Admiral Farragut Part 8

[Footnote V: _Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant_, vol. i, p. 461.]

Because rightly aimed, this daring campaign was not frustrated even by the disasters of the night action. It is distinguished from the unhappy fiasco of the year before by all the difference between a fitting and an unfitting time--by all that separates a clear appreciation of facts from a confused impression of possibilities. In 1862 Farragut was driven up the river against his own judgment, seeing no prospect of tangible or permanent results. In 1863 he went on his own responsibility, because he saw that in the then condition of affairs, with the armies gathering at both ends of the line, the movement he made would not only be successful in itself, but would materially conduce to the attainment of the common end. It is significant of his true military insight that neither depreciation nor disaster shook his clear convictions of the importance of his work. "Whether my getting by Port Hudson was of consequence or not," he wrote chaffingly in reference to some slighting comments in a Southern newspaper, "if Pollard's stomach were as tightly pinched for food as theirs at Port Hudson and Vicksburg have been since I shut up Red River, he would know how to value a good dinner and a little peace."

In soberer style he wrote to his home: "We have done our part of the work a.s.signed to us, and all has worked well. _My last dash past Port Hudson was the best thing I ever did_, except taking New Orleans. It a.s.sisted materially in the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson."

Farragut remained but a short time in New Orleans, and was soon again at the front; joining the vessels of his squadron lying near, but below, Port Hudson. After entering Alexandria on the 7th of May, General Banks moved down with his army to the Mississippi, which he crossed five or six miles above Port Hudson. General Augur, of his command, at the same time moved up from Baton Rouge, the two divisions meeting on the 23d of May, and immediately investing Port Hudson. An a.s.sault was made on the 27th; but proving unsuccessful, regular siege operations were begun. The mortar schooners and the Ess.e.x supported them by constant bombardment, and the navy furnished and manned a battery of four nine-inch Dahlgren guns.

While contributing thus conspicuously to the immediate furtherance of the siege, the most essential work of the navy, here as in the upper Mississippi, was in the maintenance of the communications, which were wholly by the river, as well as in a.s.suring the safety of New Orleans, then stripped of all the troops that could be spared. The danger of two points like Vicksburg and Port Hudson, both of such vital importance, and both being besieged at the same time, aroused every latent energy of the Confederacy, and set in motion every armed man of whom it could dispose. To divert and distract the attention of the Union generals, to induce them to abandon their efforts or diminish the forces at the front, no means were so ready nor so sure as an attack upon their communications, or a threat directed against their base. To make these insecure, is like mining the foundations of a building. Here the navy removed every substantial cause of anxiety by its firm support, and by the rapidity with which its heavy guns were brought to sustain every point attacked. Under such diligent guardianship the barrier of the Mississippi remained impa.s.sable; and although a transport might now and again be arrested and forced to surrender, such an occasional annoyance could not by the most uneasy general be magnified into a serious menace to his communications. The active Confederate general, Richard Taylor, in command of the district west of the river, stripped all his posts to concentrate an effort along the right bank, which, by disturbing Banks, might make a favorable diversion for Port Hudson; and loud talk was made of an attack upon New Orleans itself, favored by a rising among the citizens, still heartily attached to the Southern cause. The powerful vessels kept before the city by Farragut effectually disposed of any chance of such an attempt, although much anxiety was felt by General Emory, in command of the station, and confident expectation was plainly discernible on the faces of the towns-people. The Confederates, however, did for a season control the west side of the river, appearing before Donaldsonville and Plaquemine, where were posts of United States troops.

These were saved by the prompt appearance of gunboats, which followed the movements of the enemy; but the report of them brought Farragut down in person, and elicited from him a remonstrance to Banks for leaving upon the west bank, inadequately sustained, heavy guns which, if they fell into the hands of the Confederates, might convert a menace into a serious embarra.s.sment. A few days later, at midnight of June 27th, the enemy attacked Donaldsonville in force. The storming party succeeded in entering the works, but the three gunboats which Farragut had stationed there opened so heavy a fire upon the supports that these broke and fled; and those in advance, being unsustained, were made prisoners.

A few days later Farragut summoned his chief-of-staff, Captain Thornton A. Jenkins, to relieve him at Port Hudson, as he felt his own presence necessary at New Orleans. Jenkins started up in the Monongahela, a heavy corvette commanded by Captain Abner Read, having in company two small transports with needed supplies. The enemy, despite the repulse at Donaldsonville, remained in the neighborhood, and had established a battery of field-guns a few miles below at a bend in the river. By these the Monongahela was attacked and pretty severely handled for a few moments. Her captain, an officer of distinguished courage and enterprise, was mortally wounded, and Captain Jenkins slightly so. These two affairs sufficiently indicate the character of the enemy's operations on the west bank of the Mississippi at this time. They did not in the least succeed in shaking the grip of the Union army before Port Hudson, nor did they entirely cease with the surrender of the place. That they did so little harm, with the enemy in nearly undisputed command in the regions west of the river, was due to the navy, whose mobility exceeded that of their troops.

Vicksburg surrendered on the 4th of July, 1863, and its fall was followed by that of Port Hudson on the 9th of the same month. Farragut then wrote to Porter, and turned over to him the command in all the Mississippi Valley above New Orleans. On the 1st of August Porter himself arrived off the city in his flag-ship, and the two admirals had an interview on the scene of their former exploits. The same afternoon Farragut sailed in the Hartford for the North, to enjoy a brief respite from his labors during the enervating autumn months of the Gulf climate.

Though now sixty-two years old, he retained an extraordinary amount of vitality, and of energy both physical and moral; but nevertheless at his age the anxieties and exposure he had to undergo tell, and had drawn from him, soon after his return from above Port Hudson, the expressive words, "I am growing old fast, and need rest." On the 10th of August the flag-ship anch.o.r.ed in New York, after a pa.s.sage of nine days.

The admiral remained in the North until the first of the following year.

His own ship, and her powerful sisters, the Richmond and Brooklyn, were in need of extensive repairs before they could be considered again fit for winter service in the Gulf. The Hartford was in better condition than the other two, being uninjured below the water line, but the severe actions through which she had pa.s.sed were proved by the scars, two hundred and forty in number, where she had been struck by shot or sh.e.l.l.

CHAPTER X.

MOBILE.

1864.

By the fall of the last and most powerful of the Confederate strongholds upon the Mississippi, and the consequent a.s.sertion of control by the United States Government over the whole of the great water course, was accomplished the first and chief of the two objects toward which Farragut was to co-operate. After manifold efforts and failures, the combined forces of the United States had at last sundered the Confederacy in twain along the princ.i.p.al one of those natural strategic lines which intersected it, and which make the strength or the weakness of States according as they are able or unable to hold them against an enemy. Of the two fragments, the smaller was militarily important only as a feeder to the other. Severed from the body to which they belonged, the seceded States west of the Mississippi sank into insignificance; the fire that had raged there would smoulder and die of itself, now that a broad belt which could not be pa.s.sed interposed between it and the greater conflagration in the East.

It next became the task of the Union forces to hold firmly, by adequate defensive measures, the line they had gained; while the great ma.s.s of troops heretofore employed along the Mississippi in offensive operations were transferred farther east, to drive yet another column through a second natural line of cleavage from Nashville, through Georgia, to the Gulf or to the Atlantic seaboard. How this new work was performed under the successive leadership of Rosecrans, Grant, and Sherman, does not fall within the scope of the present work. Although the light steamers of the Mississippi squadron did good and often important service in this distant inland region, the river work of Farragut's heavy sea-going ships was now over. In furtherance of the great object of opening the Mississippi, they had left their native element, and, braving alike a treacherous navigation and hostile batteries, had penetrated deep into the vitals of the Confederacy. This great achievement wrought, they turned their prows again seaward. The formal transfer to Admiral Porter of the command over the whole Mississippi and its tributaries, above New Orleans, signalized the fact that Farragut's sphere of action was to be thenceforth on the coast; for New Orleans, though over a hundred miles from the mouth of a tideless river, whose waters flow ever downward to the sea, was nevertheless substantially a sea-coast city.

As the opening of the Mississippi was the more important of the two objects embraced in Farragut's orders, so did it also offer him the ampler field for the display of those highest qualities of a general officer which he abundantly possessed. The faculty of seizing upon the really decisive points of a situation, of correctly appreciating the conditions of the problem before him, of discerning whether the proper moment for action was yet distant or had already arrived, and of moving with celerity and adequate dispositions when the time did come--all these distinctive gifts of the natural commander-in-chief had been called into play, by the difficult questions arising in connection with the stupendous work of breaking the shackles by which the Confederates held the Mississippi chained. The task that still remained before him, the closing of the Confederate seaports within the limits of his command, though arduous and wearisome, did not make the same demand upon these more intellectual qualities. The sphere was more contracted, more isolated. It had fewer relations to the great military operations going on elsewhere, and, being in itself less complex, afforded less interest to the strategist. It involved, therefore, less of the work of the military leader which was so congenial to his apt.i.tudes, and more of that of the administrator, to him naturally distasteful.

Nevertheless, as the complete fulfilment of his orders necessitated the reduction of a fortified seaport, he found in this undertaking the opportunity for showing a degree of resolution and presence of mind which was certainly not exceeded--perhaps not even equaled--in his previous career. At Mobile it was the tactician, the man of instant perception and ready action, rather than he of clear insight and careful planning, that is most conspicuous. On the same occasion, with actual disaster incurred and imminent confusion threatening his fleet, combined with a resistance st.u.r.dier than any he had yet encountered, the admiral's firmness and tenacity rose equal to the highest demand ever made upon them. In the lofty courage and stern determination which plucked victory out of the very jaws of defeat, the battle of Mobile Bay was to the career of Farragut what the battle of Copenhagen was to that of Nelson. Perhaps we may even say, borrowing the words of an eloquent French writer upon the latter event, the battle of Mobile will always be in the eyes of seamen Farragut's surest claim to glory.[W]

[Footnote W: "The campaign of the Baltic will always be in the eyes of seamen Nelson's fairest claim to glory. He alone was capable of displaying such boldness and such perseverance; he alone could face the immense difficulties of that enterprise and triumph over them."--Jurien de la Graviere, _Guerres Maritimes_.]

Up to the time of Farragut's departure for the North, in August, 1863, the blockade of the Gulf sea-coast within the limits of his command, though technically effective, had for the most part only been enforced by the usual method of cruising or anchoring off the entrances of the ports. Such a watch, however, is a very imperfect subst.i.tute for the iron yoke that is imposed by holding all the princ.i.p.al harbors, the gateways for communication with the outer world. This was clearly enough realized; and the purpose of Farragut, as of his Government, had been so to occupy the ports within his district. At one time, in December, 1862, he was able to say exultingly that he did so hold the whole coast, except Mobile; but the disasters at Galveston and Sabine Pa.s.s quickly intervened, and those ports remained thenceforth in the hands of the enemy. On the Texas coast, however, blockade-running properly so called--the entrance, that is, of blockaded Confederate harbors--was a small matter compared with the flourishing contraband trade carried on through the Mexican port Matamoras and across the Rio Grande. When Farragut's lieutenant, Commodore Henry H. Bell, visited this remote and ordinarily deserted spot in May, 1863, he counted sixty-eight sails at anchor in the offing and a forest of smaller craft inside the river, some of which were occupied in loading and unloading the outside shipping; to such proportions had grown the trade of a town which neither possessed a harbor nor a back country capable of sustaining such a traffic. Under proper precautions by the parties engaged, this, though clearly hostile, was difficult to touch; but it also became of comparatively little importance when the Mississippi fell.

Not so with Mobile. As port after port was taken, as the lines of the general blockade drew closer and closer, the needs of the Confederacy for the approaching death-struggle grew more and more crying, and the practicable harbors still in their hands became proportionately valuable and the scenes of increasing activity. After the fall of New Orleans and the evacuation of Pensacola, in the spring of 1862, Mobile was by far the best port on the Gulf coast left to the Confederates. Though admitting a less draught of water than the neighboring harbor of Pensacola, it enjoyed the advantage over it of excellent water communications with the interior; two large rivers with extensive tributary systems emptying into its bay. Thanks to this circ.u.mstance, it had become a place of very considerable trade, ranking next to New Orleans in the Gulf; and its growing commerce, in turn, reacted upon the communications by promoting the development of its railroad system. The region of which Mobile was the natural port did not depend for its importance only upon agricultural products; under somewhat favorable conditions it had developed some manufacturing interests in which the Southern States were generally very deficient, and which afterward found active employment in the construction of the Tennessee, the most formidable ironclad vessel built by the Confederates.

For all these reasons the tenure of Mobile became a matter of serious consequence to the enemy; and, as Farragut had from the first foreseen, they made active use of the respite afforded them by the unfortunate obstinacy of the Navy Department in refusing him permission to attack after New Orleans fell. The enterprise then was by no means as difficult as the pa.s.sage of the Mississippi forts just effected; and once captured, the holding of the harbor would require only the small number of troops necessary to garrison the powerful masonry fort which commanded the main ship channel, supported by a naval force much less numerous than that required to blockade outside. The undertaking was therefore not open to the objection of unduly exposing the troops and ships placed in unfortified or poorly fortified harbors, which received such a sad ill.u.s.tration at Galveston; but it was dropped, owing, first, to the preoccupation of the Government with its expectations of immediately reducing the Mississippi, and afterward to the fear of losing ships which at that time could not be replaced. Hesitation to risk their ships and to take decisive action when seasonable opportunity offers, is the penalty paid by nations which practise undue economy in their preparations for war. When at last it became urgent to capture Mobile before the powerful ironclad then building was completed, the preparations of the defense were so far advanced that ironclad vessels were needed for the attack; and before these could be, or at least before they were, supplied, the Tennessee, which by rapid action might have been forestalled like the similar vessel at New Orleans, was ready for battle. Had she been used with greater wisdom by those who directed her movements, she might have added very seriously to the embarra.s.sment of the United States admiral.

When Farragut, after an absence of nearly six months, returned to his station in January, 1864, it was with the expectation of a speedy attack upon Mobile. On his way to New Orleans he stopped off the bar, and on the 20th of January made a reconnaissance with a couple of gunboats, approaching to a little more than three miles from the forts commanding the entrance. He then reported to the department that he was satisfied that, if he had one ironclad, he could destroy the whole of the enemy's force in the bay, and then reduce the forts at leisure with the co-operation of about five thousand troops. "But without ironclads," he added, "we should not be able to fight the enemy's vessels of that cla.s.s with much prospect of success, as the latter would lie on the flats, where our ships could not get at them. By reference to the chart you will see how small a s.p.a.ce there is for the ships to manoeuvre. Wooden vessels can do nothing with the ironclads, unless by getting within one or two hundred yards, so as to ram them or pour in a broadside." He repeats the information given by a refugee, that the ironclad Nashville would not be ready before March, and that the Confederate admiral announced that when she was he would raise the blockade. "It is depressing," he adds, "to see how easily false reports circulate, and in what a state of alarm the community is kept by the most absurd rumors. If the Department could get one or two ironclads here, it would put an end to this state of things and restore confidence to the people of the ports now in our possession. I feel no apprehension about Buchanan's raising the blockade; but, with such a force as he has in the bay, it would be unwise to take in our wooden vessels without the means of fighting the enemy on an equal footing." Having made this reconnaissance, he went on to New Orleans, arriving there January 22d.

It appears, therefore, that, regarded as a naval question, Farragut considered the time had gone by for an attempt to run the forts of Mobile Bay, and that it would not return until some ironclads were furnished him by the Department. The capture of the forts he at no time expected, except by the same means as he had looked to for the reduction of those in the Mississippi--that is, by a combined military and naval operation. In both cases the navy was to plant itself across the enemy's communications, which it could do by running the gantlet of his guns. It then remained for the land forces either to complete the investment and await their fall by the slow process of famine, or to proceed with a regular siege covered by the fleet. Without the protection of the ships in the bay, the army would be continually hara.s.sed by the light gunboats of the enemy, and very possibly exposed to attack by superior force.

Without the troops, the presence of the ships inside would be powerless to compel the surrender of the works, or to prevent their receiving some supplies. But in the two years that had very nearly elapsed since Farragut, if permitted his own wish, would have attacked, the strengthening of the works and the introduction of the ironclads had materially altered the question. He was, it is true, misinformed as to the readiness of the latter. The vessels that were dignified by that name when he first returned to his station, took no part in the defense, either of the bay or, later, of the city. He was deceived, probably, from the fact that the Confederates themselves were deceived, with the exception of a few who had more intimate knowledge of their real value; and consequently the reports that were brought off agreed in giving them a character which they did not deserve.

An attack upon Mobile had been a cherished project with General Grant after the fall of Vicksburg. It was to that--and not to the unfortunate Red River expedition of 1864--that he would have devoted Banks's army in the Southwest; moving it, of course, in concert with, so as to support and be supported by, the other great operations which took place that year--Sherman's advance upon Atlanta and his own against Richmond. It was to Mobile, and not to Savannah, that he first looked as the point toward which Sherman would act after the capture of Atlanta; the line from Atlanta to Mobile would be that along which, by the control of the intervening railroad systems, the Confederacy would again be cleft in twain, as by the subjugation of the Mississippi. For this reason chiefly he had, while still only commander of the Army of the Tennessee, and before he succeeded to the lieutenant-generalship and the command of all the armies, strenuously opposed the Red River expedition; which he looked upon as an ex-centric movement, tending rather to keep alive the war across the Mississippi, which would fade if left alone, and likely to result in the troops engaged not getting back in time or in condition to act against Mobile.

As Grant feared, so it happened. The expedition being already organized and on the point of starting when he became commander-in-chief, he allowed it to proceed; but it ended in disaster, and was the cause of forty thousand good troops being unavailable for the decisive operations which began two months later. Not until the end of July could a force be spared even for the minor task of reducing the Mobile forts; and until then Farragut had to wait in order to attack to any purpose. By the time the army in the Southwest, in the command of which General Canby relieved Banks on the 20th of May, was again ready to move, Sherman had taken Atlanta, Hood had fallen upon his communications with Chattanooga, and the famous march to the sea had been determined. Farragut's battle in Mobile Bay therefore did not prove to be, as Grant had hoped, and as his pa.s.sage of the Mississippi forts had been, a step in a series of grand military operations, by which the United States forces should gain control of a line vital to the Confederacy, and again divide it into two fragments. It remained an isolated achievement, though one of great importance, converting Mobile from a maritime to an inland city, putting a stop to all serious blockade-running in the Gulf, and crushing finally the enemy's ill-founded hopes of an offensive movement by ironclads there equipped.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Entrance of Rear-Admiral Farragut's Fleet into Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864.

REFERENCE

1. Tec.u.mseh.

2. Manhattan.

3. Winnebago.

4. Chickasaw.

5. Brooklyn.

6. Octorora.

7. Hartford, Flag-ship.

8. Metacomet.

9. Richmond.

10. Port Royal.

11. Lackawanna.

12. Seminole.

13. Admiral's barge Loyall.

14. Monongahela.

15. Kennebec.

16. Ossipee.

17. Itasca.

18. Oneida.

19. Galena.

------ Course of chasing vessels.

...... Course of chased vessels.

EXPLANATION OF DIAGRAM FROM THE FIVE STANDPOINTS OF THE MOBILE FIGHT.

No. 1. Ships lashed together and running in from sea and the monitors running out of Monitor Bay to take their station inside or eastward of the line.

No. 2. Running up the channel in line of battle, and engaging Fort Morgan, leading ship Brooklyn encounters what she supposes to be torpedoes; monitor Tec.u.mseh is struck by one and sinks; Brooklyn backs astern, causing confusion; Flag-ship takes the lead and pa.s.ses up and engages the ram Tennessee and the gunboats of the enemy.

No. 3. Running fight with the enemy's fleet, which ends in the capture of one, destruction of another, and the ram and one gunboat take shelter again under Fort Morgan.

No. 4. Fleet pa.s.s up and are in the act of anchoring when the ram Tennessee is seen coming out to attack them.

No. 5. Shows the manner the attack was made by the fleet upon the ram by ramming her in succession and keeping up a constant fire upon her at the same time.

The points of contact are shown by the sketch in the northeast corner of the plate.

D. G. Farragut.

_Washington, D. C. March 1, 1865._

De Krafft's flotilla bombarding Fort Powell.]

The city of Mobile is itself some thirty miles from the Gulf, near the head of a broad but generally shallow bay which bears the same name.