Bazelgette, the USS Nipsic was also captured in the same manner.

  11. A culminating point is when you have inflicted maximum damage on the enemy with minimal loss to your own force. To go beyond the culminating point risks increasing losses for decreasing gain. A spoiling attack is meant to disrupt enemy preparations and buy you time.

  12. *Alexander C. Rutledge, Spymaster of the Union: The Life of George H. Sharpe (New York: Excelsior Press, 1934), p. 352. Sharpe was a brigadier general when he assumed temporary command as the senior officer on the spot of the forces concentrating at Chazy. Lincoln immediately confirmed him in command and promoted him to major general.

  13. Adolph von Steinwehr was a German immigrant who had served in the Brunswick Army. He rose to command of the 1st Division of XI Corps and unfortunately commanded it when Stonewall Jackson fell on it like a thunderbolt at Chancellorsville. The fault was not his but that of his corps commander, Maj. Gen. O.O. Howard who failed to refuse or fortify his flank despite repeated orders from the army commander. A fellow division commander described von Steinwehr as a “remarkably intelligent and agreeable person.” His command of the 1st Division at Clavarack restored the corps’ honor and earned him its command.