A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (49 page)

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In Virginia, General McClellan had already landed two-thirds of his army at Fortress Monroe, which guarded the entrance to Hampton Roads, and was marching up the peninsula toward Richmond when the Confederate secretary of the navy, Stephen Mallory, sent a small fleet to attack the remainder of the ship transports. On April 11, the
Merrimac,
accompanied by six vessels, steamed toward the Federal fleet and its
Monitor.
Francis Dawson had been assigned to the
Beaufort,
which, despite its grand-sounding name, was only a small tugboat with one gun. “The general idea was that the
Monitor
would be overwhelmed by the combined attack,” wrote Dawson. But the
Monitor
refused to leave the cover of Fortress Monroe, disappointing HMS
Rinaldo
and the two French warships that had moved in to observe the fight. One of the Confederate gunboats did manage to capture three transports, which elicited an indiscreet cheer from the
Rinaldo,
but otherwise little was achieved in the expedition. When Dawson returned to the base, he was relieved to learn that he was being transferred. Captain Pegram had been given command of an ironclad in New Orleans, and Dawson was to join him.
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The French minister, M. Mercier, visited Richmond a few days later, on April 16, expecting to hear talk of surrender.
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Instead, that after-noon, the Confederate Congress—which had only 26 senators and 135 representatives—passed a draft law conscripting all able-bodied men between eighteen and thirty-five. When Mercier met with his old friend Judah Benjamin, who had been transferred by Davis from the War Department to the State Department in March, he was told that the South would fight to her last breath. Northerners were “a people for whom we feel unmitigated contempt as well as abhorrence,” Benjamin declared with uncharacteristic heat.
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Sitting in the new Confederate secretary of state’s spacious but austere office in the former U.S. Customs House, Mercier realized that Benjamin was hoping that the French could be enticed into breaking the blockade in return for cotton and the promise of a free trade agreement. But Mercier knew it was not France that needed persuading.

When Mercier returned to Washington on April 24, Lyons went to see him immediately, worried that his impetuous colleague had made promises to the Confederates that would undo their joint policy of neutrality. Mercier was more excited than usual. He spoke eloquently of the Southern spirit and the reasons why France and Britain should cease dallying and recognize the Confederacy’s independence. The South was preparing to recoup its losses, he insisted. Even now, the Confederates were on the verge of completing a second ironclad that would render New Orleans invincible to naval attack. Moreover, they were prepared to lose Richmond, Tennessee, “New Orleans and all their seaports, and indeed the whole of the coast.”
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But even as Mercier was talking, a fleet of U.S. gunboats was bearing down on New Orleans, having subdued the supposedly impregnable forts that defended her.

The city officially surrendered on April 26. The train on which Francis Dawson and his friend Captain Pegram were traveling was within twenty miles of New Orleans when it pulled onto a side track. To their astonishment, train after train came rumbling past in the other direction, each one packed with evacuating Confederate soldiers. “There was no choice for us but to go back to Virginia,” Dawson wrote. The much-vaunted ironclad that should have been Pegram’s next command was out of their reach. “The journey back was worse than the journey down, as the delays were multiplied,” Dawson remembered. Despite Mercier’s optimism, this last defeat was sending waves of panic through the South. “New Orleans gone—and with it the Confederacy,” came the anguished cry of the diarist Mary Chesnut.
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Rumors that General McClellan was almost at Richmond sent people rushing out of the city. Clerks packed up the government archives and prepared them for removal; President Davis put his wife and children on the train for Raleigh, North Carolina.
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For six days, until the arrival of Union general Benjamin Butler and his 15,000 troops, New Orleans was a city on the verge of anarchy. Fires burned unchecked; looters roamed at will; all commerce, including the delivery of foodstuffs, abruptly stopped. Rioters stormed the mint, and one, William Mumford, succeeded in tearing down the U.S. flag that had been installed on Union admiral David Glasgow Farragut’s orders. It was then dragged through the streets of the city. In retaliation, Farragut warned that he was sending his men ashore and would bombard the city unless the U.S. flag was flown from City Hall. The desperate mayor turned to the foreign consuls to save New Orleans from immolation. He begged them to send the 4,500-strong European Brigade, which was made up of foreign neutrals who were not liable for the draft, but who had volunteered for civil defense duty.
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The arrival of the French warship
Milan
allayed the consuls’ trepidation about sending a group of middle-aged “merchants, bankers, underwriters, judges, real-estate owners and capitalists” into riot duty. The Brigade proved to be a poor substitute; as darkness descended each night, recalled an observer, the city glowed by the light of the arsonist’s torch, and the faint but urgent ringing of fire bells wafted out across the water.
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On May 1, twenty-five hundred Northern soldiers marched through rubble and trash-strewn streets to take up positions in the chief public buildings. The residents of the magnificent St. Charles Hotel in the French Quarter were turned out to make way for General Butler and his retinue, while the customs house became his headquarters. Butler let it be known that henceforth every citizen would live and abide by his rules alone. “The hand that cuts your bread can cut your throat,” he announced.
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Butler was one of the first politicians to be made a general in the volunteer army. It was his success in raising regiments—and his support for the war as a Democrat—rather than any previous military experience that won him the rank. He had joined the Massachusetts militia as a twenty-one-year-old, and had risen to become a brigadier general without ever hearing a shot in battle. A successful lawyer by profession, Ben Butler could fight hard and dirty when circumstances demanded. Force of will and astute backroom tactics had won him the military command of the New Orleans operation—a remarkable feat considering that his two previous commands had been marred by breathtaking incompetence.

Among Butler’s first acts was the capture and execution of William Mumford, who was strung up from the same flagpole that had flown the desecrated U.S. flag. He also issued a raft of edicts: Any house used by sharpshooters would be destroyed.
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Shopkeepers who refused to sell to Union officers would have their goods confiscated. Overt displays of partisanship would be judged without mercy—a woman who laughed loudly at a passing Union funeral cortege was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.
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Almost anyone who wished to do business in the city was first required to take an oath of allegiance.

Nor was Butler troubled in the least by diplomatic niceties. When the foreign consuls protested against their citizens’ having to take loyalty oaths, he invited them to leave the city. He declared all foreign funds in their safekeeping to be Confederate contraband and therefore liable to seizure. Union soldiers forced their way into the Dutch consulate and bullied the hapless consul into opening his vault. When Butler attempted the same with the French consulate, however, Count Mejan reminded him that a French warship was moored on the river. Butler also punished members of the British Guard (a company in the European Brigade) who had sent their uniforms and weapons to friends in the Confederate army. Two were imprisoned and another thirty-seven were forced to leave the city.
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Lord Lyons thought it was “very imprudent” for the British Guard to engage in such partisan behavior, but he was sufficiently alarmed by Consul Mure’s reports to order the
Rinaldo
to proceed to the city. New Orleans had always been a byword for lawlessness and truculence, and the absence of menfolk did little to cow its abandoned wives and daughters. These female Southerners wore Confederate colors, sang songs, hissed, spat, turned their backs, and on one famous occasion dumped the contents of a chamber pot on Union soldiers. In retaliation, on May 15, Butler issued General Order No. 28, which held that “hereafter, when any female shall by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.” Washington dismissed the document as a crude piece of Southern propaganda, until newspapers from New Orleans confirmed it.
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Butler’s “Woman Order” galvanized the South more effectively than any speech or partial victory might have achieved.
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The Confederate armies in the west had become demoralized after the recent spate of defeats. The loss of Island No. 10 had increased federal control of the Mississippi River to within attacking distance of Memphis, the Confederacy’s fifth-largest city and the river gateway into Mississippi. Many of the regiments in General Beauregard’s army had come to the end of their twelve-month terms and wanted to return home. One of his corps commanders, Braxton Bragg, who was promoted to general after Shiloh, refused to let them go, and to make his point, deserters were shot without trial. William Watson’s 3rd Louisiana were among the twelve-month regiments. The men were furious with Bragg until the “Woman Order” became known. “The feeling of indignation which was roused by Butler’s acts overcame in a great measure the disaffection that had been fast spreading through the army,” wrote Watson. “Many were roused to a spirit of revenge … not that they hated Davis and his Bragg the less, but that they hated Lincoln and his Butler the more.”
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By mid-May, Beauregard’s Army of the Mississippi had swelled to around 70,000 Confederates. But he was facing a massive new entity called the Army of the West, which had 120,000 soldiers. The Union general leading this army was Henry Halleck, the second most senior general after McClellan. Known as “Old Brains” for his treatise on military theory, Halleck had taken charge after Shiloh as the senior general, and had combined the three Federal forces under Buell, Grant, and Pope. Although Halleck was moving slowly toward Corinth, Mississippi, Beauregard did not think that the time available would allow him to prepare any better for the Federals’ arrival. But he understood the city’s importance to the South. “If defeated here,” he wrote to Jefferson Davis after the army had retreated to Corinth from Shiloh, “we lose the whole Mississippi Valley and probably our cause.”
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But given the choice between railroads and men, Beauregard chose the latter. His chief concern now was to save his army.

Halleck arrived at the outskirts of Corinth on May 26. The pickets in Watson’s regiments traded jokes and insults with their Northern counterparts. “We were glad to hear they had an abundance of coffee,” wrote Watson, “as we trusted that it would fall into our hands.” In just a few more days, Corinth would be completely surrounded, and no more supplies would reach Beauregard’s wilting army. On the twenty-ninth, Watson was on a picket duty when his squad was late returning and became lost in the darkness. “We therefore concluded to seek out a quiet, snug place in the woods and lie down till daylight.” The next morning they awoke to an unnatural silence. Walking back to camp, they discovered it was empty. During the night Beauregard had succeeded in evacuating his entire army. It was one of the greatest military maneuvers of the war. Like most of the rank and file, Watson had been utterly ignorant of Beauregard’s elaborate plans to deceive Halleck.

Watson and his men headed off in the direction of Corinth. There they found the railroad and walked along its broken track. Every now and then they came across large groups of Confederate deserters. These were mostly volunteers from Bragg’s division—Tennessee men whose main concern now was to protect their farms and families from looting soldiers. Watson did not blame them. He, too, wished to return home to New Orleans. The Queen’s proclamation of neutrality meant that the new conscription law did not apply to him. “I now considered that I had faithfully fulfilled my engagement to the Confederate States, and trusted they would do the same by me.”
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General Halleck’s soldiers marched into Corinth on May 30 only to find a filthy ghost town. The general was furious at being denied his great battle, but “most of the men and officers were glad of it,” wrote Robert Neve of the 5th Kentucky Volunteers. The Englishman wrangled a pass into town and went scavenging around the defensive works, kicking over discarded treasures and occasionally finding something interesting, like a bowie knife. “I also found a note directed to General Halleck. It said: ‘If you think there is no HELL or here-after, follow us. Yours, Blythe’s Regiment, Mississippi Volunteers.’ ”
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The peaceful capture of Corinth did not result in the praise Henry Halleck had expected. Indeed, quite the reverse. The Chicago
Tribune
sneered at his “barren triumph” and called it “tantamount to a defeat.”
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Newspapers across several states followed suit. The acrimony over the Confederates’ retreat revealed Halleck’s poor relationship with the press. Reporters wishing to follow his army were firmly discouraged from making the attempt, as Frank Vizetelly discovered.
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It had felt like a deep personal sacrifice to say goodbye to his friends in the Army of the Potomac; “I was proud of the position I had achieved among them,” he wrote. During the past twelve months, “I have sought my fortune with the soldiers of the Potomac … so thoroughly had I become identified with them that numbers of the officers and—I am not ashamed to say it—men, looked upon me as an old friend.”
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