THE NAVAL WAR: 1862
Bull Run had riveted attention on the land between the opposing
capitals and on the armies fighting there. Very few people were
thinking of the navies and the sea. And yet it was at sea, and not
on land, that the Union had a force against which the Confederates
could never prevail, a force which gradually cut them off from
the whole world's base of war supplies, a force which enabled the
Union armies to get and keep the strangle-hold which did the South
to death.
The blockade declared in April was no empty threat. The sails of
Federal frigates, still more the sinister black hulls of the new
steam men-of-war, meant that the South was fast becoming a land
besieged, with every outwork accessible by water exposed to sudden
attack and almost certain capture by any good amphibious force
of soldiers and sailors combined.
Sea-power kept the North in affluence while it starved the South.
Sea-power held Maryland in its relentless grip and did more than
land-power to keep her in the Union. Sea-power was the chief factor
in saving Washington. Seapower enabled the North to hold such points
of vantage as Fortress Monroe right on the flank of the South.
And sea-power likewise enabled the North to take or retake other
points of similar importance: for instance, Hatteras Island.
In a couple of days at the end of August, 1861, the Confederate
forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, were compelled to surrender
to a joint naval and military expedition under Flag-Officer Stringham
and Major-General B. F. Butler. The immediate result, besides the
capture of seven hundred men, was the control of the best entrance
to North Carolina waters, which entailed the stoppage of many oversea
supplies for the Confederate army. The ulterior result was the
securing of a base from which a further invasion could be made with
great advantage.
The naval campaign of the following year was truly epoch-making;
for the duel between the _Monitor_ and _Merrimac_ in Hampton Roads
on March 9, 1862, was the first action ever fought between ironclad
steam men-of-war.
Eleven months earlier the Federal Government had suddenly abandoned
the Norfolk Navy Yard; though their strongest garrison was at Fortress
Monroe, only twelve miles north along a waterway which was under
the absolute control of their navy, and though the Confederates'
had nothing but an inadequate little untrained force on the spot.
Among the spoils of war falling into Confederate hands were twelve
hundred guns and the _Merrimac_, a forty-gun steam frigate. The
_Merrimac_, though fired and scuttled by the Federals, was hove
up, cut down, plated over, and renamed the _Virginia_. (History,
however, knows her only as the _Merrimac_.) John L. Porter, Naval
Constructor to the Confederate States, had made a model of an ironclad
at Pittsburgh fifteen years before; and he now applied this model
to the rebuilding of the _Merrimac_. He first cut down everything
above the water line, except the gun deck, which he converted into a
regular citadel with flat top, sides sloping at thirty-five degrees,
and ends stopping short of the ship's own ends by seventy feet fore
and aft. The effect, therefore, was that of an ironclad citadel
built on the midships of a submerged frigate's hull. The four-inch
iron plating of the citadel knuckled over the wooden sides two
feet under water. The engines, which the South had no means of
replacing, were the old ones which had been condemned before being
sunk. A four-foot castiron ram was clamped on to the bow. Ten guns
were mounted: six nine-inch smooth-bores, with two six-inch and
two seven-inch rifles. Commodore Franklin Buchanan took command
and had magnificent professional officers under him. But the crew,
three hundred strong, were mostly landsmen; for, as in the case
of the Army, the men of the Navy nearly all took sides with the
North, and the South had very few seamen of any other kind.
To oppose the _Merrimac_ the dilatory North contracted with John
Ericsson the Swede, who had to build the _Monitor_ much smaller
than the Merrimac owing to pressure of time. He enjoyed, however,
enormous advantages in every other respect, owing to the vastly
superior resources of the North in marine engineering, armor-plating,
and all other points of naval construction. The _Monitor_ was launched
at New York on January 30, 1862, the hundredth day after the laying
of her keel-plate. Her length over all was 172 feet, her beam was
41, and her draught only 10--less than half the draught of the
_Merrimac_. Her whole crew numbered only 58; but every single one
was a trained professional naval seaman who had volunteered for
dangerous service under Captain John L. Worden. She was not a good
sea boat; and she nearly foundered on her way down from New York to
Fortress Monroe. Her underwater hull was shipshape enough; but her
superstructure--a round iron tower resting on a very low deck--was
not. Contemptuous eyewitnesses described her very well as looking
like a tin can on a shingle or a cheesebox on a raft. She carried
only two guns, eleven-inchers, both mounted inside her turret,
which revolved by machinery; but their 180-pound shot were far
more powerful than any aboard the _Merrimac_. In maneuvering the
_Monitor_ enjoyed an immense advantage, with her light draft, strong
engines, and well-protected screws and rudder.
On the eighth of March, a lovely spring day, the _Merrimac_ made
her trial trip by going into action with her wheezy old engines,
lubberly crew, and the guns she had never yet fired. She shoveled
along at only five knots; but the Confederate garrisons cheered
her to the echo. Seven miles north she came upon the astonished
fifty-gun _Congress_ and thirty-gun _Cumberland_ swinging drowsily
at anchor off Newport News, with their boats alongside and the
men's wash drying in the rigging. Yet the surprised frigates opened
fire at twelve hundred yards and were joined by the shore batteries,
all converging on the _Merrimac_, from whose iron sides the shot
glanced up without doing more than hammer her hard and start a few
rivets. Closing in at top speed--barely six knots--the _Merrimac_
gave the _Congress_ a broadside before ramming the _Cumberland_
and opening a hole "wide enough to drive in a horse and cart."
Backing clear and turning the after-pivot gun, the _Merrimac_ then
got in three raking shells against the _Congress_, which grounded
when trying to escape. Meanwhile the _Cumberland_ was listing over
and rapidly filling, though she kept up the fight to the very last
gasp. When she sank with a roar her topmasts still showed above
water and her colors waved defiance. An hour later the terribly
mauled _Congress_ surrendered; whereupon her crew was rescued and
she was set on fire. By this time various smaller craft on both
sides had joined the fray. But the big _Minnesota_ still remained,
though aground and apparently at the mercy of the _Merrimac_. The
great draught of the _Merrimac_ and the setting in of the ebb tide,
however, made the Confederates draw off for the night.
Next morning they saw the "tin can on the shingle" between them and
their prey. The _Monitor_ and _Merrimac_ then began their epoch-making
fight. The patchwork engines of the deep-draught _Merrimac_ made her
as unhandy as if she had been water-logged, while the light-draught
_Monitor_ could not only play round her when close-to but maneuver
all over the surrounding shallows as well. The _Merrimac_ put her
last ounce of steam into an attempt to ram her agile opponent.
But a touch of the _Monitor's_ helm swung her round just in time
to make the blow perfectly harmless. The _Merrimac_ simply barged
into her, grated harshly against her iron side, and sheered off
beaten. The firing was furious and mostly at pointblank range.
Once the _Monitor_ fired while the sides were actually touching.
The concussion was so tremendous that all the _Merrimac's_ gun-crews
aft were struck down flat, with bleeding ears and noses. But in
spite of this her boarders were called away; whereupon every man
who could handle cutlass and revolver made ready and stood by. The
_Monitor_, however, dropped astern too quickly; and the wallowing
_Merrimac_ had no chance of catching her. The fight had lasted all
through that calm spring morning when the _Monitor_ steamed off,
across the shallows, still keeping carefully between the _Merrimac_
and _Minnesota_. It was a drawn battle. But the effect was that
of a Northern victory; for the _Merrimac_ was balked of her easy
prey, and the North gained time to outbuild the South completely.
Outbuilding the South of course meant tightening the "anaconda"
system of blockade, in the entangling coils of which the South
was caught already. Three thousand miles of Southern coastline
was, however, more than the North could blockade or even watch to
its own satisfaction all at once. Fogs, storms, and clever ruses
played their part on behalf of those who ran the blockade, especially
during the first two years; and it was almost more than human nature
could stand to keep forever on the extreme alert, day after dreary
day, through the deadly boredom of a long blockade. Like caged
eagles the crews passed many a weary week of dull monotony without
the chance of swooping on a chase. "Smoke ho!" would be called
from the main-topgallant cross-tree. "Where away?" would be called
back from the deck. "Up the river, Sir!"--and there it would stay,
the very mark of hope deferred. Occasionally a cotton ship would
make a dash, with lights out on a dark night, or through a dense
fog, when her smoke might sometimes be conned from the tops.
Occasionally, too, a foreigner would try to run in, and not seldom
succeed, because only the fastest vessels tried to run the blockade
after the first few months. But the general experience was one of
utter boredom rarely relieved by a stroke of good luck.
The South could not break the blockade. But the North could tighten
it, and did so repeatedly, not only at sea but by establishing
strong strategic centers of its own along the Southern coast. We
have seen already how Hatteras Island was taken in '61, five weeks
after Bull Run. Within another three weeks Ship Island was also taken,
to the great disadvantage of the Gulf ports and the corresponding
advantage of the Federal fleet blockading them; for Ship Island
commanded the coastwise channels between Mobile and New Orleans,
the two great scenes of Farragut's success. Then, on the seventh
of November, the day that Grant began his triumphant career by
dealing the Confederates a shrewd strategic blow at Belmont in
Missouri, South Carolina suffered a worse defeat at Port Royal
(where she lost Forts Beauregard and Walker) than North Carolina
had suffered at Hatteras Island. Admiral S. F. Du Pont managed
the naval part of the Port Royal expedition with consummate skill,
especially the fine fleet action off Hilton Head against the Southern
ships and forts. He was ably seconded by General Thomas West Sherman,
commanding the troops.
North Carolina's turn soon came again, when she lost Roanoke Island
(and with it the command of Albemarle Sound) on February 8, 1862;
and when she also had Pamlico Sound shut against her by a joint
expedition that struck down her defenses as far inland as Newbern
on the fourteenth of March. Then came the turn of Georgia, where
Fort Pulaski, the outpost of Savannah, fell to the Federals on
the eleventh of April. Within another month Florida was even more
hardly hit when the pressure of the Union fleet and army on Virginia
compelled the South to use as reinforcements the garrison that
had held Pensacola since the beginning of the war.
These were all severe blows to the Southern cause. But they were
nothing to the one which immediately followed.
The idea of an attack on New Orleans had been conceived in June,
'61, by Commander (afterwards Admiral) D. D. Porter, of the U.S.S.
_Powhatan_, when he was helping to blockade the Mississippi. The
Navy Department had begun thinking over the same idea in September
and had worked out a definite scheme. New Orleans was of immense
strategic importance, as being the link between the sea and river
systems of the war. The mass of people and their politicians, on
both sides, absurdly thought of New Orleans as the objective of a
land invasion from the north. Happily for the Union cause, Gustavus
Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, knew better and persuaded
his civilian chief, Gideon Welles, that this was work for a joint
expedition, with the navy first, the army second. The navy could
take New Orleans. The army would have to hold it.
The squadron destined for this enterprise was commanded by David
Glasgow Farragut, who arrived at Ship Island on February 20, 1862,
in the _Hartford_, the famous man-of-war that carried his flag in
triumph to the end. Unlike Lee and Jackson, Grant and Sherman,
the other four great leaders in the Civil War, Farragut was not an
American whose ancestors on both sides had come from the British
Isles. Like Lee, however, he was of very ancient lineage, one of
his ancestors, Don Pedro Farragut, having held a high command under
the King of Aragon in the Moorish wars of the thirteenth century.
Farragut's father was a pure-blooded Spaniard, born under the British
flag in Minorca in 1755. Half Spanish, half Southern by descent,
Farragut was wholly Southern by family environment. His mother,
Elizabeth Shine, was a native of North Carolina. He spent his early
boyhood in New Orleans. Both his first and second wives came from
Virginia; and he made his home at Norfolk. On the outbreak of the
war, however, he immediately went North and applied for employment
with the Union fleet.
Farragut was the oldest of the five great leaders, being now sixty
years of age, while Lee was fifty-five, Sherman forty-two, Grant
forty, and Jackson thirty-eight. He was, however, fit as an athlete
in training, able to turn a handspring on his birthday and to hold
his own in swordsmanship against any of his officers. Of middle
height, strong build, and rather plain features, he did not attract
attention in a crowd. But his alert and upright carriage, keenly
interested look, and genial smile impressed all who ever knew him
with a sense of native kindliness and power. Though far too great
a master of the art of war to interfere with his subordinates he
always took care to understand their duties from their own points
of view so that he could control every part of the complex naval
instruments of war--human and material alike--with a sure and inspiring
touch. His one weakness as a leader was his generous inclination
to give subordinates the chance of distinguishing themselves when
they could have done more useful service in a less conspicuous
position.
[Illustration: _ADMIRAL D. G. FARRAGUT_
Photograph by Brady.]
Farragut's base at Ship Island was about a hundred miles east from
the Confederate Forts Jackson and St. Philip. These forts guarded
the entrance to the Mississippi. Ninety miles above them stood
New Orleans, to which they gave protection and from which they
drew all their supplies. The result of a conference at Washington
was an order from Welles to "reduce the defenses which guard the
approaches to New Orleans." But Farragut's own infinitely better
plan was to run past the forts and take New Orleans first. By doing
this he would save the extra loss required for reducing the forts
and would take the weak defenses of New Orleans entirely by surprise.
Then, when New Orleans fell, the forts, cut off from all supplies,
would have to surrender without the firing of another shot. Everything
depended on whether Farragut could run past without too much loss.
Profoundly versed in all the factors of the problem, he foresaw
that his solution would prove right, while Washington's would as
certainly be wrong. So, taking the utmost advantage of all the
freedom that his general instructions allowed, he followed a course
in which anything short of complete success would mean the ruin
of his whole career.
The forts were strong, had ninety guns that would bear on the fleet,
and were well placed, one on each side of the river. But they suffered
from all the disadvantages of fixed defenses opposed by a mobile
enemy, and their own mobile auxiliaries were far from being
satisfactory. The best of the "River Defense Fleet," including
several rams, had been ordered up to Memphis, so sure was the
Confederate Government that the attack would come from the north.
Two home-made ironclads were failures. The _Louisiana's_ engines
were not ready in time; and her captain refused to be towed into the
position near the boom where he could do the enemy most harm. The
_Mississippi_, a mere floating house, built by ordinary carpenters,
never reached the forts at all and was burnt by her own men at New
Orleans.
Farragut felt sure of his fleet. He had four splendid new men-of-war
that formed a homogeneous squadron, four other sizable warships, and
nine new gunboats. All spars and rigging that could be dispensed
with were taken down; all hulls camouflaged with Mississippi mud; and
all decks whitened for handiness at night. A weak point, however,
was the presence of mortar-boats that would have been better out
of the way altogether. These boats had been sent to bombard the
forts, which, according to the plan preferred by the Government,
were to be taken before New Orleans was attacked. In other words,
the Government wished to cut off the branches first; while Farragut
wished to cut down the tree itself, knowing the branches must fall
with the trunk.
On the eighteenth of April the mortar-boats began heaving shells
at the forts. But, after six days of bombardment, the forts were
nowhere near the point of surrendering, and the supply of shells
had begun to run low.
Meanwhile the squadron had been busy preparing for the great ordeal.
The first task was to break the boom across the river. This boom
was placed so as to hold the ships under the fire of the forts;
and the four-knot spring current was so strong that the eight-knot
ships could not make way enough against it to cut clear through
with certainty. Moreover, the middle of the boom was filled in by
eight big schooners, chained together, with their masts and rigging
dragging astern so as to form a most awkward entanglement. Farragut's
fleet captain, Henry H. Bell, taking two gunboats, _Itasca_ and
_Pinola_, under Lieutenants Caldwell and Crosby, slipped the chains
of one schooner; whereupon this schooner and the _Itasca_ swung
back and grounded under fire of the forts. The _Pinola_ gallantly
stood by, helping _Itasca_ clear. Then Caldwell, with splendid
audacity and skill, steamed up through the narrow gap, turned round,
put on the _Itasca's_ utmost speed, and, with the current in his
favor, charged full tilt against the chains that still held fast.
For one breathless moment the little _Itasca_ seemed lost. Her
bows rose clear out, as, quivering from stem to stern, she was
suddenly brought up short from top speed to nothing. But, in another
fateful minute, with a rending crash, the two nearest schooners
gave way and swept back like a gate, while the _Itasca_ herself
shot clear and came down in triumph to the fleet.
The passage was made on the twenty-fourth, in line-ahead (that
is, one after another) because Farragut found the opening narrower
than he thought it should be for two columns abreast, at night, under
fire, and against the spring current. Owing to the configuration of
the channel the starboard column had to weigh first, which gave
the lead to the 500-ton gunboat _Cayuga_. This was the one weak
point, because the leading vessel, drawing most fire, should have
been the strongest. The fault was Farragut's; for his heart got
the better of his head when it came to placing Captain Theodorus
Bailey, his dauntless second-in-command, on board a vessel fit
to lead the starboard column. He could not bear to obscure any
captain's chances of distinction by putting another captain over
him. So Bailey was sent to the best vessel commanded by a lieutenant.
The _Cayuga's_ navigating officer, finding that the guns of the
forts were all trained on midstream, edged in towards Fort St.
Philip. His masts were shot to pieces, but his hull drew clear
without great damage. "Then," he says, "I looked back for some
of our vessels; and my heart jumped up into my mouth when I found
I could not see a single one. I thought they must all have been
sunk by the forts." But not a ship had gone down. The three big
ones of the starboard column--_Pensacola, Mississippi_, and
_Oneida_--closed with the fort (so that the gunners on both sides
exchanged jeers of defiance) and kept up a furious fire till the
lighter craft astern slipped past safely and joined the _Cayuga_
above.
Meanwhile the _Cayuga_ had been attacked by a mob of Mississippi
steamers, six of which belonged to the original fourteen blessed
with their precious independence by Secretary Benjamin, "backed
by the whole Missouri Delegation." So when the rest of the Federal
light craft came up, "all sorts of things happened" in a general
free fight. There was no lack of Confederate courage; but an utter
absence of concerted action and of the simplest kind of naval skill,
except on the part of the two vessels commanded by ex-officers
of the United States Navy. The Federal light craft cut their way
through their unorganized opponents as easily as a battalion of
regulars could cut through a mob throwing stones. But the only
two Confederate naval officers got clear of the scrimmage and did
all that skill could do with their makeshift little craft against
the Federal fleet. Kennon singled out the _Varuna_ (the only one of
Farragut's vessels that was not a real man-of-war), raked her stern
with the two guns of his own much inferior vessel, the _Governor
Moore_, and rammed her into a sinking condition. Warley flew at
bigger game with his little ram, the _Manassas_, trying three of
the large men-of-war, one after another, as they came upstream. The
_Pensacola_ eluded him by a knowing turn of her helm that roused
his warmest admiration. The _Mississippi_ caught the blow glancingly
on her quarter and got off with little damage. The _Brooklyn_ was
taken fair and square amidships; but, though her planking was crushed
in, she sprang no serious leak and went on with the fight. The
wretched little Confederate engines had not been able to drive the
ram home.
The _Brooklyn_ was the flagship _Hartford's_ next-astern and the
_Richmond's_ next-ahead, these three forming the main body of Farragut's
own port column, which followed hard on the heels of the starboard
one, so hard, indeed, that there were only twenty minutes between
the first shot fired by the forts at the _Cayuga_ and the first
shot fired by the _Hartford_ at the forts. Besides the forts there
was the _Louisiana_ floating battery that helped to swell the storm
of shot and shell; and down the river came a fire-raft gallantly
towed by a tug. The _Hartford_ sheered off, over towards Fort St.
Philip, under whose guns she took ground by the head while the
raft closed in and set her ablaze. Instantly the hands on fire
duty sprang to their work. But the flames rushed in through the
ports; and the men were forced a step back. Farragut at once called
out: "Don't flinch from the fire, boys. There's a hotter fire than
that for those who don't do their duty!" Whereupon they plied their
hoses to such good effect that the fire was soon got under control.
Farragut calmly resumed his walk up and down the poop, while the
gunners blew the gallant little tug to bits and smashed the raft
in pieces. Then he stood keenly watching the _Hartford_ back clear,
gather way, and take the lead upstream again. Every now and then
he looked at the pocket compass that hung from his watch chain;
though, for the most part, he tried to scan a scene of action lit
only by the flashes of the guns. The air was dense and very still;
so the smoke of guns and funnels hung like a pall over both the
combatants while the desperate fight went on.
At last the fleet fought through and reached the clearer atmosphere
above the forts; all but the last three gunboats, which were driven
back by the fire. Then Farragut immediately sent word to General
Benjamin F. Butler that the troops could be brought up by the bayous
that ran parallel to the river out of range of the forts. But the
General, having taken in the situation at a glance from a transport
just below the scene of action, had begun to collect his men at
Sable Island, twelve miles behind Fort St. Philip, long before
Farragut's messenger could reach him by way of the Quarantine Bayou.
From Sable Island the troops were taken by the transports to a
point on the Mississippi five miles above Fort St. Philip.
After a well-earned rest the whole fleet moved up to New Orleans
on the twenty-fifth, turning the city's lines five miles downstream
without the loss of a man, for the simple reason that these had
been built only to resist an army, and so lay with flanks entirely
open to a fleet. General Lovell (the able commander who had so
often warned the Confederate Government of the danger from the sea)
at once evacuated the defenseless city. The best of the younger men
were away with the armies. The best of the older men were too few for
the storm. And so pandemonium broke loose. Burning boats, blazing
cotton, and a howling mob greeted Farragut's arrival. But after the
forts (now completely cut off from their base) had surrendered
on the twenty-eighth a landing party from the fleet soon brought
the mob to its senses by planting howitzers in the streets and
lowering the Confederate colors over the city hall. On the first
of May a garrison of Federal troops took charge of New Orleans
and kept it till the war was over.
New Orleans was a most pregnant Federal victory; for it established a
Union base at the great strategic point where sea-power and land-power
could meet most effectively in Mississippi waters.
But it was followed by a perfect anti-climax; for the Federal
Government, having planned a naval concentration at Vicksburg,
determined to put the plan in operation; though all the naval and
military means concerned made such a plan impossible of execution in
1862. Amphibious forces--fleets and armies combined--were essential.
There was no use in parading up and down the river, however
triumphantly, so long as the force employed could only hold the part
of the channel within actual range of its guns. The Confederates
could be driven off the Mississippi at any given point. But there
was nothing to prevent them from coming back again when once the
ships had passed. An army to seize and hold strategic points ashore
was absolutely indispensable. Then, and only then, Farragut's long
line of communication with his base at New Orleans would be safe,
and the land in which the Mississippi was the principal highway
could itself be conquered.
"If the Mississippi expedition from Cairo shall not have descended
the river, you will take advantage of the panic to push a strong
force up the river to take all their defenses in rear." These were
the orders Farragut had to obey if he succeeded in taking New Orleans.
They were soon reinforced by this reminder: "The only anxiety we feel
is to know if you have followed up your instructions and pushed a
strong force up the river to meet the Western flotilla." Farragut
therefore felt bound to obey and do all that could be done to carry
on a quite impossible campaign. So, with a useless landing party
of only fifteen hundred troops, he pushed up to Vicksburg, four
hundred miles above New Orleans. The nearest Federal army had been
halted by the Confederate defenses above Memphis, another four
hundred higher still.
There were several reasons why Farragut should not have gone up.
His big ships would certainly be stranded if he went up and waited
for the army to come down; moreover, when stranded, these ships
would be captured while waiting, because both banks were swarming
with vastly outnumbering Confederate troops. Then, such a disaster
would more than offset the triumph of New Orleans by still further
depressing Federal morale at a time when the Federal arms were
doing none too well near Washington. Finally, all the force that
was being worse than wasted up the Mississippi might have been
turned against Mobile, which, at that time, was much weaker than
the defenses Farragut had already overcome. But the people of the
North were clamorous for more victories along the line to which
the press had drawn their gaze. So the Government ordered the fleet
to carry on this impossible campaign.
Farragut did his best. Within a month of passing the forts he had
not only captured New Orleans and repaired the many serious damages
suffered by his fleet but had captured Baton Rouge, and taken even
his biggest ships to Vicksburg, five hundred miles from the Gulf,
against a continuous current, and right through the heart of a
hostile land. Finding that there were thirty thousand Confederates
in, near, or within a day of Vicksburg he and General Thomas Williams
agreed that nothing could be done with the fifteen hundred troops
which formed the only landing party. Sickness and casualties had
reduced the ships' companies; so there were not even a few seamen
to spare as reinforcements for these fifteen hundred soldiers, whom
Butler had sent, under Williams, with the fleet. Then Farragut
turned back, his stores running dangerously short owing to the
enormous difficulties of keeping open his long, precarious line of
communications. "I arrived in New Orleans with five or six days'
provisions and one anchor, and am now trying to procure others....
Fighting is nothing to the evils of the river--getting on shore,
running foul of one another, losing anchors, etc." In a confidential
letter home he is still more outspoken. "They will keep us in this
river till the vessels break down and all the little reputation
we have made has evaporated. The Government appears to think that
we can do anything. They expect me to navigate the Mississippi
nine hundred miles in the face of batteries, ironclad rams, etc.;
and yet with all the ironclad vessels they have North they could
not get to Norfolk or Richmond."
Back from Washington came still more urgent orders to join the
Mississippi flotilla which was coming down to Vicksburg from the
north under Flag Officer Charles H. Davis. So once more the fleet
worked its laboriously wasteful way up to Vicksburg, where it passed
the forts with the help of Porter's flotilla of mortar-boats on
the twenty-eighth of June and joined Davis on the first of July.
There, in useless danger, the joint forces lay till the fifteenth,
the day on which Grant's own "most anxious period of the war" began
on the Memphis-Corinth line, four hundred miles above.
Farragut, getting very anxious about the shoaling of the water,
was then preparing to run down when he heard firing in the Yazoo,
a tributary that joined the Mississippi four miles higher up. This
came from a fight between one of his reconnoitering gunboats, the
_Carondelet_, and the _Arkansas_, an ironclad Confederate ram that
would have been very dangerous indeed if her miserable engines had
been able to give her any speed. She was beating the _Carondelet_,
but getting her smoke-stack so badly holed that her speed dropped
down to one knot, which scarcely gave her steerage way and made
her unable to ram. Firing hard she ran the gauntlet of both fleets
and took refuge under the Vicksburg bluffs, whence she might run
out and ram the Union vessels below. Farragut therefore ran down
himself, hoping to smash her by successive broadsides in passing.
But the difficulties of the passage wasted the daylight, so that
he had to run by at night. She therefore survived his attack, and
went downstream to join the Confederates against Baton Rouge. But
her engines gave way before she got there; and she had to be blown
up.
Farragut was back at New Orleans before the end of July. On the
fifth of August the Confederates made their attack on Baton Rouge;
but were beaten back by the Union garrison aided by three of Farragut's
gunboats and two larger vessels from Davis's command. The losses
were not very severe on either side; but the Union lost a leader
of really magnificent promise in its commanding general, Thomas
Williams, a great-hearted, cool-headed man and most accomplished
officer. The garrison of Baton Rouge, being too small and sickly
and exposed, was withdrawn to New Orleans a few days later.
Then Farragut at last returned to the Gulf blockade. Davis went back
up the river, where he was succeeded by D. D. Porter in October.
And the Confederates, warned of what was coming, made Port Hudson
and Vicksburg as strong as they could. Vicksburg was now the only
point they held on the Mississippi where there were rails on both
sides; and the Red River, flowing in from the West between Vicksburg
and Port Hudson, was the only good line of communication connecting
them with Texas, whence so much of their meat was obtained.
For three months Farragut directed the Gulf blockade from Pensacola,
where, on the day of his arrival, the twentieth of August, he was the
first American to hoist an admiral's flag. The rank of rear-admiral
in the United States Navy had been created on the previous sixteenth
of July; and Farragut was the senior of the first three officers
upon whom it was conferred.
Farragut became the ranking admiral just when the United States
Navy was having its hardest struggle to do its fivefold duty well.
There was commerce protection on the high seas, blockade along the
coast, coöperation with the army on salt water and on fresh, and
of course the destruction of the nascent Confederate forces afloat.
But perhaps a knottier problem than any part of its combatant duty
was how to manage, in the very midst of war, that rapid expansion
of its own strength for which no government had let it prepare in
time of peace. During this year the number of vessels in commission
grew from 264 to 427. Yet such a form of expansion was much simpler
than that of the enlisted men; and the expansion of even the most
highly trained enlisted personnel was very much simpler than the
corresponding expansion of the officers. Happily for the United
States Navy it started with a long lead over its enemy. More happily
still it could expand with the help of greatly superior resources.
Most happily of all, the sevenfold expansion that was effected
before the war was over could be made under leaders like Farragut:
leaders, that is, who, though in mere numbers they were no more, in
proportion to their whole service, than the flag as mere material
is to a man-of-war, were yet, as is the flag, the living symbol
of a people's soul.
Commerce protection on the high seas was an exceedingly harassing
affair. A few swift raiders, having the initiative, enjoyed great
advantages over a far larger number of defending vessels. Every
daring raid was trumpeted round the world, bringing down unmeasured,
and often unmerited, blame on the defense. The most successful
vigilance would, on the other hand, pass by unheeded. The Union
navy lacked the means of patrolling the sea lanes of commerce over
millions and millions of desolate square miles. Consequently the
war-risk insurance rose to a prohibitive height on vessels flying
the Stars and Stripes; and, as a further result, enormous transfers
were made to other flags. The incessant calls for recruits, afloat
and ashore, and to some extent the lure of the western lands, also
robbed the merchant service of its men. Thus, one way and another,
the glory of the old merchant marine departed with the Civil War.
Blockade was more to the point than any attempt to patrol the sea
lanes. Yet it was even more harassing; for it involved three distinct
though closely correlated kinds of operation: not only the seizure,
in conjunction with the army, of enemy ports, and the patrolling of
an enemy coastline three thousand miles long, but also the patrolling
of those oversea ports from which most contraband came. This oversea
patrol was the most effective, because it went straight to the
source of trouble. But it required extraordinary vigilance, because
it had to be conducted from beyond the three-mile limit, and with
the greatest care for all the rights of neutrals.
By mid-November Farragut was back at New Orleans. A month later
General Banks arrived with reinforcements. He superseded General
Butler and was under orders to coöperate with McClernand, Grant's
second-in-command, who was to come down the Mississippi from Cairo.
But the proposed meeting of the two armies never took place. Banks
remained south of Port Hudson, McClernand far north of Vicksburg;
for, as we shall see in the next chapter, Sherman's attempt to take
Vicksburg from the North failed on the twenty-ninth of December.
The naval and river campaigns of '62 thus ended in disappointment
for the Union. And, on New Year's Day, Galveston, which Farragut had
occupied in October without a fight and which was lightly garrisoned
by three hundred soldiers, fell into Confederate hands under most
exasperating circumstances. After the captain and first lieutenant
of the U.S.S. _Harriet Lane_ had been shot by the riflemen aboard two
cotton-clad steamers the next officer tamely surrendered. Commander
Renshaw, who was in charge of the blockade, amply redeemed the honor
of the Navy by refusing to surrender the _Westfield_, in spite
of the odds against him, and by blowing her up instead. But when
he died at the post of duty the remaining Union vessels escaped;
and the blockade was raised for a week.
After that Commodore H. H. Bell, one of Farragut's best men, closed
in with a grip which never let go. Yet even Bell suffered a reverse
when he sent the U.S.S. _Hatteras_ to overhaul a strange vessel that
lured her off some fifteen miles and sank her in a thirteen-minute
fight. This stranger was the _Alabama_, then just beginning her famous
or notorious career. Nor were these the only Union troubles in the
Gulf during the first three weeks of the new year. Commander J.
N. Matt ran the _Florida_ out of Mobile, right through the squadron
that had been specially strengthened to deal with her; and the
shore defenses of the Sabine Pass, like those of Galveston, fell
into Confederate hands again, to remain there till the war was
over.
In spite of all failures, however, Farragut still had the upper
hand along the Gulf, and up the Mississippi as far as New Orleans,
without which admirable base the River War of '62 could never
have prepared the way for Grant's magnificent victory in the River
War of '63.