A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (128 page)

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The chief defect of Jacob Thompson’s plots, in the opinion of the Confederate government, was that they were not working. Thompson defended his record to Confederate secretary of state Judah P. Benjamin: “I have relaxed no effort to carry out the objects the Government had in view in sending me here. I had hoped at different times to have accomplished more, but still I do not think my mission has been altogether fruitless.”
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Benjamin disagreed and appointed his replacement, telling Thompson in December:

From reports which reach us from trustworthy sources, we are satisfied that so close espionage is kept upon you that your services have been deprived of the value which is attached to your further residence in Canada. The President thinks, therefore that as soon as the gentleman arrives who bears this letter … that you transfer to him as
quietly
as possible all of the information that you have obtained and the release of funds in your hands and then return to the Confederacy.
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The “gentleman” was Brigadier General Edwin Gray Lee, a cousin of Robert E. Lee’s. Edwin Lee suffered from chronic lung disease and was no longer fit for active service, but he had experience in clandestine operations. He found on his arrival to Canada, however, that Thompson was not prepared to leave quietly or hand over control.

Jefferson Davis and Judah Benjamin knew that the Canadian operations were their only means of striking directly into the North. The South’s last remaining army in the west, the Army of Tennessee under Joe Johnston’s successor, John Bell Hood, was smashed to pieces over the course of seven battles between September and November—in the last, the Battle of Franklin on November 30, the attack of the Southern army was so ill-planned and uncoordinated that General John M. Schofield was able to inflict one of the bloodiest defeats of the war. Six Confederate generals were killed, including Patrick Cleburne, the highest-ranking Irish general in the South.
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From then on, Sherman was determined to reach the Atlantic coast as quickly as possible. “I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!” he assured Grant. “I propose to … make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms.”
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Leaving General Thomas behind to destroy the remnants of Hood’s army, Sherman was able to move forward between ten and fifteen miles a day and cause at least $1 million worth of damage to Georgia. He entered Savannah on December 21, 1864, having completed his three-hundred-mile “march to the sea” in thirty-six days. He telegraphed Lincoln: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.”

Richmond did not learn of Savannah’s capture for several days. But the Confederate government was transfixed by the threat to its last open port. “[Federal] Troops are moving toward Wilmington from here,” wrote the chief of ordnance, Josiah Gorgas, “and a heavy armament has departed from Hampton Roads, supposed to be destined to the attack of that place. The great trouble to be met now is to feed the army here while the railroads southward are being repaired.”
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The situation was now desperate: the supply of food for the army would not even last the month without additional deliveries from Bermuda. The commissary general, Lucius Northrop, turned to Thomas Taylor, the English blockade runner, for help. “I said I would do my best,” wrote Taylor, “and after some negotiations he undertook to pay me a profit of 350 per cent upon any provisions and meat I could bring in within the next three weeks!”
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Taylor set out on the
Wild Rover
and returned from Bermuda on December 24, just as the long-expected assault on Fort Fisher at Wilmington by General Butler and Admiral Porter was about to begin.

Francis Lawley and Frank Vizetelly had both rushed to Wilmington from Petersburg fearing they would be too late to witness the attack. The largest fleet ever assembled in the war—sixty-four Federal ships in total—were arranged in a three-mile-wide crescent, blocking the entrance to Cape Fear. Opposing them were fewer than a thousand Confederates manning the fort, some of them boys who had never fired a gun before. (The Confederate navy consisted of only fifty vessels now, and Mallory had not even bothered to send a defense.) “For five weary hours upon the 24th,” wrote Lawley, “the iron hailstorm, without one instant’s cessation, descended upon or around the fort, tore great rents … set fire to the wooden quarters of the garrison, swept away every vestige of flag or flagstaff … without injuring a hair of the head of its defenders.”
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The Federals’ plan to explode a ship next to the ramparts merely resulted in a loud noise and a great deal of sea spray, but the Confederates’ secret weapon—Matthew Fontaine Maury’s electromagnetic mines—also failed, being too complicated and delicate to work properly under fire.

The first wave of Union troops fought all Christmas Day, coming within seventy-five yards of the walls. Rather than being buoyed by their proximity to success, however, General Butler was blinded by the possibility of defeat, and when darkness fell he called off the attack. Admiral Porter was furious. Five hundred properly led men could have taken the fort, he claimed to the navy secretary, Gideon Welles. To compound Porter’s anger, the
Banshee II
and its vital supplies for Lee’s army managed to slip past the Federal fleet in the early hours of December 26. Taylor was fired upon by several gunboats as he dashed toward the fort: “It was an exciting moment as we crossed the bar in safety, cheered by the garrison,” he wrote, “who knew we had provisions on board for the relief of their comrades in Virginia.”
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The South knew that the Federal attackers would return. “If Wilmington falls, ‘Richmond next,’ is the prevalent supposition,” wrote the War Department clerk John Jones. “It is unquestionably the darkest period we have yet experienced. Intervention on the part of European powers is the only hope of many. Failing that, no doubt a negro army will be organized—and it might be too late!”
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President Davis decided to make one last appeal to Britain. With nothing left to offer, and with no threat of blackmail or an Anglo-American war to dangle, Davis resorted to the previously unthinkable: he proposed to abolish slavery in return for recognition of Southern independence. On December 27, 1864, he asked Duncan F. Kenner, one of his few remaining allies in the Confederate Congress, to go to London to speak to Lord Palmerston.
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Benjamin promised Kenner that he would prevent Mason and Slidell from interfering, and wrote to the commissioners that same day.
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He dared not describe the mission in explicit terms in case the letter fell into the wrong hands, but he stated that Kenner’s mandate came directly from the president and could not be questioned.
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Meanwhile, Davis arranged a secret meeting between Kenner and the Confederate congressional leaders, who reluctantly accepted that there was no alternative. Partly to explain his departure, and partly because his position as chairman of the Confederate House’s Ways and Means Committee made him the obvious candidate, Kenner was given additional powers to negotiate a government loan from European banks. Kenner would have authority to sell every last cotton bale in the South, if necessary, so long as he procured new funds for the bankrupt treasury.

But before Kenner could do any of these things, he first had to find a way of breaking the Federal stranglehold on the South.

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Francis Lawley paid a brief visit to Charleston after the Battle of Wilmington and was sorry that he did: the empty streets reminded him of Boccaccio’s description of Florence after the Black Death. Some blocks were nothing more than charred ruins, while others remained eerily pristine with “vacant verandahs and deserted sun balconies.” There was grace and grandeur amid the ruins—the tall spire of St. Michael’s Church remained intact, though no one would now dare, as Rose Greenhow once had, to climb the steps for a view over the harbor. “Nor can any one who visits Charleston to day be blind to the possibility,” he wrote in his
Times
report, “that before the 13th of April 1865, arrives—the fourth anniversary … a Federal watchman may from this same spire gaze down upon the sun-lit harbour and city beneath him.”
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The city was not entirely devoid of troops or civilians; there were still twelve thousand soldiers garrisoned in the surrounding area, and Henry Feilden was as busy as ever. His wedding to Julia had taken place in Greenville, South Carolina, on October 27, 1864, but he could not allow her to live with him in Charleston. “How I miss you, dearest, and all your kindnesses and attentions,” he wrote to his wife, who remained in Greenville. “But it was the right thing to do under the circumstances, for we shall soon have to undertake active operations.” No one was sure whether Sherman would head to Charleston after Savannah or march to Richmond via Columbia, South Carolina’s state capital. Either way, the state and its port were doomed. “One thing you may be sure of,” promised Henry, “you will have to be looked after, and I will resign my commission sooner than not be able to do so.” He had persuaded one of the last blockade runners in Charleston to take out £100 worth of cotton for them. This was all the non-Confederate money they possessed, “and will give us some little exchange in the hour of need.”
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Feilden had again been recommended for promotion, this time by General Beauregard and General Hardee. As it was, not only was there no response to the generals’ requests, but Feilden also fell victim to the growing confusion in the War Department. He received contradictory orders, sending him hither and thither, much to the annoyance of Hardee and Beauregard, who both wanted him on their staff. He managed to have the orders rescinded, but his promotion remained in abeyance.
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On January 4, 1865, General Lee detached the veteran South Carolina regiments from his shrinking army and sent them home to defend their state. Feilden was already thinking about evacuation plans. “If we can’t hold Charleston,” he wrote to Julia on the fifth, “I am very sure we shall not burn it up, because there are now in the city and would be left behind, some 15,000 poor men, women and children and negroes, who cannot possibly leave the city in any case, for they would have no place to go, and would die of starvation.” Julia had fantasies about burning their house rather than letting it fall into Federal hands. “It would be a good deal like cutting off one’s nose to spite the face,” he chided. “If Charleston is to be burnt, let the Yankees have the disgrace of doing it. Sherman’s army will commence active operations in South Carolina in a few days.”
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Feilden tried to reassure Julia that a Federal occupation would not be as terrible as she feared. He could not comprehend the pent-up rage many Northerners felt toward South Carolina, and Charleston in particular, for being the cradle of rebellion.
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Nor did he understand the Southern horror of “Negro troops.” “I know it would make no difference to me for I lived in places where there was nothing but Negro troops, Nassau for instance,” he wrote to her, “and I noticed that people; Southerners, English and others seemed to enjoy life just as much as if all the troops in the island were white.”
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The South was undergoing a late but hard lesson in the fighting ability of black soldiers as five Negro regiments joined the Federal assault force for the next attack on Wilmington. At four in the morning on January 13, Admiral Porter’s fleet once again appeared on the horizon, and by eight o’clock the first landing transports were disgorging troops onto the beach. Frank Vizetelly had remained at Fort Fisher, hoping to draw a picture of the fighting. His patience was rewarded with a perfect view of the attack. He was able to capture the entire scene for the
Illustrated London News,
from the Federal soldiers landing in the distance to the Confederates desperately trying to shore up the fort’s walls in the foreground.

The fort fell two days later, on January 15, although Wilmington itself remained in Confederate hands for the moment. Feilden urged Julia to remain in Greenville. “The people are now dreadfully scared here,” he wrote on January 19. “Many I am sure are sorry that they did not clear out before this. It cannot be long before this city is attacked. I suppose we shall have to yield in the end unless strong reinforcements reach us, of which I see very little hope at present.” Sherman had already set out from Savannah, and stories of Federal atrocities were preceding his advance.
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