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to be extraordinary for a Briton to be released from prison—such as the presidential pardon given to Alfred Rubery in December. Rubery’s guilt in the attempted seizure of the J. M. Chapman in California was undeniable, but the request to Federal authorities for his release had come from John Bright, whose photograph was currently hanging above the mantelpiece in Lincoln’s office. The official decree announcing the pardon declared that the president’s decision should be regarded “as a public mark of the esteem held by the United States of America for the high character and steady friendship of the said John Bright.” The unabashedly pro-Southern Rubery also had his $10,000 fine commuted so long as he left the country within thirty days and made no attempt to help or enter the Confederacy.28.5

Lyons would never have championed Rubery’s release if it had been up to him; as a rule, he refused to bother Seward with cases involving self-described British Confederate volunteers. “To do so,” Lyons told Lord Russell, after the Foreign Office forwarded a protest from Private Joseph Taylor, a Yorkshireman who had been incarcerated in Fort Delaware since Vicksburg, “could in fact hardly fail to cause annoyance. There are, I am sorry to say, a very large number of British Subjects who are Prisoners of War as Mr. Taylor is, and who, like him, entered the Confederate Service in disobedience to the Queen’s commands, and in defiance of Her Majesty’s warning that they would do so at their peril.”30 However, Seward was not entirely deaf or blasé about the myriad injustices created by the war. British prisoners of war in Federal hands were given the option of swearing an oath of allegiance to the United States in exchange for their release.28.6 31 Hundreds of British prisoners took advantage of the oath.

Lyons suspected that forced enlistments in the Federal army would continue until the War Department ceased to regard the practice as a necessary evil to make up for the shortfalls in the draft. But there were signs that the sheer volume of crimping was beginning to have an adverse impact on the army. After watching the execution of two such victims for attempting to desert, General Isaac Wistar sent a protest to General John Dix in New York about the dishonest recruiting practices in the city:

Nearly all are foreigners, mostly sailors both ignorant of and indifferent to the objects of the war in which they thus suddenly find themselves involved [he wrote]. Two men were shot here this morning for desertion; and over thirty more are now awaiting trial or execution. These examples are essential as we all understand but, it occurred to me, General, that you would pardon me for thus calling your attention to the great crime committed in New York of kidnapping these men into positions where, to their ignorance, desertion must seem like a vindication of their rights and liberty.28.7 32

The lax discipline and poor attitude of the new recruits and draftees was also a problem for the Federal army. “If I was in England or in the English service I should consider that it was a shame and a sin to desert,” wrote the English volunteer James Horrocks. But here, “in the land of Yankee doodle,” desertion is “regarded universally as a smart thing and the person who does it a dem’d smart fellow.”33 Yet Horrocks was a soldier of uncommon ability and rectitude compared to James Pendlebury, who enlisted as a private in the 69th New York Infantry on January 27. Pendlebury was an unemployed mill worker from Lancashire with a family, a drinking problem, and a gamey leg. At home he used to spend every night in the pub boring the regulars until “one day I was talking energetically about the Slaves and full of fire when my comrades said I ought to go to America,” recalled Pendlebury. “One said he would give me twopence if I would go and others also offered pennies.”34

Pendlebury collapsed upon arriving in New York and spent several weeks in the hospital. After his discharge he was arrested for drunkenness in Jersey City. The judge agreed to waive the fine if Pendlebury