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The Riverside Biographical Series
ANDREW JACKSON, by W. G. BROWN
JAMES B. EADS, by LOUIS HOW
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, by PAUL E. MORE
PETER COOPER, by R. W. RAYMOND
THOMAS JEFFERSON, by H. C. MERWIN
_IN PREPARATION_
WILLIAM PENN
GENERAL GRANT
LEWIS AND CLARKE
Each about 100 pages, 16mo, with
photogravure portrait, 75 cents.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
[Illustration: Jas. B. Eads]
JAMES B. EADS
BY
LOUIS HOW
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY LOUIS HOW
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PREFACE
I must mention with particular gratitude several books that were
invaluable in preparing this sketch, in supplementing the usual
biographical dictionaries and naval histories. These are: Captain
Mahan's "The Gulf and Inland Waters;" Boynton's picturesque "History of
the American Navy during the Great Rebellion;" Mr. Fiske's "Mississippi
Valley in the Civil War;" Snead's "The Fight for Missouri;" Mr. C. M.
Woodward's "History of the St. Louis Bridge;" Mr. Estill McHenry's
edition of Eads's "Papers and Addresses," with a biography; two memoirs
by Senores Francisco de Garay and Ignacio Garfias, of the Mexican
Association of Civil Engineers; and, above all, several memoirs and
addresses and the history of the Jetties by Mr. Elmer L. Corthell, C.
E., without which I could scarcely have written this Life.
I must also cordially thank for kind personal aid and advice Chancellor
Chaplin (of Washington University), Dr. William Taussig, Mr. Albert
Bushnell Hart, Major George Montague Wheeler of the Engineer Corps
(retired), Messrs. Winston Churchill, William L. Wright, C. Donovan, E.
L. Corthell (who was as obliging as he was helpful), Estill McHenry and
John A. Ubsdell, Mrs. Susan F. Stevens, and especially my mother--to
whose help and encouragement this Life of her father is due.
L. H.
ROCKPORT, MASS., July 30, 1900.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. EARLY TRAINING 1
II. THE GUNBOATS 22
III. THE BRIDGE 49
IV. THE JETTIES 75
V. THE SHIP-RAILWAY 105
JAMES B. EADS
I
EARLY TRAINING
James Buchanan Eads was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, May 23, 1820.
Both the Eads family, who came from Maryland, and his mother's people,
the Buchanans, who were originally Irish, were gentlefolk; but James's
father never was very prosperous. The son, however, went to school, and
he showed early a very special love for machinery, observing with great
interest everything of that kind that he came upon. For a while the
family lived in Cincinnati; from there they removed in 1829 to
Louisville. In those days, when steamboats were the best of
conveyances, the Ohio River formed a natural highway between the two
towns. On the trip the small boy of nine hung around the engine of the
boat, considering it with so much wonder and admiration that finally
the engineer, who found him an apt pupil, explained the various parts
of the mechanism to him.
He really had understood his lesson well, for two years later, in the
little workshop that his father had fitted up for him, he made a small
engine which ran by steam. Besides he made models of sawmills,
fire-engines, steamboats, and electrotyping machines. Except such
chance instruction as that which he found on the boat, he had had no
teaching in mechanics, but worked with the ingenuity of many a bright
boy; for he is by no means the only one who ever took apart and put
together the family clock, or even a lever-watch, with no other tool
than a penknife. One of his inventions, which shows not so much his
talent as his true boyishness, was a small box-wagon, open only
underneath and with a hole in front, which, suddenly produced before
his mother and sisters, ran mysteriously across the room. The motive
power concealed within this agreeable toy was found to be a live rat.
So much is often said of the precocity of youthful geniuses, that it is
good to know that young Eads was after all a real flesh-and-blood boy,
a boy so mischievous that, as he was the only son, his father hired a
neighbor boy to come and play with him. Certainly he was very clever;
but that he had even better qualities than cleverness is shown by his
first actions on his arrival at Saint Louis.
His father, deciding to move farther west, had sent ahead the mother,
the two daughters just grown, and the lad of thirteen, intending to
follow with supplies for opening a shop. Again the route was by river.
Arrived at Saint Louis, the boat caught fire; and early on a cold
morning the family set foot, scarcely clothed, not only in the city of
which the young boy was to be one day the leading citizen, but on the
very spot, it is said, where he was afterwards to base one pier of his
great bridge. On that bleak morning, however, none of them foresaw a
bright future, or indeed anything but a distressful present. Some
ladies of the old French families of the town were very kind to the
forlorn women; and once on her feet Mrs. Eads set about supporting
herself and her children. In those days, when sometimes a letter took a
week to go a couple of hundred miles, she was not the one to wait for
help from her husband; so she immediately rented a house and took
boarders. The boy, as resourceful and self-reliant as his mother, now
showed his energy as well as his devotion by doing the first thing he
found to help her. In going along the street he saw some apples for
sale, and, buying as many of them as he could afford, he peddled them
to the passers-by.
That, of course, was no permanent occupation for a well-bred boy, whose
associations and abilities were both high. Nevertheless his family
could no longer afford to have him at school, and it was necessary for
him to do some sort of work. One of his mother's boarders, a Mr.
Barrett Williams, offered him a position in his mercantile house.
Before long this gentleman discovered his young employee's aptitude and
overwhelming love for mechanics, and kindly allowed the lad the use of
his own library. Studying at night the scientific books which he found
there, Eads acquired his first theoretical knowledge of engineering. In
this way, without teachers, he began, in a time when there was no free
higher education, to educate himself; and both then and ever after he
was a constant reader not only of scientific works, but of all kinds of
books. This practical experience in helping to support his family and
in getting his own education, while he was still so young a lad, was
the school in which he learned self-reliance. It is pleasant to know
that the earnestness of life did not take all of his boyishness away
from him, for it must have been while he was hard at work that he built
a real steamboat, six feet long, and navigated it on Chouteau's Pond.
For five years he was a clerk in the dry-goods house. At the end of
that time, probably because he was in poor health, he left that
position for one that would take him more into the open air. Though his
health was not strong, he was by no means an invalid; for at nineteen
his muscles were solid and his fund of nervous energy was
inexhaustible. So, with the natural taste of a boy for a more exciting
life, he took a position as clerk on a Mississippi River steamboat.
While he had nothing to do with actually running the boat, he certainly
kept his eyes open to everything going on both on board and in the
river; and began then to make an acquaintance with the stream which was
later to be the scene of his greatest labors. If ever Nature played a
prominent part in the life of a man, the Mississippi did in that of
Eads; for it became the opportunity for three of his chief works, and
from it he learned perhaps more of the laws of science than from all
the books he ever read. To understand his life, one must have some idea
of the huge river, which seems to flow sluggishly or rapidly through
his whole career.
The Mississippi River, with its branches, drains the larger part of the
whole United States,--that is, from the Alleghanies on the east to the
Rockies on the west. The main stream, 4200 miles long, and in some
places over a mile wide, flows along with tremendous force, ceaselessly
eating away its yellow clay banks. The water, full of sediment, is of a
thick dull brown color. The clay that it washes off in the bends it
deposits on the juts of land, thus forming greater and greater curves;
so that often the distance between two points is very much less by land
than by water. Sometimes there are only a few yards across the neck of
a peninsula, around which the channel distance is many miles; and on
one side the level of the river is several feet higher than on the
other. Gradually the water keeps eating its way, until it forces a
passage through the neck, and then the torrent rushes through in a
cascade, with a roar that can be heard for miles. The banks dissolve
like sugar, and the next day steamboats can cross where the day before
were fields and may be houses. Besides this, the current is constantly
washing away and building up not only hidden bars on the river bottom,
but even islands above its surface. In the fall and in the spring it
rises with such terrifying rapidity that some years it quickly
overflows its banks in certain reaches till it is sixty miles wide.
Houses and trees torn from their places, and wrecks of boats, float or
protrude from the bottom of this brown lake. And when the flood
subsides, the current often chooses a new and changed channel. Amid the
ever-varying dangers of such a river the only safety for steamboats is
in a race of pilots so learned and so alert as to have the shifting
bars and courses always in their minds. In 1839, when steamboats were
the only means of rapid transit in the West, when there were more of
them in the harbor of the little town of Saint Louis than to-day when
it is a great city, this class of pilots was a large and a very
respectable one. Much of their knowledge of the river was what young
Eads learned while he was a clerk among them; and as time went on, he
came to realize that although the Mississippi seems so capricious in
its terrible games that one would think them the result of chance, yet
in truth, they "are controlled by laws as immutable as the Creator."
Despite all care that could be used, steamboats were every week sunk
and wrecked, and with their valuable engines, boilers, and cargoes were
often left where they lay in the ceaseless brown current. After he had
been for three years on the river, Eads gave up his clerkship to go
into the business of raising these boats, their machinery, and their
freight. In 1842, at the age of twenty-two, he formed a partnership
with Case & Nelson, boat-builders. His first appearance in the new
business was an experience that well shows his quick inventive genius,
his persistency, and his courage. While his diving-bell boat was
building, a barge loaded with pig-lead sank in the rapids at Keokuk,
212 miles from Saint Louis. A contract having been made with its
owners, Eads hurried up there to rescue the freight from fifteen feet
of water. He had no knowledge himself of diving-armor; but he had
engaged a skilled diver from the Great Lakes, who brought his own
apparatus. They set out in a barge and anchored over the wreck; but,
once there, they soon discovered that the current was so exceedingly
rapid that the diver could do nothing in it. Eads at once returned to
Keokuk, and, buying a forty-gallon whiskey hogshead, took it out to the
wreck; and having knocked out one head, he slung pigs of lead round his
improvised diving-bell, made a seat inside it, rigged it to his derrick
and air-pumps, and then asked the diver to go down in it. The diver
having very naturally refused, Eads on the spot set himself a precedent
which, during his after life, he never broke,--saying that he would not
ask an employee to go where he would not trust himself, he got inside
his hogshead and was lowered into the river. His assistants were unused
to managing diving-bells, and when they came to haul him up the derrick
got out of order. By main force they were able to raise the hogshead to
the surface, but not above it. As the air-pump continued to work all
the while, Eads, though wondering what was amiss, sat patiently in his
place, till finally he saw a hand appear under the rim of the hogshead.
Seizing this, he ducked under and got out. Although the rough
diving-bell worked thus awkwardly at first, it served well enough, and
finally all of the lost freight was saved.
A young man so fearless, so energetic, and so able to invent mechanical
devices at sudden need, was bound to succeed in a business like this.
And young Eads did succeed. "Fortune," he believed, "favors the brave;"
and his motto was, "Drive on!"
The insurance companies were willing to give the wreckers a large
interest, sometimes as much as a half, of the rescued cargoes; and
there was a law by which a vessel or freight that had been wrecked for
five years belonged to whoever could get it up. Eads and his partners
worked up and down the river for hundreds of miles. The first
diving-bell boat was followed by a larger one, provided with machinery
for pumping out sand, and for raising whole hulls. While in this
hazardous business Eads invented many new appliances for use in its
various branches. Because he was in charge of a boat people began to
call the young wrecker Captain Eads, and that was the only reason for a
title which clung to him always. He grew now to know the river as few
have ever known it,--his operations extended from Galena, Illinois, to
the Balize at the river's very mouth, and even into the tributaries of
the Mississippi,--and he used to say that there was not a stretch of
fifty miles in the twelve hundred between Saint Louis and New Orleans
in which he had not stood on the bottom under his diving-bell.
With the same devotion to his parents as when he peddled the apples in
the street, Eads now bought them a farm in Iowa, and provided in every
way he could for their comfort. But beyond the ordinary desire of
making a fortune for them, for himself, and for a new interest that was
coming into his life, it does not appear that there were in his mind
any unusual ambitions, any of the dreams of genius. As yet he was only
a hard-working, earnest young man, extraordinarily clever to be sure,
but founding on that cleverness no visions of great renown in the
future. Perhaps this was because he had enough to dream of in the
present, enough hopes of purely domestic happiness to look towards. For
he had fallen in love with a Miss Martha Dillon, a young lady of about
his own age, daughter of a rich man in Saint Louis. The father
disapproved of the match, not only because he thought the suitor too
young, too poor, too unknown, but because he wished to keep his
daughter with him, and for other less reasonable causes.
The letters between the engaged couple show Eads at twenty-five as a
keen, experienced, and yet an unsophisticated young man; generous,
proud, brave, and courteous; a lover of Nature, of poetry, of people,
and of good books; an inveterate early riser; reverend in religion, and
yet, while nominally a Catholic, really a free-thinker; sentimental in
his feelings almost as if he had lived a century sooner, and at the
same time controlling his true and deep emotions, and showing his
strong love only to those he loved.
At last Eads and Miss Dillon were married, he being over twenty-five at
the time, she nearly twenty-four. Eads then sold out his wrecking
business and left the river. He probably made this change because he
hoped thereby not only to be more with his wife, but also to support
her in the comfort she had been used to, and to show her father that he
could do so. The new enterprise, into which at least one of his old
partners entered with him, and into which he put all his money, was the
manufacture of glass; and they built the first glass factory west of
the Ohio River. He had to go to Pittsburg--then a long journey by boat,
stage, and rail--to get trained workmen and to learn the process
himself. Almost all of the necessary ingredients and apparatus had to
be sent for to Pittsburg, to Cleveland, or to New York; and they were
often slow in arriving and thereby made matters drag considerably.
Still there was always something to do, and Eads, the only one of the
partners who understood the trade, was forced to work extraordinarily
hard. With his usual persistence he stuck to it pluckily, often staying
up late into the night and rising the next day before dawn to oversee
operations. He was also indispensable for his faculty of managing men;
and a letter to his wife written on his twenty-seventh birthday (1847)
shows how strong the man already was in that power of getting the most
from a workman, which was afterwards to count for so much in his best
work. An employer, he says, must "have constant control of his temper,
and be able to speak pleasantly to one man the next moment after having
spoken in the harshest manner to another, and even to give the same man
a pleasant reply a few minutes after having corrected him. Self must be
left out of the matter entirely, and a man or boy spoken to only as
concerns his conduct; and the authority which the controller has over
the controlled, used only when absolutely necessary, and then with the
utmost promptness."
However, despite all his firmness and perseverance, the difficulties of
the glassworks became greater and greater; and at last, after having
been run two years, they were shut down. Eads was left with debts of
$25,000. The very unusual action of his creditors in this crisis shows
what confidence they had in his integrity and in his ability; for they
advanced him $1500 with which to go back into the wrecking business,
and he at once rejoined his former partners. He now worked harder, if
possible, than ever; for he felt, as he wrote to his wife, that "with a
man in debt it cannot be said that his time is his own." Powerful as he
was physically, his health was not good, but even in sickness he
scarcely ceased to toil during the first year or two; and at the end of
ten years, not only had all his debts been long since paid, but his
firm was worth half a million dollars.
Work, however, was to him only a means to an end. The real dignity of
character he knew to lie in culture. To a small boy he sends, in one of
his letters, the message that he should "be a good boy and study hard,
as that is the only way to be respected when he is grown." Even in his
amusements his mind sought occupation: we find him at night on the
diving-bell boat playing chess, and in later years he had become
unusually adept at that game.
The wrecking business was full of life and action. Here and there, up
and down the river, and into its branches, wherever a boat was wrecked
or burned or run aground, the Submarine hurried off to reach the spot
before other wreckers. Under their bell the divers got at the engines,
boilers, and freight, while the pumps, worked from above, cleared away
the sand; and sometimes by means of great chains and derricks the very
hull itself would be lifted and towed ashore. But on that huge river,
which at times would suddenly rise three feet in a single night, and
whose strong current played such giant pranks as turning over a wreck
in the chains that were raising it, there was need of eternal vigilance
and agility. However, Eads was more on his own ground on the river than
on the shore, and his business so increased that he was soon running
four diving-bell boats. In 1849 twenty-nine boats were burned at the
levee in Saint Louis in one big fire, and most of their remains were
removed by him. Winter as well as summer the work went on; and the task
of cutting out a vessel wrecked in an ice-gorge, or of raising one from
beneath the ice, must have been as trying as walking the river bottom
in search of a wreck. Eads himself, years later, thus describes one of
his many experiences: "Five miles below Cairo, I searched the river
bottom for the wreck of the Neptune, for more than sixty days, and in a
distance of three miles. My boat was held by a long anchor line, and
was swung from side to side of the channel, over a distance of 500
feet, by side anchor lines, while I walked on the river bottom under
the bell across the channel. The boat was then dropped twenty feet
farther down stream, and I then walked back again as she was hauled
towards the other shore. In this way I walked on the bottom four hours
at least, every day (Sundays excepted) during that time." For a day's
work the city of Saint Louis gave him $80, out of which he paid his own
workmen. He was so prosperous that, as he wrote to his wife, there was
no need for him to join the rush to California to get gold; and his
success caused much envy among his rivals. He began to clear the
channel of the Mississippi from some of its obstructions and to improve
the harbor of Saint Louis.
In 1856 he knew his work so well that he went to Washington and
proposed to Congress to remove all the snags and wrecks from the
Western rivers,--the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the
Ohio,--and to keep their channels open for a term of years. A bill to
that purpose passed the House, but in the Senate it was defeated by
Jefferson Davis and others. The next year, on account of poor health,
Eads retired from business, but he carried with him a fortune. He had
not succeeded in his purpose at Washington, but his name was known
there and remembered.
Meanwhile his wife had died, and two years later he had married the
widow of a first cousin. With his second wife he made his first trip to
Europe,--the first of very many he was destined to make. In 1857, being
thirty-seven years old, he retired, as I have said, from business.
His youthful hopes, the ordinary ambitions of men, were realized. He
had been a poor boy: at only thirty-seven he was rich,--very rich for
the times and for the place. From his proposals to the government, we
may imagine that he now had broader dreams of usefulness. But his first
proposition toward river improvement had been checked. He had bought a
large house and grounds. He made for himself a rose-arbor, and for four
years he was as much unoccupied as his lively mind permitted. He was at
any rate what is called a man of leisure.
Then, four years being passed, he received from Washington, from his
friend Attorney-General Bates, a letter written three days after the
surrender of Fort Sumter, which said: "Be not surprised if you are
called here suddenly by telegram. If called, come instantly. In a
certain contingency it will be necessary to have the aid of the most
thorough knowledge of our Western rivers, and the use of steam on them,
and in that event I advised that you should be consulted."
The government was thinking of placing gunboats to occupy and to defend
the Western waters.
II
THE GUNBOATS
At the beginning of the Civil War the State of Missouri and the city of
Saint Louis were in a very confused condition. A border slave State,
Missouri contained a great many persons of Southern birth and Southern
sympathies; and besides a good many strong Northern men, Saint Louis
had also a considerable German population, all stanch Unionists. But
excepting the Germans and one or two dauntless clear-seeing men, who
read the future, few persons in either party wished to fight if
fighting could possibly be avoided. The governor, a Southern man, while
hesitating at actual secession, wished and tried to control the power
of the State so that at need it might help the South; and while
professing loyalty, he did all he could to prove his disloyalty to the
Union. The legislature, however, would not pass a bill to arm the
State, thereby, says an historian, causing the South to sustain "a
defeat more disastrous to its independence than any which thereafter
befell its arms, down to the fall of Vicksburg." In response to
Lincoln's call for troops, the governor refused to send any from
Missouri. An extraordinary state convention, called in this crisis,
voted against secession. Seeing that the governor, notwithstanding
this, was covertly aiming at throwing himself and the State, so far as
he could, in with the Confederacy, young Frank Blair and General
Nathaniel Lyon, carrying things with a high hand, seized and dispersed
the state militia encamped in Saint Louis, got control of almost all
the Federal arms in the State, and with outside aid and help from the
regular army, chased the governor from the capital, and held him at bay
long enough for the convention to depose him and the General Assembly,
and to establish a state government loyal to the Union.
During all these lively events Saint Louis was in confusion. There were
many minds in the town--secessionists, conditional and unconditional
unionists, submissionists: some who wanted war, some who wanted only to
preserve peace so that they might keep their homes and fortunes safe,
even on condition of abandoning slavery.
James B. Eads did not own a slave, nor did he approve of slavery, but
among his friends and associates there were many who did own them, and
many secessionists. It is curious to observe how little a difference of
opinion on these points, that had become so vital, was able to put
personal enmity among men who were true friends. Of course, among mere
acquaintances there were many instances of bitterness and taunting.
Through it all, Eads, with his rare tact and his exquisite manners,
steered without collision, offending none of those who were not on his
side. And yet we are presently to see what a deep interest his side had
for him, and how much he was able and willing to do for it.
Between the election and the inauguration of Lincoln, Eads and three
other prominent citizens of Saint Louis wrote a letter to him,
expressing their fears that an attempt at secession would be made, and
urging the policy of having a secretary of state from one of the slave
States. And they recommended, for "purity of character, stern
integrity, exalted patriotism, and enlightened statesmanship," Edward
Bates, born in Virginia, married into a South Carolina family, and long
resident in Missouri. A first draught of this letter is in Eads's
handwriting. When the new cabinet was formed, Bates, a personal friend
of Lincoln's as well as of Eads's, was given a position in it, that of
attorney-general. It was he who, three days after Sumter was fired on,
wrote the letter, already quoted, telling Eads to expect a telegram
calling him to Washington for consultation on the best method of
defending and occupying the Western rivers. Eads himself was by this
time no believer in a defensive policy for the government. After Sumter
he had already written to Bates advocating determined and vigorous
measures. So, when the telegram soon followed the letter, he was glad
to hasten to Washington in order to be of use. There he was introduced
to the Secretary and to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
The importance of controlling the Mississippi River was well seen by
the great strategist, Lincoln, who called it "the backbone of the
rebellion"--"the key to the whole situation." If it could be held by
the government, the Confederacy could neither move its troops up and
down it, nor--thus cut in half--could it bring over from Texas and
Arkansas the many men and the quantities of food greatly needed by its
armies east of the river. Realizing this, the Confederacy was already
beginning to fortify the Mississippi and the Ohio with its branches. To
dislodge the rebels Bates proposed a fleet of gunboats. The Secretary
of War, however, thinking this idea of gunboats either useless or
impracticable, showed at first no interest in the plan. But at the
request of the Secretary of the Navy, who realized the importance of
the subject, Eads prepared a statement of his views, embodying Bates's
project. In it he also suggested, besides the best kind of boats for
the service, batteries, to be erected at several points. Commodore
Paulding, on reading this statement, at once reported in favor of it.
Suddenly, the Secretary of War, when he saw that the scheme was coming
to something, claimed jurisdiction over the whole matter, but finally
he agreed to order the same officer already appointed for the purpose
by the Navy to go west with Eads and purchase vessels to be armed. All
necessary approvals having been made, the two went to Cairo, where they
examined the Benton, one of the former snag-boat fleet. Afterwards Eads
proposed the strong and swift Missouri River steamboats. But neither of
these suited his colleague, who at last went to Cincinnati, and buying
three boats there, armed them himself: and very useful boats they were.
The gunboat scheme had been first proposed in April; it was now June,
and excepting these three wooden boats, nothing seemed to have come of
it. So in July the quartermaster-general advertised for bids for
ironclad gunboats. In 1861 ironclads were a rather new thing. France
and England had a few of them, but at the time the Merrimac was begun
no ironclad had been finished in America. On August 5, when the bids
were opened, that of Eads was found not only to be the lowest, but to
promise the quickest work. On August 7 the contract was signed for
seven gunboats to be delivered at Cairo on October 10,--sixty-four days
later. This contract, it has been said, would under ordinary
circumstances have been thought by most men impossible to fulfill. And
the circumstances then were anything but ordinary: it was a time of
great financial distress; in the border slave States the pursuits of
peace were interrupted; all was in turmoil and confusion;
rolling-mills, machine-shops, foundries, forges, and sawmills were all
idle, and many of the mechanics had gone to the war. The timber for the
boats was still growing in the forests; the iron was not yet
manufactured. And so short was the time that two or three factories
alone, no matter how well equipped they might be, were not to be
depended upon. Yet Eads had undertaken to start up the factories, to
gather the materials, and to build his boats in two months. Never were
the self-reliance and the energy of the man better exhibited; but his
keen business sense might have hesitated, had not his patriotism shown
him that the Union needed the boats quickly.
Most of the machine-shops and foundries of Saint Louis were at once set
to work night and day; and for hours at a time the telegraph wires to
Pittsburg and to Cincinnati were in use. Twenty-one steam-engines and
thirty-five boilers were needed. Prepared timber was brought from eight
different States, and the first iron plating used in the war was rolled
not only in Saint Louis and Cincinnati, but in small towns in Ohio and
Kentucky. Within two weeks 4000 men were at work in places miles
apart,--working by night and seven days a week. To the workmen on the
hulls who should stick to the task till it was done Eads promised a
"handsome bonus;" and in this way gratuitously paid out thousands of
dollars. The building of this little fleet has been called "a triumph
of sagacity, pluck, and executive ability unsurpassed by any exploit in
the military or civil history of the times."
To be sure, the seven boats were not finished at the time called for.
That they were all launched within a hundred days of the signing of the
contract is amazing enough, but if they had been built after designs of
Eads's own, so that he would not have been delayed by sudden changes
necessitated when he found weaknesses in the plans furnished him, or
when the designer changed the specifications, and if the government,
harassed and driven as it then was, had been able to pay him according
to its part of the contract, there is little doubt that he would have
had the vessels finished in time according to his agreement. Even as it
was, it was legally decided later that he was not at fault. When he
entered into the contract he was a rich man; and as he was not to
receive his first payment from the government for twenty days, probably
only a rich man could have had the credit necessary to put so much
machinery into motion. As it proved subsequently, the government was so
lax in its payment, and demanded work so much more expensive than the
specifications called for, that before the work was finished Eads was
in a hard way financially. He had been much worried and distracted in
obtaining funds: after exhausting his own fortune he had sought the aid
of patriotic friends, and it was principally in order to pay them back
that he made his appeal to the government. By the terms of his contract
he might have delayed the work until his payments were received, and
might thus have saved himself great distress and worry, but, as I have
said, he realized how much the Union needed the boats. He himself said
that it was "of the utmost importance that these boats should be made
as effective as possible, without reference to how I was to be affected
by delays, ... and that their completion should be pushed with the
utmost energy, whether the government failed in its part of the bargain
or not." Their rapid completion then was a proof not only of Eads's
masterful energy, but of his self-sacrificing patriotism as well.
Ultimately he was paid most of the money for the gunboats, and as a
result of his patriotism won back the fortune he had risked; but at the
time of course it hampered him intolerably to be without funds. He had,
besides, other difficulties to contend with. At least one of his
sub-contractors or head-workmen was a disappointed bidder for the
gunboat contract, and was on a salary which ran till the boats were
finished; and while Eads would not mention such a suspicion in public,
he suggested in a private letter that this had been an additional cause
of delay.
After all, the seven boats had been launched and were ready to be put
into commission by Flag-Officer Foote, before he had more than one
third of the necessary crews ready for them.
These seven, the Saint Louis (afterwards De Kalb), the Cairo,
Carondelet, Cincinnati, Louisville, Mound City, and Pittsburg, were all
alike. The Saint Louis, as Eads wrote to Lincoln, when he sent him a
photograph of her, "was the first ironclad built in America.... She was
the first armored vessel against which the _fire of a hostile battery_
was directed on this continent; and, so far as I can ascertain, she was
the first ironclad that ever _engaged a naval force_ in the world." In
reading the descriptions of them, and in reading in the naval histories
of their undeniable faults, it must be remembered that Eads "had no
part in the modeling of these boats, and is therefore relieved of all
responsibility as to their imperfections." They were 175 feet long,
51-1/2 feet beam. Their flat sides sloped upward and inward at an angle
of about 35 deg., and the front and rear casemates corresponded with the
sides, the stern-wheel being entirely covered by the rear casemate. It
was a large paddle-wheel, placed forward of the stern so as to be
protected. The whole thing was like a tremendous uncovered box, with
its sides sloping up and in, and containing the battery, the machinery,
and the paddle-wheel, while the smoke-stacks and the conical
pilot-house stuck up out of the top. Captain Mahan says that they
looked like gigantic turtles. Underneath the water, they were simply
like flat-bottomed scows. As they were intended always to fight bows
on, they were built with that in view. In front they were accordingly
armored two and a half inches over two feet of solid oak. The only
other armor they carried was abreast of the boiler and engines. The
stern, therefore, and the greater part of the sides were decidedly
vulnerable. Their armament consisted of three guns forward, four on
each broadside, and two at the stern.
When Eads was given a chance to alter a boat from his own designs, he
made it a much better one than these. It was a boat ordered by General
Fremont in September, 1861, in excess of the government appropriation
for the river fleet. This was the same snag-boat which three months
before had been suggested for alteration by Eads, and refused by the
army's agent. In this case, as in so many afterwards when Eads knew
himself to be right, he stuck persistently to his own opinion; and out
of the heavy old boat, despised and objected to by so many persons, he
fashioned the "old war-horse," the Benton, which, slow as she was,
Spears, the naval historian, calls the most powerful warship afloat at
that date. As a snag-boat, formerly used by Eads, she had "had two
hulls so joined and strengthened that she could get the largest kind of
a cottonwood tree between them, hoist it out of the mud, and drag it
clear of the channel." These hulls were now joined together; and while
the boat was armored on the same general plan as the seven contract
gunboats, she was so much more completely iron clad as to avoid the
danger that they were exposed to of having their boilers burst and
great damage and death caused thereby. Her tonnage was twice that of
the others; her size about 200 by 75 feet. She was entirely iron clad.
In her gun-deck casemate the twenty inches of timber under the plating
had "its grain running up from the water instead of horizontally, by
which means [wrote Eads] a ball will strike, as it were, _with
the_ grain, and then be more readily deflected. On the same principle
that a minie ball will penetrate five inches of oak, crossing the
grain, while it will not enter one inch if fired at the end of the
timber." This detail illustrates the care and interest with which Eads
built his boats.
The eight of them, Captain Mahan says, "formed the backbone of the
river fleet throughout the war," and "may be fairly called the ships of
the line of battle on the Western waters." He speaks also of their
"very important services." This is milder praise than has been given
them. Commander Stembel said that he had heard them called equal to
5000 men each; Boynton, the naval historian, goes so far as to say that
the permanent occupation of the South was rendered possible by the
ironclad navy of the Western waters. Though the naval battles in the
Atlantic were perhaps more brilliant, he says, none, unless that
between the Merrimac and the Monitor, had more important results. Eads
has been called as potent as a great general in clearing the upper
Mississippi. He did not, to be sure, build the entire gunboat fleet,
but he did build, as Captain Mahan says, the backbone of it; and that
the praises for that fleet, which I have quoted, are not altogether
extravagant, is further shown by the comments of Mr. John Fiske. He
says, "While it was seldom that they ["these formidable gunboats"]
could capture fortified places without the aid of a land force, at the
same time this combination of strength with speed made them an
auxiliary without which the greater operations of the war could hardly
have been undertaken."
These eight boats figured in many a fight on the great river and its
branches. They "were ever where danger was." A month and more before
the Merrimac and the Monitor were finished, the important capture of
Fort Henry "was a victory exclusively for the gunboats." It was the
Carondelet that ran the gauntlet past Island Number 10, a feat as full
of romance and daring as any that the Civil War tells us of. And these
things were done with vessels still unpaid for and the personal
property of their builder. Their usefulness was a great satisfaction to
Eads, and he rejoiced, as he wrote to Foote, with "the prideful
pleasure of the poor armorer who forged the sword that in gallant hands
struck down the foe."
When the Benton left her dock for Cairo, Foote requested Eads to see
her there in safety. Eads, who was so deeply interested in his boats
that on another occasion he was narrowly prevented from going into
action with one of them, gladly agreed. Before long the Benton
grounded. As Eads was merely a guest, and as there were naval officers
aboard, he did not feel called upon to interfere with any suggestions.
But after the officers and crew had labored all night trying to float
her, then with his aptitude for emergencies he used his scientific
knowledge to suggest another scheme. The captain at once gave him leave
to command the entire crew, and by means of hawsers tied to trees
ashore and then strongly tightened, the vessel was floated. In this
case the old river man knew more than the naval officers.
In April, 1862, the Navy Department called Eads to Washington to make
designs for more ironclads,--or rather boats made wholly of iron. These
were to be of very light draught and turreted. He submitted plans for
boats drawing five feet. The department insisted on lighter draught,
but still on heavy plating. So he revised his designs once, and then
once more. Finally the draught was reduced to only three and a half
feet. Eads has himself described his going back to his room in the
hotel, and in a few hours making over his designs. When these boats
were finished they were found to draw even less than had been
contracted for, so that extra armor was ordered for them, and three of
them exceeded the contract speed. At first two boats were ordered,
later four others. For the turrets Eads submitted designs of his own,
but as it was then only a month after the Monitor's fight, Ericsson's
turrets were insisted on for the first two boats, although
modifications were allowed. As the other four had two turrets each,
Eads was allowed on two of them to try one turret of his own, with the
guns worked by steam, on condition of replacing them at his own cost
with Ericsson's in case of failure. This was the first manipulation of
heavy artillery by steam. The guns were fired every forty-five seconds,
or seven times as fast as in Ericsson's turrets.
In addition to the fourteen gunboats, Eads also converted seven
transports into musket-proof "tinclads," and built four mortarboats.
"Such men," says Boynton, "deserve a place in history by the side of
those who fought our battles."
The career of some of the gunboats subsequent to the war is
interesting. In 1880 the Chickasaw and the Winnebago, which were two of
the six iron boats, and both of which took part in the naval campaign
at Mobile, had come into the hands of Peru; and old as they were, they
were used very effectively against some of the larger and more modern
boats of the Chileans.
During those trying war times all of Eads's tremendous energy had by no
means been exhausted by the gunboats. In more ways than one he had been
showing himself a good citizen and a kind-hearted man. Much as his
fortune had been drained by the boats, he still found money to give to
the sufferers in the war. Out of a belated partial payment on the
Benton he at once sent money to Foote for use in relief work, and with
characteristic persistence he sent several letters and telegrams to
make sure of the money's arriving. A month or so later he sent a check
from Washington to Saint Louis to the Sanitary Commission, asking that
its receipt might not be made public. In the letter sent with this he
speaks of the war as "an accursed contest between brothers," but adds
that the "cause is most worthy of the sacrifice." From the niece of the
Secretary of the Navy we also find a letter of acknowledgment of money
to be used in relief. But it was not only to the soldiers that he
showed his tenderness: to Foote, the gallant "Christian commander" of
his fleet, he sent various friendly gifts when that brave man lay
dying,--grapes from his own vines, a portrait he had had painted of his
friend. And even to those on the other side he showed an unusual
consideration. Towards the end of the war there seemed to be no means
of feeding the many refugees in Saint Louis but by levying a tax upon
Southern sympathizers. Eads, who foresaw what bitterness such a course
would produce, offered, in the name of a bank in which he was a
director, $1000 to start a subscription to be used instead, and the
invidious assessment was never levied again.
To his personal friends he was always generous and thoughtful, sending
them many presents, defending them from misrepresentation, and helping
them in their chosen careers. By means of his influence and tact he
procured the release of an indiscreet person who had talked himself
into McDowell's College prison as a suspected enemy to the government.
Giving to others seemed a trait in Eads's character which afforded him
an intense pleasure; and though a man of great dignity, he used with
his intimate friends a charming playfulness and affection. He could be
extremely mild in correcting faults; and while he was inclined to bear
with others, he could be stern. His manners were rather those one
expects in a European gentleman of leisure and high breeding, than in a
former steamboat clerk and a man who had worked hard most of his life.
His hospitality was princely. In his large house in the suburbs of
Saint Louis he received not only the young friends of his five
daughters and his own friends, but also officers of the river fleet and
of the army, officers sent west on inspection duty, and foreign
officers following the course of the war and of the improvements in
gunboat building.
His mind was as active as his heart was generous, and the course of his
life mirrored that activity. Now he was at home, now in Washington, now
at Cairo visiting the gunboats to see how they worked under fire. In
Washington he was busy with plans and projects. An intimate associate
said of him in his later life that he was always inventing some new gun
or gun-carriage; and we may be sure that if he ever was doing so, he
was in those war times. Besides inventing his own, he was also busy
examining Ericsson's inventions, in making improvements on them, in
applying steam in novel ways to the working of artillery and to the
rotating and raising of turrets; in sending models of his inventions
here and there, at home and abroad, to Germany, where the Prussian
minister, a friend with whom he often dined, "wished they could get
some of his boats on the Rhine;" having his turrets explained at a
Russian dinner in New York or Washington; and receiving from the Navy
Department an appointment as special agent to visit the navy yards in
Europe. At home he was just as busy. With his house so full of company,
he nevertheless found time somewhere for solid reading apart from his
work--the Attorney-General sent him Cicero's letters, and he lent the
Attorney-General King Alfred's works. There is a curious interest in
knowing what two men so engrossed, and upon such necessary duties, were
reading at such a time. While he was building the second batch of
gunboats, he wrote to Bates in a personal letter that he believed he
had the most complete and convenient works in the country for iron
boat-building; that there and in other places he had as many as seventy
blacksmith fires at work for him, and that his men were all sheltered
from sun and rain. After those boats were finished, he went on planning
others, and we have a letter from Farragut in which the admiral asks if
some of them are not for his use at Mobile.