Although the French jackal would not lead in this war, it would go where the British lion would not. The British had been faced with a conundrum in their decision to go to war with the Union, one they had mulled over as early as the Trent Affair two years before. Did war with the United States automatically mean recognition of and alliance with the Confederacy? Even then slavery had been so odious that the British had studiously decided to avoid any formal military cooperation, much less recognition and alliance. In two years slavery had not become any less odious, and the British had decided that they would separate the two issues officially. Napoleon had seen no necessity for such a distinction and followed his declaration of war with immediate recognition of the Confederacy, something he had not bothered to discuss with London. Lord Russell astutely understood that it would be impossible to come up with a formula on slavery “which the southerners would agree to, and the people of England approve of. The French Government are more free from the shackles of principle and of right and wrong on these matters… than we are.”
Napoleon was playing for different stakes and was well aware that should the Union triumph against the Confederacy, it would surely turn its wrath on the French presumption to carve out a colony in North America. A Union defeat then was the guarantee of a continued French free hand in Mexico. Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Congress were all too happy to confirm that guarantee as the price of recognition and alliance. They had to swallow hard because in January of that same year, Davis had to chastise severely the French consuls in Richmond and Galveston for, in the words of the Austrian ambassador in Washington, “imprudent ardor to foment a revolution in Texas against Mr. Jefferson Davis” in hopes of creating a buffer state under French protection. The French were being more than prudent. There had been enough evidence before the war of a decided Southern interest in annexing more of Mexico. That interest had not disappeared. Both sides had smiled and pretended that each would not immediately repudiate the agreement when the time was right.
Bazaine was a product of colonial war. He had gained renown in fighting in North Africa, where he had become a colonel of the Foreign Legion, and as had Williams in Canada, he had gained fame in the Crimean War. In Mexico he had handled a division with great skill, defeating a Mexican army and compelling the surrender of Puebla in May, which opened the way to Mexico City for the French Expeditionary Army. This French general was nobody’s fool; he could put the Union’s political generals to shame. He was aware of France’s ambitions in this region and made sure they supported his own. Much glory would accrue to the French general who liberated New Orleans.
He would not have to rely only on the troops he was bringing from Mexico. A strong French fleet was at this moment sailing toward Galveston to break the blockade and disembark strong reinforcements. The fleet then would support his attack on the first city of the South. The emperor had been known to say privately that his uncle’s sale of that city and the immense territory it governed had been a colossal mistake. It had occurred to Bazaine that once the city was again in French hands, the emperor would be loath to give it up. The future was pregnant with such opportunities.
SOUTH ATLANTIC BLOCKADING SQUADRON, CHARLESTON HARBOR, SOUTH CAROLINA, 11:00 AM, OCTOBER 5, 1863
Ever since his son had arrived with the ship that brought the news of war, Rear Adm. John Dahlgren had been looking over him in unguarded moments. He was searching to see if the gallant lad who had gone off to war early last year, still a teenager, still showed some spirit, or if losing a leg had also killed something in him. Lincoln had been a good friend in writing him of Ulric’s recovery. It had been an ongoing agony for the father to know that he had two sons hovering near death in Washing-ton-Ullie wounded at Gettsyburg and Charlie wracked with fever from Vicksburg. Dahlgren had written,The Sabbath arrives, and with it the brother who, wasted by the malaria and summer sun of the Mississippi Valley, had had just sufficient strength to crawl homeward for care and cure under his father’s roof. Both are but wrecks of the active, care-free lads who went out from their home and offered their mite to the great cause.… In retrospect there is nothing to regret.
He had known no more joy than seeing Ullie waving to him from the dispatch boat that had brought him to the flagship. In the next few hectic days his gaze would linger on Ullie as he hobbled on his crutches across the deck or struggled awkwardly to learn to walk with his new cork leg. Dahlgren’s stern Swedish heritage kept him from showing the emotions that pulsed through him as he remembered the lithe, leopardlike grace of the splendid horseman and dancer who had swept away the heart of every girl in Washington. He could see that same intensity in Ullie that had made him excel at everything he had attempted. He was the same as his little boy, who would fall down and get right back up. The boy had mastered horses, dancing, and the saber. What was the cork leg then? Twenty years old and already a hero and a full colonel.
The day after he arrived, his father watched Ullie intently studying the gun drill of the crew, especially the Marines manning the 5.1-inch Dahlgren rifle on the spar deck. He remembered little Ullie at the Navy Yard, not yet ten years old, watching the gun drill his father had modified for his new guns with just as much intensity. The sailors had thought him a lucky mascot and were glad to have him around. When his father was not around, they had let him help serve the gun in practice. Initially, the Marines had been nervous about having an Army colonel-a Navy captain equivalent-watching so closely, especially the admiral’s son and a “peg leg” to boot, but he seemed to know his way around the guns as well as any man and better than some. After a while, the earnest and engaging young man became a favorite of the Marines.
It was only a glance here and there the admiral could spare. It had not been lost on him that he was most assuredly going to be the first American naval officer to command a full fleet action. Heretofore, the U.S. Navy’s battle record had been mostly in single ship-to-ship combat or small contingents at most. Oliver Hazard Perry had come closest in 1813 on the Great Lakes, but what Dahlgren faced would dwarf that combat.
His South Atlantic Blockading Squadron numbered seventy-eight vessels but could not have resembled Admiral Milne’s force assembled at Bermuda less. As the name of Dahlgren’s force indicated, it was designed to blockade the shallow coasts and harbors of the South. Milne’s command was designed to fight great fleet actions on the high seas. Of Dahlgren’s almost four score ships, only four were traditional, wooden, purpose-built warships-one frigate and three sloops. Nine more ships were the new ironclads-the broadside ship New Ironsides and all eight of the Passaic class single-turreted monitors. There were another ten gunboats. The rest were small screw or side-wheel steam ships, small sailing ships with mortars, or supply ships, and none were more than a thousand tons (see Appendix B). Secretary Welles had promised him four new monitors when they were completed within two months. Dahlgren concluded that it might as well be a year for all the good they would do him. He could smell war on the wind from Bermuda.
Of all his ships, only twenty were off Charleston when he received the news of war with Britain on September 28. The rest of his ships were covering the numerous small islands, river mouths, and islets along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia or were at the squadron’s main forward operating base a hundred miles to the south at Port Royal. A few small, fast ships prowled the waters from Bermuda and Nassau for blockade-runners.