An Englishman’s Journey Through the Confederacy During America’s Civil War

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After graduating from Sandhurst, Great Britain’s West Point, Arthur James Lyon Fremantle entered the army in 1852 and soon became an officer in England’s renowned Coldstream Guards (both his father and grandfather had served with distinction in the same regiment). At the age of 25, Fremantle was promoted to lieutenant colonel and eventually rose to the rank of full general, becoming along the way one of the most senior officers in the British army. In 1885, he commanded a brigade of Guards during the Sudan campaign and was later appointed governor of Malta, a strategically important British possession in the Mediterranean.

Fremantle’s credentials certainly bespeak a distinguished military career, but perhaps his greatest importance to military history lies not in his service to queen and country but rather in the form of a short three-month diary he kept while on ‘vacation.’ Fueled by a strong desire to get a firsthand view of the boiling crisis in America as the Southern states struggled to free themselves from their Northern counterparts, Fremantle secured six-months’ leave and crossed the Atlantic.

Upon entering the Confederacy, Fremantle made a breathtaking tour, visiting every Southern state except Arkansas and Florida. Within three months he had met most of the top Confederate leaders in both Eastern and Western theaters, including Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, Joseph Johnston and Jefferson Davis, to name a few. But by no means did Fremantle limit himself to the leading figures; he befriended a gamut of men and women from all walks of life, and left behind an excellent account of the common soldier and the fiery Southern womenfolk on the home front.

Like many visitors to the South, Fremantle was also curious about the ‘peculiar institution,’ and he had some interesting if not ironic things to say about black Americans during the Civil War. Traveling by railroad, steamer, rowboat, mule wagon, stagecoach, ambulance and a broken-down horse, Fremantle managed to put himself in the thick of the action, including the Battle of Gettysburg and the New York City draft riot.

Numerous historical studies have quoted the highly observant Englishman, especially his Gettysburg account and his detailed descriptions of Robert E. Lee and other famous commanders. It would be rare indeed to find a book dealing with the Battle of Gettysburg that did not include Fremantle’s name in the list of sources. Oddly enough, little has been written about Fremantle himself; with the exception of his diary, Fremantle has all but slipped from the pages of history. Some of his friends have left behind snippets about his character in their own memoirs. Justus Scheibert, his Prussian friend at Gettysburg, may have struck on Fremantle’s greatest strength when he wrote that the Englishman was ‘able to win the hearts of everyone with his open, candid behavior.’

Without a doubt, Fremantle’s greatest traveling asset was his indefatigable amiability. Everyone who spoke of Fremantle in their memoirs had only kind words for the man. His very Englishness made him an automatic friend of any Southerner hoping for English intervention in the Civil War. He made things easier for himself by dressing in a gray shooting jacket, and he was often mistaken for a Confederate officer. Even Fremantle’s accent would not have given him away–by his own account, Southern gentlemen still spoke like Englishmen, although the women, curiously, had distinct American accents.

Wishing to remain a strictly neutral party, Fremantle decided to enter the Confederacy via Mexico in order to avoid the illegal act of running the Union blockade. On April 2, 1863, he landed at the squalid village of Bagdad, Mexico, near the mouth of the Rio Grande. After crossing the river, Fremantle fell in company with some rough-and-ready Texan cavalrymen dressed in ‘flannel shirts, very ancient trousers, jack-boots with enormous spurs, and black felt hats, ornamented with the ‘lone star of Texas.” Although Fremantle found much to admire in the inhabitants of Texas and was treated with kindness by all he met, he was quick to remark that Texas ‘was the most lawless State in the Confederacy.’ Everyone carried six-shooters, and due to the sparsity of population, lynching remained ‘almost a necessity.’

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Tags: 19th Century, Adventurers & Trail Blazers, America's Civil War, Historical Conflicts, Social History, World War II

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