Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War

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WASHINGTON NAVY YARD, WASHINGTON, D.C.,10:20 AM, AUGUST 6, 1863

Gus Fox was not the sort of man to wait on events much less on other men. The assistant secretary of the Navy was a burly, powerful man, with a bushy mustache-goatee that bristled with power. He bent events to his will as the foundries did that shaped the great flat slabs of armor plate into the rounded turrets of his beloved Monitors. On this day he was waiting for one man as he paced the Navy Yard’s Anacostia River dock, and a naval lieutenant at that.

Whenever Fox appeared at the Yard, a primal energy was unleashed. Adm. John Dahlgren, during his time as superintendent of the Yard, had had the self-confidence and connections with Lincoln to withstand and guide Fox’s enthusiasm. But his successor, Capt. Andrew Harwood, was not as well connected and knew it. He would pay Fox the courtesies his dignity allowed and then get back to his own work and leave the Assistant Secretary to whatever had brought him to the Yard. Fox understood the game and played it well. Being the brother-in-law of the Postmaster General and the son-in-law of a major figure in the Republican Party had been the trick that landed him the job. That he was uniquely qualified for it was not something that American patronage politics encouraged, but this time it had hit a bull’s-eye.

Everyone knew that Gideon Welles was the Secretary of the Navy. Everyone also knew that Fox was the Navy. Secretary Welles stuck to policy and left the conduct of actual operations to Fox, who had the complete confidence of the officer corps. He was, after all, one of their own. A former naval officer, he resigned during the service doldrums of the 1850s, but the war had drawn him back like a magnet.

In late 1860, as the issue of war or peace had hung in the balance and the new President and his cabinet struggled with whether to relieve Fort Sumter, Fox had figured out the how and threw the plan into Lincoln’s lap. It was hardly his fault that the relief expedition he accompanied had arrived in Charleston Harbor just as the Confederates began the bombardment of the fort. Fox had the dubious honor of escorting the surrendered garrison home. That experience only fueled his aggressive and energetic nature. He had suggested and organized the first important naval success of the war by seizing Port Royal in South Carolina and turning it into the Navy’s forward operating base without which the blockade could not have been maintained so far south.

Lincoln had been overjoyed that the Navy had pulled such a beautiful rabbit out the hat when most news had reeked of bitter frustration and failure. If Dahlgren was close to Lincoln, now so was Fox. He had piled high his credit with the President with his enthusiastic support of John Ericcson’s famous Monitor and especially of the follow-on class, the Passaics. Those ships formed the fighting core of Dahlgren’s force off Charleston. Another larger class of shallow-draft monitors, the Casco class, was now abuilding along the Atlantic coast and along the Ohio.

Fox was not one to hoard his credit. He wagered it freely on new games as they came up. He was ruthless and arrogant, but admirals had more to fear from those features than lieutenants did. He was also an instinctive fighter, seized new ideas and opportunities, and could size up good men in a snap.

One such man was on the bridge of the Nansemond gliding up to the dock. Fox liked such men and gave them bigger and bolder commands. There were plenty of commands to go around in a navy that had mushroomed so quickly in size-and not nearly enough bold and lucky men to take them. The evidence of that lucky boldness was the prize trailing behind Lamson’s Nansemond. She was the British blockade-runner, the Margaret and Jesse. Lamson had caught her off Wilmington, where his luck had blossomed. He had come across her low in the water with a heavy cargo of lead-those deadly accurate Whitworth breach-loading rifled guns and enough ammunition to keep them firing for years. The weight of her cargo had been her undoing. Built as a British mail packet, the iron-hulled, side-wheeler Margaret and Jesse was the only ship afloat able to do sixteen knots, but slowed by the greed of her cargo, Nansemond had fallen on her like a hawk.

Lieutenant Lamson knew Fox by sight. Any aggressive officer among the blockading and river fighting squadrons along the Atlantic coast was sure to have met Fox. As the ship came alongside the dock, Fox took the time to examine the sleek ship coming up to dock outboard of Nansemond. Then his eyes moved to the bridge and locked on Lamson’s.

“Captain, come ashore immediately. I must speak with you,” Fox’s voice boomed. Lamson bounded down the gangplank as soon as it hit the dock. He took Fox’s extended hand and found the older man was trying to crush it as he grinned at him. Lamson smiled back and met grip with grip until Fox let go. “Good to see you again, young man. A fine prize.” He looked thoughtful for a moment and said, “You may not have seen the last of her.” He motioned to the carriage nearby. “We must hurry. You are wanted at the White House.

BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD STATION, WASHINGTON, D.C., 10:30 AM, AUGUST 6, 1863

The lieutenant saluted. “Colonel Sharpe?” he asked the officer who had just stepped off the train car. George H. Sharpe was on the short side of medium height, round shouldered, and with a walrus mustache, a plain, even homely looking thirty-five-year-old man and not a very martial figure by any means. He was a man you could easily miss-until he spoke, that is.

“Lieutenant, I am Colonel Sharpe.” The young man was taken aback at the transformation. Sharpe’s face had brightened with a disarming smile and his blue-gray eyes sparkled with good humor.

“I am to take you to the White House, sir, by direction of the Secretary of War.”

Sharpe reflected that life was getting more and more interesting as the carriage clattered down Pennsylvania Avenue. He had been summoned by the iron-willed Secretary to Washington with no explanation from his staff position at the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac at Brandy Station in Virginia, the furthest point of the Army’s advance after Gettysburg. He had met the formidable Edwin McMasters Stanton before. His duties had taken him to Washington repeatedly before Gettysburg, and he had briefed Stanton any number of times. He knew that the Secretary of War was a force of nature, single-minded will personified. Stanton had come to national prominence shortly before the war when he had defended Dan Sickles for shooting his wife’s lover dead right outside the White House and won the case by advancing the insanity defense for the first time in American legal history. Because of those briefings, Stanton had acquired a taste for what Sharpe had to say.

Sharpe, a slope-shouldered man from Kingston, New York, was unique in any number of ways. He was a Hudson Valley aristocrat, sophisticated and cosmopolitan. He was one of the best-educated men in the country, with degrees from Rutgers and Yale Law School. He had been the chargé at the Vienna legation and was something of a linguist, fluent in Latin and French. His mousy exterior gave no indication that he liked to have good time. A connoisseur of fine food and wine, he was not above staggering back from the Irish Brigade’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration tight as a tick. He also had a mind as sharp as an obsidian razor.

When Joseph Hooker had blown into the command of the Army like a cleansing wind, Sharpe had been his inspired choice for something new. Hooker had been that transformational man who had leapt out of an old paradigm into the new. With a taste for the value of military intelligence, he had experimented with various collection means as a division and corps commander. When he became Army commander, he did something unique. Heretofore, commanding generals had been their own intelligence officers, a role that had worked for great commanders like Washington when armies were small. Hooker saw that the scale and complexity of modern war had made it impossible for any single man to both command an army and control its intelligence operation as well.

For the latter task he chose Sharpe. At Fredericksburg, he had seen Sharpe decisively sort out a muddle on the field. A regiment of French immigrants had milled about in confusion, unable to understand the order of their non-French-speaking colonel. Sharpe rode over from his own 120th New York (NY) Volunteers, gave the orders in parade ground-loud perfect French, and the regiment moved smartly into line. Hooker had called Sharpe in for an interview and showed him a French book on how to create a secret service. He asked if he could translate it and how fast. Sharpe replied, “As fast as I can read it.” When he did, the job was his.

Sharpe had taken this new ball and run with it. He created a fully functioning intelligence operation-the Bureau of Military Information (BMI)-practically from scratch. He assembled a contingent of hardy and clever scouts, developed a spy network, and established interrogation, document exploitation, and order-of-battle operations. Hooker had given him carte blanche, which he used to coordinate the other intelligence collection means of the cavalry, Balloon Corps, and Signal Corps. He also established contacts throughout the Eastern Theater of operations that often took him to Washington and Baltimore. His efforts had presented Robert E. Lee “the Incomparable” to Hooker on a silver platter in April, the most magnificent gift of intelligence in the war. However, at Chancellorsville early the next month Joe Hooker had lost faith in Joe Hooker, and all of Sharpe’s efforts went for naught.

Hooker’s successor, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, had listened to Sharpe at Gettysburg and not flinched. It was Sharpe’s report on the night of July 2 that had convinced Meade to stay and fight it out on the third day of the battle. It was also Sharpe’s special operation raid the morning of the same day that had snatched dispatches to Lee from Jefferson Davis that laid bare the Confederacy’s defensive strategy and force deployment in the East. Stanton was so elated that he poured gold into the hands of Sharpe’s chief of scouts, the sandy-haired Sgt. Milton Cline, who had personally seized the dispatches. Yes, Stanton knew Sharpe.

Now Sharpe was pondering the reason for his cryptic summons. He considered the possible sources in the reports he had forwarded to Washington. Almost everything had been a running account of Lee’s movements, strength, logistics, and possible intentions. There was nothing really special or earthshaking there, just patient building of a picture of the enemy and the daily effort to keep it current. Although Stanton absorbed everything like a sponge, his interest had shown no special emphasis in the month since Gettysburg except for the case of a contraband named George.

George, a Confederate officer’s servant, had come through the lines only last week. He bore a strange tale, one that normally was outside Sharpe’s area of responsibility. Cline had come to see him, “Colonel, you should talk to this boy, yourself.” And he did.

The boy was obviously intelligent. His astute observations confirmed much of what Sharpe’s office already knew, a vital cross-checking feature of intelligence. It was the normal order-of-battle information, but George had more to say when Cline nudged him and said, “George, tell him about the white folks up north.” He then told a tale that made even Sharpe’s eyes widen.

As Sharpe mused in his carriage, Fox’s and Lamson’s carriage was also moving down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House. Fox chewed on his cigar briefly between sentences. He was too active a man to endure long silences. “These Confederate commerce raiders are gutting our merchant navy, ruining our international commerce, and driving people whose livelihoods have been destroyed into the arms of the people who want this war stopped.”

Lamson watched the man’s body language radiate hostility. Fox went on, “They’re as serious a threat as the blockade-runners that keep the rebels alive with the bounty of Her Majesty’s foundries and arsenals.” He looked at the ruin of his cigar with disgust and tossed it out the window. “And, I’ll tell you straight out, Lamson, that we are on the losing end of the fight at both ends. We are just not catching enough blockade-runners, and even when we catch one, Semmes and his infernal Alabama seize two of our ships. A losing game, a losing game.”

Lamson had not been discouraged by Fox’s venting. Rather his interest had been piqued. It was not every day that a junior naval officer received an invitation to the White House. Within Fox’s lament, Lamson could smell opportunity for something grand. It was with a delicious sense of anticipation that he followed Fox into the White House.

Charles Dana, the assistant secretary of war and Fox’s counterpart, was already in the anteroom chatting with an Army colonel. He saw Fox and said, “Gus, let me introduce Col. George Sharpe. Colonel, this is Gus Fox whom I’m sure you’ve heard of.”

Fox sized up Sharpe and was not impressed as they shook hands. “Dana here speaks highly of you, Colonel, don’t you, Charlie?” Sharpe’s handshake was firm, not what Fox expected from such a nondescript-looking man. Then Fox was as taken aback as the lieutenant at the railroad station had been by the transformation of Sharpe’s face. There was power there. He remembered to introduce Lamson, who found some comfort in the presence of another officer in this otherwise intimidating setting of the Executive Mansion, even if it was an Army officer three grades his senior. Fox and Dana drifted off to a corner to talk, leaving the colonel and the lieutenant to their thoughts.

Upstairs the cabinet was meeting with the President. The room in which they regularly met was austere, the only decorations being a large series of maps on one wall and on the other an old engraving of Andrew Jackson and a small framed photographic portrait of John Bright, a man Lincoln admired immensely. Bright was a member of the British Parliament whose impassioned support of the United States in its struggle had earned him the derisive title of “Member from the United States.” At times he seemed to be the only member of the British establishment who took up the cause of the Union. His powerful antislavery message resonated more with working- and middle-class Britons than with the ruling and business classes whose palpable disdain for the Union was returned with a bitter resentment by the Americans. Establishment Britain anticipated a Southern victory with undisguised glee. That was not lost on the men sitting at the table. A recent centerpiece for the table, a jagged piece of shell, had been presented by Meade after Gettysburg. It had been fired by a Whitworth breech-loading rifled cannon presented as a gift to the Confederacy by the London Chamber of Commerce.¹

Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William H. Seward, held the floor. He was the man who informed opinion acknowledged should have been president and was probably the most distinguished man in the country before the war. He had been governor of New York and a senator thereafter. The 1860 nomination of the new Republican Party seemed his for the taking, until the Log Splitter from Illinois carried off the prize from under Seward’s enormous Roman nose. That was not the first time he had underestimated Lincoln. When the new president sought the best men for his cabinet, he turned to Seward to be his senior cabinet officer. Seward thought at first that that position gave him license to determine policy for the unsophisticated lawyer from the West. When he got over his shock that Lincoln would be his own man and was quite capable of it, their relationship settled into one of mutual respect and even friendship. Seward was a man without political rancor and served to the best of his considerable ability. For that reason, he did not object when Lincoln made Thomas Haines Dudley the U.S. consul in Liverpool. Dudley was the Connecticut politician whose support had swung the Republican nomination away from Seward to Lincoln. The appointment was more than a political reward; Lincoln had placed an able man in a sensitive post, which Seward did not fail to recognize.²

Still, Seward was an enormous presence in any room. A slight man, thin-faced with a mop of tousled hair that no comb dared approach, he was the master of his own domain of foreign policy, subject only to Lincoln’s broad policy guidance. William Russell, the famous British journalist, described him in 1861 as “a subtle, quick man, rejoicing in power, given to perorate and to oracular utterances, fond of badinage, bursting with the importance of state mysteries, and with the dignity of directing foreign policy of the greatest country-as all Americans think-in the world.”³ He had not hesitated to use that power in the dangerous first months of Lincoln’s presidency. He had recommended and executed the policy to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to arrest thousands of Southern sympathizers and collaborators. He had pressured the British diplomatically by putting on an aggressive, anti-British front to warn them off from supporting the South too much. That and every other measure to curb British support for the Confederacy had failed. That failure was the subject of today’s cabinet meeting and Seward’s briefing. It would be laced with the Secretary’s widely acknowledge gift for swearing, something Lincoln took enormous amusement in.

“We are approaching a damned crisis we do not seem able to control. Ambassador Adams reports that the work on the two infernal rams at the Laird Brothers’ shipbuilding works in Birkenhead near Liverpool continues at an accelerated pace. Adams writes as of the 11th of last month, ‘All the appliances of British skill to the arts of destruction appear to be resorted to for the purpose of doing injury to the people of the United States.… It is not unnatural that such proceedings should be regarded by the government and people of the United States with the greatest alarm, virtually as tantamount to a participation in the war by the government of Great Britain.’”⁴

Seward continued, “I do not need to remind you that Laird built the infamous Alabama. Her construction number was 292; that of the rams, 294 and 295. Laird Brothers is so damned confident that they mock us with the very ship’s construction numbers. Our consul in Liverpool, Thomas Dudley, has reported in minute detail the progress of construction and proof that they are intended for delivery to Confederate agents.” He brought a letter out his portfolio. “This is from Dudley on the 21st of last month, describing the construction of even another ram up in Glasgow. ‘On Thursday of last week I went to Glasgow and took with me one of my men. I obtained a good view of the Ram building for the Confederates by George Thompson from the river, which is very narrow. She is up high and so much exposed that I could see her as if in the yard. Only a part of the armour plates are on as yet, and from appearances I should judge she could not be ready for launching for two months at least.’ He also writes they intend to name this ram the Virginia.”

Seward went on, the steam almost rising from his collar. “Adams presents these proofs to the British Foreign Minister, and Sir John Russell, in turn, replied with a straight face that they constitute no real proofs, that they are based on ‘hearsay rumor.’ I am convinced he is only following the direction of the Prime Minister. Lord Palmerston is no friend of the United States and sets the tone for the entire cabinet. He is set upon the success of the rebellion. I am convinced that otherwise the English Ministry are our friends with the exception of the chief. His course and conduct are execrable.” He handed the papers to Lincoln.

“Seward,” began Lincoln with such a hard edge that the Secretary of State straightened in his chair, “I would not so easily assume Russell’s good will. He has expressed the opinion that the South should be and will be independent. I still haven’t forgotten his comments on the Emancipation Proclamation.” His hand grasped the papers so tightly that they crumpled as his jaw set hard. “That man is no friend of the United States.” The cabinet was taken aback. None of them had ever heard him speak so harshly of anyone.

The President picked up another document from the table and went on, “Russell wrote, ‘There seems to be no declaration of a principle adverse to slavery in this proclamation. It is a measure of a very questionable kind.’A very questionable kind? How dare he affront this great thing we are about? I have to bring the people along on emancipation step by step. They will not be rushed, but are willing to learn. I cannot beat into them what only time and the evidence of their own common and moral senses tell them.” His fist with the crumpled papers pounded the arm of his chair.

“England will live to regret her inimical attitude towards us. After the collapse of the rebellion, John Bull will find that he has injured himself much more seriously than us.”⁹

Seward tried to lighten the mood. “I have this description from a fellow countryman of Russell’s, Sidney Smith. He said of Russell, ‘He would have been willing to have built St. Peter’s, commanded the Channel Squadron, or to have operated on a patient for the stone and would not have been deterred by the collapse of the sacred edifice, or the patient’s death.’” The corners of a few dour faces rose.

“I’ve heard that Russell is only 5 foot 4 inches and barely weighs 8 stone. Why, Little Johnny Russell gives small men a bad name. He was once, as Smith said, ‘over six foot tall but he has been so constantly kept in hot water that he is boiled down to the proportions in which you now behold him.’” Half smiles broke into laughter.

Lincoln had quickly shed his uncharacteristic anger, and he was not to be outdone in story telling. “That reminds me,” he began-for those around Lincoln, those three words-were very familiar “of a barber in Sangamon County. He had just gone to bed, when a stranger came along and said he must be shaved; that he had four days’ beard on his face and was going to a ball, and that the beard must come off. Well, the barber reluctantly got up, and dressed, and seated the man in a chair with a back so low that every time he bore down on him he came near dislocating his victim’s neck. He began by lathering his face, including his nose, eyes, and ears, stropped his razor on his boot, and then made a drive at the man’s countenance as if he had practiced mowing a stubblefield. He made a bold swath across the cheek, carrying away the beard, a pimple, and two warts. The man in the chair ventured the remark, ‘You appear to make everything level as you go.’ Said the barber, ‘Yes, and if this handle don’t break, I guess I’ll get away with what there is there.’ The man’s cheeks were so hollow that the barber could not get down into the valleys with the razor, and his ingenious idea occurred to him to stick his finger in the man’s mouth and press out the cheeks. Finally he cut clear through the cheek and into his own finger. He pulled the finger out of the man’s mouth, snapped the blood off it, glared at him and said, ‘There, you lantern-jawed cuss, you’ve made me cut my finger.’”

Lincoln concluded with a twinkle in his eye, “Now, England will find that she has got the South into a pretty bad scrape by trying to administer to her, and in the end she will find that she has only cut her own finger.”

The men burst out laughing. Even Gideon Welles nodded his great bushy beard. If ever there was a flinty New England Yankee, it was Welles. He was a good Navy Secretary and a War Democrat whom Lincoln brought into the cabinet to attract support for the effort to restore the Union. Welles had the wit to use Fox and did so now that Lincoln was in a good mood. “I would like Fox to discuss the potentialities of these ships.” Lincoln nodded, and an assistant went to fetch him.

But Lincoln was on a roll and went on. “It makes me think of an Indian chief that we had out West. He was visited by an Englishman once who tried to impress him with the greatness of England. ‘Why,’ said he to the chief, ‘the sun never sets on England.’ ‘Humph!’ said the Indian. ‘I suppose it’s because God wouldn’t trust them in the dark.’”¹¹

They were still laughing when Fox entered the room to lay out the facts in stark detail. The two rams were iron hulled, 230 feet in length by 45 feet in the beam. They carried 4.5 inches of armor on the hull, which was designed to be only 6 feet above the waterline. They carried four heavy 9-inch British rifled guns, two each in twin turrets in 10 inches of armor. They had a speed of 10.5 knots and a cruising range of 3,000 miles. Most ominously, though, were the 7-foot steel rams jutting from the prows, an innovation reintroduced from ancient times.

“Those are facts, gentlemen, of the ships themselves. The ships are Numbers 294 and 295, and are being built in the same slip as the Alabama. Mr. Dudley’s quick fingers have acquired for us the intent of the rebels. Their chief agent in Britain, James Bulloch, has written, ‘I designed these ships for something more than harbour or even coast defence, and I confidently believe, if ready for sea now, they could sweep away the entire blockading fleet of the enemy.’”

Lincoln calmly broke the silence that followed that announcement. “Gus, when do we expect the first ship to be finished?”

“Our best estimate is late September, sir.”

Lincoln turned to Seward. “Mr. Secretary, have we exhausted every means to persuade the British government to intervene and block the delivery of these ships?”

“Mr. President, we face the subtle but no less malevolent hostility of Palmerston. The Prime Minister works his hostility out like a puppeteer. Russell can do nothing to block him. His Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, is his ally. Is there anyone in this room that forgets his open endorsement of British recognition of the Confederacy last October?” Seward snorted in disgust. “He openly stated that the rebels had made a government and an army, and infamously ‘what is more than either, they have made a nation.’¹² He publicly announced that the Confederacy would win its independence. The announcement caused a sensation in Europe and a case of delirium in the South.”

Lincoln seemed lost in thought once Seward finished speaking, and no one else wanted to break into it. The clicking of the clock filled the room. The President leaned back in his chair, crossed his gangly legs, and put his long hands on the armrests. “Since the early days of this administration, I have done everything in my power to avoid being dragged into a second war, firm in the belief that the Union can bear only one war at a time. That is why during the Trent Affair I chose to suffer the public outrage and return the Confederate commissioners. The British were serious about war, and we were not.”

Turning to look at John Bright’s picture on the wall, he said, “There are times when a policy simply can no longer be sustained. Our foreign trade is in a shambles, our merchant fleet in ruins or fled to foreign flags, economic ruin spreads along the East Coast. There may come a time when I can no longer ignore these injuries.” Looking at Seward, he said, “Mr. Secretary, we must prepare a message for Mr. Adams to present to Lord Russell, a message that his government cannot ignore, that there is a line that cannot be crossed.”

Fox saw his opening. “Mr. President,” then remembering Welles, he added, “Mr. Secretary,” and nodded. Navy Secretary Welles was a man who could be ruffled, if the proprieties were ignored. “May I suggest another measure that could prevent a war even if the British look the other way while the ships escape into international waters?”

Lincoln was intrigued, “Go on, Gus.”

“As you know, the Foreign Enlistment Act was passed some years ago ostensibly to prevent British subjects from violating British neutrality by providing overt military assistance to a belligerent. Unfortunately, for us, the law was written so loosely that the Confederates have been able to sail the equivalent of a commerce-raiding fleet through it.

“The law forbids British subjects and firms from supplying ships of war to a belligerent, that is, ships outfitted with guns, ammunition, and military fittings in general. It also forbids the recruitment of British subjects as crews for belligerent warships. Our rebel friends get around this by building what are obviously commerce raiders but without the guns, ammunition, and fittings. Then as with the Alabama, they sneaked it out of Liverpool Harbor and sailed it off to the Azores, where it married up with another ship carrying guns, ammunition, fittings, and military stores, as well as a mostly British, former Royal Navy crew. The military cargo was transferred and fitted to the commerce raider in short order.”

Seward added, “We have evidence that British officials from the harbor master in Liverpool to the Foreign Ministry itself connived to alert the Confederate agents in the port to take the ship out when our diplomatic pressure became too great.” He nodded to Fox to continue.

“Yes, that is just my point. We can expect the British to try this again. If we intercept the rams just outside of British waters in the Irish Sea, we can seize or sink them easily since they will be unarmed and with minimal crew.”

Seward thumped the table with a bang. “Excellent. Just what I have been recommending to you, Gideon!”

Welles glowered. “And I have told you, Bill, we simply do not have the warships to pull off blockade duty. Even one purpose-built warship is too much.”

Fox had an answer. “Mr. Secretary, we do not need to use such ship. The rams will be unarmed and with only a small transfer crew on its sea trials voyage. What we need is something fast with a bold captain to strike suddenly like a shark.”

Lincoln said, “I like what I’m hearing. Go on, Gus. And what will you use if not a purpose-built warship? And who will be our bold captain?”

“I have him downstairs, Mr. President. It is Lt. Roswell Lamson of the Nanesmond. I took the liberty of ordering him to the Navy Yard.”

“I’ve heard of this young man. Didn’t he bring in quite prize just a few days ago?”

“Yes, sir, the fastest ship on record, the British mail packet the Margaret and Jesse. And here is my second point. Such a stroke requires the greatest speed and agility, and that is just what the Margaret and Jesse has-sixteen knots to the ten and a half knots for the rams.”

“But this ship isn’t armed, is it?”

“No, sir, but that can be remedied in ten days at the Navy Yard if I have priority. The guns, fittings, and skilled workmen are there. They’ve worked wonders before.”

“Well, Gus, you’ve brightened my day considerable. Let’s meet this young man.”

All this time Sharpe and Lamson had been in the middle of an animated conversation. Lamson found himself pouring out everything he knew about blockade-running prompted by one deft question after another from Sharpe. Lamson was in the middle of his account of running down the Margaret and Jesse when a secretary announced that the President would see him. He straightened his uniform; slicked back his straight, dark hair; and followed the secretary as Sharpe sent after him an encouraging, “Good luck, Lieutenant.”

When they were alone, Dana leaned over to speak in confidence. “Colonel, your report of the contraband, George, caused quite a stir here coming on the heels of Morgan’s raid.”

Sharpe had hoped that it would. He asked, “How so?”

“How much do you know about the Copperheads?”

Sharpe knew a great deal. His intelligence duties included, on his initiative, counterintelligence as well. He was aware of the attempts by the Copperheads to attack the morale of the Union soldier through the mails and by visiting agitators. He also knew how they preyed on furloughed soldiers and did everything to discourage recruitment. He went over these issues one by one with Dana, who was impressed with Sharpe’s grasp of an issue not directly tied to his duties.

“I must tell you, Sharpe, that the President and Secretary Stanton want to discuss your report with you. It bears on the Copperhead conspiracy centered in the Midwest to launch another rebellion; take Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois out of the Union; and join the Confederacy. They are not just talking, either, or attempting to poison the minds of citizens and soldiers. They have raided military warehouses and depots for small arms and ammunition, and are even making huge purchases on the open market. They’ve even welcomed rebel officers among them to plan the military operation. We are convinced they plan to overthrow the government and take the Northwest into the Confederacy.”

Now it was Sharpe’s turn to be impressed. “What is the source of your information?” he asked.

Dana smiled. “We have a remarkable young agent in their midst. Felix Stidger, a clerk for the Tennessee Provost, volunteered for the mission and reports to Col. Henry Carrington. The governor of Indiana requested Carrington by name to get a grip on these damned traitors, and the colonel recruited Stidger. The young man ingratiated himself so well with the conspirators that he was appointed, of all things, their corresponding secretary! Hah! We get all the news faster than some of their own leaders. We’ve been able to raid many of their arms caches and arrest a number of their leaders, but I’m afraid we’re just scratching the surface. That’s why Stidger is so important. He is an admirable young man. His country owes well of him.”