Worden’s career. Commodore Paulding had been the first, Captain Worden
the second officer of the navy, he said, to give an unqualified opinion
in favor of armored vessels. Their opinions had been influential with
him and with the Board of Construction. Captain Worden had volunteered
to take command of the _Monitor_, at the risk of his life and
reputation, before her keel was laid. He had watched her construction,
and his energy had made it possible to send her to sea in time to
arrest the destructive operations of the _Merrimac_. What he had done
with a new crew, and a vessel of novel construction, we all knew.
He, the President, cordially acknowledged his indebtedness to Captain
Worden, and he hoped the whole country would unite in the feeling of
obligation. The debt was a heavy one, and would not be repudiated when
its nature was understood. The details of the first battle between
iron-clads would interest every one. At the request of Captain Fox,
Captain Worden had consented to give an account of his voyage from New
York to Hampton Roads, and of what had afterwards happened there on
board the _Monitor_.
In an easy, conversational manner, without any effort at display,
Captain Worden told the story, of which the following is the substance:
“I suppose,” he began, “that every one knows that we left New York
Harbor in some haste. We had information that the _Merrimac_ was nearly
completed, and if we were to fight her on her first appearance, we must
be on the ground. The _Monitor_ had been hurried from the laying of her
keel. Her engines were new, and her machinery did not move smoothly.
Never was a vessel launched that so much needed trial-trips to test her
machinery and get her crew accustomed to their novel duties. We went
to sea practically without them. No part of the vessel was finished;
there was one omission that was serious, and came very near causing her
failure and the loss of many lives. In heavy weather it was intended
that her hatches and all her openings should be closed and battened
down. In that case all the men would be below, and would have to depend
upon artificial ventilation. Our machinery for that purpose proved
wholly inadequate.
“We were in a heavy gale of wind as soon as we passed Sandy Hook. The
vessel behaved splendidly. The seas rolled over her, and we found
her the most comfortable vessel we had ever seen, except for the
ventilation, which gave us more trouble than I have time to tell you
about. We had to run into port and anchor on account of the weather,
and, as you know, it was two o’clock in the morning of Sunday before we
were alongside the _Minnesota_. Captain Van Brunt gave us an account
of Saturday’s experience. He was very glad to make our acquaintance,
and notified us that we must be prepared to receive the _Merrimac_ at
daylight. We had had a very hard trip down the coast, and officers
and men were weary and sleepy. But when informed that our fight would
probably open at daylight, and that the _Monitor_ must be put in order,
every man went to his post with a cheer. That night there was no sleep
on board the _Monitor_.
“In the gray of the early morning we saw a vessel approaching, which
our friends on the _Minnesota_ said was the _Merrimac_. Our fastenings
were cast off, our machinery started, and we moved out to meet her
half-way. We had come a long way to fight her, and did not intend to
lose our opportunity.
“Before showing you over the vessel, let me say that there were three
possible points of weakness in the _Monitor_, two of which might have
been guarded against in her construction, if there had been more time
to perfect her plans. One of them was in the turret, which, as you see,
is constructed of eight plates of inch iron--on the side of the ports,
nine--set on end so as to break joints, and firmly bolted together,
making a hollow cylinder eight inches thick. It rests on a metal ring
on a vertical shaft, which is revolved by power from the boilers. If
a projectile struck the turret at an acute angle, it was expected
to glance off without doing damage. But what would happen if it was
fired in a straight line to the centre of the turret, which in that
case would receive the whole force of the blow? It might break off the
bolt-heads on the interior, which, flying across, would kill the men
at the guns; it might disarrange the revolving mechanism, and then we
would be wholly disabled.
“I laid the _Monitor_ close alongside the _Merrimac_, and gave her a
shot. She returned our compliment by a shell, weighing one hundred
and fifty pounds, fired when we were close together, which struck the
turret so squarely that it received the whole force. Here you see the
scar, two and a half inches deep in the wrought iron, a perfect mould
of the shell. If anything could test the turret, it was that shot.
It did not start a rivet-head or a nut! It stunned the two men who
were nearest where the ball struck, and that was all. I touched the
lever--the turret revolved as smoothly as before. The turret had stood
the test; I could mark that point of weakness off my list forever.
“You notice that the deck is joined to the side of the hull by a right
angle, at what sailors call the ‘plank-shear.’ If a projectile struck
that angle, what would happen? It would not be deflected; its whole
force would be expended there. It might open a seam in the hull below
the water-line, or pierce the wooden hull, and sink us. Here was our
second point of weakness.
“I had decided how I would fight her in advance. I would keep the
_Monitor_ moving in a circle, just large enough to give time for
loading the guns. At the point where the circle impinged upon the
_Merrimac_ our guns should be fired, and loaded while we were moving
around the circuit. Evidently the _Merrimac_ would return the
compliment every time. At our second exchange of shots, she returning
six or eight to our two, another of her large shells struck our
‘plank-shear’ at its angle, and tore up one of the deck-plates, as you
see. The shell had struck what I believed to be the weakest point in
the _Monitor_. We had already learned that the _Merrimac_ swarmed with
sharp-shooters, for their bullets were constantly spattering against
our turret and our deck. If a man showed himself on deck he would draw
their fire. But I did not much consider the sharp-shooters. It was my
duty to investigate the effects of that shot. I ordered one of the
pendulums to be hauled aside, and, crawling out of the port, walked
to the side, laid down upon my chest, and examined it thoroughly. The
hull was uninjured, except for a few splinters in the wood. I walked
back and crawled into the turret--the bullets were falling on the iron
deck all about me as thick as hailstones in a storm. None struck me, I
suppose because the vessel was moving, and at the angle, and when I was
lying on the deck, my body made a small mark difficult to hit. We gave
them two more guns, and then I told the men, what was true, that the
_Merrimac_ could not sink us if we let her pound us for a month. The
men cheered; the knowledge put new life into all.
“We had more exchanges, and then the _Merrimac_ tried new tactics.
She endeavored to ram us, to run us down. Once she struck us about
amidships with her iron ram. Here you see its mark. It gave us a shock,
pushed us around, and that was all the harm. But the movement placed
our sides together. I gave her two guns, which I think lodged in her
side, for, from my lookout crack, I could not see that either shot
rebounded. Ours being the smaller vessel, and more easily handled, I
had no difficulty in avoiding her ram. I ran around her several times,
planting our shot in what seemed to be the most vulnerable places.
In this way, reserving my fire until I got the range and the mark, I
planted two more shots almost in the very spot I had hit when she tried
to ram us. Those shots must have been effective, for they were followed
by a shower of bars of iron.
“The third weak spot was our pilot-house. You see that it is built a
little more than three feet above the deck, of bars of iron, ten by
twelve inches square, built up like a log-house, bolted with very large
bolts at the corners where the bars interlock. The pilot stands upon a
platform below, his head and shoulders in the pilot-house. The upper
tier of bars is separated from the second by an open space of an inch,
through which the pilot may look out at every point of the compass.
The pilot-house, as you see, is a four-square mass of iron, provided
with no means of deflecting a ball. I expected trouble from it, and
I was not disappointed. Until my accident happened, as we approached
the enemy I stood in the pilot-house and gave the signals. Lieutenant
Greene fired the guns, and Engineer Stimers, here, revolved the turret.
“I was below the deck when the corner of the pilot-house was first
struck by a shot or a shell. It either burst or was broken, and no
harm was done. A short time after I had given the signal, and with my
eye close against the lookout crack, was watching the effect of our
shot, when something happened to me--my part in the fight was ended.
Lieutenant Greene, who fought the _Merrimac_ until she had no longer
stomach for fighting, will tell you the rest of the story.”
Can it be possible that this beardless boy fought one of the historic
battles of the world? This was the thought of every one, as the modest,
diffident young Greene was half pushed forward into the circle.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE “MONITOR” AND “MERRIMAC”]
“I cannot add much to the Captain’s story,” he began. “He had cut out
the work for us, and we had only to follow his pattern. I kept the
_Monitor_ either moving around the circle or around the enemy, and
endeavored to place our shots as near her amidships as possible, where
Captain Worden believed he had already broken through her armor. We
knew that she could not sink us, and I thought I would keep right on
pounding her as long as she would stand it. There is really nothing
new to be added to Captain Worden’s account. We could strike her
wherever we chose; weary as they must have been, our men were full
of enthusiasm, and I do not think we wasted a shot. Once we ran out of
the circle for a moment to adjust a piece of machinery, and I learn
that some of our friends feared that we were drawing out of the fight.
The _Merrimac_ took the opportunity to start for Norfolk. As soon as
our machinery was adjusted we followed her, and got near enough to give
her a parting shot. But I was not familiar with the locality; there
might be torpedoes planted in the channel, and I did not wish to take
any risk of losing our vessel, so I came back to the company of our
friends. But except that we were, all of us, tired and hungry when we
came back to the _Minnesota_ at half-past twelve P.M., the _Monitor_
was just as well prepared to fight as she was at eight o’clock in the
morning when she fired the first gun.”
We were then shown the injury to the pilot-house. The mark of the ball
was plain upon the two upper bars, the principal impact being upon the
lower of the two. This huge bar was broken in the middle, but held
firmly at either end. The further it was pressed in, the stronger was
the resistance on the exterior. On the inside the fracture in the
bar was half an inch wide. Captain Worden’s eye was very near to the
lookout crack, so that when the gun was discharged the shock of the
ball knocked him senseless, while the mass of flame filled one side of
his face with coarse grains of powder. He remained insensible for some
hours.
“Have you heard what Captain Worden’s first inquiry was when he
recovered his senses after the general shock to his system?” asked
Captain Fox of the President.
“I think I have,” replied Mr. Lincoln, “but it is worth relating to
these gentlemen.”
“His question was,” said Captain Fox, “‘Have I saved the _Minnesota_?’
“‘Yes, and whipped the _Merrimac_!’ some one answered.”
“‘Then,’ said Captain Worden, ‘I don’t care what becomes of me.’”
“Mr. President,” said Captain Fox, “not much of the history to which we
have listened is new to me. I saw this battle from eight o’clock until
mid-day. There was one marvel in it which has not been mentioned--the
splendid handling of the _Monitor_ throughout the battle. The first
bold advance of this diminutive vessel against a giant like the
_Merrimac_ was superlatively grand. She seemed inspired by Nelson’s
order at Trafalgar: ‘He will make no mistake who lays his vessel
alongside the enemy.’ One would have thought the _Monitor_ a living
thing. No man was visible. You saw her moving around that circle,
delivering her fire invariably at the point of contact, and heard the
crash of the missile against her enemy’s armor above the thunder of her
guns, on the bank where we stood. It was indescribably grand!
“Now,” he continued, “standing here on the deck of this battle-scarred
vessel, the first genuine iron-clad--the victor in the first fight of
iron-clads--let me make a confession, and perform an act of simple
justice. I never fully believed in armored vessels until I saw this
battle. I know all the facts which united to give us the _Monitor_. I
withhold no credit from Captain Ericsson, her inventor, but I know
that the country is principally indebted for the construction of this
vessel to President Lincoln, and for the success of her trial to
Captain Worden, her commander.”
XI
SHERIDAN’S RIDE
_Told by his Aide_
“When I heard this I took two of my aides-de-camp, Major George A.
Forsyth and Captain Joseph O’Keeffe, and with twenty men from the
escort started for the front.”--_From the Personal Memoirs of P. H.
Sheridan_, vol. ii., chap, iii., page 80.
In the summer of 1864 I was on detached duty as an acting aide on the
staff of Major-General Philip H. Sheridan, then in command of the Army
of the Shenandoah. I was one of two officers who rode to the front with
him “from Winchester down” on October 19, 1864, the day of the battle
of Cedar Creek.
It seemed as though the campaign in the valley of the Shenandoah in
the year 1864 was practically over. Twice within four days General
Sheridan had attacked and defeated the Confederate army under General
Early: first, on September 19th, at the crossing of Opequon Creek, in
front of Winchester, Virginia, and again at Fisher’s Hill, twenty-two
miles farther up the valley, on the twenty-second day of the same
month. Both victories had been wrung from the enemy by dint of hard
fighting and good judgment on the part of the commanding general of the
United States forces, and his reputation as the commander of an army
was now seemingly as secure as the brilliant record he had already made
as a brigade, division, and corps commander.
The Federal troops lay quietly in camp in fancied security near
Strasburg, just in rear of Cedar Creek, one of the tributaries of the
Shenandoah River, and the shattered forces of the enemy were supposed
to be somewhere in the vicinity of Gordonsville, Virginia; but the
Confederate general, Jubal A. Early, was a soldier unused to defeat, a
bitter enemy and a desperate foe, and as later events went to show, an
officer willing to risk his all on the mere possibility of regaining,
by a sudden and unexpected blow, the lost prestige of himself and army.
In my opinion, but for the opportune arrival of General Sheridan on
the field of battle, there is no reasonable doubt that he would have
succeeded in accomplishing his object.
* * * * *
On the morning of October 19th, about daylight, word was brought from
the picket-line south of Winchester of heavy firing at the front.
General Sheridan interviewed the officer who brought the information,
and decided that it must be the result of the reconnoissance that
General Wright had notified him the night before was to take place
this morning. Little apprehension was occasioned by the report. After
breakfast, probably nearly or quite nine o’clock, we mounted and rode
at a walk through the town of Winchester to Mill Creek, a mile south of
the village, where we found our escort awaiting us.
We could occasionally hear the far-away sound of heavy guns, and as
we moved out with our escort behind us I thought that the General was
becoming anxious. He leaned forward and listened intently, and once
he dismounted and placed his ear near the ground, seeming somewhat
disconcerted as he rose again and remounted. We had not gone far,
probably not more than a mile, when, at the crest of a little hill on
the road, we found the pike obstructed by some supply-trains which had
started on their way to the army. They were now halted, and seemingly
in great confusion. Part of the wagons faced one way, part the other;
others were half turned round, in position to swing either way, but
were huddled together, completely blocking the road.
Turning to me, the General said, “Ride forward quickly and find out the
trouble here, and report promptly.” I rode rapidly to the head of the
train and asked for the quartermaster in charge, and was told he had
gone up the road a short distance.
On reaching him, I found him conversing with a quartermaster-sergeant.
They informed me that an officer had come from the front and told
them to go back at once, as our army had been attacked at daylight,
defeated, and was being driven down the valley. The officer, they said,
had gone back towards the front after warning them to come no farther.
Galloping back, I made my report. “Pick out fifty of the best-mounted
men from the escort,” was the response. Riding down the column,
with the aid of one of the officers of the regiment, this was soon
accomplished, and I reported with the selected men. Turning to his
chief of staff, Colonel J. W. Forsyth, the General said something
regarding certain instructions he had evidently been giving him, and
then said to me, “You and Captain O’Keeffe will go with me;” and
nodding good-bye to the other gentlemen of our party, with whom he had
probably been conferring while I was making up the cavalry detail, he
turned his horse’s head southward, tightening the reins of his bridle,
and with a slight touch of the spur he dashed up the turnpike and was
off. A yard in rear, and side by side, Captain O’Keeffe and myself
swept after him, while the escort, breaking from a trot to a gallop,
came thundering on behind.
The distance from Winchester to Cedar Creek, on the north bank of which
the Army of the Shenandoah lay encamped, is a little less than nineteen
miles. The general direction was west of south, and the road to it, by
way of the valley pike, ran directly through the road-side hamlets of
Milltown, Kearnstown, Newtown, and Middletown. Our army was encamped
four miles south of Middletown. The Shenandoah Valley turnpike, over
which we were now speeding, was formerly a well-built macadamized road,
laid in crushed limestone, and until the advent of the war had been
kept in excellent condition. Even then, though worn for three years
past by the tread of contending armies with all the paraphernalia of
war as they swept up and down the valley, it was a fairly good road;
but the army supply-trains, ammunition-wagons, and artillery had worn
it into deep ruts in places, and everywhere the dust lay thick and
heavy on its surface, and powdered the trees and bushes that fringed
its sides, so that our galloping column sent a gray cloud swirling
behind us. It was a golden sunny day that had succeeded a densely foggy
October morning. The turnpike stretched away, a white, dusty line,
over hill and through dale, bordered by fenceless fields, and past
farm-houses and empty barns and straggling orchards. Now and then it
ran through a woody copse, with here and there a tiny stream of water
crossing it, or meandering by its side, so clear and limpid that it
seemed to invite us to pause and slake our thirst as we sped along our
dusty way. On either side we saw, through the Indian-summer haze, the
distant hills covered with woods and fairly ablaze with foliage; and
over all was the deep blue of a cloudless southern sky, making it a day
on which one’s blood ran riot and he was glad of health and life.
Within a mile we met more supply-trains that had turned back, and the
General stopped long enough to order the officer in charge to halt,
park his trains just where he was, and await further instructions.
Then on we dashed again, only to meet, within a few moments, more
supply-trains hurrying to the rear. The General did not stop, but
signalling the officer in charge to join him, gave him instructions on
the gallop to park his train at once, and use his escort to arrest and
stop all stragglers coming from the army, and to send back to the front
all well men who might drift to him, under guard if necessary.
Scarcely had we parted from him and surmounted the next rise in the
road when we came suddenly upon indubitable evidence of battle and
retreat. About a mile in advance of us the road was filled and the
fields dotted with wagons and men belonging to the various brigade,
division, and corps headquarters, and in among them officers’ servants
with led horses, and here and there a broken ambulance, sutlers’
supply-trains, a battery forge or two, horses and mules hastily packed
with officers’ mess-kits, led by their cooks, and now and then a
group of soldiers, evidently detailed enlisted men attached to the
headquarters trains. In fact, this was the first driftwood of a flood
just beyond and soon to come sweeping down the road. Passing this
accumulation of débris with a rush by leaving the pike and galloping
over the open fields on the side of the road, we pushed rapidly on; but
not so quickly but that we caught an echoing cheer from the enlisted
men and servants, who recognized the General, and shouted and swung
their hats in glee.
Within the next few miles the pike and adjacent fields began to be
lined and dotted everywhere with army wagons, sutlers’ outfits,
headquarters supply-trains, disabled caissons, and teamsters with led
mules, all drifting to the rear; and now and then a wounded officer
or enlisted man on horseback or plodding along on foot, with groups
of straggling soldiers here and there among the wagon-trains, or in
the fields, or sometimes sitting or lying down to rest by the side of
the road, while others were making coffee in their tin cups by tiny
camp-fires. Soon we began to see small bodies of soldiers in the fields
with stacked arms, evidently cooking breakfast. As we turned into the
fields and passed around the wagons and through these groups, the
General would wave his hat to the men and point to the front, never
lessening his speed as he pressed forward. It was enough; one glance at
the eager face and familiar black horse and they knew him, and starting
to their feet, they swung their caps around their heads and broke
into cheers as he passed beyond them; and then, gathering up their
belongings and shouldering their arms, they started after him for the
front, shouting to their comrades farther out in the fields, “Sheridan!
Sheridan!” waving their hats, and pointing after him as he dashed
onward; and they too comprehended instantly, for they took up the cheer
and turned back for the battlefield.
To the best of my recollection, from the time we met the first
stragglers who had drifted back from the army, his appearance and his
cheery shout of “Turn back, men! turn back! Face the other way!” as he
waved his hat towards the front, had but one result: a wild cheer of
recognition, an answering wave of the cap. In no case, as I glanced
back, did I fail to see the men shoulder their arms and follow us. I
think it is no exaggeration to say that as he dashed on to the field of
battle, for miles back the turnpike was lined with men pressing forward
after him to the front.