The American garrison was withdrawn following the outbreak of war between the North and South and the Royal Marines seized the whole of San Juan Island in January 1862. The Marines have commemorated this unopposed victory ever since with an annual dinner of roast pork, except in 1944 during a particularly difficult period of the fighting in Italy, when they had to resort to tinned bully beef.
The British had only a couple of hundred Royal Engineers on nearby Vancouver Island and in British Columbia on the mainland, as it was cheaper to use the Royal Navy rather than garrisons to maintain law, order and British sovereignty. As a result of its gold rush in 1858 British Columbia contained a majority of American settlers and its governor, James Douglas, had vainly asked for two battalions of reinforcements before the outbreak of the war. Some additional British troops were sent from China immediately after hostilities began, as a holding measure. Then, in April 1862, another 10,000 men arrived from India under Lieutenant-General Sir James Hope Grant, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Madras and one of the heroes of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. He also happened to be an accomplished musician and was always accompanied on campaign by his cello.
Grant took the offensive and thrust southwards into Washington Territory and Oregon, where he was joined by the warriors from the Paiute tribe. The Gurkhas were involved in several sharp clashes with detachments of the 2d California Volunteer Infantry and in one famous action a Federal unit was charged on one side by Paiute warriors and on the other by the Gujarat Silladar Horse. By the end of the war, the British effectively controlled the entire Pacific coast and were sending cavalry units to raid gold and silver mines in Nevada Territory in conjunction with local Native American tribes.
The Invasion of British North America
Meanwhile, the war had taken a dramatic turn on the eastern side of the continent as the Union invaded British North America.
Britain’s intervention had immediately overturned the Union’s strategy of strangling the Confederacy with a blockade and a deadly thrust into its heartland along the Mississippi. The Union now gave priority to operations in the east, against both Richmond and British North America. This accorded with popular demand. Lincoln’s administration was riven by arguments throughout February 1862 over whether to concentrate first on Richmond or on forcing Britain to the negotiating table with an invasion of British North America before the Royal Navy could have a serious impact. The result was a compromise, whereby the Army of the Potomac under Major General George B. McClellan would advance on Richmond with 72,000 men while Major Generals John Pope and Henry W. Halleck invaded British North America with 116,000 after the spring thaw.
No fewer than six rivers crossed the Union line of advance on Richmond. General Robert E. Lee with the Franco-Confederate Army of Northern Virginia (53,000 men) skilfully defeated McClellan’s offensives and inflicted heavy casualties. But Union operations on the northern front were more successful and began with the Union establishing naval supremacy on the Great Lakes. The British, with only 18,000 regulars under Lieutenant-General Sir William Fenwick Williams, were hopelessly outnumbered. Halleck’s Army of the Niagara (65,000) attacked across that river from the town of Buffalo and its subsequent advance was eased by a successful amphibious assault on Toronto on the northern shore of Lake Ontario. The British fought a heroic delaying action at Kingston on the north-eastern end of the lake and then withdrew down the St Lawrence. Fortunately, the river was no longer frozen and reinforcements from England were able to reach Quebec.
Meanwhile, Pope’s Army of the Hudson (51,000) advanced directly north, up the traditional invasion route along Lake Champlain. Its objective was Montreal, the largest city in British North America with a population of 90,000, and the key communications hub. Pope linked up with Halleck in May 1862 and took the city, much of which was burnt. Another casualty was Montreal’s magnificent, two-mile-long Royal Victoria railway bridge, which was blown up by the British.
The Union armies had lost heavily in the fighting and Pope had to leave Halleck to guard his rear while he himself advanced on Quebec. His offensive was checked on July 19 on the Plains of Abraham outside the city, where a series of idiotic frontal attacks were massacred by the deadly firepower of the British regulars. The battle-torn regimental color of the 10th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was captured by the 63rd (West Suffolk) Regiment of Foot and is still preserved today at Windsor Castle. Four Victoria Crosses were won in this great victory, including a posthumous award to Lieutenant-Colonel Garnet Wolseley.13 It was a turning point in the war, for the loss of Quebec would have been disastrous. Pope’s options were now limited by the timely arrival of more British troops from home.
Canadian militia forces which had been left behind Union lines in the wake of the invasion were raiding communications and tying down many units. Pope exacerbated the situation by ordering his troops to live off the country and by taking tough reprisals in a vain attempt to halt guerrilla attacks. These measures simply antagonized the local population and created bitter hatred. Halleck’s Army of the Niagara also had to contend with the Confederate raider Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had left Southern lines and ridden northwards through Ohio and Pennsylvania in a wide arc to strike Union communications. On November 18, 1862, Forrest was finally trapped at New Castle in Pennsylvania during one of his devastating raids and was shot dead, allegedly by friendly fire, as he tried to fight his way out of the chaos.
The British were keen to bring the war to a swift conclusion, for they were alarmed at the scale of their casualties, the astronomical financial cost and at the possibility of losing their North American provinces altogether. Apparently, they even assisted Confederate secret agents, who had long been operating from British North America, but whose effectiveness now dramatically increased. In their most audacious stroke, these agents used incendiary devices in an attack on New York City, setting fire to dozens of hotels, businesses, public buildings and shipyards. The simultaneous fires could not be controlled and gutted Broadway. Similar, but less successful, attacks were made on Baltimore, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, causing widespread panic and disruption. Other agents threw small explosive devices into coal bunkers in Navy Yards in the hope that they would explode after ending up in ships’ furnaces. At least two Union vessels were crippled in this way.
Similarly audacious plans to rescue prisoners-of-war from camps near the border were foiled when the Union increased security measures. Despite the appalling conditions in the prisons, the British regimental system maintained remarkably high morale and cohesion and this was reflected in the survival rates. The British officers imprisoned in the camps introduced their Confederate comrades to the game of cricket, which has since become even more popular in the Deep South than baseball is in the North. British prisoners-of-war also became notorious for their repeated escape attempts. Their most spectacular bid for freedom came in October 1862 when they organized a mass escape from Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island. The breakout was made at night and involved seizing two of the guard boats that patrolled the surrounding waters. The escapees made it ashore to the river bank by constructing rafts of canteens or by swimming and some managed to reach Confederate lines, where they were incorporated into the Louisiana Tigers.
Confederate Victories
Meanwhile, the Confederates and their French allies had continued to defeat the Union attacks north of Richmond. Then, at the end of August 1862, Lee invaded the North with 59,000 men in response to British appeals for a major diversion. He defeated McClellan at Boonsboro, Maryland, on September 15 despite heavy casualties. During the battle, Bazaine’s Frenchmen broke into the Union defences in one of the most outstanding attacks of the war, prompting Lee to exclaim: “I have never seen a finer assault in my life. The day is yours! Vive la Francer”
Lee was determined to remain in the North during the winter and to maintain the threat to Washington, D.C., whose girdle of earthworks was hurriedly strengthened. Lincoln in desperation considered proc
laiming the emancipation of the Confederacy’s slaves, but realized that he could not make such an announcement from a position of military weakness without it backfiring. In the meantime, he sacked McClellan and replaced him with Major General William Buel Franklin.
Lee continued his advance and on November 4 defeated Franklin at Cashtown, Pennsylvania. The Confederacy’s hero of the day was the popular and eccentric Major General Richard S. Ewell. His projecting nose and sloping forehead gave him a distinctly bird-like profile and the French circulated fond, and possibly apocryphal, stories of him spending a conference happily chirping away and pecking at a handful of birdseed. He was widely mourned when he was killed by a cannonball at the height of the battle.
Confronted with the success of Lee’s invasion, Lincoln evacuated Washington and transferred his government to New York City. He lost control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats in the congressional elections in November and his political survival looked increasingly unlikely. On January 29, 1863, Lee reoccupied his mansion at Arlington just outside the former capital and that afternoon reviewed Major General Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson’s troops as they tramped past the abandoned White House. Some Confederates called for their capital to be moved from Richmond to Washington, but President Jefferson Davis rejected the idea. The Confederacy was fighting a war of independence, not of conquest. Furthermore, Richmond would be less exposed than Washington in both the current and any future war against the North.
The success of Lee’s invasion dealt the North another severe blow when Maryland seceded. Maryland was one of four slave states on the border between North and South whose loyalties were deeply divided. The other three were Delaware and, in the west, Kentucky and Missouri. All four had stayed with the Union on the outbreak of war, partly because of the presence of Northern troops. Delaware still remained loyal, but Kentucky and Missouri both had rival pro-Confederate and pro-Union governments.
Lincoln ordered the Northern armies in Canada to withdraw to help block Lee. They had suffered appallingly after their defeat at Quebec from the ravages of the Canadian winter and from the strain of guerrilla attacks. The British cautiously followed the Union retreat and even began to plan an advance down Lake Champlain towards New York City to split the Union and isolate the north-eastern states, which were already blockaded by sea. This had been the route taken by Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne in 1777 during the War of Independence and by Lieutenant-General Sir George Prevost in the War of 1812–14. It was not encouraging that Burgoyne had been forced to surrender at Saratoga and that Prevost had retreated after the destruction of his supporting fleet on Lake Champlain. It was clear that any such advance could only be undertaken in close conjunction with Confederate moves.
As it happened, events elsewhere moved too fast for the British to launch a serious offensive. Anti-war sentiment in the North had already provoked serious unrest and when large-scale riots broke out in New York City in March 1863, the vain, resentful and ambitious McClellan took the opportunity to launch a military coup. His close friend Major General Franklin marched on New York with a corps from the Army of the Potomac, ostensibly to restore order, while other generals declared their support, including William S. Rosecrans, Ambrose E. Burnside and Henry J. Hunt. Lincoln, whom McClellan despised and openly derided as “the original Gorilla” or “a well-meaning baboon,” was arrested.
McClellan believed that he was the only man able to save the North from destruction. He imposed military rule, arranged an armistice and asked the Russian ambassador to help mediate a settlement.14
The End of the War
Tsar Alexander II of Russia had become increasingly concerned at the progress of the war. He had fought the British and French in the Crimea just seven years earlier and had conflicting interests with Britain in the Balkans, Persia and Afghanistan. He favored the North, as he saw the United States as a useful ally and a counter-balance against British global power.
The friendship was mutual. Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William H. Seward, asserted in 1862:
“She [Russia] has our friendship, in every case, in preference to any other European power, simply because she always wishes us well, and leaves us to conduct our affairs as we think best.”15
Union ships found a warm welcome in Russian ports as they sailed the world raiding allied commerce. The tsar even sent Russian volunteers to fight unofficially for the North under the leadership of Brigadier General John B. Turchin, who had served on the tsar’s staff before the war as Ivan Vasilovitch Turchinoff. As part of the Army of the Cumberland, Turchin fought in Kentucky and the northern districts of Tennessee. His Russian wife, Nadia, insisted on following him on campaign and even commanded his brigade in the Battle of Oak Grove when he fell ill. Turchin was so effective that he was called “The Russian Thunderbolt,” although he had a bad reputation for looting.
The tsar, alarmed at the North’s imminent defeat, wanted to end the war as quickly and favorably as possible. Direct intervention was out of the question, for Russia’s deficiencies had been only too evident in the Crimea and the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 had caused additional problems. The Russian Navy was too weak and outdated to win a major fleet action, but its warships, operating independently, would make effective commerce raiders. The tsar therefore sent two fleets to the Pacific and Indian Oceans where they could pose a potential threat to British trade while he exerted diplomatic pressure on Britain to accept international mediation. He was supported by the Prussian king and peace was signed in August 1863 in the Swiss city of Geneva.
The Confederacy won its independence and massive reparations. It also secured a five-year occupation of a buffer zone north of the border, including Delaware and the southern half of Pennsylvania. The former Union slave states of Kentucky and Missouri followed Maryland’s lead in seceding to the victorious Confederacy. On the other hand, Britain returned California, Oregon and Washington Territory to the North, being keen to withdraw from colonial commitments rather than add to them. She also wanted to balance the North and South so that neither could dominate the New World and realized that by returning the Pacific Seaboard she might divert the North’s expansionist energies away from British North America. Critics, including Robert Cecil, the future Lord Salisbury and the rising star of the Conservative Party, argued forcefully that the aggressive and militaristic North would inevitably turn against British North America in its desire for revenge and that the return of the Pacific Seaboard would simply encourage hopes of further territorial compensation. Cecil was particularly alarmed at the potential for a future global war against both Russia and the North, with Britain being forced to defend her far-flung Empire against simultaneous attacks as far away as British North America and the North-West Frontier of India.16 Such fears were aggravated by the shooting of Prime Minister William Gladstone in 1869 by a disgruntled Union activist. The assassin was sentenced to death, but had his sentence commuted on Queen Victoria’s personal intervention.
McClellan’s coup deeply divided Northern society, entailing as it did the abandonment of the Union and the collapse of the democratic experiment. Many veterans, aggrieved at their wasted sacrifices and the pointless deaths of so many comrades, bitterly accused McClellan of treason. His nickname, “the little Napoleon,” had originally referred to his promise as a military commander, but now became a political jibe. Such internal pressures contributed to the political instability and extremism of the North and the volatility of its foreign policy in the decades immediately after the war.
Lincoln was put on trial for misuse of the Presidential powers, particularly in his suppression of more than 300 Northern newspapers and the internment of 14,000 opponents without trial. He was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, but was released after 14 months and returned to his former profession as a lawyer. He would die in 1887, mourned by thousands of African-Americans and die-hard veterans who saw in him the embodiment of the Great Cause of American freedom and democracy.
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p; Presidents McClellan and Jefferson Davis were left to contemplate a future complicated by the needs of reconstruction and realignment, but also bright with the great opportunities now opening before their two nations.
The Reality
The Trent crisis did happen, but did not involve bloodshed and was defused in part by Prince Albert, who skilfully moderated the language of Lord Russell’s message to make it read less like an ultimatum and more as a starting point for negotiation. Albert died from typhoid just a fortnight later. He had nearly been killed in his runaway carriage while visiting Coburg in 1860, but had managed to jump clear in time and had escaped with cuts and bruises.
Britain and the North neither wanted, nor were they prepared for, a war in 1861. A full-scale conflict was less likely than is often thought and would probably have required a series of additional provocations following the Trent incident. In reality, the Confederates idiotically failed to try and precipitate British intervention through cross-border raids until late in the war. They concentrated instead on diplomatic methods in a vain attempt to secure recognition of the Confederacy as an independent nation.
The incendiary attack on New York City was in fact carried out by Confederate agents on November 25, 1864, but caused more alarm than damage. The plot might have worked if the agents had known how to mix Greek Fire properly.
Dixie Victorious Page 4