A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [103]
In Benjamin’s defense, he had inherited a badly organized and unhappy department. Boredom and disease were sapping the strength of the Confederate armies. Sam Hill’s regiment, the 6th Louisiana Volunteers, was losing half a dozen men a month.49 “Our hospital tents are full of sick; I am always busy,” wrote Mary Sophia Hill from their camp in northern Virginia after yet another healthy young man died from typhus. One of her dying charges asked for a letter to be written to his mother in England, giving “an account of his death, and his reason for joining the Southern army.” It was done as he requested, although she thought the letter contained little to comfort the young man’s mother. Some of Mary Sophia’s friends urged her to leave the camp for her own safety. “But I will risk it,” she wrote on November 13. “I am determined to keep my brother in view, and I have no other means of protection.”50 Sam was always losing something, his blanket one day, his belt and cartridge box the next. He had no idea how to forage for himself and remained dependent on the food parcels sent to Mary by their friends in New Orleans.
The Southern press demanded to know why their troops were so poorly supplied. “We are credibly informed,” expostulated the Richmond Examiner, “that there has not been a day within the past two months when full rations were served to the army. There has been great and almost constant want of candles and soap; sometimes and for the past ten days allegedly no sugar or rice.”51 Judah Benjamin was valiantly trying to reorganize the sclerotic relationship between the army and the commissary, but neither department was willing to compromise or take responsibility for mistakes. Yet he was also guilty of shortsightedness, as Edward Anderson discovered when he tried to interest him and Mallory in running a joint operation to improve the flow of supplies from England. Believing that Mason and Slidell would soon be in Europe, Benjamin thought there was no need to take action against a blockade that would not be around for much longer. Mallory also regarded the blockade as merely a stumbling block rather than a threat to the South’s existence. “Mallory met my suggestions with evident discourtesy,” Anderson recorded, “and yet he knew nothing whatever of the details of my arrangements.”52 Benjamin failed to understand the importance of Anderson and his ideas, and although the agent begged to be sent back to London, he allowed Anderson to be reassigned to General Robert E. Lee’s staff. Anderson spent the rest of the war commanding the forts and batteries around Savannah, his expertise and brilliance wasted.
James Bulloch fared somewhat better than Anderson, suggesting to Mallory that they use the Fingal to ship cotton to England and take the profits to pay for supplies brought back on the return journey. But once the Fingal was loaded with cotton and made ready to go, Bulloch realized that she was too slow to outrun the blockading fleet. Rather than allowing him to transfer the cargo to a faster vessel, Mallory lost confidence in the idea and ordered Bulloch to return to London on a civilian blockade runner. Like Benjamin, Mallory decided that the shipping business was a distraction from far more pressing matters; the privateering scheme had failed to attract many volunteers, and for the moment all he had was the Sumter and the Nashville, neither of which would stand up against an actual naval vessel. On reflection, Mallory thought it was just as well that the new Confederate commissioners had traveled on a private vessel rather than the easily identifiable Nashville.