A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (182 page)

21.
OR, ser. 1, vol. 39/3, p. 162, Sherman to Grant, October 9, 1864; OR, ser. 1, vol. 39/3, p. 377, Sherman to Thomas, October 20, 1864.

22.
Frank E. Vandiver (ed.),
The Civil War Diary of General Josiah Gorgas
(Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1947), p. 157, December 20, 1864.

23.
Thomas Taylor,
Running the Blockade
(Annapolis, Md., repr. 1995), p. 140.

24.
The Times,
February 7, 1865.

25.
Taylor,
Running the Blockade
, p. 141.

26.
John B. Jones,
A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital
, ed. Earl Schenck Miers (Urbane, Ill., 1958), p. 467, December 27, 1864.

27.
ORN, ser 2, vol. 3, pp. 1253–56, Benjamin to Mason and Slidell, December 27, 1864.

28.
Craig A. Bauer, “The Last Effort: The Secret Mission of the Confederate Diplomat, Duncan F. Kenner,”
Louisiana History
, 22 (1981).

29.
The Times
, March 8, 1865.

30.
South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS, Feilden to Julia Feilden, December 21, 1865.

31.
“It does seem strange,” he wrote on January 4, 1865, in a letter to William Porcher Miles, the chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee. He had served three different generals and been recommended for promotion on three separate occasions, without success. “I expect I know more of the localities and the organization of the troops than any other AA general in the office.” NARA, Feilden military records, Feilden to Porcher Miles, January 4, 1865.

32.
South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS, Feilden to Julia Feilden, January 5, 1865.

33.
James Ford Rhodes, “Who Burned Columbia?,”
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society
, 35 (1901), p. 268.

34.
South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS, Feilden to Julia Feilden, January 5, 1865.

35.
The Hon. Maurice Berkeley Portman, third son of Viscount Portman, and an old friend of Lord Wharncliffe’s, had recently arrived from Canada to serve under General Wade Hampton. He told Wharncliffe that the wife of one acquaintance had allegedly been bayoneted to the wall and her house set on fire, another had been “violated,” and a third stripped and forced to dance for the soldiers. Sheffield Archives, WHM 461 (18), identified by the author as Maurice B. Portman, January 10, 1865. Portman’s judgment of the situation was utterly absurd. Despite having witnessed the first battle for Fort Fisher, and visited Lee’s headquarters in Petersburg, he still wrote as though the South was going to win.

36.
Jones,
A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary
, p. 485, January 23, 1865.

37.
Bauer, “The Last Effort,” p. 80.

38.
National Archives of Canada, Burley, Extradition MSS, Sec. C-1, RG 13, vol. 987, Robert Harrison to John Macdonald, February 4, 1865.

39.
Stephen Z. Starr,
Colonel Grenfell’s Wars
(Baton Rouge, La., 1971), p. 210.

40.
See ibid., p. 212, and PRO FO, 5/1155, on the Grenfell correspondence.

41.
Starr,
Colonel Grenfell’s Wars
, p. 212.

42.
Buckinghamshire, D11/1/3.c, memorandum by Joseph Wheeler.

43.
Diary of Gideon Welles
, 3 vols. (Boston, 1911), vol. 2, p. 229, January 21, 1865. The source for the footnote is OR, ser. 1, vol. 46, 3, p. 38, Grant to Seward, March 19, 1864.

44.
“Bright-Sumner Letters,”
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society
, 46 (1913), p. 132, Bright to Sumner, January 26, 1865.

45.
Bauer, “The Last Effort,” p. 86.

Chapter 36: “Richmond Tomorrow”

 
1.
West Sussex RO, Lyons MSS, box 299, Malet to Lyons, February 24, 1865.

 
2.
PRO 30/22/38, Lyons to Russell, December 27, 1864.

 
3.
Arthur Irwin Dasent,
John Thadeus Delane, Editor of “The Times,”
2 vols. (London, 1908), vol. 2, p. 135, Delane to Dasent, December 25, 1864; p. 136, Delane to Dasent, December 26, 1864.

 
4.
Sheffield, WHM461/6, Spence to Wharncliffe, January 5, 1865.

 
5.
The controversy rescued the year-old London branch from its torpid existence. New York Public Library, U.S. Sanitary Commission MSS, Box 339/120, C.S.P. Bowles to E. C. Fisher, January 2, 1865.

 
6.
W. C. Ford (ed.),
A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865
, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 2, p. 244, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Abigail Adams, January 8, 1865.

 
7.
A recent traveler to America suggested to Wharncliffe that they donate the money to the U.S. Sanitary Commission. “I witnessed there on many and various occasions the untiring efforts of this Commission who took care of the sick, wounded and PRISONERS on each side,” the correspondent asserted. Sheffield Archives, WHM461/15, Bower Wood to Wharncliffe, January 3, 1865. The sources for the quotations in the footnote are Sheffield Archives, WHM461/16, PC Joseph Taylor to Wharncliffe, January 5, 1865, and Sheffield Archives, WHM461/24, Captain Hampson, late 13th Louisiana Regiment, to Wharncliffe, January 17, 1865.

 
8.
Timothy Holmes (ed.),
David Livingstone: Letters and Documents, 1861–1872
(London, 1990), p. 102, Livingstone to James Young, January 4, 1865.

 
9.
NARA RG94/skm/414, Smelt to Lincoln, March 17, 1865. Smelt stated that he had written twelve months previously to get his son discharged on grounds of youth and inability; “I have today a letter from him, he having been exchanged [from a Confederate prison] and is now at Annapolis—He was wounded in 3 places … and lay for two days uncared for on the field of battle, yet singular to relate—lives!” (see also Chapter 28, n. 29).

10.
Sheffield Archives, WHM461/23, Spence to Wharncliffe, January 16, 1865.

11.
Not even the knowledge that every dispatch since July 1863 had been lost or captured diminished Bulloch’s belief that seapower could save the South. ORN, ser. 2, vol. 2, p. 787, Bulloch to Mallory, December 24, 1864.

12.
Ibid., Bulloch to Low, January 8, 1865.

13.
“If you approve this suggestion, you will please give me the earliest possible intimation of your views,” he wrote to Mallory. ORN, ser. 1, vol. 3, p. 722, Bulloch to Mallory, January 10, 1865.

14.
Library of Congress, Hotze MSS, private letterbook, Hotze to Bulloch, January 25, 1865.

15.
Two British officers were allowed on board. They were amazed that such a large ship could be managed by so small a crew. The governor of Australia was perplexed by the
Shenandoah
’s arrival and unsure whether to apply the usual belligerent rules or act on his own initiative. He decided to be safe and ordered her departure after recoaling and carrying out emergency repairs.

16.
“Diary of John R. Thompson,”
Confederate Veteran
, 37 (1929), p. 99, January 27, 1865.

17.
Sheffield Archives, WHM461/25, Collie to Wharncliffe, January 23, 1864.

18.
ORN, ser. 1, vol. 3, p. 736, Bulloch to Mallory, February 11, 1865.

19.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 1260, Mason to Benjamin,
c.
February 1865.

20.
Economist
, February 5, 1865.

21.
Stephen Wise,
Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War
(Columbia, S.C., 1988)
,
p. 266, and David Surdam,
Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Blockade
(Columbia, S.C., 2001), p. 87.

22.
Lance Davis and Stanley L. Engerman,
Naval Blockades in Peace and War
(Cambridge, 2006), p. 154.

23.
See, e.g., Surdam,
Northern Naval Supremacy,
pp. 207–9.

24.
Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran 1857–1865,
2 vols. (Chicago, Ill., 1948, 1949), vol. 2, pp. 1371, 1373, 1382, February 1, 1865, February 6, 1865, and February 23, 1865.

25.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 1260, Mason to Benjamin,
c.
February 1865.

26.
PRFA
, part 1 (1866), p. 131, Adams to Seward, February 9, 1865.

27.
MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, December 28, 1864.

28.
G. P. Gooch (ed.),
The Later Correspondence of Lord John Russell, 1840–1878
, 2 vols. (London, 1925), vol. 2, p. 336, February 7, 1865. As late as January 15, Palmerston was still arguing with the Duke of Somerset that Quebec, Montreal, Halifax, and Bermuda must all be fortified. “The warnings of eventual hostility on the part of the United States are not to be disregarded, and the Irish Fenians in North America would give us trouble in Ireland if we had war with America.”

29.
Kenneth Bourne,
Britain and the Balance of Power
(Berkeley, 1967), p. 271. The source for the footnote is Somerset RO, Somerset MSS, d/RA/A/2a/270/13, Donald McKay to Rear Admiral Robinson, February 14, 1864.

30.
Dean Mahin,
One War at a Time
(Dulles, Va., 1999), p. 226.

31.
Scott Thomas Cairns, “Lord Lyons and Anglo-American Diplomacy During the American Civil War,” Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 2004, p. 362, Journal of Queen Victoria, March 10, 1865.

32.
PRFA
, part 1 (1866), pp. 69–71, Adams to Seward, December 30, 1864.

33.
Ibid., p.176, Russell to Mason, Slidell, and Mann, February 13, 1865. Brian Jenkins,
Britain and the War for the Union
, 2 vols. (Montreal, 1974, 1980)
,
vol. 2, p. 366. The Queen thought it was somewhat undignified to ask for Seward’s help in delivering the letter. But Russell replied that if the only reason against sending the letter was “because we do not like to be thought afraid,” he was prepared to suffer that consequence “for the humanity of the country.”