A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (163 page)

10.
Lord Lyons was annoyed by Mercier’s visit. It was his firm belief that they should respect the Northern embargo and refrain from any direct communication with the South. He also feared that it would give the impression of a crack in the Anglo-French accord. For that reason alone, Seward was not averse to Mercier’s solo mission.

11.
Robert Douthat Meade,
Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate Statesman
(Baton Rouge, La., 2001), p. 254.

12.
James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes (eds.),
The American Civil War Through British Eyes
, vol. 2 (Kent, Ohio, 2005), p. 26, Lord Lyons to Lord Russell, April 28, 1862.

13.
C. Vann Woodward (ed.),
Mary Chesnut’s Civil War
(New Haven, 1981), p. 330, April 27, 1862.

14.
Hudson Strode,
Jefferson Davis: Confederate President
, 3 vols. (New York, 1959), vol. 2, p. 246.

15.
See Ella Lonn,
Foreigners in the Confederacy
(Chapel Hill, N.C., repr. 2001), pp. 113–15, for a discussion of the European Brigade. There were 2,500 Frenchmen, 800 Spaniards, 500 Italians, 400 Germans, Dutch, and Scandinavians, and 500 Swiss, Belgians, English, Slavonians, and others.

16.
Virgil Carrington Jones makes clear that by April 30, New Orleans was relatively calm. “Truly the backbone of the rebellion is broken,” reported Admiral Porter. Jones,
The Civil War at Sea
, 3 vols. (New York, 1961), vol. 2, p. 138.

17.
Robert S. Holzman, “Ben Butler in the Civil War,”
New England Quarterly
, 30/3 (Sept. 1957), pp. 330–45, at p. 335.

18.
PRO F
O5
/848, ff. 403–10, Consul Coppel to Lord Russell, May 9, 1862.

19.
Holtzman, “Ben Butler in the Civil War,” p. 334.

20.
The British consul tried to protect the 105 British members of Company B. When Butler learned that 39 of them had sent their uniforms and weapons to friends in the Confederate army, he ordered the entire company to appear before him in full kit, or face either expulsion or imprisonment. Two men, according to a petition from the British residents, Samuel Nelson and J. Turner Roe, were arbitrarily arrested and sent “to work as common laborers on the forts which is tantamount to a death sentence given the weather, conditions etc.” They requested a British warship for protection. PRO FO5/848, ff. 433–39, Petition on behalf of British Residents of New Orleans, June 11, 1861.

21.
PRO FO5/830, ff. 346–48, Lord Lyons to Lord Russell, May 30, 1862.

22.
Seward dispatched a trusted representative to New Orleans to examine each claim of judicial abuse. It came as no surprise to Butler’s critics when every one of his cases was overturned.

23.
William Watson,
Life in the Confederate Army: Being the Observations and Experiences of an Alien in the South During the Civil War
(London, 1887; repr. Baton Rouge, La., 1995), p. 371.

24.
James M. McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom
(London, 1988), p. 416.

25.
Watson,
Life in the Confederate Army
, p. 361.

26.
“The Journal of Robert Neve,” private collection, p. 40.

27.
Shelby Foote,
The Civil War
, 3 vols. (New York, 1986), vol. 1, p. 385.

28.
Halleck proclaimed a blanket ban on all journalists and noncombatants on May 13, on the grounds that Confederate spies were among them.

29.
Illustrated London News
, April 26, 1862.

30.
Ibid., June 14, 1862.

31.
E. B. Long, with Barbara Lond,
The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865
(New York, 1971; repr. New York, 1985), p. 726.

32.
Illustrated London News
, July 19, 1862.

33.
Ibid., July 26, 1862.

34.
Camp Douglas was originally a training camp for volunteers; after the capture of Fort Donelson in February, the temporary barracks had been converted to hold enlisted prisoners of war; officers were sent to a separate prison. There, Stanley shared a straw pallet with W. H. Wilkes, a Southern nephew of the notorious Charles Wilkes.

35.
Hughes,
Sir Henry Morton Stanley
, p. 141.

36.
Ibid., p. 146.

37.
PRO FO115/300, ff. 151–52, Lyons to Russell, May 5, 1862.

38.
See, e.g., OR, ser. 2, vol. 4, S. 117, William Hoffman to Edwin Stanton, June 28, 1862.

39.
Hughes (ed.),
Sir Henry Morton Stanley
, p. 148. Hughes notes that George Levy, the author of the most comprehensive study of Camp Douglas, has serious doubts about Stanley’s account. However, there is sufficient evidence to accept that he was there, and did join the 1st Illinois Light Artillery.

40.
OR, ser. 1, vol. 10/1, p. 73, Report of Col. John F. De Courcy, June 20, 1862.

41.
Hugh Dubrulle, “A Military Legacy of the Civil War: The British Inheritance,”
Civil War History
(June 2003), pp. 153–80. The military observers were genuinely impressed, however. Sir George Seymour wrote to Lord Russell on May 9, 1862: “I have just seen a letter from an English officer (a man who has seen a great deal of service) who has been taking a look at the Federal army. A finer one—or one better provided with all things necessary he never—he says—saw—and he adds … ‘that it would require a force of 100,000 men to keep them out of Canada.’ Meanwhile he says that he does not trace much hostile feeling towards us, and that he has met with a great deal of civility from the Federal Officers.” PRO 33/22/39, f. 163.

42.
Richard Taylor,
Destruction and Reconstruction
(1879, repr. New York, 1992), p. 21.

43.
He claimed to be the son of Brigadier Sir Charles Wyndham of the 5th Light Cavalry, and a Frenchwoman named Zoë Vauthrin. His mother allegedly gave birth to him in the middle of the English Channel, on board the
Arab
. But there was no HMS
Arab
in commission in 1833, nor did the Royal Navy have a Captain Charles Wyndham. Nor was he the son, illegitimate or otherwise, of Lord Leconsfield, although there was a Captain Charles Wyndham, killed in action at Jagdalak on October 29, 1841.

44.
Edward G. Longacre,
Jersey Cavaliers
(Hightstown, N.J., 1992), p. 47.

45.
Taylor,
Destruction and Reconstruction
, p. 53.

46.
Ruth Scarborough,
Siren of the South
(Macon, 1997), p. 53. This same Henry Kyd Douglas has been accused of being the man responsible for Robert E. Lee’s Antietam battle plans falling into Federal hands. Wilbur D. Jones, “Who Lost the Lost Order?,”
Civil War Regiments: A Journal of the American Civil War
, 5/3 (1997).

47.
Mary Sophia Hill,
A British Subject’s Recollections of the Confederacy
(Baltimore, 1875), pp. 19, 20.

48.
Wyndham’s lieutenant colonel reported: “All the officers, as far as I could see, behaved bravely in trying to rally their men, but to no avail. They retreated without order and in the greatest confusion—for the most part panic-stricken.” OR, ser. 1, vol. 15/1, p. 680.

49.
Longacre,
Jersey Cavaliers
, p. 92.

50.
Douglas Southall Freeman,
Lee’s Lieutenants
, 3 vols. (repr. New York, 1970), vol. 1, p. 432.

51.
James I. Robertson, Jr.,
Stonewall Jackson
(New York, 1997), p. 429.

52.
Ibid., p. 449.

53.
Wilmer Jones,
Generals in Blue and Gray
(New York, 2006), p. 80.

54.
PRO 30/22/36, ff. 87–90, Lyons to Russell, May 6, 1862. “So strongly have I been impressed with the necessity of being at the seat of Government, that with the exception of the two months … attendance upon the Prince of Wales, I have been only four nights absent from Washington,” he wrote apologetically.

55.
West Sussex RO, Lyons MSS, box 300, Lord Lyons to Augusta Lyons, May 6, 1862.

56.
When Lyons called on Seward to say goodbye, Lyons reassured him that it would be far better for him to spend his holiday in England than at an American resort, cut off from both capitals. Seward agreed, reported Lyons. “There was, [Seward] was happy to say, no difficult question pending between the two governments.” PRO FO 5/831, ff. 171–74, Lyons to Russell, June 9, 1862.

57.
The legation often acted as a missing persons bureau. Instructions like this one to the consulate in New York were not uncommon: “to insert in the New York Herald and New York Tribune the following advertisement: ‘Ashley Norton Jones, otherwise called George Temple, who is believed to be serving in the United States Army, is earnestly entreated, for the sake of his afflicted parents to communicate at once with the Reverend Rush Buel, 44 William Street, Providence, RI. His parents will consult his wishes on all matters. Officers or comrades are requested to call his attention to this notice’. Notice should appear every alternative day for a month.”

58.
Bayly Ellen Marks and Mark Norton Schatz,
Between North and South: A Maryland Journalist Views the Civil War. The Narrative of William Wilkins Glenn, 1861–1869
(Cranbury, N.J., 1976), pp. 64–65, June 15, 1862.

59.
Just before he left, on June 13, Lyons informed the Foreign Office that Congress had voted to recognize the Republics of Haiti and Liberia. Previous administrations had declined because “those Republics are governed by men of Negro descent.”

60.
Lord Newton (ed.),
Lord Lyons: A Record of British Diplomacy
, 2 vols. (London, 1914), vol. 1, pp. 85–86, Lyons to Russell, May 16, 1862.

61.
Letters of Lord St. Maur and Lord Edward St. Maur
(London, 1888), p. 251, Lord Edward St. Maur to Duke of Somerset, June 9, 1862; p. 254, to Duchess of Somerset, June 19, 1862.

62.
Ibid., p. 260. It became a Southern myth that Lord Edward St. Maur “fought” alongside General Longstreet in the Seven Days’ Battles. By the same token, Lord Edward returned home believing that Southern Anglophobia was a Northern myth.

63.
Cueto had arrived in America at around the same time that W. H. Russell gave up trying to follow the Army of the Potomac. Put off by Russell’s tangle with officialdom, Cueto decided he would work as a free agent, traveling without passes or letters to wherever the action seemed most exciting. He did not get very far. A Yankee civilian remembered meeting him while they were both imprisoned in Castle Godwin. “Soon after I learned … that Cueto had died of typhoid fever in New York City.” George Washington Frosst,
A South Berwick Yankee Behind Confederate Lines (Part II)
. Cueto was in a Confederate prison in North Carolina for eight months before he was able to smuggle out a letter to Consul Bunch in late November 1862. The consul immediately sent a letter of protest to Judah P. Benjamin, who ordered an investigation into Cueto’s arrest.