Bayonets, Balloons & Ironclads: Britain and France Take Sides With the South
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10. The wolverine is the state animal of Michigan, a stocky and muscular carnivore that has a reputation for ferocity and strength out of proportion to its size, with the documented ability to kill prey many times its size.
11. Robert J. Schneller, Jr., A Quest for Glory: A Biography of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren (Anapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996), pp. 156–57.
12. The 120th NY had been raised by Sharpe at the request of the governor of New York in September 1862. He had commanded it until he had been made chief of the new BMI by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker in February 1863. He continued in nominal command because that was source of his commission, though the regiment’s lieutenant colonel had operational command. With Sharpe’s assignment to the new CIB, he persuaded Lincoln to assign the regiment to the garrison of Washington where he employed it for security operations and presidential protection. He also acquired control of the 3rd Indiana Cavalry, which had a history of special operations. Sharpe employed these regiments in the battle of Washington to stop the Confederate attack over Long Bridge.
13. Gavin Mortimer, Double Death: The True Story of Pryce Lewis, The Civil War’s Most Daring Spy (New York: Walker & Company, 2010), pp. 183–90. Timothy Webster, Jr., was executed on April 29, 1862, as a spy by the Confederates in Richmond. Heretofore, both sides had refrained from executing spies.
14. Edwin Forrest, 1806–1872, was one of the great tragedians of the American stage in the first half of the nineteenth century. At this time his health was failing and his draw as an actor fading.
15. The British, under Hope Grant’s command, sacked the splendid Chinese imperial summer palace in the Third China War of 1860. Grant declined his share of the loot and had it shared out among his men.
16. *James Joyce, My Own Country’s Capital (London: Sylvia Beach, 1925), pp. 322–23. Since the Irish War of Independence was almost exclusively fought in and around Dublin, it was of particular fascination to a novelist like Joyce, who wrote, “For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: “I WOULD RATHER DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS”
1. J.J. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All fighting Shps of the Royal Navy from the Fifteenth Century to the Present (London: Greenhill Books, 2003) p. 110. HMS Edgar was one of the few ships-of-the-line at this time to be equipped with heavy ordnance, forty-four 8-and 10-inch guns.
2. *Julian Corbett, Admiral James Hope and the Ironclad Controversy (London: The Library of Imperial History, 1905), p. 92.
3. *Michael D. Wilmoth, ed., Intelligence Operations in the Saco Campaign, Vol. 9 in The Intelligence War series (Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1890), p. 39.
4. Napoleon, 11 March 1805, to a courier to the czar, quoted in R.M. Johnston, The Corsican, 1910 and Peter G. Tsouras, ed., The Book of Military Quotations (London: Greenhill Books, 2005), p. 442.
5. Robert E. Lee, letter to Jefferson Davis quoted in Douglas Southall Freeman on Leadership, 1993, and in Tsouras, pp. 149–50.
6. *Babock on Sharpe’s instructions had supervised the setting up of a new BMI office for Hancock’s Army of the Rappahannock, staffing it with two of his experienced officers and several of his better scouts. To this core, Sharpe had sent down the rest of the team to include cipher clerks and a company of the Balloon Corps.
7. *Peter G. Tsouras, ed., The Memoirs of Sergeant Judson Knight, Chief of Scouts of the Army of the Hudson (Alexandria, VA: Xenophon Press, 2009), pp. 331–32.
8. Peter G. Tsouras, A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2010), pp. 259–60.
9. http://www.hanoveracademy.org/about.htm, accessed 7 July 2011. “Hanover Academy was one of the first classical schools founded in America. The first Hanover Academy was established in 1859 by Colonel Louis Minor Coleman as a preparatory school for boys, closely affiliated with the University of Virginia. The hardships of the Civil War and the reconstruction which followed, forced the Academy to cease operation in 1889,” not to reopen until the centenary of its founding.
10. *Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Submersible Squadron at the Battle of the Chesapeake (Boston: Beacon Hill Press, 1899), p. 132.
11. Peter G. Tsouras, Britannia’s Fist: From Civil War to World War (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008), pp. 51–57, 63–65, 73–74. Captain Hancock immediately prior to the war served as an unofficial naval assistant to the British ambassador, Lord Lyons, and as an observer for the Admiralty.
12. HMS Immortalité was the fourth British ship with this French name. The first ship of that name had been captured from the French in 1798, and the second and third ship were also French captures renamed for the original French capture. It was customary in the age of sail to retain the name of a captured ship.
13. Each of the three brigades in the British 2nd Division was composed of an Imperial (British) battalion and three smaller Canadian militia battalions.
14. *Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Selected Letters 1839–1865 (New York: The Library of America, 1990) pp. 770–71.
15. Grant, pp. 701–702.
16. *John F. Feldman, Ordnance Development in the Naval Aeronautical Service During the Great War (Naval Academy Press, 1927), pp. 222–25. Bronze was used in aerial bombs because iron ordnance was always at risk of striking a spark, lethal on a hydrogen aeroship.
17. Von Borke returned to the Prussian Army after the Civil War and fought with great gallantry in the Six Weeks War against Austria in 1866. Upon inheriting his father’s castle, he proudly flew the Confederate flag from its battlements.
18. NPS, “The Battle of Yellow Tavern,” http://www.nps.gov/frsp/planyourvisit/yell-tav.htm, accessed 7 July 2011.
19. *William Clyde, Hero of the Chesapeake: The Life of Admiral George Hancock (London: Greencastle Press, 1935), p. 230. Hancock was awarded the VC and a knighthood for his gallantry in shielding the remnant of the fleet at the end of the battle of the Chesapeake. He would later command the first of the Revenge class ironclads and ultimately was promoted to admiral and commanded the Pacific Station, where he died in 1876.
20. Larry Tagg, The Generals of Gettysburg (Campbell, CA: Savas Publishing, 1998) p. 301.
21. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonorrhea, accessed 8 July 2011; aching joints and heart valves are debilitating effects of gonorrhea.
22. *Edward R. McKenzie, Well Done, Canada: The 1st Battalion, The Prince of Wales Regiment in the American War (Toronto: The Prince of Wales Regiment Society, 1888), pp. 311–12.
23. 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), p. 68.
24. J. William Jones, “General Lee to the Rear,” Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume VIII Jan-1880 No.1 pages 32–35
25. Robert E. Lee, The Memoirs of Robert E. Lee (Philadelphia: D. Appleton & Company, 1866), p. 534.
EPILOGUE
1. David D. Ryan, ed., A Yankee Spy in Richmond: The Civil War Diary of “Crazy Bet” Van Lew (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1996), pp. 18–19.
2. *John G. Chambers, How I Captured Jefferson Davis (Philadelphia: D. Appleton Publishers, 1866), p. 177. Chambers was a white major in the 1st USCC and attributed Davis’s survival to the fact that it was he who burst through the bedroom door to confront the Confederate President. Had it been some of his colored troopers, undoubtedly Davis would have immediately fired and been killed himself. He seemed relieved to be captured by a white man. Weitzel, however, gave the honor of guarding him to the 54th Massachusetts whose men were models of military bearing and courtesy. The 1st USCC were a little too wild for him. Davis would compliment the conduct of the Massachusetts men and referred to the time when he had armed his own slaves to hunt down white bandits.
3. *Edward G. Rittenhouse, The Plot to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln: In the Words of the Eyewitnesse
s (Chicago: Clarke & Company, 1866), p. 302.
4. *George Allen Townsend, The Trial and Execution of John Wilkes Booth (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1865), pp. 292–95.
5. Peter G. Tsouras, A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2010), pp. 195–98. Lincoln had been shot in October 1864 during the battle of Washington by his traitorous bodyguard, Big Jim Smoke. The shot had grazed his head. Mrs. Lincoln’s reaction was similarly hysterical on that occasion as well.
6. *Edwin Marsden, Let US Have Peace (New York: Webster Publishers, 1895), pp. 199–203. A lithograph in Harper’s Magazine of Lincoln and Davis sitting together became the iconic symbol of national reconciliation.
7. *William Henry Wilson, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Brig. Gen. Ulrich Dahlgren (Washington, DC: The Cavalry Press, 1934), p. 288. At this ball, Dahlgren would meet his future bride, a Russian princess, daughter of one of the czar’s cousins.
8. *Vladimir A. Osipov, Russia and the American Alliance: A Lesson in Perfidy (Moscow: Imperial House Publishers, 1932), pp. 301–11.
9. *Thomas Francis Meagher, The Great Betrayal (London: Trafalgar Square Publishers, 1877), pp. 311–12. Ironically, Disrael’s mild hand in suppressing the Irish revolt and Gladstone’s subsequent goal of providing home rule to Ireland actually accelerated the achievement of Irish independence with no further violence within the Commonwealth that emerged in the twentieth century. To this day the Queen’s portrait still hangs in Dublin.
10. The United States attempted to conquer Canada during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, bungling both attempts, hence the apropos slogan.
11. *John Bancroft, California for Canada: The Grand Bargainthat Sealed a Peace (Boston: Beacon Hill Press, 1902), pp. 411–413.
12. *Frederick William Seward, William H. Seward and the Treaty that Ended the War (New York: Newbury Publishers, 1886), pp. 299–301. Seward privately explained Lincoln’s reasoning for the plebecite to his British counterpart during negotiations in Havana as laying the groundwork for the treaty’s acceptance by Northern opinion.
APPENDIX B: STATIONS OF THE BRITISH ARMY
1. Colburn’s United Service Magazine and Naval and Military Journal, 1863, Part III (London: Hurst & Blackett, Publishers, 1863), pp. 451–456.
2. Colburn’s, p. 451. The Curragh Plain was the great summer months training ground of the British Army in Ireland. Three battalions(2/12th, 32nd, 86th) training there in August would be back in Dublin by October.
APPENDIX E: ORDER-OF-BATTLE OF THE CAVALRY ACTION AT HANOVER JUNCTION
1. *Jonathan Bobbs, The Cavalry in the New England Campaign (Monpelier, VT: Monpelier Press, 1988), pp. 11, 78. The transfer of Second Brigade’s 1st Maine and 1st Vermont to operations in upper New England required the transfer of the 18th Pennsylvania to the First Brigade.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter G. Tsouras is a retired Army officer and intelligence analyst, a military historian, and the author or editor of twenty-seven works of military history and alternate history that range the broad sweep of military history from Alexander the Great to Mesoamerica to the Gulf war. His alternate history works Gettysburg: An Alternate History; Dixie Victorious: An Alternate History of the Civil War; Disaster at D-Day: The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944; His military quotation books are the most comprehensive in the English language and include Military Quotations form the Civil War: In the Words of the Commanders and The Book of Military Quotations. His history titles include Alexander: Invincible King of Macedonia, Warlords of the Ancient Americas, Montezuma: Warlord of the Aztecs, and The Great Patriotic War. He has also edited a number of alternate history anthologies as well as memoirs of German generals of World War II. Many of them have been primary selections in the History Book Club and Military Book Club. A regular guest on the History Channel and similar venues in Britain and Canada, Mr. Tsouras retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2010 and lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife, Patricia, where he is devoting himself to writing, his garden, and, above all, his granddaughters, Eleni Mae and Althea Rose.