A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [372]
Hotze’s journal, the Index, was paying for itself. Circulation was increasing, as were revenues, and Hotze no longer had to write the majority of articles himself. The Southern poet John R. Thompson had agreed to come over from Richmond to help him, and Hotze had prevailed on John Witt, a nephew of the scientific racialist George Witt, to become the magazine’s new editor. “My work being thus, both in England and France, reduced within manageable dimensions,” Hotze told Benjamin, “I feel able … to devote some efforts to a field hitherto entirely neglected.” Hotze’s aim was to spread uncertainty in the European financial markets regarding the North’s ability to pay its bonds. He had also heard that Poles were being recruited in Germany to fight for the Federal army. This, he thought, he could deal with quite easily by sending across John Witt to entrap a recruiter. Hotze had already dispatched the amenable Witt to Ireland on a mission to expose the activities of Federal recruiters there. “One conviction for violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act would make considerable noise,” he explained to Witt. “Engage the services of a first rate detective … find some intelligent, non-commissioned officer … who could play the part of a decoy duck at the proper time.”24
Although British subjects were more likely to be forced into the Confederate than the Federal army, the South’s isolation from Europe meant that such reports rarely reached the outside world. As far as the British public was aware, the kidnappings, beatings, and torture of immigrants were all a Northern phenomenon.25 The perception that crimping was rampant in the North lent veracity to Robert Livingstone’s explanation to his father of how he became a Federal soldier. “I went to Cape Town where your agent Mr. Rutherford advised me to find employment on board a brig which brought me to Boston,” Robert wrote from his hospital bed. “Here I was kidnapped and one morning … I found myself enlisted in the US army.” He passed over his alias of “Rupert Vincent” by claiming, “I have changed my name, for I am convinced that to bear your name here would lead to further dishonour to it.” Robert swore to his father that he was an unwilling combatant and a penitent son.26 Dr. Livingstone tried to suppress his doubts and accept the letter at face value. “Our Robert is in the Federal Army … he was kidnapped he says,” he told a friend.27
Livingstone joined the queue of anxious relatives making inquiries at the legation. “We get daily applications as to the fate of persons in our army, and I have a great deal to do to answer them,” Benjamin Moran recorded in his diary. “At one time the letters all run on employment in the army—at another on free emigration—and now on the fate of relatives in our service.”28 He had noticed another change: for no apparent reason that he could discern, the public had gone wild over a petition addressed to the U.S. government asking for the bloodshed to end. London had been placarded with advertisements for the so-called Peace Address: Not only are the walls covered with big posters inviting people to sign,” he wrote, “but men are sent around from house to house in lanes and allies [sic] for signatures. The address is a most insulting one to the loyal American people, and is being extensively subscribed by children and fools. Shop girls and servants are inveigled into placing their names to it.”29 The U.S. consuls reported similar scenes in their districts. In Ireland, priests were reading the petition during the Sunday sermon and urging parishioners to sign. The Peace Address was in the form of a letter claiming