Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History (13 page)

Hancock led him into the shade of the garden pergola and motioned him to the bench. “Damned tricky equation a war with the Americans, trickier than they think back home. I wonder if anyone in London reads my reports.”

Wolseley was trying to sort out the implications of Hancock’s review. “I understood that we were absolutely convinced during the Trent Affair that we could have crushed the Americans. Have the monitors upset that assumption so completely?”

“You must remember that in December 1861, the Americans had just embarked on this ruinous war. Their Navy was small—barely ninety ships, or one-tenth the size of the Royal Navy. Their admittedly fine harbor forts were in many cases unmanned and ungunned. We would have crushed them in one blow, I believe.

“But with the declaration of the blockade, the American Navy began to grow like Jack’s magic beans. In four months, they had doubled the number of ships; in ten months they had grown sixfold. Mr. Welles was quoted, in speaking of one of the new ships rushed to completion, that its keel had been growing in a forest three months ago. Many of these new ships were gunboats or were converted merchantmen, but the point is that they did the job. Moreover, their crews have learned their jobs. The Americans have always been good sailors and when given even odds have embarrassed the Royal Navy too many times for me to consider—not at all like fighting the French. It is the American ability to organize and produce that worries me, Wolseley.”

It occurred to Wolseley that the Army had had a similar experience with this American talent. During the Crimean War, when the production of the new Enfield rifled musket could not meet the war demand, the British Army had to swallow its pride and send an ordnance delegation to the United States. They toured the War Department’s Springfield Arsenal and observed the “American method” of mass production. The Army immediately put in an order for comparable American-made machinery to completely reequip the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield. They also hired an American to manage the factory. The Royal Small Arms Factory had been transformed by its American additions into the pride of British manufacturing. The production of the superb Enfield rifle was more than sufficient to completely equip the British Army and its territorial forces as well as sell hundreds of thousands to both the
Confederacy and the Union before the latter’s production increase by this time made imports unnecessary.
⁹

“There’s more, Wolseley. Are you aware that Adm. Sir Alexander Milne developed a war plan against the United States during the Trent Affair? He proposed to break the Union blockade at two points. Charleston, of course, would be the main effort, with a secondary effort to open a port such as Galveston, Texas. He also proposed to counterblockade the ports of the North and to sail up the Chesapeake Bay and attack Washington itself. At that time, we could have easily done it. I understand Admiral Milne says that today he would find such a plan most risky.”
¹⁰

“But, Hancock, given the neutrality of Her Majesty’s government, the risk of war seems highly unlikely, does it not?”

“Not as unlikely as you think. London does not understand the deep anger the North feels toward Great Britain. British commerce keeps the Confederacy alive through our blockade-runners. Our Foreign Enlistment Act is so flimsy that British shipyards have produced a squadron of commerce raiders that is ruining the American merchant navy and whaling fleet with disastrous effects in the ports and businesses of the North. The press feeds the public’s anger. Too many Americans already feel that we are secretly at war with them now. Adding constant insult to injury is our open partiality for the South. Such articles as yours in
Blackwood’s
, I must say, Wolseley, are exactly what feeds anti-British sentiment. I cannot count the number of Americans of consequence who have angrily asked me to explain the advocacy of Her Majesty’s Assistant Quartermaster General of Canada for British alliance with the Confederacy.”

Before Wolseley had time to come to his own defense, Hancock exclaimed, “It’s frightfully hot even here in the shade. Let’s go indoors. Besides, I have something to show you that may be of interest.”

The carriage had only a few blocks to go as it trundled out of the Navy Yard gate. Lincoln explained that the object of their visit was a gallant young soldier—Col. Ulric Dahlgren, son of the admiral, who was recuperating at his father’s home. Ulric had lost his leg while pursuing Lee after Gettysburg. Sharpe looked forward to the visit. Young Dahlgren and he had been appointed on the same order to Hooker’s headquarters. It was a small headquarters, and the two were easily drawn to each other. Captain Dahlgren had been a twenty-one-year-old, handsome, lithe, blond
beau sabreur
, with a taste for daring forays into the enemy, and Sharpe had been the homely looking colonel with a master’s touch for intelligence. It was this relationship that had led to the incredible raid that captured Jeff Davis’s dispatches to Lee on July 2 at Gettysburg. Sergeant Cline had brought the information of the courier’s route and timing, and Sharpe had organized the raid with Dahlgren in command. It had been the stuff of legend as Dahlgren led his band of fifteen men into a surprise attack on the courier escort and a passing Confederate wagon train in the middle of Greencastle. It was Cline who had seized the couriers with a cocked pistol at their heads. Dahlgren immediately rode the thirty miles for Meade’s headquarters at Gettysburg and arrived at midnight to put the dispatches into Meade’s hands. They were wired to Washington the next day; their content exposed the strategic weakness of the Confederacy in detail. Meade asked Dahlgren how he could reward him, and the young man said to give him a hundred men and send him out again. He had his wish. As he harried Lee’s rear as it crossed the mountains, a bullet had shattered his foot. The wound went bad, and the leg below the knee had to be taken off.
¹¹

A look of sadness came across Lincoln’s face. “I wanted you both to meet Ulric; in the two years that I have known his father, the boy had become almost like one of my own sons. It distressed me deeply to see the best this country has maimed.”

Sharpe knew that Ulric’s first visitor had been the President, who sat for hours by his bedside as the young man hovered near death. “Sir, Colonel Dahlgren and I are old friends. The staff of the Army of the Potomac is a small family, and we joined it at the same time last year. He is very much liked and very much missed.”

Pleased, Lincoln said, “He seemed to have taken the operation in stride, but he went quickly into such a decline that we thought we would lose him. When Secretary Stanton had come to present him with his commission to colonel, the boy was too sick to even recognize him. Stanton then closed the street to wheeled traffic so as not to disturb his rest. He posted that guard,” Lincoln pointed to the soldier lounging by the door of a small house, “to refuse admittance to anyone but doctors.”
¹²
The soldier saw the carriage and grew bug eyed as he recognized the tall man in the stovepipe hat getting out of the carriage. He immediately presented arms.

A maid answered, curtsied, showed them to the parlor, and disappeared. Moments later an elderly gentleman, obviously not in the best
of health, came in. Lincoln presented Mr. Lawrence, Ulric’s uncle who had come from Connecticut to supervise his care. “How is our boy today?” Lincoln asked.

“Ever so much better, Mr. President. He will be delighted to have company. He is itching to get out of that bed and try that cork leg you had made for him, but I fear he has many weeks more to go.”

A clear, strong tenor voice called down from the upstairs. “Uncle, do we have visitors?”

Sharpe saw Lincoln’s face brighten as he walked into the hallway and looked up the stairs. Ulric was standing at the top of the landing, teetering on a pair of crutches. His uncle hurried over, clearly distressed. “Ulie, you must stay in bed. The doctors said you are not ready to try the crutches.”

“Let the brave lad be, Mr. Lawrence. It is his nature.” Then glancing at Sharpe, he said, “My boy Willie would have been like him.” A look of grief passed over his face. “Stay there, my boy. We’ll come up to see you.” He took the steps three at a time to throw his long arms around Dahlgren. Sharpe noticed Dahlgren’s look of delight when he recognized Lincoln. This was a mutual affection.
¹³

When Sharpe and Lamson reached the top of the stairs, Lincoln had helped Dahlgren to a chair in the small upstairs sitting room and pulled another up close. Dahlgren recognized Sharpe and tried to rise, “Colonel Sharpe, what a surprise!” He reached out his hand, and Sharpe grasped it. Ulric’s handshake was as firm as ever.

“Well,
Colonel
Dahlgren,” he said emphasizing the rank, “I’m glad to see you doing so well. We were worried about you. I will have to tell everyone that the bold twinkle has not left your eyes.” He was telling the truth. Dahlgren was thinner than he remembered; his brush with death had shrunk some of the flesh from his already thin body. He had been a splendid horseman and reputedly the best dancer in Washington. The girls would miss him on the dance floor. But he had lost none of the spirit Sharpe remembered. His fine fair hair was neatly cut and combed, his face shaved, and his small goatee trimmed.

Lincoln introduced Lamson, and while the two were talking, he said in a low voice to Sharpe, “I like to put my thoroughbreds in the same pasture on occasion. It convinces each to run a bit faster.” Sharpe could see what Lincoln meant. One fair and one dark, the two were deep in conversation. They had instantly recognized the same thing in each other. Lincoln interrupted to say, “I’ll wager you two have no idea what you
have in common.” They looked at him. “Why, it’s Gettysburg! Dahlgren covered himself with glory there, and I’ve just named Lamson’s new ship after that battle, at the suggestion, I might add, of Colonel Sharpe.”

Lincoln went on to describe Lamson’s mission to intercept the Laird rams, drawing a parallel between Dahlgren and the dispatches and Lamson and the rams. Both required both boldness and brains. He remarked on the importance of luck, though to him the luckiest men were the best prepared. “That reminds me of story about Napoleon. Whenever a man was recommended for promotion, he would always ask, ‘But is he lucky?’ Seems the little Corsican knew what he was talking about, at least some of the time.”

After dropping Lamson back at the Yard, Lincoln and Sharpe went to the Conservatory, a great glass botanical garden at the base of Capitol Hill on Maryland Avenue. As they walked through the gorgeous plant-filled corridors, each with a different grouping of the most exotic plants and flowers, Lincoln found a bench and motioned for Sharpe to sit. “Sometimes a soul just needs to rest, Colonel. Can you think of a better place?”

“No, sir, there’s nothing else like it in this country. Kew Gardens in London is even larger, and the French have wondrous gardens, too, but give us time.”

“Yes, dear God, give us time. That is what I am about. To give this country time. Every day I do my best to make sure that we have time for all that the future has in store for us. This war cannot be our end of times. We are a new start, proof that man’s history is not confined to an endless rut of tyranny and misery.

“And I come here because my boys loved to play here. I’m afraid they were a trial to the conservators, racing around and plucking their choicest flowers. I had not the heart to stop them. Mary always said I was too indulgent. Now my Willie is gone.” His ungainly body slumped in the iron bench as he put his face in his hands and wept.

Sharpe’s heart went out to this man who with all the weight of the world on his shoulders suffered that indescribable grief. Lincoln said, “We have words for those who have lost parents and a husband or wife, but we do not have a word for those who have lost a child. There is just no word capable of such a meaning.”

He paused and looked at Sharpe. “Is there a word for a people who have let their country die or, worse, helped kill it?”

“Copperhead.”

“Yes, Sharpe, that is why I keep you in Washington. I can feel a great underground seething in the North, as if this fanged and perverse serpent is uncoiling itself, feeling its strength, readying itself to strike. At least the South is honest in its rebellion—man to man in the open field—but these Copperheads cover themselves with the Constitution while they seek to destroy it. They are abetted by the radical civil libertarians who insist on making the government too weak to defend itself. Thank God Carrington is doing such a good job keeping a finger on their pulse. His man, Stidger, has been a godsend. I truly fear that we would be in far greater danger without his intimate intelligence of their activities.”

He paused to reach out and run his long fingers gently over the flowers of a clematis vine. “I know how much you contributed to the victory at Gettysburg, Sharpe. It is not your fault that more was not made of it. I have been thinking that we may need your talents in organization for a secret service here. I’m not talking of what Mr. Baker is doing in chasing spies, but something larger and more comprehensive that gathers together all of the strands of what we must know about not just the rebels but about all of our enemies.