Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War

5

U.S. ARMY ORDNANCE BUREAU, THE WINDER BUILDING, SEVENTEENTH STREET, N.W., WASHINGTON, D.C., 10:35 AM, AUGUST 8, 1863

Sharpe discovered that Lincoln’s offer entailed more attendance on the President in his travels about Washington. Lincoln explained as they alighted in front of the Ordnance Bureau, “If I introduce you about town as someone in my confidence, you will be taken a lot more seriously. I don’t intend to do this thing by halves.”

On the drive from the Navy Yard, Lincoln had vented his frustration in working with the chief of the Ordnance Bureau, Col. James W. Ripley. The essence of that problem was found in the nickname he had acquired within his own bureau as “Ripley van Winkle.” Ripley rejected any new innovation in firearms technology as “new-fangled gimcracks” and a nefarious plot to slow down the production of the tried-and-true basic weapons determined by the Ordnance Bureau to be the proper and sufficient arms for the Army.

“I swear, Sharpe, the man defines stubborn and single minded. Every time I want a new idea tried, I must undergo the labors of Hercules to get him to do it. He reminds me of a story. During the Creek War a requisition was made on a certain lieutenant of ordnance, stationed at the South, which he refused to comply with, on the ground that it had not reached him through the channel pointed out by the regulations. He soon after received a message from Gen. Andy Jackson, the substance of which was that if he did not make the issue immediately he would send a guard to arrest him and bring him into camp, and there hang him from the first tree. The requisition was, of course, promptly complied with.

“What makes it so painful, Sharpe, is that it was Ripley who told this story about himself! As I said, I only retail my stories, and some of them come with thorns. I’m constantly suggesting he order some of these new breech-loading or repeating weapons, but he always argues against it, like a dog defending his last bone. I tell you, I envy Old Hickory’s willingness to hang a man to be taken seriously. We wouldn’t have had this war if a man like Jackson had been in office instead of Buchanan, who simply sold off the store before I took office. When South Carolina made its first threat to secede, Jackson announced if they dared, he would march the Army into the state and hang the first traitor from the first tree with the first rope. You never saw the chivalry come to heel so fast.

“But no one takes me seriously on that. The nearest I can come is to personally go to this office and give him a direct order to buy so many of these weapons. That is about as close as I can come to threaten to hang him. And it works but not as well as the specter of a tree and rope. He issues the contracts, but then in the fine print he stipulates that if the order is delivered even one day late, the contract is canceled.”

“Why don’t you simply dismiss and replace him?”

“Hah! Easier said than done. There were few truly qualified men in the Army when this war started. The people and Congress had been happy to keep the Army small and penurious. A pinched purse is no friend to a new idea. We planted lieutenants in a bed of punctilious forms and now have harvested colonels who cannot think beyond what has been done before. The motto of the Ordnance Corps might as well be the one coined by Voltaire-‘Learned Nothing and Forgotten Nothing.’ Do you know that he refused to purchase breech-loading weapons for [Hiram] Berdan’s rifles, the finest sharpshooters in the Army? Let me tell you how I finally got the 1859 Sharps rifle into the hands of his sharpshooters.

“The sharpshooters were barely settled into their camp when their prowess began to cause quite a stir among folks. Visitors buzzed around them like flies on molasses. So not to miss the fun, I showed up trailing Generals McClellan, [Irvin] McDowell, and [Joseph] Mansfield and a lot more stars, the Prince de Joinville and his considerable French entourage, and three cabinet officers. Quite a party.

“I reviewed the men, and then we went down to the rifle pits, where they had been practicing. Everybody got to fire at targets at six hundred yards. Well, all of these important people could only get about one in four rounds into the targets. They wouldn’t have made it on the frontier, that’s for sure. Then Tom Scott, the assistant secretary of war back then, and a friend of Ripley, sneered something powerful at Colonel Berdan, asking him how he could compare his knowledge of ordnance with the phalanx of ‘experts’ in the government. I knew what he was up to right off. You see, Berdan had hoped to get on the good side of Ripley by agreeing to the muzzle-loaders, but then changed his mind and ended up on Ripley’s bad side. I guess his boys gave him an earful. But he only earned Ripley’s ill will. Well, now, Berdan did not rise to Scott’s bait, so Scott challenged him to try a shot at the target himself. Poor Scott-he and bad judgment went together. A target of a man was set up at six hundred yards and they wrote the name of Jeff Davis on it.” Lincoln laughed. “Now Berdan said that he was a bit reluctant to take a shot at a chief executive in the presence of another, and I said, ‘Oh, Colonel, if you make a good shot it will serve him right.’

“Berdan borrowed his sergeant major’s personal breechloader. Then Scott, like the Serpent in the Tree, said, ‘Now, you must fire standing, for officers should not dirty their uniforms by getting into rifle pits.’

“Berdan answered as coolly as could be, ‘You are right, Colonel Scott. I always fire from the shoulder.’ It was a huge, heavy gun, too.

“‘What point are you going to fire at?’ Scott asked.

“‘The head.’

“Scott added, ‘Fire at the right eye!’

“Scott gloated as the target was brought in, thinking he had run a log through his spokes. Then, I swear, his face fell to his boots as everyone could see Jeff Davis’s right pupil had been cleanly shot through! Now Berdan is an uncommonly good shot, but even Davy Crockett or Dan’l Boone would have trouble with that shot. Who cared? I don’t know when I had laughed so hard, but I did control myself long enough to call back from my carriage, ‘Colonel, come down tomorrow, and I will give you an order for your breechloaders!’

“And you might think that was the end of that. Ripley simply refused to fill the order, and Scott backed him up.” Sharpe’s eyebrows rose in incredulity. “Yes, I thought so, too. And so did General McClellan, who tried to compromise the issue by requesting the Colt repeating rifle, but if Ripley could scorn the President, who was the general in chief of our armies? Ripley did not report to him. The matter rested as the boys in Berdan’s regiment stewed and fumed. They even offered to buy the Sharps and pay the difference between that and the Springfield, but Ripley had the same answer for that, too-no.

“About this time, I met this young feller from Connecticut named Chris Spencer. He was about as inventive as it is possible to be with this repeating rifle.⁴ Dahlgren gave it a test and couldn’t have been happier. Five hundred cartridges fired and one misfire-and that due to bad fulminate. Dahlgren didn’t hesitate and ordered seven hundred Spencers for the Navy. It was from Dahlgren that I heard about this marvel, and I went down to the Navy Yard to see it and meet the inventor. Then McClellan sets up a board to test it. The members of the board practically beat it to pieces; it still fired as well at the end as the beginning. Again McClellan recommended it enthusiastically. But Ripley whined that it was too heavy and too expensive and needed special ammunition, and insisted that the Army’s weapons must be standardized. He also, and I must say slyly, said that seventy-three thousand breechloaders had already been ordered, but these were only for the cavalry. I guess even he did not have the face to insist that mounted men carry muzzle-loaders.

“Spencer came to see me and laid it all out. There was nothing for it. I sent him an order-buy those weapons. And you know Ripley even staved that off. And still Berdan’s men had no decent weapons. Those boys finally did what I could not. They threatened to mutiny in January ’62, and it came close to a fight right in the shadow of the Capitol. God knows he did not fear me, but I guess that scared Ripley. Ripley signed the order for the Sharps, probably with smoke billowing out of his ears.

“Replace him? Would that I could! But who would I find to replace him? There is no one else with his qualifications. Then even should I be able to find a replacement, the law requires a formal retiring board, and that would be drawn out and public. In fairness, I must admit that I owe to Ripley the fact that we are able to get a fine Springfield musket into the hands of every soldier by now, and the man has the uncanny ability to squeeze a penny until it screams, but we could have done so much better.

“Let me give you another example. I saw it early in the war in the loft of Hall’s Carriage Shop across from the Willard Hotel.” An observer would later describe Lincoln’s delight with the weapon.Mounted on a two-wheeled slight artillery carriage, the Union Repeating Gun consisted of a single rifle barrel with an ingenious breech mechanism. On top was a hopper which Mills had filled with steel cartridge cases, designed to hold regular.58-caliber paper cartridges. Lincoln turned a crank on the side of the gun and delightedly watched the cartridge cases drop one by one into the grooves of a revolving cylinder, while the mechanism automatically tripped the firing pin, extracted the cylinders and dropped them into a receptacle for reloading. Seeing the level of the cases sink lower in the hopper while others were spewed into the receiving tray.

“Yes, right then and there I saw its resemblance to a coffee mill with the hopper and all. That’s just what I called it, the ‘coffee mill gun,’ and the name kind of just stuck. The inventor, a fellow named J. D. Mills, called it the ‘Union Repeating Gun.’ Said it was ‘an army in six feet square.’ Why, he never got over the name change. Hurt his feelings something powerful.”

Lincoln interrupted himself to order the driver to stop next to a construction site. He got out of the carriage and walked over to a woodpile. He picked up an ax as the workmen recognized him and crowded around. “Sharpe,” he said, “you may talk about your ‘Raphael repeaters’ and ‘XI-inch Dahlgrens,’ but here is an institution that I understand better than any of the generals or weapons makers.” He held the ax out at arm’s length by the end of the handle. His arm did not betray the slightest tremble.

So, thought Sharpe, Fox’s story was true. The man’s strength is phenomenal. He said, “No, sir, I think you understand a great deal more.”

Lincoln winked. “Care to try, Sharpe?”

“No, sir, not on my best day.”

Lincoln laughed and slowly lowered the ax to the ground without a tremble. The workmen crowded around to shake his hand until he waved good-bye and climbed back into the carriage. Still, he could not shake his unhappiness with the chief of ordnance.

“Ripley was badgered into a field test at the Washington Arsenal, and I made sure a good crowd was there-three cabinet officers, five generals, and the governor of Connecticut, too. Everybody but Ripley was impressed. I even sent him a note telling him it was worth the attention of the government. Still nothing happened. Finally, I bought ten of them on my own on the spot. I pushed McClellan into ordering another fifty. I put them in the hands of the generals, and do you know what happened? Nothing. Good ideas are laying around like chestnuts in the fall, Sharpe, and no one has the wit to pick them up.” Lincoln slumped back in his seat, “I just can’t do it all.”

Then he straightened up again. “There was small fight in Middleburg, Virginia, last October where the gun was actually used. It was turned on a squadron of cavalry and cut them up so badly that they fled the field.”

Sharpe commented, “It is a common problem. These weapons arrive, and no one has any idea how to use them, and more importantly, no one has the sole responsibility of seeing that they are used and used properly. Let me give you an example, sir. You godfathered the Balloon Corps and when Hooker was with the Army, Dr. Thaddeus Lowe’s balloons did great work. They were a vital source of intelligence, which I found most useful in supplementing the work of my bureau.” Sharpe referred to the hydrogen gas balloons invented by Dr. Thadeaus Lowe. It was only a demonstration with Lincoln himself that had resulted in their introduction into the Army. Hooker had been the first general ever to go up in a balloon. They proved critical in the survival of McClellan’s Army in the Peninsular Campaign. And so ubiquitous were they hovering over the Union lines, peering into the enemy’s depth, that the Confederates developed a healthy fear of them and went to great lengths to hide from their searching telescopes. Reports flashed from telegraphers in the balloons whose wires ran down the heavy tethering cables and directly across the battlefields to Army headquarters. “I tell you, sir, I have no other words than to describe their reports as ‘near-time’ intelligence. Nothing else at our disposal for the collection and transmission of intelligence was almost instantaneous.

“The corps just died of neglect, sir, neglect, and petty-minded spite. The officer appointed to supervise the Balloon Corps, since Mr. Lowe remained a civilian contractor, was as officious as he was small minded and rank conscious. He drove Lowe to resign by reducing his pay and refusing to seek funds to repair or replace the worn-out balloons. When Lowe left, the Balloon Corps died.”

Lincoln’s jaw set. “I will tell you, Ripley is only a pale shadow to John Dahlgren when he was chief of naval ordnance. He was rich in invention, open minded, and with the knowledge of technical things that I found in almost no one else. Is it any wonder that I looked to him for shrewd advice and friendship? I must look after his poor boy now. But I don’t think we have heard the last of young Colonel Dahlgren, one leg or no.”

As they rode along, Lincoln said, “You know, Sharpe, Lowe told me the story of his first flight when he was a cobbler’s apprentice in Portland. That was just when his young imagination was all aflame with the idea of flight. Naturally, he did not have anything like a balloon. He did have a kite, and there was this ferocious old tom in the cobbler’s shop, a great, vicious rat killer. One night he cornered the beast and forced him into a cage. He tied the cage to the kite along with a lantern. He let the offshore winds blow it to a thousand feet and lashed it a post to let it sway in the wind. Ran around town, he did, looking at it from every angle and admiring his feat. When he finally pulled it down, the tom was a shrunk furry bundle. The mean had been scared clean out of him.”

When they arrived at the Ordnance Bureau, the doorkeeper opened the double doors for them as a clerk ran up the iron stairs to tell Ripley the President was here. Ripley barely looked up from his pen to reply, “He knows where he can find me.”

The clerk had barely disappeared when Lincoln and Sharpe entered Ripley’s office. Sharpe was getting used to Lincoln’s disdain for ceremony. Ripley rose from his desk. “Good morning, Mr. President.”

“Good morning, Colonel.” Lincoln introduced Sharpe. “I wanted him to meet you, Colonel, because he has my entire confidence and will be monitoring the development of advanced weapons in other countries, especially breech-loading and repeating weapons. We have to know what possible enemies are up to. I understand the Prussians are quite happy with their new needle gun.” Ripley radiated hostility despite that play on words of being needled entirely escaped him.

“I’m sure the Prussians will regret the decision, Mr. President, just as we would had we bought large numbers of these new-fangled gimcracks.”

Lincoln smiled. “You mean the new-fangled gimcracks I keep telling you to order and that don’t get ordered. Colonel Berdan has renewed his request for Spencers after Gettysburg. What have you done about it?”

Ripley mumbled something about suppliers unable to meet contracts. “They are faulty weapons, too great an expense, and an interruption of standardized production. Also, they showed no noticeable improvement on the battlefield.”

Sharpe jumped in here, “I take it then you were at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, sir. You must have some firsthand knowledge to sustain that statement.”

“No, sir, but on good authority, I have heard that…”

“Well, I was on both fields, sir, and your ‘good authority’ is nothing of the sort. At Chancellorsville, Berdan’s men taught the Stonewall Brigade about the meaning of the word ‘retreat.’ At Little Top on the field at Gettysburg, barely one hundred sharpshooters did the duty of a full regiment and carpeted its rocky slopes with the bodies of Hood’s Texas Brigade. The sharpshooters alone delayed Longstreet’s attack on the Peach Orchard by a vital forty minutes. I interviewed one of the sharpshooters who was captured in the fight and escaped. He said, ‘It is impossible for me to describe the slaughter we had made in the ranks. In all my past service it beat all I had ever seen for the number engaged and for short a time. They were piled in heaps and across each other.’ That forty minutes saved the day, Colonel.”

Ripley was squirming. He would not give up, though, and countered, “Even if we issued the entire Army of the Potomac with Sharps, we could never supply the ammunition to feed it. The expense would be enormous.”

“That conclusion might seem sound for someone who lives in an office,” Sharpe paused to emphasize his next sentence, “and for someone who has not heard the whistle of bullets.” Ripley flushed. He may have been a military bureaucrat, but he knew a soldier’s insult when he heard it. Lincoln recalled someone’s definition of a gentleman as someone who never unknowingly gives offense.

Sharpe continued, “Consider, Colonel, that if the entire Army of the Potomac had been issued with the Sharps before Gettysburg, Lee would never have escaped.” Lincoln grew suddenly intent. “We would have shot him completely to pieces. Nothing would have remained to escape across the Potomac. With Lee destroyed, the rebellion would have lost its main prop and soon collapsed. I think it worth the trouble of supplying sufficient ammunition for results like that. After all, we are not talking about a sustained effort of years. How many battles do you think we would have to fight with a seven-to-one firepower advantage over the enemy?

“And it is a completely one-sided advantage. The rebels have no capacity whatsoever to match us with such weapons or ammunition. They must rely upon the British for Enfields, and even the British cannot supply them with breech-loading weapons of the quality and number we are now capable of producing.”

BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD STATION, WASHINGTON, D.C., 12:30 PM, AUGUST 8, 1863

The carriage drew up to the main entrance of the train station just north of Capitol Hill and two men got out. They had been deep in conversation all the way from the British embassy. “I cannot tell you, Hancock, how useful this visit has been to me.” From under the large front portico, an ordinary-looking man was paying attention to the two.

“I am glad to have been of service. Perhaps you will have more luck than I had in convincing someone at home of the importance of what is going on here. Lord knows, my reports to the Admiralty seem to drop like a stone in a well. The ambassador does not seem much interested in these ‘strictly military affairs,’ as he calls them. I don’t believe that I’m saying this, Wolseley, but hopefully, it might have some effect going through Army channels.”

Wolseley appreciated the twinge in Hancock’s thoroughly Royal Navy nature. “Rest assured that I will be writing to important people at home. General Grant has an open mind and will find all of this of great interest. Now he has the ear of the government.” He meant Hope Grant, of course, the most capable of the British generals and his patron, not the American Ulysses S. Grant, then much in the news.

As they continued their conversation on a vacant part of the train platform, Hancock commented that Wolseley was lucky to be taking the train directly through New York to Canada to enjoy the cool summer.

Wolseley paused. “No, I think I will take a detour through Maine. After all, the good governor has praised the railroad network to the heavens. The least I can do is examine it. I expect the weather there is as pleasant as in Canada. And I hear Portland is a scenic stop. Its harbor forts are as much recommended to the visitor by the governor as well. Good-bye, Hancock.”

As he settled into his seat, the ordinary-looking man took a seat nearby.

WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., 12:50 PM, AUGUST 8, 1863

Charles Dana cursed as he read the just deciphered telegram from Colonel Carrington in Indianapolis. “Damn! And double damn! This is a real loss.” He gazed out of the window at Seventeenth Street and saw Lincoln’s carriage waiting in front of the Ordnance Bureau across the street.

Dana ran from the building to meet Lincoln and Sharpe as they emerged through the Winder Building’s double doors. “Mr. President!” Heads on the street turned. A crowd surrounded Lincoln before he reached the carriage. The swarms of contractors and office seekers who were converging on Lincoln like a free lunch engulfed the single detective attending him. Dana plunged into the crowd and with Sharpe’s help was able to push Lincoln back to the carriage and mount a rear guard as he climbed in. The driver cracked the whip, and they escaped with all the alacrity of so many of Lincoln’s generals when pursued by Lee and Jackson.

“Why, Dana, I might have made my escape without a pitched battle if you hadn’t been so all-fired excited to get my attention.”

“Stidger is dead. I just received the telegram from Colonel Carrington saying they had identified another body at the site of the looted arms warehouse in Indianapolis. It was Stidger, shot right through the belly and his face stomped in.”

Lincoln turned to Sharpe. “Well, Sharpe, it looks like you have your first problem.”

As they rode back to the White House, Lincoln smiled and said, “And now I’m giving you your second problem. Get me my balloons back.”

WASHINGTON NAVY YARD, WASHINGTON, D.C., 2:15 PM, AUGUST 8, 1863

Lamson opened the package delivered by courier from the Navy Department. There was a note from Fox on top. “Lamson, I thought you would find these reports on the rams useful. They have been supplied through the State Department from our consul in Liverpool, Thomas Dudley. These documents are to be considered private and confidential. You will find a secure place to store them.” Lamson took the documents to an office in the superintendent’s headquarters where he could be alone and began to read.

The two rams were contracted for construction by James Dun-woody Bulloch, the chief Confederate agent in Great Britain, the man responsible for building the CSS Alabama and the other Confederate raiders. Their builder was the firm of Laird Brothers; they were financed through the offices of the Fraser, Trenholm amp; Company, the trading company that handled all financial matters for the Confederacy in Europe and was itself a provider of considerable credit. Fraser, Trenholm amp; Company could afford it. They owned a fleet of fifty blockade-runners that did a large part in keeping the Confederacy alive and charged a half percent fee for its banking services. Bulloch had constructed an elaborate cover story to prove that the ships had been ordered by French interests and were to be sold to Egypt as the El Toussan and El Monassir. The rams were being constructed at the Birkenhead Ironworks, opposite Liver pool on the Mersey River, at a cost of ninety-three thousand pounds.

The two ships were referred to as Numbers 294 and 295. The CSS Alabama’s number had been 292. The intended names were the CSS North Carolina and the CSS Mississippi. Lamson paused at this point. Like all sailors he was a bit superstitious about ships and the sea. As long as these ships had simply been referred to by the faceless name of “rams” they had not truly been real. Now that he read the names each would bear, he sensed the individuality and power that was growing in each ship. They became as real as his Nansemond and the other decks he had trod. Now they were alive.

He devoured the details of their construction. At 1,850 tons they were almost twice the size of the U.S. Passaic class monitors. The most striking feature was that they were modeled on the turreted monitors. They were on the cutting edge, with two turrets, one on the bow and the other amidships. Only the USS Roanoke, recently assigned to the defense of Hampton Roads with the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, had double turrets. Each of the ram turrets was armed with twin 9-inch Armstrong rifles that could fire a 250-pound projectile. The most remarkable weapon, and the one that seized the imagination, was the 7-foot solid iron ram affixed to the prow.

Each turret was wrapped in 10 inches of armor. The hull was teak over iron to a depth of 5.5 inches of wood. Overlaying that were 4.5 inches of iron armor plate on the hull and 3.5 inches on the prow. The deck was designed to ride only 6 inches above the water when fully loaded. The ships’ dimensions were 224.5 feet in length by 42.5 in the beam. The draught was 16 feet and maximum speed was ten knots. Each would have a crew of 150 and enough stores for three months at sea.

Lamson sat back in the chair to think. He would not like to go up against such a ship when it was fully armed and prepared for war even with the converted Gettysburg, which was less than half the size of the rams and unarmored. His only advantage would be speed; the rams could not outrun him. Luckily, his mission would confront the rams as they departed British waters when they were completely unarmed and with only enough crew to get them to their destination. He expected that, if they were anything like the American monitors, they would not handle well in open water, much less in rough seas.

Lamson rocked his chair back, his hand behind his head. One of the rams, the hull of the North Carolina, had already been launched and floated across the Mersey for outfitting at Liverpool’s Albert Dock. It was a race for time, and he wondered if the hands at the Washington Navy Yard could work faster than those at the Albert Dock. The Yard men had to work much faster to give him the time he needed to cross the sea and find out what was happening at Liverpool. Unforgiving time was making his odds an extreme long shot. He thought to himself, Long shot, hell; these odds would be a long shot with a limb in between.

OFFICES OF FRASER, TRENHOLM amp; COMPANY, LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND, 7:36 PM, AUGUST 8, 1863

Very careful planning was what James Bulloch excelled at. He had slipped the sharks out of British ports that were savaging Union commerce on the high seas-famous ships all — the CSS Florida, Shenandoah, and above all Alabama.

He had so far avoided every snare set by the Yankees to cripple his shipbuilding, but they were getting better all the time. He was sitting across from George Trenholm, the director of Fraser, Trenholm amp; Company. The company’s connections within the British government had been critical in providing the initial introductions to Bulloch that had allowed him to operate with what amounted to an almost official blind eye. And when a blind eye did not suffice, sympathetic officials and judges could be depended upon to interpret claims or direct rulings in the Confederacy’s favor.

Such was the case when Ambassador Adams had pressured the British government to seize the Alexandra, another of Bulloch’s commerce raiders that was about to slip British waters. It had taken the threat that the U.S. Congress was willing to pass a privateering bill in retaliation to convince Russell to seize the ship. Bulloch immediately saw that the seizure was challenged in court. The judge instructed the jury that it should return a verdict for the defendants if it thought there was no intent to arm the ship in British waters. It took the jury moments to decide accordingly. Not only had the ship escaped, the British government had been discouraged from any precipitous action on the status of the two rams abuilding on the Mersey.

Such sympathy had been the reason the Alabama had escaped as well, but it did not come from the bench. In July 1862, U.S. Consul Dudley had amassed such evidence of the Confederate ownership of the Enrica, the Alabama’s cover name, and its imminent escape that British barrister Sir Robert Collier was able to write a series of damning opinions that should have provoked immediate attention at the Foreign Office. At this point, Russell’s undersecretary at the Foreign Office, Austin David Layard, member of Parliament (MP), intervened to delay action. Russell agreed with the Treasury’s recommendation that the letters be submitted to the Law Officers of the Crown. Layard sent them to the senior Law Officer, who he knew had suffered a mental breakdown and was going mad. They languished for five days at his home before being forwarded. A new letter with even more damning evidence from Collier arrived, and Layard cleverly forwarded it to the office of the next senior Law Officer on a Saturday, when his office was closed, instead of to his home.

In the meantime, Layard warned Bulloch through another party that the ship could not safely remain at its berth for another forty-eight hours. Bulloch acted quickly and boldly. Any departure of a ship from Liverpool Harbor required the notification and permission of the Crown’s collector of customs. There was one exception, and Bulloch sailed the Enrica right through it. A newly built ship on its trial run was exempt from this requirement. Under that pretext, the ship left Liverpool with the owner of Laird Brothers and his little daughter on board along with a large party of guests to provide the cover. Once out of the harbor, Bulloch announced that he intended to put the ship through night sailing trials and sent the guests ashore by an accompanying tug. He directed the captain to meet him at Moelfre Bay down the coast the next day. The order to seize the Enrica arrived the very day that Bulloch took to sea. He had made it by the skin of his teeth.

The returned tug was to pick up a good part of the intended crew, but the women attached to the seamen had refused to let their men go without the customary first month’s advance pay. This commotion attracted the interest of a customs official, who elicited from the crowd that they were on the way to join the “gunboat.” The customs officer mailed a report and sent the tug on its way, and this was a full day after the order to seize the Enrica had arrived in Liverpool.

The episode had not put Bulloch off his plans but made him even more aware of how tenuous his position was. His very success in unleashing increasing pain on the United States had only served to increase the danger for him. Adams and Dudley had redoubled their efforts this time to ensure the rams never left British waters. Although a secretive man, Bulloch had shared much with his paymaster, George Trenholm. There was little that Trenholm had not done to further Bulloch’s mission, and he was ready to do even more at this crisis. Not only did his sympathies lay with the Confederacy, his firm had paid out almost two hundred thousand pounds to finance the rams. Bulloch had concealed one subterfuge within another. Initially he had personally contracted with Laird Brothers for the two rams with no reference or connection to the Confederacy. When American pressure over the rams mounted, Bulloch further clouded their ownership by selling them nominally to the French shipbuilder Bravay and Company-with the advice and assistance of a Queen’s counsel no less. Bravay, in turn, made a secret deal to resell the ships to Bulloch for a commission. Laird Brothers did everything to assist in this deception.

Now Trenholm was getting nervous and wanted reassurance from Bulloch. “We cannot expect a jury to pull another rabbit out of a hat on the excuse that these ships are not meant for war. For God’s sake, John, these things are monitors with double turrets. Even the most sympathetic jury that can be found wouldn’t have the face to say these are not warships.”

“George, do not worry. It won’t come to that.”

“I tell you if it does, all of Europe, not to mention the Americans, will see it as an openly belligerent act. My God, that could trigger a war.”

“Now would that truly be a bad thing if we take a broad view, George? The Union is crushed by the British Empire. It would serve everyone’s interests, would it not? The South achieves its independence. Your country removes the greatest rival on the horizon and makes and secures the alliance of a grateful Confederacy that will keep any Union thoughts of revenge under control. Britain will have access to the Southern market unhindered by tariffs that have previously only suited Northern business interests. The future profits for Fraser, Trenholm amp; Company would be enormous. Think about it, George.”

Trenholm did and decidedly did not like the thought. “Listen to me, John. It is not that most people in this country who matter, including those in government, would not like to see these things accomplished. And they would not shrink from war if there were no other choice. What they do mind is being manipulated by foreigners into it. We are a perverse people in that regard.”

Bulloch realized he had touched far too soft a spot and sought to deflect Trenholm’s distress. “I said not to worry, George. It will never come to that. My government would only wish the assistance of Great Britain if it were the result of great deliberation on a matter of imperial policy.”

Trenholm was still nervous. “But there is still great danger. Dudley’s men are sniffing around all the time. We cannot expect Russell to forever claim the mounting evidence Dudley digs up is only hearsay.”

“Now George, I think Russell’s basic sympathies for the Confederacy and his desire to see the bloodshed stopped will encourage him to see all evidence as hearsay unless it comes in written with the finger of God himself.”

“Don’t blaspheme, John. I’m afraid that damn Yankee is actually close to finding divine evidence.”

“We still have our friend in the Foreign Office. Let us just hope that the rams are ready for their sea trials before Russell is forced to act.”

MILITARY TELEGRAPH OFFICE, WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C., 2:36 PM, AUGUST 8, 1863

Sharpe sent an urgent telegram to John Babcock, his deputy in the Army of the Potomac. He was to send Sergeant Cline to Washington immediately.

Lincoln may have given him the charter to put order into the intelligence operations of the government, but Sharpe knew that he would have to win the goodwill of powerful cabinet officers if he were to have any chance of success. Seward would be no problem. A fellow New Yorker and friend of the family, he would see Sharpe’s appointment as the advancement of a protégé. He was also practical enough to see the effects of a central control. Sharpe paused to think for a moment as to what he would call his new office. Secret Service had already been given a bad name by Allan Pinkerton and McClellan and had become even more odious under Stanton’s private henchman, Lafayette Baker. Sharpe turned over various alternatives in his mind, to include the name of his bureau in the Army of the Potomac-the Bureau of Military Information (BMI). But his new office would have more than military interests and be encompassing all the government’s interests in intelligence. Nothing seemed to fit.

The first step was to find allies in the War Department. He did not consider Ripley as he had burned his bridges with him about as dramatically as Cortés had done in Mexico. Besides, if Ripley did not have the look of a man whose days were numbered, Sharpe was no judge of things.

He found Dana in his office late that afternoon and broached his plans to him. Dana was a shrewd man and listened intently. He had assumed many of the duties of intelligence at the War Department, but they were secondary duties, and he had not the time to give them the proper organization and attention they deserved. It was after seven when they finally finished brainstorming the new organization. Dana said as he got up to put on his coat, “Well, Sharpe, what will you call this centralized intelligence agency of yours?”

“Hell if I know. Nothing comes.”

“How about the Federal Bureau of Information?”

“Sounds too much like law enforcement. The parts are all there; it’s just a matter of putting them together.”

On their way to dinner it struck him and he snapped his fingers. “That’s it, Dana, the Central Information Bureau! Just enough of a name to be functional without attracting too much intention.”

“There, that’s settled. Now for some airy business.” Sharpe handed a clerk another telegram to send. It was addressed to Professor Thaddaeus Lowe, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and read: RETURN IMMEDIATELY WASHINGTON TO COMMAND

NEW BALLOON CORPS STOP COLONEL’S COMMISSION

AWAITS STOP REPORT TO ME STOP GEORGE SHARPE,

BVT BRIG GENERAL, CHIEF, CENTRAL INFORMATION

BUREAU STOP.

LAFAYETTE SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D.C., 10:05 AM, AUGUST 10, 1863

Sergeant Cline caught the train near Army headquarters and was in Washington the next day. He reported to Sharpe’s home on Lafayette Square. Cline was a hard man to surprise, but the Colonel had his head spinning as he laid out the problem and the sergeant’s role in solving it. First Cline found himself transferred to Sharpe’s new organization. Next he had a transportation voucher for the night train to Indianapolis and was armed with a letter of introduction to meet with Colonel Carrington. Sharpe felt that Carrington needed someone to replace Stidger, an actor who could command the stage. He had Lincoln’s verbal orders to take the strongest measures to scotch the Copperheads. Stidger’s death was proof of that. The need for action was immediate.

At the same time Sharpe had to organize and staff his bureau. He was starting from scratch. The effort it had taken to create the intelligence organization for the Army of the Potomac shrank in comparison to this. His first act was to acquire a competent deputy, and he asked for the assignment of civilian James L. McPhail, the provost for Maryland. From his Baltimore headquarters, McPhail had quickly gathered the strings of espionage directed at Richmond. He had eagerly shared everything he learned with Sharpe, a rare characteristic in the intelligence business. Sharpe was a frequent visitor to Baltimore to coordinate and exchange information. It was apparent that McPhail was the rare professional in a sea of amateurs. McPhail had come down to Washington the day that he received the summons of a War Department telegram.

Sharpe, for want of office space and the time to look for it in a crowded city, had started shop in his own rented home on Lafayette Square. A few carefully selected military clerks had taken over the front parlor as an office. He took McPhail into the library and shut the sliding doors. “Jim, we have the labors of Hercules before us. This has never been tried before-a single national intelligence effort.”

“When do we start?”

“You already have by being here. You are my deputy, and I am going to work you near to death.”

McPhail grinned.

“This is how I see the President’s intent-to bring order to all these separate teams that are pulling each in its own direction, and this is where he is quite clear, he wants someone who will present him the equivalent of a thoroughly researched lawyer’s brief on any particular subject. He said Gettysburg taught him how dangerous it was that everybody seemed to have a finger in the pie when it came to finding out what General Lee was up to, including himself. Neither he nor Stanton had the time to do this well. He was also aware that in only the most haphazard manner, if at all, does one Union Army learn anything of use from another army.

“In practical terms, this is how I see our job. We must be the clearinghouse for all intelligence on the rebels. I do not mean to take over the staff work of the armies in the field, but they will provide us what they learn so we can build an overall picture to inform the President and Secretary Stanton. The President told me his inclination was to set up a separate agency that would report only to him, but he thought it not worth the fireworks from Stanton. He told me, ‘You need Stanton as an ally, not an enemy.’ For that reason I cannot touch Lafayette Baker’s National Detective Police. Baker and his NDP are Stanton’s pets.”

McPhail said, “I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole, George. Baker and his crew are a stench in the nostrils of honest men. Stanton protects them because they are his willing tools in any dirty thing he wants done.”

Sharpe was emphatic. “If we took over Baker’s crew, that stench would infect us as well. I mean the Bureau to be within the law, Jim. I shudder to think of how Baker has trampled on the law to abuse just about anyone he wants without writ or judge to stop him. I am a practical man, and in crisis I believe that the old adage ‘Never let your conscience stop you from doing what’s right’ is sometimes necessary. The President himself has skirted the constitutionality of some of his actions, but they have been forced on him by necessity to protect the Constitution itself from destruction. That is the real world, not the ivory tower of civil libertarians who would see the Constitution burn up in front of their eyes rather than accommodate it to the fact that the roof is on fire. We shall stand on the right side of the law, but we will also follow Mr. Lincoln’s policy of ‘bending it here and there’ where necessary.

“Baker trumpets how well he has cleaned up rebel spies in Washington, but you know as well as I do, they continue to flourish here. What Baker excels at is shaking down merchants who supply the South.”

McPhail commented, “Well, we will need our own organization to counter the enemy’s espionage. How will you get around Baker?”

“Simple,” Sharpe said. “I have an independent budget thanks to the President. Don’t ask me where he gets it. We shall just set up our own organization to catch spies. Quietly. Let Baker make all the noise he wants to about catching Belle Boyd. We will work rings around him. But watch him close, Jim; he’s a dangerous man.”

Their attention at that moment was drawn to the noise of the doors sliding open and the young soldier standing there. He was one of the studious young men clerking diligently in the outer office. In the two days since Sharpe had acquired the services of Cpl. Michael Wilmoth, the young Hoosier had shown a remarkable talent for order-of-battle analysis. He had already committed Lee’s order of battle to memory. “Sir, Professor Lowe is here.”

“Show him in.” Almost immediately the tall, lanky form of Thaddeus Lowe appeared. “Professor!” Sharpe exclaimed and rushed over to shake his hand. “Thank God, you’ve come. Here, let me introduce you to Jim McPhail.” The two shook hands as Sharpe waved them to sit. He sketched for McPhail’s benefit the travesty of Lowe’s treatment and the disappearance of the Balloon Corps. Lowe’s strong jaw tightened in the retelling. He was the foremost aeronaut in the United States, a gifted scientist, and a man of great energy who had the will and ability to get things done, none of which had been proof against military martinets.

“I tell you, George,” Lowe said, “that the only reason I have come is as a favor to you.” He looked at McPhail. “Colonel Sharpe was one of the few men I met who appreciated the value of my balloons. It was a pleasure to work with him, and I would have been a damn sight happier had I worked for him, instead of that officious.…” His voiced trailed off.

Wilmoth had appeared again and handed Sharpe a folder. Sharpe said, “And we’re going to do things right this time.” He drew a finely printed parchment out of the folder and handed it to Lowe. “Long overdue, it’s your commission as colonel, signed personally by Lincoln and countersigned by Stanton.” He drew another paper from the folder. “And here are your orders assigning you as chief of the Balloon Corps. You are in charge of all the U.S. government’s efforts at aeronautics. And you work directly for me.”

Before Lowe could reply, Sharpe went on, “Professor, you have no greater admirer than I. Your contribution during the Chancellorsville campaign made Gen. John Sedgwick’s victory at Marye’s Heights possible. I was with Hooker as he received your stream of reports within minutes of your dispatching them by telegraph from your balloons all the way down the Rapphannock at Fredericksburg.”

Lowe’s excitement had risen to the point where it seemed he needed a tether, like his balloons, to keep him grounded. “When do I start, General?”