A Victorious Union.
by Oliver Optic.
PREFACE
"A VICTORIOUS UNION" is the sixth and last of "The Blue and the Gray Series." While the volume is not intended to be a connected historical narrative of the particular period of the War of the Rebellion in which its scenes are laid, the incidents accurately conform to the facts, and especially to the spirit, of the eventful years in which they are placed, as recorded in the chronicles of the great struggle, and as they exist in the memory of the writer. It is more than thirty years since the war began, and thousands upon thousands of the active partic.i.p.ants in the strife as soldiers and sailors, including nearly all the great commanders, have pa.s.sed on to their eternal reward. Thousands upon thousands of men and women have been born and reached their maturity since the most tremendous war of modern times ended in A Victorious Union. The knowledge of the stirring events of those four years of conflict, and of the patriotic spirit which inspired and underlaid them, has come, or will come, to at least one-half the population of this vast nation of sixty-five millions from the printed page or through the listening ear. The other moiety, more or less, either as children or adults, lived in the period of action, saw the gathering battalions, and heard or read the daily reports from the ensanguined battle-fields.
In some of the States that remained loyal to the Union throughout the long struggle, a military parade had been regarded by many as something very much in the nature of a circus display, as "fuss and feathers,"
such as tickled the vanity of both officer and private. Military organizations, except in our small regular army, were disparaged and ridiculed. When the war came, the Northern people were unprepared for it to a very great degree. The change of public opinion was as sudden as the mighty event was precipitate. Then the soldier became the most prominent and honored member of the community, and existing military bodies became the nucleus of the armies that were to fight the battles of the Republic.
During the last thirty years the military spirit has been kept alive as a const.i.tuent element of patriotism itself. The love of country has been diligently fostered and nurtured in the young, and public opinion has been voiced and energized in the statutes of many States, and in the educational machinery of many munic.i.p.alities. Over vast numbers of schoolhouses in our land floats the American flag, the symbol of the Union and the principles that underlie it.
The flag, the banner now of a reunited nation, means something more than the sentiment of loyalty to the Union as the home of freedom; for it implies the duty of defending the honor of that flag, the representative idea of all we hold dear in Fatherland. In the East and the West a considerable proportion of the high schools make military tactics a part of their educational course. Companies, battalions, and regiments of young men in their teens parade the streets of some of our cities, showing in what manner the military spirit is kept alive, and, at the same time, how the flag floating over our educational inst.i.tutions, which means so much more than ever before to our people, is to be defended and perpetuated in the future.
The author of the six volumes of "The Blue and the Gray Series," as well as of "The Army and Navy Series," the latter begun in the heat of the war thirty years ago, earnestly believes in keeping active in the minds of the young the spirit of patriotism. In the present volume, as in those which have preceded it, he has endeavored to present to his readers, not only a hero who is brave, skilful, and ready to give his life for his country, but one who is unselfishly patriotic; one who is not fighting for promotion and prize-money, but to save the Union in whose integrity and necessity he believes as the safeguard and substance of American liberty.
Peace has reigned in our land for nearly thirty years, and the asperities of a relentless war have been supplanted by better and more brotherly relations between the North and the South. The writer would not print a word that would disturb these improving conditions; and if he has erred at all in picturing the intercourse between Americans as enemies, he has made sure to do so in the interests of justice and magnanimity on both sides.
In the series of which this volume is the last, the author has confined his narrative of adventures to the navy. It has been suggested to him that another series, relating exclusively to incidents in the army, should follow. After forty years of labor in this particular field, and having already exhausted the threescore and ten of human life, he cannot be a.s.sured that he will live long enough to complete such a series, though still in excellent health; but he intends to make a beginning of the work as soon as other engagements will permit.
William T. Adams.
Dorchester, March 16, 1893.
CHAPTER I
THE MISSION TO MOBILE POINT
"I almost wish you were the second or the third lieutenant of the Bellevite, instead of the executive officer, Christy," said Captain Breaker, the commander of the steamer, as they were seated together one day on the quarter-deck.
"Do I fail in the discharge of my duty in my present position, Captain?"
asked Christy, very much astonished, not to say startled, at the remark of the commander.
"Not in the slightest degree, my dear boy!" returned Captain Breaker with very decided emphasis. "You have served in your present capacity for four months; and if you were fifty years old, and had twenty years of naval experience behind you, it would be hardly possible for you to be more correct and dignified in the performance of the details of your office."
"I thank you, Captain, for the partial view you take of what I have done," added Christy, taking off his cap and bowing to his superior.
"Well, you ought to be a good officer in any situation, my dear fellow,"
continued the commander. "I doubt if there is another officer in the navy who has enjoyed the advantages you have had in preparing himself for the duties of his profession. You were brought up, so to say, on board of the Bellevite. You were a good scholar in the first place.
Without including myself, you have had excellent teachers in every department of science and philosophy, among whom your father was one of the wisest. Poor Dashington was one of the best seamen that ever trod a deck; and he took especial delight in showing you how to make every knot and splice, as well as in instructing you in the higher details of practical seamanship. Blowitt and myself a.s.sisted him, and old Boxie, who gave his life to his country, was more than a grandfather to you."
"I have certainly been very grateful to you and to them for all they did for me," replied Christy with a sad expression on his handsome face as the commander recalled the three shipmates of both of them who slept in heroes" graves.
"Perhaps the brilliant genius of our engine-room did quite as much for you as any other person, though not many years your senior."
"Paul Vapoor is my friend and crony; and if he had been my professor in a college he could have done no more for me. I a.s.sure you, Captain, that I keep alive my grat.i.tude to all my instructors, including some you have not mentioned."
"I was only explaining why you are what you ought to be, for you have had very exceptional opportunities, better by far than any other officer in the service. But it is altogether to your credit that you have used those opportunities wisely and well."
"I should have been a blockhead if I had not."
"That is very true; but the mournful wrecks of wasted opportunities strew the tracks of many, many young men. I think you can look back upon as few of them as any one within my knowledge," said the commander, bestowing a look of genuine affection upon his chief officer. "More than once, even before we entered upon this terrible war, I have told your father how happy he ought to be in having such a son as you are."
"Come, come, Captain Breaker, you are praising me!" exclaimed Christy impatiently.
"I am speaking only the simple truth, and I have very rarely said as much as I say now. It was when you asked me if you had failed in the discharge of the duties of your present position that I was led into this line of remark; and I am sure you will not be spoiled by honest and just praise," replied the captain.
"Then, to go back to the point where you began, why do you almost wish that I were second or third lieutenant, instead of executive officer, of the Bellevite, Captain?" continued Christy, rising from his seat, and fixing an earnest gaze upon the face of the commander, for he was very sensitive, and he could not help feeling that he had been lacking in something that would make him a better executive officer than he was.
"Mr. Ballard, the second lieutenant, and Mr. Walbrook, the third, are gentlemen of the highest grade, and excellent officers; but they are both somewhat wanting in dash and cool impetuosity."
""Cool impetuosity" is very good, Captain," added Christy with a laugh.
"But that is precisely what I mean, my boy, and no two words could express the idea any better. You cannot carry an enemy by boarding with the same precision you man the yards on a ceremonious occasion, or as a regiment of soldiers go on dress parade. It requires vim, dash, spirit.
The officers named have this quality in a very considerable degree, yet not enough of it. But what they lack more is ingenuity, fertility in expedients, and the expansive view which enables them to take advantage promptly of circ.u.mstances. You never lose your head, Christy."
"I never knew the gentlemen named to lose their heads, and I have always regarded them as model officers," replied the first lieutenant.
"And so they are: you are quite right, my dear boy; but it is possible for them to be all you say, and yet, like the young man of great possessions in the Scripture, to lack one thing. I should not dare to exchange my second and third lieutenants for any others if I had the opportunity."
"I confess that I do not understand you yet, Captain."
The commander rose from his seat, stretched himself, and then looked about the deck. Taking his camp-stool in his hand he carried it over to the port side of the quarter-deck, and planted it close to the bulwarks.
The second lieutenant was the officer of the deck, and was pacing the planks on the starboard side, while the lookouts in the foretop and on the top-gallant forecastle were attending closely to their duty, doubtless with a vision of more prize money floating through their brains.
The Bellevite, with the fires banked in the furnaces, was at anchor off the entrance to Mobile Bay, about two miles east of Sand Island Lighthouse, and the same distance south of the narrow neck of land on the western extremity of which Fort Morgan is located. Her commander had chosen this position for a purpose; for several weeks before, while the Bellevite was absent on a special mission, a remarkably fast steamer called the Trafalgar had run the blockade inward.
Captain Pa.s.sford, Senior, through his agents in England, had some information in regard to this vessel, which he had sent to Captain Breaker. Unlike most of the blockade-runners built for this particular service, she had been constructed in the most substantial manner for an English millionaire, who had insisted that she should be built as strong as the best of steel could make her, for he intended to make a voyage around the world in her.
Unfortunately for the owner of the Trafalgar, who was a lineal descendant of a t.i.tled commander in that great naval battle, he fell from his horse in a fox chase, and was killed before the steamer was fully completed. His heir had no taste for the sea, and the steamer was sold at a price far beyond her cost; and the purchaser had succeeded in getting her into Mobile Bay with a valuable cargo. She was of about eight hundred tons burden, and it was said that she could steam twenty knots an hour. She was believed to be the equal of the Alabama and the Shenandoah. The Bellevite had been especially notified not to allow the Trafalgar to escape. She had recently had her bottom cleaned, and her engine put in perfect order for the service expected of her, for she was the fastest vessel on the blockade.
When Captain Breaker had a.s.sured himself that he was out of hearing of the officer of the deck, he invited Christy to take a seat at his side.
He spoke in a low tone, and was especially careful that no officer should hear him.
"Perhaps I meddle with what does not concern me, Christy; but I cannot help having ideas of my own," said the commander, when he was satisfied that no one but the executive officer could hear him. "There is Fort Morgan, with Fort Gaines three miles from it on the other side of the channel. Mobile Point, as it is called at this end of the neck, extends many miles to the eastward. It is less than two miles wide where it is broadest, and not over a quarter of a mile near Pilot Town."
"I have studied the lay of the land very carefully, for I have had some ideas of my own," added Christy, as the commander paused.
"If Fort Morgan had been Fort Sumter, with bad memories clinging to it, an effort would have been made to capture it, either by bombardment by the navy, or by regular approaches on the part of the army," continued Captain Breaker. "They are still pounding away at Fort Sumter, because there would be a moral in its capture and the reduction of Charleston, for the war began there. Such an event would send a wave of rejoicing through the North, though it would be of less real consequence than the opening of Mobile Bay and the cleaning out of the city of Mobile. Except Wilmington, it is the most pestilent resort for blockade-runners on the entire coast."
"Then you think Fort Morgan can be reduced from the land side?" asked Christy, deeply interested in the conversation.
"I have little doubt of it; and while I believe Farragut will resort to his favorite plan of running by the forts here, as he has done by those of the Mississippi, the army will be planted in the rear of both these forts. As we have lain here for months, I have studied the situation, and I want to know something more about the land on the east of Mobile Point."