THE BEGINNING OF WAR.
The United States navy had done little to distinguish itself since its
wonderful achievements in the War of 1812 with Great Britain. During
the Mexican War it took part in the occupation of California, and
performed what service it could in the Gulf, but there was no
opportunity for anything remarkable. Wilkes had made his exploring
expedition in Pacific and Antarctic waters; Ingraham, in the St. Louis,
had demanded and secured the release of Martin Koszta at Smyrna;
Tatnall, with his famous "blood is thicker than water," had
participated in the bombardment of the Chinese forts at Peiho; Hudson,
in the Niagara, had assisted in laying the first Atlantic cable; and
several cruisers had pursued pirates in the West Indies. But with the
exception of these occurrences the navy had done nothing to attract
popular attention for more than forty years. Yet it had quietly
accomplished much good work on the Coast Survey; and the Naval Academy
at Annapolis, from its establishment in 1845, educated officers who
gave character and efficiency to the service, and when the day of
battle came showed themselves to be worthy successors of the famous
captains who had preceded them.
A great crisis in the nation's history was now approaching, more
rapidly than any one suspected. The older statesmen were gone. Adams,
Jackson, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, all had passed away within a
period of seven years. Their successors were men of different mold, and
the problem that had given them the most serious trouble, while
comparatively small in their day, had now grown to monstrous
proportions. The difficulty arose from the existence of two exactly
opposite systems of labor in the two parts of the country. In the
Southern States the laborers were of a different race from the
capitalists and ruling class, and were slaves; in the Northern States
all (except a very small proportion) were of the white race and all
were free. The different ideas and interests that arose from these two
different states of society had constantly tended to alienate the
people of one section from those of the other, and the frequent
clashing of these interests in the halls of legislation had obscured
the fact that in a much larger view, and for permanent reasons, the
interests and destiny of the whole country were the same. In the summer
when young Dewey was graduated at the Naval Academy, Abraham Lincoln,
then in the midst of a heated canvass on this question, said in a
speech that became famous: "I believe this Government can not endure
permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."
Most of the Southern statesmen, and a few of those at the North, looked
to a division of the country as the best, if not the inevitable,
solution of the problem. But against this there was a barrier greater
and more permanent than any wording of constitution or laws enacted in
the last century by a generation that had passed away. This was the
geography of our country. Mr. Lincoln did not distinctly name it as the
reason for his faith in the perpetuity of the Union, but he probably
felt it. History shows unmistakably that the permanent boundaries of a
country are the geographical ones. Conquest or diplomacy occasionally
establishes others, but they do not endure. Separate tribes or peoples,
if living within the same geographical boundaries, ultimately come
together and form one nation. Had our country been crossed from east to
west by a great river like the Amazon, or a chain of lakes like those
that separate us from Canada, or a high mountain range, the northern
and southern sections might never have come together, or would have
been easily separated into two distinct peoples. But with no such
natural line of division, and with the Mississippi running south
through the center of the country, and with railroads, telegraphs, and
other rapidly multiplying means of communication tying the sections
together, the perpetuity of the Union was a foregone conclusion,
whatever might be the arguments of the politician or the passions of
the people.
Nevertheless, the struggle had to come, whether this great
consideration was realized or not, and come it did. The Southern
statesmen were in earnest in their threat of disunion, and when Abraham
Lincoln was elected to the presidency in 1860 they proceeded to carry
it out. South Carolina passed an ordinance of secession in December,
and most of the other Southern States followed quickly, and the new
government, called the Confederate States of America, was organized at
Montgomery, Alabama, in February, 1861. They proceeded to take
possession of the United States forts, arsenals, and navy yards within
their territory, and soon had them all without firing a gun, except
those at Pensacola and Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. The
Confederate forces erected several batteries within reach of Sumter,
and on April 12th opened fire on the fort and compelled its surrender.
This was the actual beginning of hostilities, and within twenty-four
hours the whole country, North and South, was ablaze with the war
spirit. The President called for volunteers to suppress the rebellion
and restore the national authority, and was offered several times as
many as he asked for. The South was already in arms. Many of the
military and naval officers who were from the South went with their
States, and young men who had been educated together at West Point or
Annapolis were now to take part on opposite sides in one of the
greatest conflicts the world has ever seen. In some instances brother
was against brother, and father against son.
Gideon Welles, of Connecticut, was Secretary of the Navy in President
Lincoln's cabinet. Though some of the naval officers resigned their
commissions and offered their services to the Confederacy, the vessels
of the navy, except a very few that were captured at Norfolk navy yard,
remained in the possession of the National Government. There was need
of all these and more, for a mighty task was about to be undertaken,
and there were large bodies of troops to be transported by sea, cities
to be captured, fortifications to be bombarded, and ports to be held
under blockade. This last was a most important duty, though little idea
of glory was connected with it, and popular reputations could not be
made in it; for the Southern States had very few manufactures, and for
arms, ammunition, and other necessaries they depended mainly on
importation.
At this time the United States navy was undergoing transformation. In
the more important vessels steam had been substituted for sail power,
but they were still constructed of wood, and the development of the
ironclad was just beginning. In the emergency the Government bought a
large number of merchant vessels of various kinds, including some
ferryboats, turning them into gunboats and transports, and began the
construction of ironclads. Many ironclads of light draught for use on
the western rivers were built in a hundred days. The Southerners were
almost without facilities for building vessels from the keel, but they
made two or three formidable rams and floating batteries by covering
the wooden hulls of some of the captured ships with railroad iron.
The first naval expedition of the war sailed in August, 1861, commanded
by Flag-Officer Silas H. Stringham. It consisted of ten vessels,
including two transports, carried about nine hundred soldiers, and was
directed against the forts that guarded Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina.
The troops, with some difficulty, were landed through the surf, and a
combined attack by them and the naval force reduced the defenses and
compelled their surrender with about seven hundred prisoners. The
garrisons had lost about fifty men, the assailants not one. This was
due to the fact that the work was done chiefly by rifled guns on the
vessels, which could be fired effectively while out of range of the
smooth-bore guns of the forts.
Late in October another expedition, commanded by Flag-Officer Samuel F.
Du Pont, sailed from Hampton Roads. It consisted of more than fifty
vessels, and carried twenty-two thousand men. A terrific gale was
encountered, one transport and one storeship were lost, and one gunboat
had to throw its battery overboard. When the storm was over, only one
vessel was in sight from the flagship. But the scattered fleet slowly
came together again and proceeded to its destination--the entrance to
Port Royal harbor, South Carolina. This was guarded by two forts. The
attack was made on the morning of November 7th. The main column, of ten
vessels, led by the flagship, was formed in line a ship's-length apart,
and steamed past the larger fort, delivering its fire at a distance of
eight hundred yards, and then turned and sailed past again, somewhat
closer. In this manner it steamed three times round a long ellipse,
delivering its fire alternately from the two broadsides. Some of the
gunboats got positions from which they enfiladed the work, and two of
the larger vessels went up closer and poured in a fire that dismounted
several guns. This was more than the garrison could endure, and they
evacuated the fort and were seen streaming out of it as if in panic.
The other column, of four vessels, attacked the smaller fort in the
same manner, with the same result.
[Illustration: SCENE OF THE NAVAL OPERATIONS IN THE WESTERN RIVERS.]
Meanwhile, a much larger and more important naval expedition than
either of these was planned at Washington. New Orleans was the largest
and richest city in the Confederacy. It had nearly one hundred and
seventy thousand inhabitants--more than Charleston, Mobile, and
Richmond together. In the year before the war it had shipped
twenty-five million dollars' worth of sugar and ninety-two million
dollars' worth of cotton. In these two articles its export trade was
larger than that of any other city in the world. And as a strategic
point it was of the first importance. The Mississippi has several
mouths, or passes, and this fact, with the frequency of violent gales
in the Gulf, made it very difficult to blockade commerce there.
Moreover, if possession of the Mississippi could be secured by the
national forces it would cut the Confederacy in two and render it
difficult if not impossible to continue the transportation of supplies
from Arkansas and Texas to feed the armies in Virginia and Tennessee.
Add to this the fact that any great city is a great prize in war,
highly valuable to the belligerent that holds it, and the importance of
New Orleans at that time may be readily appreciated.
The defenses of the city consisted of two forts--Jackson and St.
Philip--on either bank of the stream, thirty miles above the head of
the passes and about twice that distance below New Orleans. They were
below a bend which had received the name of English Turn, from the
circumstance that in 1814 the British naval vessels attempting to
ascend the stream had here been driven back by land batteries. The
forts were built by the United States Government, of earth and brick,
in the style that was common before the introduction of rifled cannon.
They were now garrisoned by fifteen hundred Confederate soldiers, and
above them lay a Confederate fleet of fifteen vessels, including an
ironclad ram and an incomplete floating battery that was cased in
railroad iron. Below the forts a heavy chain was stretched across the
river, supported on logs; and when it was broken by a freshet the logs
were replaced by hulks anchored at intervals across the stream, with
the chain passing over their decks and its ends fastened to trees on
the banks. A similar chain was stretched across the Hudson at the time
of the Revolutionary War. In addition to all this, two hundred
Confederate sharpshooters constantly patrolled the banks between the
forts and the head of the passes, to give notice of any approaching
foe, and fire at any one that might be seen on the deck of a hostile
vessel. The Confederate authorities fully appreciated the value of the
Crescent City. The problem before the national authorities was, how to
take that city in spite of all these barriers.