A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (175 page)

48.
Berwanger,
The British Foreign Service and the American Civil War
, p. 104.

Chapter 26: Can the Nation Endure?

 
1.
PRO FO5/908, ff. 115–17, no. 30, Cridland to Russell, November 14, 1863.

 
2.
Fitzgerald Ross,
Cities and Camps of the Confederate States
, ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell (Champaign, Ill., 1997), p. 140.

 
3.
The Times,
December 1, 1863.

 
4.
Ross,
Cities and Camps
, p. 143.

 
5.
John G. Nicolay and John Hay (eds.),
Complete Works of Lincoln
, vol. 9 (New York, 1907), p. 26, Lincoln to Grant, July 13, 1863.

 
6.
“The Journal of Robert Neve,” private collection, p. 140.

 
7.
Ibid., p. 143.

 
8.
Francis W. Dawson,
Reminiscences of Confederate Service, 1861–1865
, ed. Bell I. Wiley (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), p. 105.

 
9.
Jeffrey Wert,
General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier
(New York, 1993), p. 341.

10.
Dawson,
Reminiscences,
p. 109.

11.
The Times
, December 15, 1863.

12.
Bruce Catton,
Never Call Retreat
(London, 2001), p. 273.

13.
Decatur Daily News
, March 20, 1879.

14.
David Donald provides the following footnote in his edition of Salmon P. Chase’s diary: “Henry Charles De Ahna wrote the President his version of these events on January 31, 1864: ‘As Your Excellency probably recollects, it was brought to the knowledge of the Government several months ago, that through a singular mistake in a name, I found myself approached by an agent of the Rebel government and an offer of $50,000 was made to me, if I would undertake to enter into a negotiation with Col. Percy Wyndham and by offering him in the name of the Rebel Government the sum of 100,000 Dollars, would succeed in persuading the said Percy Wyndham to allow himself to be taken prisoner with his whole Cavalry Brigade.’ De Ahna told his story to V. Hogan, ‘who was then well known as Secretary Chase’s Detective,’ and he also had an interview with Chase himself, but he claimed that Chase failed properly to investigate the matter.”
Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase
, ed. David Donald (New York, 1954), p. 316.

15.
PRO FO 115/400, f. 247, Lyons to John Livingston, November 3, 1863.

16.
Nicolay and Hay (eds.),
Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln
, vol. 9, p. 204, Lincoln to Meade, November 9, 1863; Lincoln to Burnside, November 8, 1863.

17.
Ibid., p. 154, Lincoln to Rosecrans, October 4, 1863.

18.
Sarah Forbes Hughes (ed.),
Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes
, 2 vols. (New York, 1990), vol. 2, p. 74, Forbes to Lincoln, September 8, 1863.

19.
Michael Burlingame,
Abraham Lincoln
, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 2008), vol. 2, p. 573; Ronald White, Jr.,
Lincoln
(New York, 2009), p. 604.

20.
David H. Donald,
Lincoln
(New York, 1995), p. 465.

21.
The Times
, December 4, 1863.

22.
Michael Burlingame and R. Turner Ettlinger (eds.),
Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete War Diary of John Hay
(Carbondale, Ill., 1997), pp. 112–13, November 18–19, 1863.

23.
Burlingame,
Abraham Lincoln
, vol. 2, p. 576.

24.
Nicolay and Hay (eds.),
Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln
, vol. 9, pp. 209–10.

25.
An Englishman in the American Civil War: The Diaries of Henry Yates Thompson, 1863
, ed. Sir Christopher Chancellor (New York, 1971), pp. 141–42.

26.
Sam Watkins,
Company Aytch
(New York, 1999), p. 91.

27.
An Englishman in the American Civil War
, p. 152.

28.
“The Journal of Robert Neve,” p. 158.

29.
An Englishman in the American Civil War
, p. 153.

30.
Cleburne realized that he had a volunteer of exceptional quality the moment Byrne presented himself at his headquarters. Cleburne requested a commission for him on November 8, writing: “This young gentleman is eminently deserving. He left England to volunteer his services in our cause. He has been on my staff. I have found him a brave and gallant officer, highly intelligent, and devoted to our cause. I am the more anxious he should be appointed, because he sacrificed the opportunity of being commissioned in the British Service. He passed the examination required to entitle him to be placed on the list of possible appointees, before he left England, which he did upon a limited leave of absence. His leave has now expired, and, as he understands, he had forfeited his chance of being subjected in that service.” Irving A. Buck,
Cleburne and His Command
(Wilmington, N.Y., 1995), p. 27.

31.
“The Journal of Robert Neve,” p. 161.

32.
Watkins,
Company Aytch
, p. 95.

33.
An Englishman in the American Civil War
, pp. 166–67.

34.
Ibid., p. 18.

35.
George Templeton Strong,
Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865
, ed. Allan Nevins (New York, 1962), p. 375, November 27, 1863.

36.
R. W. McFarland,
The Surrender of Cumberland Gap
(Columbus, Ohio, 1898), p. 29.

37.
For a complete description of the 16th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and De Courcy’s career as its colonel, along with scanned documents, muster rolls, and much more, see
http://www.mkwe.com/home.htm
.

38.
Ten years later, De Courcy’s cousin died. Thus,
Kind Hearts and Coronets
style, though De Courcy was the fourth child of a second son, he became the 31st Baron Kingsale, Ireland’s premier barony.

39.
Jeffry D. Wert,
The Sword of Lincoln
(New York, 2006), p. 321.

40.
British Library of Political and Economic Science, LSE, GB 0097, Farr MSS, vol. 10, Henry Ezechiel to Mr. Murray, January 6, 1864.

41.
Jones,
A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary
, p. 306, November 12, 1863.

PART III: IF ONLY WE ARE SPARED

Chapter 27: Buckling Under Pressure

 
1.
W. C. Ford (ed.),
A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865
, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 2, p. 106, Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., November 27, 1863.

 
2.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 2, p. 514, Stephen Mallory to Bulloch, October 22, 1863.

 
3.
Fitzgerald Ross,
Cities and Camps of the Confederate States
, ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell (Champaign, Ill., 1997), p. 172.

 
4.
Stephen Z. Starr,
Colonel Grenfell’s Wars
(Baton Rouge, La., 1971), pp. 106–7, Ross,
Cities and Camps
, pp. 172–73.

 
5.
C. Vann Woodward (ed.),
Mary Chesnut’s Civil War
(New Haven, 1981), p. 337, January 12, 1864.

 
6.
Illustrated London News
, April 2, 1863, p. 313.

 
7.
Raphael Semmes,
My Adventures Afloat: A Personal Memoir of My Cruises and Services
(1868; repr. Baltimore, 1987), p. 629.

 
8.
They were Baron Maximilian von Meulnier of Bremen and Julius Schroeder of Hanover.

 
9.
Norman C. Delaney,
John McIntosh Kell of the Raider Alabama
(Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1973), p. 153.

10.
Charles Francis Adams made the first claim for redress against the
Alabama,
“for the national and private injuries sustained by the proceedings of this vessel,” on November 20, 1862. Russell replied on December 19, categorically stating that “Britain cannot be held responsible … for these irregular proceedings of British subjects,” and to claim otherwise would be as reasonable as the British government suing the American “for the injuries done to the property of British subjects by the
Alabama
 … on the ground that the United States claim authority … over the Confederate States, by whom that vessel was commissioned.”
PRFA
, 1 (1864), p. 35, Russell to Charles Francis Adams, December 22, 1862.

11.
PRO FO282/7 (2), Consul Archibald to Lord Lyons, April 9, 1863.

12.
PRO HO45/7261/216, Colonial Office to Home Office, February 10, 1864. Final estimates for Irish-American recruitment throughout the war hover around 140,000 in the Federal army, and between 20,000 and 40,000 in the Confederate. Of the sixteen stowaways on the
Kearsarge
, five were tried in April 1864 for violating the Foreign Enlistment Act. They pleaded guilty to the charge and were released on their own cognizance. By then, Adams thought the government was pursuing the case in order to appear even-handed in its battle to shut down Confederate operations.

13.
Charles P. Cullop, “An Unequal Duel: Union Recruiting in Ireland, 1863–1864,”
Civil War History
, 13 (1967), p. 108.

14.
James D. Bulloch,
The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe
, 2 vols. (New York, 1886), vol. 1, p. 444.

15.
Duke University, Special Collections Library, Rose O’Neal Greenhow Papers, Greenhow to Alexander Boteler, December 10, 1863.

16.
The captured blockade runner is incorrectly identified as the
Ceres
in William C. Davis (ed.),
Secret History of Confederate Diplomacy Abroad
(Lawrence, Kan., 2005), p. xxii.

17.
Ann Blackman,
Wild Rose: Rose O’Neal Greenhow, Civil War Spy
(New York, 2005), p. 275.