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confessed to his family, “to write and enter into very minute details without trenching upon information gained in the familiarity of private conversation, and to this I have an intolerable aversion.” He was fortunate in that the Daily Telegraph took a relaxed attitude to the objectivity of its foreign reports. Lawley was resolutely pro-Northern and had no intention of touring the South: “I can do better as a correspondent in the North,” he wrote, “seeing it only and writing from a one-sided view, than if I saw both sides and was embarrassed thereby.”35

Washington suited Lawley very well. His travels with Trollope had trained him to be less delicate about the presence of mud, and his chronic shortage of funds merely put him in a large enough company for it to go unremarked. The “Buccaneers” at the British legation welcomed him at once, and he was given a role in their production of a burlesque opera called Bombastes Furioso. A large part of the English community in Washington was in the play. William Howard Russell reported to Mowbray Morris that it “was a complete success at the legation and Shiny William, as I call Seward, complimented me immensely.”36 This was an impolitic admission for one who was seeking his recall on compassionate grounds. “It is your business to report the military proceedings of the Federal Army,” complained Morris, “and so I repeat: Go to the Front or come home.”37

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Russell felt that neither Delane nor Morris understood his position or else they would not keep insisting that he go where he was barred from entering. Russell could not help worrying that he had made a mistake in returning to Washington. Vizetelly had decided to go west, and the idea no longer seemed so harebrained; a significant battle had taken place on March 7 at Pea Ridge, near the Arkansas-Missouri border. President Jefferson Davis had sent a new general, Earl Van Dorn, to take over the disorganized forces in the region. This much Van Dorn achieved. The little general with a large ego boasted to his wife that he would take his army all the way north to St. Louis in Missouri. His plan was simple: a Union army of only 11,000 men, under General Samuel R. Curtis, controlled the passage from northwest Arkansas into Missouri; Van Dorn would divide his own army into two forces, surround the Federals front and back, and then pounce in a surprise attack.

William Watson, the Scotsman who had joined the 3rd Louisiana Infantry in New Orleans the previous summer, was at first relieved by Van Dorn’s arrival, but he soon developed misgivings over whether the new general understood the limitations posed by territory or was aware of the real condition of the Confederate army. Their supplies were already low when Van Dorn gave the order for every man to be ready to march with ten days’ rations in his haversack. But Union sympathizers had sent word to General Curtis of the Confederates’ approach: Curtis was waiting for them when they attacked.

The Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, began on March 7 as the fog lifted from the trees to reveal a gray winter morning. Watson and his fellow soldiers had been marching through frost and snow with little sleep and no food for almost seventy-two hours. “Cold, hungry, and fatigued we moved sullenly along,” he wrote, “some of the lads almost sleeping on their feet.” They thought they had marched to the rear of the Federal forces only to discover “that they were also in our rear, and they had the advantage of being in a strong position.” Watson’s regiment had stumbled into the center of the waiting Federals; when the firing died down, the 3rd’s officers were all either dead or missing, except for one lieutenant. Fortunately, the sun was beginning to set, and the soldiers who had survived were able to creep away under the cover of darkness. The following morning, a Federal counterattack smashed the Confederates’ line and the rebels fled the battlefield, Van Dorn first. Watson and his fellow soldiers were left to fend for themselves. It was a ninety-mile march to the nearest Confederate stronghold, a trek through