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5.3 Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) was not only the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, but also the first female doctor to be placed on the British General Medical Council’s register. Born in England and having lived and studied in both countries, she was the quintessential British American, having lived and studied in both countries, though “I look upon England as my home, and must always do so,” she wrote to her best friend, the feminist writer Barbara Bodichon in 1860. Dr. Blackwell had been unable to raise sufficient funds to start a medical school for women in London, but since 1853 had been running the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, where her aim was to train women to become doctors in the course of serving the poor. The novelist George Eliot met Elizabeth Blackwell in 1859, recording in her diary: “Esteemable for the courage and perseverance she has shown … but very repulsive and schoolmistress-like in manner.”

5.4 Nineteen-year-old Thomas Beach, for example, was working for a British bank in Paris when the war began. “Friends and associations, many of them American, were leaving on every hand for the seat of war,” he wrote. As a lark, Beach decided to go along with a group of friends who were sailing for New York. They all joined the same regiment: “Regarding the whole proceeding more in the light of a good joke than anything else, [I called] myself Henri Le Caron.” (Under this name, during the 1870s he became one of the most notorious and successful spies in the British Secret Service.)27

5.5 The original Zouaves were an elite North African corps in the French army whose uniform of white leggings, baggy blue trousers, magenta jacket, and bright red fez made them unmistakable on the battlefield. A Chicago lawyer named Elmer Ellsworth had started the American craze for Zouave regiments in 1859. He formed his own outfit, trained the men in the complicated drills and swordplay of a Zouave regiment, and took them on a nineteen-city tour of America. Colonel Hawkins had seen a demonstration by Ellsworth’s Zouaves the previous summer, which was all the encouragement he needed to organize a New York version. His small company of Zouaves was among the first to be granted permission to recruit a full regiment, hence its designation as the 9th New York Volunteer Infantry.

5.6 A regiment was composed of around a thousand officers and men divided into ten companies; a brigade generally consisted of four to six regiments; and a division normally had three or four brigades. In theory, a division contained twelve thousand men.

5.7 The effective range of a smoothbore was about 100 yards, compared to the more deadly and accurate 1861 Springfield, which had a range of 300 yards.

SIX

War by Other Means

McClellan takes charge—Prince Napoleon at the White House—Sanford’s spies—Desperate for arms—The British join up—The raging storm

Frank Vizetelly diplomatically skimmed over the Federal rout in his dispatch for the Illustrated London News; William Howard Russell could describe little else, since it was the only part of the battle he had actually witnessed. Knowing how dreadful it would sound, he was careful not to condemn the soldiers for the mistakes of their leaders. “The men were overworked,” Russell explained in his report, “kept out for 12 or 14 hours in the sun exposed to long-range fire, badly officered, and of deficient regimental organization.” The army’s lack of experience, he added, made an orderly retreat all but impossible.1

Russell also blamed the generals for the subsequent mayhem in the capital; Washington was held hostage for two days while drunken soldiers roamed the city. “The Secretary of War knows not what to do, Mr. Lincoln is equally helpless,” Russell recorded. “There is no provost guard, no patrol, no authority visible in the streets.”2 He wondered why the Confederates did not simply march in and take the city while it lay helpless