The problem at hand was to save New York and Boston from attack. New York, especially, was the economic and financial heart of the Union. At all costs it must be saved. The arrival of the rest of the Russian squadron and the strengthening of the harbor forts would relieve him of worry of another attack by sea and give him a free hand to deal with the British in Albany. Hooker’s XI and XII Corps had entrained for their transfer to the relief of the Army of the Cumberland two days before. They would be turned around, and every other train would be sidelined to give them priority to New York City. Until then, they would have to rely on whatever forces were at hand to stop any British advance down the Hudson River Valley.
A silver lining of the draft riots was that a number of regiments that had been sent to suppress them were still in the city. The city’s remaining militia regiments were more experienced than would have been apparent. Many of them had served early in the war and had experienced men on their rolls. He ordered a call to all veterans not in the militia to reenlist and join the forces in the city. He was surprised to read in a telegram that Meagher had signed up more than ten thousand men from the Irish in one day, but they would not be ready in time to deal with this crisis. He did take time, though, to dictate to a clerk approval and praise of Meagher’s actions and his appointment as a brevet major general with instructions to telegraph it immediately.
As if to prove the aphorism “It never rains but that it pours,” one of the Union’s major field armies had found itself trapped in Chattanooga whence it had fled after its defeat at Chickamauga. It was obvious Rosecrans was in a funk, or he would not have let that old woman Bragg finally get up the gumption to follow him much less put him under siege. And now the men were beginning to starve. If “Old Rosy” gave up at a time like this, then the entire line of the Ohio would fall. He could not pluck any more units from Meade’s Army of the Potomac or Lee would be in Washington at the drop of a hat. The only other major source of troops was Grant’s command, but much of that concentration had been nickel-and-dimed to tidy up a number of small problems Halleck’s too orderly mind had obsessed about and to reinforce Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks for a Texas expedition that Lincoln favored. Stanton would have immediately called Grant to the scene, but the man was barely able to move after his horse had fallen on him in New Orleans. Stanton knew his options were running thin.
That dilemma came down to a choice between New York and Chattanooga. The XI and XII Corps could not be in both places at once, and to send one to each crisis would do little good in either place. In the end, Lincoln made the decision-New York. Rosy would have to hang on and wait for Grant. That night Hooker received a telegram that appointed him to command the new Army of the Hudson. The corps would be diverted to New York immediately.
The lights burned late at the Navy Department as well. Gideon Welles may not have had Stanton’s greatness in a crisis, but he was steady and a superb administrator. Backed up by a fighting assistant secretary, Gus Fox, he bent to his work. On his own, Fox had immediately dispatched ships to carry the news of war to the naval forces in Hampton Roads and the two blockading squadrons at Wilmington and Charleston.
In many ways the Navy faced a greater challenge than the Army did. Only a small part of the Army would or could be devoted to the British war. Most of it was locked in a struggle with the rebels and would have to remain so. Almost the entire Navy, save its riverine forces, would be going into harm’s way. Britannia’s mighty fist, its Royal Navy, would do everything in its power to bring the war home to America.
Already in Europe, American shipping was desperately sailing for neutral ports. Those that had not had the good sense to depart British ports after Moelfre Bay had already been seized. The Navy could do little to protect American commerce on the seas when it found strained to the breaking point to defend American harbors. Memories of the outrages perpetrated by the Royal Navy on the ports and coastal towns of the North sent a chill down the spine of every American. Those memories were also a spur to the naval service to see that they did not happen again. This time, the game was not so completely in the Royal Navy’s favor. But the chancelleries of Europe would have given the U.S. Navy only the longest of odds.
Certainly the Quay d’Orsay did not. What Napoleon III would not dare to do on his own, he would be glad to do now that the British led the way. The French ambassador, Count Edouard-Henri Mercier, delivered the emperor’s declaration of war the day after the British announcement, citing truly ludicrous justifications. Seward almost laughed in his face. Stanton and Welles could only count the addition of the French fleet and especially its large Army in Mexico to the order of battle of their country’s enemies.
The Russian alliance, when it became known, would serve to complicate British-French plans wonderfully. Forces that would have gone to North America would have to be diverted to bottling up the Russians again in the Baltic and Black seas. But this time, the cat was out of the bag. The presence of two Russian squadrons in American ports was proof the Russians were not about to repeat the errors of the Crimean War. The strong Russian squadron in New York was a vital addition to the protection of the port. For good reason that night Welles wrote in his diary, “God bless the Russians.”
Towering over them was Lincoln, who rallied the English language in its majestic cadences drawn from the Bible and Shakespeare to the defense of the nation. Men are moved by words and define themselves by words. While his secretaries of war and the Navy organized the nation’s defenses, Lincoln gathered and arrayed his words for battle. He addressed a joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against the British Empire in terms that riveted every member, Republican and Democrat alike. It was not a long speech, but expressed with a simple dignity, its elemental truth and directness had the members soaring. His words bound up all the hopes of the American democracy as the foundation stone, not only of the progress of the American people, but of all mankind. It was a speech for the ages, and men who had been with Lincoln since the beginning said it bested even his speech at the Cooper Union in Boston when he was seeking the nomination, the speech that had thrilled and moved his skeptical Eastern audience to set his feet on the road to the presidency. His words sang over the wires throughout the North and by ship across the seas to Europe and the Americas.
A copy rapidly found its way to the tent of Robert E. Lee, who gave it his complete attention. The news of the British invasion had sparked a general celebration of deliverance across the South, but in his tent Lee read Lincoln’s speech. The man whose heart had broken in the choice between Virginia and the United States clutched the paper in his hand and wept.
And well he might, for the Union people were tinder into which a match had been thrown. Doubts, demoralization, political differences were being consumed in the fire of an anger that had stirred them to their depths. A foreign invader on American soil, especially in a red coat, come to support the rebellion destroyed all restraint. The people were uncoiling their strength. Where the draft had failed to extract men, now volunteers flooded recruiting stations. New York State and the city, particularly, answered the call. It was not only the Irish who had done a volte-face. Patricians like Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., who had stood above the war and bought substitutes, now presented themselves for duty. Roosevelt organized a new brigade and commanded it through the rest of the war. His veterans remember that he came to the recruiting station with his little boy Teddy in tow.
OFFICE OF THE CENTRAL INFORMATION BUREAU, LAFAYETTE PARK, WASHINGTON, D.C., 12:05 AM, OCTOBER 2, 1863