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2. Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, 4 vols., vol. 4: The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865 (New York, 1971), pp. 367–68.

3. Craig L. Symonds and William J. Clipson, The Naval Institute Historical Atlas of the U.S. Navy (Annapolis, Md., 1995), p. 105.

4. The reopening of communications with the South meant release for the many families in Britain held fast in the agony of limbo. Joseph Burnley received definite proof of Frederick Farr’s death. He also began fresh inquiries about Robert Livingstone and Stephen Smelt, the Manchester boy who had run away with his best friend in 1863. Nothing was forthcoming with regards to Robert; Livingstone had been so optimistic that he had visited the American legation on March 11 to make sure Charles Francis Adams had not forgotten his son. But there was positive news in Stephen’s case. Burnley learned that the boy had been wounded at the Battle of Olustee and captured by the Confederates. The Federal authorities thought he was still alive. Mr. Smelt, Stephen’s father, learned that his son had been found but was not coming home after all. Stephen had discovered a taste for army life. “I have the honor to state that I have no desire to leave the U.S. service as I wish to serve out my term of enlistment and become a citizen of the U.S. since I joined from a Prisoner of War my health was never better, as the surgeon’s certificate will show.” NARA, Stephen Smelt, in camp in Raleigh, N.C., July 9, 1865, to Lieutenant J. O’Connel, Adjutant, 47th New York State Volunteers. I am grateful to Mike Musick for bringing these letters to my attention.

5. Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering (Cambridge, Mass., 2008), pp. 211–13.

6. Colonel Currie had married an American woman in 1864, Harriet Caroll Jackson, a granddaughter of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. After the war he became a special agent for the Post Office, overseeing the delivery of diplomatic mail en route between San Francisco and Hong Kong. On his retirement, the couple moved to Britain to live on the Isle of Wight.

7. A. S. Lewis (ed.), My Dear Parents (New York, 1982), pp. 159, 169.

8. Isle of Man Examiner, October 2, 1897.

9. The total cost of the war could have bought the freedom of every slave, given each one 40 acres and a mule, and provided a bounty for a hundred years of lost earnings. See E. B. Long with Barbara Long, The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865 (New York, 1971; repr. New York, 1985), appendix.

10. Frances Leigh, Ten Years on a Gerogia Plantation Since the War (London, 1883), pp. 52–53.

11. The consular records show that there were 352 British residents still living in Charleston in May 1865. Some of them were blockade runners who had no means of getting home.

12. South Carolina Historical Society, Feilden-Smythe MSS, Trevor-Battye MSS, n.d.

13. Robert Summers, The Fall and Redemption of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd (n.p., 2008), p. 56.

14. Sir Frederick Bruce was relieved that the amnesty included the discharge of all military prisoners still awaiting trial. But there was a catch for foreign prisoners of war. Henry O’Brien sent a plaintive letter to the legation, asking for help because he did not want to swear allegiance to the United States, since “by doing so I expatriate myself.… I am aware that I did wrong in joining a foreign army without Her Majesty’s Licences and consequently have born humiliation and insult without any hope of redress, but now as the war is over and all the prisoners of war being released and as I only ask to be allowed to leave the U.S., I hope you will at least obtain for me some decision by the Washington Military Authorities.” PRO FO115/448, f. 402, Henry O’Brien to legation, June 14, 1865.

15. Lonnie A. Burnett, Henry Hotze, Confederate Propagandist (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2008), p. 30.

16. New York Times, June 26, 1878.

17. James T. Hubbell and James Geary (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of the Union (Westport, Conn., 1995), p. 360.

18. Jay Luvaas, The Military Legacy of the Civil War (Lawrence,