A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [264]
TWENTY-TWO
Crossroads at Gettysburg
The anguish of Charles Francis Adams, Jr.—Colonel Fremantle meets Robert E. Lee—The view from the oak tree—The Federals hold—Lawley’s painful duty
The train carrying the English colonel Arthur Fremantle pulled into Richmond on the morning of June 17, 1863, while more than a hundred miles away the Army of Northern Virginia was crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley. Francis Lawley had already left Richmond, hoping to reach Lee before the army disappeared entirely. Lawley was weighed down by a sense of foreboding, even though his reports maintained their jaunty tone. His boast that “Vicksburg will never fall” was simply propaganda, he had admitted to the Marquess of Hartington in a confidential letter of June 14. It looked increasingly doubtful that the besieged town could withstand Grant for much longer. “If it falls the Confederacy may hold out and will strive to hold out for years,” he wrote. “But bisected & perforated everywhere by its enemies its fortunes will be at zero. No successes which Lee can gain in Virginia will be set off against the fall of Vicksburg.” Mindful of Hartington’s new position as undersecretary for war, Lawley appealed to his military instincts, urging him to lobby for Southern recognition so that Britain would have an ally if the North turned its million-strong army toward Canada.1
“I hear everyone complaining dreadfully of General Johnston’s inactivity in Mississippi, and all now despair of saving Vicksburg,” Fremantle wrote in his diary. He had spent his first day in Richmond visiting with as many government officials as would receive him.22.1 2 He eventually managed to gain access to the Confederate secretary of state, Judah P. Benjamin—“a stout dapper little man” in Fremantle’s opinion—whose anteroom was crowded with supplicants waiting for an audience. Benjamin gravely pressed upon him England’s moral responsibility in allowing the bloodshed to continue—one word about recognition and the war would end, he claimed. When Fremantle brought up the specter of Britain’s losing Canada if she grappled with the North, Benjamin laughed at the possibility: “They know perfectly well you could deprive them of California … with much greater ease.” This was a novel idea that Fremantle was too polite to pursue.3
After their interview, Benjamin escorted Fremantle to Davis’s house. The president served him tea, the first that Fremantle had seen during his travels, while they discussed the risks to England if she supported the Confederacy. Although Davis avoided talking about the current fighting, he alluded bitterly to the suffering wrought by Union armies. His own family had been made homeless after Federal soldiers torched his brother’s plantation in Mississippi, having forced the tearful occupants out onto the lawn to watch the destruction. He defended the behavior of Confederate soldiers and denied that they shot men who surrendered. (The fate of Negro regiments at Charleston and also Port Hudson in 1864 would put the lie to this claim.) This gave Fremantle the opportunity to question him about Colonel Grenfell’s legal trouble with the state authorities. “He was very sorry when I told him,” wrote Fremantle, as “he had heard much of his gallantry and good services.”4 But Davis was not unduly troubled by Grenfell’s departure; there seemed to be no shortage of foreign volunteers.22.2
“When I took my leave about 9 o’clock, the President asked me to call upon him again,” wrote Fremantle. He felt sorry for him; Davis looked much older than his fifty-five years. He face was lined and emaciated, his eyes were evidently hurting him, yet “nothing can exceed the charm of his manner, which is simple, easy, and most fascinating.”6 This