A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln Part 16

XX

The Blockade--Hatteras Inlet--Roanoke Island--Fort Pulaski--Merrimac and Monitor--The c.u.mberland Sunk--The Congress Burned--Battle of the Ironclads--Flag-officer Farragut--Forts Jackson and St. Philip--New Orleans Captured--Farragut at Vicksburg--Farragut's Second Expedition to Vicksburg--Return to New Orleans

In addition to its heavy work of maintaining the Atlantic blockade, the navy of the United States contributed signally toward the suppression of the rebellion by three brilliant victories which it gained during the first half of the year 1862. After careful preparation during several months, a joint expedition under the command of General Ambrose E.

Burnside and Flag-Officer Goldsborough, consisting of more than twelve thousand men and twenty ships of war, accompanied by numerous transports, sailed from Fort Monroe on January 11, with the object of occupying the interior waters of the North Carolina coast. Before the larger vessels could effect their entrance through Hatteras Inlet, captured in the previous August, a furious storm set in, which delayed the expedition nearly a month. By February 7, however, that and other serious difficulties were overcome, and on the following day the expedition captured Roanoke Island, and thus completely opened the whole interior water-system of Albemarle and Pamlico sounds to the easy approach of the Union fleet and forces.

From Roanoke Island as a base, minor expeditions within a short period effected the destruction of the not very formidable fleet which the enemy had been able to organize, and the reduction of Fort Macon and the rebel defenses of Elizabeth City, New Berne, and other smaller places.

An eventual advance upon Goldsboro' formed part of the original plan; but, before it could be executed, circ.u.mstances intervened effectually to thwart that object.

While the gradual occupation of the North Carolina coast was going on, two other expeditions of a similar nature were making steady progress.

One of them, under the direction of General Quincy A. Gillmore, carried on a remarkable siege operation against Fort Pulaski, standing on an isolated sea marsh at the mouth of the Savannah River. Here not only the difficulties of approach, but the apparently insurmountable obstacle of making the soft, unctuous mud sustain heavy batteries, was overcome, and the fort compelled to surrender on April 11, after an effective bombardment. The second was an expedition of nineteen ships, which, within a few days during the month of March, without serious resistance, occupied the whole remaining Atlantic coast southward as far as St.

Augustine.

When, at the outbreak of the rebellion, the navy-yard at Norfolk, Virginia, had to be abandoned to the enemy, the destruction at that time attempted by Commodore Paulding remained very incomplete. Among the vessels set on fire, the screw-frigate _Merrimac_, which had been scuttled, was burned only to the water's edge, leaving her hull and machinery entirely uninjured. In due time she was raised by the Confederates, covered with a sloping roof of railroad iron, provided with a huge wedge-shaped prow of cast iron, and armed with a formidable battery of ten guns. Secret information came to the Navy Department of the progress of this work, and such a possibility was kept in mind by the board of officers that decided upon the construction of the three experimental ironclads in September, 1861.

The particular one of these three especially intended for this peculiar emergency was a ship of entirely novel design, made by the celebrated inventor John Ericsson, a Swede by birth, but American by adoption--a man who combined great original genius with long scientific study and experience. His invention may be most quickly described as having a small, very low hull, covered by a much longer and wider flat deck only a foot or two above the water-line, upon which was placed a revolving iron turret twenty feet in diameter, nine feet high, and eight inches thick, on the inside of which were two eleven-inch guns trained side by side and revolving with the turret. This unique naval structure was promptly nicknamed "a cheese-box on a raft," and the designation was not at all inapt. Naval experts at once recognized that her sea-going qualities were bad; but compensation was thought to exist in the belief that her iron turret would resist shot and sh.e.l.l, and that the thin edge of her flat deck would offer only a minimum mark to an enemy's guns: in other words, that she was no cruiser, but would prove a formidable floating battery; and this belief she abundantly justified.

The test of her fighting qualities was attended by what almost suggested a miraculous coincidence. On Sat.u.r.day, March 8, 1862, about noon, a strange-looking craft resembling a huge turtle was seen coming into Hampton Roads out of the mouth of Elizabeth River, and it quickly became certain that this was the much talked of rebel ironclad _Merrimac_, or, as the Confederates had renamed her, the _Virginia_. She steamed rapidly toward Newport News, three miles to the southwest, where the Union ships _Congress_ and _c.u.mberland_ lay at anchor. These saw the uncouth monster coming and prepared for action. The _Minnesota_, the _St. Lawrence_, and the _Roanoke_, lying at Fortress Monroe also saw her and gave chase, but, the water being low, they all soon grounded. The broadsides of the _Congress_, as the _Merrimac_ pa.s.sed her at three hundred yards' distance, seemed to produce absolutely no effect upon her sloping iron roof. Neither did the broadsides of her intended prey, nor the fire of the sh.o.r.e batteries, for even an instant arrest her speed as, rushing on, she struck the _c.u.mberland_, and with her iron prow broke a hole as large as a hogshead in her side. Then backing away and hovering over her victim at convenient distance, she raked her decks with shot and sh.e.l.l until, after three quarters of an hour's combat, the _c.u.mberland_ and her heroic defenders, who had maintained the fight with unyielding stubbornness, went to the bottom in fifty feet of water with colors flying.

Having sunk the _c.u.mberland_, the _Merrimac_ next turned her attention to the _Congress_, which had meanwhile run into shoal water and grounded where the rebel vessel could not follow. But the _Merrimac_, being herself apparently proof against shot and sh.e.l.l by her iron plating, took up a raking position two cables' length away, and during an hour's firing deliberately reduced the _Congress_ to helplessness and to surrender--her commander being killed and the vessel set on fire. The approach, the manoeuvering, and the two successive combats consumed the afternoon, and toward nightfall the _Merrimac_ and her three small consorts that had taken little part in the action withdrew to the rebel batteries on the Virginia sh.o.r.e: not alone because of the approaching darkness and the fatigue of the crew, but because the rebel ship had really suffered considerable damage in ramming the _c.u.mberland_, as well as from one or two chance shots that entered her port-holes.

That same night, while the burning _Congress_ yet lighted up the waters of Hampton Roads, a little ship, as strange-looking and as new to marine warfare as the rebel turtleback herself, arrived by sea in tow from New York, and receiving orders to proceed at once to the scene of conflict, stationed herself near the grounded _Minnesota_. This was Ericsson's "cheese-box on a raft," named by him the _Monitor_. The Union officers who had witnessed the day's events with dismay, and were filled with gloomy forebodings for the morrow, while welcoming this providential reinforcement, were by no means rea.s.sured. The _Monitor_ was only half the size of her antagonist, and had only two guns to the other's ten.

But this very disparity proved an essential advantage. With only ten feet draft to the _Merrimac's_ twenty-two, she not only possessed superior mobility, but might run where the _Merrimac_ could not follow.

When, therefore, at eight o'clock on Sunday, March 9, the _Merrimac_ again came into Hampton Roads to complete her victory, Lieutenant John L. Worden, commanding the _Monitor_, steamed boldly out to meet her.

Then ensued a three hours' naval conflict which held the breathless attention of the active partic.i.p.ants and the spectators on ship and sh.o.r.e, and for many weeks excited the wonderment of the reading world.

If the _Monitor's_ solid eleven-inch b.a.l.l.s bounded without apparent effect from the sloping roof of the _Merrimac_, so, in turn, the _Merrimac's_ broadsides pa.s.sed harmlessly over the low deck of the _Monitor_, or rebounded from the round sides of her iron turret. When the unwieldy rebel turtleback, with her slow, awkward movement, tried to ram the pointed raft that carried the cheese-box, the little vessel, obedient to her rudder, easily glided out of the line of direct impact.

Each ship pa.s.sed through occasional moments of danger, but the long three hours' encounter ended without other serious damage than an injury to Lieutenant Worden by the explosion of a rebel sh.e.l.l against a crevice of the _Monitor's_ pilot-house through which he was looking, which, temporarily blinding his eye-sight, disabled him from command. At that point the battle ended by mutual consent. The _Monitor_, unharmed except by a few unimportant dents in her plating, ran into shoal water to permit surgical attendance to her wounded officer. On her part, the _Merrimac_, abandoning any further molestation of the other ships, steamed away at noon to her retreat in Elizabeth River. The forty-one rounds fired from the _Monitor's_ guns had so far weakened the _Merrimac's_ armor that, added to the injuries of the previous day, it was of the highest prudence to avoid further conflict. A tragic fate soon ended the careers of both vessels. Owing to other military events, the _Merrimac_ was abandoned, burned, and blown up by her officers about two months later; and in the following December, the _Monitor_ foundered in a gale off Cape Hatteras. But the types of these pioneer ironclads, which had demonstrated such unprecedented fighting qualities, were continued. Before the end of the war the Union navy had more than twenty monitors in service; and the structure of the _Merrimac_ was in a number of instances repeated by the Confederates.

The most brilliant of all the exploits of the navy during the year 1862 were those carried on under the command of Flag-Officer David G.

Farragut, who, though a born Southerner and residing in Virginia when the rebellion broke out, remained loyal to the government and true to the flag he had served for forty-eight years. Various preparations had been made and various plans discussed for an effective attempt against some prominent point on the Gulf coast. Very naturally, all examinations of the subject inevitably pointed to the opening of the Mississippi as the dominant problem to be solved; and on January 9, Farragut was appointed to the command of the western Gulf blockading squadron, and eleven days thereafter received his confidential instructions to attempt the capture of the city of New Orleans.

Thus far in the war, Farragut had been a.s.signed to no prominent service, but the patience with which he had awaited his opportunity was now more than compensated by the energy and thoroughness with which he superintended the organization of his fleet. By the middle of April he was in the lower Mississippi with seventeen men-of-war and one hundred and seventy-seven guns. With him were Commander David D. Porter, in charge of a mortar flotilla of nineteen schooners and six armed steamships, and General Benjamin F. Butler, at the head of an army contingent of six thousand men, soon to be followed by considerable reinforcements.

The first obstacle to be overcome was the fire from the twin forts Jackson and St. Philip, situated nearly opposite each other at a bend of the Mississippi twenty-five miles above the mouth of the river, while the city of New Orleans itself lies seventy-five miles farther up the stream. These were formidable forts of masonry, with an armament together of over a hundred guns, and garrisons of about six hundred men each. They also had auxiliary defenses: first, of a strong river barrier of log rafts and other obstructions connected by powerful chains, half a mile below the forts; second, of an improvised fleet of sixteen rebel gunboats and a formidable floating battery. None of Farragut's ships were ironclad. He had, from the beginning of the undertaking, maintained the theory that a wooden fleet, properly handled, could successfully pa.s.s the batteries of the forts. "I would as soon have a paper ship as an ironclad; only give me _men_ to fight her!"

he said. He might not come back; but New Orleans would be won. In his hazardous undertaking his faith was based largely on the skill and courage of his subordinate commanders of ships, and this faith was fully sustained by their gallantry and devotion.

Porter's flotilla of nineteen schooners carrying two mortars each, anch.o.r.ed below the forts, maintained a heavy bombardment for five days, and then Farragut decided to try his ships. On the night of the twentieth the daring work of two gunboats cut an opening through the river barrier through which the vessels might pa.s.s; and at two o'clock on the morning of April 24, Farragut gave the signal to advance. The first division of his fleet, eight vessels, led by Captain Bailey, successfully pa.s.sed the barrier. The second division of nine ships was not quite so fortunate. Three of them failed to pa.s.s the barrier, but the others, led by Farragut himself in his flag-ship, the _Hartford_, followed the advance.

The starlit night was quickly obscured by the smoke of the general cannonade from both ships and forts; but the heavy batteries of the latter had little effect on the pa.s.sing fleet. Farragut's flag-ship was for a short while in great danger. At a moment when she slightly grounded a huge fire-raft, fully ablaze, was pushed against her by a rebel tug, and the flames caught in the paint on her side, and mounted into her rigging. But this danger had also been provided against, and by heroic efforts the _Hartford_ freed herself from her peril. Immediately above the forts, the fleet of rebel gunboats joined in the battle, which now resolved itself into a series of conflicts between single vessels or small groups. But the stronger and better-armed Union ships quickly destroyed the Confederate flotilla, with the single exception that two of the enemy's gunboats rammed the _Varuna_ from opposite sides and sank her. Aside from this, the Union fleet sustained much miscellaneous damage, but no serious injury in the furious battle of an hour and a half.

With but a short halt at Quarantine, six miles above the forts, Farragut and his thirteen ships of war pushed on rapidly over the seventy-five miles, and on the forenoon of April 25 New Orleans lay helpless under the guns of the Union fleet. The city was promptly evacuated by the Confederate General Lovell. Meanwhile, General Butler was busy moving his transports and troops around outside by sea to Quarantine; and, having occupied that point in force, Forts Jackson and St. Philip capitulated on April 28. This last obstruction removed, Butler, after having garrisoned the forts, brought the bulk of his army up to New Orleans, and on May 1 Farragut turned over to him the formal possession of the city, where Butler continued in command of the Department of the Gulf until the following December.

Farragut immediately despatched an advance section of his fleet up the Mississippi. None of the important cities on its banks below Vicksburg had yet been fortified, and, without serious opposition, they surrendered as the Union ships successively reached them. Farragut himself, following with the remainder of his fleet, arrived at Vicksburg on May 20. This city, by reason of the high bluffs on which it stands, was the most defensible point on the whole length of the great river within the Southern States; but so confidently had the Confederates trusted to the strength of their works at Columbus, Island No. 10, Fort Pillow, and other points, that the fortifications of Vicksburg had thus far received comparatively little attention. The recent Union victories, however, both to the north and south, had awakened them to their danger; and when Lovell evacuated New Orleans, he shipped heavy guns and sent five Confederate regiments to Vicksburg; and during the eight days between their arrival on May 12 and the twentieth, on which day Farragut reached the city, six rebel batteries were put in readiness to fire on his ships.

General Halleck, while pushing his siege works toward Corinth, was notified as early as April 27 that Farragut was coming, and the logic of the situation ought to have induced him to send a cooperating force to Farragut's a.s.sistance, or, at the very least, to have matured plans for such cooperation. All the events would have favored an expedition of this kind. When Corinth, at the end of May, fell into Halleck's hands, Forts Pillow and Randolph on the Mississippi River were hastily evacuated by the enemy, and on June 6 the Union flotilla of river gunboats which had rendered such signal service at Henry, Donelson, and Island No. 10, reinforced by a hastily constructed flotilla of heavy river tugs converted into rams, gained another brilliant victory in a most dramatic naval battle at Memphis, during which an opposing Confederate flotilla of similar rams and gunboats was almost completely destroyed, and the immediate evacuation of Memphis by the Confederates thereby forced.

This left Vicksburg as the single barrier to the complete opening of the Mississippi, and that barrier was defended by only six batteries and a garrison of six Confederate regiments at the date of Farragut's arrival before it. But Farragut had with his expedition only two regiments of troops, and the rebel batteries were situated at such an elevation that the guns of the Union fleet could not be raised sufficiently to silence them. Neither help nor promise of help came from Halleck's army, and Farragut could therefore do nothing but turn his vessels down stream and return to New Orleans. There, about June 1, he received news from the Navy Department that the administration was exceedingly anxious to have the Mississippi opened; and this time, taking with him Porter's mortar flotilla and three thousand troops, he again proceeded up the river, and a second time reached Vicksburg on June 25.

The delay, however, had enabled the Confederates greatly to strengthen the fortifications and the garrison of the city. Neither a bombardment from Porter's mortar sloops, nor the running of Farragut's ships past the batteries, where they were joined by the Union gunboat flotilla from above, sufficed to bring the Confederates to a surrender. Farragut estimated that a cooperating land force of twelve to fifteen thousand would have enabled him to take the works; and Halleck, on June 28 and July 3, partially promised early a.s.sistance. But on July 14 he reported definitely that it would be impossible for him to render the expected aid. Under these circ.u.mstances, the Navy Department ordered Farragut back to New Orleans, lest his ships of deep draft should be detained in the river by the rapidly falling water. The capture of Vicksburg was postponed for a whole year, and the early transfer of Halleck to Washington changed the current of Western campaigns.

XXI

McClellan's Illness--Lincoln Consults McDowell and Franklin--President's Plan against Mana.s.sas--McClellan's Plan against Richmond--Cameron and Stanton--President's War Order No. 1--Lincoln's Questions to McClellan--News from the West--Death of Willie Lincoln--The Harper's Ferry Fiasco--President's War Order No. 3--The News from Hampton Roads--Mana.s.sas Evacuated--Movement to the Peninsular--Yorktown--The Peninsula Campaign--Seven Days' Battles--Retreat to Harrison's Landing

We have seen how the express orders of President Lincoln in the early days of January, 1862, stirred the Western commanders to the beginning of active movements that brought about an important series of victories during the first half of the year. The results of his determination to break a similar military stagnation in the East need now to be related.

The gloomy outlook at the beginning of the year has already been mentioned. Finding on January 10 that General McClellan was still ill and unable to see him, he called Generals McDowell and Franklin into conference with himself, Seward, Chase, and the a.s.sistant Secretary of War; and, explaining to them his dissatisfaction and distress at existing conditions, said to them that "if something were not soon done, the bottom would be out of the whole affair; and if General McClellan did not want to use the army, he would like to borrow it, provided he could see how it could be made to do something."

The two generals, differing on some other points, agreed, however, in a memorandum prepared next day at the President's request, that a direct movement against the Confederate army at Mana.s.sas was preferable to a movement by water against Richmond; that preparations for the former could be made in a week, while the latter would require a month or six weeks. Similar discussions were held on the eleventh and twelfth, and finally, on January 13, by which date General McClellan had sufficiently recovered to be present. McClellan took no pains to hide his displeasure at the proceedings, and ventured no explanation when the President asked what and when anything could be done. Chase repeated the direct interrogatory to McClellan himself, inquiring what he intended doing with his army, and when he intended doing it. McClellan stated his unwillingness to develop his plans, but said he would tell them if he was ordered to do so. The President then asked him if he had in his own mind any particular time fixed when a movement could be commenced.

McClellan replied that he had. "Then," rejoined the President, "I will adjourn this meeting."

While these conferences were going on, a change occurred in the President's cabinet; Secretary of War Cameron, who had repeatedly expressed a desire to be relieved from the onerous duties of the War Department, was made minister to Russia and Edwin M. Stanton appointed to succeed him. Stanton had been Attorney-General during the last months of President Buchanan's administration, and, though a lifelong Democrat, had freely conferred and cooperated with Republican leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives in thwarting secession schemes. He was a lawyer of ability and experience, and, possessing organizing qualities of a high degree combined with a strong will and great physical endurance, gave his administration of the War Department a record for efficiency which it will be difficult for any future minister to equal; and for which service his few mistakes and subordinate faults of character will be readily forgotten. In his new functions, Stanton enthusiastically seconded the President's efforts to rouse the Army of the Potomac to speedy and vigorous action.

In his famous report, McClellan states that very soon after Stanton became Secretary of War he explained verbally to the latter his plan of a campaign against Richmond by way of the lower Chesapeake Bay, and at Stanton's direction also explained it to the President. It is not strange that neither the President nor the new Secretary approved it.

The reasons which then existed against it in theory, and were afterward demonstrated in practice, are altogether too evident. As this first plan was never reduced to writing, it may be fairly inferred that it was one of those mere suggestions which, like all that had gone before, would serve only to postpone action.

The patience of the President was at length so far exhausted that on January 27 he wrote his General War Order No. I, which directed "that the 22d day of February, 1862, be the day for a general movement of all the land and naval forces of the United States against the insurgent forces," and that the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, the general-in-chief, and all other commanders and subordinates of land and naval forces "will severally be held to their strict and full responsibilities for prompt execution of this order." To leave no doubt of his intention that the Army of the Potomac should make a beginning, the President, four days later, issued his Special War Order No. I, directing that after providing safely for the defense of Washington, it should move against the Confederate army at Mana.s.sas Junction, on or before the date announced.

As McClellan had been allowed to have his way almost without question for six months past, it was, perhaps, as much through mere habit of opposition as from any intelligent decision in his own mind that he again requested permission to present his objections to the President's plan. Mr. Lincoln, thereupon, to bring the discussion to a practical point, wrote him the following list of queries on February 3:

"MY DEAR SIR: You and I have distinct and different plans for a movement of the Army of the Potomac--yours to be down the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock to Urbana, and across land to the terminus of the railroad on the York River; mine, to move directly to a point on the railroad southwest of Mana.s.sas.

"If you will give me satisfactory answers to the following questions, I shall gladly yield my plan to yours.

"_First_. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure of time and money than mine?"

"_Second_. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than mine?"

"_Third_. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan than mine?"

"_Fourth_. In fact, would it not be less valuable in this, that it would break no great line of the enemy's communications, while mine would?"

"_Fifth_. In case of disaster, would not a retreat be more difficult by your plan than mine?"

Instead of specifically answering the President's concise interrogatories, McClellan, on the following day, presented to the Secretary of War a long letter, reciting in much detail his statement of what he had done since coming to Washington, and giving a rambling outline of what he thought might be accomplished in the future prosecution of the war. His reasoning in favor of an advance by Chesapeake Bay upon Richmond, instead of against Mana.s.sas Junction, rests princ.i.p.ally upon the a.s.sumption that at Mana.s.sas the enemy is prepared to resist, while at Richmond there are no preparations; that to win Mana.s.sas would give us only the field of battle and the moral effect of a victory, while to win Richmond would give us the rebel capital with its communications and supplies; that at Mana.s.sas we would fight on a field chosen by the enemy, while at Richmond we would fight on one chosen by ourselves. If as a preliminary hypothesis these comparisons looked plausible, succeeding events quickly exposed their fallacy.

The President, in his anxious studies and exhaustive discussion with military experts in the recent conferences, fully comprehended that under McClellan's labored strategical theories lay a fundamental error.

It was not the capture of a place, but the destruction of the rebel armies that was needed to subdue the rebellion. But Mr. Lincoln also saw the fearful responsibility he would be taking upon himself if he forced McClellan to fight against his own judgment and protest, even though that judgment was incorrect. The whole subject, therefore, underwent a new and yet more elaborate investigation. The delay which this rendered necessary was soon greatly lengthened by two other causes. It was about this time that the telegraph brought news from the West of the surrender of Fort Henry, February 6, the investment of Fort Donelson on the thirteenth, and its surrender on the sixteenth, incidents which absorbed the constant attention of the President and the Secretary of War. Almost simultaneously, a heavy domestic sorrow fell upon Mr. Lincoln in the serious illness of his son Willie, an interesting and most promising lad of twelve, and his death in the White House on February 20.

When February 22 came, while there was plainly no full compliance with the President's War Order No. I, there was, nevertheless, such promise of a beginning, even at Washington, as justified reasonable expectation.