Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History (43 page)

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Authors: Peter G. Tsouras

Tags: #Imaginary Histories, #International Relations, #Great Britain - Foreign Relations - United States, #Alternative History, #United States - History - 1865-1921, #General, #United States, #United States - History - Civil War; 1861-1865, #Great Britain, #United States - Foreign Relations - Great Britain, #Political Science, #War & Military, #Fiction, #Civil War Period (1850-1877), #History

BOOK: Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History
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5
. Bruce,
Lincoln and the Tools of War
, 114.

6
. Ibid., 119.

7
. J. B. McClure, ed.,
Anecdotes & Stories of Abraham Lincoln
(Chicago: Rhodes & McClure Publishing Co., 1888), 162.

8
. Charles M. Evans,
The War of the Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning During the Civil War
(Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002), 285–87.

9
. Mary Hoeling,
Thaddeus Lowe: America’s One-Man Air Corps
(New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1958), 23–24.

10
.
Encyclopædia Britannica
, 11th ed. (1910–11). The Dreyse needle gun (German
Zündnadelgewehr
or figuratively “needle-firing-rifle”) was a military breech-loading rifle. Famous as the main Prussian infantry weapon it was adopted for service in 1848 as the
Dreyse Zündnadelgewehr
, or Prussian model 1848. Its name comes from its 0.5-inch needle-like firing pin, which passed through the cartridge case to impact a percussion cap at the bullet base. The Dreyse rifle was also the first breech-loading rifle to use a bolt action to open and close the chamber.

11
. Bruce,
Lincoln and the Tools of War
, 257.

12
. *George H. Sharpe,
Conversations With Abraham Lincoln, 1863–1868
(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1886), 53–57.

13
. *Arthur H. Trumbull,
Wolseley and the American War
(London: Constable & Company, 1915), 111.

14
. *Sharpe,
Conversations With Abraham Lincoln
, 59–60.

15
. *Ibid., 62–63.

16
.
http://www.canis-publ.demon.co.uk/sofw2/ships/scorpion.html
.

17
.
http://www.civilwartalk.com/cwt_alt/resources/articles/acws/larid_rams.htm
.

18
. Dean B. Mahin,
One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War
(Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 1999), 147–53.

19
. *Edgar C. Withersbottom,
Lifeblood of the Confederacy: Fraser, Trenholm & Company’s Support of the Southern Cause
(London: Collins, 1948), 322.

20
. *Charles Dana,
At the Creation: A Memoir of George H. Shape
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1892), 112.

21
. *Thaddaeus Lowe,
Army Aeronautics in the Great War
(New York: The Century Company, 1878), 33.

22
. *Woodrow Wilson,
George H. Sharpe and the Constitution in Wartime: The Struggle Between Civil Liberties and Necessity
(New York: D. Appleton, 1904), 318.

23
. Maria Isabella Boyd (1844–1900), better known as “Belle Boyd,” was probably the most famous of the Confederacy’s spies. She worked behind Union lines and was finally arrested by Baker in July 1862.

24
. *James McPhail,
My Service in the Great War
(New York: Seldon & Company, 1888), 23. Much of the success of the CIB stemmed from the superb work of McPhail as its deputy and his unerring loyalty to Sharpe.

25
. *Thomas Shervington,
The Life of Michael D. Wilmoth, Third Director of the Central Information Bureau
(New York: Neale Publishing Co., 1900), 67.

26
. Evans,
War of the Aeronauts
, 264–87.

27
. *Lowe,
Army Aeronautics in the Great War
, 52.

CHAPTER SIX: “ROLL, ALABAMA, ROLL!”

1
. *H. Emerson Harper,
Voyage of Destiny: USS
Gettysburg
and the Beginning of the Great War
(New York: The Century Company, 1903), 42.

2
. Trading Places: A History of Liverpool Docks,
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org/uk/nof/docks/index2html
.

3
. J. J. Colledge,
Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy From the Fifteenth Century to the Present
(London: Greenhill Books, 2003), 11, 193. Tonnage is here expressed in terms of builder’s measure (bm), a unit of measurement used until 1875 and perhaps dating from the fifteenth century, determined by calculating how many tuns (casks) of wine a ship could carry. After 1873 displacement tonnage was used. In the case of
Liverpool
, this was 3,919 tons.

4
. In this period, smoothbore guns that fired shot were designated by the weight of the shot—e.g., 32-pounder—and rifled guns were designed by the diameter of their bore, e.g., 8-inch.

5
. Colledge,
Ships of the Royal Navy
, 14, 142, 193. The ninety-eight
Albacore
class gunboats ordered in 1855 were armed with one 68-pounder, one 32-pounder, and two 20-pounder guns.

6
. *John P. Eldridge,
A Marine Aboard the
Gettysburg (New York: The Century Company, 1888), 97.

7
. David Hepburn Milton,
Lincoln’s Spymaster: Thomas Haines Dudley and the Liverpool Network
(Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003), 91.

8
. The Cumberland Three,
Songs of the Civil War
: “Number 292” (compact disk) (Los Angeles: Rhino Records, 1991).

9
. *Roswell H. Lamson,
Into the Maelstrom: A Memoir of the
Gettysburg (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1876), 112.

10
. *Harper,
Voyage of Destiny
, 56–57. Maintaining that the
Gettysburg
was to replace the
Kearsarge
was part of the deception plan Fox had included in his orders to Lamson. He had coordinated this strategy with Seward, who mentioned it in a dispatch to Ambassador Adams.

11
. *James Bulloch,
The Fuse of War: The CSS North Carolina
(London: John Murray, 1875), 119.

12
. Dean B. Mahin,
One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War
(Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 1999), 178.

13
. Ibid., 179.

14
. *Austen David Layard,
Origins of the American War: View From the Foreign Office
(London: Holmes & Sons, Ltd., 1886), 229. Layard went to great lengths in this book to deflect any responsibility for the coming war from himself, Russell, and the Foreign Office.

15
. B. D. Adams,
Great Britain and the American Civil War
, vol. 2 (New York: Longmans, Green & Company, 1925), 143.

16
. *Lamson,
Into the Maelstrom
, 150–52. Despite these initial impressions, Lamson and Adams developed a lifelong friendship, proving that opposites do attract.

17
. *Edward R. Little, ed.,
The Diaries of Thomas Haines Dudley
(New York: The George Doran Company, 1911), 93–96. *Walter B. Eddings,
Seward, Adams, and Dudley: Diplomacy and Espionage Leading up to the Outbreak of War
(Chicago: The World Publishing Company, 1922), 186–88.

18
. *Lamson,
Into the Maelstrom
, 150.

19
. *Albert Meyer,
Brief Glory: James Bulloch and the Short Life of the CSS
North Carolina (Richmond: James River Press, 1932), 131.

20
. *Lamson,
Into the Maelstrom
, 165.

CHAPTER SEVEN: FRENCH LICK TO HALIFAX

1
. *Martin Hogan,
Hooker’s Horse Marines: The Adventures of the 3rd Indiana Cavalry
(Boston: James P. McPhee Company, 1882), 121–23. Hogan would stay with the CIB after the war and eventually rise to become the Director of Special Operations in the Bureau, succeeding Cline after the latter’s death in 1882.

2
. *“The Copperhead Assassin: Big Jim Smoke,”
Harper’s Weekly
, April 18, 1864.

3
. Kenneth Bourne, “British Preparations for War With the North, 1861– 1862,”
English Historical Review
76, no. 301 (1961): 619.

4
. The Canadas (Lower Canada and Upper Canada) refer to present-day Quebec and Ontario, respectively; the Maritimes refer to Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. In 1840 the British Parliament passed the Act of Union (1840) that merged Upper and Lower Canada to form the Province of United Canada.

5
. Bourne, “British Preparations,” 615.

6
. David Pam,
The Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield and Its Workers
(published by the author, 1998), 50–58. Between 1859 and 1864, the factory produced 365,779 rifled muskets of the 1853 pattern. Private British arms manufacturers quickly followed the mass-production model at Enfield.

7
. “The Gun—Rifled Ordnance: Armstrong,” Royal New Zealand Artillery Old Comrades’ Association,
http://riv.co.nz/rnza/hist/gun/rifled3.htm
.

8
. A British or Canadian cavalry troop numbered about forty men.

9
. Desmond Morton,
A Military History of Canada
(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1999), 87–88.

10
. Peter G. Tsouras, ed.,
The Greenhill Dictionary of Military Quotations
(London: Greenhill Books, 2000) p. 339. Cromwell made the statement in September 1643 in a letter to Sir William Springe.

11
. Mark Grimsley, “Net Assessment During the Trent Affair,”
http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/h582/2001/trent.htm
.

12
. *William R. Plimpton,
Staff Notes: The Wolseley North American Staff Lectures, 1863
(Toronto: The Defence Staff, 1914), 23–32.

13
. *Ian Alan Tomlinson, “The Crown Subsidy of 1862 and the Canadian Militia Expansion,”
Imperial Defence Journal
, December 1912, 45.

14
. Ian W. Toll,
Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 352.

15
. Regis A. Courtemanche,
No Need for Glory: The British Navy in American Waters, 1860–1864
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1977), 129.

16
. Grimsley, “Net Assessment,” 5–6. “In December 1861 the Royal Navy boasted of 339 ships (324,063 tons), 61,342 men, and 5,304 guns, augmented by a naval reserve that could have been readied for maritime duties. The United States Navy, by contrast, possessed only 264 vessels (218,016 tons), 22,000 men, and 2,557 guns. More importantly, the Union Navy had only a few ships capable of joining a line of battle; most of those 264 vessels were simply hastily-converted merchantmen pressed into blockade duty and mounting only a few guns each.”

17
. Courtemanche,
No Need for Glory
, 163–66.

18
. Ibid., 164.

19
. Ibid., 166.

20
. J. J. Colledge,
Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy From the Fifteenth Century to the Present
(London: Greenhill Books, 2003), 188, 228, 284.

21
. Courtemanche,
No Need for Glory
, 56.

22
. Grimsley, “Net Assessment,” 6.

23
. *Basil Hall,
The Battles for North American Waters: Recollections of a Flag Lieutenant
(London: Collins, 1935, reprint of the private 1875 edition), 128–30.

24
. Toll,
Six Frigates
, 459.

25
. *Hall,
The Battles for North American Waters
, 132.

26
. Edwin Fishel,
The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996), 84, 292.

27
. C. Van Santvoord,
The One Hundred and Twentieth Regiment, New York State Volunteers: A Narrative of Its Services in the War for the Union
(Cornwallville, NY: Hope Farm Press, 1983), 235.

28
. Callaway to Rosecrans, August 22, 1863, Military Record File of Lt. Col. James E. Callaway, National Archives.

29
. Robert V. Bruce,
Lincoln and the Tools of War
(Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1956), 254–56.

CHAPTER EIGHT: BATTLE AT MOELFRE BAY

1
. *H. Emerson Harper,
Voyage of Destiny: USS
Gettysburg
and the Beginning of the Great War
(New York: The Century Company, 1903), 158. *Henry Porter,
The Battle of Moelfre Bay
(New York: D. Appleton, 1868), 130.

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