1862 (2 page)

Fairfax was uncomfortable. The Confederates weren’t the only ones taking passage on the
Trent,
A small crowd of civilians had gathered near the bow and virtually all glared at him with undisguised contempt and hate. “I have my orders, sir; you are to surrender the so-called Confederate delegation.”

“Find them yourselves,” Moir snarled.

After quickly determining that neither Mason nor Slidell were in the crowd on the deck, he sent his men below to find them. It did not take long. A few moments later, both Confederates were brought into the sunlight. When it became apparent that they were going to be removed forcibly, several of the civilians appeared to be groping for pistols.

“Steady,” Fairfax told them. “I wish no harm to anyone. But we will shoot if we see a weapon.”

“lt’ll be all right,” said Slidell. “We will be treated honorably and then released. Do not let blood be shed over us.”

Actually, Fairfax thought. Captain Wilkes planned to treat them as traitors and not particularly honorably. But he kept his counsel so as not to incite violence.

Captain Moir stepped up to Fairfax and glared at him, his face only a few inches from the American’s.

“This is not some foul South American merchant, Lieutenant, or a stinking dhow from an Arab slave master. This is a British government ship, part of the government of the most powerful nation on earth. I accept that you are following orders. I can see the distaste on your face. However, your captain is a lunatic. He may have just caused a war between Great Britain and the Union.”

Fairfax paled but said nothing. It was all too terribly possible.

It was November 7. 1861.

   Viscount Palmerston, the prime minister of Great Britain, grasped his glass tightly, The brandy in it quivered with his fury. “Some may accept this outrage, but, by God, I will not!” he snarled.

“Hear, hear,” said his companions, Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell and Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone.

England was reeling with the shock and horror of having one of her ships, the
Trent,
stopped and boarded by a foreign power, That the offending nation was the United States, a nation that was both an economic and a military rival, made the situation worse. While the action was partly justified since the United States was at war and the
Trent
had been in a war area, it was the sort of thing that England did unto others, No one did it to England,

Worse, the Union captain had then taken the Confederate emissaries as prisoners and treated them shabbily. Thus, not only had a British government ship been stopped, but she had also been plundered of her human cargo, and now all England seethed at the insult,

Between them, Palmerston, Gladstone, and Russell had enough influence to control Parliament and determine the fate of the British Empire, While Palmerston had the more senior rank and title, the relationship was almost a partnership. Russell had been prime minister once and hoped to have the title again. As Palmerston was seventy-seven and Russell a mere sixty-nine, it seemed likely. Gladstone, also in his sixties, had his own hopes for a political future that included the title of prime minister.

All three were firm in the belief that the world was a better place because of the stability brought about by Britain’s far flung empire, and they felt it was their duty to ensure that Great Britain’s primacy in the world went unthreatened.

But now it was threatened. Ever since the beginnings of the American Civil War, there had been serious economic repercussions within the empire. The Union forces had declared a blockade of the Southern ports, thus almost eliminating the shipments of cotton to English mills. Fortunately, quantities had been stored up before the war, and the cotton fields of India were beginning to develop as an alternative, but there was unrest and unemployment in many parts of England. Newspaper headlines screamed that millions of Englishmen and their families would starve if something wasn’t done about the blockade, and labor unrest was near crisis proportions.

Many in England were hostile to the United States for other reasons. The two nations had fought two official wars in less than a century, and had been on the verge of others several times as a result of border disputes between the United States and Canada. Relations between the two English-speaking nations had never been good, and had deteriorated badly since the start of the Civil War. Now the
Trent
Incident, as it was called, had again raised the specter of war with the United States, or at least the northern portion of the severed nation. The clamor for war was fast becoming an irresistible force, presuming that anyone in Her Majesty’s government wished to resist it.

Many ordinary Englishmen appeared to want their government to use force to break the Union blockade and open the Southern ports to British ships. It was clearly understood that such a use of force would mean war. None of the three men gathered at Russell’s country home nine miles outside London were terribly upset at the possibility.

Palmerston had calmed down. “Tell me, John, who are our enemies?”

“Truthfully, we have none at the moment,” Russell replied.

Palmerston shook his head. “We always have enemies. Great powers cannot escape them. We have enemies of the past, enemies of the present, and enemies of the future. Think upon it, who might they be?”

While Russell pondered, Palmerston stood and walked to the window. For once it wasn’t raining, although the late afternoon was bleak. The dark clouds created by the smoke from a hundred thousand coal-burning furnaces blanketed nearby London in filth.

“France is not our enemy of the moment,” Palmerston said, answering his own question, “although she would like to be. France is a nation of incompetents led by a buffoon, Napoleon III. No, France is not a threat. At least not right now. That she was in the past and will be in the future is both history and inevitability, but France does not threaten us today.”

Gladstone decided to join in. “Then what about Russia? Granted we pulled the bear’s claws in the Crimea, but she is still vast and populous.”

“And filled with unarmed and illiterate millions,” Palmerston said. “She is even less competent than France. The only reason we had any difficulty fighting Russia in the Crimea was that we had to fight them on their home ground. No, Russia is not our enemy.”

“Prussia?” asked Russell.

“A good thought,” Palmerston said. “The Prussians are likely to succeed in organizing the German states into one nation, which would make them very powerful. But that will take many years to accomplish. They are a definite candidate for an enemy of the future, but not of the present.”

Russell shrugged. “Then who’s left? Surely you cannot be thinking of Portugal or Spain? And both Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire are sick and likely to fall apart before very long. Nor can you be thinking of Italy, which, like Prussia, may someday be unified. I must also admit that I find it difficult to consider a unified Italy a threat to anyone.”

“True enough,” said Palmerston. “Now, who does that leave us?” Russell smiled thinly. “The United States of America.”

“Correct. The United States is vibrant and energetic, and she has a population of more than thirty million, not counting her slaves. She has a continent to fill up, which she will do about the same time Prussia consolidates the German states. Right now, the United States is both our economic customer and our most serious rival in the world of commerce; thus, she will be an enemy in the coming years. The United States has the resources and the wealth to be a threat to our well-being in the not-too-distant future.”

“So what do you propose?” Gladstone asked.

“I propose that we regard the
Trent
Incident as an opportunity to put the United States in her place and ensure our rightful position in world affairs,” Palmerston said. “The Union government has sent an apology that would otherwise be considered most generous as it contains more than a proper amount of groveling. They say that Captain Wilkes acted beyond the scope of his orders and will be punished. It is apparent that Mr. Lincoln does not want a war with England concurrent with his war with the Confederacy. The question then remains: Does England want a war with the United States?

“Under ordinary circumstances,” Palmerston continued, “the American apology would be eminently satisfactory and require our acceptance of it. However, two things give me pause. First, if this Wilkes creature acted without orders, then why did it hail him as a hero. I believe it will even vote him a medal. Second, why hasn’t he been incarcerated and charged with a crime? Instead, our ambassador to Washington, Lord Lyons, reports that Wilkes is cheered to the heavens wherever he goes. No, it is time to teach the Yankees a lesson. I am reminded of the situation between Rome and Carthage. In order to remain supreme, Rome constantly fought and ultimately destroyed Carthage. We do not propose to destroy the United States, merely teach her a stern lesson, and, by assisting the Confederacy, we will ensure the South’s independence. As a result, the United States, instead of being a continental power, will be fragmented. Who knows,” he mused, “perhaps we can cause other parts to break off. California, for instance.”

Russell and Gladstone both smiled tolerantly at the Rome versus Carthage analogy. Palmerston frequently equated the British Empire with the Roman Empire and was determined that Britain’s would not suffer the same fate as Rome’s. The barbarians would not overwhelm her on his watch as prime minister.

“Prime Minister,” said Russell, “there are many who say that Great Britain and the United States should be allies against the real barbarians of the world.”

“And someday that may happen,” Palmerston replied. “But first we shall have to make certain it is England who leads that alliance and not the United States. The United States is a democracy and her success imperils those, like us, who have traditionally governed England by right of heredity and breeding. The United States has neither tradition nor breeding and is not ready for leadership. Should she ascend to primacy in the world without a more learned power to guide her, chaos would ensue as other, even less-qualified levels of people seek to rule. Surely you haven’t forgotten the horrors that occurred in France when there was government without restraint? No, democracy in the New World must be shown to be a failure.”

“And what about the slavery issue?” Russell asked. He had stepped into his usual role of devil’s advocate to Palmerston’s ideas. “What will the queen say about allying ourselves with a slaveocracy?”

Palmerston smiled. “Her majesty is distracted with the illness of her beloved Prince Albert. She is also aware that President Lincoln’s position on slavery is utter hypocrisy. The war has been waging for the better part of a year and Lincoln has done nothing regarding freeing the slaves. In fact, I believe slavery is still legal in Washington, D.C., although I doubt anyone really practices it there. No, the slavery issue is a moot point. The people of England will support our decision. There is an overabundance of anger towards the Northern Union that needs to be satisfied. They cannot sink our ships and, more important, they cannot threaten the strength and well-being of the British Empire, either now or in the future.”

“Then we shall have war,” said Russell.

“Indeed,” Palmerston replied. “And we must make absolutely certain that we win it both decisively and quickly. A long war would be a drain on the economy, and defeats could render both it and us vulnerable to changing opinions. We cannot have another bloody debacle like the Crimean War. No, we must fight and win decisively.”

“When?” Gladstone asked.

“As soon as possible,” Palmerston said softly, “and we shall give them the same warning the immortal Nelson gave the Danes at Copenhagen.”

The others in the room nodded grimly. The immortal Admiral Horatio Nelson had given the Danes no warning at Copenhagen.

* * * *

Private Billy Harwell shivered in the cold November rain. Washington, D.C., might be a Southern town, but today it had early winter weather that knifed to the bone, causing Billy to think that volunteering for the Union army was one of the dumbest things he had ever done in his seventeen years of life on this earth.

Billy had joined for the great adventure of military life to get out of having to work in a bakery in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Like so many thousands of other volunteers, he’d thought the war would be over in a few weeks and consist of a lot of flags flying, marching around, and kissing girls. It was commonly believed that the scrawny and illiterate rebs would shit their pants when they saw the mighty Union host marching against them. Then they would see the light and stop this war before anyone got hurt. The worst thing that could happen was that there would be one battle with a few heroic dead and wounded, and then everyone’s honor would be satisfied and peace would resume.

The bloody catastrophe at Bull Run had cured him of that fantasy, and standing in the rain guarding a small useless bridge over a muddy creek north of Washington had convinced him that he would not reenlist when his time was up. Right now. being warm and dry in a hot bakery sounded just fine.

A rider was approaching. The misty rain and low gray sky had obscured Billy’s vision until the rider was very close. Of course, he hadn’t been looking all that hard, since it was highly unlikely that the rebels would have gotten this far without someone noticing. He thought about calling for his sergeant but that fine man was warming himself by a fire in a hut with a deck of cards, a bottle of cheap booze, and several cronies. Sergeant Grimes had told Billy only to call him out into the rain if it looked like Jesus Christ or the rebel army showed up.

Since it was highly unlikely that the one rider coming from the direction of Baltimore was either Jesus or the advance of the rebel army, Billy decided he could handle the situation by himself. He would not call Sergeant Grimes. The sergeant was a surly drunk and Billy wanted nothing more than to drive his bayonet right up Grimes’s big fat ass.