Bayonets, Balloons & Ironclads: Britain and France Take Sides With the South
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13. The last serious defeat on the British Army in the British Isles had been at the battle of Prestonpans, outside of Edinburgh, on September 21, 1745, by the Highland forces of the Stuart pretender, Charles. The government army was led by General John Cope, and their disastrous defense against the Jacobites is immortalized in the song “Johnnie Cope.”
14. *Edward G. Rittenhouse, The Plot to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln: In the Words of the Eyewitnesses (Chicago: Clarke & Company, 1866), p. 111.
15. William A. Tidwell, April ’65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1995), pp. 68–69, 183–84.
16. Eleanor Ruggles, Prince of Players: Edwin Booth (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1953), p. 157.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: JUST PITCH INTO HIM
1. Anthony Gross, ed., The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln (New York, Barnes & Noble, 1994), p. 166.
2. *Michael D. Wilmoth, Spy Mistress of the Union: The Life of Elizabeth Van Lew, Patriot (Washington, DC: Arlington House Press, 178), p. 310. In addition to succeeding eventually to the directorship of the Central Information Bureau, Wilmoth became a prominent historian of the intelligence history of the war. He asserts that Van Lew obtained this information on Longstreet’s movement from her sources, clerks in the Confederate War Department. Since Van Lew never wrote her own memoirs and destroyed most of her correspondence, historians have had to rely on other sources such as Wilmoth’s to authenticate her considerable activities.
3. *John C. Babcock, The Bureau of Military Information in the Army of the Potomac (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1882), p. 264.
4. *William F. Grierson, From Ponchetoula to Baton Rouge: The Destruction of a French Army (New York: Longman Greens & Company, 1954), p. 269. For five days the Confederates continued to send trains to Ponchatoula, each one of them captured upon arrival, their railcars stuffed with supplies and a steady stream of French personnel.
5. *The absence of General Taylor’s Confederate army in the campaign to recapture northern Arkansas and Missouri would be seen as the consequence of Sharpe’s divide and conquer strategy.
6. *Etienne Clery, Clio Dulaine: Heroine of New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), pp. 320–24. Pryce Lewis married Clio Delaine and founded the libre dynasty of the Pryce-Dulaines, great powerbrokers for generations in New Orleans. Their great granddaughter, Clio Pryce-Dulaine, became U.S. senator in 2004.
7. The Dogger banks are believed to be the remains of a glacial moraine and varies in depth from 49 to 118 feet (15 to 36 m), averaging twenty meters shallower than the surrounding seas. In the Pleistocene, it was dry land now called Doggerland.
8. Edwin B. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968), p. 196. Lee said upon hearing of Meade’s appointment to command the Army of the Potomac, “General Meade will commit no blunder in my front, and if I make one he will make haste to take advantage of it.”
9. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1: Volume 28 (Part II) (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1890), p. 137. The brigade consisted of the 9th and 11th Maine and the 3rd and 4th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiments.
10. “Kansas Jayhawking Raids into Western Missouri in 1861,” Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 54 No. 1, October 1959.
11. Originally raised as the 2nd South Carolina, the regiment was redesignated the 34th U.S.C.T. in early 1864.
12. In his first assignment commanding Union forces at Fortress Monroe, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler cleverly refused to return escaped slaves to Virginia slave owners, stating that since the South considered them property, they fell under the category of contraband of war, property liable to confiscation because it provided material support to the enemy’s war effort.
13. Andrew D. Lambert, British Grand Strategy, 1853–1856 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), pp. 309–27.
14. Major George B. Davis, et al., The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2003), p. 76. This is a reprint of the atlas produced by the U.S. Army, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1891–1995.
15. *Jeremiah Philemon, Casualties of the Civil War (New York: Century Publishing Co., 1892), pp. 122–23.
16. In the United States, that part of the Seven Years War fought in North America has always been called the French and Indian War. At that conclusion of that war, the defeated French were essentially given a choice of losing either their sugar islands in the Caribbean or Canada. They chose to give up Canada and the seventy thousand French settlers there, an act that did nothing to encourage any lingering loyalty to the Bourbons or France itself.
17. *Edward Lyon Haythornthwaite, British Operations in California in the Great War, Vol. II, The Seizure of San Francisco (London: Bidwell & Sons, 1877), pp. 114–16. The British landing force consisted of a battalion of Royal Marines, and the 1/12 Foot from Australia and from New Zealand, the 2/14th, 40th, 65th, and 70th Foot in addition to 6th Co., RE.
18. *The large number of men in Union corps at this time was due to the return to the colors of so many discharged men who originally had enlisted for two years as well as recovered invalids and the flood of volunteers triggered by the British attack and Copperhead rising.
19. Peter G. Tsouras, A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril, An Alternate History (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2010), pp. 268–69.
20. *Enoch Williamson, “Army-Navy Cooperation in the Civil War and the Great War,” American Military Historical Review, Vol. XXI, 1890, pp. 37–42.
CHAPTER TWELVE: A LONG SHOT WITH A LIMB IN BETWEEN
1. Oliver Raferty, “Fenianism in North America in the 1860s: The Problems for Church and State,” History: The Journal of the Historical Association, Vol. 84, Issue 274, pp. 257–77, April 1999.
2. Western England, Scotland, and Wales: From Glasgow came the 41st Foot; from Edinburgh the 3rd, 4th, and 10th Hussars, and 92nd Foot; from Manchester the 14th Hussars; from Birmingham 1st and 2nd Dragoons. These were accompanied by twenty-three RVCs and totaled 27,800 men including artillery and engineers. The Channel ports and nearby: Jersey 61st Foot; Aldershot, 1/3rd Foot, 1/24th Foot, 2/60th Foot, 76th Foot, 4th Artillery Brigade, Military Trains (2nd and 5th Battalions); Brighton 9th Lancers; Schorncliffe 1/5th Foot; Dover 85th Foot. Another 30 RVCs accompanied this force for a total of 30,300 men.
3. The first wave of forces sent to Ireland included the following Volunteer Corps: (Scotland) Ayrshire Arty VC, Ayrshire RVC, 3rd, 5th, and 18th Renfrewshire RVCs, 1st Lanarkshire Arty VC, 1st Lanarkshire Engr VC, 3rd, 4th, 19th, 38th, 86th, and 88th Lanarkshire RVCs and from England 10th, 13th, and 21st Lancashire Arty VCs, 11th, 5th, 6th, 28th, 51st, 56th RVCs, and 1st (Birkenhead), 2nd, 4th, 6th, 13th, and 56th Cheshire RVCs, and (Wales) 1st, 2nd, and 6th Flintshire RVCs. This is a total of 24 RVCs, 5 arty VCs, and 1 Engr VC.
4. “The Times of London, May 20th, 1864.
5. Lieutenant colonels in the English-speaking armies are addressed simply as colonel.
6. Adolph A. Hoehling, Thunder at Hampton Roads (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993). p. 6.
7. Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, The American Civil War: The Ritings of Field Marshal Viscount Wosleley (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004), p. 61. As a younger man Robert E. Lee had often been referred to as the handsomest man in North America. Wolseley in his writings repeatedly refers to him as handsome.
8. After his death at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 the body of Adm. Horatio Nelson was transported back to England for burial in a barrel of brandy to preserve it.
9. At this time the Indian Army collectively referred to the three standing armies the British maintained in India: the Bengal Army, the Madras Army, and the Bombay Army. Each had its own establishment separate from the British Army.
10. Peter G. Tsouras, ed., The Book of Military Quotations (London: Greenhill Books, 2005), p. 223.
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sp; 11. *Major General John Frederick Maurice, General Robert Napier and the Irish Campaign (London: Blackwoods Publishers, 1910), p. 327.
12. The honors of war allowed a surrendered garrison of a fortress to march out under arms and with colors flying to be saluted by the victor. It was a mark of great honor by the victor to the valor of the vanquished.
13. *Elijah W. Watkins, Fire Kills: The Role of Repeating Weapons in the World War (Philadelphia: The Neale Publishing Co., 1889), p. 299. The use of repeating weapons against the well dug-in Confederates was not as overpowering as hoped. Already protected by deep trenches and earthworks, the Confederate infantry was able to return sufficient, protected fire through the firing slots between timbers to beat back any Union attack.
14. The detachment of II and VI Corps and a cavalry division left Meade’s Army of the Potomac with I, III, and V Corps and a two division cavalry corps, altogether about one hundred thousand men now that the Army had been reinforced with so many veterans returned to the colors and volunteers.
15. It was for this victory that Grant was made 1st Viscount Grant of Kennebunk.
16. The germ of this idea was to grow into the concentration camp system used in the Boer War of 1899–1902 in which large numbers of Boer women and children died of poor treatment.
17. Angus Konstam, Duel of the Ironclads: USS Monitor & CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads 1862 (Botely, Oxord: Osprey Publishing, 2003), pp. 93–94. Dictator: 4,438 tons, 312 x 50 x 20.5 ft, 9 knots, 2 x 15 in. Dahlgrens in a single turret, crew 174. Monadnock: 3,295 tons, 250 ft. x 53 ft 8 in. x 12 ft. 3 in., 9 knots, 4 x 15 in. Dahlgrens in two turrets, crew 130.Onondaga: 2,592 tons, 226 x 49 ft. 3 in. x 12 ft. 10 in., 7 knots, 2 x 8 in. rifles in forward turret, 2 x 15 in. Dahlgrens in after turret, crew 130. Canonicus: 2,100 tons, 223 ft. x 43 ft. 4 in. x 13 ft. 6 in., 8 knots, 2 x 15 in. Dahlgrens in a single turret, crew 85.
18. * Julian Corbett, The Carnegie Reforms and Their Effect on the Naval War (London: Nelson Press, 1901), pp. 312–15. Three of the Canonicus class were scheduled for commissioning in April 1864 even before the war with Great Britain. Onondaga had already been commissioned in March. Dictator, Monadnock, Manhattan, and Mohapac were completed well ahead of schedule due to the Carnegie reforms.
19. Peter G. Tsouras, ed., The Book of Military Quotations (London: Greenhill Books, 2005), pp. 313–14.
20. *Edward G. Rittenhouse, The Plot to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln: In the Words of the Eyewitnesses (Chicago: Clarke & Company, 1866), pp. 266–68. John Peanut’s testimony was a key element of the prosecution of the plotters.
21. James L. Swinton, Manhunt: The 12-day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), pp. 36–37.
22. David Homer Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office: Recollections of the United States Military Telegraph Corps During the Civil War (New York: The Century Co., 1907), p. 205.
23. Lonnie R. Speer, Portals to Hell: Military Prisons in the Civil War (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997), pp. 151–53.
24. *James T. Faulkner, Liberation! The Rescue of the Confederate Prisoners at Point Lookout (Richmond: Hollywood Press, 1936), pp. 277–82.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: RUNNING THE ROADS
1. David Homer Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office: Recollections of the United States Military Telegraph Corps During the Civil War (New York: The Century Co., 1907), p. 210.
2. At this time there was a saying that was equivalent to “Selling coals to Newcastle”: “Selling grain to Russia.” Tragically, the insanities of Marxist economics as practiced later in the Soviet Union, meant that eventually the region that once produced huge surpluses could not even feed itself and had to buy American grain.
3. Field Marshal Viscount Wolslely, The American Civil War: The Writings of Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, An English View (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002), p. 42. Wolseley in his “shooting leave” visit to the Army of Northern Virginia made just the same point.
4. On some period maps, Hanover Junction is referred to as Sexton Junction.
5. Thomas A. Lewis and the Editors of Time-Life Books, The Shenandoah in Flames: The Valley Campaign of 1864 (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1987), pp. 103–104.
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxley_Sorre, accessed 31 July 2011. In Moxley Sorrel, Longstreet was blessed with the man considered to be the finest staff officer in the Confederacy.
7. *The 3rd Brigade of the Cavalry Division consisted of the 1st Vermont and 1st West Virginia Cavalry Regiments. Only the 1st Vermont was present at Brighton. The 1st Vermont had been transferred to the Army of the Hudson because part of Vermont was occupied by the British, an incentive if ever there was one to fight hard.
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wells_(general), accessed 21 July 2011. “Wells received more promotions than any other Vermont officer during the war (from Private to General in less than three and a half years).”
9. *Fitzhugh Lee’s Division consisted of two brigades, Wickham’s and Lomax’s. Wickham’s Brigade consisted of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Virginia Cavalry. Lomax had sent two of its regiments (5th and 15th Virginia) with Longstreet to the James Peninsula. The remaining two formations, the 6th Virginia and 1st Maryland Cavalry Battalion were reinforced by the heretofore independent 9th Virginia Cavalry. The 1st Maryland Battalion was composed of six companies, rather than the normal ten for a cavalry regiment. At that time, the term battalion was used to describe an organization that did not have the complete organization of a regiment or part of a regiment detached for a special purpose.
10. During the Civil War far more of the eastern United States had been deforested and put under the plow than today. Large areas that today have reverted to forest were once rolling farmland. Woodlots and remaining woods were usually well-managed for their resources of wood. The undergrowth was kept cleared to allow cattle and hogs to browse.
11. Victor Davis Hansen, The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Days to the Present (New York: The Free Press, 1999), p. 20.
12. Farragut’s squadron was traveling at seven knots and hour, which would take it one hour and twenty-six minutes to go the ten miles to British squadron. The picket ship was traveling at a fast twelve knots and hour, which would take fifty minutes to reach the British squadron. Thus at most, Admiral Hope had a thirty-six-minute warning.
13. *Edwin Swinton, Running the Roads: Preclude to Decision (New York: The Century Company, 1888), p. 182. Mahopac went down with her full crew of 80 officers and men. Royal Oak’s losses were 187 killed or missing, and 42 wounded.
14. The term arm blanche means the “white arm,” referring to the heraldic color of the French cavalry before the Revolution and by inference the cavalry itself.
15. Eric J. Wittenberg, The Union Cavalry Comes of Age: Hartwood Church to Brandy Station, 1863 (Washington, DC: Brassey’s Inc., 2003), pp. 284–85.
16. *Alonzo W. Cushing, The Barbary Pirate: The Feats of the Aeroship USS Stephen Decatur in the Great War (Philadelphia: D. Appleton, Publishers, 1901), p. 31. This book was written by Cushing’s son whom he named after his brother who fell at the head of his battery at the stone during Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. The name Barbary Pirate was unofficially chosen by the crew to commemorate Stephen Decatur’s feats during the wars against the Muslim pirates of the Barbary States in North Africa.
17. Peter G. Tsouras, The Book of Military Quotations (London: Greenhill Books, 22005), p. 238.
18. *Henry Glasdale, The Repeater War: The Effects of Repeating Weapons in the War (New York: The Neale Publishing Co., 1904), pp. 311–12. The Gatlings and coffee mill guns were organized into new batteries under the artillery. This was a logical development but one that employed them as artillery rather than direct infantry support weapons, one reason that British artillery, in particular, was often able to neutralize the coffee mill guns in the Army of the Hudson so well.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: “WE’VE GOT ’EM NICKED!”
1. Elizabeth R. Varon, Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story
of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 96–97.
2. *Michael D. Wilmoth, ed., Intelligence Operations in the Hanover Campaign, Vol. 8 in The Intelligence War series (Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1888), p. 39.
3. Abraham Lincoln, letter to James C. Conkling, Aug. 26, 1863, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 6 (Rutgers University Press, 1953, 1990), p. 409.
4. The two smallest British ironclads were Prince Albert at 3,746 tons and Wivern at 2,751. The two largest American turreted ironclads were Dictator at 4,438 tons and Monadnock at 3,295.
5. The American ironclads’ guns included: 23x 15-inch Dahlgrens, 14 x 11-inch Dahgrens, 2 x 8-inch guns, and 2 x 150-pdr Rodman rifles, for a total of. The British ironclads had 5 x 10.5-inch, 18 x 9-inch, 2 x 8-inch, 41 x 7-inch (110 pdr), 49 x 68 pdr, 8 x 100 pdr, and 4 x 40 pdr guns, for total of 124 guns.
6. USS Brooklyn was the same size (2,400 tons) and even more heavily (twenty-one guns) armed than the frigate Powhatan with eleven guns.
7. “To nick” meant at that time “to catch at the right point or time.”
8. The first instance was when he arrived on the field of Gettysburg in the late afternoon of July 1 just as the defeated Union troops were streaming up to Cemetery Hill and Ridge. He instantly saw the critical importance of Culp’s Hill and immediately sent troops to defend it; they arrived just before the Confederates. On July 2 he plugged the gap left in the Union line by Sickles defeat and threw back the Confederate force that was about to plunge over Cemetery Ridge. On July 3 his II Corps threw back Lee’s great attack.
9. These two regiments had been sent to North America at almost full strength; Canada had been far healthier than the Crimea where losses to disease had reduced the entire Light Brigade of five regiments to barely six hundred men.