A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [449]
44. Francis Dawson (1840–89), British volunteer in the Confederate navy and subsequently the Confederate army. “My idea simply was to go to the South, do my duty there as well as I might, and return home to England.” In fact, Dawson stayed in the South after the war and became editor of the Charleston News and Courier.
45. A colored regiment poses for the camera. By the end of the war, there were more than 180,000 colored troops serving in the Union army. Their entry into the U.S. Army was slow and difficult and did not begin until Congress passed an act in July of 1862 that allowed them to enlist.
46. Group of “contrabands,” Cumberland Landing, Virginia. Escaped slaves were not sent back to the South because they were classed as “contraband of war,” meaning they were part of the Southern war effort and were therefore liable for “confiscation.” Thousands of slaves from Virginia fled to shanty towns around the outskirts of Washington.
47. A slave auction house in Atlanta, Georgia.
48. The Rohrbach Bridge. During the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, the bridge became known as Burnside’s Bridge after U.S. General Burnside ordered his men to cross it while being fired upon by the Confederates from the bluffs above the river.
49. The dead after the slaughter at Antietam. The battle ended in a draw and was the single bloodiest day of the war. The two sides combined suffered more than 25,000 casualties.
50. President Lincoln and U.S. General McClellan meeting after the Battle of Antietam. Lincoln was furious with McClellan for not pursuing General Lee and crushing the Confederate army while it was in retreat.
51. General Ambrose Burnside (1824–81), commander of the U.S. Army of the Potomac for less than three months. His exuberant facial hair allegedly gave rise to the term “sideburns.”
52. Fredericksburg. Confederate General Robert E. Lee won a stunning victory over Burnside at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862. Burnside ordered the Federal soldiers to charge across a plain overlooked by a seven-mile range of wooded hills filled with Confederate artillery. When asked if any more guns were needed, the artillery officer in charge replied, “A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it.”
53. Marye’s Heights. The famous stone wall along the heights of Fredericksburg gave the Confederates perfect protection while they fired upon the Federals below. Burnside sustained 12,600 casualties to Lee’s 5,000.
54. Admiral Raphael Semmes (1809–77), who commanded two commerce raiders of the Confederate navy. His exploits on CSS Alabama inspired the Junior United Service Club of Great Britain to present him with a “magnificent sword, which had been manufactured to their order in the city of London, with suitable naval and Southern devices.”
55. Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806–73), Confederate navy, nicknamed “pathfinder of the seas” for his study of the ocean currents, which made travel easier and faster. Maury was sent to England during the war to purchase commerce raiders for the Confederate navy.
56. Lieutenant James Morgan (1845–1928), Confederate navy, friend and future brother-in-law of the English Confederate volunteer Francis Dawson. Morgan served on Commander Maury’s commerce raider CSS Georgia, whose cruise ended in madness and savagery after only six months at sea.
57. Colonel John Fitzroy De Courcy (1821–90), 31st Baron Kingsale (left), British volunteer in the Union army and colonel of the 16th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. In 1863 De Courcy captured the Cumberland Gap from the Confederates with a force less than half the size of his