A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [223]
17.2 Dr. Mayo was shocked when he visited Congress. “In both houses,” he wrote, “the occupation of members seemed to consist of calling each other traitors.” He was a witness to some of the least edifying scenes in Senate history. On January 27, 1863, Senator Willard Saulsbury of Delaware made his infamous harangue from the Senate floor. He was, recorded the doctor, “in a state of hopeless drunkenness, and insisted on making a speech, and when rebuked by the chairman and threatened with removal by the sergeant-at-arms, drew and cocked his revolver, and threatened to shoot any body who interfered with him.” The standoff continued for some time, until Saulsbury was persuaded to leave.
17.3 It was General Butler who invented the term “contraband.” He was the commandant of Fortress Monroe in 1861 when three runaway slaves arrived asking for sanctuary. When their former Southern masters requested their return, Butler refused, arguing that slaves were “contraband of war,” since the South was using them as “tools” to sustain the war effort. The term stuck.
17.4 These included former employees from the Irish estate of William Gregory, the leading Confederate sympathizer in Parliament. Gregory’s gamekeeper, Michael Conolly, had followed his family to America and volunteered for the North. His action cost him his arm at Fredericksburg. Several of Conolly’s cousins were also wounded, but his two brothers had come out of the battle unscathed. “As for my part,” Conolly wrote to Gregory from his hospital bed, “I will not be able to join the company again.”
17.5 Wynne had escaped by “breaking out a panel in his door.” He was one of only four escapees in the prison’s history. Wynne always insisted that he acted on his own, and the legation’s records are silent on the matter.
17.6 Hartington’s faux pas took on a life of its own. The lapel badge story was repeated ad nauseam as incontrovertible proof of the English aristocracy’s hatred of the United States. The American poet and literary critic James Russell Lowell included the incident in his diatribe against European arrogance in his essay “On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners” (1869), changing the story slightly in order to have Lincoln meet Hartington after the ball and deliberately insult him for having shown disrespect toward the North.
EIGHTEEN
Faltering Steps of a Counterrevolution
Attack on Charleston—British public opinion begins to change—The illustrious Maury, Pathfinder of the Seas—Espionage—Lord Russell is thwarted by John Bright—Wilkes again
The “Yankee Armada” set sail for Charleston at the beginning of April 1863. Frank Vizetelly was still in the city and could hardly wait for the clash to take place. His reports for the Illustrated London News became increasingly one-sided as he watched the city prepare for the attack. “I have every faith in the result of the coming encounter,” he wrote, “for never at any time have the Confederates been more determined to do or die than they express themselves now.”1 More important than the Confederates’ determination, however, was the lack of preparedness of the U.S. invasion force. Dr. Mayo inspected the fleet of seven monitors18.1 and two ironclads before it left the Washington Navy Yard “and sincerely pitied those who had to go to sea in it.” The decks of the monitors were barely a foot above water. He thought the slightest turbulence would probably swamp the vessels and send them to the bottom of the sea.2 Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont was similarly pessimistic about his fleet, but the public clamor to capture and punish Charleston for starting the war was gathering force. Lincoln interpreted Du Pont’s reluctance as McClellan-like timidity. “Doom hangs over wicked Charleston,” boomed the New York Herald Tribune on the eve of the fleet’s departure. “If there is any city deserving of holocaustic infamy, it is Charleston.”3
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