Chapter One Hundred and Forty Six
The Kearny Mission - The American Crown Prince
Part I
From “Kearny the Magnificent” by Roger Galton
NorthWestern 2005
"The importance of the Kearny mission cannot be overstated. It would have a profound effect on US-European relations for a generation, but it would also lay the foundation of a new direction in American domestic politics. With two future presidents and four future cabinet officers, the Mission would put a face on future American administrations with which leading Europeans would be familiar for the next 30 years..."
From "Profoundly Wrong - A Re-assessment of the American Historical Criticism" by Bertram James
Collingwood-German 1933
"Analysis of history in the United States is, by dint of its founding philosophy, prejudiced in favour of the discredited Great Man theory of history. This natural prejudice tends to overstate the contributions of men like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln etc to the tide of American history. It fails to capture the inevitability of the great cultural, political and economic tides of history against which no one man can stand. The beliefs, aspirations and actions of the masses matter more than the words or deeds of one man...
Nowhere is the American obsession with the Great Man more exaggerated than in its assessment of Philip Kearny, the so-called Imperial President; and no event in his life is imbued with more undeserved significance that the so called 'Kearny Mission'..."
From “The Mission” by Evangeline Lawrence
Brogan Mills 1988
"What Agnes had envisaged as a quiet, restful European tour had quickly snowballed into a major, if very unofficial, diplomatic mission, If not quite a cast of hundreds, the final roster of travelers was nonetheless rather large for a private holiday party. It was more in keeping with the entourage of, what the French called, an '
American Prince'...
Phil Kearny only agreed to the tour, despite the Presidential command to take leave, on the basis he would still receive reports. Kearny also intended to be fully active in the anticipated Congressional wrangling over the future size and composition of the army. As a result he insisted on being accompanied by his, albeit reduced, staff: Colonel Chauncey McKeever, Major Louis Fitzgerald, Major James C. Briscoe and Lieutenant Robert Todd Lincoln. Kearny also invited his closest adviser on the future state of the army: his cousin John Watts de Peyster. The New York Militia Brigadier General would be accompanied by his wife, Estelle and their two sons: Colonel Frederic De Peyster and Captain Johnston de Peyster. Frederic, as a military doctor, had the unofficial responsibility of monitoring both General Kearny's and his own father's health: neither of which was particularly robust at the outset. In a touching moment before the party left New York, General Kearny had the honor of personally presenting Johnston de Peyster with a Kearny Cross for his courage in his very first engagement at Charlotte...
John and Estelle's stormy relationship would cause both John and Phil Kearny difficulties later...
Agnes had asked family friends Isaac and Margaret Stevens to join the party as Margaret had been a rare friend to Agnes before she received the President's seal of approval, and Major General (USV) Isaac Stevens was a trusted member of Phil Kearny's military family. Their son, Hazard Stevens, was, as a favor, temporarily assigned to Kearny's staff so as to join his parents...
Isaac Stevens, Regis de Trobriand and John P. Hale
At this point the administration took notice of the party and began to encourage the addition of their own tourists...
Seward was deeply concerned about the Kearny plans to return to Paris. Phil Kearny's Francophilia was no secret in the cabinet and Seward was one of the few he knew of Kearny's 'impolitic' views about the French intervention in Mexico. Seward therefore felt it necessary to balance the party out with someone that Kearny trusted but who could be relied upon not to be swept up in the French Imperial tide of diplomacy that would be directed at Kearny. Major General Regis de Trobriand was such a man. His sympathies were firmly with a republic for France, but he was diplomatic enough to communicate that without offering insult. His wife, Mary, would join him. They had not returned to Paris since their wedding in 1843...
Lincoln was initially satisfied with the counsel that Isaac Stevens would offer Kearny. However following an interview with Stevens Lincoln became concerned when he realized the full scope of Stevens loyalty and commitment to 'the old man'. John P. Hale had been seeking a diplomatic posting abroad. As a loyal and reliable Republican of no particular faction Lincoln turned to him as the political ballast of the Kearny party. Whether such an addition was sought by Robert Todd Lincoln or not can only be surmised. However Lincoln sold the addition to Kearny as an "
opportunity for his son and Lucy Hale to experience Europe under the watchful eye of trusted and responsible friends"...
Gideon Welles would join the collective effort to over-engineer the party. Assuming now the widely held belief that this holiday party destined for a grand tour of Europe was naught but an ill disguised diplomatic and military delegation, he insisted that the Navy be represented. It was a request easily granted for another cousin of Phil Kearny's, albeit a more distance one, was the retired bachelor Rear Admiral Lawrence Kearny. An old man now, Lawrence Kearny had in his prime fought slavers in the West Indies, Greek pirates in the Mediterranean, and had out witted Jean Lafitte. The Kearnys and de Peysters referred to him as Uncle Lawrence...
In order to bring a modern perspective to the aged Lawrence, the temporarily re-instated Admiral was assigned the best and brightest from the Naval Academy, Lieutenant Alfred Thayer Mahan, second in his class. The seemingly bookish Mahan would struggle to fit in with the somewhat more "
piratical members of General Kearny's staff"...
From “The Mission” by Evangeline Lawrence
Brogan Mills 1988
"It was certainly to the regret of George Cornewall Lewis that the Kearny party was not met in England with the pomp and circumstance it was to see on the continent. The Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell, was firmly of the view that the party, having no formal accreditation from the United States government, did not merit any particular official notice from the British Government. Furthermore while it would have been usual for such an august foreign dignitary as Philip Kearny to be presented to the Queen, the Queen was in one of the more truculent phases of her mourning and was not receiving unofficial guests...
This was a time of transition as Lord Palmerston's time in office drew to a close. Having experienced several recent defeats, particularly in an area of former strength - foreign policy, there were murmurings about succession. Gladstone had clashed with Pam on foreign affairs, church appointments, electoral reform and the military. Gladstone, in his role as Chancellor, and Lewis, as Secretary of War, too had clashed on foreign affairs and military reform. It was increasingly apparent that Lord Palmerston favored Lewis over Gladstone and was reluctant to relinquish the reins of government and party leadership without confirmation that Lewis or at worst Russell, and not Gladstone, would succeed him. "
Gladstone must be stopped. He will wreck the party and end up in a madhouse" (Lord Palmerston in private correspondence)...
Unofficial the Kearny party may have been but it did not stop General Kearny being lionized in London society for two weeks. Finally, before a week long rest in Brighton and the surrounding countryside, Lord Palmerston invited Generals Kearny, de Peyster, Stevens and their wives and Senator Hale to a lavish dinner at his London home. Hale ensured the party was well advised to stay away from the Irish Question, on which Lord Palmerston was notoriously sensitive. The difficult subject of compensation for the CSS Alabama damages did arise, at the instigation of General Stevens, and threatened to derail an otherwise pleasant evening. Not because of British-American disagreements, but because the cabinet itself was split between Lord Palmerston, who opposed compensation in any form, and a rare act of concert between Gladstone and Lewis, who agreed financial compensation should be paid and at worst an arbitration of some kind should be set up...
Another potentially discordant note was struck by Gladstone when he rose to toast "
The Anglo-Saxon race in the late difficulties: On both sides they have shown courage and endurance highly honourable to their stock". However Phil Kearny was the first to rise to accept the toast and the moment passed...
While the party moved on to Brighton, Admiral Kearny and Lieutenant Mahan accepted a separate invitation from Admiral Sydney Dacres, Commander of the Channel Fleet, to inspect the fleet at anchor and also to examine some of the ironclads then being laid down. While Admiral Kearny was a product of his age and thus a skeptic where steam and iron where concerned, the visit had a profound effect on Lieutenant Mahan's views of the future of naval power..."
"As the party arrived by train into Paris was met by a honor guard from the Imperial Guard Cavalry under General Louis Michel Morris, General Kearny's old friend and commander from the Italian campaign. It was the first indication that the French Imperial Government had every intention of treating the Kearny party as an official foreign delegation of the highest order...
The Earl Cowley, British Ambassador to France and nephew of the Duke of Wellington, described Kearny's reception in Paris "
as equal parts that due a Crown Prince of Europe and that due a conquering French hero"...
The party discovered that their accommodation in Paris had effectively been cancelled by the Imperial government and instead the party were to be guests of the Imperial Court itself...
It was in Paris that the party received its final additions. General George Armstrong Custer, beau sabreur and the man who had slain the assassin Booth, was himself in Paris on tour with his wife Libby. In fact Custer's intention was to put himself firmly in General Kearny's path in Paris with a view joining the party. Custer feared the threatened reduction in the US army would leave him without a command commensurate to his own sense of self-importance. Custer hoped either to gain preference from General Kearny (as he had done as a Lieutenant on Kearny's staff at the outset of McClellan's Peninsula Campaign) or perhaps gainful employment in European service, as Kearny himself had done, at an appropriate rank...
For a party of private citizens, the formal presentation to the Emperor and Empress at Versailles was an astonishingly formal affair. Generals Kearny, Stevens, de Trobriand, de Peyster and Custer all appeared in full dress uniform, hardly the attire of a private American citizen abroad. Custer wore enough gold braid to satisfy even the most flamboyant French Admiral, while General Kearny's uniform was notable for the single medal on the breast - the Légion d'Honneur...
The Ball at Versailles thrown for General and Mrs Kearny to celebrate victory for the Union and Peace in the United States
The Emperor was profoundly impressed by this, his second meeting with Philip Kearny. In the words of General Morris here was a man with "
the genius of Napoleon, the flamboyance of Murat, and the courage of Marshal Ney..." The Emperor paid him the compliment of calling him the "
greatest Frenchman in uniform" in honor of Kearny's service in Italy and North Africa...
There were a number of French generals, Morris among them, who considered Kearny something of a sage on the subject of the art of war. No command had been comparable in size to Kearny's, either in terms of troops commanded or the scope of the theatre of war, since that of Napoleon I had marched on Russia. French memoirs and reminiscences of the period are replete with the words and maxims allegedly dispensed by General Kearny during his time in Paris. Were all attributable to Kearny he must not have stopped speaking to eat or sleep or indeed breath for three weeks...
In a letter from Morris to General Louis-Jules Trochu, Morris quotes Kearny on the development of his own understanding of war: "
he once believed that victory required only courage and discipline. Command of armies has taught him differently. These qualities are but the sword point of victory. The blade that drives the point home is made of railroads and factories; telegraph wires and steam engines. The Rebels learned that courage alone cannot drive the blade of victory home". Morris believed most firmly that Kearny was referring to the French army he had seen in Italy: courageous but lacking the organization, resources or industry to defeat all but the most disorganized foe..."
General Louis-Michel Morris
