A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (84 page)

The Ladies’ London Emancipation Society tried to beat Hotze at his own game by distributing more than a hundred thousand excerpts from Fanny Kemble’s plantation diary, but neither they nor the indefatigable Harriet Martineau could match Hotze’s tentacle-like connection with the press. By early May, Martineau had given up trying to change the North’s poor image in England and was concentrating on the message “that it is not necessary to admire the Yankees very much to be on their side in the quarrel.”
¹³

Hotze was being helped, of course, by the absence of pro-Northern English journalists covering the war in America. Since Charles Mackay’s arrival in America to replace the
Times
’ ailing New York correspondent, J. C. Bancroft Davis, Mackay had been obediently sending back articles that showed the North in a poor light. The managing editor, Mowbray Morris, was pleased with the reports and told Mackay, “Your views are entirely in accordance with those of the paper and I believe of the majority in this country.”
¹⁴
(The Morris fortune had disappeared almost overnight after emancipation released the slaves on the family’s sugar plantation in the West Indies.) Francis Lawley was treading a far more precarious line. He was writing his reports to make it seem as though a Confederate victory was inevitable, but was also trying to force the government’s hand by provoking public outrage over Southern suffering.

The combination of Lawley’s eyewitness reports and Frank Vizetelly’s emotive drawings certainly acted powerfully on the public conscience. “I assure you the sympathy of all England is with the South and I think justly so,” a housekeeper from Manchester informed her relatives in Michigan. “[The Northerners] are jealous of us as a mightier nation and hate us because we do not take their part, but it is a family quarrel and they must make it up themselves.”
¹⁵
At the other end of the social spectrum, the Hon. Lucy Lyttleton, at the time an impressionable twenty-two-year-old debutante, was shocked to discover that not everyone supported the South. “During dinner America was the topic,” she wrote in her diary on June 13, 1863, while staying with the Duchess of Sutherland at Cliveden. “The Duke and Duchess [of Argyll] are Northern! in their sympathies.” Lucy did not feel confident enough to argue with them or with the widowed William Vernon Harcourt, the other guest present. “It does make one’s heart ache to think of such grief,” she wrote; “he joins in conversation, and puts on no affectations of sorrow; but his face tells it all. The little baby lives.”
¹⁶

Ill.40
Southern refugees camping in the woods near Vicksburg, by Frank Vizetelly.

Henry Hotze could not have hoped for a more positive reception to his propaganda. He was delighted by the lamentations of the pro-Northern
Bradford Observer
on June 19 that the Northerners were losing the argument: “We have men really wishing for the universal abolition of slavery expressing earnest wishes for the success of the section of a nation who are the most deeply tainted with the crime of slavery.”

Yet the Confederate lobby was still not satisfied. There was a rumor going around the Tory Party that the French emperor would not openly support the South. Roebuck and Lindsay agreed they had to receive a personal assurance from Louis-Napoleon himself before they exposed themselves to the massed ranks of the House. John Slidell prepared the ground for their meeting during his own interview with the emperor on June 18. Once again Louis-Napoleon said he hoped the South would win, not least because he considered the Confederates more supportive of his own venture in Mexico. He also agreed to allay the fears of the two English MPs. Slidell could almost hear the trumpets of independence in his ears. Two days later, on June 20, Roebuck and Lindsay went to the Tuileries. James Spence had run through all the possible arguments with Roebuck in advance. The emperor reassured them that he had not changed his mind. However, he added, his cabinet was opposed to any sort of formal communication with London, fearing that Lord Russell might use the offer as leverage to gain favor with Seward. The French ambassador had been instructed to make only an informal approach about a joint move between the two countries.

In London, James Spence attended a campaign dinner for nearly sixty guests given by Beresford Hope. He sat between the publisher John Murray and the Whig politician Lord Elcho, both of whom made flattering remarks about his
Times
articles. But Spence could not enjoy himself while the Tories’ participation remained an open question. The Confederate lobby discussed whether they should go ahead without the Conservative Party and simply rely on the emperor’s promised support. Mason, Hotze, and Spence were more worried about the
Alexandra
trial, which they feared might throw out something embarrassing or prejudicial at precisely the wrong moment.

The trial began on June 22, with the Crown prosecution laying out the facts against the ship. Lord Russell had moved the proceedings to London, certain that Liverpool would never allow a conviction against one of its own. That city, he wrote in exasperation, was “addicted to Southern proclivities, foreign slave trade, and domestic bribery.”
¹⁷
The
Alexandra
was, said the solicitor general, Sir Roundell Palmer, obviously a vessel built for war. To bolster his argument, he produced Clarence Yonge, the ex-paymaster of the
Alabama,
who admitted that James Bulloch and Fraser, Trenholm were in cahoots and confirmed that Confederate naval and military officers had the run of the company’s headquarters. But Sir Hugh Cairns, Bulloch’s defense lawyer, tore apart poor Roundell Palmer. Despite the best efforts of Consul Dudley, the American lawyer William Evarts, the Home Office’s Secret Service, the chief law officers, and a Confederate turncoat, all the evidence produced was circumstantial. After three days of testimony, the case went to the jury on June 25. Guided by the presiding judge, Justice Pollock (who happened to be a great friend of Lindsay’s as well as a stickler for legal precedent), the jury found against the Crown; the seizure of the
Alexandra
was ruled to have been illegal. The Confederates and their supporters were jubilant. Pollock had interpreted the Foreign Enlistment Act to mean that only fully armed ships were covered under the law; “war-like” ships could be built without interference. But James Bulloch knew in his heart that the case was only a temporary victory. Lord Russell demonstrated his determination to win by ordering Palmer to appeal the ruling.

—

The day after the acquittal, London heard stunning news from America. General Lee was marching toward Maryland, or possibly Washington. “The English hope it will be our destruction,” wrote Benjamin Moran in his diary.
¹⁸
Lee’s invasion thrilled the Confederate lobby. The timing could not have been more auspicious for them. They had already decided to prepare the way for Roebuck’s motion by having one of Gregory’s friends in the Lords, the Marquis of Clanricarde, ask Russell whether the French had made any sort of important proposal that ought to be made known to the country. This, they thought, would force Russell’s hand.
¹⁹

On June 26, 1863, Clanricarde fired the first salvo and asked Russell whether he had received a communication from the French. Russell replied that he had not. This rather flustered Clanricarde, who tried to retrieve the situation by asking whether the noble lord thought it was time to recognize the South. Russell replied that he did not, and so ended the exchange. This was not how the Confederates had expected the day to end. Either Russell or the emperor was lying to them. In Paris, Slidell paid a hasty visit to the foreign minister, who assured him that a note had indeed been sent to Baron Gros, the French ambassador. In London, Roebuck went to see the ambassador, who could only say that he had not made a formal approach to Russell, which the Englishman already knew.

Louis-Napoleon had actually instructed his ambassador to speak to Palmerston about jointly recognizing the South, but the prime minister was ill with gout. Baron Gros, unsure whether he was required to convey the same message to the foreign secretary, merely met with Lord Russell instead but dropped a hint about the emperor’s intentions and left it at that. All this nodding and winking was creating a scenario for a perfect tragicomedy of errors, unless decisive reports arrived from America.
²⁰

With some trepidation, given John Bright’s previous performance in the Commons, the pro-Northern lobby asked him to lead the counterattack against Roebuck and Lindsay. Bright agreed, though he was worried that another military victory by Lee would make any further debate about recognition a pointless exercise. He was having dreams about the war in which he was surrounded by telegrams that he could see but not read.
²¹

Charles Francis Adams asked Bright to attend a working dinner a few nights before Roebuck’s planned motion for recognition of the South. Several of Seward’s recent emissaries were present, including William Evarts, John Murray Forbes, and William H. Aspinwall.
^21.4
A sense of grievance against the Lincoln administration weighed down the conversation. “The impression here is that your Government is incapable, that it lacks two essential qualities, foresight and force,” Bright explained to Sumner. “Among the Americans here, friends of the North, there is great want of confidence in your Cabinet at Washington, and I cannot but feel that great losses of men, and means, and long delays, and apparent mismanagement, must have the effect of creating a disgust with the war.”
²²

Having witnessed the government’s difficulties, Evarts thought Washington was not giving Lord Russell the credit he deserved for his attempts to secure a conviction against the
Alexandra
’s owners. Forbes and Aspinwall concurred; they were returning to America in a few days and intended to speak to Seward about his role in the British public’s negative perception of the North.

Forbes and Aspinwall left for New York on June 30, the day of Roebuck’s motion in the Commons, a few hours too early to know the results of the debate. In America, the last newspaper reports placed the Confederate army near the border of Pennsylvania; Harrisburg, the state’s capital, was standing by to evacuate the legislature. The Confederates in London were feeling confident; Roebuck did not know that Bright was to be his opponent in the House. When asked by a Southerner whether he would fear such an encounter, “No, sir!” Roebuck replied sententiously. “Bright and I have met before. It was the old story—the story of the sword-fish and the whale! No sir! Bright will not cross swords with me again!”
²³

—

The death of Stonewall Jackson had not dented the Confederate army’s confidence, even though Lee had been forced into a drastic reorganization to make up for the loss of his best general. He created three infantry corps, one under “Old Pete” Longstreet and the others under Richard Ewell and Ambrose P. Hill. Jackson’s cavalry was assigned to Jeb Stuart. Longstreet had already demonstrated his abilities; the rest would have to prove themselves on the field. But at least Lee had sufficient stores and enough men, eighty thousand in all, to justify leading the army into enemy territory.

Thirty days of hot, cloudless skies had left Virginia parched and dry. As the Army of Northern Virginia pulled away from Fredericksburg during the first week of June, rising columns of dust betrayed its movements to General Hooker’s scouts. Hooker realized that Lee was heading north and wrongly assumed that the Confederates were going to attack Washington. He was prevented from discovering his mistake for several days by the newly appointed Ambrose Hill, who had been ordered to block the Federals at Fredericksburg for as long as possible. The strategy worked insofar as it occupied the attentions of Union general “Uncle John” Sedgwick, but Lee had underestimated the strength and size of Hooker’s cavalry corps, who were also on the hunt.

The debonair Jeb Stuart had passed the time since Chancellorsville organizing grand reviews of his troops. His headquarters was in Culpeper County, thirty miles east of Fredericksburg on the other side of the Rappahannock River, where the Orange–Alexandria railroad passed through a small village at Brandy Station.
²⁴
The grandest of the reviews was on June 5, involving all ten thousand soldiers and the horse artillery, followed by a ball in the evening. Thousands of spectators watched as Stuart put on a performance of knightly dash worthy of
Ivanhoe.
There were even buglers and flower girls who scattered petals before Stuart’s arrival.