A Rainbow of Blood: The Union in Peril an Alternate History (21 page)

The House was deadly still. Sweat beaded the forehead of Lord
Paget. Disraeli leaned back into the green leather of his bench and looked
down at the floor. Cobden continued. "I asked any nautical man, 'Would
you, if you were at war with America tomorrow, send one of your
wooden line-of-battle ships, with 700 or 800 men on board, and with 30
or 40 tons of gunpowder under their feet, to meet a vessel like Monitor?
Baronet, the member for Finsbury (Sir Morton Peto), once declared his
opinion that the minister who should send a wooden line-of-battle ship
to encounter these modern shell guns would deserve to be impeached.'1

"I have it on authority that Admiral Milne was hesitant to engage
the American monitors at Charleston but was compelled by the direct instructions of the government to break the blockade at Charleston because
of the demands of commercial interests in the city which demanded to
carry off the countless of bales of cotton stored in that city.

"Perhaps the government thought that the broadside ironclads Black
Prince and Resistance would he enough to overcome the American monitors. If so, it was a disastrous miscalculation. In losing both, the Navy
lost one half of its ironclads. The noble lord was at pains in February
to explain that eighteen more ironclads were under construction and
should all be at sea, though not commissioned, by spring of next year.
I might add that most the rest are wooden frame ships bearing armor
plate. Already, the battle of Charleston has shown them to be obsolete
against the turreted American ships. I ask the noble lord, how many of
those eighteen ironclads are turreted?"

Paget rose slowly. "The member from Rochdale should know that
Royal Sovereign and Prince Albert will be the first such ships."2

Cobden shot hack, "Come, my lord, you neglected vital information. Pray, what is the purpose of these ships?"

Paget replied, "Coastal defense."

"Coastal defense! Well, my lord, we shall then be able to put
up a stout fight when the monitors cross the ocean and steam up the
Thames."

Hard laughter rolled down the benches. Paget did not know when
to fold and added, "We also have the second of the two turreted warships being built by Laird Brothers which the government plans to transfer to the Navy. That is an ocean-going ship."

Disraeli rose and was recognized by the Speaker. "My lord perhaps
does not appreciate the irony of his last statement. One battle, one avoidable battle, has declared to the world that our Navy is obsolete. Now the
secretary of the Admiralty tells the House that we will have, at some undetermined date, one and only one modern warship able to sail the high
seas and that ship is none other than the sister to the infamous North
Carolina whose escape, due to the inexplicable neglect of the Foreign Office, has ignited this war. Perhaps my lord should take to writing novels.
He certainly has far more imagination for it than I. May I recommend a
publisher, my lord?" More laughter.

HEADQUARTERS, CIB, LAFAYETTE SQUARE, WASHINGTON, D.C.,
6:10 PM, OCTOBER 23, 1863

Sharpe asked McPhail, "Well, was Ripley van Winkle cooperative?" On
his trip north McPhail had had more to do than shore up the thin agent
system in Canada.

He grinned. "I had expected him to be the cantankerous, difficult
obstructionist we had all come to love as chief of the Ordnance Bureau.
But, you know, shameless flattery will open doors that you could not
break down with a fire ax. Oh, I laid it on thick, telling him that he was a
national treasure as the single greatest expert on ordnance in the United
States, and how he had a reputation for utter probity and had been an
exemplary steward of the taxpayer's money. He really warmed up when
I mentioned it must have taken iron self-control and dedication to duty not to be stampeded into ordering all the crackpot new weapons every
charlatan had thought of.

"I actually thought I had overdone it, but the old coot was eating it
up with a spoon. You know, he really is a world-class expert. My notes
are extensive." He looked at Wilmoth, who seemed as eager as a child
on Christmas Eve at the prospect of McPhail's details. Wilmoth's pencil hung poised over his notepad. "Ripley had been an encyclopedia of
knowledge about the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield. He was also
able to supplement what Pete Dupont has been able to tell us about
the nearby Royal Powder Mills at Waltham Abbey. Even more than we
thought, the British have concentrated what seems like an inordinate
part of their army's war-making production in one small area.

"Ripley said that early during the Crimean War, they discovered
that the weapon contractors were simply unable to fulfill their production contracts for the new Model 1853 Enfield Rifle. It was a potential
catastrophe for them. So, they swallowed their pride and sent a military
commission here to study our 'American Method' of production.3 They
went straight to Springfield Arsenal, which Ripley was running at the
time. They were most impressed, and Ripley apparently fell all over
himself to be helpful. He sent them on an extensive tour of factories of
all sorts to see how we do things and especially of weapon makers such
as Colt and Sharp and of the makers of our specialized weapon machine
tools. He positively glowed when he repeated the comment of the commissioners that 'the Americans displayed a degree of ingenuity which
English industrialists would do well to imitate.'4 They spent a fortune on
American machinery, rebuilt their facility at Enfield -which had been
nothing but a repair shop-on a huge scale, and converted it into the
primary producer of the small arms of the British Army. They even hired
away Ripley's chief engineer to manage the new factory."

Sharpe asked, "Anyone we know?"

"James Burton, a Virginian and surely a Rebel according to Ripley."

Sharpe looked at Wilmoth who said, "We have a file on him, too."

McPhail added, "They seemed to have hired most of their talent
here." He rummaged through a sheaf of papers in his carpetbag and
pulled out one. "Yes, there's a fellow named Oramel Clark, foreman
in the stocking department, one Caulnin, foreman in the smithy, and someone named McGee, whom Ripley thinks is Burton's assistant." He
handed the paper to Wilmoth.5

"The factory went into full production in 1859 and turns out as
many as a hundred thousand rifles a year. Ripley was sure that in wartime they could at least triple their production based on his experience
at Springfield Arsenal. He also said that the private weapon makers had
to follow Enfield's example and retool. The largest of these is the London
Armoury Company with its pronounced Rebel sympathies. Although
they've sold us a lot of Enfields early in the war, they've been supplying
the Confederacy with their entire output ever since."6

Sharpe asked, "Where is Enfield?"

Wilmoth spoke up. "It's thirty-five miles north of London in Essex
but only twenty-five miles from a port on River Crouch."

By this point, Wilmoth's encyclopedic knowledge surprised neither
Sharpe nor McPhail. "A good hard ride, I would think." Sharpe leaned
back on his desk and folded his arms in thought. Then he and McPhail
looked at each other, seemingly arriving at the same thought that Wilmoth had already had.

McPhail went on. "Ripley also had an uncanny feel for what is going on in the British and European ordnance network. The British don't
have anything like our repeaters. Ripley thinks this is a fine example of
superior British prudent common sense. And he didn't have anything
good to say about the Prussian needle-gun either." Another thought
occurred to McPhail. "You know, I had one of our people go through
Ripley's files before I went up so I could speak from some authority.
Good God, George, those files are a graveyard of opportunities that have
passed us by. He actually lied to General Fremont last year when he
asked for some of those coffee mill guns Lincoln had forced Ripley to
buy. Ripley just lied that he didn't know a thing about them, when he
had actually recalled them to the Washington Arsenal."7

Sharpe said, "I'm way ahead of you, Jim. Someone told me they
could fire a hundred twenty rounds a minute. I heard one was used once
in combat and cut a Rebel cavalry squadron to pieces. You just poured
the cartridges into a hopper and they fed the gun by hand crank; the
hopper looked like a coffee mill, and that's what Lincoln called the gun.
I thought they sounded interesting. Then they just disappeared from the Army. Then when Lincoln gave me this job, he told me everything about
how impressed he was with this gun and how Ripley had made sure
nothing came of it. He could have wept in frustration.

"So, I made a few inquiries and, lo and behold, I found all sixty or
so of them neatly lined up at the Arsenal, most of them brand new, oiled,
and unfired. Well, I drew ten for the Ulster boys and ten for the 20th.
They've been practicing at the firing ranges around Washington. The
boys seem to like them, though they can be finicky. We got the designer
out here to work out the bugs, and they've been fairly reliable."

Sharpe was referring to the regiment he had personally raised in
August 1862-the 120th New York Volunteers, known as the Ulster
Guard, and his old militia regiment, the 20th New York State Militia
commanded by Col. Theodore Gates. Both regiments had been recruited
form Sharpe's hometown of Kingston and the surrounding counties of
Ulster and Greene. Sharpe was a man of intense loyalties and had persuaded Lincoln to transfer both regiments to the garrison of Washington.
It was understood clearly, however, that the two regiments reported to
Sharpe. He also had under his control those companies of the 3rd Indiana Cavalry that weren't out hunting Copperheads in the Midwest.
Sharpe was doing more than taking care of his men. He was giving
himself the capability to act in an emergency without having to beg for
troops. He was also thinking of those situations in which the use of such
troops was something the Army did not wish to know about.

McPhail nodded. "And there's another gun made by a Richard
Gatling. The Army tested it twice earlier this year. I read the reports in
Ripley's files, stamped with a big red 'REJECTED.' Good men on the
committee, and I've rarely read such enthusiasm. They said it simply did
not malfunction or overheat no matter how many rounds you fired from
its six rotating barrels - two hundred a minute, I think the reports said."

"All fine and good, Jim." Sharpe was anxious to move on, but made
a mental note of what McPhail had said. "We know how Ripley thinks
in these matters. He can't do any more harm. But has he heard of any
developments in finding an alternative to niter in the making of gunpowder?"

"Well, nothing specific on that, I'm afraid. He admitted that he
knew less about propellants than ordnance."

Wilmoth spoke up again. "Mr. DuPont had something interesting
there. I spoke to him a few days ago after you told me about the niter
supply problem. It's guncotton."

Sharpe threw up his hands. "But I thought the British and Europeans had all given up on it because it was too unstable and dangerous."

"Mr. DuPont said he has heard that the British Army's chief chemist, Sir Frederick Abel, has made a serious advance in making guncotton safe."

McPhail asked, "What the hell is guncotton?"

Wilmoth said, "According to Mr. DuPont, it is a lightweight explosive made by soaking finely washed cotton treated with nitric and sulfuric aci .

"And why is this important?"

"Well, sir, it uses a lot less niter to make the nitric acid used in making guncotton than is used to make gunpowder."

Sharpe stood up suddenly. "You mean that our niter supply can
be stretched almost indefinitely by making guncotton instead of gunpowder?"

"I think so, sir, but I'm no expert, and Mr. DuPont says it would
take a lot more experimentation to turn it into a useful propellant, if it
can be done at all."

"My boy!" Sharpe almost shouted, "We have the ..." He stopped in
mid-sentence as he heard his name being shouted in alarm as footsteps
ran up the hall. His chief telegrapher threw open the door. "General,
New Orleans has fallen!"

HEADQUARTERS, ARMIES OF THE WEST, OUTSIDE CHATTANOOGA,
7:15 PM, OCTOBER 23, 1863

Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sat on a stump with a cigar clenched in his
teeth, reading the same telegraph message that had stunned Sharpe's
telegrapher. Taylor had bounced into the city three days ago. The news
had run along with the panic by escaping riverboat to Baton Rouge and
from there to Port Hudson. The Navy had been able to carry off part of
the garrison up river before the city fell.

His staff hung about him silent as the grave. He looked up and muttered to no one in particular, "How the hell did this happen? Where was
Banks?" There had been no mention of Banks or his army. Grant was aware that he had marched west to meet the French. Grant had immediately wired him to pull back behind Brashear City and the city's marshy
moat and not risk a battle. He did not trust Banks in an open fight with
anyone who had his wits about him.

The forces at Grant's command after Vicksburg had been so powerful that the Union had ample freedom of strategic initiative. Now he
was desperately short of men. Washington, at the instigation of Maj.
Gen. Henry Halleck, Lincoln's Army chief of staff, and a military pedant of the first order, had overridden his desires and sent his powerful
XIII Corps under command of one of his best generals, Maj. Gen. E. O.
C. Ord, off to support Banks in a mission of picking up loose change in
western Louisiana and eastern Texas. Then the Copperhead rebellion
had diverted Sherman's tough XVII Corps to the recapture of Chicago
and the pacification of the Midwest. He had been promised the shrunken
XI and XII Corps from the Army of the Potomac, but they had been held
back with the British in New York and Maine. All he had been able to
bring to the fight was XV Corps, and he had used it to drive a difficult
route to the beleaguered garrison over the loop of the Tennessee River
at Brown's Ferry. But all he had done was put off the day when the last
hardtack was consumed. He had replaced Rosecrans, whose spirit had
never recovered from his crushing defeat at Chickamauga, with Maj.
Gen. George Thomas, an obdurate man who had fought the rearguard
action that had saved the remnant of the army and earned him the epithet "The Rock of Chickamauga." He now vowed to hang on until they
starved. Grant knew the last hardtack in Chattanooga would be a distant
memory before Thomas asked for terms.