A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (6 page)

It would not be strong enough. All the Confederate officers who
had crossed the river to organize the mob had driven them to new
frenzy. They were howling outside, and that noise rose to a roar just before the gate shuddered at a tremendous blow. Gatling and Greenwood
looked at each other as they stood in front of one of the guns they had
dragged into the yard. "It was a splendid-looking thing, a marvel, a curiosity, a dazzle of shining metal and sleek design, even in its fledgling
state. Six steel barrels were arranged in a tight, intimidating circle and affixed on a narrow platform suspended between two large wagon wheels.
Jutting from one side of the device was a hand crank."6 This gun had
been only finished two days before and not been tested.

Richard Gatling was a tenacious man as well as one of the great
inventors of an age of invention. Even before the war, he had grown
rich from his developments in farming machinery that had drawn
amazed attention at the Crystal Palace Exposition in London. As civil
war loomed, though, his thoughts turned to arms. He reasoned that he
could thin the battlefield and spare lives for the Union if one man firing
a quick-repeating gun could take the place of a hundred. While his logic
of war was naive, his ingenuity was as practical as they came. Thus in
less than a year was born the weapon he was now quickly loading with
steel cartridges as the gate groaned under the assault of the mob's battering ram. Governor Oliver Morton of Indiana had seen a display in Indianapolis the year before and become an enthusiastic booster. That had
won Gatling the opportunity to have the Army test his gun in May and
July. The examining officers were unusually impressed and urged its
purchase in large numbers. Their report had been dead-filed by the rigid
and obdurate chief of the Ordnance Bureau, Brig. Gen. James Ripley,
who loathed any new idea that came across his desk. Only Butler had
shown interest, but there was a limit to any general's personal pocket.

The gate failed with a crack as its crossbar snapped at the last blow.
Its halves swung back to strike the brick walls with a loud crash. The
mob waited only long enough to drop the ram before screeching in victory and rushing into the factory yard. Gatling's right arm spun the
crank on the gun around and around as his left swiveled the barrels right
to left. The gun groaned as it spat out its bullets, higher and higher the
pitch the faster he turned the crank.

The mob went down in a spray of blood as if death's scythe had
swung clean through them. Gatling kept on firing into the packed mass
as a spray of bright shell casings spewed onto the brick pavement. The
mob's bloodlust howl now turned to shrieks of terror and pain. Those
in the middle turned to claw their way to safety but were held by those
pressing from behind until they, too, fell to the harvest of the machine.
He stopped firing, and the barrels spun slowly to a wispy smoking
stop. Gatling and Greenwood were gape-mouthed by the reality of their
weapon. Bodies, dead and writhing, two and even three deep, carpeted
the threshold of the gate and back out into the street. There were so
many that a man could walk across it without touching the ground!

OFF CAPE FEAR, NORTH CAROLINA, 5:04 PM, OCTOBER 15, 1863

John Dahlgren woke from his coma to look up into his son's face, now
ringed with a new light beard of angel gold. "Papa, Papa, thank God,"
Col. Ulric Dahlgren whispered, as the surgeon looked down at the admiral, taking his pulse and beaming. The worst was past. The wound had
not festered. Luckily, no bone or nerves had been damaged, as deep as
it was.

He tried to speak, but his throat choked on its own dryness. A
water glass was pressed to his lips, and he drained it to lie back and let
his wits come back to him. He did not recognize the cabin and could feel
the ship underway. "The battle," he whispered. "The battle?" His mouth
went dry again.

"A victory, Papa!"

It took a moment for it to sink in. "Tell me."

"We crushed them, Papa. We crushed them. Only a handful of their
ships got away. Black Prince sank alongside New Ironsides a half hour after she struck. We beat two ships of the line into kindling, turned them
into torches. A third struck and is in tow. Three frigates, two corvettes,
and two sloops rounded out the Royal Navy's humbling. My God, Papa!
You've commanded the greatest naval victory in our history!"8

"Our losses?"

"Sloop Pawnee, monitor Nahant, I'm afraid. Donegal put too many
shots through Nahant's deck, smashing her engines, and letting in the
ocean that took her down with all her crew." He paused, "And, yes, ironclad Atlanta. She rammed Shannon with her spar torpedo and sent her to
the bottom, but she died in the process. Cromwell went down with her.
And we lost three gunboats-Marblehead, Ottawa, and Wissahickon.'

Dahlgren looked anxious. "And the submersibles?"

"Papa, the tender picked them up, but Resistance shot her to pieces
just after the recovery, and she burned. Both boats were lost, but we
saved the crews."10

Capt. Stephen Clegg Rowan, commanding USS New Ironsides and
acting commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, had been
immediately informed that the admiral was awake and came down to
pay his respects. Dahlgren pressed him immediately to explain the battle. Rowan pulled up a chair. "Well, Admiral, your plan just played itself
out. Your tactics and your guns won the day. After you were wounded, the battle broke into two parts. The ships to our front, the two monitors,
and Wabash and Pawnee, kept moving in line ahead and engaging the
enemy line led by St. George and then Donegal. We pounded both ships
into splinters; it was amazing how fast the shells from your guns will set
a wooden ship on fire. A burning ship of the line is a magnificent and
sad sight, I swear. The British frigates followed them into the same meat
grinder.

"We were having a tougher time with Black Prince and Sans Pareil;
they had come up on either side of us after our screw was damaged. The
monitors following us pounded Sans Pareil until she struck. The British
were still game. What brave men. Their frigates and corvettes crowded
in, and I think would have boarded the monitors had not our gunboats
come up from Morris Island to rake them. I think the last straw was the
arrival of our three monitors and more gunboats from Port Royal followed by most of the ships at the base. I think seven of the enemy got
away. Their other ironclad, Resistance, escaped into Charleston Harbor.
The navy has never won such a victory, Admiral."11

"Where are we now, Rowan?"

"That's the had news, sir-off Cape Fear. The entire squadron is
sailing to Norfolk. We were lucky to win at Charleston, but we could
not risk a second fight against a larger force. Our supplies are low, and
we can barely get everyone away. We evacuated Port Royal just in time.
The last late ship out reported a large British force approaching from the
southeast. They'll find nothing but the ashes of our base. I'm proud to
say we got off all the troops both at Port Royal and around Charleston.
They're a bit crowded and on short rations, as were we, but we were able
to find room for all twelve thousand men. I'm sure they feel the accommodations are better than British hospitality."

Dahlgren said, "Yes, that's twelve thousand men to fight another
day-and a fleet in being."

"We put a lot of them on them on the captured British ships. It was
crowded with their surrendered crews and all the men we fished out of
the water-we paroled and turned over to the Rebs 1,400 wounded prisoners. We could not care for so many. But we have over 2,500 unwounded prisoners, Admiral -2,500 prisoners, by God!12

"And one very special prisoner. It seems that we picked up Prince
Alfred, Victoria's second son, wounded on Racoon and saved by the ship's ratings. Shows you how a good officer can win the love of his
men. Why, I put him in the cabin next to yours."

At that moment, they heard the clatter of a tray of food hurled into
the passageway from the next cabin. A dripping plate rolled past the
open hatch to the admiral's cabin. A very English voice screamed, "Swill!
Damn your eyes! Don't come back until you have a proper meal!"

A smile twitched at the corners of Dahlgren's mouth. "You were
saying, Rowan?" Then, suddenly exhausted, he sank back on his pillow,
but his eyes gleamed 13

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, LONDON, 11:30 PM,
OCTOBER 15, 1863

The House sat in dead silence. The Speaker in his red robes and Restoration wig nodded to the shrunken little man sitting in for Prime Minister
Palmerston, who had been felled by the shock of the disaster at Charleston.

Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell knew in his heart the role his
own inattention and missed opportunities had played in bringing this
unimaginable humiliation to Crown and country. He had failed to alert
the American minister, Charles Francis Adams, that the government had
determined to seize the two ironclad rams being fitted out in Liverpool?4
He had been in no hurry, unaware that things automatically had begun
to happen. The Americans had sent USS Gettysburg to intercept the rams
should they escape, as had the infamous commerce raider CSS Alabama
the year before. He also suspected that the ship was forewarned of the
order of seizure by a Confederate sympathizer in his own office. Events
had spiraled out of control. His orders to seize the rams arrived too late;
one of them had escaped, and Gettysburg as well as USS Kearsarge had
sunk two British warships in British waters when they tried to stop the
capture of the ram. The government had declared war in the upswell of
public outrage and dispatched reinforcements from the Channel Squadron to Adm. Alexander Milne with orders to immediately break the
blockade of Charleston. Russell had escaped censure in the debate for
war by simply lying with a facility he did not know he had.

His hands were not clean, and he knew it. There was British blood
on them, and he could not help obsessing about Lady Macbeth's wail
that not all the perfumes of Arabia would wipe away the stain. He took
refuge in confining himself to reading Milne's report, but even that was a crucifixion. The sweat beaded on his forehead though the chamber had
caught the early autumn chill. He read on of the crushing defeat that
was unparalleled in British history: the great ironclad, HMS Black Prince,
sunk, and Resistance barely able to escape into the safety of Charleston
Harbor. He read the list of the famous old names of ships of the line that
had burned or struck. When he read the name St. George, a groan escaped the grim men on their green leather benches. The list went on and
on as he read the names of frigates, corvettes, and gunboats lost.

He finished and sat down to thundering silence. The British people
and their leaders had sustained a shock to the very basis of their selfesteem, their birthright to victory and success. Such a loss to their ancient
enemies, the French, might have been taken better. After all, the French
were due a victory simply by the law of averages. But to suffer such a
humiliation from the Americans, for whom the British establishment felt
such contempt, left them humiliated and perplexed beyond all measure.
They had taken little notice of the flood of Britons and Irish to the American republic. They might have taken solace from the argument that they
had been beaten by themselves, men of fundamentally the same blood,
language, religion, and history, but after the American Revolution, they
were loath to acknowledge any common root stock.

It was then that John Bright rose and faced the Speaker. The tension exploded. In moments the members were on their feet in a roar,
waving arms, shouting, throwing papers. Their pent-up rage suddenly
had found its outlet in this most famous friend of America in Parliament. Bright was the foremost reformer of the age and as obdurate foe of
slavery as he was the champion of the rights of the common man to the
franchise in the United Kingdom. From the reform of the Corn Laws to
the relief of Ireland in the grip of famine, he had become a moral power
in the tradition of William Wilberforce, the immortal enemy of slavery.
And for all that he was a Quaker, he was the most deadly debater in the
House, ready to eviscerate anyone careless enough to challenge him.

Already he was known derisively as "the member for the United
States." And it was his friendship with the beleaguered Union that enraged the House. There was deeper fuel for the members' anger, though.
The very men who had looked with such sympathy on the South had
been long frightened of Bright, the reformer. He had made it quite clear
that the success of the Union would be the proof that democracy worked. That success would provide the irresistible moral impetus for the extension of voting rights to the British common man. It was no accident that
the very men in the British establishment who so ostentatiously favored
the South were equally opposed to Bright's reforms and its threat to their
monopoly of power.

The Speaker struck his mace of office against the floor to bring
order, and only slowly did the members resume their seats with an illgraced and sullen snarl. The Speaker nodded to Bright. "The chair recognizes the member for Durham." Russell's slight form seemed to shrink
even more on the ministers' bench.

Bright began. "The gentlemen are rightly shocked by the news of
Charleston. It is a sad day for British arms, and many homes will mourn
throughout the realm. But the gentlemen have no right to be shocked
that we are at war. For two years the government and privilege in this
country have goaded and insulted the American republic in its trial of
freedom against the slave power. Even more, this government and privilege have done incalculable injury to that republic, though hiding behind
a tissue of neutrality."

"Shame, shame!" an angry voice cried out from the upper benches.

"Shame, indeed, sir!" Bright shot back. "Shame that it has been
British-built warships that have savaged and ruined the merchant shipping of the republic, which has done us no injury. Shame that it is British
foundry, arsenal, and factory that have equipped the armies of the slave
power and kept them in the field far beyond the poor ability of its own
industry. Shame that it is British bacon and biscuit that feeds the armies
of the slave power while it was fifty thousand barrels of American flour,
generously donated, that has fed thousands of British mill workers and
their families destituted by that same slave power's calculation to withhold cotton to force this country to become its ally."