Captains of the Civil War Part 4

The concussion was so tremendous that all the _Merrimac's_ gun-crews aft were struck down flat, with bleeding ears and noses. But in spite of this her boarders were called away; whereupon every man who could handle cutla.s.s and revolver made ready and stood by. The _Monitor_, however, dropped astern too quickly; and the wallowing _Merrimac_ had no chance of catching her. The fight had lasted all through that calm spring morning when the _Monitor_ steamed off, across the shallows, still keeping carefully between the _Merrimac_ and _Minnesota_. It was a drawn battle. But the effect was that of a Northern victory; for the _Merrimac_ was balked of her easy prey, and the North gained time to outbuild the South completely.

Outbuilding the South of course meant tightening the "anaconda"

system of blockade, in the entangling coils of which the South was caught already. Three thousand miles of Southern coastline was, however, more than the North could blockade or even watch to its own satisfaction all at once. Fogs, storms, and clever ruses played their part on behalf of those who ran the blockade, especially during the first two years; and it was almost more than human nature could stand to keep forever on the extreme alert, day after dreary day, through the deadly boredom of a long blockade. Like caged eagles the crews pa.s.sed many a weary week of dull monotony without the chance of swooping on a chase. "Smoke ho!" would be called from the main-topgallant cross-tree. "Where away?" would be called back from the deck. "Up the river, Sir!"--and there it would stay, the very mark of hope deferred. Occasionally a cotton ship would make a dash, with lights out on a dark night, or through a dense fog, when her smoke might sometimes be conned from the tops.

Occasionally, too, a foreigner would try to run in, and not seldom succeed, because only the fastest vessels tried to run the blockade after the first few months. But the general experience was one of utter boredom rarely relieved by a stroke of good luck.

The South could not break the blockade. But the North could tighten it, and did so repeatedly, not only at sea but by establishing strong strategic centers of its own along the Southern coast. We have seen already how Hatteras Island was taken in '61, five weeks after Bull Run. Within another three weeks Ship Island was also taken, to the great disadvantage of the Gulf ports and the corresponding advantage of the Federal fleet blockading them; for Ship Island commanded the coastwise channels between Mobile and New Orleans, the two great scenes of Farragut's success. Then, on the seventh of November, the day that Grant began his triumphant career by dealing the Confederates a shrewd strategic blow at Belmont in Missouri, South Carolina suffered a worse defeat at Port Royal (where she lost Forts Beauregard and Walker) than North Carolina had suffered at Hatteras Island. Admiral S. F. Du Pont managed the naval part of the Port Royal expedition with consummate skill, especially the fine fleet action off Hilton Head against the Southern ships and forts. He was ably seconded by General Thomas West Sherman, commanding the troops.

North Carolina's turn soon came again, when she lost Roanoke Island (and with it the command of Albemarle Sound) on February 8, 1862; and when she also had Pamlico Sound shut against her by a joint expedition that struck down her defenses as far inland as Newbern on the fourteenth of March. Then came the turn of Georgia, where Fort Pulaski, the outpost of Savannah, fell to the Federals on the eleventh of April. Within another month Florida was even more hardly hit when the pressure of the Union fleet and army on Virginia compelled the South to use as reinforcements the garrison that had held Pensacola since the beginning of the war.

These were all severe blows to the Southern cause. But they were nothing to the one which immediately followed.

The idea of an attack on New Orleans had been conceived in June, '61, by Commander (afterwards Admiral) D. D. Porter, of the U.S.S.

_Powhatan_, when he was helping to blockade the Mississippi. The Navy Department had begun thinking over the same idea in September and had worked out a definite scheme. New Orleans was of immense strategic importance, as being the link between the sea and river systems of the war. The ma.s.s of people and their politicians, on both sides, absurdly thought of New Orleans as the objective of a land invasion from the north. Happily for the Union cause, Gustavus Fox, a.s.sistant Secretary of the Navy, knew better and persuaded his civilian chief, Gideon Welles, that this was work for a joint expedition, with the navy first, the army second. The navy could take New Orleans. The army would have to hold it.

The squadron destined for this enterprise was commanded by David Glasgow Farragut, who arrived at Ship Island on February 20, 1862, in the _Hartford_, the famous man-of-war that carried his flag in triumph to the end. Unlike Lee and Jackson, Grant and Sherman, the other four great leaders in the Civil War, Farragut was not an American whose ancestors on both sides had come from the British Isles. Like Lee, however, he was of very ancient lineage, one of his ancestors, Don Pedro Farragut, having held a high command under the King of Aragon in the Moorish wars of the thirteenth century.

Farragut's father was a pure-blooded Spaniard, born under the British flag in Minorca in 1755. Half Spanish, half Southern by descent, Farragut was wholly Southern by family environment. His mother, Elizabeth Shine, was a native of North Carolina. He spent his early boyhood in New Orleans. Both his first and second wives came from Virginia; and he made his home at Norfolk. On the outbreak of the war, however, he immediately went North and applied for employment with the Union fleet.

Farragut was the oldest of the five great leaders, being now sixty years of age, while Lee was fifty-five, Sherman forty-two, Grant forty, and Jackson thirty-eight. He was, however, fit as an athlete in training, able to turn a handspring on his birthday and to hold his own in swordsmanship against any of his officers. Of middle height, strong build, and rather plain features, he did not attract attention in a crowd. But his alert and upright carriage, keenly interested look, and genial smile impressed all who ever knew him with a sense of native kindliness and power. Though far too great a master of the art of war to interfere with his subordinates he always took care to understand their duties from their own points of view so that he could control every part of the complex naval instruments of war--human and material alike--with a sure and inspiring touch. His one weakness as a leader was his generous inclination to give subordinates the chance of distinguishing themselves when they could have done more useful service in a less conspicuous position.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _ADMIRAL D. G. FARRAGUT_ Photograph by Brady.]

Farragut's base at Ship Island was about a hundred miles east from the Confederate Forts Jackson and St. Philip. These forts guarded the entrance to the Mississippi. Ninety miles above them stood New Orleans, to which they gave protection and from which they drew all their supplies. The result of a conference at Washington was an order from Welles to "reduce the defenses which guard the approaches to New Orleans." But Farragut's own infinitely better plan was to run past the forts and take New Orleans first. By doing this he would save the extra loss required for reducing the forts and would take the weak defenses of New Orleans entirely by surprise.

Then, when New Orleans fell, the forts, cut off from all supplies, would have to surrender without the firing of another shot. Everything depended on whether Farragut could run past without too much loss.

Profoundly versed in all the factors of the problem, he foresaw that his solution would prove right, while Washington's would as certainly be wrong. So, taking the utmost advantage of all the freedom that his general instructions allowed, he followed a course in which anything short of complete success would mean the ruin of his whole career.

The forts were strong, had ninety guns that would bear on the fleet, and were well placed, one on each side of the river. But they suffered from all the disadvantages of fixed defenses opposed by a mobile enemy, and their own mobile auxiliaries were far from being satisfactory. The best of the "River Defense Fleet," including several rams, had been ordered up to Memphis, so sure was the Confederate Government that the attack would come from the north.

Two home-made ironclads were failures. The _Louisiana's_ engines were not ready in time; and her captain refused to be towed into the position near the boom where he could do the enemy most harm. The _Mississippi_, a mere floating house, built by ordinary carpenters, never reached the forts at all and was burnt by her own men at New Orleans.

Farragut felt sure of his fleet. He had four splendid new men-of-war that formed a h.o.m.ogeneous squadron, four other sizable warships, and nine new gunboats. All spars and rigging that could be dispensed with were taken down; all hulls camouflaged with Mississippi mud; and all decks whitened for handiness at night. A weak point, however, was the presence of mortar-boats that would have been better out of the way altogether. These boats had been sent to bombard the forts, which, according to the plan preferred by the Government, were to be taken before New Orleans was attacked. In other words, the Government wished to cut off the branches first; while Farragut wished to cut down the tree itself, knowing the branches must fall with the trunk.

On the eighteenth of April the mortar-boats began heaving sh.e.l.ls at the forts. But, after six days of bombardment, the forts were nowhere near the point of surrendering, and the supply of sh.e.l.ls had begun to run low.

Meanwhile the squadron had been busy preparing for the great ordeal.

The first task was to break the boom across the river. This boom was placed so as to hold the ships under the fire of the forts; and the four-knot spring current was so strong that the eight-knot ships could not make way enough against it to cut clear through with certainty. Moreover, the middle of the boom was filled in by eight big schooners, chained together, with their masts and rigging dragging astern so as to form a most awkward entanglement. Farragut's fleet captain, Henry H. Bell, taking two gunboats, _Itasca_ and _Pinola_, under Lieutenants Caldwell and Crosby, slipped the chains of one schooner; whereupon this schooner and the _Itasca_ swung back and grounded under fire of the forts. The _Pinola_ gallantly stood by, helping _Itasca_ clear. Then Caldwell, with splendid audacity and skill, steamed up through the narrow gap, turned round, put on the _Itasca's_ utmost speed, and, with the current in his favor, charged full tilt against the chains that still held fast.

For one breathless moment the little _Itasca_ seemed lost. Her bows rose clear out, as, quivering from stem to stern, she was suddenly brought up short from top speed to nothing. But, in another fateful minute, with a rending crash, the two nearest schooners gave way and swept back like a gate, while the _Itasca_ herself shot clear and came down in triumph to the fleet.

The pa.s.sage was made on the twenty-fourth, in line-ahead (that is, one after another) because Farragut found the opening narrower than he thought it should be for two columns abreast, at night, under fire, and against the spring current. Owing to the configuration of the channel the starboard column had to weigh first, which gave the lead to the 500-ton gunboat _Cayuga_. This was the one weak point, because the leading vessel, drawing most fire, should have been the strongest. The fault was Farragut's; for his heart got the better of his head when it came to placing Captain Theodorus Bailey, his dauntless second-in-command, on board a vessel fit to lead the starboard column. He could not bear to obscure any captain's chances of distinction by putting another captain over him. So Bailey was sent to the best vessel commanded by a lieutenant.

The _Cayuga's_ navigating officer, finding that the guns of the forts were all trained on midstream, edged in towards Fort St.

Philip. His masts were shot to pieces, but his hull drew clear without great damage. "Then," he says, "I looked back for some of our vessels; and my heart jumped up into my mouth when I found I could not see a single one. I thought they must all have been sunk by the forts." But not a ship had gone down. The three big ones of the starboard column--_Pensacola, Mississippi_, and _Oneida_--closed with the fort (so that the gunners on both sides exchanged jeers of defiance) and kept up a furious fire till the lighter craft astern slipped past safely and joined the _Cayuga_ above.

Meanwhile the _Cayuga_ had been attacked by a mob of Mississippi steamers, six of which belonged to the original fourteen blessed with their precious independence by Secretary Benjamin, "backed by the whole Missouri Delegation." So when the rest of the Federal light craft came up, "all sorts of things happened" in a general free fight. There was no lack of Confederate courage; but an utter absence of concerted action and of the simplest kind of naval skill, except on the part of the two vessels commanded by ex-officers of the United States Navy. The Federal light craft cut their way through their unorganized opponents as easily as a battalion of regulars could cut through a mob throwing stones. But the only two Confederate naval officers got clear of the scrimmage and did all that skill could do with their makeshift little craft against the Federal fleet. Kennon singled out the _Varuna_ (the only one of Farragut's vessels that was not a real man-of-war), raked her stern with the two guns of his own much inferior vessel, the _Governor Moore_, and rammed her into a sinking condition. Warley flew at bigger game with his little ram, the _Mana.s.sas_, trying three of the large men-of-war, one after another, as they came upstream. The _Pensacola_ eluded him by a knowing turn of her helm that roused his warmest admiration. The _Mississippi_ caught the blow glancingly on her quarter and got off with little damage. The _Brooklyn_ was taken fair and square amidships; but, though her planking was crushed in, she sprang no serious leak and went on with the fight. The wretched little Confederate engines had not been able to drive the ram home.

The _Brooklyn_ was the flagship _Hartford's_ next-astern and the _Richmond's_ next-ahead, these three forming the main body of Farragut's own port column, which followed hard on the heels of the starboard one, so hard, indeed, that there were only twenty minutes between the first shot fired by the forts at the _Cayuga_ and the first shot fired by the _Hartford_ at the forts. Besides the forts there was the _Louisiana_ floating battery that helped to swell the storm of shot and sh.e.l.l; and down the river came a fire-raft gallantly towed by a tug. The _Hartford_ sheered off, over towards Fort St.

Philip, under whose guns she took ground by the head while the raft closed in and set her ablaze. Instantly the hands on fire duty sprang to their work. But the flames rushed in through the ports; and the men were forced a step back. Farragut at once called out: "Don't flinch from the fire, boys. There's a hotter fire than that for those who don't do their duty!" Whereupon they plied their hoses to such good effect that the fire was soon got under control.

Farragut calmly resumed his walk up and down the p.o.o.p, while the gunners blew the gallant little tug to bits and smashed the raft in pieces. Then he stood keenly watching the _Hartford_ back clear, gather way, and take the lead upstream again. Every now and then he looked at the pocket compa.s.s that hung from his watch chain; though, for the most part, he tried to scan a scene of action lit only by the flashes of the guns. The air was dense and very still; so the smoke of guns and funnels hung like a pall over both the combatants while the desperate fight went on.

At last the fleet fought through and reached the clearer atmosphere above the forts; all but the last three gunboats, which were driven back by the fire. Then Farragut immediately sent word to General Benjamin F. Butler that the troops could be brought up by the bayous that ran parallel to the river out of range of the forts. But the General, having taken in the situation at a glance from a transport just below the scene of action, had begun to collect his men at Sable Island, twelve miles behind Fort St. Philip, long before Farragut's messenger could reach him by way of the Quarantine Bayou.

From Sable Island the troops were taken by the transports to a point on the Mississippi five miles above Fort St. Philip.

After a well-earned rest the whole fleet moved up to New Orleans on the twenty-fifth, turning the city's lines five miles downstream without the loss of a man, for the simple reason that these had been built only to resist an army, and so lay with flanks entirely open to a fleet. General Lovell (the able commander who had so often warned the Confederate Government of the danger from the sea) at once evacuated the defenseless city. The best of the younger men were away with the armies. The best of the older men were too few for the storm. And so pandemonium broke loose. Burning boats, blazing cotton, and a howling mob greeted Farragut's arrival. But after the forts (now completely cut off from their base) had surrendered on the twenty-eighth a landing party from the fleet soon brought the mob to its senses by planting howitzers in the streets and lowering the Confederate colors over the city hall. On the first of May a garrison of Federal troops took charge of New Orleans and kept it till the war was over.

New Orleans was a most pregnant Federal victory; for it established a Union base at the great strategic point where sea-power and land-power could meet most effectively in Mississippi waters.

But it was followed by a perfect anti-climax; for the Federal Government, having planned a naval concentration at Vicksburg, determined to put the plan in operation; though all the naval and military means concerned made such a plan impossible of execution in 1862. Amphibious forces--fleets and armies combined--were essential.

There was no use in parading up and down the river, however triumphantly, so long as the force employed could only hold the part of the channel within actual range of its guns. The Confederates could be driven off the Mississippi at any given point. But there was nothing to prevent them from coming back again when once the ships had pa.s.sed. An army to seize and hold strategic points ash.o.r.e was absolutely indispensable. Then, and only then, Farragut's long line of communication with his base at New Orleans would be safe, and the land in which the Mississippi was the princ.i.p.al highway could itself be conquered.

"If the Mississippi expedition from Cairo shall not have descended the river, you will take advantage of the panic to push a strong force up the river to take all their defenses in rear." These were the orders Farragut had to obey if he succeeded in taking New Orleans.

They were soon reinforced by this reminder: "The only anxiety we feel is to know if you have followed up your instructions and pushed a strong force up the river to meet the Western flotilla." Farragut therefore felt bound to obey and do all that could be done to carry on a quite impossible campaign. So, with a useless landing party of only fifteen hundred troops, he pushed up to Vicksburg, four hundred miles above New Orleans. The nearest Federal army had been halted by the Confederate defenses above Memphis, another four hundred higher still.

There were several reasons why Farragut should not have gone up.

His big ships would certainly be stranded if he went up and waited for the army to come down; moreover, when stranded, these ships would be captured while waiting, because both banks were swarming with vastly outnumbering Confederate troops. Then, such a disaster would more than offset the triumph of New Orleans by still further depressing Federal morale at a time when the Federal arms were doing none too well near Washington. Finally, all the force that was being worse than wasted up the Mississippi might have been turned against Mobile, which, at that time, was much weaker than the defenses Farragut had already overcome. But the people of the North were clamorous for more victories along the line to which the press had drawn their gaze. So the Government ordered the fleet to carry on this impossible campaign.

Farragut did his best. Within a month of pa.s.sing the forts he had not only captured New Orleans and repaired the many serious damages suffered by his fleet but had captured Baton Rouge, and taken even his biggest ships to Vicksburg, five hundred miles from the Gulf, against a continuous current, and right through the heart of a hostile land. Finding that there were thirty thousand Confederates in, near, or within a day of Vicksburg he and General Thomas Williams agreed that nothing could be done with the fifteen hundred troops which formed the only landing party. Sickness and casualties had reduced the ships' companies; so there were not even a few seamen to spare as reinforcements for these fifteen hundred soldiers, whom Butler had sent, under Williams, with the fleet. Then Farragut turned back, his stores running dangerously short owing to the enormous difficulties of keeping open his long, precarious line of communications. "I arrived in New Orleans with five or six days'

provisions and one anchor, and am now trying to procure others....

Fighting is nothing to the evils of the river--getting on sh.o.r.e, running foul of one another, losing anchors, etc." In a confidential letter home he is still more outspoken. "They will keep us in this river till the vessels break down and all the little reputation we have made has evaporated. The Government appears to think that we can do anything. They expect me to navigate the Mississippi nine hundred miles in the face of batteries, ironclad rams, etc.; and yet with all the ironclad vessels they have North they could not get to Norfolk or Richmond."

Back from Washington came still more urgent orders to join the Mississippi flotilla which was coming down to Vicksburg from the north under Flag Officer Charles H. Davis. So once more the fleet worked its laboriously wasteful way up to Vicksburg, where it pa.s.sed the forts with the help of Porter's flotilla of mortar-boats on the twenty-eighth of June and joined Davis on the first of July.

There, in useless danger, the joint forces lay till the fifteenth, the day on which Grant's own "most anxious period of the war" began on the Memphis-Corinth line, four hundred miles above.

Farragut, getting very anxious about the shoaling of the water, was then preparing to run down when he heard firing in the Yazoo, a tributary that joined the Mississippi four miles higher up. This came from a fight between one of his reconnoitering gunboats, the _Carondelet_, and the _Arkansas_, an ironclad Confederate ram that would have been very dangerous indeed if her miserable engines had been able to give her any speed. She was beating the _Carondelet_, but getting her smoke-stack so badly holed that her speed dropped down to one knot, which scarcely gave her steerage way and made her unable to ram. Firing hard she ran the gauntlet of both fleets and took refuge under the Vicksburg bluffs, whence she might run out and ram the Union vessels below. Farragut therefore ran down himself, hoping to smash her by successive broadsides in pa.s.sing.

But the difficulties of the pa.s.sage wasted the daylight, so that he had to run by at night. She therefore survived his attack, and went downstream to join the Confederates against Baton Rouge. But her engines gave way before she got there; and she had to be blown up.

Farragut was back at New Orleans before the end of July. On the fifth of August the Confederates made their attack on Baton Rouge; but were beaten back by the Union garrison aided by three of Farragut's gunboats and two larger vessels from Davis's command. The losses were not very severe on either side; but the Union lost a leader of really magnificent promise in its commanding general, Thomas Williams, a great-hearted, cool-headed man and most accomplished officer. The garrison of Baton Rouge, being too small and sickly and exposed, was withdrawn to New Orleans a few days later.

Then Farragut at last returned to the Gulf blockade. Davis went back up the river, where he was succeeded by D. D. Porter in October.

And the Confederates, warned of what was coming, made Port Hudson and Vicksburg as strong as they could. Vicksburg was now the only point they held on the Mississippi where there were rails on both sides; and the Red River, flowing in from the West between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, was the only good line of communication connecting them with Texas, whence so much of their meat was obtained.

For three months Farragut directed the Gulf blockade from Pensacola, where, on the day of his arrival, the twentieth of August, he was the first American to hoist an admiral's flag. The rank of rear-admiral in the United States Navy had been created on the previous sixteenth of July; and Farragut was the senior of the first three officers upon whom it was conferred.

Farragut became the ranking admiral just when the United States Navy was having its hardest struggle to do its fivefold duty well.

There was commerce protection on the high seas, blockade along the coast, cooperation with the army on salt water and on fresh, and of course the destruction of the nascent Confederate forces afloat.

But perhaps a knottier problem than any part of its combatant duty was how to manage, in the very midst of war, that rapid expansion of its own strength for which no government had let it prepare in time of peace. During this year the number of vessels in commission grew from 264 to 427. Yet such a form of expansion was much simpler than that of the enlisted men; and the expansion of even the most highly trained enlisted personnel was very much simpler than the corresponding expansion of the officers. Happily for the United States Navy it started with a long lead over its enemy. More happily still it could expand with the help of greatly superior resources.

Most happily of all, the sevenfold expansion that was effected before the war was over could be made under leaders like Farragut: leaders, that is, who, though in mere numbers they were no more, in proportion to their whole service, than the flag as mere material is to a man-of-war, were yet, as is the flag, the living symbol of a people's soul.

Commerce protection on the high seas was an exceedingly hara.s.sing affair. A few swift raiders, having the initiative, enjoyed great advantages over a far larger number of defending vessels. Every daring raid was trumpeted round the world, bringing down unmeasured, and often unmerited, blame on the defense. The most successful vigilance would, on the other hand, pa.s.s by unheeded. The Union navy lacked the means of patrolling the sea lanes of commerce over millions and millions of desolate square miles. Consequently the war-risk insurance rose to a prohibitive height on vessels flying the Stars and Stripes; and, as a further result, enormous transfers were made to other flags. The incessant calls for recruits, afloat and ash.o.r.e, and to some extent the lure of the western lands, also robbed the merchant service of its men. Thus, one way and another, the glory of the old merchant marine departed with the Civil War.

Blockade was more to the point than any attempt to patrol the sea lanes. Yet it was even more hara.s.sing; for it involved three distinct though closely correlated kinds of operation: not only the seizure, in conjunction with the army, of enemy ports, and the patrolling of an enemy coastline three thousand miles long, but also the patrolling of those oversea ports from which most contraband came. This oversea patrol was the most effective, because it went straight to the source of trouble. But it required extraordinary vigilance, because it had to be conducted from beyond the three-mile limit, and with the greatest care for all the rights of neutrals.

By mid-November Farragut was back at New Orleans. A month later General Banks arrived with reinforcements. He superseded General Butler and was under orders to cooperate with McClernand, Grant's second-in-command, who was to come down the Mississippi from Cairo.

But the proposed meeting of the two armies never took place. Banks remained south of Port Hudson, McClernand far north of Vicksburg; for, as we shall see in the next chapter, Sherman's attempt to take Vicksburg from the North failed on the twenty-ninth of December.

The naval and river campaigns of '62 thus ended in disappointment for the Union. And, on New Year's Day, Galveston, which Farragut had occupied in October without a fight and which was lightly garrisoned by three hundred soldiers, fell into Confederate hands under most exasperating circ.u.mstances. After the captain and first lieutenant of the U.S.S. _Harriet Lane_ had been shot by the riflemen aboard two cotton-clad steamers the next officer tamely surrendered. Commander Renshaw, who was in charge of the blockade, amply redeemed the honor of the Navy by refusing to surrender the _Westfield_, in spite of the odds against him, and by blowing her up instead. But when he died at the post of duty the remaining Union vessels escaped; and the blockade was raised for a week.

After that Commodore H. H. Bell, one of Farragut's best men, closed in with a grip which never let go. Yet even Bell suffered a reverse when he sent the U.S.S. _Hatteras_ to overhaul a strange vessel that lured her off some fifteen miles and sank her in a thirteen-minute fight. This stranger was the _Alabama_, then just beginning her famous or notorious career. Nor were these the only Union troubles in the Gulf during the first three weeks of the new year. Commander J.

N. Matt ran the _Florida_ out of Mobile, right through the squadron that had been specially strengthened to deal with her; and the sh.o.r.e defenses of the Sabine Pa.s.s, like those of Galveston, fell into Confederate hands again, to remain there till the war was over.

In spite of all failures, however, Farragut still had the upper hand along the Gulf, and up the Mississippi as far as New Orleans, without which admirable base the River War of '69. could never have prepared the way for Grant's magnificent victory in the River War of '63.