Sharpe commented wryly, "I think the colonel's commission had something to do with it."
"If you hadn't sent Cline and some of the 3rd Indiana Cavalry out to Indiana to sniff out that Copperhead plot, he wouldn't have been there to crush the attempt to liberate all the prisoners of war at Camp Morton. Indianapolis, as well as Chicago, would have fallen, and I don't think we could have recovered from that.
"You set up BMIs in the Army of the Cumberland, and with Grant and Banks down in Louisiana."
Sharpe shook his head. "It didn't do Rosecrans any good. We warned him in plenty of time that Longstreet was coming out to rein force Bragg. A crushing defeat at Chickamauga and getting shut up in Chattanooga are not great advertisements for our organization, Jim."
McPhail was determined to convince Sharpe that the glass was half full. "George, Longstreet just moved too fast, and Rosecrans's scouts never were able to warn of his arrival. Rosecrans gave battle thinking he had brought Bragg 's smaller army to bay. You know as well as I do that the enemy has a vote."
He could see that Sharpe needed more encouragement. "Then you were able to warn the president and Stanton of British maneuvering in preparation for their attack."
"Yes, and they fooled me. I would bet it was that damned Wolseley who planned it. They demonstrated so actively against Buffalo and Detroit that we sent reinforcements there, and then they struck at Albany and Portland. Our agents just did not catch that deception." Sharpe had been truly impressed with the way the British had, at the last minute and without any word getting out, marshaled their railroads to move most of the British and Canadian troops making their big show in the Canadian Peninsula to concentrate against Albany.
"George, we were damned lucky to get that. It takes longer than three months to set up an effective agent network in another country. All that Treasury gold we pass out up in Canada has bought us a lot of access, I must admit. But even that takes time to bear fruit."
Sharpe permitted himself a smile. "Reminds me of a story. Alexander the Great's father, Philip II, was faced with what everyone told him was an impregnable fortress. He replied, 'You mean an ass laden with silver cannot get inside?"'
"Exactly. And while we are at it, we did pick up the British interest in Portland. It was your idea to send all the Maine regiments home under the pretext of a recruitment leave. Had they not arrived when they did, the enemy would have taken the city without hardly a shot. Instead, the British Army that could be sacking Boston is tied up in the siegeworks of Portland."
"And that brings us back to the enemy situation, Jim. What will Sedgwick face when he tries to relieve Portland? What will the British send down the Hudson when they decide to take New York? And what reinforcements are arriving from England?"
"I don't have much more than what I wired Wilmoth from Boston and New York yesterday and last night," Mcphail responded.
Just then, the unobtrusive Wilmoth entered and stood quietly. Sharpe had come to allow him unannounced access to him at any time. McPhail cordially nodded to him and went on. "I was handed this information just as I was getting on the train in New York. Halifax is abuzz with the expectation that a twenty-thousand-man reinforcement is about to arrive from garrisons all throughout the British Isles. With them comes General James Hope Grant to take command of all troops in British North America."
Wilmoth quietly added, "He's the best they've got. I have a file on him." He had a file on Wolseley, too. Sharpe would have been pleased to know that Wolseley had a file on him, too. The assistant quartermaster general had become the primary planner and intelligence officer for the British forces in North America, and if any man was Sharpe's counterpart, it was Wolseley.
"Jim, take a few days to pick whomever you want, and then I want you back in New York to pull this agent network together. And, Jim, I suggest you buy a stouter carpetbag to hold all the gold I will be sending with you."
McPhail laughed. "When I think of the opportunities to get rich in this job..."
Sharpe countered, "Well, I can write you a letter of recommendation to join Lafayette Baker's Secret Service if you want to get rich in shaking people down." Even Wilmoth permitted himself to laugh. The CIB staff mirrored their boss's contempt of Baker and his crew.
FORD'S THEATRE, 7TH STREET, WASHINGTON, D.C., 5:52 PM, OCTOBER 23, 1863
John Wilkes Booth was still in high dudgeon. He had been in an exuberant and exalted mood ever since Britain and France had declared war, absolutely sure that it spelled the doom of the United States and the triumph of the Confederacy. Now this vile, damnable notice had plunged into an incandescent anger. The government had banned actors from moving freely back and forth between the North and South. For two years, he had freely preened his pro-Southern sympathies to appreciative Southern audiences and had enjoyed the adulation that came with that, not to mention his increasingly impressive acting skills. What he did not know was that Sharpe had been behind the order.
He was giving another magnificent performance of outrage in his dressing room to the cast of his matinee performance still in their makeup. His handsome features seemed to glow with his anger. His glance took in the big, bearded man standing in the dressing room doorway, definitely not an actor. In the imperious tone he had mastered for Shakespeare, Booth demanded, "And who are you, sir?"
He noticed the man's grin was positively canine. "John Miller, Secret Service. I have a message for you from Mr. Lafayette Baker." The room immediately emptied past him. No one wanted to be anywhere around Baker or anyone who worked for him. The man closed the door behind him. It was clear that Booth was in a combative mood. But Big Jim Smoke had not come for a fight. He pulled up a chair and sat down. "I think we need to talk, sonny."
Smoke's inquiries with his Copperhead contacts had vouched for Booth's sympathies. The problem was how to bring this high-strung peacock along without scaring him off. Smoke had seen too many poseurs among the Copperheads to take anyone's protestations of support for granted. He may not have been subtle, but he was guileful. He knew vanity was a powerful weakness in any man and that that fault ran powerfully among actors. He leaned forward and said in a half whisper, "God bless the Confederacy." Booth's mouth fell open momentarily. Then he replied, his brown eyes dancing fire, "And God damn the Union!"
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, LONDON, 12:00 AM, OCTOBER 23, 1863
The House always met late as a matter of course. Gentlemen never rose until the afternoon. The member for Rochdale, Richard Cobden, stood up to speak. Lord Clarence Paget, the secretary of the Admiralty, groaned inwardly. Cobden was a member of the Navy Committee and damned well informed and as influential a Radical as Bright. His comments before the committee over the Navy Estimates last February had come to haunt Paget.
"The secretary of the Admiralty will bear with me as I recapitulate my comments from the February Navy Estimates. I made a point of emphasizing then that we had then seventy-six thousand men and boys in the Navy. Since Charleston subtracted five thousand from that number, I think my words, which had no affect on the Admiralty and the House at that time, will make an impression now.
"'The fate of empires' said the noble lord-I will use his own words -'will not in future depend on line-of-battle ships; they are not suited to the modern mode of warfare.'
"'I heard the late Admiral Napier declare, a short time before his death, that a line-of-battle ship struck with one of your modern percussion shells would have a hole in her side large enough, he said, to drive a wheelbarrow through. What said the honorable and gallant officer the member for Harwich (Captain Jervis)? In my own hearing, he said that a wooden line-of-battle ship, hit by these modern percussion shells, would be nothing but a slaughterhouse."'
The House was deadly still. Sweat beaded the forehead of Lord Paget. Disraeli leaned back into the green leather of his bench and looked down at the floor. Cobden continued. "I asked any nautical man, 'Would you, if you were at war with America tomorrow, send one of your wooden line-of-battle ships, with 700 or 800 men on b
oard, and with 30 or 40 tons of gunpowder under their feet, to meet a vessel like Monitor? Baronet, the member for Finsbury (Sir Morton Peto), once declared his opinion that the minister who should send a wooden line-of-battle ship to encounter these modern shell guns would deserve to be impeached.'1
"I have it on authority that Admiral Milne was hesitant to engage the American monitors at Charleston but was compelled by the direct instructions of the government to break the blockade at Charleston because of the demands of commercial interests in the city which demanded to carry off the countless of bales of cotton stored in that city.
"Perhaps the government thought that the broadside ironclads Black Prince and Resistance would he enough to overcome the American monitors. If so, it was a disastrous miscalculation. In losing both, the Navy lost one half of its ironclads. The noble lord was at pains in February to explain that eighteen more ironclads were under construction and should all be at sea, though not commissioned, by spring of next year. I might add that most the rest are wooden frame ships bearing armor plate. Already, the battle of Charleston has shown them to be obsolete against the turreted American ships. I ask the noble lord, how many of those eighteen ironclads are turreted?"
Paget rose slowly. "The member from Rochdale should know that Royal Sovereign and Prince Albert will be the first such ships."2
Cobden shot hack, "Come, my lord, you neglected vital information. Pray, what is the purpose of these ships?"
Paget replied, "Coastal defense."
"Coastal defense! Well, my lord, we shall then be able to put up a stout fight when the monitors cross the ocean and steam up the Thames."
Hard laughter rolled down the benches. Paget did not know when to fold and added, "We also have the second of the two turreted warships being built by Laird Brothers which the government plans to transfer to the Navy. That is an ocean-going ship."
Disraeli rose and was recognized by the Speaker. "My lord perhaps does not appreciate the irony of his last statement. One battle, one avoidable battle, has declared to the world that our Navy is obsolete. Now the secretary of the Admiralty tells the House that we will have, at some undetermined date, one and only one modern warship able to sail the high seas and that ship is none other than the sister to the infamous North Carolina whose escape, due to the inexplicable neglect of the Foreign Office, has ignited this war. Perhaps my lord should take to writing novels. He certainly has far more imagination for it than I. May I recommend a publisher, my lord?" More laughter.
HEADQUARTERS, CIB, LAFAYETTE SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 6:10 PM, OCTOBER 23, 1863
Sharpe asked McPhail, "Well, was Ripley van Winkle cooperative?" On his trip north McPhail had had more to do than shore up the thin agent system in Canada.
He grinned. "I had expected him to be the cantankerous, difficult obstructionist we had all come to love as chief of the Ordnance Bureau. But, you know, shameless flattery will open doors that you could not break down with a fire ax. Oh, I laid it on thick, telling him that he was a national treasure as the single greatest expert on ordnance in the United States, and how he had a reputation for utter probity and had been an exemplary steward of the taxpayer's money. He really warmed up when I mentioned it must have taken iron self-control and dedication to duty not to be stampeded into ordering all the crackpot new weapons every charlatan had thought of.
"I actually thought I had overdone it, but the old coot was eating it up with a spoon. You know, he really is a world-class expert. My notes are extensive." He looked at Wilmoth, who seemed as eager as a child on Christmas Eve at the prospect of McPhail's details. Wilmoth's pencil hung poised over his notepad. "Ripley had been an encyclopedia of knowledge about the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield. He was also able to supplement what Pete Dupont has been able to tell us about the nearby Royal Powder Mills at Waltham Abbey. Even more than we thought, the British have concentrated what seems like an inordinate part of their army's war-making production in one small area.
"Ripley said that early during the Crimean War, they discovered that the weapon contractors were simply unable to fulfill their production contracts for the new Model 1853 Enfield Rifle. It was a potential catastrophe for them. So, they swallowed their pride and sent a military commission here to study our 'American Method' of production.3 They went straight to Springfield Arsenal, which Ripley was running at the time. They were most impressed, and Ripley apparently fell all over himself to be helpful. He sent them on an extensive tour of factories of all sorts to see how we do things and especially of weapon makers such as Colt and Sharp and of the makers of our specialized weapon machine tools. He positively glowed when he repeated the comment of the commissioners that 'the Americans displayed a degree of ingenuity which English industrialists would do well to imitate.'4 They spent a fortune on American machinery, rebuilt their facility at Enfield -which had been nothing but a repair shop-on a huge scale, and converted it into the primary producer of the small arms of the British Army. They even hired away Ripley's chief engineer to manage the new factory."
Sharpe asked, "Anyone we know?"
"James Burton, a Virginian and surely a Rebel according to Ripley."
Sharpe looked at Wilmoth who said, "We have a file on him, too."
McPhail added, "They seemed to have hired most of their talent here." He rummaged through a sheaf of papers in his carpetbag and pulled out one. "Yes, there's a fellow named Oramel Clark, foreman in the stocking department, one Caulnin, foreman in the smithy, and someone named McGee, whom Ripley thinks is Burton's assistant." He handed the paper to Wilmoth.5
"The factory went into full production in 1859 and turns out as many as a hundred thousand rifles a year. Ripley was sure that in wartime they could at least triple their production based on his experience at Springfield Arsenal. He also said that the private weapon makers had to follow Enfield's example and retool. The largest of these is the London Armoury Company with its pronounced Rebel sympathies. Although they've sold us a lot of Enfields early in the war, they've been supplying the Confederacy with their entire output ever since."6
Sharpe asked, "Where is Enfield?"
Wilmoth spoke up. "It's thirty-five miles north of London in Essex but only twenty-five miles from a port on River Crouch."
By this point, Wilmoth's encyclopedic knowledge surprised neither Sharpe nor McPhail. "A good hard ride, I would think." Sharpe leaned back on his desk and folded his arms in thought. Then he and McPhail looked at each other, seemingly arriving at the same thought that Wilmoth had already had.
McPhail went on. "Ripley also had an uncanny feel for what is going on in the British and European ordnance network. The British don't have anything like our repeaters. Ripley thinks this is a fine example of superior British prudent common sense. And he didn't have anything good to say about the Prussian needle-gun either." Another thought occurred to McPhail. "You know, I had one of our people go through Ripley's files before I went up so I could speak from some authority. Good God, George, those files are a graveyard of opportunities that have passed us by. He actually lied to General Fremont last year when he asked for some of those coffee mill guns Lincoln had forced Ripley to buy. Ripley just lied that he didn't know a thing about them, when he had actually recalled them to the Washington Arsenal."7
Sharpe said, "I'm way ahead of you, Jim. Someone told me they could fire a hundred twenty rounds a minute. I heard one was used once in combat and cut a Rebel cavalry squadron to pieces. You just poured the cartridges into a hopper and they fed the gun by hand crank; the hopper looked like a coffee mill, and that's what Lincoln called the gun. I thought they sounded interesting. Then they just disappeared from the Army. Then when Lincoln gave me this job, he told me everything about how impressed he was with this gun and how Ripley had made sure nothing came of it. He could have wept in frustration.
"So, I made a few inquiries and, lo and behold, I found all sixty or so of them neatly lined up at the Arsenal, most of them brand new, oiled, and unfired. Well, I drew ten for the Ul
ster boys and ten for the 20th. They've been practicing at the firing ranges around Washington. The boys seem to like them, though they can be finicky. We got the designer out here to work out the bugs, and they've been fairly reliable."
Sharpe was referring to the regiment he had personally raised in August 1862-the 120th New York Volunteers, known as the Ulster Guard, and his old militia regiment, the 20th New York State Militia commanded by Col. Theodore Gates. Both regiments had been recruited form Sharpe's hometown of Kingston and the surrounding counties of Ulster and Greene. Sharpe was a man of intense loyalties and had persuaded Lincoln to transfer both regiments to the garrison of Washington. It was understood clearly, however, that the two regiments reported to Sharpe. He also had under his control those companies of the 3rd Indiana Cavalry that weren't out hunting Copperheads in the Midwest. Sharpe was doing more than taking care of his men. He was giving himself the capability to act in an emergency without having to beg for troops. He was also thinking of those situations in which the use of such troops was something the Army did not wish to know about.
McPhail nodded. "And there's another gun made by a Richard Gatling. The Army tested it twice earlier this year. I read the reports in Ripley's files, stamped with a big red 'REJECTED.' Good men on the committee, and I've rarely read such enthusiasm. They said it simply did not malfunction or overheat no matter how many rounds you fired from its six rotating barrels - two hundred a minute, I think the reports said."
"All fine and good, Jim." Sharpe was anxious to move on, but made a mental note of what McPhail had said. "We know how Ripley thinks in these matters. He can't do any more harm. But has he heard of any developments in finding an alternative to niter in the making of gunpowder?"
"Well, nothing specific on that, I'm afraid. He admitted that he knew less about propellants than ordnance."
A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History Page 13