THE IRONCLADS OFF CHARLESTON.
After five letters from Washington, in the first of which he had
predicted that in a few days, for the first time in war, there would
be the great contest between ironclads and forts, and the stroke of
fifteen-inch shot against masonry, Carleton set off for salt water,
determining to see the tug-of-war on the Atlantic coast. It was on
Saturday afternoon, February 7th, that he stood on deck of the steamer
_Augusta Dinsmore_ as she moved through the floating masses of ice
down the Hudson River to the sea. This new ship was owned by Adams's
Express Company, and with her consort, _Mary Sandford_, was employed
in carrying barrels of apples, boxes of clothing, messages of love,
and tokens of affection between the Union soldiers along the coast and
their friends at home. Heavily loaded with express packages, with
fifty or sixty thousand letters, and with several hundred
fifteen-inch solid shot, packed ready for delivery by Admiral Du Pont
at or into Fort Sumter, the trim craft passed over a sea like glass,
except that now and then was a dying groan or heave of the storm of a
week before. A pleasant Sunday at sea was spent with worship, sermon,
and song. After sixty hours on salt water, Carleton's ear caught the
boom of the surf on the beach. The sea-gulls flitted around, and after
the sun had rent the pall of fog, the town of Beaufort appeared in
view.
The harbor was full of schooners which had come from up North,
bringing potatoes, onions, apples, and Yankee notions for the great
blue-coated community at Newburgh. Carleton moved up the
poverty-stricken country through marsh, sea-sand, pitch-pine, swamp,
and plain. Here and there were the shanties of sand-hillers, negro
huts, and scores of long, lank, scrimped-up, razor-backed pigs of the
Congo breed, as to color; but in speed, racers, outstripping the
fleetest horses. Making his headquarters at Hilton Head, Carleton made
a thorough study of the military and naval situation. He visited the
New England regiments. He saw the enlistment of negro troops, and
devoted one letter to Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson's first South
Carolina regiment of volunteers.
With his usual luck, that is, the result of intelligence and energy
which left nothing to mere luck, Carleton stood on the steamer
_Nantasket_, off Charleston, April 7, 1863. Both admiral and general
had recognized the war correspondents as the historians of the hour.
At half past one, the signal for sailing was displayed from the
flag-ship. Then the ugly black floating fortresses moved off in a
line, each a third or a half a mile apart, against the masses of
granite at Sumter and Moultrie, and the earthen batteries on three
sides. "There are no clouds of canvas, no beautiful models of marine
architecture, none of the stateliness and majesty which have marked
hundreds of great naval engagements. There is but little to the sight
calculated to excite enthusiasm. There are eight black specks, and one
oblong block, like so many bugs. There are no human beings in
sight,--no propelling power visible."
A few minutes later, "the ocean boils." Columns of spray are tossed
high in air, as if a hundred submarine mines were let instantly off,
or a school of whales were trying which could spout highest. There is
a screaming in the air, a buzzing and humming never before so loud.
"You must think the earth's crust is ruptured, and the volcanic fires,
long pent, have suddenly found vent."
"There she is, the _Weehawken_, the target of probably two hundred and
fifty or three hundred guns, at close range, of the heaviest calibre
rifled cannon, throwing forged bolts and steel-pointed shot turned and
polished to a hair in the lathes of English workshops, advancing
still, undergoing her first ordeal, a trial unparalleled in history.
For fifteen minutes she meets the ordeal alone."
Soon the other four monitors follow. Seventy guns a minute are
counted, followed by moments of calm, and scattering shots, but only
to break out again in a prolonged roar of thunder. In the lulls of the
strife, Carleton steadied his glass, and when the southwest breeze
swept away the smoke, he could see "increasing pock-marks and
discolorations upon the walls of the fort, as if there had been a
sudden breaking out of cutaneous disease."
We now know, from the Confederate officers then in Fort Sumter, that
the best artillery made in England, and the strongest powder
manufactured in the Confederacy, were used during this two and a half
hours of mutual hammering, until then unparalleled in the history of
the world. Near sunset, at 5.20 P. M., signals from the flag-ship were
read; the order was, "Retire."
The red sun sank behind the sand hills, and the silence was welcomed.
During the heavy cannonade,--like the Union soldiers who, obedient to
the hunter's instinct, stopped in the midst of a Wilderness battle to
shoot rabbits,--a Confederate gunner had trained his rifled cannon
upon the three non-combatant vessels, the _Bibb_, the _Ben Deford_,
and the _Nantasket_, which lay in the North Channel at a respectful
distance, but quite within easy range of Sullivan's Island. Having
fired a half a dozen shot which had fallen unnoticed, the gunner
demoralized the little squadron, and sent hundreds of interested
spectators running, jumping, and rolling below deck, by sending a
shot transversely across the _Nantasket_. It dropped in the sea about
a hundred yards from the bow of the _Ben Deford_. Another shot in
admirable line fell short. Shells from Cummings Point had also been
tried on the ships laden with civilians, but had failed to reach them.
However, the correspondents claim to have silenced the batteries,--by
getting out of the way; for in a few minutes the cables had been
hauled in, paddle-wheels set in motion, and distance increased from
the muzzles of the battery.
When the fleet returned, Carleton leaped on board of the slush deck of
the monitor _Catskill_, receiving hearty response from Captain George
Rodgers, who reported "All right, nobody hurt, ready for them again."
I afterwards saw all these monitors covered with indentations like
spinning-top moulds or saucers. They were gouged, dented, and bruised
by case-shot that had struck and glanced sidewise. Here and there, it
looked as though an adamantine serpent had grooved its way over the
convex iron surface, as a worm leaves the mark of its crawling in the
soft earth under the stone. The _Catskill_ had received thirty shots,
the _Keokuk_ a hundred. Inside of the _Nahant_, Carleton found eleven
officers and men badly contused by the flying of bolt-heads in the
turret; but, except from a temporary jam, her armor was intact. On the
_Patapsco_ a ball had ripped up the plating and pierced the work
beneath. This was the only shot that had penetrated any of the
monitors. The _Weehawken_ had in one place the pittings of three shots
which, had they immediately followed each other, might, like the
arrows of the Earl of Douglas in Scott's "Lady of the Lake," split
each other in twain. Except leaving war's honorable scar, these three
bolts hurt not the _Weehawken_. Out of probably three thousand
projectiles shot from behind walls, about three hundred and fifty took
effect, that is, one shot out of six. Three tons of iron were hurled
at Fort Sumter, and probably six tons at the fleet. Fighting inside of
iron towers, the Union men had no one killed, and but one mortally
wounded. The _Keokuk_, the most vulnerable of all the ships engaged,
sank under the northwest wind in the heavy sea of the next day.
It was long after midnight when Carleton finished the closing lines of
his letter, and then stepped out upon the steamer's guard for a
little fresh air. Over on Sumter's walls the signal-light was being
waved. The black monitors lay at their anchorage. Ocean, air, and
moonbeams were calm and peaceful. From the flag-ship, which the
despatch steamer visited, the report was, "The engagement is to be
renewed to-morrow afternoon." Nevertheless, the next day, Admiral Du
Pont, dissenting from the opinions of his engineers and inspectors, as
to a renewal of the attack, moreover finding his own officers
differing in their opinions as to the ability of the fleet to reduce
Fort Sumter, ordered no advance. The enterprise was, for the present,
at least, given up. So Carleton, after another letter on white and
black humanity in South Carolina, which showed convincingly the
results of slavery, sailed from Hilton Head.
Like the war-horse of Hebrew poetry, he smelt the battle afar off, and
looked to Virginia. He reached home just in time to hear of the great
conflict at Chancellorsville. Rushing to Washington, and gathering up
from all sources news of the disaster, he presented to the readers of
the _Journal_ a clear and connected story of the battle. During the
latter part of May and until the middle of June, the previous weeks
having been times of inaction in the military world, Carleton
recruited his strength at home. Like a falcon on its perch, he awaited
the opportunity to swoop on the quarry.