A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (184 page)

 
5.
The Times
, April 25, 1865.

 
6.
Brian Holden Reid,
Robert E. Lee
(London, 2005), p. 237.

 
7.
Virginia Historical Society
,
Diary of Llewellyn Saunderson, MSS5:1Sa877:1, April 6, 1865.

 
8.
PRO FO115/448, f. 402, Henry O’Brien to Sir Frederick Bruce, June 14, 1865.

 
9.
Francis Lawley, “The Last Six Days of Secessia,”
Fortnightly Review,
2 (June 1865), pp. 1–10, at p. 7.

10.
General Fitz Lee had taken a liking to Welly—because he behaved “admirably under fire” and “was bold, bright, and witty of course.” Fitzhugh Lee,
General Lee
(New York, 1925), p. 387.

11.
Burke Davis,
To Appomattox: Nine April Days, 1865
(New York, 1959), p. 282.

12.
Virginia Historical Society
,
Diary of Llewellyn Saunderson, April 8, 1865.

13.
James Ford Rhodes,
History of the Civil War, 1861–1865
(New York, 1917), p. 434.

14.
Frederick Maurice (ed.),
An Aide de Camp of Robert E. Lee
(New York, 1927), p. 273.

15.
Grant,
Memoirs
, p. 629.

16.
Lawley, “The Last Six Days of Secessia,” p. 9.

17.
Jay Winik,
April 1865
(New York, 2001), p. 197.

18.
Duke University, Francis Dawson MSS, no. 27, Dawson to mother, April 7, 1865; Francis W. Dawson,
Reminiscences of Confederate Service, 1861–1865
, ed. Bell I. Wiley (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), p. 146.

19.
South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS, 47, Feilden to Julia, April 6, 1865.

20.
With the exception of Judah Benjamin, no one thought that this was even a remote possibility.

21.
Frederick W. Seward (ed.),
Seward at Washington
(New York, 1891), p. 270.

22.
Charles A. Dana,
Recollections of the Civil War
(New York, 1913), p. 274.

23.
Diary of Gideon Welles
, 3 vols. (Boston, 1911), vol. 2, p. 284, April 14, 1865.

24.
Burlingame,
Abraham Lincoln
, vol. 2, p. 806.

25.
Ibid., p. 814.

26.
Seward, ed.,
Seward at Washington
, p. 278.

27.
I am indebted to Derek Mayhew for supplying me with this information about his ancestor. Source for the footnote is
Southern Historical Society Papers,
vol. 4 (Richmond, Va., 1877), ed. Rev. J. W. Jones, p. 22. Conolly’s return to Ireland was reported in the
Donegal Advertiser
, which noted acidly: “Here again, we have him impressing upon the Donegal electors how much better it was for him to go to America than to stay like ordinary members and attend to the dull routine of his parliamentary duties.” NARA, Dispatches, U.S. Consuls in Sheffield, Consul Abbot to Seward, May 15, 1865.

28.
South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS, 48, Feilden to Julia, May 4, 1865.

29.
Keith Robbins,
John Bright
(London, 1978), p. 175.

30.
MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, April 26, 1865.

31.
Alan Hankinson,
Man of Wars: William Howard Russell of “The Times,” 1820–1907
(London, 1982), p. 182.

32.
George S. Wykoff, “Charles Mackay: England’s Forgotten Civil War Correspondent,” S
outh Atlantic Quarterly
, 26 (1927), pp. 59–60.

33.
Economist
, April 29, 1865.

34.
Oscar Maurer, “Punch on Slavery and the Civil War,”
Victorian Studies
(Sept. 1957), pp. 4–28.

35.
Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865
, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1948, 1949), vol. 2, p. 1419, April 30, 1865.

36.
NARA, M.T-185, roll 8, vol. 8, Consul Zebina Eastman to Mr. Hunter, Acting Secretary of State, May 8, 1865; Liverpool RO, Durning-Holt MSS, Diary of Emma Holt, 902 Dur 1/4, May 8, 1865.

37.
Virginia Mason,
The Public Life and Diplomatic Correspondence of James M. Mason
(New York, 1906), p. 562.

38.
Library of Congress, Mason MSS, private letterbook, Mason to Wood, April 21, 1865.

39.
Louis Martin Sears, “A Confederate Diplomat at the Court of Napoleon III,”
American Historical Review
, 26, 2 (Jan. 1921), p. 278, Slidell to Mason, April 26, 1865.

40.
Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (eds.),
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War
, 4 vols. (Secaucus, N.J., 1985), vol. 3, p. 764.

41.
James M. Morgan,
Recollections of a Rebel Reefer
(Boston, 1917), p. 238.

42.
Frank E. Vandiver (ed.),
The Civil War Diary of General Josiah Gorgas
(Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1947), p. 184, May 4, 1864.

43.
The money was taken from Davis when he was captured. A typical rate on the Inman line between New York and London was £5 per adult.

44.
ORN, ser. 1, vol. 16, p. 333, report of Commander Reynolds, May 16, 1865.

45.
James J. Barnes and Patricia P. Barnes (eds.),
The American Civil War Through British Eyes,
vol. 3 (Kent, Ohio, 2005), p. 302, Bruce to Russell, May 16, 1865.

46.
William Watson,
The Adventures of a Blockade Runner
(College Station, Tex., 2001), p. 823.

47.
Margaret Leach,
Reveille in Washington
(Alexandria, Va., 1962, repr. 1980), p. 379.

48.
News and letters were trickling in from the South. Consul Arthur Lynn was finally rescued from his Crusoe-like existence in Galveston. He had continued to send his dispatches, never knowing if they had reached their destination. Miraculously, a few did eventually arrive. The Foreign Office, on the other hand, had written him off as lost until further notice more than a year earlier. Lynn now learned that his sister had been trying to contact him for the past eighteen months with questions arising from their late father’s estate. PRO FO5/976, draft, Foreign Office to Messrs. Brown and Dunlop, Glasgow, Solicitors, January 4, 1865.

49.
Edward Waldo Emerson,
The Early Years of the Saturday Club
(New York, 1918), p. 405.

50.
PRO 30/22/38, ff. 186–89, Bruce to Russell, April 20, 1865.

51.
PRO 30/22/38, ff. 198–99, Bruce to Russell, April 27, 1865.

52.
James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes (eds.),
Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers to the Foreign Secretaries
(Selinsgrove, Pa., 1993), p. 362, Bruce to Russell, May 22, 1865.

53.
South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS (49), Feilden to Julia, May 30, 1865.

54.
Columbia University, Blackwell MSS, Elizabeth Blackwell to Barbara Bodichon, May 25, 1865.

Epilogue

 
1.
The second largest army, the Prussian, was roughly half the size at 484,000; the French had about 343,000; and the British Army no more than 220,000 regulars plus 370,000 volunteer and militia soldiers.

 
2.
Allan Nevins,
The War for the Union
, 4 vols., vol. 4:
The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865
(New York, 1971), pp. 367–68.

 
3.
Craig L. Symonds and William J. Clipson,
The Naval Institute Historical Atlas of the U.S. Navy
(Annapolis, Md., 1995), p. 105.

 
4.
The reopening of communications with the South meant release for the many families in Britain held fast in the agony of limbo. Joseph Burnley received definite proof of Frederick Farr’s death. He also began fresh inquiries about Robert Livingstone and Stephen Smelt, the Manchester boy who had run away with his best friend in 1863. Nothing was forthcoming with regards to Robert; Livingstone had been so optimistic that he had visited the American legation on March 11 to make sure Charles Francis Adams had not forgotten his son. But there was positive news in Stephen’s case. Burnley learned that the boy had been wounded at the Battle of Olustee and captured by the Confederates. The Federal authorities thought he was still alive. Mr. Smelt, Stephen’s father, learned that his son had been found but was not coming home after all. Stephen had discovered a taste for army life. “I have the honor to state that I have no desire to leave the U.S. service as I wish to serve out my term of enlistment and become a citizen of the U.S. since I joined from a Prisoner of War my health was never better, as the surgeon’s certificate will show.” NARA, Stephen Smelt, in camp in Raleigh, N.C., July 9, 1865, to Lieutenant J. O’Connel, Adjutant, 47th New York State Volunteers. I am grateful to Mike Musick for bringing these letters to my attention.

 
5.
Drew Gilpin Faust,
This Republic of Suffering
(Cambridge, Mass., 2008), pp. 211–13.

 
6.
Colonel Currie had married an American woman in 1864, Harriet Caroll Jackson, a granddaughter of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. After the war he became a special agent for the Post Office, overseeing the delivery of diplomatic mail en route between San Francisco and Hong Kong. On his retirement, the couple moved to Britain to live on the Isle of Wight.

 
7.
A. S. Lewis (ed.),
My Dear Parents
(New York, 1982), pp. 159, 169.

 
8.
Isle of Man Examiner
, October 2, 1897.

 
9.
The total cost of the war could have bought the freedom of every slave, given each one 40 acres and a mule, and provided a bounty for a hundred years of lost earnings. See E. B. Long with Barbara Long,
The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865
(New York, 1971; repr. New York, 1985), appendix.

10.
Frances Leigh,
Ten Years on a Gerogia Plantation Since the War
(London, 1883), pp. 52–53.