Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History

BRITANNIA’S FIST

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From Civil War to World War

AN ALTERNATE HISTORY

PETER G. TSOURAS

T
HE
B
RITANNIA’S
F
IST
T
RILOGY
V
OLUME
1

Copyright © 2008 Peter G. Tsouras.

Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tsouras, Peter.

Britannia’s fist: from Civil War to World War—an alternate history / by Peter G. Tsouras. — 1st ed.

v. cm. — (The Britannia’s fist trilogy; v. 1)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-57488-823-2 (hardcover: alk. paper)

1. United States — History — Civil War, 1861–1865. 2. United States — History — 1865–1921. 3. United States — Foreign relations — Great Britain. 4. Great Britain — Foreign relations — United States. 5. Imaginary histories. I. Title. II. Title: From Civil War to World War — an alternate history.

E661.T83 2008

973.7—dc22

2008021576

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.

Potomac Books, Inc.
22841 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

To the honored memory of Maj. Gen. George H. Sharpe,
the Civil War founder of
American All-Source Intelligence

Introduction

Maps

Dramatis Personae

CHAPTERS

1
. Cossacks, Copperheads, and Corsairs

2
. Russell and the Rams

3
. George the Contraband and One-Eyed Garnet

4
. Gallantry on Crutches

5
. Sergeant Cline Gets a New Job

6
. “Roll, Alabama, Roll!”

7
. French Lick to Halifax

8
. Battle at Moelfre Bay

9
. Pursuit Into the Upper Bay

10
. A Rain of Blows

11
. Treason, Frogs, and Ironclads

12
. Cold Spring and Crossing the Bar

Appendix A: Order of Battle of the Armies at the First Battle of Portland

Appendix B: Order of Battle of the Fleets at the Third Battle of Charleston

Notes

About the Author

The Anglo-American War of 1863 that ignited the Great War, which, in turn, dragged in all the great powers and nearly ruined Western civilization is a tale never before told—for the simple fact that it never happened. The Four Horsemen paused at that crossroads, and War leaned forward over his black charger and looked longingly in that direction. But history pulled the dreaded four in another direction, and this path not taken still shimmers like a mirage of what might have been.

For many historians, their field of study moves under the pressure of great causes and betrays the taint of too close an affection for the idiocies of Karl Marx and his disciples. History all too often pivots on great or petty men, mixed signals, lost letters, spite, nobility, greed, and sacrifice, as much as it does on the great transformations produced by sharp bronze, the industrial age, democracy, and the sublime message of a Galilean rabbi. Two centuries ago, Samuel Johnson had already put his finger on it.

It seems to be almost the universal error of historians to suppose it politically, as it is physically true, that every effort has proportionate cause. In the inanimate action of matter upon matter, the motion produced can be but equal to the force of the moving power; but the operations of life, whether private or publick, admit no such laws. The caprices of voluntary agents laugh at calculations. It is not always that there is a strong reason for a great event. Obstinacy and flexibility, malignity and kindness, give place alternately to each other,
and the reason of these vicissitudes, however important may be the consequences, often escapes the mind in which the changes are made.
¹

The British Empire and the United States were not fated to go to war. Almost no one in positions of responsibility on both sides of the ocean wanted war, and if you had polled each country, the vote against a third cousin’s war would have been overwhelming, but “the caprices of voluntary agents” came very close to making just that happen. This then is an alternate history of just such a cataclysmic war.

Before going down this tale of a path not taken, it is important to review the path that history actually took. Great Britain and the United States came alarmingly close to war twice during the American Civil War. In both cases, war with the British Empire, like the Angel of Death, passed the embattled Union by. In each case, the French jackal, Napoleon III, was eager to follow the British lion into war. The first case, the Trent Affair, set the stage for the second pass at war—the Laird rams. In both cases, cooler heads eventually prevailed, and the crises were resolved. However, the margin was paper-thin.

On November 8, 1861, Capt. Charles Wilkes of the USS
San Jacinto
stopped the British mail steamer, RMS
Trent
, which had just departed Havana. Wilkes seized two Confederate diplomats, John Slidell, minister to Great Britain, and James Mason, minister to France, over the protest of the Trent’s captain. The British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, stated upon hearing the news, “I don’t know whether you are going to stand this, but I’ll be damned if I do.” The cabinet was fully prepared to go to war over this affront to British honor and what they saw as a clear violation of international law. The Royal Navy and British Army quickly developed war plans that as a member of the cabinet stated would iron the smile off the American face. The object was to inflict enough damage on the United States to serve as a salutary lesson. That such a lesson would also ensure the independence of the Southern Confederacy was something that the British government, “society,” and business circles looked forward to with undisguised glee. The American experiment in participatory democracy and the American character, especially that of the Northern people, were equally detested. The aristocratic society of the South was far more congenial and sympathetic to the British establishment.
That establishment found itself, on this issue, on the horns of a dilemma. All of British society was united in its distaste for slavery. A crippling blow against the North would perpetuate that institution in the South. The cabinet attempted to finesse the problem by splitting the issues. While going to war with the United States, it would not cooperate with the Confederacy in that war. It was a fine point that did not impress the rest of British society, the lower and middle classes, whose opposition to slavery and support for increased democracy at home saw the Union not as an enemy but as an example. Over time, the success of the American Union was seen as a mighty impetus to domestic British reforms to increase the franchise. Nevertheless, the Trent Affair blew so hot that these considerations had no time to become politically important.

The war plan called for the Royal Navy’s North American and West Indies Station to be heavily reinforced. Its commander, Adm. Alexander Milne, proposed to break the blockade at Charleston, decisively engage the U.S. Navy, blockade the North, dominate the Chesapeake Bay, and strike at Washington by coming up the Potomac River.

The Army’s plan concentrated on the defense of British North America, which at that time consisted of the Maritime Provinces, Lower Canada (Quebec), and Upper Canada (Ontario). A spoiling attack down the Hudson Valley was developed to protect Kingston, Montreal, and Quebec from an American attack along this traditional invasion route. A more aggressive element was the seizure of the state of Maine. Geographically, Maine juts between the Maritimes and Quebec. Because of that, rail communications between the Maritimes and the Canadas ran from Hailfax in Nova Scotia through New Brunswick to Portland, Maine, and then up to Sherbrooke in Quebec and beyond. This Grand Trunk Railway was the first international rail system, and the control of it was vital to the survival of British North America. Without it, reinforcements and supplies could not reach the Canadas. In addition, some genius at the British War Office concluded that the people of Maine, to whom making money was the primary consideration, were so disillusioned with the war that they would gladly leave the Union and just as gladly join the British Empire. To implement these plans, more than ten thousand reinforcements were immediately dispatched with several times that number planned to follow. Among the arrivals was Lt. Col. Garnet Wolseley, who would eventually become Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, the most celebrated of all British generals of the Victorian Age.

With all this in mind Palmerston wrote a blistering ultimatum. Fortunately, the prince consort, Alfred Albert, toned it down. At the same time, despite the immensely popularity of Wilkes’s deed in the North, President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward knew they had to give in. A major financial crisis had struck the Northern states. At this point, the imperial Russian government stepped in to offer invaluable diplomatic advice. It clearly stated that Wilkes’s action had, indeed, been a violation of international law. Lincoln and Seward fully appreciated the Russians’ goodwill and diplomatic experience. The United States and the Russian Empire had been on the friendliest terms since the American Revolution when Catherine the Great refused the British request to hire mercenaries by saying, “My subjects are not for sale.” She then formed the League of Armed Neutrality to defy British attempts to close down American trade with the rest of the world. Since then Russia and America had had no strategic conflicts and found much in common in the development and peopling of vast open continents. The Russians had a deeper motive, however, in supporting the United States. They had been so badly drubbed in the Crimean War by British strategic reach and power that they had come to fear British world hegemony. They saw the survival of the American Union as the only real counter to that eventuality.