A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History

by Peter G. Tsouras

  A cloud of incense wafted out of the immense double doors of the cathedral as Bazaine stepped into the bright, crisp autumn morning, the hymns of the "Te Deum" still running though his head. The crowd that packed the square and nearby streets outside erupted in a wild roar, punctuated by shouts of "Vive Bazaine!" and "Vive l'empereur!" New Orleans was pleased to show off its French face to its new heroes.

  They were already comparing his victory at Vermillionville to Napoleon's at Austerlitz. On that winter's day in 1805, Napoleon had driven thousands of Russians into icy ponds to drown. At Vermillionville, Bazaine had driven thousands of Americans into the murky waters of a Southern bayou and lake to a similar fate. Let the others take up the refrain, he thought. The emperor should receive his report in a week. He knew how ambition's game would cause a sensation in Paris-30 colors, 32 guns, 9 generals, and 12,348 unwounded prisoners. Another 899 dead and 3,223 wounded had been counted on the field. They had been veteran troops and deserved better leadership.5

  Bazaine was already toying with thoughts of the rewards to be expected from his grateful sovereign-Le Comte de Vermillionville or, even better, Le Due de Vermillionville.

  Yes, Bazaine knew the game of military ambition in the Second Empire and so was attentive to the concerns and dreams of the imperial ambition. The ostensible purpose of the alliance was to secure France's grip on Mexico. A grateful Confederacy would gladly acquiesce to what an undivided Union would never tolerate - the nullification of the Mon roe Doctrine. The emperor had hinted broadly in his instructions that perhaps France could expect greater gains from the American fratricide.

  Jefferson Davis was astute enough to he concerned about larger French ambitions. For that reason, he had carefully instructed Taylor to emphasize the subordinate role of the French while operating on Confederate soil. Taylor had wasted no time in bringing that subject up with Bazaine shortly after his tumultuous welcome to the newly liberated city that would deny the victor of Vermillionville nothing.

  Bazaine responded with cordial grace to Taylor's recapitulation of alliance roles. "Daaccord, d'accord, General Taylor. That is in line with the emperor's instructions. This army is sent to support you in your own country. You command me, and I command my army, no? This is best."

  Then he paused to blow a neat circle from his cigar. "Of course, His Majesty has concerns that he has confided in me."

  There it was -what Taylor feared - the "yes, but." He replied, keeping his voice even, "And those concerns are?"

  "Oh, General Taylor, these are minor things, matters of sentiment, I assure you. But they are matters close to our French hearts. The emperor wishes to extend his imperial protection to Louisiana due to his regard for its French history, culture, and language -the very language of this city and the one we are speaking now."

  "The Confederacy, sir, will look after its own," Taylor said pointedly in English before repeating it in French.

  "Ah, yes, someday, of course, but you must admit, that the very necessity of welcoming a French army indicates otherwise. No? Your Confederacy will no doubt, as is His Majesty's fervent wish, be able someday to defy the world, but in the meantime you will face a vengeful Union and, I may say between friends, the treachery of perfidious Albion, despite the temporary alliance of convenience we share with it. It is the affection for our shared history and aspirations that motivates France."

  THE BATTERY, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, 11:00 AM, OCTOBER 24, 1863

  As Bazaine emerged from St. Louis Cathedral in distant New Orleans, Jefferson Davis was waiting for the British ship that was slowly approaching the dock. He had rushed down from Richmond for the occasion when word of its reached him. It was the most wished-for event in the Confederacy, the recognition of the independence of their new country by the foremost power in the world. Davis had insisted that it be the most formal of state occasions. With him was his vice president, Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard and a cluster of other generals, the governor of South Carolina, an honor guard in new uniforms, and a band. The railings along the Battery had been lined with alternating Union Jacks and Confederate flags. Crowds packed the street behind the Battery, the adjacent park, and the balconies of the overlooking mansions.

  Charleston had come back to life in the last two weeks. This great Southern city had been nearly choked to death by the grip of two years of blockade. Now its harbor was a forest of masts from the hundreds of ships that had raced in from Bermuda and from across the Atlantic to exchange their cargoes of war materials and luxuries for the mountains of Southern cotton from the harvests of 1861 through 1863.

  The battle that had freed the city could only be heard by the crowds packing the waterfront on that fateful day. A deep and constant rumble of heavy naval guns and clouds of dark smoke from the funeral pyres of ships of the line had kept hopes balanced on a knife's edge until the 6,200-ton ironclad HMS Resistance had steamed into the harbor past Fort Sumter. The crowds had gone wild. Only a practiced eye could see how much distress the great ship was in or that it had struck a Confederate mine in passing the fort. Its approach was agonizingly slow, and as it came up to Auger Dock, the wounded leviathan simply settled to the bottom. Luckily, its deep draft allowed its upper decks to remain above water.

  General Beauregard carried off the official welcome in gallant Southern style. In the greatest tradition of the Royal Navy, Resistance's captain strolled down the gangplank as if nothing had happened, graciously, albeit briefly, accepted the thanks of the city, and then asked for assistance for his many wounded.

  Those men were rushed to Confederate hospitals and private homes where they were nursed by the ladies of the city with every care. The officers were feted in every mansion, and the only officer who did not immediately have a dozen belles hanging on every word was the officer on deck, for the captain had insisted on maintaining the illusion that his ship was still all "shipshape and Bristol fashion." But even the watch officer was soon deluged with visitors, for Resistance had become the greatest tourist attraction in the South. In a week, a dozen ships of the Royal Navy rode into the harbor among the mass of civilian shipping. The "women of the town" experienced a lucrative but exhausting bonanza. One of the ships brought the news of the imminent arrival of a ranking representative of the British government, and the news had drawn Davis from Richmond like a magnet.

  Now, Jefferson Davis paced the stone parapet of the Battery as the ship came up to the dock with its distinguished passengers clustered on deck, flanked by scarlet-coated Royal Marines. The guns along the Battery fired the salute, the band struck up "God Save the Queen," and the crowd cheered. No one seemed to notice the nearby HMS Resistance with its upper decks barely above the water.

  The Southern press immediately immortalized the meeting on the dock of President Davis and Her Majesty's representative, Austin David Layard. Their private meeting was much less satisfactory. Foreign Minister Russell had carefully chosen Layard for this mission. Layard had been his undersecretary at the Foreign Office and a member of Parliament. No one was more informed of the government's policies.

  Russell was aware of Layard's overt Southern sympathies, but that was a sentiment shared by most in the British establishment. What he did not realize was that Layard had done more to start this war than anyone else. It was Layard's warning that allowed the infamous Confederate commerce raider, CSS Alabama to escape from Liverpool in 1862 just when American pressure was building for its seizure. The depredations of the Alabama and her sister ships had forced Lincoln to demand the seizure of the two ironclads building for the Confederacy in September. Layard had warned the builders and their Confederate accomplice in time for one of them to escape. Its escape and subsequent interception by the USS Gettysburg in British waters had provoked the battle with the frigate HMS Liverpool. The destruction of the British ship with heavy loss of life was the casus helli for the British declaration of war against the United States. Davis was more informed of Layard's role than even Russell through his agent in Britain, Capt. James B
ulloch, Layard's contact. Davis considered Layard's appointment to be a mark of distinction and compliment to the Confederacy, unaware of Russell's ignorance of his activities. He was prepared to treat Layard as a hero.

  For that reason, Davis was stunned by Layard's official message. It was clear to him that Layard had the impossible task of attempting to square a circle. "I regret that Her Majesty's government is unable at this time to offer your government formal recognition or alliance."

  Davis's response was unprintable.

  Layard attempted to explain, but even his aplomb was unsettled by the seething anger of the sharp-faced man in front of him. "Honor left Great Britain no other recourse after the attack on one of Her Majesty's warships in British waters than to go to war to avenge this outrage." If his role in this chain of events bothered him, it was not apparent. "The nation will support a war against the United States for this reason, sir. At this time, it will not support a war to maintain slavery."

  Davis shot back, "Such distinctions are a fantasy, Mr. Layard. This war has already become indivisible by such artful distinctions. And I assure you, sir, from my own considerable experience, war is a great destroyer of assumptions. The iron law of necessity demands recognition and alliance. You would hamstring yourself without them."

  Layard resumed. "As I said, Mr. Davis, at this time, we are not prepared to offer recognition and alliance. But Her Majesty's government recognizes that the force of events will alter perceptions of necessity at some point in the future. Only then will recognition and alliance be possible."

  "Alliance already exists de facto, Mr. Layard. You fought a battle to break the blockade. Your ships ride in Charleston Harbor and have the full use of the Navy Yard. Your wounded are cared for in our hospitals. Royal arsenals and factories supply our armies. Your armies already occupy territory of our mutual enemy, and you have blockaded his coast. What would you call this state of affairs?"

  "That is the purpose of my visit-to fashion a de facto cooperation that will serve the practical necessities of alliance. The difference between de facto and de jure, sir, is often a gossamer."

  For the first time, the flicker of a smile played on Davis's face. "Tell that to a bastard, Mr. Layard."

  "Ah, Mr. Davis, there is always the possibility that rightful legitimacy will be discovered in due time."

  UNION RAILROAD STATION, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, 2:44 PM, OCTOBER 24, 1863

  Sherman's aides could not take their eyes off the crowds of men at the station as the general's train slowly came to a stop. There must have been at least two thousand, most in faded blue with a bedroll or knapsack, but most without weapons. They were not in any military formation, but they showed the innate sense of order of veterans. "It's been like this at every station since we left Chicago," one officer said.

  It was the crowds of men in faded blue that raised the morale of Sherman's troops as they sped south. These were discharged veterans, men who had enlisted for two years in 1861 and had been discharged. They had gone home satisfied that they had done their share and vowing never to rejoin the Army. With them were thousands more who had been invalided home for wounds or sickness. There was more than one limp or cough among them still. Now they were back, trudging down the roads, gathering at the railroad stations demanding to be sent back to their regiments, and taking the oath of enlistment from any military or naval officer they could find. Entire discharged regiments assembled in their original camps of instruction and marched in step to the railroads, their tattered colors drawn from the state houses or from the place of honor in the home of some beloved commander. Even deserters came back in response to Sherman's blanket amnesty. Trains were commandeered to move this growing host. Sherman would arrive to reinforce Grant, not with a single corps but with an army.

  As the train slowed to a halt at the bunting-draped main station building, Sherman could see what was obviously a delegation of civilians, chief among them the tall and rotund figure of Governor Morton. A band was playing "Rally Round the Flag, Boys!" to sea of men in blue. In the midst of crowd was what first appeared to be several batteries of artillery. A closer look showed the barrels to be circlets of heavy rifle barrels mounted on what looked like light artillery gun carriages.

  As soon as Sherman emerged from the car, the throng erupted into hearty soldier cheers. Morton stepped forward, the platform boards creaking under his weight. He thrust out his hand to Sherman and the crowd cheered even more. Morton may not have been a soldier, but he knew public relations. "Wave, General, wave. Use the moment." It was hard for Sherman, who loathed anything smacking of a politician's oily pretence, but he waved. Now the crowd was chanting, "Billy! Billy! Billy!" It washed over him with the force of nature.

  Morton linked arms with Sherman as he waved his hat at the crowd. He whispered into Sherman's ear, "Indiana has another gift for the Army, General. I want you to meet Richard Gatling."

  MILL ROW, MANCHESTER, ENGLAND, 3:50 PM. OCTOBER 24, 1863

  Edward, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, had had to beg his mother to give him some role in supporting the war. She had not forgiven him for his father's death. Prince Albert had gone to his son's sickbed and caught there the typhoid that killed him. It had taken the intercession of the government to plead with the queen that he allowed to do his part to strengthen national resolve.

  The sinking of HMS Liverpool in British waters by two American warships had filled the British public with an incandescent rage. It had been worth John Bright's life to speak out, but speak he did. Here and there, when the first enthusiastic rush of patriotism had worn down, thoughts of the consequences of the war became hard to ignore. And the most glaring of these was that Great Britain had essentially gone to war in support of the slaveholding South and was now in de facto alliance. The loss of Liverpool was the poisoned fruit of British support of the Confederacy and only the ostensible cause of war. Too many men had become rich over that support, and too many more had had their prejudices against American democracy flattered by that support. The establishment-privilege-had done everything to bring on this war. And now that it had come, privilege began to worry.

  So Mill Row, the mill worker's row cottages for one of the big cotton manufacturers in Manchester, had been chosen by the government for a visit by His Royal Highness to encourage support for the war. Despite the tens of thousands unemployed by the Confederate cotton embargo, Army enlistments had slowed to a trickle. The crowd that came to see him had been large but distressingly restrained with its applause after he read the speech prepared for him, and that clearly was not due to the ingrained good manners of the British. After the speech, he walked down Mill Row in one of those rare exposures to the common people that only the necessity of war could provoke. He stopped every few yards to speak to someone in the respectful crowd. It was painfully obvious that he did not have the common touch, but he was the queen's son, and there was a deep reverence for Victoria.

  He stopped by a young man, not more than twenty-two years old, who seemed sound enough to be a soldier and had that Everyman look that is more disguise than window. Edward thought him a suitable stage for his performance. "Well, my good fellow, will you enlist today and make Manchester proud?"

  The young man doffed his cap and bowed slightly. Then he said plainly, "No, sir."

  "No, sir?" Edward blurted out in surprise. "And why not?" Edward had stepped into the trap that only the most experienced and quick-witted politician can extricate himself from. And Edward was neither. Don't ask a question you don't know the answer to or don't want to hear.

  The young man's gaze seemed harden. "Have you ever watched your child starve, sir?" His knuckles clutching his hat were white.

  Edward was speechless, but his entourage gasped. No one asked him anything with such raw emotional bluntness, much less the type of person who normally cleaned his boots. If such a person addressed a question to him, it was invariably for instruction in meeting his needs.

  "I named her Vicky, sir, after your m
other, I did. She was God's gift, always laughing, golden curls. And when the slaveholders cut off the cotton and put me out of work, I watched her starve. I could find no work. I watched the flesh melt from her bones and her hair turn to straw." He voice caught.

  Edward could only murmur, "I'm so sorry, my good man."

  "She didn't die, sir, though the reaper was walking to my door, for sure."

  "Well, then... "

  "You see, sir, it was American bread that saved her and the pennies of the Americans who felt more pity for us than the slaveholders did."

  Edward's entourage could see a disaster in the making and tried to move him on, but it was as if the prince had been glued to the cobbles as the crowd pressed in to hear every word. All he could mutter was something about standing up for your country.

  "I love my country, sir, but my country would have let my child starve, like it did the Irish. Only the Americans showed pity."

  The crowd had hung on every word and packed in tight. It began to buzz. Another man spoke up. "It is shame on this country to fight for the slaveholders. This is not our war."

  Then another voice louder, "Privilege will see us all slaves!"

  Another voice shouted, "I have family in America. We are shedding our own blood!" It was a rare member of the lower orders that did not have kin in North America. The buzz became a roar, and the crowd began to seethe. It was then that the chief constable acted to force a path for the prince and his entourage and insist they leave immediately.

  The next day's lead article in The People's Paper carried the headline, under the byline of Karl Marx, "Mill Workers Demand End to the American War." He knew that the paper would be on the next packet for Canada and then smuggled to the United States where it would be reprinted in the New York Tribune, the formidable anti-slavery and proLincoln engine of opinion. It was almost as if Karl Marx had a direct line to Abraham Lincoln himself.

  That evening, the papers from London arrived in Dublin where Marx's report was read with perhaps even more interest than it would be in New York. Ireland had bled away over half her population of over eight million in the last fifteen years, and the green land was still stricken by the nightmare of the Great Famine that left almost two million corpses strewn about its empty cottages, country roads, and poorhouses. Another two million had fled ahead of grim starvation, many to Canada and Australia but most to the United States. Memories among the survivors of the starving time were bone deep with a permanent fester of hatred for the government that had ignored their plight, more anxious not to interfere with the working of a free market. It was remarked that the British showed more care for their dusky colonial subjects than their fellow Christians right across the Irish Sea. Safe and snug in Britain, privilege had not seen the convoys of grain being exported from the starving country, trailing thousands of emaciated beggars fended off by the bayonets of the redcoat escorts.