THE ANACONDA
While General Joseph E. Johnston was devoting his energies to a campaign
to change the date of his commission and his friends organizing their
opposition to the President at Richmond, Gideon Welles, the quiet,
unassuming Secretary of the Navy at Washington, was slowly but surely
drawing the mighty coil, the United States Navy, about the throat of the
South. He made little noise but the work he did was destined to become
the determining factor of the war.
The first blow was struck at North Carolina.
On August 26, 1861, at one o'clock the fleet quietly put to sea from
Fortress Monroe. On Tuesday they arrived at Hatteras Inlet, opened fire
on the two forts guarding its entrance and on the twenty-ninth a white
flag was raised. Seven hundred and fifteen prisoners were surrendered,
one thousand stand of arms, and thirty pieces of cannon. At a single
blow the whole vast inland water coast of North Carolina on her Sounds
was opened to the enemy with communications from Norfolk, Virginia, to
Beaufort. A garrison of a thousand men could hold those forts for all
time with the navy in command of the sea.
Burnside followed with his expedition into the Sounds, captured Roanoke
Island and the fall of Newbern was inevitable. Every river-mouth and
inlet of the entire coast of North Carolina was now in the hands of the
Federal Government save the single port of Wilmington.
The moral effect of this blow by the navy was tremendous in the North.
It was the first token of renewed power since the defeat at Bull Run.
The navy had not only turned the tide of defeat in the imagination of
the people, the achievement was one of vast importance to the North and
the most sinister import to the South.
The Federal Government had gained the first important base on the
Southern coast for her blockading squadron and given a foothold for the
military invasion of North Carolina.
The President at Richmond was compelled to watch this tragedy in
helpless sorrow. The South had no navy with which to dispute the command
of the sea and yet she had three thousand miles of coast line!
With swift, remorseless sweep the navy struck Port Royal, South
Carolina, and established the second secure base for the blockading
squadrons.
The Beaufort district of South Carolina captured by this expedition was
one of the richest and most thickly settled of the State, containing
fifteen hundred square miles. It produced annually fifty million pounds
of rice and fourteen thousand bales of cotton. And in its population
were thirty thousand slaves suddenly brought under the power of the
Federal Government.
The coast of Florida was next pierced. The blockade of the enormous
coast line of the South was declared at first an impossibility. Within
less than a year the United States Navy had established bases within
striking distance of every port. New ships were being launched,
purchased or chartered daily and the giant Anaconda was slowly winding
its terrible coil about the commerce of the Confederacy.
Jefferson Davis was not the man to accept this ominous situation without
a desperate struggle. The man who had substituted iron gun carriages for
wood in the army consulted his Secretary of the Navy on the possibility
of revolutionizing the naval-warfare of the world by the construction of
an iron-clad ship of first-class power. In his report to the Confederate
Naval Committee, Secretary Mallory had developed this possibility two
months before the subject had been broached in the report of Gideon
Welles in Washington.
"I regard the possession of an iron-armored ship," Mallory urged, "as a
matter of the first necessity. Such a vessel at this time could traverse
the entire coast of the United States, prevent all blockade, and
encounter with a fine prospect of success their entire navy. Inequality
of numbers may be overcome by invulnerability, and thus not only does
economy but naval success dictate the wisdom and expediency of fighting
with iron against wood, without regard to first cost."
The President of the Confederacy gave his hearty endorsement to this
plan--and summoned the genius of the South to the task. At the bottom of
the harbor of Norfolk lay the half-burned hull of the steam frigate
_Merrimac_ which the Government had set on fire and sunk on destroying
the Navy Yard.
The _Merrimac_ was raised. A board was appointed to draw plans and
estimate the cost of the conversion of the vessel into a powerful,
floating, iron-clad battery. In the crippled condition of the Norfolk
Navy Yard the task was tremendous and the expense would be great.
The President ordered the work prosecuted with the utmost vigor. Day and
night the ring of hammers on heavy iron echoed over the quiet harbor of
Norfolk. Blacksmiths were forging the most terrible ship of war that
ever sailed the seas. If the hopes of her builders should be realized,
the navy of the North would be swept from the ocean and the proudest
ships of the world be reduced to junk in a day.