A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (124 page)

General Sheridan was expanding the definition of “total war” to include deliberate starvation and the destruction of civilian property. Jacob Thompson was taking it in another direction: that of terror and mass murder. He was far more systematic than any of the other Confederate agents working in Canada, and he had the men and resources to mount large-scale campaigns.
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2
Thompson had several schemes under way in late October, including a second attempt against USS
Michigan
by John Yates Beall and Bennet G. Burley, which involved the purchase and arming of a civilian steamer; but Thompson’s chief plot was an undertaking in conjunction with the Northern Sons of Liberty to start a revolution on November 8, Election Day.

Two more members from General John Hunt Morgan’s defunct brigade had been sent by Jefferson Davis to help Thompson: Lieutenant Colonel Robert Maxwell Martin and Captain John William Headley. They had originally hoped to lead the supposed uprising talked up so persuasively in June by Vallandigham, but Copperhead enthusiasm for conspiracies had subsided once Sherman and Sheridan’s victories exposed the weakness of the Confederacy. By the beginning of November, the number of cities involved in the Confederate Sons of Liberty plot had shrunk to just two: Chicago and New York. “We were told that about 20,000 men were enlisted in New York under a complete organization,” recalled Captain John Headley. “It was proposed by the New York managers to take possession of the city on the afternoon of Election Day and, in order to deter opposition, a number of fires were to be started in the city.” As in the Chicago plot, the prisoners at Fort Lafayette would be freed, and the city’s authorities, both military and civilian, would be either murdered or thrown in prison.
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The Confederates expected the rest of New York State to follow or be taken as easily as the city.

Lord Monck was throwing the meager resources at his disposal into surveillance operations against the Confederates, but his system was grossly inferior to the Federals’. Alerted by the U.S. consul in Halifax, Seward was able to telegraph General Dix on November 2: “This department has received information from the British Provinces to the effect that there is a conspiracy on foot to set fire to the principal cities in the Northern States on the day of the Presidential election.” The warning was followed by the dispatch of General Butler and five thousand troops, who marched into New York on November 7. The New York Copperheads met Thompson’s guerrillas that day and told them to go back to Canada, as no subversive would dare show his face while Butler was in town. But Martin and Headley would not be put off that easily, and they extracted from the Copperheads a new date for the uprising: Evacuation Day, November 25, so called because it was the day the British Army had been evacuated from Manhattan during the Revolutionary War.

Although the New York plotters had postponed their plan, the Chicago conspiracy was still in play, despite the arrest of John Castleman, Captain Thomas Hines’s deputy, on October 2. Castleman’s place was taken by the English volunteer Colonel Grenfell. “We have all got to live a certain time,” Grenfell wrote to his daughter on October 11, “and when the end comes what difference will it make whether I lived in London or Illinois?”
⁴
The new plan relied on the help of twelve hundred Copperheads—a much smaller number than before—to launch a four-pronged attack on Camp Douglas. Once armed and liberated, the Confederate prisoners were supposed to break open the other prison camps in the state while the Copperheads, led by Grenfell, created a diversion throughout Chicago with fires and incendiary bombs. Hines expected to raise an army of 25,000 Confederate prisoners of war to capture Illinois.

The commandant of Camp Douglas, Colonel Benjamin Sweet, had informants inside the prison who were keeping him abreast of the conspiracy, but he did not know the full details of the plot until a Confederate turncoat named Maurice Langhorne called at his office on November 5 and offered to go undercover for him. Langhorne had briefly served under Confederate general Morgan and knew he would have no difficulty reconnecting with his former comrades. Grenfell was particularly incautious, freely discussing the plot not only with Langhorne but also with a second informant who was sent by Colonel Sweet to verify the information.

Shortly after midnight on November 7, Union troops arrested the leader of the Copperheads; another detachment went after Thomas Hines, although he managed to hide. A third went to the Richmond House hotel in search of Grenfell. A fellow conspirator had managed to get a note to him first, which read: “Colonel—you must leave tonight. Go to Briggs House,” but Grenfell ignored the warning. The arresting officers found the note when they entered his room. He was sitting by the fire, fully dressed, though he could have run from the hotel at any time during the previous three hours.
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Whether he was feeling ill (he was still recovering from influenza) or was simply overconfident, his inaction led to his becoming an inmate of Camp Douglas rather than its liberator. He was put in a special cell reserved for spies and irregular combatants—next to the latrines.

The legation read about the arrests on the morning of the election, but Lord Lyons himself was unaware of the failed plot. He had collapsed on November 6. “Two days after you left,” George Sheffield wrote to Edward Malet, “Lord Lyons gave up the work of the legation to Burnley, and I am sorry to say, has been seriously ill.”
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Lord Lyons’s last act of business before his collapse had been to speak to Seward about the problem of Confederate operations out of Canada. Seward believed his assurances that Lord Monck was trying his best to discourage them, and as a show of good faith he gave Lord Lyons a copy of the government’s vehement protest before it was sent to Charles Francis Adams in London. Lyons was grateful, since foreknowledge would allow Lord Russell sufficient time to compose his response before it was officially delivered. “He said that it would be impossible to resist the pressure which would be put upon the government … if these incursions from Canada continued,” Lyons reported confidentially to Lord Russell on October 28.
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A way had to be found to stop Thompson and his agents.

Seward’s protest to Lord Russell arrived at the legation while Adams was out of London. The family had moved to Hanger Hill House, a handsome Georgian mansion in the village of Ealing.
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The apparent certainty of a Democratic victory had made Charles Francis Adams lackadaisical about coming in to London, conduct that exasperated Benjamin Moran.

“Mr. Adams got a letter this morning from Mr. Dudley reporting a suspicious vessel,” Moran recorded on October 8. “I thought we should send the
Niagara
after her, but he said no.” Moran reveled in injured silence when it was discovered that the vessel had been carrying the crew for the
Shenandoah,
James Bulloch’s replacement for the
Alabama.

The forced sale of the French ships had provided Bulloch with a large reserve of cash that he used to purchase a ready-built steamer.
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The greatest challenge for Bulloch was how to assemble the Confederate officers in one place without someone talking or being discovered. In order to forestall potential leaks, Bulloch had furnished each crew member with explicit instructions. “You will proceed to London by the 5 o’clock train this afternoon,” Bulloch informed 1st Lieutenant William Whittle on October 6, 1864,

and go to Wood’s Hotel, Furnival’s Inn, High Holborn. Take a room there and give your name as Mr. W. C. Brown if asked. It has been arranged for you to be in the coffee room of the hotel at 11 o’clock a.m. precisely to-morrow, and that you will sit in a prominent position, with a white pocket handkerchief rove through a buttonhole of your coat, and a newspaper in your hand. In this attitude you will be recognized by Mr. Richard Wright, who will call at the appointed hour and ask you if your name is Brown. You may say yes, and ask his name; he will give it, and you will then retire with him to your room, hand him the enclosed letter of introduction, and then, throwing off all further disguise, discuss freely the business in hand.
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Whittle and his fellow Confederates obeyed their orders, and the
Shenandoah
sailed secretly from London on October 8. But after the transfer of arms and crew had been made in neutral waters on the nineteenth, the new commander of the cruiser, James Waddell, discovered that the stabilizers for the gun carriages were missing. Without them, the guns would go crashing backward every time they were fired. But this was the least of Captain Waddell’s problems. He had only 43 officers and men for a ship designed to carry a crew of 150.
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The equipment had been salvaged from other Confederate ships, and in the rush to acquire guns and ammunition, ordinary necessities such as tables and chairs had been forgotten. Waddell was so concerned about the shortages that he contemplated abandoning the cruise, but his small crew persuaded him that they would be able to manage. Most were used to far worse deprivations, especially the transfers from the
Alabama.
“Every officer and man ‘pulled off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves,’ ” recalled Lieutenant Whittle, “and with the motto, ‘do or die,’ went to work at anything and everything.” They captured their first prize, the
Alina,
from Maine, on October 30. With a little encouragement, seven sailors from the
Alina
agreed to serve on the
Shenandoah,
giving hope to the overworked crew that more would follow.

James Bulloch argued that his little navy’s record was spotless and that his raiders had attacked the Northern shipping trade without ever harming passengers or crew.
¹¹
But there was nothing heroic about commercial warfare, and in real engagements the Confederate cruisers fared badly. On October 7, USS
Wachusett
had captured CSS
Florida
—the last of the original three commerce raiders—in the Bay of San Salvador, Brazil, without firing a shot.
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Bulloch’s real contribution to the South was his supply operation, which, under the steady direction of the Confederate agent Colin McRae, was working twenty-four hours a day. Since the beginning of autumn, McRae and Bulloch had sent the Confederacy more than five miles of wire, eight pairs of engines, six torpedo boats, four steamers for the navy, three British engineers, and a large quantity of miscellaneous goods including three unmarked boxes sent by Matthew Maury that contained the parts for a new kind of electromagnetic mine.
¹³

Maury had “locked myself down” in his “experimental establishment of my own,” as he told Louisa, the sister of the Reverend Francis Tremlett.
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But he did take one day off to visit the Confederate bazaar in aid of the Southern Prisoners’ Relief Fund.
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Despite James Spence’s fear that the bazaar would have too many contributors and not enough buyers, more than two thousand visitors crammed into Liverpool’s St. George’s Hall on October 18. Inside the neoclassical building were twelve stalls, representing the twelve Confederate states (though the twelfth, Kentucky, had actually remained in the Union). Confederate flags and portraits of Southern generals lined the walls. “This is purely an enterprise gotten up by English gentlemen and ladies, sympathizers with the South and of their own prompting,” James Mason told his wife with great pride.
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Spence had accumulated an extraordinary array of donations, from Robert E. Lee’s pipe to wooden crosses made from the wreckage of Fort Sumter. In addition to persuading local businesses to donate all the food and drink, he arranged for a number of concerts to take place throughout the four days.
¹⁶
(Raphael Semmes had departed for the South on October 3, or Spence would have tried to make use of him as another attraction.) Encouraged by the large crowds, the organizers extended the fair from four to five days. Even after deducting expenses, their final profits were more than £17,000.

Although many newspapers accepted the organizers’ claim that the bazaar was an exercise in charity rather than political propaganda, Northern supporters were not deceived. Benjamin Moran prayed to heaven that retribution would fall upon the English. “When the day of reckoning comes,” he wrote to Dudley on November 1, “I hope I shall be oblivious of mercy towards this government.”
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Moran’s desire to be merciless was granted a week later when Samuel Hardinge, Belle Boyd’s new husband, paid an unexpected visit to the legation. He came “begging for a loan today,” Moran recorded in his diary on November 7, 1864. “He looks like a traitor—is tall and about 21 years of age. He professes to be loyal.” Moran triumphantly turned him away, but Hardinge returned the next morning, offering to spy for the Federals. Moran was supercilious: “I gave him no encouragement. He is evidently in very straightened [
sic
] circumstances, and wants money. After associating with rebels and marrying a spy, it is rather cool impudence in him to come here to beg. His coming here is proof to me that the rebels are in very great pecuniary troubles in London.”
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Hardinge returned to America shortly afterward—without Belle. He was arrested on his arrival in the North and taken to the Old Capitol prison, where he was told he would remain at the discretion of Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war.