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The idea of launching raids from Canada had indeed been suggested to Jefferson Davis, but he remained undecided, worrying that the international community would regard such a move as a last, desperate measure. For the moment, Davis had decided to pursue an alternative course. The North was constantly sending emissaries to meet with influential members of British society, and he was sure that the South had suffered as a result. To redress the balance, Davis had asked Rose Greenhow—whom he remembered as one of the most powerful hostesses in Washington before the war—to travel to England and, as important, to France, with the express purpose of explaining the case of Southern independence. Slidell would help her gain an audience with the emperor, but the rest would be up to her own efforts.

Rose had been living quietly since her arrival in Richmond in June the previous year. Between looking after her ten-year-old daughter, also named Rose, and writing a memoir of her imprisonment in Washington, she had managed to make a semblance of a life for herself. But she had not been happy. The Southern ladies had not welcomed her into their circle; Mary Chesnut waspishly described Rose as “spoiled by education—or the want of it.”51 President Davis’s request was a welcome rescue not only from her grinding day-to-day existence, but also from the petty disapproval of Richmond society.

There were no other travelers at the Mills House Hotel when Rose arrived in Charleston during the second half of July; the other guests were all black marketeers of some description. Within hours of unpacking, she received a visit from General Beauregard. Knowing that she had a direct link to President Davis, he gave her a frank report of the situation and explained why he needed more artillery. The Federal bombardment was about to resume, and this time the Confederates expected it to continue until the city surrendered.

Rose’s next guest was Frank Vizetelly. “He gives me all that he gathers, altho’ under the seal of confidence as I told him I should tell you,” she informed President Davis. Vizetelly believed that the shortage of drinking wells around Jackson would soon exact a crushing toll on Grant’s army, having witnessed “eight men within a space of thirty feet fall down from want of water.” This fact alone, he told her, guaranteed that General Johnston would not be driven out of the city. In reality, even as Vizetelly spoke, the Confederates were retreating from Jackson, and in a few hours the city would be in flames. Vizetelly’s passionate advocacy of the Southern cause had temporarily robbed him of his critical faculties. Every judgment, every prediction he made to Rose would turn out to be wrong.

Rose soon came to the conclusion that Charleston Harbor was useless as a means of escape, and she boarded a train with little Rose for Wilmington. Her rooms at the Mills House Hotel did not remain empty for long. On August 7, Fitzgerald Ross and Captain Scheibert checked into the hotel, having left Francis Lawley behind in Richmond. The journalist had pushed himself to the brink of collapse at Gettysburg and was too weak to travel. The pressure of maintaining an optimistic tone in his Times reports had also been taking its toll on him.

Fitzgerald Ross recognized Vizetelly from Lawley’s description when the journalist showed up at the Mills House Hotel for dinner. According to Scheibert, “this hotel had the best service of any tavern” in the South. It charged the highest prices, too: $100 per person for a three-course meal.52 General Beauregard welcomed Vizetelly’s new friends when they called at his headquarters, and introduced them to the English officer on his staff. Henry Feilden was growing used to his role as Beauregard’s mouthpiece and cheerfully gave a tour of the preparations against the next phase of the Federal siege. The consuls observed with alarm that more gunships were sailing into the harbor. The city itself was obviously the next objective. The British consul, Henry Pinckney Walker, sent a message to the legation in Washington that