A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (180 page)

37.
Army and Navy Gazette
, September 3, 1864. Not everyone doubted the news. Northern supporters in Perth, Scotland, celebrated Sherman’s victory by flying the American flag and firing the town cannon.

38.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 1219, Slidell to Benjamin, September 29, 1864.

39.
Ibid., p. 1209, Hotze to Benjamin, September 17, 1864.

40.
The Private Journal of Georgiana Gholson Walker
, p. 112.

Chapter 33: “Come Retribution”

 
1.
Duke University, Malet family MSS, Malet to mother, August 30, 1864, and September 29, 1864.

 
2.
Brian Jenkins,
Britain and the War for the Union
, 2 vols. (Montreal, 1974, 1980), vol. 2, p. 369.

 
3.
Robin Winks,
Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years
(Lanham, Md., 1988), pp. 143–47. Monck had telegraphed Lord Lyons, who immediately sent a message to Seward, alerting him to the plot. Meanwhile Monck ordered the Welland Canal between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario to be watched for suspicious steamboats. General Cox in Ohio informed Edwin Stanton on November 15 that “the Rebels who left Windsor to join the raid are returning, saying that the plans are frustrated for the present, and will have to be postponed for a time.” OR, ser. 3, vol. 3, p. 1043, Cox to Stanton, November 15, 1863.

 
4.
Madeline House, Graham Storey, and Kathleen Tillotson (eds.),
The Letters of Charles Dickens
, 3 vols. (New York, 1974), vol. 3, p. 207, Dickens to John Forster, April 24, 1842.

 
5.
Bradley A. Rodgers,
Guardian of the Great Lakes
(Ann Arbor, Mich., 1996), p. 84.

 
6.
Charles Frohman,
Rebels on Lake Erie
(Columbus, Ohio, 1975), p. 98.

 
7.
Oscar A. Kinchen,
Confederate Operations in Canada
(Hanover, Mass., 1970), p. 105.

 
8.
Frohman,
Rebels on Lake Erie
, p. 73.

 
9.
John W. Headley,
Confederate Operations in Canada and New York
(Kent, Ohio, 1906), p. 252.

10.
Daniel B. Lucas,
Memoir of John Yates Beall
(Montreal, 1865), p. 32.

11.
Frohman,
Rebels on Lake Erie
, p. 93.

12.
Ibid., p. 80.

13.
Frances Elizabeth Owen Monck,
My Canadian Leaves: Diary of a Visit to Canada, 1865–6
(London, 1891), p. 122.

14.
Ibid., p. 137.

15.
Ibid., p. 148, October 4, 1864.

16.
Ibid., p. 170.

17.
Ann Blackman,
Wild Rose: Rose O’Neal Greenhow, Civil War Spy
(New York, 2005), pp. 298–99.

18.
Thomas E. Taylor,
Running the Blockade
(Annapolis, Md., repr. 1995), p. 123.

19.
Blackman,
Wild Rose
, p. 300.

20.
The Times
, November 15, 1864.

21.
South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS, Beauregard to Feilden, September 5, 1864.

22.
James M. Morgan,
Recollections of a Rebel Reefer
(Boston, 1917), pp. 197–98.

23.
South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS, Feilden to Julia McCord, September 27, 1864.

24.
Ibid., Feilden to Julia McCord, September 25, 1864.

25.
The wine, for example, was coming from Bermuda, and the ring was being made from the last of his gold sovereigns. Ibid., Feilden to Julia McCord, September 27, 1864.

26.
South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS, Jordan to Hardee, October 12, 1864.

27.
The Times
, November 5, 1864.

28.
Frank E. Vandiver (ed.),
The Civil War Diary of Josiah Gorgas
(Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1947), p. 145, October 6, 1864.

29.
Illustrated London News
, January 21, 1865.

30.
Ibid., October 22, 1864, p. 407.

31.
John B. Jones,
A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital
, ed. Earl Schenck Miers (Urbana, Ill., 1958), p. 433, October 10, 1864.

32.
Mary Sophia Hill,
A British Subject’s Recollections of the Confederacy
(Baltimore, 1875), p. 66.

33.
PRO FO5/1285, n. 78, Burnley to Russell, September 26, 1864.

34.
Jones,
A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary
, p. 433, October 4, 1864.

35.
Hill,
A British Subject’s Recollections
, p. 40.

36.
Francis W. Dawson,
Reminiscences of Confederate Service, 1861–1865
, ed. Bell I. Wiley (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), p. 125.

37.
Ibid., pp. 201–2, Dawson to mother, October 13, 1864.

38.
W. C. Ford,
A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865
, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 2, pp. 194–96, September 18, 1864. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., was vastly overstating the condition of the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry, an elite black regiment that included Charles Douglass, the son of the abolition campaigner Frederick Douglass; and Joshua Laurence, father of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose work was set to music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

39.
Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne,
Eight Months in America: Letters and Travel Notes
, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1974), vol. 1, p. 32, June 20, 1864.

40.
A. S. Lewis (ed.),
My Dear Parents
(New York, 1982), p. 107, Horrocks to parents, November 19, 1864.

41.
James McPherson (ed.),
Atlas of the Civil War
(Philadelphia, 2005), p. 190.

42.
Gary W. Gallagher (ed.),
The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006), p. 212.

43.
Quoted in Horace Greeley,
The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion,
2 vols. (London, 1867), vol. 2, p. 611.

Chapter 34: “War Is Cruelty”

 
1.
The Private Journal of Georgiana Gholson Walker
, ed. Dwight Franklin Henderson, Confederate Centennial Studies, 25 (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1963), p. 113, October 11, 1864.

 
2.
William Tidwell lists five separate Confederate “cells” operating in Canada: in Toronto, under Jacob Thompson; in Hamilton, under Cassius F. Lee; in St. Catherine’s, under Clement Clay; in Windsor, under Steele; and in Montreal, under Patrick Charles Martin and George N. Sanders.
April ’65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War
(Kent, Ohio, 1995), p. 135.

 
3.
John W. Headley,
Confederate Operations in Canada and New York
(New York, 1906), p. 265.

 
4.
Mabel Clare Weaks, “Colonel George St. Leger Grenfell,”
Filson Club History Quarterly
, 34 (1960), p. 12, Grenfell to Mary, October 11, 1864. Stephen Z. Starr says it is only speculation that Grenfell was Hines’s deputy, although well-founded speculation.
Colonel Grenfell’s Wars
(Baton Rouge, La., 1971), p. 183.

 
5.
Stephen Starr writes, “There is unfortunately no way of discovering what thoughts passed through his mind as he sat quietly in his hotel room in the dreary hours of a November night.” Ibid., p. 203.

 
6.
Duke University, Malet family MSS, Sheffield to Malet, November 11, 1864.

 
7.
PRO 30/22/38, f.120, Lyons to Russell, October 28, 1864.

 
8.
Bulloch’s successful manipulation of the legal system made it appear as though there was a vast conspiracy by the British to help the Confederacy. Dudley reported to Seward on November 15 that the owners of the
Laurel
and the
Sea King
were British. They both sailed under the British flag and the sailors were British. “The armament, shot, shell, guns, powder, and everything down to the coal in the hold are English, all the produce and manufacture of Great Britain. Even the bounty money paid for enlisting the men was English sovereigns and the wages English coin, pounds, shillings and pence. It seems to me that nothing is wanting to stamp this as an English transaction from beginning to end.…” NARA M. 141, roll t-29, d. 386.

 
9.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 2, p. 731, Bulloch to Whittle, October 6, 1864.

10.
Tom Chaffin,
Sea of Gray
(New York, 2006), pp. 58–64.

11.
Chester G. Hearn,
Gray Raiders of the Sea: How Eight Confederate Warships Destroyed the Union’s High Seas Commerce
(Camden, Me., 1992), p. 152. The American merchant marine had shipped over 5 million tons before the war. The latest statistics point to a decline of 4 million tons.

12.
The ship and her crew had been continuously at sea since sneaking out of Brest on February 10, 1864. Yet the flight from the U.S. flag meant that in eight months the
Florida
had only managed to capture thirteen prizes. Short of coal, and worried that his bored crew might mutiny unless given their shore leave, Captain Charles Morris (Maffitt’s replacement) had sailed into Bahia, Brazil, where he was pounced upon by the waiting USS
Wachusett.

13.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 2, p. 736, Bulloch to Stephen Mallory, October 20, 1864. R. I. Lester,
Confederate Finance and Purchasing in Great Britain
(Charlottesville, Va., 1975), pp. 190–91.

14.
Virginia Historical Society, Raphael Semmes MSS, MSS1Se535a/53–65, Maury to Tremlett, October 23, 1864.

15.
Virginia Mason,
The Public Life and Diplomatic Correspondence of James M. Mason
(New York, 1906), p. 514.

16.
John Bennett, “The Confederate Bazaar at Liverpool,”
Crossfire: The Magazine of the American Civil War Round Table,
61 (Dec. 1999).