CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIRST ADVANCE ON VICKSBURG.
1862.
The purpose of the Navy Department, as expressed in the original orders to Farragut, had been to send his squadron up the river immediately after the capture of New Orleans. The words were: "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 the rear." When New Orleans fell, the Cairo expedition, more commonly known as the Mississippi flotilla, so far from having descended the river to the neighborhood of New Orleans, was still detained before Fort Pillow, one of the outlying defenses of Memphis, forty miles above the latter city and over eight hundred from New Orleans. It was not until the end of May that the evacuation of Corinth by the Confederates made Memphis untenable, leading to the abandonment of the forts on the 4th of June and the surrender of the city on the following day. It became therefore inc.u.mbent upon Farragut, after turning over the command of New Orleans to Butler on the 1st of May, to go up the river as soon as he possibly could.
Although the flag-officer seems to have acquiesced in this programme in the beginning, it was probably with the expectation that the advance, up river and against the current, required of his heavy-draught and slow-moving ships would not be very far; that the Cairo expedition, which at the date of the orders quoted, January 20th, had not begun to move, would, from the character of the vessels composing it, many being ironclad, and from the advantage of the current, have progressed very far by the time he had taken New Orleans. Moreover, at that date the upper river flotilla was still a branch of the army, and its prospective movements were to be in combination with, and a part of, a great military enterprise, securing control both of the stream and of the land; whereas Farragut"s was a purely naval operation, to which the army contributed only a force sufficient to hold the points which were first reduced by the fleet.
Under the actual conditions, the proposed ascent of the river bore a very different aspect to the commanding naval officer on the spot from that which presented itself to the fond imaginations of the officials in Washington. The question now was not one of fighting batteries, for there was no reason as yet to expect anything heavier than the fleet had already overcome with ease; it was the far more difficult matter of communications, in the broadest scope of the word, to be maintained over a long, narrow, tortuous, and very difficult road, pa.s.sing in many places close under the guns of the enemy. "As I stated in my last dispatch," wrote Farragut to the department after his first visit to Vicksburg, "the dangers and difficulties of the river have proved to us, since we first entered it, much greater impediments to our progress, and more destructive to our vessels, than the enemy"s shot. Between getting aground, derangement of the machinery, and want of coal, the delays in getting up the river are great." To take the defenses in the rear, and in their then state to drive the enemy out of them, was one thing; but to hold the abandoned positions against the return of the defenders, after the fleet had pa.s.sed on, required an adequate force which Butler"s army, calculated by McClellan for a much narrower sphere, could not afford. Coal and supply ships, therefore, must either run the gantlet for the four hundred miles which separated Vicksburg from New Orleans, or be accompanied always by armed vessels. The former alternative was incompatible with the necessary security, and for the latter the numbers of the fleet were utterly inadequate. In fact, to maintain the proposed operations, there would be needed so many ships to guard the communications that there would be none left for the operations to which they led.
It must also be observed that not only was this line of communications four times as long as that which led from the sea to New Orleans, and of far more difficult pilotage, but that the natural character of the enemy"s positions upon it was essentially different. They were as yet undeveloped by art; but by nature they were high and commanding bluffs, having secure land communications with an extensive enemy"s country in their rear over which our troops exercised no control whatever--where they had not even been seen. To speak of "taking them in the rear" was to beg the question--to a.s.sume that their front was then, as in June, 1863, toward an enemy investing them on the land side. New Orleans and the region below, including its defenses and the communications therewith, were low-lying and intersected with numerous water-courses; over such a navy naturally exercises a preponderating control. Above New Orleans the low delta of the Mississippi extends, indeed, on the west bank as far as the Red River, if it may not be said to reach to Vicksburg and beyond; but on the east bank it ceases one hundred and fifty miles from the city. From thence to Vicksburg, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, the stream is bordered by a series of bluffs backing on a firm country of moderate elevation. Such positions are not to be reduced from the water alone. On the contrary, if the water be a narrow strip swept by their guns, they command it; while, from the extent of country in their rear, they are not susceptible of isolation by fleets above and below, as were Forts Jackson and St. Philip.
This series of bluffs became, therefore, the line upon which the Confederates based their control of the Mississippi and maintained their vital communications with Texas and the Red River region. It could be reduced only by a military force; and to think of subduing it by a fleet taking advantage of the panic following the fall of New Orleans, was truly to rely upon moral effect without adequate physical force to support it. It is due to the Navy Department to say that they expected the army from the North to advance more rapidly than it did; but, without seeking to a.s.sign the blame, the utterly useless penetration of the United States fleet four hundred miles into the heart of the enemy"s country and its subsequent mortifying withdrawal, when contrasted with the brilliant success resulting from Farragut"s dash by the forts, afford a very useful lesson in the adaptation of means to ends and the selection of a definite objective, upon compa.s.sing which something happens. The object of the United States Government being to control the lower Mississippi, that was effected by means of isolating its defenses, which then fell. When the further object was sought of controlling the course of the stream above, the mere perambulation of a body of ships effected nothing, because it aimed at nothing in particular, and could have no effect upon the decisive points.
Of all these considerations Farragut was fully sensible; and, while he obeyed his orders, he showed in his dispatches to the Department, and in private letters of the same period, how much against his judgment were operations conceived on such erroneous military principles and undertaken with such inadequate force. The Department was forward to press him on, and as early as the 17th of May sent a dispatch intimating that he had forgotten his orders on the subject; and he was urged and required to open up the Mississippi to Flag-officer Davis"s command (the Mississippi flotilla), then still above Memphis. This and other letters of the same date must have been peculiarly exasperating; for they were received early in June, when he had been up the river as far as Vicksburg and satisfied himself that without an adequate force of troops nothing could be accomplished. "The Department," he replies, "seems to have considered my fleet as having escaped all injury, and that when they arrived off New Orleans they were in condition to be pushed up the river. This was not the case; but, the moment the vessels could be gotten ready, the gunboats were all sent up under the command of Commander S. P. Lee, with directions to proceed to Vicksburg, take that place, and cut the railroad.... From all I could hear it was not considered proper, even with pilots, to risk the ships beyond Natchez.... By the time Commander Lee arrived at Vicksburg (May 18th) he was satisfied that the force of the enemy was too great for him to venture to take the town, or even to pa.s.s it. The land in the rear of Vicksburg is about two hundred feet high, on which are placed some eight and ten inch columbiads, which are perfectly secure from our fire.... I determined to get the heavy ships up there if possible, which I did a day or two after. General Williams arrived in the mean time with fifteen hundred men, when I proposed to him, if he could carry the battery on the hill, I would attack the town. He made a careful reconnaissance, and returned to me in the afternoon, when I had all the (naval) commanders a.s.sembled. He reported that it would be impossible for him to land, and that he saw no chance of doing anything with the place so long as the enemy were in such force, having at their command thirty thousand men within one hour by railroad. A large majority of the commanders concurred with him in the opinion."
Writing to his home about this council, in which, contrary to his independent decision when below Fort Jackson, he yielded to the advice of his captains, he said: "I did not pa.s.s Vicksburg; not because it was too strongly fortified; not because we could not have pa.s.sed it easily enough, _but we would have been cut off from our supplies of coal and provisions_. We would have been placed between two enemies (Vicksburg and Memphis), and so the captains advised me not to do it. I was very sick at the time, and yielded to their advice, _which I think was good_; but I doubt if I would have taken it had I been well." Here is seen, transpiring vividly enough, the uncertainty and indecision arising from the conflict between the orders of the Department and his own sounder judgment. He would fain obey; yet no orders could override, though they might cruelly embarra.s.s, the responsibility of the officer in command on the spot. "Fighting is nothing," he adds, "to the evils of the river--getting on sh.o.r.e, running foul of one another, losing anchors, etc." "The army," he resumes in his dispatch to the Department, "had been sent up early with a few days" rations, and I was compelled to supply them from the squadron, thereby reducing our own supplies, which were barely sufficient to bring the ships back to New Orleans, making allowance for probable delays. The river was now beginning to fall, and I apprehended great difficulty in getting down should I delay much longer. In the mean time coal vessels had been towed up the river just above Natchez (a hundred miles below Vicksburg), which vessels I was obliged to bring down and keep in company with the vessels of war, for fear of their being captured by the guerrilla bands which appear to infest almost the entire banks of the river wherever there are rapids and bluffs."
Such were some of the difficulties being experienced when the a.s.sistant-Secretary of the Navy was writing: "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." "I had no conception," replied Farragut, "that the Department ever contemplated that the ships of this squadron were to attempt to go to Memphis, above which the Western flotilla then was; nor did I believe it was practicable for them to do so, unless under the most favorable circ.u.mstances, in time of peace, when their supplies could be obtained along the river. The gunboats are nearly all so damaged that they are certainly not in condition to contend with ironclad rams coming down upon them with the current.... We consider the advantage entirely in favor of the vessel that has the current added to her velocity." In conclusion he adds: "I arrived in New Orleans with five or six days"
provisions and one anchor, and am now trying to procure others. As soon as provisions and anchors are obtained we will take our departure for up the river, and endeavor to carry out, as far as practicable, the orders conveyed in your different dispatches." Writing home, he expressed himself more freely and unmistakably: "They will keep us in this river until 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....
Well, I will do my duty to the best of my ability, and let the rest take care of itself.... They can not deprive me and my officers of the historical fact that we took New Orleans. Now they expect impossibilities."
Enough has been quoted to show that Farragut was in no way responsible for, nor approved of, the ill-timed tenacity with which the Government held to its original plan, when the conditions had turned out entirely different from those at first expected. The Secretary of the Navy at a later date endeavored to throw the blame of failure entirely upon the War Department, which was either unwilling or unable to support the naval movement with adequate troops. It is not necessary, in a life of the admiral, to attempt to decide upon the degree of remissness, if any, shown by the military service, nor upon whose shoulders it falls. It is sufficient to point out that the Navy Department required of Farragut to go up to meet the Western flotilla when it was near nine hundred miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, for no better reason, apparently, than that it had determined upon the junction at a time when it supposed it would be effected much lower down. In so doing it left nothing to the judgment of the officer commanding on the spot. "I think," said Farragut quietly, "that more should have been left to my discretion; but I hope for the best, and pray G.o.d to protect our poor sailors from harm." His own opinion was that Mobile should be the next point attacked. The difficulties there were not so great as those encountered at the Mississippi forts; and his success at the latter might not improbably have considerable moral effect upon the other works, whose position had some strong features of resemblance to those already subdued, and which were not yet in the strong state of defense which they afterward reached. The blockade of the coast was part of his charge; and in no way did he think it could be so thoroughly maintained as by occupying the harbors themselves, or their entrances.
In obedience to his peremptory orders Farragut again started up the river, with the apprehension that if he once got above Vicksburg he would not be able to return before the next spring rise; for the season of lowest water in the Mississippi was now at hand. The Hartford did run ash.o.r.e on the way up, and remained hard and fast for the better part of twenty-four hours. "It is a sad thing to think of having your ship on a mud bank, five hundred miles from the natural element of a sailor,"
wrote the flag-officer; "but I knew that I had done all I could to prevent her being up the river so high, and was commanded to go." She had to take out her coal and shot, and had even removed two guns before she floated.
On the 18th of June the squadron was a.s.sembled just below Vicksburg, having in company also seventeen schooners of the mortar flotilla, still under Porter"s command. These were placed as rapidly as possible in suitable positions on the two sides of the river, opened fire on the 26th, and continued it through the 27th. Upon the evening of the latter day Porter notified the flag-officer that he was ready to cover, by a steady bombardment, the intended pa.s.sage of the fleet before the batteries.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Pa.s.sAGE OF VICKSBURG BATTERIES, JUNE 28, 1862.
ORDER OF ATTACK.]
Vicksburg is situated on the first high land met on the east bank of the Mississippi after leaving Memphis, from which it is four hundred miles distant. The position was one of peculiar strength and importance for commanding the navigation of the river. Not only was it exceptionally lofty, and on one flank of that series of bluffs which has before been mentioned as const.i.tuting the line upon which the Confederate grip of the stream was based, but the tortuous character of the channel gave particular facilities for an enfilading fire on vessels both before and after they came abreast the works. They were thus exposed to a longer and more dangerous cannonade than is the case where the stream flows straight past the front of a battery. The channel has now changed; but in 1862 the river, which from Memphis had pursued its winding course through an alluvial country, made when abreast of Vicksburg a sharp turn to the northeast, as though determined to reach the bluffs but four miles distant. As it neared them it swung round with a sharp turn to the southwest, parallel to its recent direction, flowing for the most part close to the foot of the hills. Between the two reaches, and formed by them, immediately opposite the town, there was a low tongue of land, or promontory, four miles long and less than one wide. The squadron, being below, had to steam up through the lower reach against the current, make the sharp turn at the bend, and then pa.s.s through the upper reach. In the bend it was followed by a fire from the highest part of the bluffs, to which it could make no reply.
At 2 A. M. of June 28th the signal was given, and at three the squadron was under way--eleven vessels, of which three were the heavy ships Hartford, Richmond, and Brooklyn; two, the corvettes Iroquois and Oneida; and six gunboats. At four, the ships in their slow progress, stemming the current, had pa.s.sed the mortar schooners; and the latter then opened fire, as did the steamers connected with them, which were not to attempt the pa.s.sage. Owing to a misunderstanding, the three vessels which formed the rear of the column, the Brooklyn and two gunboats, did not get by. The others, at 6 A. M., anch.o.r.ed above Vicksburg. Though exposed much of the time to a raking fire, to which they were not able to reply, the vessels suffered less than would have been expected, owing to the enemy falling into the common mistake of giving too much elevation to his guns. Having thus accomplished his instructions, Farragut reported coldly to the Department that, in obedience to the orders "and the command of the President, I proceeded up to Vicksburg with the Brooklyn, Richmond, and Hartford, with the determination to carry out my instructions to the best of my ability....
The Department will perceive from this report that the forts can be _pa.s.sed_, and _we have done it_, and can _do it again as often as may be required_ of us. It will not, however, be an easy matter for us to do more than silence the batteries for a time, as long as the enemy has a large force behind the hills to prevent our landing and holding the place." "I am satisfied," he says again, "it is not possible to take Vicksburg without an army of twelve or fifteen thousand men. General Van Dorn"s division (Confederate) is here, and lies safely behind the hills.
The water is too low for me to go over twelve or fifteen miles above Vicksburg." The last sentence reveals clearly enough the madness of attempting to take three of the best ships of the navy to the upper river in falling water. Fortunately the insufficient depth now was above--not below--them, and they were not utterly cut off from the sea.
Commander Porter, however, who started down river a week later, in compliance with orders summoning him to Washington, and than whom the navy had no more active nor enterprising officer, wrote back to the flag-officer that if the big ships did not soon return he feared they would have to remain till next year.
Three days after Farragut pa.s.sed the batteries of Vicksburg, on the 1st of July, the Mississippi flotilla, under the command of Flag-officer Charles H. Davis, joined him from above; having left Memphis only two days before, but favored in their voyage by the current, by competent pilots, and by a draught suited to the difficulties of river navigation.
The united squadrons continued together until the 15th of July, lying at anchor near the neck of the promontory opposite Vicksburg; with the exception of the Brooklyn and the two gunboats which had not pa.s.sed up on the 28th of June. These remained below the works, and on the opposite side of the promontory.
The position of the two flag-officers was about four miles below the mouth of the Yazoo River, a tributary of the Mississippi, which enters the main stream on the east side not far above Vicksburg. It was known to them that there was somewhere in the Yazoo an ironclad ram called the Arkansas; which, more fortunate than the Mississippi at New Orleans, had been hurried away from Memphis just before that city fell into the hands of the United States forces. She was a vessel of between eight hundred and a thousand tons burden, carrying ten guns, which were protected by three inches of railroad iron, backed by bales of compressed cotton firmly braced. Her most dangerous weapon, however, was her ram; but, owing to the lightness and bad construction of the engines, this was not as formidable as it otherwise might have been to the enemy"s ships.
So little injury had thus far been done to the United States vessels by the rams of the Confederates that the two flag-officers were probably lulled into a state of over-security, and they allowed their squadrons to lie with too low fires. To this doubtless contributed the more powerful motive of the difficulty to the coal supply incurred by the excessively long line of exposed communications, imposed upon both squadrons by the stubborn persistence of the Navy Department in hurrying the fleets far in advance of any support by the army. Beyond the reach of their guns they could not control the river banks; and, unless they could be present everywhere along the eight hundred miles which separated Memphis from New Orleans, even the narrow strip on either side swept by their cannon was safe at any point only while they were abreast it. The moral effect of their promenade up and down and of their meeting at Vicksburg was accurately weighed by the enemy; and, however it may have imposed upon the Northern people, did nothing to insure the safety of the unarmed vessels upon which supplies depended. This essentially vicious military situation resulted necessarily in a degree of insecurity which could have but one issue--a retreat by both squadrons toward their respective bases, which soon after followed.
Convinced of the inutility of his own presence at Vicksburg, and preoccupied with the risks threatening his squadron from the unguarded state of the river and its dangerous navigation, it is not wonderful that Farragut, who was the senior of the two flag-officers, thought little of the single ironclad vessel in his neighborhood. He was not p.r.o.ne to exaggerate danger, and his experience had not led him to entertain any high opinion of the enemy"s rams. To these circ.u.mstances he owed one of the most mortifying incidents of his career.
On the 15th of July a reconnoitering expedition was sent into the Yazoo, composed of two vessels of Davis"s squadron, accompanied by one of the rams which at that time formed an independent organization upon the upper Mississippi under the command of Colonel Ellet. It was a fortunate move, for to this circ.u.mstance was due that the squadrons had any notice of the approach of the Arkansas. The detached vessels met her about six miles within the Yazoo, when a running fight ensued between her and the Carondelet, to the disadvantage of the United States vessel; but the sustained cannonade attracted betimes the attention of the fleet, and the Tyler, a small unarmored boat, after supporting the Carondelet to the best of her ability through the action, preceded the combatants down stream, bringing tidings of the ram"s approach. There was not time to raise steam--only to cast loose the guns for action. When the Arkansas reached the fleet her smoke-stack had been so often perforated by the Carondelet"s shot that her boilers could scarcely supply any steam. Her speed was thereby reduced to one knot, powerless to ram and scarcely sufficient to steer. At that rate, with the favor also of the current, she pa.s.sed through the United States vessels, suffering from their successive fires much injury, though not of a vital kind, and took refuge under the guns of Vicksburg. It was a most gallant exploit, fairly comparable in daring to the pa.s.sage of the Mississippi forts, but resulting in no decisive effect upon the issues of the war.
It became immediately advisable for Farragut to rejoin the three ships which lay below the town, and were consequently in a condition favoring an attack by the ram, whose apparent immunity under the fire of the two squadrons showed her an enemy not to be despised. He determined to follow her down at once, again pa.s.sing the batteries, and endeavoring to destroy her with the guns of his squadron as it went by. The execution of the plan was set for the late afternoon, and the Mississippi flotilla took up a position to support the movement by engaging the upper batteries. Unfortunately, time was lost in forming the order of battle, and the pa.s.sage was effected in the dark. The uncertainty of aim thus caused was increased by the precaution of the enemy, who shifted his position after nightfall. Two shots only found her, injuring several of her people and setting fire to the cotton bulwarks. Beyond this she received no injury at this time, but she had been severely shaken by the hammering of the morning. A week later, on the 22d of July, Davis sent down the Ess.e.x, one of his heavy ironclads, accompanied by one of Ellet"s rams, to attack the Arkansas at her moorings. The effort was unsuccessful, although the enemy"s vessel received some further injury.
The ram rejoined the upper squadron; but the Ess.e.x, from her indifferent speed, was unable to return against the current, exposed unsupported to the fire of all the batteries. She therefore became thenceforth a member of the lower squadron, together with a ram called the Sumter, which had run down with Farragut on the 15th.
On the 20th of the month Farragut had received orders from the Navy Department, dated July 14th, directing him to get the part of his fleet above Vicksburg below that place with as little injury and loss of life as possible. The circ.u.mstances that have been narrated caused him to receive this dispatch below the town; and on the 24th, two days after the descent of the Ess.e.x, he departed for New Orleans. Davis a.s.sured him that the Ess.e.x and Sumter should look out for the river between Vicksburg and Baton Rouge. To them were joined three of Farragut"s gunboats; and the five vessels took an active part in supporting the garrison of Baton Rouge when an attack was made upon the place by the Confederates on the 5th of August. In this the Arkansas was to have co-operated with the enemy"s troops, and she left Vicksburg on the 3d for that purpose; but her machinery broke down, and while lying helpless against the river bank the Ess.e.x came in sight. Resistance in her then plight was hopeless. She was set on fire by her commander, the crew escaping to the sh.o.r.e. Farragut himself reached Baton Rouge shortly after this happened. He had with much difficulty succeeded in getting the heavier ships to New Orleans on the 28th of July; and there he had lingered, unwilling to leave the river, though desirous of doing so, until affairs seemed on a reasonably secure basis. The chief element of anxiety was the Arkansas, concerning whose power to harm quite exaggerated notions prevailed. While thus lying before New Orleans word was brought him of the attack on Baton Rouge, and he at once retraced his steps with the Hartford, Brooklyn, and some smaller ships. On the 7th he reached the scene of action, and learned the destruction of the Confederate vessel. The same day he wrote to the Department: "It is one of the happiest moments of my life that I am enabled to inform the Department of the destruction of the ram Arkansas; not because I held the iron-clad in such terror, but because the community did." It must have been an additional element of satisfaction to him that the disappearance from the waters of the Mississippi of the last hostile vessel capable of offensive action released him from the necessity of remaining himself, or of keeping a large force there, during the unhealthy season.
Before leaving Vicksburg the crews of the fleet had suffered severely from the sickness common in that climate. The Brooklyn had sixty-eight sick out of a total of three hundred; and as this proportion was less than in the upper river flotilla, where the sick numbered forty per cent of the total force, it is probable that it fairly represents the general condition of Farragut"s ships. Among the troops accompanying the expedition there were but eight hundred fit for duty out of over three thousand. It was not considered well to maintain for a longer time in Baton Rouge the small garrison hitherto stationed there. It had honorably repulsed the enemy"s attack; but, in the general cessation of offensive movements by the United States army, the Confederates were continually strengthening their forces on the line of bluffs south of Vicksburg, to the importance of which their attention, never entirely diverted, had been forcibly drawn by the advance of the fleet in the previous months. Fruitless as that ill-judged advance had been, it reminded the enemy of the serious inconvenience they would suffer if the United States ships could freely patrol that part of the Mississippi, and impressed upon them the necessity of securing a section of it, by which they could have undisturbed communication between the two sh.o.r.es.
This could be done by fortifying two points in such strength that to pa.s.s them from either direction would involve a risk too great to be lightly undertaken. The points chosen were Vicksburg and Port Hudson, two hundred miles apart, and embracing between them the mouth of the Red River. The latter is the great artery of the region west of the Mississippi, and also, by means of the Atchafalaya Bayou, offers direct communication for light-draught vessels with the Gulf of Mexico. Port Hudson being less than twenty miles from Baton Rouge, the presence in the latter of a small garrison, which could undertake no offensive movement and which there were no troops to re-enforce, became purposeless. On the 16th of August, 1862, the post was abandoned, and the troops occupying it withdrew to New Orleans.
CHAPTER IX.
THE BLOCKADE AND PORT HUDSON.
1862-1863.
Operations in the Mississippi having now temporarily ceased, Farragut was at liberty to give his undivided attention for a time to the coast blockade. The important harbor of Pensacola had been evacuated by the Confederates in May, less than a month after the capture of New Orleans.
Its abandonment was due to want of troops to garrison it properly; the pressure of the United States armies in Kentucky and Tennessee, after the fall of Fort Donelson in the previous February, having necessitated the withdrawal of all men that could be spared from other points. Before the war Pensacola had been the seat of a well-equipped navy yard with a good dry-dock, the only naval station of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time of the evacuation the buildings in the yard had been destroyed and the dry-dock injured; but the fine harbor, the depth of water--twenty-two feet--that could be carried over the bar, and the nearness of the port to Mobile, the most important center of blockade running, all combined to make it the headquarters of the fleet for repairs and supplies. Farragut arrived there on the 20th of August. Just before leaving New Orleans he received his commission as rear admiral, dated July 16, 1862. Three other officers were promoted at the same time to the active list of this grade, which had never before existed in the United States; but as Farragut was the senior in rank of the four, he may be said to have been the first officer of the navy to hoist an admiral"s flag.
The admiral remained in Pensacola for three months, superintending from there the affairs of his squadron. During this period the harbors of Galveston and of various other smaller ports on the coast of Texas and Louisiana were occupied by detachments of vessels, as the surest way of enforcing the blockade. The admiral had early announced that he should carry on the blockade as far as possible inside; and these successes enabled him to say in December, 1862, that he now held the whole coast except Mobile. During his stay in Pensacola he received a visit from his son, who found him in the best of spirits, all having gone well on the coast; the only mishap having been the success of a Confederate cruiser, the Oreto, in running into Mobile. She had availed herself of her close resemblance to some of the British cruisers in the Gulf to hoist the British flag; and as visits of these vessels to the blockaded ports were authorized and not infrequent, the ruse induced the United States ship that overhauled her to withhold its fire for a few critical moments.
During these the Oreto gained so far on the other that, although struck three times by heavy projectiles, she received no vital injury and succeeded in gaining the shelter of the forts.
The period of the admiral"s stay in Pensacola was one of the deepest depression to the Union cause, and his letters bear evidence of the anxiety which he shared with all his fellow-countrymen in that time of distress. The reverses of McClellan in the peninsula, followed by the withdrawal of his army from thence and its transference to northern Virginia, the defeats suffered by Pope, and the first invasion of Maryland, occurred either immediately before or during the time that Farragut was in Pensacola. His own bootless expedition up the Mississippi and subsequent enforced retirement conspired also to swell the general gloom; for, although thinking military men could realize from the first that the position into which the fleet was forced was so essentially false that it could not be maintained, the unreflecting mult.i.tude saw only the conversion into repulse and disaster of a substantial success, of a conquest as apparently real as it was actually phantasmal. In the West, Grant was so stripped of troops that he feared the possibility of the Union forces being obliged to withdraw behind the Ohio, as they had in the East recrossed the Potomac. "The most anxious period of the war to me," he afterward wrote, "was during the time the army of the Tennessee was guarding the territory acquired by the fall of Corinth and Memphis, and before I was sufficiently re-enforced to take the offensive"--from July 15 to October 15, 1862.
The Confederate forces which confronted Grant in northern Mississippi during these anxious months interposed between him and Vicksburg, and belonged to the department charged with the defenses of the Mississippi river. As they touched Grant, therefore, on the one side, on the other they were in contact with Farragut"s command. The summer pa.s.sed in various movements by them, threatening Grant"s position at Corinth, which culminated on the 3d of October in an attack in force. This was repulsed after hard fighting, and re-enforcements to Grant beginning to come in, the Confederates themselves were thrown on the defensive. The approach of winter, bringing with it higher water and healthier weather on the line of the Mississippi, warned them also that the time was at hand when they might have to fight for the control of the water communications, upon which they no longer had, nor could hope to have, a naval force. Reports therefore began to reach the admiral in Pensacola, from the senior naval officer in the river, that the Confederates were with renewed energy building batteries above Baton Rouge and strongly fortifying Port Hudson.
As there seemed no speedy prospect of obtaining the land force, without whose co-operation an attack upon Mobile would be a fruitless enterprise, Farragut felt his proper position was now in the Mississippi itself. Important as was the blockade service, it was of a character safely to be trusted to a subordinate; whereas the strictly military operations of the approaching campaign, whatever shape they might finally take, would be for the control of the river. It therefore behooved the commander-in-chief of the naval forces to be at hand, ready to support in any way that might offer the effort to obtain control of a region of which the water communications were so characteristic a feature. To push far up a narrow and intricate river a force of ships, whose numbers are insufficient even to protect their own communications and insure their coal supplies, is one thing; it is quite another to repair to the same scene of action prepared to support the army by controlling the water, and by establishing in combined action a secure secondary base of operations from which further advances can be made with reasonable certainty of holding the ground gained. There was no inconsistency between Farragut"s reluctance of the spring and his forwardness in the autumn. The man who, to secure New Orleans and compa.s.s the fall of the forts, had dared to cut adrift from his base and throw his communications to the winds, because he had an object adequate to the risk, was the same who, six weeks later, had testified his anxiety about communications stretched too far and to no purpose; and now, half a year after that reluctant ascent of the river against his better judgment, we find him eagerly planning to go up again, establishing under the protection of the army an advanced base, from which, with the supplies acc.u.mulated at it, further movements may be contemplated with a good chance of final success.
On the 14th of November Farragut reported to the Navy Department his return to New Orleans. The Government, however, had taken warning by the fiasco of the previous season; and, far from urging the admiral on, now sought to impress him with the need for caution. As the great object of opening the Mississippi and obtaining control of it remained, and necessarily must remain, the first of the Government"s aims in the Southwest, the result of these instructions was to give Farragut the discretion which had before been denied him. He retained fully his convictions of the summer. "I am ready for anything," he writes to the Department, "but desire troops to hold what we get. General Butler urges me to attack Port Hudson first, as he wishes to break up that rendezvous before we go outside. It will take at least five thousand men to take Port Hudson." In the same spirit he writes home, "I am still doing nothing but waiting for the tide of events, and doing all I can to hold what I have"; and again, a week later, "As Micawber says, I am waiting for something to turn up, and in the mean time having patience for the water to rise." Readiness to act, but no precipitation; waiting for circ.u.mstances, over which he had no control, to justify acting, may be described as his att.i.tude at this moment.
On the 16th of December the arrival from the north of General Banks to relieve General Butler--an event which took Farragut much by surprise--gave him the opportunity to show at once his own ideas of the proper military steps to be taken. Banks had brought re-enforcements with him; and three days after his coming the admiral writes to the Department: "I have recommended to General Banks the occupation of Baton Rouge.... It is only twelve or fifteen miles from Port Hudson, and is therefore a fine base of operations. He has approved of the move, and ordered his transports to proceed directly to that point. I ordered Commander James Alden, in the Richmond, with two gunboats, to accompany them and cover the landing." Baton Rouge is on the southernmost of the bluffs which in rapid succession skirt the Mississippi below Vicksburg.
With an adequate garrison it became a base of operations from which the army could move against Port Hudson when the time came; and under its protection the colliers and supplies necessary for the naval vessels in the advance could safely remain.
While waiting for the new commander of the army to get fairly settled to work and ready for the combined movement which Farragut was eager to make, the latter was called upon to endure some sharp disappointments.
On the 1st of January, 1863, the military forces in Galveston were attacked by Confederate troops, and the naval vessels by a number of river steamboats barricaded with cotton to resist sh.e.l.ls fired against them, and loaded with riflemen. The garrison was captured, one of the gunboats blown up by her own officers, and another surrendered after her captain and first lieutenant had been killed on her decks. The other vessels abandoned the harbor. The affair was not only a disaster; it was attended with discreditable circ.u.mstances, which excited in the admiral indignation as well as regret. Shortly afterward, two sailing vessels of the squadron, charged with the blockade of Sabine Pa.s.s, were also taken by cotton-clad steamers; which to attack availed themselves of a calm day, when the ships were unable to manoeuvre. An unsuccessful attempt was made after this to take Sabine Pa.s.s; but both that place and Galveston remained in the power of the enemy, and were not regained until the final collapse of the Confederacy. Farragut dispatched one of his most trusted and capable officers, Commodore Henry H. Bell, formerly his chief-of-staff, to re-establish the blockade of Galveston. Arriving off the port toward night, Bell sent one of his detachment, the Hatteras, a light side-wheel iron steamer bought from the merchant service, to overhaul a sail in the offing. Unfortunately, the stranger proved to be the Confederate steamer Alabama, far superior in force to the Hatteras, and after a short engagement the latter was sunk.
All this bad news came in rapid succession, and was closely followed by tidings of the escape from Mobile of the Oreto, which a few months before had eluded the blockading squadron through the daring ruse practiced by her commander. Known now as the Florida, and fitted as a Confederate cruiser, she ran out successfully during the night of January 15th. Here again, though the discredit was less than at Galveston, the annoyance of the admiral was increased by the knowledge that carelessness, or, at the best, bad judgment, had contributed to the enemy"s success. From a letter written home at this time by his son, who had not yet returned from the visit begun at Pensacola, it appears that in the intimacy of family life he admitted, and showed by his manner, how keenly he felt the discredit to his command from these events.
Though conscious that they were not due to failure on his part to do his utmost with the force given to him, and seeing in the escape of the Oreto a further justification of his own opinion that the lower harbor of Mobile should have been early seized, he nevertheless was "very much worried." This inside view of the effect, visible to those from whom he had no concealments, is supplemented by the description of the admiral"s bearing under these reverses given by Captain (now Rear-Admiral) Jenkins, who at this time became his chief-of-staff. "These disasters,"
he writes, "were sore trials to the admiral, and a less well-poised man would have given way; but they seemed only to give him greater strength of will and purpose.... I myself had the misfortune, after months of watching, to see the Oreto run out the first night after I had been relieved of the command of the Oneida and ordered to report to the admiral as his fleet-captain. I had to bear him these bad tidings.
Though no stoic, he bore the news as one accustomed to misfortune." It may seem, indeed, that these events, considered individually, were but instances of the hard knocks to be looked for in war, of which every general officer in every campaign must expect to have his share; and this view is undoubtedly true. Nevertheless, occurring in such rapid succession, and all in that part of his extensive command, the blockade, to which at that moment it seemed impossible to give his princ.i.p.al attention, the effect was naturally staggering. His first impulse was to leave the river and repair in person to the scene of disaster in Texas; but reflection soon convinced him that, however unfortunate the occurrences that had taken place there and elsewhere on the coast, they had not the same vital bearing on the issues of the war as the control of the Mississippi, and therefore not an equal claim upon the commander-in-chief.