A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [74]
“There is a British Regiment gotten up here,” one English immigrant, Edward Best, told his aunt Sophie in Somerset. “It seems to be very popular and I trust will carry its flag through this affair with credit to our dear old country.”35 Consul Archibald, however, was embarrassed when the recruiters for the British Volunteers opened their office in the same building as the consulate.36 He sent a letter to the main newspapers denying any involvement, though this provoked the press to label him a Southern sympathizer.
The British Volunteers started off well and could be seen training each morning in the drill room at the Astor Riding School.37 But the regiment soon became a magnet for anti-British hostility, as did a regiment in Massachusetts that called itself the British Rifle Club.38 “It is not right that British residents should be taunted and twitted without cause,” complained the Albion, a weekly journal for the British community in New York.39 The British Volunteers lost its appeal to recruits after one of the captains was accused of being a Confederate agent, a charge that was repeated in the press even after the unfortunate captain was exonerated.
By mid-June the British Volunteers’ difficulties became insurmountable and they merged with an Irish regiment to become the 36th New York Volunteers. There were frequent fights and stabbings in the new outfit between the English and Irish factions, and mealtimes could be explosive. The violence encouraged many of the former British volunteers to join the 79th New York Highlanders, which in contrast to the Irish 69th had provided the Prince of Wales’s honor guard during his visit in 1860. It was safe to be called Scots, Irish, or Welsh, but not British or English, noted Mr. Archibald.
A young Englishman named Ebenezer Wells had joined the 79th Highlanders when he arrived in New York in 1860 in order to have something to do on the weekends. “When the Civil War broke out, the regiment volunteered for the war,” he wrote in his memoirs. “I was buglar [sic] and being away from parental restraint thought it would be a splendid excursion.”40 The men were thrilled when they received their orders in early June. “It was a beautiful Sunday when we marched down Broadway amidst deafening applause,” wrote Wells. The crowds adored their tartan uniform, especially the officers’ kilts. Nothing about the occasion hinted at the hardships ahead. Their knapsacks were packed with every conceivable delicacy as though they were on a Sunday outing. But, Wells added ruefully, if they had known what lay in store for them, “how depressed instead of elated would our spirits have been.”41
Ebenezer Wells experienced his first brush with violence as the regiment passed through Baltimore. He was ambushed by a stone-throwing mob and lost his cap and blanket before being rescued by members of his company. The 79th Highlanders were tired and hungry when they finally reached Washington on June 4. The sweltering city had become a vast military camp. Rows of white tents and parked artillery occupied the green fields around the half-finished Capitol building. Long trains of covered wagons filled the dusty thoroughfares.42 At night, the city resonated with wild shouts and hoots, and thunderous fireworks were answered with rounds of gunfire.
The Highlanders were allocated temporary quarters at Georgetown University. The 69th had only recently vacated the premises, and their detritus still littered the grounds. The campus was eerily silent, all but fifty of the student body having volunteered to fight for the South. The men were nervous. The Confederate army, under the command of the hero of Fort Sumter, General Beauregard, was only seventeen miles to the west. “We lay every night with our muskets by our sides, ready cocked, and one finger on the trigger,” wrote one of the recruits from the old