Admiral Farragut

In this point the admiral appears to have made a mistake, in not making obligatory one detail which he employed on board the flag-ship. "I had directed a trumpet fixed from the mizzen-top to the wheel on board this ship, as I intended the pilot to take his station in the top, so that he might see over the fog, or smoke, as the case might be. To this idea, and to the coolness and courage of my pilot, Mr. Carrell, I am indebted for the safe passage of this ship past the forts." It may be that the admiral counted upon the vessels being so closed up that the flag-ship would practically serve as the pilot for all. If so, he reckoned without his host, and in this small oversight or error in judgment is possibly to be found a weak point in his preparations; but it is the only one. The failure of the Richmond, his immediate follower, was not in any way due to pilotage, but to the loss of steam by an accidental shot; and it is still a matter of doubt whether the Genesee, her consort, might not have pulled her by. The third in the order, the Monongahela, also failed finally from the heating of a bearing; but as this occurred after being aground for half an hour, with the vigorous working of the engines that naturally ensues under such circumstances, it seems as if her failure must ultimately be traced to the smoke. "The firing had so filled the atmosphere with smoke," wrote her captain, "as to prevent distinguishing objects near by." The loss of the Mississippi was due entirely to an error of the pilot, whatever may have been the cause.

The effect of the appearance above Port Hudson of the Hartford and Albatross is abundantly testified in the correspondence of the day, both Union and Confederate, and justifies beyond dispute this fine conception of Farragut's and the great risk which he took entirely upon his own responsibility. He found, indeed, a ground for his action in an order of the Department dated October 2, 1862,21 directing him "to guard the lower part of the Mississippi, especially where it is joined by the Red River," until he heard from Admiral Porter that the latter, in conjunction with the army, had opened the river; but he distrusted the consent of the Secretary to his running the great risk involved in the passage of Port Hudson. As Grant was ordered to take Vicksburg, so was Farragut ordered to blockade the Red River; and as Grant did not notify the commander-in-chief of his final great resolve to cut loose from his base, until it was too late to stop him, so did Farragut keep within his own breast a resolve upon which he feared an interdict. For even after two years of war the department was embarrassed for ships, and the policy of economy, of avoiding risks, the ever fatal policy of a halting warfare, was forced upon it—an impressive illustration of the effect exerted by inadequate preparation upon the operations of war. For lack of ships, Mobile was in 1863 still in the hands of the enemy. "I would have had it long since or been thrashed out of it," wrote Farragut six weeks before Port Hudson. "I feel no fears on the subject; but they do not wish their ships risked, for fear we might not be able to hold the Mississippi." A similar reluctance might be anticipated to expose such valuable vessels as attacked Port Hudson, when their loss was so hard to repair; for only men of the temper of Farragut or Grant—men with a natural genius for war or enlightened by their knowledge of the past—can fully commit themselves to the hazard of a great adventure—can fully realize that a course of timid precaution may entail the greatest of risks.

"Your services at Red River," wrote Admiral Porter to Farragut upon hearing of his arrival above Port Hudson, "will be a godsend; it is worth to us the loss of the "Mississippi," and is at this moment the severest blow that could be struck at the South. They obtain all their supplies and ammunition in that way.... The great object is to cut off supplies. For that reason I sent down the Queen of the West and the Indianola. I regret that the loss of the Indianola should have been the cause of your present position." These utterances, which bespeak the relief afforded him at the moment by Farragut's bold achievement, are confirmed by the words written many years later in his History of the Navy. "Farragut in the Hartford, with the Albatross, reached the mouth of the Red River, and Port Hudson was as completely cut off from supplies as if fifty gunboats were there.... It was soon seen that the object aimed at had been gained—the works at Port Hudson were cut off from supplies and the fate of the garrison sealed." "I look upon it as of vast importance," wrote General Grant, "that we should hold the river securely between Vicksburg and Port Hudson"; and he undertook to contribute anything that the army could furnish to enable vessels from above to run by Vicksburg, and so supply to Farragut the numbers he needed through the repulse of his own ships.

"The Mississippi is again cut off," wrote to Richmond the Confederate General Pemberton, who commanded the district in which are Vicksburg and Port Hudson, "neither subsistence nor ordnance can come or go"; and the following day, March 20th, the sixth after Farragut's passage, he sends word to General Richard Taylor, on the west shore, "Port Hudson depends almost entirely for supplies upon the other side of the river." "Great God! how unfortunate!" writes, on March 17th, a Confederate commissary in Taylor's department. "Four steamers arrived to-day from Shreveport. One had 300,000 pounds of bacon; three others are reported coming down with loads. Five others are below with full cargoes designed for Port Hudson, but it is reported that the Federal gunboats are blockading the river." As to passing by other points, "it is doubtful whether many cattle ever get through the swamps and bayous through which they are required to pass on this side. As the water declines, I think likely cattle in large quantities can be crossed by swimming, but at present your prospect of getting supplies from this side is gloomy enough." "Early in February," writes Pemberton again, "the enemy succeeded in passing two of his gunboats by our batteries at Vicksburg" (the Indianola and Queen of the West). "This at once rendered the navigation of the Mississippi and Red River dangerous, and from that time it was only by watching opportunities, and at great risk of capture, that supplies could be thrown into Port Hudson and Vicksburg. Nevertheless, large amounts were successfully introduced into both places."

This success, partial as it was, was due, first, to the capture of Porter's detachment, which opened the river again until Farragut came; and, secondly, to the repulse of so large a portion of the latter's squadron. The Hartford and Albatross, though they could close the Red River, could not multiply themselves to cover the great stretch which the admiral had purposed to occupy with seven vessels. Neither was the Albatross of sufficient force to be left by herself at the mouth of the Red River. Farragut therefore moved slowly up the Mississippi, destroying a quantity of stores accumulated upon the levees awaiting transportation, as well as a number of flat-boats; and on the afternoon of the 19th of March he anchored twelve miles below Vicksburg. The following day he moved further up and communicated with General Grant, informing him of the events that had just befallen him and offering any assistance in the power of the two ships. If not needed, he purposed returning to Red River, and asked for coal from either army or navy. Porter was then absent on the Deer Creek expedition, an attempt to get the Mississippi gunboats through the bayou of that name into the Yazoo; whereby, if successful, the Confederate position at Vicksburg would be turned. Grant accordingly undertook to send down coal, which was done by turning adrift in the current of the Mississippi a barge carrying some four hundred tons. This floated by night clear of the enemy's positions, and was picked up by boats from the Hartford.

Farragut had written to Porter of his wish to receive some vessels from above, specifying two rams and an ironclad, with which and his own two vessels he could better carry out his purpose of closing the whole stretch in which he was. He intimated this wish to Grant, who highly approved of it. "I see by Southern papers received yesterday," he wrote to Farragut, "that Vicksburg must depend upon Louisiana, or west of the Mississippi, for supplies. Holding Red River from them is a great step in the direction of preventing this, but it will not entirely accomplish the object. New Carthage (twenty miles below Vicksburg, on the west bank) should be held, and it seems to me that in addition we should have sufficient vessels below to patrol the whole river from Warrenton (ten miles below Vicksburg) to the Red River. I will have a consultation with Admiral Porter on this subject. I am happy to say the admiral and myself have never yet disagreed upon any policy." In the absence of Porter, General Ellet determined to send down two of the Ellet rams, which made their dash on the morning of March 25, displaying all the daring, but unfortunately also much of the recklessness, which characterized that remarkable family. Starting near dawn, on a singularly clear night, they were surprised by daylight still under fire. One, being very rotten, was shattered to pieces by a shell exploding her boilers. The other was disabled, also by a shell in the boilers, but, being stronger, drifted down with the current and reached Farragut safely. She was soon repaired, and was an addition to his force.

While lying below Vicksburg the admiral transferred to Porter's care, for passage north by the Mississippi River, his son and only child, who had been with him since the summer stay in Pensacola. They had passed the batteries at Port Hudson together, the bearing of the boy in that hot contest approving itself to the father, who, despite his anxiety, could not bring himself to accept the surgeon's suggestion to send him below, out of harm's way. "I am trying to make up my mind to part with Loyall," he wrote to his wife, "and to let him go home by way of Cairo. I am too devoted a father to have my son with me in troubles of this kind. The anxieties of a father should not be added to those of the commander."

On the 27th of March the Hartford started again down river, accompanied by the Albatross and the Ellet ram Switzerland. On the 2d of April the little squadron anchored off the mouth of the Red River, having on its passage down again destroyed a number of skiffs and flat-boats used for transporting stores. Warned by the fate of the Indianola, the admiral left nothing undone to ensure the absolute safety of the flag-ship; for, though her powerful armament and numerous crew gave her a great superiority over any number of river vessels, granting her room to manœuvre, the difficulties of the river and the greatness of the stake to both parties made it imperative to take no needless risks. As a protection against rams, large cypress logs were hung around the ship about a foot above the water line, where they would both resist penetration and also give time for the elasticity of the frame of a wooden vessel to take up the blow. Against boarding, elaborate preparations were made, which would prevent a steamer attempting it from getting nearer than twenty feet to the side, where she would remain an easy victim to the shell and grape of the Hartford's guns.

From the 2d to the 30th of April Farragut remained in the neighborhood of the Red River, between its mouth and Port Hudson. Cut off by the batteries of the place, and by the prevalence of guerrillas on the west bank, from all usual means of communication with General Banks and his own squadron, he contrived to get a letter down by the daring of his secretary, Mr. Edward C. Gabaudan; who was set adrift one night in a skiff ingeniously covered with drift brush, and, thus concealed, floated undiscovered past the enemy's guards. The small number of his vessels prevented his extending his blockade as far as he wished; but in closing the Red River he deprived the enemy of by far the best line they possessed, and he destroyed a quantity of stores and boats.

In the mean time diverse and important events were concurring to release him from his position of isolation. Toward the end of March General Grant, who had for some time abandoned all expectation of turning Vicksburg by its right flank, began the celebrated movement down the west side of the Mississippi; whence he crossed to the east bank at Bruinsburg, and fought the campaign which ended by shutting up Pemberton and his army within the lines of the place. In furtherance of this plan, Porter himself, with a large body of his ships, ran the batteries at Vicksburg on the night of April 16. The fleet then kept pace with the necessarily slow progress of the army, encumbered with trains, through the roads heavy with the mire of the recent overflow. On the 29th of April the Mississippi squadron fought a sharp engagement with the Confederate batteries at Grand Gulf, which they could not reduce; and the following day Grant's army crossed the river.

While these events were bringing the Mississippi squadron into that part of the river which Farragut had aimed to control, other movements were leading to his assistance some of the lighter vessels of his own command. After the naval action at Port Hudson, Banks had temporarily abandoned his designs upon that post in favor of operations west of the Mississippi by the Bayous Teche and Atchafalaya, the latter of which communicates with the Red River a few miles above its mouth. This movement was accompanied by a force of four gunboats, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander A. P. Cooke, of the Estrella, which captured a post on the Atchafalaya called Butte à la Rose, on the 20th of April, the same day that Opelousas, sixty miles from Alexandria, was entered by the army. The latter pressed on toward Alexandria, while the gunboats pushed their way up the Atchafalaya. On the first of May two of them, the Estrella and Arizona, passed into the Red River, and soon afterward joined the Hartford.

Three days later Admiral Porter arrived with several of his fleet and communicated with Farragut. The next day, May 5th, Porter went up the Red River and pushed rapidly toward Alexandria, which was evacuated, its stores being removed to Shreveport, three hundred and fifty miles farther up.

Farragut now felt that his personal presence above Port Hudson was no longer necessary. The Mississippi was ultimately to become the command of Porter, whose vessels were especially fitted for its waters; and that admiral was now at liberty to give his full attention below Vicksburg. On the other hand, his own squadron in the lower river and on the blockade demanded a closer attention than he could give from his isolated station. Accordingly, on the 6th of May he transferred the command to Commodore Palmer, of the Hartford, with whom he left the Albatross, Estrella, and Arizona to intercept communications between the two banks of the Mississippi below Red River; while he himself returned by one of the bayous to New Orleans, reaching there on the 11th.

Thus ended Farragut's brilliant strategic movement against the communications of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and through them against the intercourse of the Confederacy with its great Western storehouse, over which the two fortresses stood guard. It was a movement which, though crippled from the beginning by a serious disaster on the battle-field, was conceived in accordance with the soundest principles of the art of war. Its significance has been obscured and lost in the great enterprise initiated a month later by General Grant, and solidly supported by the navy under Porter; whose co-operation, Grant avows, was absolutely essential to the success—nay, even to the contemplation of such an undertaking.22 In this combined movement, identical in principle with that of Farragut, Porter, in executing his part, had the current with instead of against him. Had circumstances delayed or prevented Grant's advance by the west bank of the Mississippi—had he, for instance, been enabled by one of the abortive bayou expeditions to penetrate north of Vicksburg—Farragut's action would have been no more sound nor bold, but its merits would have been far more perceptible to the common eye. Re-enforcements must have been sent him; and around his flag-ship would have centered a force that would have choked the life out of Vicksburg and Port Hudson.

Because rightly aimed, this daring campaign was not frustrated even by the disasters of the night action. It is distinguished from the unhappy fiasco of the year before by all the difference between a fitting and an unfitting time—by all that separates a clear appreciation of facts from a confused impression of possibilities. In 1862 Farragut was driven up the river against his own judgment, seeing no prospect of tangible or permanent results. In 1863 he went on his own responsibility, because he saw that in the then condition of affairs, with the armies gathering at both ends of the line, the movement he made would not only be successful in itself, but would materially conduce to the attainment of the common end. It is significant of his true military insight that neither depreciation nor disaster shook his clear convictions of the importance of his work. "Whether my getting by Port Hudson was of consequence or not," he wrote chaffingly in reference to some slighting comments in a Southern newspaper, "if Pollard's stomach were as tightly pinched for food as theirs at Port Hudson and Vicksburg have been since I shut up Red River, he would know how to value a good dinner and a little peace." In soberer style he wrote to his home: "We have done our part of the work assigned to us, and all has worked well. My last dash past Port Hudson was the best thing I ever did, except taking New Orleans. It assisted materially in the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson."

Farragut remained but a short time in New Orleans, and was soon again at the front; joining the vessels of his squadron lying near, but below, Port Hudson. After entering Alexandria on the 7th of May, General Banks moved down with his army to the Mississippi, which he crossed five or six miles above Port Hudson. General Augur, of his command, at the same time moved up from Baton Rouge, the two divisions meeting on the 23d of May, and immediately investing Port Hudson. An assault was made on the 27th; but proving unsuccessful, regular siege operations were begun. The mortar schooners and the Essex supported them by constant bombardment, and the navy furnished and manned a battery of four nine-inch Dahlgren guns.

While contributing thus conspicuously to the immediate furtherance of the siege, the most essential work of the navy, here as in the upper Mississippi, was in the maintenance of the communications, which were wholly by the river, as well as in assuring the safety of New Orleans, then stripped of all the troops that could be spared. The danger of two points like Vicksburg and Port Hudson, both of such vital importance, and both being besieged at the same time, aroused every latent energy of the Confederacy, and set in motion every armed man of whom it could dispose. To divert and distract the attention of the Union generals, to induce them to abandon their efforts or diminish the forces at the front, no means were so ready nor so sure as an attack upon their communications, or a threat directed against their base. To make these insecure, is like mining the foundations of a building. Here the navy removed every substantial cause of anxiety by its firm support, and by the rapidity with which its heavy guns were brought to sustain every point attacked. Under such diligent guardianship the barrier of the Mississippi remained impassable; and although a transport might now and again be arrested and forced to surrender, such an occasional annoyance could not by the most uneasy general be magnified into a serious menace to his communications. The active Confederate general, Richard Taylor, in command of the district west of the river, stripped all his posts to concentrate an effort along the right bank, which, by disturbing Banks, might make a favorable diversion for Port Hudson; and loud talk was made of an attack upon New Orleans itself, favored by a rising among the citizens, still heartily attached to the Southern cause. The powerful vessels kept before the city by Farragut effectually disposed of any chance of such an attempt, although much anxiety was felt by General Emory, in command of the station, and confident expectation was plainly discernible on the faces of the towns-people. The Confederates, however, did for a season control the west side of the river, appearing before Donaldsonville and Plaquemine, where were posts of United States troops. These were saved by the prompt appearance of gunboats, which followed the movements of the enemy; but the report of them brought Farragut down in person, and elicited from him a remonstrance to Banks for leaving upon the west bank, inadequately sustained, heavy guns which, if they fell into the hands of the Confederates, might convert a menace into a serious embarrassment. A few days later, at midnight of June 27th, the enemy attacked Donaldsonville in force. The storming party succeeded in entering the works, but the three gunboats which Farragut had stationed there opened so heavy a fire upon the supports that these broke and fled; and those in advance, being unsustained, were made prisoners.

A few days later Farragut summoned his chief-of-staff, Captain Thornton A. Jenkins, to relieve him at Port Hudson, as he felt his own presence necessary at New Orleans. Jenkins started up in the Monongahela, a heavy corvette commanded by Captain Abner Read, having in company two small transports with needed supplies. The enemy, despite the repulse at Donaldsonville, remained in the neighborhood, and had established a battery of field-guns a few miles below at a bend in the river. By these the Monongahela was attacked and pretty severely handled for a few moments. Her captain, an officer of distinguished courage and enterprise, was mortally wounded, and Captain Jenkins slightly so. These two affairs sufficiently indicate the character of the enemy's operations on the west bank of the Mississippi at this time. They did not in the least succeed in shaking the grip of the Union army before Port Hudson, nor did they entirely cease with the surrender of the place. That they did so little harm, with the enemy in nearly undisputed command in the regions west of the river, was due to the navy, whose mobility exceeded that of their troops.

Vicksburg surrendered on the 4th of July, 1863, and its fall was followed by that of Port Hudson on the 9th of the same month. Farragut then wrote to Porter, and turned over to him the command in all the Mississippi Valley above New Orleans. On the 1st of August Porter himself arrived off the city in his flag-ship, and the two admirals had an interview on the scene of their former exploits. The same afternoon Farragut sailed in the Hartford for the North, to enjoy a brief respite from his labors during the enervating autumn months of the Gulf climate. Though now sixty-two years old, he retained an extraordinary amount of vitality, and of energy both physical and moral; but nevertheless at his age the anxieties and exposure he had to undergo tell, and had drawn from him, soon after his return from above Port Hudson, the expressive words, "I am growing old fast, and need rest." On the 10th of August the flag-ship anchored in New York, after a passage of nine days.

The admiral remained in the North until the first of the following year. His own ship, and her powerful sisters, the Richmond and Brooklyn, were in need of extensive repairs before they could be considered again fit for winter service in the Gulf. The Hartford was in better condition than the other two, being uninjured below the water line, but the severe actions through which she had passed were proved by the scars, two hundred and forty in number, where she had been struck by shot or shell.

CHAPTER X.

MOBILE.

1864

By the fall of the last and most powerful of the Confederate strongholds upon the Mississippi, and the consequent assertion of control by the United States Government over the whole of the great water course, was accomplished the first and chief of the two objects toward which Farragut was to co-operate. After manifold efforts and failures, the combined forces of the United States had at last sundered the Confederacy in twain along the principal one of those natural strategic lines which intersected it, and which make the strength or the weakness of States according as they are able or unable to hold them against an enemy. Of the two fragments, the smaller was militarily important only as a feeder to the other. Severed from the body to which they belonged, the seceded States west of the Mississippi sank into insignificance; the fire that had raged there would smoulder and die of itself, now that a broad belt which could not be passed interposed between it and the greater conflagration in the East.