Dixie Victorious: An Alternate history of the Civil War

by Peter Tsouras

  Events moved at a breathtaking pace that portentous fall of 1862, whereby one day’s sensationalism often became conventional wisdom on the morrow. Fields of bloodshed and dramatic political scenes coalesced in a kaleidoscopic patchwork of tragedy for the disintegrating United States. Stuart, largely relieved of screening an army operating in enemy country, could joyride his cavalry almost to his heart’s content. His first move was to the north into Pennsylvania where he burned Carlisle, tore up the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and raided the key railroad hub at Harrisburg, destroying the Susquehanna bridge in the bargain. Next, moving southeast, the army’s mounted eyes and ears rode the wave of popular sentiment around Baltimore. Lee took Stuart’s advice to relieve the city of its “foreign yoke,” and the Confederate crusade there was conducted with virtual impunity since the road thither lay undefended by regular forces. An advance guard marched in amidst cheering crowds. The Federal East had effectively been isolated from the Federal West, and Lee’s successful strategy corresponded uncannily to the Union’s “Tennessee Plan” to cut the South in twain along the Charleston and Memphis railroad. Lee, for his part, maintained his usual composure and equanimity in the thick of conquest and slaughter. “Now I just wish,” Lee was heard to remark to his subordinate officers in what appeared a justification of his personal goal in the conflict, “these people will finally let us alone.”

  The sequence of momentous military episodes brought Confederate hopes of European diplomatic recognition to fulfilment. Lee’s spectacular successes convinced British and French leaders that Federal arms could never restore the Union. The victories in Maryland were so complete that foreign recognition was no longer vital. One way or the other, the Confederacy would reap a full harvest of laurels.

  To be sure, though, Britain had a dog in the fight. History would later show that largely because the United States, the synonym for democracy in the mid-19th century, had failed politically, the proposed British Reform Bill that was on the parliamentary agenda, no longer had any real chance of passing. In the coming years, most observers agreed that stoppage of the bill was the direct result of Confederate victory. Lord Palmerston, firmly in control, had hitherto been chiefly responsible for Britain’s continued neutrality. Able in all likelihood to carry Britain into war on the strength of widespread elite sympathy for the South alone, he no longer attempted to refute supplementary arguments for intervention. For a number of reasons, some in his Cabinet pressured him to undertake action even prior to the great Confederate victories in the late summer and early fall of 1862. Dreading the prospect of civil unrest in manufacturing towns, Chancellor of the Exchequer William E. Gladstone, for instance, advocated immediate termination of the war and a subsequent arrangement to guarantee unabated cotton deliveries to Britain from the American South.

  The manifestation of Confederate offensive strength would surely also disabuse the U.S. Federal Government of any foolish notions about expeditions against Canada. Admiration for the South now fostered a willingness on the part of British elites to assist the Confederacy tangibly and to bestow upon the young political entity the recognition many felt it deserved. The governing elite was in the main realistic, though, not sentimental, about foreign policy. Lee’s victories of 1862 promoted the commingling of cold-blooded realism about national interests with a warmhearted outlook toward the Southern aristocracy. In short, British intervention in the Civil War in 1862 involved the irresistible combination of principle and pragmatism.

  No less so for France. For over a year Napoleon III had contemplated tendering recognition with subsequent military assistance for the dual purpose of ensuring the uninterrupted flow of cotton across the Atlantic and establishing French suzerainty in Mexico. Always the sporting man, the French autocrat intended his Mexican adventure to bring about the partial restoration of the empire in North America that his uncle had unloaded onto the United States for a song. Economic pressures were building in France, notwithstanding widespread popular feelings of kinship with republicanism in North America. French ministers by 1862 were publicly deploring the shortage of cotton for delivery to French textile mills and urging pro-active policies to ensure the continuation of supplies allegedly so badly needed. Yet, Napoleon III resolved to move forward only in the wake of prior explicit British recognition of the Confederacy.

  Once the British Cabinet showed its hand, the Emperor of the French eagerly accepted the Confederacy’s offer of July 1862 to deliver several hundred thousand bales of cotton and to conclude an alliance against the liberal regime of Benito Juarez in Mexico in return for diplomatic recognition and naval assistance in breaking the Union blockade in North America. Within a week of Lord Palmerston’s announcement on the last day of September that the campaign in Maryland had a “great effect” on the state of political affairs and that Her Majesty’s Government intended to address the contending parties with an aim to producing an arrangement on the basis of separation, the French Government signed a comprehensive treaty with the Confederate plenipotentiary in Paris, John Slidell, consisting of sweeping economic, political and military provisions.29 As British officials were still meeting with the American Minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, and Secretary of State Seward in Washington, both of whom indignantly carped that the European aristocracy and commercial classes were determined to see the United States go to pieces, French naval squadrons were ordered to begin attacking U.S. Navy ships in North American waters without prior warning. Realists that they were, Lincoln and his Cabinet had been aware that military assistance and overt intervention would follow diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy as surely as these had for the fledgling United States in 1778 during the War of Independence. The destruction of the Army of the Potomac was a bloody refutation of the President’s military judgment, and would cast open the gates for all his enemies to move in for the political kill. Demands for negotiation to settle the war would be loud and strident, simply impossible to ignore. Indeed, Lincoln felt control of the war and the country slipping from him.

  The shift in British foreign policy was conspicuous in Gladstone’s celebrated speech in Newcastle in October. “President Jefferson Davis and the valiant leaders of the Confederate States of America,” the imperturbable minister proclaimed, “have made an army; they are making a navy; and they have made what is more than either; they have made a nation.”30 It seemed the British Cabinet had merely been waiting for the proper moment to accord recognition. At that point, it was reasoned, most in the North, including the abolitionists and the hard war men, would concur in their heart-of-hearts that Britain really had no choice.31 For the British Cabinet, that moment came in the fall of 1862. By the end of the year, Mexico would become a French colony with the blessing of the Confederate States of America. The Monroe Doctrine ceased to exist, as Napoleon III, the self-proclaimed “man of destiny” reestablished his French Imperium on the American Continent.

  In October, the usually sluggish Confederate commanders in the western theater, Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith, appeared to have been given a new lease on life by the stimulating news from the east and abroad. Confederate forces continued their advance through Kentucky, and having seized Lexington and Frankfort, pushed on to Louisville. The tide turned rapidly and Louisville was occupied in the last week of October. The multiple crises in Washington caused pervasive despondency in the Union forces deployed in the most crucial border state, and Federal authority there swiftly waned. The Union’s Kentucky disaster represented the proverbial icing on the French tarte. The November Congressional elections brought resounding defeat for the Republicans, and the new majority of peace Democrats announced it would demand an end to the war on the basis of dissolution.

  The Reality

  Special Order No. 191 was not a clever ruse de guerre, of course, but rather a genuine and highly sensitive document of substantial intelligence value to the Union commander. Lee had come north to force the Federals to attack on ground of his own choosing, anticipating another vict
ory of the order of the Second Battle of Manassas, if not greater. Nor did Britain or France afford diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy or intervene directly in the Civil War. Britain bided its time, harboring the glittering illusion that even without European assistance, the independence of the South was assured. France, for its part, would not move until Britain did.

  Convinced that the lethargic McClellan would grant him ample time, Lee divided his army into several detachments that could not support one another in the event of an enemy attack. True, the Union army did move against the vulnerable foe, but McClellan would not have been McClellan if he did not drag his feet, confusing swift reaction with organizational tidiness, even in such overwhelmingly favorable circumstances. The opportunity could scarcely have been greater, for McClellan had caught the Army of Northern Virginia’s main body north of the Potomac in deployable strength of 25,000 troops, the separated commands of Longstreet, Hill and McLaws, with his own concentrated force of 87,000.32 The outcome of the engagement could hardly have been in doubt had McClellan not hesitated. Following this inexplicable delay, McClellan’s powerful columns smashed through both passes of South Mountain to confront the hastily consolidated Confederate army at Antietam Creek. On those fields of fire, McClellan would in all likelihood have destroyed Lee’s army even then, had he not taken his time getting his troops into assault positions and had the subsequent attacks been properly coordinated. September 17, 1862, the day of the Battle of Antietam, was the bloodiest in American history. Somehow, Lee’s defense line held and a seemingly hopeless situation was salvaged. The Army of Northern Virginia would march and fight again another day.

  Bibliography

  Cowley, Robert, ed., What If? The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (Putnam, New York, 1999).

  Cowley, Robert, ed., With My Face to the Enemy: Perspectives on the Civil War (Putnam, New York, 2001).

  Crook, D.P, The North, the South, and the Powers 1861–1865 (Wiley, New York, 1974).

  Fishel, Edwin C., The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1996).

  Foote, Shelby, The Civil War: A Narrative, 3 vols., (Scribner’s, New York, 1958).

  Garraty, John A., 1,001 Things Everyone Should Know About American History (Doubleday, New York, 1989)

  Hearn, Chester G., Six Years of Hell: Harpers Ferry During the Civil War (Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1996).

  Heysinger, Isaac Winter, Antietam and the Maryland and Virginia Campaigns of 1862 (Neal Publishing Company, New York, 1912).

  MacCartney, Clarence Edward, Little Mac: The Life of General George B. McClellan (Dorrance, Philadelphia, 1940)

  McPherson, James M., Battlecry of Freedom (Ballantine Books, New York, 1989).

  Myers, William Starr, General George Brinton McClellan (Appleton-Century, New York, 1934).

  Owsley, Frank Lawrence, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1959).

  Palmer, Michael A., Lee Moves North: Robert E. Lee on the Offensive (Wiley, New York, 1998).

  Sears, Stephen W., Landscape Turned Red (Ticknor and Fields, New Haven, 1983).

  Shapiro, Larry, ed., Abraham Lincoln: Mystic Chords of Memory (Book-of-the-Month Club, New York, 1984)

  Swinton, William, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac (Charles B. Richardson, New York, 1866)

  Vanauken, Sheldon, The Glittering Illusion: English Sympathy for the Southern Confederacy (Churchman Publishing, Folkestone, 1988).

  Wert, Jeffrey, “I Am So Unlike Other Folks,” Civil War Times, April 1989, vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 14–21.

  Woodworth, Steven E., Davis and Lee at War (University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, 1995).

  Notes

  1.

  The author would like to thank John K. Rowland for his helpful comments.

  2.

  McPherson, Battlecry of Freedom, p. 551.

  3.

  Quoted in Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, p. 186.

  4.

  McPherson, Battlecry of Freedom, p. 551.

  5.

  James Russell Lowell, Poems (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1891), II, p. 296.

  6.

  MacCartney, Little Mac, p. 231.

  7.

  Lee’s two major subordinate commanders were James Longstreet and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson who commanded the First and Second Corps respectively.

  8.

  Myers, General George Brinton McClellan, p. 358.

  9.

  Quoted in Heysinger, Antietam and the Maryland and Virginia Campaigns of 1862, pp. 56–7.

  10.

  Quoted in Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War, p. 188.

  11.

  Quoted in MacCartney, Little Mac, p. 239.

  12.

  Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, pp. 197–8.

  13.

  MacCartney, Little Mac, p. 240.

  14.

  Fishel, The Secret War for the Union, p. 223.

  15.

  Stephen W. Sears, “The Last Word on the Lost Order,” in Robert Cowley, ed., With My Face to the Enemy, p. 150.

  16.

  Hearn, Six Years of Hell, p. 129.

  17.

  Wert, “I Am So Unlike Other Folks,” p. 19.

  18.

  James M. McPherson, “If the Lost Order Hadn’t Been Lost,” in Robert Cowley, ed., What If? The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, pp. 232–3.

  19.

  Quoted in Fishel, The Secret War for the Union, p. 222.

  *20.

  J.E.B. Stuart, Join the Cavalry: War as I Knew It (Neal Publishing Company, New York, 1880), pp. 267–8.

  21.

  Quoted in Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 1, p. 674.

  22.

  Sears, Landscape Turned Red, pp. 119–20.

  23.

  Heysinger, Antietam and the Maryland and Virginia Campaigns of 1862, pp. 82–3.

  24.

  A French term meaning “save yourselves”, the worst thing to be heard on any battlefield in any language, the cry that all is lost.

  25.

  Garraty, 1,001 Things Everyone Should Know About American History, p. 164.

  26.

  Shapiro, Abraham Lincoln: Mystic Chords of Memory, pp. 45–6.

  27.

  Quoted in Sears, Landscape Turned Red, pp. 44–5.

  *28.

  The Complete War Memoirs of Abraham Lincoln (Freedom House, New York, 1925), p. 238.

  *29.

  G.P Gooch, Gladstone and Palmerston (London: Churchman, 1922), p. 231.

  30.

  Quoted in Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers 1861–1865, pp. 227–8.

  31.

  Vanauken, The Glittering Illusion: English Sympathy for the Southern Confederacy, p. 128.

  32.

  Woodworth, Davis and Lee at War, p. 191.

  4

  WHEN THE BOTTOM FELL OUT

  The Crisis of 1862

  Michael R. Hathaway

  The Battle of Frederick, the “Saratoga”1 of the Confederacy’s war for independence, happened because of horses. Not because of their employment as cavalry mounts or drawers of artillery, or even as draft horses for military supply wagons. Through them, mighty Mars found Fortuna’s slippery ball turning under his feet.

  The commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, General Robert E. Lee, was very nearly seriously hurt by his horse just after the Battle of Second Manassas on August 31. Lee and his staff had stopped and Lee had dismounted to view a part of the battlefield when a force of Union cavalry appeared suddenly over a nearby hill. The staff reacted, and Lee’s horse started, nearly throwing him violently to the ground. But he escaped uninjured.2

  Lieutenant General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was not so fortunate. Jackson was thrown by his new horse on September 6, 1862, as he was about
to ride into Frederick.3 Jackson’s head injury, a concussion, kept him in bed for three days. Lee could not be sure that his “strong right arm” would be able to command the critical operation he was considering, to drive Union garrisons out of Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry in order to open communications through the Shenandoah Valley. That injury was a key to Lee’s decision to accept Longstreet’s cautious counsel to “… stand still and let the damned Yankees come to us,” at his commander’s conference on September 9.4

  Union General George B. McClellan was moving west quickly—he had left Washington for Rockville on the 7th, and his main forces were only 15 miles from Frederick on the 9th.5 If Lee had been injured and passive, this could have been a critical oversight. But Lee was healthy and active, and took notice that, on the 7th, a strong Union force had beaten back Colonel Thomas Munford and the 7th and 12th Virginia Cavalry Regiments from Poolesville.6 On the 8th, he ordered his cavalry commander, General J.E.B. Stuart, to punch through Pleasonton’s Union cavalry screen and uncover the strength and disposition of the oncoming Union forces.7 While that effort failed due to the strength of the Union forces—in the face of Stuart’s unsupported Confederate cavalry, the Union cavalry was closely backed by infantry and artillery—it produced the greatest single stroke of fortune for either side in the war.