Forge of Empires

by Michael Knox Beran

  180 He purchased: Ross King, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism (New York: Walker, 2007), 80.

  180 founded on a contradiction: The Times, Monday, January 4, 1864, 6; Heinrich von Treitschke, The Fire-Test of the North German Confederation, trans. Frederick Arthur Hyndman (London: Longmans, Green, 1870), 21.

  180 a dictator and an emancipator: The Times, Monday, January 4, 1864, 6.

  180 “par la grâce”: See, e.g., “Décret Impériale,” June 5, 1859, Mac Mahon Dossier, AA, 6yd 57.

  181 a new nation: The new Italian nation did not, at this time, encompass the city of Rome. In an effort to please his ultramontane Catholic subjects, Louis-Napoleon dispatched French troops to the Eternal City, and by their bayonets was the temporal jurisdiction of the Pope, Pius IX, supported.

  181 1st Division of Infantry: Etat des Services, May 11, 1872, Bazaine Dossier, AA, 6yd 62.

  181 only his eyes: The description is based on photographs in the Maréchal Bazaine Dossier in the archives of the French army—AA, 6yd 62.

  182 Hamilton’s old counsels: Edward Mead Earle, “Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List: The Economic Foundations of Military Power,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, ed. Edward Meade Earle (New York: Atheneum, 1967), 135.

  182 “any portion”: President Monroe, “Message to Congress,” December 2, 1823, in The Record of American Diplomacy, ed. R. J. Bartlett (New York: Knopf, 1956), 182.

  182 John Slidell: John Slidell, “Memorandum of an Interview with the Emperor at the Tuileries,” Thursday, 18th June, 1863, RAL, ii, 12; James Morton Callahan, Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1964), 184.

  182 Louis-Napoleon: John Slidell, “Memorandum of an Interview with the Emperor at the Tuileries,” Thursday, 18th June, 1863, RAL, ii, 13; Frank Lawrence Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America, ed. Harriet Chappel Owsley, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 446; Beckles Willson, John Slidell and the Confederates in Paris, 1862-1865 (New York: Minton, Balch, 1932), 175.

  182 “great regret”: John Slidell, “Memorandum of an Interview with the Emperor at the Tuileries,” Thursday, 18th June, 1863, RAL, ii, 12.

  182 “a direct proposition”: Ibid., 13; Willson, John Slidell and the Confederates in Paris, 1862-1865, 177-78; Burton J. Hendrick, Statesmen of the Lost Cause: Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (New York: Literary Guild, 1939), 319-20; Callahan, Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy, 185.

  182 “inform Lord Palmerston”: RAL, ii, 31; Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 446. It will be seen that Louis-Napoleon, on the advice of his ministers, did not in fact make a “direct proposition” toEngland for intervention, but rather notified the English Cabinet that “he stood ready at all times to join with England intervention.”

  182 elation: Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 451.

  16. “This Horrible Massacre of Men”

  183 General Kukel: MR, 169-70.

  183 “It is a great”: MR, 171.

  183 Kropotkin learned: MR, 171-72.

  183 “And thus it went”: MR, 213.

  184 cannot be directed autocratically: Kropotkin’s critique of Alexander’s revolution anticipated those of Alfred J. Reiber and Richard Wortman, who drew attention to the despotic qualities that undermined the Tsar’s liberal reforms—See Alfred J. Rieber, “Alexander II: A Revisionist View,” JMH, vol. 43, no. 1 (March 1971), 53-55; Alfred J. Rieber, “Bureaucratic Politics in Imperial Russia,” SSH, vol. 2, no. 4 (Summer1978), 399-413; and Richard Wortman, “Rule by Sentiment: Alexander II’s Journeys Through the Russian Empire,” AHR, vol. 95, no. 3 (June 1990), 770.

  184 “I soon realized”: MR, 215-16.

  184 “the complex forms”: MR, 216.

  184 who often enslaves them: Edmund Wilson saw something of this paradox in Karl Marx: “Lucifer was to hover behind Prometheus through the whole of Karl Marx’s life: he was the malevolent obverse side of the rebel benefactor of mankind.”—Wilson, To the Finland Station, 119.

  185 as gloomy: L, 321.

  185 A spy: L, 320.

  185 “God grants us”: L, 320.

  185 “push those people”: L, 325.

  185 “Pete” Longstreet’s I Corps: L, 327-30.

  185 the Union itself: L, 336.

  186 “Up, men”: L, 338.

  186 “General Pickett”: L, 340.

  186 “If I had had”: L, 347.

  186 “Glorious Victory”: SDC, 40.

  186 “I say stop”: Daniel Mark Epstein, Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington (New York: Ballantine, 2004), 170.

  186 “If there is”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 574.

  186 took a room: Whitman to Martha Whitman, January 3, 1863, C, 63.

  187 nursing wounded soldiers: Epstein, Lincoln and Whitman, 131-32; Whitman to Nathaniel Bloom and John F. S. Gray, March 19-20, 1863, C, 82; Whitman to Ralph Waldo Emerson, January 17, 1863, C, 70.

  187 “I am very familiar”: Epstein, Lincoln and Whitman, 132.

  187 his “boys”: Whitman to James Redpath, August 6, 1863, C, 122.

  187 “shining beauty”: Epstein, Lincoln and Whitman, 135.

  187 “I see the President”: David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography (New York: Vintage, 1996), 439.

  187 “a hoosier Michael Angelo”: Whitman to Nathaniel Bloom and John F. S. Gray, March 19-20, 1863, C, 82.

  187 “a pretty big President”: Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, October 27, 1863, C, 174.

  187 “Time and again”: Epstein, Lincoln and Whitman, 10-11.

  187 “prophetic screams”: LG, 53.

  187 “translucent: LG, 51.

  187 “I speak the password”: LG, 50.

  188 “great void”: Matthew Arnold, “Civilisation in the United States,” in The Oxford Authors: Matthew Arnold, ed. Miriam Allott and Robert H. Super (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 499.

  188 “no shadow”: Henry James, Hawthorne, in James, Literary Criticism, ed. Leon Edel (New York: Library of America, 1984), 350.

  188 “formless”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, June 1847, in Emerson in His Journals, ed. Joel Porte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 372.

  188 “less brilliant, less glorious”: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 9, 459.

  188 it lay in its citizens: Other nations, Whitman asserted in the preface to Leaves of Grass, “indicate themselves in their deputies…. but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors … but always in its common people”—LG, 5-6.

  188 “Nature’s cunningest work”: David S. Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 215.

  188 “model artists”: Ibid., 214.

  188 Lady Godiva: Ibid., 215.

  188 “poses plastiques”: Ibid., 214.

  188 “I hear America”: LG, 174.

  188 “unrhymed poetry”: LG, 6.

  188 “essentially the greatest”: LG, 5.

  188 “the broadcloth”: LG, 33.

  188 “hankering, gross”: LG, 45.

  17. Dust unto Dust

  189 A coating of snow:” The Invasion of Schleswig,” The Times, Saturday, February 6, 1864, 9.

  189 crossed the border: Norman B. Judd to Seward, February 2, 1864, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.

  189 Danish dragoons: A. Gallenga, The Invasion of Denmark in 1864, 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1864), i, 57; “The Invasion of Schleswig,” The Times, Saturday, February 6, 1864, 9.

  189 The roads were crowded: “The Invasion of Schleswig,” The Times, Saturday, February 6, 1864, 9.

/>   189 bitter cold: Ibid.; The Times, Monday, February 8, 1864; Gallenga, The Invasion, of Denmark in 1864, i, 56.

  189 to rescue their fellow Germans: The imperative of liberating German-speaking populations from the dominion of foreign powers and uncongenial governments formed a pretext for conquest of which Berlin was to become fond. Similar claims figured in the justifications offered for the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, the rape of Austria in 1938, the mutilation of Czechoslovakia in the same year, and the invasion of Poland in 1939.

  189 handled roughly: BGE, 81.

  190 in the hope of retrieving: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, January 23 1864, SD NARA T157/ROLL 6.

  190 chattered and sang: “The Invasion of Schleswig,” The Times, Monday, February 8, 1864.

  190 an ultimatum: “The Austrian and Prussian Ultimatum,” The Times, Saturday, February 6, 1864, 9; Adolphus William Ward, Germany 1815-1890, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917), ii, 147.

  190 The reply: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, January 23 1864, SD NARA T157/ROLL 6; LLJR, ii, 389.

  190 unity and integrity: LLJR, ii, 374, 386. Under the terms of the Treaty of 1852, the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were held to be constituent elements of the Danish Kingdom, and upon the demise of the Danish Crown they were to pass to the Danish heir. At the same time, the “special joint status” of the duchies was to be respected by the Danes.

  190 At Pembroke Lodge: Lady John Russell: A Memoir, ed. Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen, 1910), 93, 121-22.

  190 Lord Wodehouse: “The Schleswig-Holstein Question,” The Times, Thursday, January 7, 1864, 9; LLJR, 386-87; Keith A. P. Sandiford, Great Britain and the Schleswig-Holstein Question 1848-1864: A Study in Diplomacy, Politics, and Public Opinion (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 78-79.

  190 reduce the size: Lord Robert Cecil, “The Danish Duchies,” in Cecil (afterwards Lord Salisbury), Essays by the Late Marquess of Salisbury, K.G. (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1905), 146.

  191 controversial constitution: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, February 23 1864, SD NARA T157/ROLL 6.

  191 The plea: Russell, Lord Robert Cecil observed, was in fact urging Denmark “to make everything work pleasantly with Germany”—Lord Robert Cecil, “The Danish Duchies,” in Cecil, Essays by the Late Marquess of Salisbury, K. G., 146.

  191 “to swallow the cup”: Ibid., 223, 227.

  191 a diplomatic note: “Prussia,” The Times, Saturday, January 9, 1864, 10; BGE, 84.

  191 As he neared: LHJTVP, ii, 271; LBD, iv, 392.

  191 “I doubt”: Palmerston to Russell, February 13, 1864, LHJTVP, ii, 247-48; LLJR, ii, 390; LBD, iv, 345; see also John Lothrop Motley to Seward, March 7 1864, SD NARA T157/ROLL 6.

  191 Alexander was hostile: Tsar Alexander’s rejection of proposals for concerted European intervention in the American Civil War was an important—arguably the decisive—factor in the decision of Palmerston and Russell not to intervene—Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians (Cleveland: Collier, 1961), 129. The Tsar’s attitude was “an important reason for British refusal [to intervene in the conflict], as, indeed, it was the basis for harmonious decision within the British Cabinet”—Ephraim Douglass Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (New York: Russell & Russell, 1925), ii, 43-45, 66; LWEG, ii, 45, 75, 85; LLJR, ii, 350-51.

  191 a cautious man: The world, Henry Adams observed, thought Palmerston “positive, decided, restless; the record proved him to be cautious, careful, vacillating”—EHA, 870.

  191 “I believe Palmerston”: Victoria to Earl Russell, February 13, 1864, in The Letters of Queen Victoria, Second Series, ed. George Earle Buckle, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1926), i, 157.

  191 on the march: Norman B. Judd to Seward, February 27, 1864, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.

  191 carry the Cabinet: LBD, iv, 345.

  191 “timidity and weakness”: LLJR, ii, 392.

  191 the Austrian Ambassador: LHJTVP, ii, 249; Sandiford, Great Britain and the Schleswig-Holstein Question 1848-1864, 103.

  191 concluded that England: “The Schleswig-Holstein Question,” The Times, Thursday, January 7, 1864, 9.

  191 “England is excessively noisy”: This specimen of the conventional wisdom then prevailing at Berlin and shared by Bismarck was retailed by Norman B. Judd in his letter of February 11, 1865, to Seward, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.

  191 the English Queen: LLJR, ii, 392-93; Sandiford, Great Britain and the Schleswig-Holstein Question 1848-1864, 87, 93, 100-02, 108-12.

  191 “With regard”: Victoria to Earl Russell, February 13, 1864, in The Letters of Queen Victoria, ed. Buckle, i, 153; Earl Granville to General Grey, May 9, 1864, in ibid., i, 183-84.

  192 dusty pavement … outstretched limbs: “The War in Denmark,” The Times, Monday, May 2, 1864, 11.

  192 Dybböl: Norman B. Judd to Seward, April 16, 1864, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.

  192 many a noble house: “The War in Denmark,” The Times, Monday, May 2, 1864, 11; Auberon Herbert, The Danes in Camp: Letters from Sönderborg, 2nd ed. (London: Saunders, Otley, 1864), 69.

  192 courtesy of the Danes: “The War in Denmark,” The Times, Monday, May 2, 1864, 11; Herbert, The Danes in Camp, 34-35, 37, 52.

  192 covered with crêpe … flaxen hair: “The War in Denmark,” The Times, Monday, May 2, 1864, 11.

  192 In that unhappy capital: See, e.g., MCCW, 330.

  192 “won his three stars”: MCCW, 441.

  192 tall: Ibid.

  193 “sad Quixote face”: Ibid.

  193 “the hottest of the fight”: Ibid.

  193 “The man was transfigured”: Ibid.

  193 a note of despair: MCCW, 442.

  193 “Stop!”: Ibid.

  193 “Such rags”: Ibid.

  193 “Not hurt”: Ibid.

  194 “What was that”: MCCW, 443.

  194 “being fallen in”: MCCW, 430.

  194 “Come here”: MCCW, 502.

  194 “to be as happy”: Ibid.

  194 Hood asked Brewster: MCCW, 509.

  194 “If it amounts to” … “light-winged birds”: MCCW, 509-10.

  195 “Our army”: David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 446.

  195 “I do not”: Lincoln to George C. Meade, July 14, 1863, SW, 1859-1865, 479.

  196 He did not send: Donald, Lincoln, 447.

  196 had done his best: Lincoln to Oliver O. Howard, July 21, 1863, SW, 1859-1865, 481.

  196 “To avoid”: Lincoln to Henry W. Halleck, September 19, 1863, SW, 1859-1865, 514.

  196 “Lee’s army”: Ibid.; Lincoln to Joseph Hooker, June 10, 1863, SW, 1859-1865, 454.

  196 bloody dream: Lincoln to Mary Todd Lincoln, June 9, 1863, SW, 1859-1865, 453.

  196 “best of educations”: Donald, Lincoln, 428.

  196 in his father’s bed: HLL, 415; Donald, Lincoln, 428.

  196 at the age of nine: Donald, Lincoln, 428.

  196 “God bless”: HLL, 2-3.

  197 The President’s detractors: Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Vintage, 1974), 142-50; Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 141-42; Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003).

  197 “on terms”: Lincoln, “Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate” Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858, SW, 1832-1858, 636.

  197 black equality: La Wanda Cox, Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study in Presidential Leadership (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 22-24.

  197 “strong measures”: Lincoln to Erastus Corning and others, June 12, 1863, SW, 1859-1865, 460.

  197 “contract so strong”: Lincoln to Erastus Corning and others, June 12, 1863, SW, 1859-1865, 460-61.

  197 a pamphlet: President Lincoln’s Views: An Important Letter on the Principles Involved in the Vallandigham Case (Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1863); President Lincoln on Vallandigham and “Arbitrary Arrest” (New York: New-York Tribune, 1863).

 
197 more than half a million: Donald, Lincoln, 444.

  197 “name in history”: Lincoln to Michael Hahn, March 13, 1864, SW, 1859-1865, 579.

  198 “How long ago”: Lincoln, “Response to Serenade, Washington, D. C.,” July 7, 1863, SW, 1859-1865, 475.

  198 “to the sublimity”: Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1984), 99.

  18. Fighters for the Future

  199 Dining in state: Gedanken, i, 351-52.

  199 Hohenschwangau: Frances Gerard, The Romance of Ludwig II of Bavaria (London: Hutchinson, 1899), xlviii.

  199 “Your Highness”: Ibid., 4.

  200 love of swans: Henry Channon, The Ludwigs of Bavaria (London: Methuen, 1933), 5-8; Gertrude Norman, A Brief History of Bavaria, 2nd ed. (Munich: Heinrich Jaffe, 1910), 100.

  200 He could not bear: Ferdinand Mayr-Ofen [pseudonym of Otto Zarek], Ludwig II of Bavaria: The Tragedy of an Idealist, trans. Ella Goodman and Paul Sudley (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1937), 26; Gerard, The Romance of Ludwig II of Bavaria, 19.

  200 threw back his head: Gerard, The Romance of Ludwig II of Bavaria, 38; Channon, The Ludwigs of Bavaria, 63. Ludwig seems to have modeled his carriage on that of his hero, Louis XIV, who had, Macaulay says, “a way of holding himself, a way of walking, a way of swelling his chest and rearing his head….”—Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Mirabeau,” WLM, v, 627.

  200 Herrenchiemsee: Eric Pfanner, “Bavaria’s Summer Playground,” The New York Times, Sunday, August 22, 2004, v, 12.

  200 “Find Richard Wagner”: LRW, iii, 216.

  200 ecstasy: Mayr-Ofen, Ludwig II of Bavaria, 29.

  200 Wagner’s essay: Ibid., 30.

  200 He longed: LRW, iii, 374.

  201 “soulless”: Mayr-Ofen, Ludwig II of Bavaria, 32.

  201 “utilitarian man”: Ibid., 33.

  201 “It was this”: Ibid., 31.

  201 When, at last: LRW, iii, 220.

  201 shed years: Mayr-Ofen, Ludwig II of Bavaria, 58.

  201 Wagner, bending: LRW, iii, 222.

  201 beauty of Ludwig: Channon, The Ludwigs of Bavaria, 5-8; Mayr-Ofen, Ludwig II of Bavaria, 45; Gerard, The Romance of Ludwig II of Bavaria, 23, 37.