A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (77 page)

The Globe Hotel was a three-story stone building, painted a pretty shade of pink with black shutters. Built in 1699 as a residence for the governor, it was one of the oldest houses on the island. With each change of ownership the place had become a little more run-down and frayed about the edges, and it was currently a boardinghouse run by a widow and her three spinster sisters. But “it was a Palace to me,” wrote Major Walker’s pregnant wife, Georgiana, who arrived on March 24, 1863, with three young children in tow and what remained of their belongings. (One bag contained the Confederate flag and a pouch filled with Virginia soil. Georgiana intended to give birth with the flag draped symbolically above the bed and the soil placed underneath to ensure that the baby was a true Virginian.) Desperate to join her husband in Bermuda, Georgiana had approached every blockade runner in Wilmington pleading to be taken on as a passenger, until finally the captain of the
Cornubia,
the leading steamer in the Ordnance Department’s squadron, had taken pity on her. Georgiana became the first woman to run the blockade.

At times, Georgiana could count as many as a dozen Confederate flags in the harbor. Some of the vessels’ captains were Southern, but many were British, usually Royal Naval Reserve officers. One, the Hon. Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden, a younger son of the sixth Earl of Buckinghamshire, even resigned his commission to dedicate himself to blockade running, and there seemed to be no shortage of thrill seekers from either branch of Her Majesty’s forces. On the steamship from Halifax to Liverpool in November, Matthew Maury and James Morgan had been surprised to learn that among the passengers was a group of English army officers who had used their leave to try blockade running. The Earl of Dunmore, who became friendly with Maury and Morgan, boasted of his capture and confinement in a Northern prison. The earl had “passed through the Federal lines and gone to Richmond and thence to Charleston,” wrote a clearly impressed Morgan.

He had travelled incognito, under his family name of Murray. The boat he took passage on successfully eluded the Federal fleet off Charleston, but an outside cruiser captured her the very next day. The prisoners were of course searched, and around the body of “Mr. Murray,” under his shirt, was found wrapped a Confederate flag—the flag of the C.S.S.
Nashville,
which had been presented to him by Captain Pegram. Despite his protestations that he was a Britisher traveling for pleasure, he was confined, as “Mr. Murray,” in Fort Lafayette. The British Minister, Lord Lyons, soon heard of his predicament and requested the authorities in Washington to order his release, representing him as being the Earl of Dunmore, a lieutenant in Her Majesty’s Life Guards. But the commandant of Fort Lafayette denied that he had any such prisoner and it required quite a correspondence to persuade him that a man by the name of Murray could at the same time be Lord Dunmore.
³

Lord Lyons implored his staff to discourage their friends and acquaintances from visiting the Confederacy. Two months after Edward Malet’s midnight encounter with Lord Hartington, the legation attaché was again called to the aid of an English civilian. The Federal security measures implemented after Mosby’s raid had snared another victim. George Alfred Lawrence was famous throughout England as the author of
Guy Livingstone.
Published in 1857, the novel eulogized a handsome daredevil Guards officer who defies social convention to the point of blackguardism but ultimately knows right from wrong. Five years later, Lawrence’s dashing alter ego still haunted its sedentary creator. In December 1862, Lawrence shocked his wife and friends by announcing his intention to serve as a volunteer staff officer to General Lee. In contrast to the devil-may-care Guy, Lawrence had carefully planned his adventure. He obtained highly laudatory letters of introduction, including one from James Mason, made financial provisions for his family, and secured an appointment from the
Morning Post
as its Southern correspondent.

Lawrence was greeted with adulation by the young attachés at the legation. Lord Lyons invited him to dinner, although he was not as taken with the author as his impressionable staff, one of whom supplied Lawrence with the address of the ever-obliging pro-Southern journalist W. W. Glenn. This time, however, Glenn regretted his involvement; Lawrence was captured on April 10 a few miles from the last Federal outpost in Greenland County, West Virginia. He was high-handed with his Federal interrogator and melodramatically refused to answer questions except to say “I am the author of
Guy Livingstone
and other works of fiction, I took no letters from Baltimore to carry and none were found on me.”

According to the army report, hidden among Lawrence’s personal belongings was a letter from Mr. Glenn giving directions on where to find his guide, “and the route to take, the persons to trust and to avoid … it reflects a disloyal and traitorous light.” There was also a scurrilous verse in his handwriting: “Jeff Davis rides a white horse, Abe rides a mule, Davis is a gentleman, Abe a fool.” William Seward was robustly unsympathetic when Lord Lyons wrote to him about releasing Lawrence from the Old Capitol prison.

The publicity attending Lawrence’s arrest was deeply embarrassing for Lord Lyons. He also feared what the English papers would say once it became known that the “author of
Guy Livingstone
” was being held in prison without charge. Despite persistent prodding by Lyons to bring Lawrence to trial or else release him, Seward did nothing for two months. The secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, insisted that Seward make an example of Lawrence and showed his anger by refusing to grant any more passes to British military observers, including Lieutenant Colonel James Eli Crowther, who had been sent by the British Army as an official observer.
^19.1

George Lawrence whiled away his time in prison writing irritable letters to Lyons swearing that there was not “a shadow of foundation” to the charge he had sought to join the Confederacy. The attachés visited him weekly bearing little care packages, which the guards kept for themselves. Lawrence loathed his loquacious cellmate, whose “narrative riches about matched those of the knife-grinder.”
⁵
His sole consolation, he wrote, was the occasional sight of a beautiful female prisoner who once threw him a white rose from her window. Apart from this innocent little romance, Lawrence kept to himself. When Seward finally ordered his release in June, Lawrence returned to New York a chastened man. Henceforth he would continue his campaign against the North from the safety of his study.

Lord Lyons might have been more persuasive with Seward if Lawrence’s arrest had not coincided with that of another adventure-hungry Briton. Twenty-year-old Alfred Rubery was one of life’s nincompoops. The death of his father, John, the largest umbrella manufacturer in Birmingham, had given him a modest independence. Leaving his older brother to manage the family business, Alfred went to San Francisco in the summer of 1862 with dreams of making his fortune in mining. He had not been in the city for long when he fell into a barroom argument with a Federal officer. Young Rubery had visited the South before the war. Naturally, as one who owed his wealth and social position to factory smoke, he idealized Southern society and thought it the most perfect on earth. He said all this and more to the incensed Lieutenant Tompkins, who happened to be the descendant of a New York State governor. “High words followed,” according to witnesses, “and Tompkins made a remark that touched Rubery’s honor. The latter simply said, ‘You will hear from me, sir,’ and left the room.”
⁶

The virtually friendless Rubery needed a second for his duel with Tompkins. An acquaintance put him in touch with Asbury Harpending, a Confederate veteran who had fought at Shiloh. Only a year older than Rubery, Harpending seemed to be living proof that fantasies can come true. Brought up in Kentucky, he had run away from home as a teenager and made his way to Mexico, where he discovered a gold mine, becoming rich overnight. But the chronic anarchy and violence that bedeviled Mexico soon separated Harpending from his new source of wealth. Undaunted, when the war began, he went to San Francisco with fresh schemes in mind. His first idea was to organize a chapter of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret pro-Southern society, and have each member recruit a hundred volunteers. This, he reckoned, would give him a big enough force to seize California’s government buildings and declare the state’s allegiance to the South. When that failed, he somehow got himself to Richmond, where he wrangled an officer’s commission in the Confederate navy.

Harpending returned to San Francisco with a new plan. He and a friend named Ridgley Greathouse were going to charter a ship, sail it into Mexican waters, and lie in wait for the Pacific Mail steamer and its cargo of California gold. After offloading the passengers, they would equip the steamer as a privateer and send the gold to Richmond. Thus armed, they would prey on Californian cargo ships and, with luck, disrupt the supply of gold to the North. The only hitch to the plan was the $25,000 required to see it through to execution. Harpending was therefore delighted to meet the pro-Southern and apparently well-heeled Rubery.

But first, Harpending had to rescue his friend from the duel with Tompkins. Alfred Rubery’s physical prowess lagged far behind his enthusiasm. “I tried him at pistol practice,” recalled Harpending, “and found that, with extra good luck, at ten paces he could hit a barn.” The American could fast-talk his way out of anything; he used his gift now to make the duel disappear. With Tompkins safely dispatched, the three conspirators began looking for a suitable ship. They soon happened upon the
J. M. Chapman,
a ninety-ton schooner that had just made a record-breaking voyage from New York. As soon as ownership was transferred to them, they proceeded to hire a crew and purchase enough firepower to make a formidable warship. “It only remained to secure a navigator who could be implicitly trusted,” wrote Harpending. When none materialized, they were forced to engage William Law, a sea captain and ex–slave trader who had been dismissed by the Pacific Mail Company. Law had only eight fingers and “was the most repulsive reptile in appearance that I ever set eyes on,” wrote Harpending. His antipathy proved well founded.

The day of departure was set for March 15, 1863. The night before, Harpending and Rubery hid in a dark alley behind the American Exchange Hotel and waited for the crew to arrive. They then divided into three squads to avoid suspicion and “slipped through the dimly lighted streets, past roaring saloons and sailor boarding houses” and reached an unfrequented part of the waterfront unnoticed, where the privateer was moored. Rubery and Harpending “were exultant.” But,

when we scrambled aboard the
Chapman,
Greathouse was pacing the deck in agitation. Law was not there. I experienced a shock such as a man receives when a bucket of ice water is emptied on him in his sleep. The suggestion of treachery could not be avoided. We cast loose from the wharf and anchored in the stream. But we were helpless. We could not sail without our navigator. We had nothing to do but wait.
⁷

Shortly after dawn the three conspirators awoke to find the
Chapman
surrounded by U.S. gunboats. The authorities had been keeping careful surveillance for several days. Rubery and Harpending had neglected to supply the local revenue officers with a cargo manifest, thereby piquing official interest in the mysterious boxes that were being loaded in such a hurry. The luckless three were taken to Alcatraz, where Rubery was soon visited by Consul William Lane Booker, who thought him to be a rather unsympathetic, cocky youth who fully deserved his punishment. “He has nothing to complain as to his treatment,” Booker reported to Lord Russell, “beyond being deprived of his liberty.”
⁸
The evidence against Rubery was so overwhelming that Lyons made no attempt to intervene on his behalf. While searching through Rubery’s baggage, the Federals had found a plan for capturing San Francisco’s military forts, a proclamation to the people of California urging them to join the Confederacy, and a declaration of allegiance for those who did.

Rubery’s family could not accept that their little Alfred had played a central role in the conspiracy. For the past three months he had been spinning a tale to them about a mining venture in Mexico. Determined to prove his innocence, they showed the letters to Birmingham’s two MPs, John Bright and William Scholefield. Neither shared the Ruberys’ delusion: “They seem to be wholly unaware that he can have committed himself so as to justify his arrest,” wrote Scholefield pityingly.
⁹
“[Alfred] must be wonderfully stupid to have engaged in any conspiracy,” decided John Bright, “and yet I hear that he is sharp and clever, and was educated at the London University.” The Rubery name and fortune carried sufficient weight in Birmingham to make it impossible for the MPs to ignore the family’s request for help. John Bright reluctantly wrote to Charles Sumner, “Is it too much for me to ask you to procure his liberation on condition that he shall at once return to England?”
¹⁰
It was. Rubery remained at Alcatraz.

—

Lord Lyons refused to let either George Lawrence or Alfred Rubery disrupt his enjoyment of the first days of spring. It was not only possible but also delightful to walk down streets abloom with flowering trees. The great drying-out attracted crowds of tourists and distinguished visitors to the city. Seward’s house became lively again, and nineteen-year-old Fanny Seward briefly relinquished her reserve to enjoy a brief flirtation with an English naval surgeon on leave from USS
Commodore Morris.