In the shadow of the Alabama : the British Foreign Office and the American Civil War

291 Pages·2015·4.96 MB·English

by  Buckley

This book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.
Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road
Annapolis, MD 21402
© 2015 by Renata Eley Long
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
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system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Long, Renata Eley.
In the shadow of the Alabama : the British Foreign Office and the American Civil War / Renata Eley
Long.
1 online resource.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
ISBN 978-1-61251-837-4 (epub) 1. United States—Foreign relations—1861-1865. 2. Buckley, Victor,
1838-1882. 3. United States—Foreign relations—Great Britain. 4. Great Britain—Foreign relations—
United States. 5. Great Britain. Foreign Office—History—19th century. 6. Alabama (Screw sloop) I. Title.
E469
327.73041’09034—dc23
2015016201
Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First printing
For my sons, Richard and Kit,
and for Freddie and Nicole
The Foreign Office requires of the clerks . . . that they should take such interest
in the Office as to consider its credit and reputation their own.
—EDMUND HAMMOND, Permanent Under-Secretary, 1855
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Family and Foreign Office
Chapter 2. Guns, Ships, and Victorian Values
Chapter 3. The Honorable Members for the United States
Chapter 4. Money Will Accomplish Anything in England
Chapter 5. Our Friend in the Foreign Office
Chapter 6. Choice Foreign Office Fiction
Chapter 7. The Enrica Is Launched and the Florida Is Freed
Chapter 8. Intended for a Ship of War
Chapter 9. Information from a Private and Most Reliable Source
Chapter 10. Everlasting Infamy
Chapter 11. Humble Submission to Yankee Bullying
Chapter 12. War-Torn Waters
Chapter 13. The War Is a Thing of the Past
Chapter 14. Black Friday
Chapter 15. “Little Hudson”
Chapter 16. Britain Is Condemned out of Her Own Mouth
Chapter 17. Prospects for a Solution
Chapter 18. The Massive Grievance
Chapter 19. The Foreign Office Thief
Chapter 20. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Revelations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Iam indebted to several people in the U.S.A. who have waited patiently for
many years while I promised this finished work—in particular, Dr. Norman
Delaney, historian and author to whom I wrote in 1991 having read an article by
him. He not only replied, but also passed my name on to a friend, Dr. Frank J.
Merli, author and professor of history at Queen’s College, New York. Frank’s
first letter to me opened with the sentence: “How may I help you?”—and thus
began years of correspondence between the three of us, circulating letters with
exchanges of ideas, mostly concerning Captain James D. Bulloch. In the
American spirit of generosity, Norman Delaney and Frank Merli were truly the
founders of the feast.
My thanks also go to Frank’s widow Margaret Merli, for her kindness and
generosity in offering me access to his papers after his untimely passing,
although, of course, they deserved the attention of academics, of which I cannot
claim to be one. Dr. David M. Fahey edited Frank’s papers for publication.
Many people have assisted me in my research during the years it has taken to
produce this book and I have valued their patience and helpfulness. If I have
inadvertently missed anyone’s name, I hope they will forgive me.
In Great Britain, I am grateful for the permission of Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II for the use of material from the Royal Archives. My thanks also to
the great grandsons of Victor Buckley—Ed Buckley for his permission to use the
photograph of his ancestor, and Canon Walter King, for the copy of his thesis
and the information he has provided; also the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Radnor for his
observations in the early days of my work.
My thanks also to Kate Crowe and Helen Glass at the FCO for their
considerable help; Joan Butcher, granddaughter of Captain Mathew Butcher for
kindly sharing his memoir; Felicia Taylerson and Cynthia Chamberlain for
kindly permitting me to quote from the books of their late husbands; the late
Major David Batt of the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers; also Colonel W. J.
Chesshyre and Honorary Archivist Derek Stimpson; Alan Ray-Jones; Brian D.
Hope; Mrs. P. Hatfield, Eton College Library; Eileen Edwards at the Merseyside
Maritime Museum; Liverpool historian Jerry Williams for unreservedly sharing
his knowledge of the American Civil War with me twenty years ago and loaning
me his books as I got started; Jaqueline Cox, Malcolm Underwood, St. John’s
College, Cambridge; John Owston, Librarian, Oxford and Cambridge University
Club; Valerie Hart, the Guildhall Library; Prof. P. N. Davies who kindly
provided information on Frederick Bond; also James E. Cowden, for help and
expertise on the African Steam Ship Company; the late Marianne Laird
(granddaughter of John Laird) for her letters and information on the Laird
family; Philip Somervail; Rory Laird; Ted Molyneux, National Rifle
Association; Jenny Mountain, archivist at The Royal Bank of Scotland Group
plc; Prof. Richard Crockatt, University of East Anglia who provided an
academic reference for me to access material in the library of Cambridge
University, and Prof. Thomas Otte; Jack Davis, Librarian, and staff, at the
Mitchell Library, History and Glasgow Room, Glasgow City Council; Glasgow
University Archive Services; Andrew Bethune, Edinburgh Central Library; The
Secretary of the Reform Club; Ernie Ruffler (Cammell Laird Archives);
Wiltshire County Council Archives; Wirral Museum at Birkenhead Town Hall;
Graham Miller of Fawcett Christie Hydraulics Ltd. (for trusting me with his rare
copy of the bicentenary book A History of Fawcett Preston & Co. Ltd.); Sarah
Walpole, Archivist, Royal Anthropological Institute, London; Tunbridge Wells
Family History Society; Norfolk Family History Society; Bob Newman of the
Joshua Nunn Lodge, Essex, for the gift of a book and the photo of Joshua Nunn.
I am also grateful to my two sons for their patience over the years as they grew
up with this book in the making, and for the memories that my husband and I
shared of the detours we took from our work so that we could visit places and
archives of interest. My thanks to son Kit for his help with formatting the
manuscript.
In the United States: Ethel Trenholm Seabrook Nepveux, descendant of
George Alfred Trenholm who, at the outset of my research, very kindly sent me
a copy of her book, George Alfred Trenholm and the Company That Went to
War; the late Regina Rapier, author of The Saga of Felix Senac; also her family;
Dr. David M. Fahey; Prof. Lonnie A. Burnett; Whitney Stewart, author, and A.
George Scherer III, great, great grandson of Francis B. Carpenter; the archivists
at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; Alicia Clarke and staff at the
Henry Sheldon Sanford Archive, Sanford Museum, Florida; staff at the Tredegar
Iron Works, Richmond, VA; in Georgia—staff at Bulloch Hall, Roswell, the