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rather than tactics.34 “He said the mistake they had made was in not concentrating the army more, and making the attack yesterday with 30,000 men instead of 15,000,” reported Fremantle. “The advance had been in three lines, and the troops of Hill’s corps who gave way were young soldiers, who had never been under fire before.” Longstreet would retract this opinion after the war, however, writing in his own memoirs that forty thousand men “could not have carried the position at Gettysburg.”35

Lawley, Fremantle, Ross, and Scheibert arrived at Hagerstown on the seventh and took rooms together at the Washington Hotel.36 Lawley had a hard task ahead of him and was left alone by the others so he could write in peace. He could not disguise the grief in his heart: “For the first time during my residence in Secessia,” he began, “it is my province to record, as having happened under my own eyes, a failure of the Confederate arms.”37

* * *

22.1 Despite not having met a single Southerner who was prepared to free his slaves under any conditions, Fremantle wrote after his visit to Charleston: “I think that if the Confederate States were left alone, the system would be much modified and amended.”

22.2 Only the week before, on June 9, a letter from Lieutenant Sydney Herbert Davies had appeared on his desk. Davies had resigned from his regiment in Canada in order to carry secret dispatches to the South. “I have now the honour to apply for a major’s commission in the CSA,” he wrote. “I am in possession of a first class certificate as an instructor of musketry and am not ignorant of warfare.” He was rewarded with a commission of first lieutenant.5

22.3 Gettysburg, like Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, had its own lexicon of horrors where thousands died contesting a patch of ground: the Wheat Field, Devil’s Den, and the Peach Orchard.

TWENTY-THREE

Pressure Rising

Fiasco at the House of Commons—Vicksburg surrenders—An economy without cotton—Rioting in New York—A summer jaunt—Rose Greenhow’s diplomatic mission

The House of Commons was full on Tuesday evening, June 30, 1863, when Henry Adams entered the Strangers Gallery, pretending not to notice the Southerners seated around him. According to the latest news from America, Lee’s army had marched without hindrance all the way to Pennsylvania. But the news appeared to be having a dampening effect on support for Roebuck’s motion—several MPs had questioned the need for a debate on recognition when the Confederacy was on the verge of winning independence without English help. It was yet one more dilemma weighing on Roebuck’s mind when he entered the Commons. Earlier that day, in the House of Lords, Russell had denied for a second time that the French emperor had written to him about recognizing the South.

James Spence had always felt uncomfortable with Roebuck as the South’s main spokesman in the Commons, but even he never imagined the extent to which the MP would self-immolate that evening. Roebuck’s speech began unpromisingly with an overflow of bile before descending into such balderdash that he alienated his listeners. There were cries of “No!” when Roebuck insisted that Negroes were worse off in the North than in the South, where “black children and white children are brought up together. I say it without fear of contradiction from any one whose contradiction is worthy of notice.… There is a kindly feeling in the minds of the Southern planters toward those whom England fixed there in a condition of servitude.” But the real damage came toward the end when he referred to his interview with Louis-Napoleon. Roebuck explained afterward that Russell’s denial had given him no choice but to bring up the matter because his own honor was at stake. But rather than simply saying in a few words that France was eager to cooperate on a policy of recognition, Roebuck gave a blow-by-blow description of their interview, including Louis-Napoleon’s complaints about double-dealing by the Foreign Office.

At that moment he was doomed, the Confederate lobby discredited. Roebuck