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Wolseley’s leave was coming to an end and he had to begin his journey home. He was able to achieve only a brief glimpse of Lee’s cavalry commander, J.E.B. (“Jeb”) Stuart. The travelers arrived at his headquarters, an elegant plantation house called “The Bower,” to discover that the famed general was off on a raid in Pennsylvania. The Bower’s owners were still there, however, as were numerous pretty female relatives whose chief raison d’être appeared to be making the officers comfortable. Stuart returned on October 10 with twelve hundred captured horses and not a single man lost. Wolseley observed the riders galloping home and was impressed by their superiority to Northern cavalry, “who can scarcely sit on their horses, even when trotting.”58

Francis Lawley and Frank Vizetelly were a great hit among Stuart’s staff. Lieutenant Colonel William Blackford recalled the officers’ delight when they returned to camp on October 16 and found the journalists waiting to meet them. “These gentlemen were often after this our guests, and we all became very fond of them,” he wrote. They already had a Prussian officer serving as a volunteer aide, Major Heros von Borcke, and were used to eccentric foreigners.59 A partially recovered Henry MacIver was also pottering in and out of Stuart’s camp, trying to be useful but more often simply passing the time with friends from his Garibaldi days. He was delighted to see Vizetelly again. The hard-drinking journalist “was the most interesting narrator I have ever listened to around a campfire,” wrote Blackford.

Ill.24 General Jeb Stuart scouting in the neighborhood of Culpeper Court House, Virginia, by Frank Vizetelly.

There was not a disreputable or reputable place of prominence in the civilized world that he did not know all about.… We had a shrewd suspicion that he drew a little on his imagination for his facts, but what difference did that make to us. Late into the night we all sat around the embers of our fire out under the grand oaks listening to the fascinating tales he told, his expressive countenance and gestures giving full effect to his words by their play. Mr. Lawley was an exceedingly intelligent and refined Englishman and in another style we enjoyed his instructive conversation very much, but Vizetelly was fascinating.60

Ill.25 Night amusements in the Confederate camp, by Frank Vizetelly.

Blackford and Borcke invited them to pitch their tents on the vacant plot next to their own. “Regularly after dinner,” Borcke recalled, “our whole family of officers, from the commander down to the youngest lieutenant, used to assemble in [Vizetelly’s] tent, squeezing ourselves into narrow quarters to hear his entertaining narratives.”61

During the journey home, Wolseley mused on the scenes he had witnessed down south. He had seen many armies, “but I never saw one composed of finer men, or that looked more like work,” he wrote. “Any one who goes amongst those men in their bivouacs, and talks to them as I did, will soon learn why it is that their Generals laugh at the idea of Mr. Lincoln’s mercenaries subjugating the South.”62 By the time he reached Montreal, he had made up his mind to campaign for Southern recognition. Wolseley was aware that the question remained open in Britain. Like so many Englishmen, he assumed that slavery would quickly die out after independence. The real moral issue, in his eyes, was how long the suffering should be allowed to continue. In a bid to reach the widest possible audience, he decided to write an essay for the literary Blackwood’s Magazine entitled “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters.” “The first question always asked me by both men and women was,” he declared in the article, “why England had not recognised their independence.… Had we no feelings of sympathy for the descendants of our banished cavaliers? Was not blood thicker than water?”63

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13.1 Lincoln continued to be hamstrung by the opposition to emancipation from influential leaders such as John Hughes, the archbishop of New York, who had