TFSmith121
Banned
BURNISHED ROWS OF STEEL: A History of the Great War
By T.F. Smith
Copyright (c) 2013-2014 by the author. All rights reserved.
============================================================
Foreword
The following is a work of fiction, and created primarily for entertainment value, both for the audience and the author. Anyone taking it too seriously will be asked to have a cold frosty one and enjoy life.
Having said that, I have tried to be true to the times in which this story is set, and to the individuals who are featured, as best that I can. I have also tried to source everything; if the inspiration for a particular turn of events is not clear, I will try and make it so to anyone who asks. Not everything used as inspiration occurred exactly as written, but the events so referenced were generally all within a reasonable time period – say, a professional man’s career – of two decades (either side) of the story that follows. No chiroptera need apply, as far as I can tell; others may differ. So be it, and – please – enjoy. To start, read the italicized material to yourself in slow time, to help set the stage:
….I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
- written by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, as published in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX, February, 1862.
======================================================
The Prologue(s) – Dangerous is a people's voice when charged with wrath. (Aeschylus)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
excerpt from Chapter 5, “Industrialization and the Shifting Global Balances, 1815-1885” in “The Rising Powers: Europe and the Americas in the Nineteenth Century” by Paula Kennedy, Random House, New York, 1987
….Americans on their homesteads or in the swiftly growing cities generally – other than the enslaved - enjoyed a higher standard of living, and of national output, relative to other countries. As early as 1800, wages had been about one-third higher than in Western Europe, and that superiority was to be preserved, if not increased, throughout the century. The young republic’s isolation from European power struggles, and the failures of the European powers other than Britain to maintain any significant holdings in the Western Hemisphere meant the only threat to the United States’ future prosperity could come either from within, or from Britain itself. Yet despite memories of the conflicts from 1775-83 and again from 1812-15, and border disputes in Maine and both the Old Northwest and the “new” Pacific Northwest, a third Anglo-American war was unlikely; the flow of British capital and manufactures toward the United States and the return flow of America raw materials – especially cotton – tied the two economies ever closer together and further stimulated American economic growth.
The result of all this was that even before the outbreak of the Civil War in April, 1861, the United States had become an economic giant, although its own distance from Europe – transatlantic passage of freight or passengers still routinely took two to four weeks, even by steamer – its concentration on internal development (rather than foreign trade), and the rugged and wide open frontiers partly disguised the fact. While the share of world manufacturing output from American factories and forges in 1860 was a little more than a third that of Britain’s (7.2 percent to 19.9 percent), the U.S. share had already surged past the German states (4.9 percent) and Russia (7 percent), and was on the point of overtaking France (7.9 percent), historically Britain’s great power rival. The United States, with only 40 percent of the population in 1860 of Russia, Britain’s most recent peer opponent in war, had an urban population more than twice as large, produced 830,000 tons of iron to Russia’s 350,000 tons, had an energy consumption from modern fuel sources (coal, lignite, oil) more than 15 times as large, and a railway mileage 30 times greater – the last three times greater than Britain’s.
Within another year, of course, the Civil War began to transform the amount of national resources which Americans devoted to military purposes. The immediate point that thoughtful men on both sides had to acknowledge was that – assuming willpower for a fight to the finish remained equal on either side – was the disproportion in resources and population. There was a great numerical imbalance between the loyal and rebel states; while the former contained a population of approximately 20 million whites, the Confederacy had only six million, along with (approximately) another three million blacks, mostly slaves. To put this into a “British Imperial” perspective, the population of the United Kingdom in the 1861 census was 29 million; that of the whole of British North America was 3.3 million, with 2.5 million in the Province of Canada. As the war continued, of course, the manpower pool the U.S. forces could draw upon increased with every step south their armies took; this included the recruitment of southern whites who adhered to the Union and, once the decision was made in 1862 to enlist black troops, both northern freemen and escaped slaves.
In terms of agriculture, in 1860 the United States both fed itself and exported large amounts of produce to Europe; all that production was available for the war effort, if necessary. In terms of industry, in 1860 the North possessed 110,000 manufacturing establishments to the South’s 18,000, many of which had relied on Northern technical expertise and skilled labor. The same year, the whole of what became the Confederacy produced only 36,700 tons of pig iron; Pennsylvania alone produced 580,000 tons. The value of goods manufactured in New York State alone in 1860 amounted to almost $300 million; this was more than four times the value of manufactured goods produced in Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, combined. This staggering disparity in the economic base of each belligerent steadily transformed itself into real military effectiveness.
For example, whereas the South could make few of its own small arms, instead relying heavily upon what was initially captured from the various federal forts and arsenals (roughly 100,000 modern firearms, a mix of rifles and muskets) - in 1861 and then what could be imported from Europe, the U.S. massively expanded weapons manufacturing, producing no less than 111,000 modern rifles in the national armories alone in the first 15 months of the war to add to the 440,000 long-arms already stockpiled. Another 62,000 modern rifles and carbines were purchased from private manufacturers in the North in the same period, and hundreds of thousands more were purchased and shipped from Europe, beginning as soon as hostilities broke out in April of 1861.
As another example, the North’s railway system – some 22,000 miles in length, and fanning out from the East Coast to the Mississippi River, across into Missouri and Iowa, northeast to Maine, north to the international borders, and northwest to Wisconsin – could be maintained and was even expanded during the war, as was, in fact, the production of agricultural products, munitions, and ship-building. Financially, while the Confederacy could sell cotton and borrow abroad, there was a surplus of cotton in storage in Europe in 1861, and newer sources, in Africa and Asia, were under development. In addition, the Confederacy’s reliance on export agriculture in the antebellum era left it with little in the way of economic infrastructure; there were few banks, little liquid capital, and little ability to produce specie; by contrast, the North, with the near limitless resources of the continent to draw upon, and the ability to raise funds through taxation and loans, could pay for the conflict, while the printing of federally-backed greenbacks in some ways stimulated further industrial and economic growth. By the end of the first year of conflict, U.S. soldiers were probably better fed and supplied than any army in history.
If there was going to be a particularly American approach to military conflict – an “American way of war,” to use Col. Weigley’s phase – then it was first forged here, in the Union’s huge mobilization of personnel and the deployment, under a centralized government with control of the treasury and thence the economy, of the nation’s massive industrial and technical potential for use against its foes...
=====================================================================
Excerpt from the Introduction to Historia Virtua: Counterfactuals and Alternatives, by Nels Fredericksen, Macmillan Publishers Ltd, London,1997
…Still more fiercely antagonistic to counterfactualism was the English idealist philosopher Joseph M. Oakes. In Oakes’ view, when the historian ‘considers by a kind of ideal experiment what might have happened, as well as what the evidence obliges him to believe what did happen” he “steps outside the current of historical thought:”
The question in history is never what must, or what might have taken place, but solely what the evidence obliges us to conclude what did take place. If a given monarch had not been in power when conflict began across the Atlantic, it is possible that the differences there might or might not have led to war; but to conclude from this that George III, or Victoria, or someone else was an odd chance which at this point ‘altered’ the natural course of events is to have abandoned history for something less profitable if more entertaining…”
….However, in a chaotic world, where scientific determinism has been set aside, is counterfactualism truly “outside the current of historical thought?” Surely, from the historians’ point of view, can it not be asked if historical thought allows for considering the roads not taken? Of course, it is most important to consider which counterfactual question should be asked in the first place – because, of course, one of the strongest criticisms of the whole notion of alternative histories is that there is no limit to the number which we can consider.
Obviously, no sensible person wishes to know if in 1861, the entire population of London had suddenly sprouted wings. The need for plausibility – say, what if the entire population of London had been aware of the circumstances of the Prince Consort’s death in October, and the impact his loss had on the Queen, and how that influenced the decision-making of Palmerston and his cabinet during the crisis – is what makes a thoughtful counterfactual just that, and worth considering. Of course, this re-opens the larger issue, of whether the historian posing a counterfactual is raising a possibility that seemed plausible in the past. This was a point that Marc Bloch well understood:
To evaluate the probability of an event is to weigh its chances of taking place.
=====================================================================
Secret History of the St. Alban’s Raid
From “The Vermonter” January, 1902
By The Editors
The secret history of the St. Alban’s Raid, as contained in the archives of the Confederate States of America, has never been published in THE VERMONTER. It forms a very interesting chapter in the history of the eventful raid on St. Alban’s, Oct. 19, 1861. This material is published in THE VERMONTER so our readers may know the raid was executed and planned by the Confederate government and its emissaries in British North America.
The only official CSA document relating to the St. Alban’s Raid appears below:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Confederate States of America
War Department
August 16, 1861
To Capt. John Hunt Morgan – You have been appointed to the Confederate States Army for special service. You will proceed by the route already indicated to you, with Lt. T. H. Morgan and such number of Kentuckians as you know can be entrusted with this mission, not exceeding twenty in number, and execute the enterprises that have been discussed in previous communications. You will take care to organize within the territory of the enemy, to violate none of the neutrality laws, and to follow explicitly the instructions you have been given. You and your men will conduct themselves as soldiers, and will be recognized as such when the time comes. Remember the importance of this mission to our cause; the highest authority in our nation has ordered that this enterprise go forward.
LeRoy Pope Walker
Sec. of War
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{From the editors}:
In the autumn of 1861, Leroy Pope Walker, Confederate secretary of war and an intimate of the Morgan brothers, ordered them north from then-“neutral” Kentucky to what was then British North America for the purpose of organizing raids into the Union states along the northern frontier. The purpose of the Confederate Government was to commit depredations on the northern border by a system of terrorism so as to as to call back U.S. troops to protect the loyal homes of this region, and by breaches of neutrality on the part of Great Britain so as to embroil that power and the United States in warfare and so to secure the independence of the Confederate States. The connection of this effort with the dispatch of envoys to Europe, including both the Court of St. James and Imperial France, is unclear, but the timing has been regarded as suspicious for more than four decades. Among the initial depredations planned was the raid upon St. Albans, the nearest place of any considerable size to the border in Vermont. The time selected for the raid upon St. Albans was Oct. 19, 1861.
Capt. J.H. Morgan was a Kentuckian by birth and because of the strange state of affairs in that state in the fall of 1861, he and a group of 10 of his kinsmen and neighbors, including his brother, Lt. Thomas H. Morgan, were able to travel north by train from Ohio to Detroit, where they crossed into Upper Canada, describing themselves variously as commercial travelers or hunters, and traveled by rail to Montreal. There, with the assistance of local allies, the 12 raiders purchased additional arms and ammunition, and Capt. Morgan and a scout left Montreal by train Oct. 10 for St. Albans. Upon their arrival in the village, they checked into the largest inn in the community; over the next few days, the remainder of the command, including Lt. Morgan, arrived in small groups, finding accommodations where they could and not congregating. These were all young men in their twenties; Capt. Morgan, at 36 and a veteran of the Mexican War, was the oldest. They were armed with revolvers and shotguns, and were well provided with ammunition.
The raiders robbed the Franklin County and St. Alban’s banks at gunpoint as soon as they opened; shots were exchanged between the raiders and the citizens, and Mr. Farrand Stewart Stranahan, a 19-year-old bank clerk, was shot and killed by Morgan. The banks were robbed of more than $180,000, and the raiders seized horses in the livery stables and on the streets and began their flight north toward the border. The fleeing raiders took the Sheldon Road after leaving Main Street, with a number of armed and mounted citizens in pursuit. An attempt to burn the highway bridge across Sheldon Creek was made, and the raiders crossed the Missisiqoi River at Enosburg Falls and succeeded in crossing the border at Frelighsburg, dispersing into the Canadian countryside. The American citizens in pursuit fell away when the raiders crossed the border, and none of the 12 were taken. Most escaped to Montreal, where they dispersed into the city. The subsequent history of the complaints, legal and diplomatic, lodged by the United States are well-known, and need not be repeated here.
=====================================================================
Excerpt from Chapter 8, “The Lion Roars Back,” in “A World Aflame: The Anglo-American War” by Aaron Foreman, Random House, New York, 2010
“A cold, raw day,” William Howard Russell noted in his diary on November 16, 1861. “As I was writing,” he continued, “a friend of mine, who appears like a stormy petrel in moments of great storm, fluttered into my room and chirped out something about a `jolly row,’ – ‘seizure of Mason and Slidell,’ – ‘battle between a Yankee frigate and HMS Rinaldo’ – ‘British flag insulted,’ and the like.” Russell hastily grabbed his coat and ran into the streets of Washington City, where he bumped into the French (diplomatic) minister, Henri Mercier, coming from the direction of the British legation. “And then, indeed, I learned there was no doubt about the fact that [on November 8] there had been a naval action between the U.S. steamer San Jacinto (1,600 tons, 12 guns, and 240 men) and Rinaldo (1,400 tons, 17 guns, 180 men), that began when Captain Charles Wilkes, of the San Jacinto, had not only forcibly boarded the Trent, a British mail steamer, off the Bahamas, but had taken Messrs. Mason, Slidell [and their secretaries] Eustis, and Macfarland from on board by armed force, in defiance of the protests of the captain and naval officer in charge of the mails. It was unclear how the action between the two warships began, or who fired first, but Rinaldo’s captain, Commander William N. W. Hewett, was killed by a Yankee shot on the quarterdeck of his ship. The action left Hewett and 14 of her crew dead, with 39 wounded, and the battered warship at anchor at Havannah, with the Trent, which had towed her there, still alongside. The San Jacinto, for her part, was on her way to Boston with her prisoners. Quite the day; shades of Leopard and Chesapeake, or President and Little Belt! ‘What will “Pam” do?’ I thought…”
=======================================================
(to be continued)
By T.F. Smith
Copyright (c) 2013-2014 by the author. All rights reserved.
============================================================
Foreword
The following is a work of fiction, and created primarily for entertainment value, both for the audience and the author. Anyone taking it too seriously will be asked to have a cold frosty one and enjoy life.
Having said that, I have tried to be true to the times in which this story is set, and to the individuals who are featured, as best that I can. I have also tried to source everything; if the inspiration for a particular turn of events is not clear, I will try and make it so to anyone who asks. Not everything used as inspiration occurred exactly as written, but the events so referenced were generally all within a reasonable time period – say, a professional man’s career – of two decades (either side) of the story that follows. No chiroptera need apply, as far as I can tell; others may differ. So be it, and – please – enjoy. To start, read the italicized material to yourself in slow time, to help set the stage:
….I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
- written by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, as published in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX, February, 1862.
======================================================
The Prologue(s) – Dangerous is a people's voice when charged with wrath. (Aeschylus)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
excerpt from Chapter 5, “Industrialization and the Shifting Global Balances, 1815-1885” in “The Rising Powers: Europe and the Americas in the Nineteenth Century” by Paula Kennedy, Random House, New York, 1987
….Americans on their homesteads or in the swiftly growing cities generally – other than the enslaved - enjoyed a higher standard of living, and of national output, relative to other countries. As early as 1800, wages had been about one-third higher than in Western Europe, and that superiority was to be preserved, if not increased, throughout the century. The young republic’s isolation from European power struggles, and the failures of the European powers other than Britain to maintain any significant holdings in the Western Hemisphere meant the only threat to the United States’ future prosperity could come either from within, or from Britain itself. Yet despite memories of the conflicts from 1775-83 and again from 1812-15, and border disputes in Maine and both the Old Northwest and the “new” Pacific Northwest, a third Anglo-American war was unlikely; the flow of British capital and manufactures toward the United States and the return flow of America raw materials – especially cotton – tied the two economies ever closer together and further stimulated American economic growth.
The result of all this was that even before the outbreak of the Civil War in April, 1861, the United States had become an economic giant, although its own distance from Europe – transatlantic passage of freight or passengers still routinely took two to four weeks, even by steamer – its concentration on internal development (rather than foreign trade), and the rugged and wide open frontiers partly disguised the fact. While the share of world manufacturing output from American factories and forges in 1860 was a little more than a third that of Britain’s (7.2 percent to 19.9 percent), the U.S. share had already surged past the German states (4.9 percent) and Russia (7 percent), and was on the point of overtaking France (7.9 percent), historically Britain’s great power rival. The United States, with only 40 percent of the population in 1860 of Russia, Britain’s most recent peer opponent in war, had an urban population more than twice as large, produced 830,000 tons of iron to Russia’s 350,000 tons, had an energy consumption from modern fuel sources (coal, lignite, oil) more than 15 times as large, and a railway mileage 30 times greater – the last three times greater than Britain’s.
Within another year, of course, the Civil War began to transform the amount of national resources which Americans devoted to military purposes. The immediate point that thoughtful men on both sides had to acknowledge was that – assuming willpower for a fight to the finish remained equal on either side – was the disproportion in resources and population. There was a great numerical imbalance between the loyal and rebel states; while the former contained a population of approximately 20 million whites, the Confederacy had only six million, along with (approximately) another three million blacks, mostly slaves. To put this into a “British Imperial” perspective, the population of the United Kingdom in the 1861 census was 29 million; that of the whole of British North America was 3.3 million, with 2.5 million in the Province of Canada. As the war continued, of course, the manpower pool the U.S. forces could draw upon increased with every step south their armies took; this included the recruitment of southern whites who adhered to the Union and, once the decision was made in 1862 to enlist black troops, both northern freemen and escaped slaves.
In terms of agriculture, in 1860 the United States both fed itself and exported large amounts of produce to Europe; all that production was available for the war effort, if necessary. In terms of industry, in 1860 the North possessed 110,000 manufacturing establishments to the South’s 18,000, many of which had relied on Northern technical expertise and skilled labor. The same year, the whole of what became the Confederacy produced only 36,700 tons of pig iron; Pennsylvania alone produced 580,000 tons. The value of goods manufactured in New York State alone in 1860 amounted to almost $300 million; this was more than four times the value of manufactured goods produced in Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, combined. This staggering disparity in the economic base of each belligerent steadily transformed itself into real military effectiveness.
For example, whereas the South could make few of its own small arms, instead relying heavily upon what was initially captured from the various federal forts and arsenals (roughly 100,000 modern firearms, a mix of rifles and muskets) - in 1861 and then what could be imported from Europe, the U.S. massively expanded weapons manufacturing, producing no less than 111,000 modern rifles in the national armories alone in the first 15 months of the war to add to the 440,000 long-arms already stockpiled. Another 62,000 modern rifles and carbines were purchased from private manufacturers in the North in the same period, and hundreds of thousands more were purchased and shipped from Europe, beginning as soon as hostilities broke out in April of 1861.
As another example, the North’s railway system – some 22,000 miles in length, and fanning out from the East Coast to the Mississippi River, across into Missouri and Iowa, northeast to Maine, north to the international borders, and northwest to Wisconsin – could be maintained and was even expanded during the war, as was, in fact, the production of agricultural products, munitions, and ship-building. Financially, while the Confederacy could sell cotton and borrow abroad, there was a surplus of cotton in storage in Europe in 1861, and newer sources, in Africa and Asia, were under development. In addition, the Confederacy’s reliance on export agriculture in the antebellum era left it with little in the way of economic infrastructure; there were few banks, little liquid capital, and little ability to produce specie; by contrast, the North, with the near limitless resources of the continent to draw upon, and the ability to raise funds through taxation and loans, could pay for the conflict, while the printing of federally-backed greenbacks in some ways stimulated further industrial and economic growth. By the end of the first year of conflict, U.S. soldiers were probably better fed and supplied than any army in history.
If there was going to be a particularly American approach to military conflict – an “American way of war,” to use Col. Weigley’s phase – then it was first forged here, in the Union’s huge mobilization of personnel and the deployment, under a centralized government with control of the treasury and thence the economy, of the nation’s massive industrial and technical potential for use against its foes...
=====================================================================
Excerpt from the Introduction to Historia Virtua: Counterfactuals and Alternatives, by Nels Fredericksen, Macmillan Publishers Ltd, London,1997
…Still more fiercely antagonistic to counterfactualism was the English idealist philosopher Joseph M. Oakes. In Oakes’ view, when the historian ‘considers by a kind of ideal experiment what might have happened, as well as what the evidence obliges him to believe what did happen” he “steps outside the current of historical thought:”
The question in history is never what must, or what might have taken place, but solely what the evidence obliges us to conclude what did take place. If a given monarch had not been in power when conflict began across the Atlantic, it is possible that the differences there might or might not have led to war; but to conclude from this that George III, or Victoria, or someone else was an odd chance which at this point ‘altered’ the natural course of events is to have abandoned history for something less profitable if more entertaining…”
….However, in a chaotic world, where scientific determinism has been set aside, is counterfactualism truly “outside the current of historical thought?” Surely, from the historians’ point of view, can it not be asked if historical thought allows for considering the roads not taken? Of course, it is most important to consider which counterfactual question should be asked in the first place – because, of course, one of the strongest criticisms of the whole notion of alternative histories is that there is no limit to the number which we can consider.
Obviously, no sensible person wishes to know if in 1861, the entire population of London had suddenly sprouted wings. The need for plausibility – say, what if the entire population of London had been aware of the circumstances of the Prince Consort’s death in October, and the impact his loss had on the Queen, and how that influenced the decision-making of Palmerston and his cabinet during the crisis – is what makes a thoughtful counterfactual just that, and worth considering. Of course, this re-opens the larger issue, of whether the historian posing a counterfactual is raising a possibility that seemed plausible in the past. This was a point that Marc Bloch well understood:
To evaluate the probability of an event is to weigh its chances of taking place.
=====================================================================
Secret History of the St. Alban’s Raid
From “The Vermonter” January, 1902
By The Editors
The secret history of the St. Alban’s Raid, as contained in the archives of the Confederate States of America, has never been published in THE VERMONTER. It forms a very interesting chapter in the history of the eventful raid on St. Alban’s, Oct. 19, 1861. This material is published in THE VERMONTER so our readers may know the raid was executed and planned by the Confederate government and its emissaries in British North America.
The only official CSA document relating to the St. Alban’s Raid appears below:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Confederate States of America
War Department
August 16, 1861
To Capt. John Hunt Morgan – You have been appointed to the Confederate States Army for special service. You will proceed by the route already indicated to you, with Lt. T. H. Morgan and such number of Kentuckians as you know can be entrusted with this mission, not exceeding twenty in number, and execute the enterprises that have been discussed in previous communications. You will take care to organize within the territory of the enemy, to violate none of the neutrality laws, and to follow explicitly the instructions you have been given. You and your men will conduct themselves as soldiers, and will be recognized as such when the time comes. Remember the importance of this mission to our cause; the highest authority in our nation has ordered that this enterprise go forward.
LeRoy Pope Walker
Sec. of War
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{From the editors}:
In the autumn of 1861, Leroy Pope Walker, Confederate secretary of war and an intimate of the Morgan brothers, ordered them north from then-“neutral” Kentucky to what was then British North America for the purpose of organizing raids into the Union states along the northern frontier. The purpose of the Confederate Government was to commit depredations on the northern border by a system of terrorism so as to as to call back U.S. troops to protect the loyal homes of this region, and by breaches of neutrality on the part of Great Britain so as to embroil that power and the United States in warfare and so to secure the independence of the Confederate States. The connection of this effort with the dispatch of envoys to Europe, including both the Court of St. James and Imperial France, is unclear, but the timing has been regarded as suspicious for more than four decades. Among the initial depredations planned was the raid upon St. Albans, the nearest place of any considerable size to the border in Vermont. The time selected for the raid upon St. Albans was Oct. 19, 1861.
Capt. J.H. Morgan was a Kentuckian by birth and because of the strange state of affairs in that state in the fall of 1861, he and a group of 10 of his kinsmen and neighbors, including his brother, Lt. Thomas H. Morgan, were able to travel north by train from Ohio to Detroit, where they crossed into Upper Canada, describing themselves variously as commercial travelers or hunters, and traveled by rail to Montreal. There, with the assistance of local allies, the 12 raiders purchased additional arms and ammunition, and Capt. Morgan and a scout left Montreal by train Oct. 10 for St. Albans. Upon their arrival in the village, they checked into the largest inn in the community; over the next few days, the remainder of the command, including Lt. Morgan, arrived in small groups, finding accommodations where they could and not congregating. These were all young men in their twenties; Capt. Morgan, at 36 and a veteran of the Mexican War, was the oldest. They were armed with revolvers and shotguns, and were well provided with ammunition.
The raiders robbed the Franklin County and St. Alban’s banks at gunpoint as soon as they opened; shots were exchanged between the raiders and the citizens, and Mr. Farrand Stewart Stranahan, a 19-year-old bank clerk, was shot and killed by Morgan. The banks were robbed of more than $180,000, and the raiders seized horses in the livery stables and on the streets and began their flight north toward the border. The fleeing raiders took the Sheldon Road after leaving Main Street, with a number of armed and mounted citizens in pursuit. An attempt to burn the highway bridge across Sheldon Creek was made, and the raiders crossed the Missisiqoi River at Enosburg Falls and succeeded in crossing the border at Frelighsburg, dispersing into the Canadian countryside. The American citizens in pursuit fell away when the raiders crossed the border, and none of the 12 were taken. Most escaped to Montreal, where they dispersed into the city. The subsequent history of the complaints, legal and diplomatic, lodged by the United States are well-known, and need not be repeated here.
=====================================================================
Excerpt from Chapter 8, “The Lion Roars Back,” in “A World Aflame: The Anglo-American War” by Aaron Foreman, Random House, New York, 2010
“A cold, raw day,” William Howard Russell noted in his diary on November 16, 1861. “As I was writing,” he continued, “a friend of mine, who appears like a stormy petrel in moments of great storm, fluttered into my room and chirped out something about a `jolly row,’ – ‘seizure of Mason and Slidell,’ – ‘battle between a Yankee frigate and HMS Rinaldo’ – ‘British flag insulted,’ and the like.” Russell hastily grabbed his coat and ran into the streets of Washington City, where he bumped into the French (diplomatic) minister, Henri Mercier, coming from the direction of the British legation. “And then, indeed, I learned there was no doubt about the fact that [on November 8] there had been a naval action between the U.S. steamer San Jacinto (1,600 tons, 12 guns, and 240 men) and Rinaldo (1,400 tons, 17 guns, 180 men), that began when Captain Charles Wilkes, of the San Jacinto, had not only forcibly boarded the Trent, a British mail steamer, off the Bahamas, but had taken Messrs. Mason, Slidell [and their secretaries] Eustis, and Macfarland from on board by armed force, in defiance of the protests of the captain and naval officer in charge of the mails. It was unclear how the action between the two warships began, or who fired first, but Rinaldo’s captain, Commander William N. W. Hewett, was killed by a Yankee shot on the quarterdeck of his ship. The action left Hewett and 14 of her crew dead, with 39 wounded, and the battered warship at anchor at Havannah, with the Trent, which had towed her there, still alongside. The San Jacinto, for her part, was on her way to Boston with her prisoners. Quite the day; shades of Leopard and Chesapeake, or President and Little Belt! ‘What will “Pam” do?’ I thought…”
=======================================================
(to be continued)
Last edited: