A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (176 page)

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Authors: Amanda Foreman

Tags: #Europe, #International Relations, #Modern, #General, #United States, #Great Britain, #Public Opinion, #Political Science, #Civil War Period (1850-1877), #19th Century, #History

BOOK: A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War
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18.
Ibid.
19.
Lynda L. Crist, Kenneth H. Williams, and Peggy L. Dillard (eds.),
The Papers of Jefferson Davis
, vol. 10 (Baton Rouge, La., 1999), p. 143.
20.
Bayly Ellen Marks and Mark Naton Schatz (eds.),
Between North and South: A Maryland Journalist Views the Civil War; The Narrative of William Wilkins Glenn, 1861–1869
(Cranbury, N.J., 1976), p. 123, February 1864.
21.
North Carolina State Archives, Private Collections, PC1226, Rose O’Neal Greenhow Papers, London Diary, p. 48.
22.
The Private Journal of Georgiana Gholson Walker
, ed. Dwight Franklin Henderson, Confederate Centennial Studies, 25 (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1963), p. 74, March 8, 1864.
23.
North Carolina State Archives, Greenhow diary, p. 53.
24.
Bulloch,
The Secret Service of The Confederate States of America
, p. 296.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Stanley Lebergott, “Through the Blockade: The Profitability and Extent of Cotton Smuggling, 1861–1865,”
Journal of Economic History
, 41 (Dec. 1981), p. 876.
27.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 981–85, Hotze to Benjamin, December 26, 1863.
28.
R.J.M. Blackett,
Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War
(Baton Rouge, La., 2001), p. 190.
29.
Index
, January 14, 1863.
30.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 1007–9, Mason to Benjamin, January 25, 1864. For example, Lady Wharncliffe wrote on January 30, 1864: “To think that having started [the war in 1861 with our friends] here drawn with indignation at the conduct of the Confederates, and that now one should be wishing for their success, slave owners as they are! … However I am convinced that somehow the knell of slavery is rung.” Durham University, Grey MSS, GRE/G17/21/18–19, Georgiana Elizabeth, Lady Wharncliffe, to Miss Elizabeth Copley.
31.
Benjamin to Spence, January 11, 1864, quoted in John Bigelow, “The Confederate Diplomatists and Their Shirt of Nessus,”
Century Magazine
, 20 (1891), p. 122.
32.
MPUS, Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs
, 1 (1864), p. 44.
33.
Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865
, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1948, 1949), vol. 2, p. 1263, February 11, 1863.
34.
Wilbur Devereux Jones,
The Confederate Rams at Birkenhead
, Confederate Centennial Studies, 19 (Wilmington, N.C., 2000), p. 107.
35.
W. G. Wiebe, Mary S. Miller, and Anne P. Robson,
Benjamin Disraeli Letters: 1860–1864
(Toronto, 2009), p. 314.
36.
Ford (ed.),
A Cycle of Adams Letters
, vol. 2, pp. 118–19, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Charles Francis Adams, January 16, 1864.
37.
Wallace and Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran
, vol. 2, p. 1264, February 16, 1864, and February 17, 1864.
38.
Ibid., p. 1266, February 20, 1864.
39.
Ibid., p. 1269, March 1, 1864.
40.
Edward Chase Kirkland,
Charles Francis Adams Jr.
(Cambridge, Mass., 1965), p. 28.
41.
Wallace and Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran
, vol. 2, p. 1274, March 12, 1863.
42.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 874–81, Hotze to Benjamin, August 27, 1863.
43.
The book was far superior to the novelist George Alfred Lawrence’s self-pitying account of his capture and imprisonment, called
Border and Bastille
. It was also much more effective as a piece of pro-Confederate propaganda than a work such as
The South as It Is
, by the Rev. T. D. Ozanne, who had spent twenty-one years in the South and could not understand why it should be made to suffer all because of “one social evil.”
44.
Hugh Dubrulle, “Fear of Americanization and the Emergence of an Anglo-Saxon Confederacy,”
Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies
, 33/4 (Winter 2001), pp. 583–613, at p. 594.
45.
Brian Jenkins, “Frank Lawley and the Confederacy,”
Civil War History
, 23 (March 1977), p. 158.
46.
Ibid.
47.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 1046–47, Slidell to Benjamin, March 5, 1864.
48.
Jenkins, “Frank Lawley and the Confederacy,” p. 158.
49.
Quoted in Edward Chalfant,
Better in Darkness
(New York, 1996), p. 75.
50.
North Carolina State Archives, Greenhow diary, p. 65.

Chapter 28: A Great Slaughter

 
1.
A head count in the South at the end of 1863 revealed that only 277,000 soldiers remained after three years. President Davis did not dare allow such alarming information to reach the public. The North, on the other hand, had 611,000 men in arms.
 
2.
John Bierman,
Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire
(New York, 1988), p. 234.
 
3.
Thomas Edgar Pemberton,
Sir Charles Wyndham: A Biography
(London, 1904), p. 27; “Britons in the Civil War: Sir Charles Wyndham,”
Crossfire
, 37 (Nov. 1990).
 
4.
OR, ser. 1, vol. 34/1, p. 219, Report of Admiral Porter, June 13, 1864. “I trust some future historian will treat this matter as it deserves to be treated,” he declared, “because it is a subject in which the whole country should feel an interest.”
 
5.
Although Dahlgren’s massacre plan could have been a forgery, the South believed that the papers were authentic.
 
6.
Duane Schultz,
The Dahlgren Affair
(New York, 1998), p. 157. Two weeks before Colonel Dahlgren made his doomed ride toward Richmond, the Confederate Congress had secretly approved a bill on February 15 to transfer $5 million to a Secret Service fund. The bill also authorized the use of covert warfare against the North. The government had finally accepted that Lee could not win the war by himself.
 
7.
Ibid., p. 181.
 
8.
Mabel Clare Weaks, “Colonel George St. Leger Grenfell,”
Filson Club History Quarterly,
34 (1960), p. 11.
 
9.
Stephen Z. Starr,
Colonel Grenfell’s Wars
(Baton Rouge, La., 1971), p. 125.
10.
Frank Moore (ed.),
Rebellion Record,
ser. 1, 53 vols., vol. 8 (New York, 1883), p. 515, Burton N. Harrison to Lord Lyons, April 6, 1864.
11.
Oscar A. Kinchen,
Confederate Operations in Canada
(Hanover, Mass., 1970), p. 36.
12.
John Jones passed a pleasant two days in February 1863, working out possible permutations of a three-way partition between the states; John B. Jones,
A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital
, ed. Earl Schenck Miers (Urbane, Ill., 1958), p. 165.
13.
James Morton Callahan,
The Diplomatic History of the Confederacy
(Baltimore, 1901), p. 225.
14.
Hudson Strode,
Jefferson Davis: Confederate President
, 3 vols. (New York, 1959), vol. 3, p. 35.
15.
“There is no doubt he has got the best military head of any man in this Confederacy, and if he only gets a chance he will make his mark on the enemy this Spring and Summer,” Feilden had written enthusiastically. South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS (3), Feilden to Julia McCord, April 20, 1864.
16.
Ibid., (10), Feilden to Julia McCord, April 20, 1864.
17.
Ibid., (6), Feilden to Julia McCord, April 30, 1864.
18.
E. Milby Burton,
The Siege of Charleston
(Columbia, S.C., 1982), p. 283.
19.
PRO FO5/896, f. 23, Lyons to Russell, November 3, 1863; the reference for the quotation in the footnote is PRO FO 5/896, f. 33, Lyons to Russell, November 3, 1863.
20.
PRO FO 5/948/274, f. 63, Lyons to Russell, April 19, 1864; James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes (eds.),
The American Civil War Through British Eyes
, vol. 3 (Kent, Ohio, 2005), p. 178.
21.
New York Times
, February 2, 1864.
22.
West Sussex RO, Lyons MSS, box 301, Lyons to sister, December 26, 1863; PRO 30/22/37, f. 63, Lyons to Russell, December 24, 1863.
23.
PRO 30/22/38, ff. 46–49, Lyons to Russell, May 17, 1864.
24.
British Library of Political and Economic Science, LSE, Farr MSS, ADD 2, unknown writer to Captain Hatch, February 19, 1864.
25.
Duke University, Malet family MSS, Malet to mother, January 4, 1863.
26.
Edmund Hammond, the permanent undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, had a low opinion of young men who wanted to have a personal life outside the Foreign Office: “The labour required of the Foreign Office Clerks is great, the attendance long, and the hours late and uncertain.…”
Reports from Commissioners
, 20 vols., vol. 5 (London, 1856), p. 67, Hammond to Horace Mann, June 25, 1855.
27.
PRO FO5/949, f. 5, d. 289, Lyons to Russell, May 3, 1864.
28.
PRO FO282/10, f. 294, Archibald to Lyons, January 30, 1863.
29.
Bright-Sumner Letters, 1861–1872,
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society
, 46 (1912), pp. 93–165, at p. 125, Bright to Sumner, December 15, 1863. Thomas Smelt, the father of young Stephen, wrote to Lincoln on March 6, imploring him to release his son, who had been drugged and drafted into the army. The humble clerk struggled to express himself: “I also appeal to you as a Father and man of honour that you take all these circumstances into your consideration, and for the sake of his family, you be graciously pleased to grant this my prayer,” he begged. By the time Mr. Smelt’s letter had passed from Lincoln’s desk to the adjutant general’s office, and from there into the hands of the War Department clerks, Stephen had been wounded and captured by the Confederates. Stephen Smelt was a prisoner of war in Andersonville, the prison with the highest death toll in the South, and he was beyond the reach of his father or the indifferent Northern authorities. NARA RG 94/SKM 06, Thomas Smelt to Lincoln, March 6, 1864.

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