A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [373]
Ill.54 Punch’s caricature Irishman is lured to fight for the Union (left), while the Church (right) urges him to stay.
Charles Francis Adams told Seward that the real instigators of the Peace Address had to be “the rebel emissaries themselves,” never imagining that the Confederate lobby was furious with Kershaw for diverting the public’s energy into a scheme that had no chance of achieving its goal.31 Spence had tried everything short of sabotage to discourage him. William Lindsay would never have allowed the peace petition to continue, but a stroke in August had disabled him and his recovery was uncertain. Hotze had initially refused to give Kershaw any assistance in collecting signatures. The master propagandist knew that a peace petition from England would incite Northern Anglophobia without adding a single vote to the Democrats in the upcoming national elections.32 Hotze was running his own peace campaign, writing letters and articles under various aliases for newspapers throughout the North. Kershaw’s only usefulness to the Southern cause was in his keeping the issue alive among the “shop girls and servants.” But even then, there were cheaper ways of attracting public sympathy than the £150 it cost to distribute the petition.33 (When Kershaw eventually arrived in Washington with his petition in October, he was told that the U.S. government did not accept foreign petitions from nonaccredited individuals. After waiting for a few days, he gave up and returned home.)
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Hotze was one of the first people to see Belle Boyd when she arrived from Quebec in early August. Though she had destroyed her dispatches when the Federals captured the Greyhound, Belle still possessed Benjamin’s letter commending her to Hotze’s protection. It was only natural that she would seek him out now that she was friendless and penniless. In a surprising twist, Hotze was himself holding a letter for Belle. “Upon opening it, I found that it was from Mr. Hardinge, informing me that he had come to England,” wrote Belle in her memoirs, “but not being able to learn my whereabouts, had proceeded to Paris, in the faint hope of finding me there. I was deeply touched at this new proof of his honest attachment, and immediately telegraphed a message to him, stating where he would find me in London.”34
Belle and Acting Ensign Samuel Hardinge had spent a total of three weeks in each other’s company. They might well have married even without Hotze’s encouragement, but the propagandist worked so swiftly that neither was allowed the opportunity for second thoughts. Hotze arranged the entire wedding. He booked the church, invited the guests, and, most important of all, tweaked the interest of the press by portraying the young lovers as a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. The nuptials took place at St. James’s, Piccadilly, on August 24, 1864. The main newspapers, including several in France, carried gushing accounts of the day, complete with a lengthy history of the brave and beautiful bride and her stalwart groom. Belle was inundated with wedding presents, which was fortunate, since the couple was beginning married life with nothing but the public’s goodwill.
Benjamin Moran noted the Confederate wedding in his diary: “It seems the rebel strumpet Belle Boyd was married at St James’ Church, Piccadilly, to-day to some poor idiot. He is said to be a deserter from our Navy by the name of Hardinge.”35 Moran was alone at the legation; the secretary, Charles Wilson, had left for Chicago on August 17, having decided that an honest day’s work could not be half as trying as another hour spent in Moran’s company. Naturally, Moran was frightened that Henry Adams