A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War

Lincoln stopped at Capitol Square on his way to General Weitzel’s headquarters in the former Confederate White House and addressed a crowd of newly freed slaves: “My poor friends, you are free,” he said, “free as the air. You can cast off the name of slave and trample upon it.… Liberty is your birthright.” But later, at the close of his meeting with Weitzel, Lincoln urged the general to treat the defeated white population with tact: “If I were in your place,” the president told him, “I’d let ’em up easy, let ’em up easy.”²

Lincoln was impatient for peace, and he urged General Grant, in a telegram on April 6, to finish off Lee’s army before it escaped to Georgia: “Nothing … is to delay, hinder, or interfere with your work.”³ Grant had heard from Sheridan that the Confederates had massed at Amelia Court House, forty miles west-northwest of Petersburg, and were desperately foraging for food in the surrounding countryside, as their supplies had failed to arrive. Grant realized immediately that his adversary had only one course of action: “It now became a life and death struggle with Lee to get south to his provisions.”⁴ More than a million and a half rations of bread and meat were waiting for the famished Confederates at Danville, a hundred miles away on the Virginia–North Carolina border. “The soldiers are in a dreadful state from hunger,” Welly wrote in his diary on the sixth. Lee had heard that the road to Danville was blocked, but there were 80,000 rations at Farmville, only eighteen miles from his present position; this had to be the next destination, or else his men would either collapse from starvation or desert.

Francis Lawley had changed his mind about fleeing immediately to New York, returning instead to observe the final scene of the drama that had absorbed his life since he became the Times’ special correspondent. “All day long upon the 6th, hundreds of men dropped from exhaustion,” he wrote, “and thousands let fall their muskets from inability to carry them any further.”⁵ Lee pleaded with his son Rooney, who was commanding a division of the cavalry corps, to keep up its spirits, exhorting him, “don’t let it think of surrender. I will get you out of this.”⁶ But Sheridan pounced on the Confederate army as it retreated across Sayler’s Creek. Two divisions, amounting to almost a quarter of Lee’s forces, were cut off from their comrades; here, beside a naked line of trees, occurred the final battle between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia.

The surrounded Confederates tried to fight their way through, many resorting to fists and teeth if they had no weapons.^38.1 But after five hours the two divisions surrendered, making prisoners of nine Confederate generals (including Custis, Lee’s eldest son) and almost eight thousand soldiers. The gray countryside turned black with the smoke rising from burning wagons. Lawley looked about him and saw “exhausted men, worn-out mules and horses, lying down side by side—gaunt famine glaring hopelessly from sunken lack-lustre eyes—dead mules, dead horses, dead men everywhere—death, many times welcomed as God’s blessing in disguise.”⁹

During the night of April 8, Lee’s senior commanders, Longstreet, Gordon, and Fitz Lee, gathered in a copse near Appomattox Court House to discuss the possible courses left open to them. Fitz Lee did not wish to be a part of any surrender, and informed his uncle that he would take the remainder of his corps and flee southward. But the others were prepared to surrender with Lee if their final attempt to escape failed. Though there were only 10,000 soldiers present for duty against a pursuing force of 116,000, the generals agreed there should be one last attempt to break through Grant’s encirclement: “At 6 A.M., our line of battle is formed,” wrote Welly. “The whole line move forward under heavy shelling from the enemy, our men seem mad with rage, they charge the enemy who are ten times their number, and drive them before them, killing all that come in their way, taking no prisoners, but for all that it is no good, the enemy’s reserve come up and our men have to retreat, but they do it only inch by inch.”¹²

At 8:30 A.M. Lee was informed that Gordon’s attack had failed and the troops were falling back toward Longstreet’s position, which was itself under fire from Federal forces. “Then,” said Lee, “there is nothing left for me to do but to go to General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”¹³ He had prepared for this moment, having dressed before the battle in his best uniform, with red sash, ceremonial sword, and gold scabbard (the last given to him by a group of English female admirers).¹⁴ Welly was still exchanging fire with Federal soldiers when Fitz Lee received Lee’s dispatch that he was surrendering the army that day.

At four in the afternoon, Lee and his aides stepped out onto the sunlit porch of the McLean house, the document of surrender signed. Grant had offered generous terms: the Confederates were to lay down their weapons in perpetuity, but in return the officers could keep their horses and sidearms, and all could return to their homes unmolested. Grant had also offered to send rations to the famished Confederates. Lee mounted his horse, Traveller, and rode toward his own lines. “As the great Confederate captain rode back from his interview with General Grant,” wrote Francis Lawley,

the news of the surrender acquired shape and consistency, and could no longer be denied. The effect on the worn and battered troops—some of whom had fought since April 1861 … passes mortal description. Whole lines of battle rushed up to their beloved old chief, and, choking with emotion, broke ranks and struggled with each other to wring him once more by the hand. Men who had fought throughout the war, and knew what the agony and humiliation of the moment must be to him, strove with a refinement of unselfishness and tenderness which he alone could fully appreciate, to lighten his burden and mitigate his pain. With tears pouring down both cheeks, General Lee at length commanded voice enough to say: “Men, we have fought through the war together. I have done the best that I could for you.”¹⁶

Word of Lee’s surrender spread quickly throughout the South. “We were brought into the 4 mile camp at Vicksburg and I was lying there when news came of General Grant’s great victory,” wrote James Pendlebury of the 69th New York Irish Regiment. He had survived three months of relentless marching from one makeshift prison to another until his rescue by Federal troops. Sick and weak as he was, Pendlebury dragged his emaciated frame to the Vicksburg courthouse and rang the bell, which was answered by a volley of cannon fire off the surrounding hills. But in Richmond, the one-hundred-gun salute was ignored by the long shuffling lines of residents queuing at U.S. Sanitary Commission depots for their rations. Francis Dawson had regained consciousness, although he was incapacitated by the bullet wound to his shoulder. “What would you think of me were I to return to England, poorer than when I left her shores?” he wrote to his mother. He felt not just the defeat of the Confederacy but a sense of personal failure: “My life has been a useless one, productive only of grief to others whom I love the best and remorse to myself.” He had always promised his mother that his absence from London would not leave her in want; however, his “worldly possessions” now consisted of “a postage stamp and what was left of a five dollar greenback that a friend in Baltimore had sent me.”¹⁸

Farther south, at Danville, Jefferson Davis, his cabinet, and an escort of sixty midshipmen from the Confederate naval academy boarded their trains again, this time for Greensboro, North Carolina, where the armies of Beauregard and Johnston were said to remain intact. “People in the army wonder at my good spirits,” Feilden wrote to Julia from his makeshift camp at Hillsborough, North Carolina, “for all that I cannot shut my eyes to our condition, though perhaps after all it is more philosophic to try and not think, but to float down with the current.”¹⁹ But, like Dawson, Feilden was prepared for a prolonged resistance to Federal rule. “To tell the truth,” he wrote, “I would sooner be killed in this war than leave the country in its present distress of my own accord.” Davis shared his sentiments, and when he reached Greensboro, the Confederate president became indignant with Beauregard and Johnston for telling him there was no alternative to asking Sherman for his terms of surrender. Davis insisted that the war was by no means over, not when there remained two undefeated Confederate armies—Johnston’s in North Carolina and General Edmund Kirby-Smith’s west of the Mississippi.²⁰ Driven by Davis’s determination to fight on—and a fear that they would all be hanged for treason if caught by the Federals—the remaining members of the Confederate cabinet began making preparations to leave Greensboro on April 14. They were being hunted by Federal forces, but one determined seeker had already found them, though he was a friend: Frank Vizetelly, who had been trying to catch up with Davis since the fall of Richmond, was the only journalist to reach him.

Abraham Lincoln had been in Washington for five days on April 14 when he convened the cabinet to discuss the terms for readmitting the Southern states to the Union. The only member not at the meeting was William Seward, who was bedridden after suffering a carriage accident on April 5 that had left him with a dislocated shoulder and a broken jaw. His wife and daughter, Frances and Fanny, were nursing him. “His face is so marred and swollen and discolored that one can hardly persuade themselves of his identity,” Frances wrote to her sister, nor was he able to communicate except by grunting.²¹ Bereft of his closest ally, Lincoln found it much more difficult to persuade the cabinet of the wisdom of showing clemency toward the South. He even advised the war secretary, Edwin Stanton, to allow the Confederate plotters in Canada to escape to Europe. Stanton wanted Jacob Thompson arrested and tried in the United States. “Best to let him run,” countered Lincoln.²²

That evening the Lincolns went to Ford’s Theatre to watch Laura Keane in her one-thousandth performance of Tom Taylor’s Our American Cousin.^38.2 All of Washington knew that Lincoln was going to be there, and many people had bought tickets just so they could catch a glimpse of him. The information helped John Wilkes Booth to make up his mind; his previous attempts to kidnap the president had all been thwarted by faulty intelligence or human failure. Months of frustration had exacerbated his already volatile nature, and tonight he was determined “to live in history.”²⁵ He expected three deaths to occur simultaneously: Lincoln’s by his hand, Vice President Andrew Johnson’s by the hand of George Atzerodt, and Seward’s by the hand of Lewis Powell; and he had prepared a statement in advance for the National Intelligencer justifying the murders. The three men started out together, but George Atzerodt could not bring himself to perform the task and retreated to a hotel bar. At 10:00 P.M. Powell called at Seward’s house, claiming to have brought medicine from the doctor. A servant took him to the third floor, where Fanny and a male nurse were tending to Seward. But Frederick, Seward’s younger son, became suspicious and refused to let Powell enter the patient’s room. Throwing off his pretense, Powell attempted to shoot Frederick, and when the gun failed to go off, he used it to beat him unconscious. Easily dispensing with the nurse who opened the door to investigate the noise, Powell ignored Fanny and went straight for Seward, who struggled to defend himself as Powell hacked at his head and neck with his bowie knife. Fanny’s screams alerted Seward’s older son, Augustus, who rushed into the room and tried to grab the knife. Powell slashed at him wildly; breaking free of Augustus’s grip, he hurled himself down the stairs and out of the house, stabbing a State Department messenger who happened to call at the wrong time.

On April 21, Lincoln’s funeral train pulled away from Washington station at 7:00 A.M. and began its seventeen-hundred-mile journey to Springfield, Illinois.^38.3 That day, in Virginia, the raider John Singleton Mosby disbanded his Partisan Rangers, although Mosby himself refused to give his parole. His two British volunteers confounded the Federals by asking for safe passage to Canada. The following day, General Fitz Lee wrote his final dispatch to Robert E. Lee, commending each of his staff officers “and Captain Llewellyn Saunderson, who, having just arrived from his native country, Ireland, joined me previously to the fall of Petersburg, and remained with me to the last.”^38.4 ²⁷ Lincoln’s train had reached Albany, the state capital of New York, when Joe Johnston surrendered his army to Sherman on April 26. The one important difference to the terms that Grant had offered Lee was Sherman’s agreement to provide transport for the Southern troops from distant states. Henry Feilden had only a hundred miles to travel in order to reach Julia in Greenville, South Carolina, so he set off on his own horse.

I have not heard anything about you for so long that I have been quite miserable. You are aware I suppose that the war has ended in this part of the country, and that we have given in on this side of the Mississippi. Considering the position we were in, General Johnston made excellent terms with Sherman for the army—that is to say—that we are not to be molested by the Yankee Government, and our personal property is respected. No one else in the country has any guarantee for either life or property, except from the magnanimity of our enemies, which does not amount to much. The feeling of indignation in the North against our late leaders is described by the Yankee officers as intense. General Schofield (a very old friend of General Hardee’s) who now commands North Carolina advised him to leave the country at once. My own opinion is that our prominent men will be treated with great severity, if not executed.… The death of Lincoln was looked upon by our army as a great misfortune for the South. If he were alive we should have had no difficulty in getting terms.²⁸

The British press was united over the tragedy of Lincoln’s violent death. Newspapers that had routinely criticized the president during his lifetime rushed to praise him. On April 28 and again on May 1, The Times printed long eulogies to the late president. “The feeling which the death of Mr. Lincoln has excited in England is in no degree confined to the advocates of the Northern cause, it has shown itself just as strongly among the friends of the South,” the paper declared. “We feel confident that a sorrow in which both nations may without exaggeration be said to share cannot pass without leaving them better acquainted with each other, and more inclined to friendship … than they were before.”^38.5 This was a wild hope, and the editors knew it; William Howard Russell could not help writing smugly in his diary: “Had The Times followed my advice how different our position would be—not only that of the leading journal but of England!”³¹

Despite being the primary instigator and cause of The Times’ wildly biased reporting of the war, Francis Lawley escaped vilification because he was not a journalist by profession. The paper’s New York correspondent, Charles Mackay, on the other hand, was castigated for betraying his trade. The Spectator accused him of doing “probably more than any other single man to diffuse error concerning the great issue involved, and to imperil the cause of human freedom.”³² The Times’ managing editor, Mowbray Morris, belatedly realized the damage caused to the paper’s reputation by its pro-Southern reporting and dismissed Mackay from his post in a scathing letter that laid the entire blame for The Times’ position on his shoulders alone. The Economist also felt obliged to explain away its previous condemnations of Lincoln, claiming that over the past four years “Power and responsibility visibly widened [Lincoln’s] mind and elevated his character.”³³ But it was Punch that performed the greatest volte-face. Three weeks earlier, on April 8, the magazine had placed Lincoln in a gallery of April Fools that included Napoleon III and the MPs Roebuck, Bright, and Disraeli. The combination of embarrassment, shame, and shock that Lincoln was killed while watching his play moved Tom Taylor, the magazine’s senior contributor, to browbeat his colleagues into giving him a free hand to compose an abject apology and homage to the late president. The editor, Mark Lemon, supported him, telling the staff, “The avowal that we have been a bit mistaken [over Lincoln and the war] is manly and just.” Taylor did not hold back: “Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurril-jester, is there room for you?” he asked contritely. Lincoln “had lived to shame me from my sneer, / To lame my pencil, and confute my pen, / To make me own this kind of prince’s peer, / This rail-splitter a true-born king of men. / My shallow judgment I had learned to rue.”³⁴

The great change in attitudes toward the North did not mean that the Confederates in England were being cast aside by their friends, however. James Spence disbanded the pro-Southern associations, because, he explained to a former member, it would be wrong to continue public action on behalf of the South: “I feel, too, that Englishmen cannot now take further part in this direction with propriety.” But his personal loyalty to Mason was undiminished, and he was among those who offered to establish a subscription fund on the Confederate agent’s behalf. (The Southern commissioner was too proud to accept such charity.) “The British believe that resistance is hopeless,” Mason wrote to Judah P. Benjamin on May 1, “and that the war is at an end—to be followed, on our part, by passive submission to our fate. I need not say that I entertain no such impression, and endeavor as far as I can to disabuse the public mind.”³⁷ The South’s other chief agents in England—James Bulloch, Henry Hotze, Colin McRae, and Matthew Maury—were far more realistic. Hotze trimmed his staff on the Index and began looking for financial backers, announcing that journal’s new cause would be the protection of “white man’s government” against the “Africanization” of America.³⁸ Maury sent a formal letter of surrender to the U.S. Navy, promising to desist from all acts of aggression against the United States. Bulloch and McRae girded themselves for prolonged litigation from creditors both real and predatory on account of the Confederacy’s unpaid bills. (Some firms, such as the London Armoury Company, which had turned away business in order to fulfill its lucrative orders from the Confederacy, would quickly go bankrupt.) The certainty that an investigation into their books would absolve them of wrongdoing counted for little against the knowledge that their personal sacrifices for the South had been to no avail.

Jefferson Davis finally accepted defeat on May 3. He had been constantly on the move since leaving Greensboro on April 14, and he had reached Washington, in northeast Georgia. Right up until the day before, Davis had insisted to the cluster of cabinet members and generals surrounding him that resistance was not just possible but also a duty. He had carried on the normal functions of government, issuing orders and signing papers—albeit by the roadside instead of at his desk—as if it would only be a matter of time before the Confederacy was made whole again. Frank Vizetelly was present to sketch him doing so. “This was probably the last official business transacted by the Confederate Cabinet and may well be termed ‘Government by the roadside,’ ” the war artist wrote next to his drawing.

Ill.62 Jefferson Davis signing acts of government by the roadside, by Frank Vizetelly.

The Confederate cabinet began to break up as soon as the fugitives crossed into Georgia on the third. They were worn down by fatigue and fear. “I am as one walking in a dream, and expecting to wake,” wrote General Josiah Gorgas.⁴² Vizetelly drew one last picture of the complete party as it rode through the woods, and then Gorgas, Benjamin, and Mallory all set out on their own. A novice rider, Benjamin was physically incapable of keeping up with Davis and had struggled for the past few days. He assumed the disguise of a French businessman, bought a horse and buggy, and went off in the direction of Florida, where he hoped to take passage on a boat to the Caribbean.

Ill.63 Flight of Jefferson Davis and his cabinet over the Georgia Ridge, five days before his capture, by Frank Vizetelly.

With the postmaster general, John H. Reagan, his three aides, and a small cavalry detachment, Davis headed southward, expecting to catch up with Varina and the children in a day or two. He hoped that the wagons carrying the last of his government’s funds—$288,022.90 in gold and silver coins—would reach a port and from there be transported to England, where it could be used to fund Southern resistance against Washington.^38.6 Davis, now realizing the extreme folly of attracting attention, made up a new identity as a Texas politician on his way home. Vizetelly’s continued presence only endangered the party, and the journalist accepted that it was time for him to leave. Just before he rode away, sometime on or shortly after May 5, Vizetelly pressed a £50 note into Davis’s hand, which would be enough to pay for the entire family to sail to England, third class.⁴³

Ill.64 Jefferson Davis bidding farewell to his escort two days before his capture, by Frank Vizetelly.

Bruce had been in Washington since April 8, although he had not yet been presented to Lincoln when the president was assassinated on April 14. Since then, Bruce had waited anxiously to learn what the new administration’s attitude would be toward Britain. A large banner had been draped across the State Department building proclaiming PEACE AND GOOD WILL TO ALL NATIONS, BUT NO ENTANGLING ALLIANCES AND NO FOREIGN INTERVENTIONS, which did not inspire him with confidence.⁴⁷ He was relieved when President Johnson went out of his way to reassure him of his cordial feelings toward Britain.⁴⁸ “I have not been accustomed to etiquette,” Johnson admitted when Bruce was presented to him, “but I shall be at all times happy to see you and prepared to approach questions in a just and friendly spirit.”^38.8 Charles Sumner had offered to be an intermediary between the British legation and the president, but Bruce was loath to call upon him despite his admiration for the senator’s historic battle against slavery. There was something about Sumner’s insistence that no one else in Washington was capable of discussing foreign affairs that made Bruce doubt his motives. “It struck me,” wrote Bruce, “that the drift of his conversation was to lead me to the conclusion that I should enter into confidential communication with himself. This I am reluctant to do, as long as there is hope of Mr. Seward being able shortly to resume his duties.” He disliked “the want of frankness in him” and suspected that Sumner was trying to discover his weaknesses in order to exploit them later.⁵⁰

Bruce could see that the overwhelming desire in the country was for peace, and he no longer feared for the safety of Canada, although there were still serious frictions between Britain and America that remained unresolved. “The feeling against blockade runners, and foreigners who have served in a civil or military character in the South, is so strong as to make a fair trial almost hopeless,” he wrote to Russell. “These cases require great delicacy in handling—for to insinuate unfairness on the part of the officers composing their Military Commissions, would render the execution of a sentence only more certain.” Reflecting on Colonel Grenfell, who had been the only defendant in the Chicago conspiracy trial to receive the death sentence, Bruce thought that people were “against leniency where a foreigner is concerned and the Government will not openly thwart the popular sentiment in that respect.”⁵¹ Bennet Burley’s trial would take place soon, and Bruce expected a similar outcome.

Bruce felt pity for the defeated South, but his overriding fears were for the colored population of the United States, whose future seemed so uncertain. “The antagonism [against] the Negro breaks out constantly,” he wrote to Lord Russell. In Manhattan, a delegation of black New Yorkers was denied the right to walk behind Lincoln’s funeral cortege. When the White House intervened, a police escort had to protect the black marchers from the violence of the mob. “At Philadelphia,” continued Bruce, “though the Abolition element is strong, the pretension of the coloured people to ride in the railway cars [is] strenuously resisted, and threaten[s] to end in serious riots.” He had also heard that Tennessee had barred the testimony of black witnesses except in trials involving black defendants.⁵²

Many Southerners assumed that Northern fury would result in the execution of all the leading Confederates. Henry Feilden had heard that President Johnson was “burning with hatred against the South” (which was untrue, though Johnson did exclude owners of plantations worth more than $20,000 before the war from pardon), yet his own experiences showed him there was hope of eventual reconciliation between the two sides. He encountered mostly kindness from Federal troops as he slowly made his way to Charleston. Two Northern officers “acted as well as they could and were as kind and accommodating as possible,” he told Julia. “For instance they insisted on paying all the expenses. We helped them to drink three bottles of whiskey en route. At Branchville they got the US officer to put our horses on the car and saved us 65 miles ride. By the way,” he added, “the 102nd US Colored troops gave us lunch there.”⁵³

President Andrew Johnson proclaimed a general amnesty on May 29, 1865, three days after the surrender of the last Southern army in the field, General Edmond Kirby-Smith’s Army of the Trans-Mississippi. The war was officially at an end, but for many people it was not over. During the past four years, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell had rarely been absent from her work, training nurses at the New York Infirmary for Women; she tried to explain her state of mind to Barbara Bodichon, her friend in England:

You cannot hardly understand and I cannot explain how our private lives have all become interwoven with the life of the nation’s. No one who has not lived through it can understand the bond between those who have.… Neither is it possible without this intense and prolonged experience to estimate the keen personal suffering that has entered into every household and saddened every life.… The great secret of our dead leader’s popularity was the wonderful instinct with which he felt and acted … he did not lead, he expressed the American heartbreak … it has been to me a revelation to feel such influence and to see such leadership. I never was thoroughly republican before … but I am so, thoroughly, now.⁵⁴

^38.1 A former British Army officer in the Confederate army, Henry O’Brien, lay among the wounded, left for dead by his comrades. He had not expected the war to come to this: “I came to this country last winter,” he explained a few weeks later from prison, his life having been saved by a Federal surgeon. “[I ran] the blockade at Wilmington, NC through a love of adventure and a desire of seeing something of active service on this continent.”⁸

^38.2 Her first performance, on October 15, 1858, had coincided with Lincoln’s final U.S. Senate campaign debate against Stephen A. Douglas. Although Douglas went on to represent Illinois in the Senate, Lincoln’s extraordinary eloquence and clarity regarding the future of slavery had catapulted him to national prominence.

^38.3 Consul Archibald broke Foreign Office protocol for the first time in his life to attend a memorial service organized by the British community in New York. He defended his action to Sir Frederick Bruce, arguing that to stay away would have offended not only his own sensibilities but also the entire city’s.

^38.4 A paroled Confederate general, Cadmus Wilcox, who bumped into Thomas Conolly in New York on April 22, wrote: “[I] met Conley [sic] the first night. He gave an amusing account of his leaving Richmond in the night and his difficulties in reaching the Baltimore-Ohio railroad. He urged me to go to Ireland with him and, supposing I wanted money, offered me his purse freely.”

^38.5 Leslie Stephen prepared a devastating critique of The Times’ reporting on the war, which he published later that year under the title “The Times and the American Civil War.” The thirty-three-page pamphlet carefully dissected each report and essay for its bias and misrepresentation of facts.

^38.6 The bulk of the money disappeared and has never been found.

^38.7 The Scotsman William Watson was in Havana trying to salvage some of his profits from his blockade runner the Rob Roy when the Stonewall sputtered into the harbor. “As for the large fleet of blockade-running steamers thrown idle at Havana, it would be difficult to say what became of them all,” wrote Watson. He was disappointed to discover that exorbitant taxes and charges had reduced his share to a sum comparable to the average yearly wage of a ship’s master.⁴⁶

^38.8 In contrast to “plain and quiet Lord Lyons,” Bruce was “white-haired, white-whiskered, round-cheeked, with rich dark eyes, hearty, [and] convivial,” wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes, the future Supreme Court justice. Bruce was a clever choice as minister; his successful partnership with Anson Burlingame, the U.S. minister in China, had already made him popular with the administration. Moreover, Bruce liked Americans, having served on a previous diplomatic mission to Washington in 1842; he felt comfortable among them, preferring the raw energy of the New World to the stuffy hauteur of the Old. Holmes was amazed to discover that Bruce was “pretty freely outspoken for our side as if he were one of us.”⁴⁹

THIRTY-EIGHT“A True-Born King of Men”

THIRTY-EIGHT
“A True-Born King of Men”