A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [260]
Charles Francis Adams asked Bright to attend a working dinner a few nights before Roebuck’s planned motion for recognition of the South. Several of Seward’s recent emissaries were present, including William Evarts, John Murray Forbes, and William H. Aspinwall.21.4 A sense of grievance against the Lincoln administration weighed down the conversation. “The impression here is that your Government is incapable, that it lacks two essential qualities, foresight and force,” Bright explained to Sumner. “Among the Americans here, friends of the North, there is great want of confidence in your Cabinet at Washington, and I cannot but feel that great losses of men, and means, and long delays, and apparent mismanagement, must have the effect of creating a disgust with the war.”22
Having witnessed the government’s difficulties, Evarts thought Washington was not giving Lord Russell the credit he deserved for his attempts to secure a conviction against the Alexandra’s owners. Forbes and Aspinwall concurred; they were returning to America in a few days and intended to speak to Seward about his role in the British public’s negative perception of the North.
Forbes and Aspinwall left for New York on June 30, the day of Roebuck’s motion in the Commons, a few hours too early to know the results of the debate. In America, the last newspaper reports placed the Confederate army near the border of Pennsylvania; Harrisburg, the state’s capital, was standing by to evacuate the legislature. The Confederates in London were feeling confident; Roebuck did not know that Bright was to be his opponent in the House. When asked by a Southerner whether he would fear such an encounter, “No, sir!” Roebuck replied sententiously. “Bright and I have met before. It was the old story—the story of the sword-fish and the whale! No sir! Bright will not cross swords with me again!”23
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The death of Stonewall Jackson had not dented the Confederate army’s confidence, even though Lee had been forced into a drastic reorganization to make up for the loss of his best general. He created three infantry corps, one under “Old Pete” Longstreet and the others under Richard Ewell and Ambrose P. Hill. Jackson’s cavalry was assigned to Jeb Stuart. Longstreet had already demonstrated his abilities; the rest would have to prove themselves on the field. But at least Lee had sufficient stores and enough men, eighty thousand in all, to justify leading the army into enemy territory.
Thirty days of hot, cloudless skies had left Virginia parched and dry. As the Army of Northern Virginia pulled away from Fredericksburg during the first week of June, rising columns of dust betrayed its movements to General Hooker’s scouts. Hooker realized that Lee was heading north and wrongly assumed that the Confederates were going to attack Washington. He was prevented from discovering his mistake for several days by the newly appointed Ambrose Hill, who had been ordered to block the Federals at Fredericksburg for as long as possible. The strategy worked insofar as it occupied the attentions of Union general “Uncle John” Sedgwick, but Lee had underestimated the strength and size of Hooker’s cavalry corps, who were also on the hunt.
The debonair Jeb Stuart had passed the time since Chancellorsville organizing grand reviews of his troops. His headquarters was in Culpeper County, thirty miles east of Fredericksburg on the other side of the Rappahannock River, where the Orange–Alexandria railroad passed through a small village at Brandy Station.24 The grandest of the reviews was on June 5, involving all ten thousand soldiers and the horse artillery, followed by a ball in the evening. Thousands of spectators watched as Stuart put on a performance of knightly dash worthy of Ivanhoe. There were even buglers and flower girls who scattered petals before Stuart’s arrival.
When Lee and his army reached Culpeper