A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [90]
An English arms manufacturer tipped off the Confederates to the fact that they were under surveillance. “My attention was brought to these people by Mr. Isaacs who came over to my quarters one morning and asked me if I knew I was being watched,” wrote Edward Anderson. “Come with me to your window then, said he, and I will point out to you a shadow that never loses sight of you—at the same time directing my notice to a rough looking fellow standing across the street on the corner.” Anderson immediately went down and tried to embarrass the detective by asking for street directions, which he gave rather awkwardly.
He was a plain, countrified looking man, roughly clad and by no means bearing about him the appearance of a detective officer. Subsequently, when I came to know him better I was impressed with the effect produced by dress, for when I met my man on the following day, he was accoutred in a neat suit of black clothing like a gentleman, and on subsequent occasions in different costumes … sometimes with moustache and whiskers and again clean shaved. I never failed however to recognize my shadow. Assisting him were one or two others.56
On another occasion, while returning on the night train from Paris, Anderson shared a carriage with one of his shadows. “We had some little talk together,” he recorded in his diary, “but neither of us learned much of the other.”57 He was not alone in having such face-to-face encounters. Suspicious figures seemed to loiter in every doorway. “They have agents employed for no other purpose,” commented Caleb Huse.58 Sanford intended to keep all the Confederates under surveillance, but he realized that James Bulloch had to be the chief target. “He is the most dangerous man the South have here and fully up to his business,” he told Seward. “I am disbursing at the rate of £150 a month on this one man which will give you an idea of the importance I attach to his movements.” He hoped that Bulloch might try to slip off to the Continent, where it would be relatively easy to have him arrested for failing to carry the proper documentation. “Of course, no one official would appear in the matter,” he assured Seward.59 Sanford was less concerned about Lieutenant North, whose contribution to the Southern war effort puzzled the detectives. North appeared to be working on his own, but what he was doing, apart from costing Sanford money in espionage expenses, remained a mystery. He seemed to spend a great deal of time moping and, from the look of his intercepted mail, complaining.
Sanford’s fears about Bulloch had been prescient. The Confederate agent knew that the real threat to his operations was not from the spies (who were irritating), but from the legal obstacles created by the Foreign Enlistment Act. Before he set about any naval business, Bulloch obtained expert legal opinion on what the act allowed and disallowed, hoping to uncover any loopholes. To his surprise, he discovered it would be relatively easy to circumvent the rules: the act forbade a belligerent nation from outfitting or equipping warlike vessels in British waters, but there was nothing to prevent the construction of a ship with an unusual design. A vessel could be built in Britain with gun ports, for example, but it could not leave with any guns on board; it could have a magazine to store gunpowder, but would not be allowed to