It is not to be questioned that the moral effect of the passage of the forts, succeeded, as it was, by the immediate fall of the great city of the Mississippi, was very great; but it was not upon the forts themselves, nor in the unexpected mutiny of the garrison, that that effect was chiefly manifested. Great as was the crime of the men, they showed by their act a correct appreciation of those results to the forts, from the passage of the fleet, which some have sought to ignore—results physical, undeniable, fatal. It was not moral effect, but indisputable reasoning which sapped the further resistance of men—brave till then—to whom were wanting the habit of discipline and the appreciation of the far-reaching effects upon the fortunes of a campaign produced by a prolonged, though hopeless, resistance. They saw that the fate of the forts was sealed, and beyond that they recognized no duties and no advantages. On the scene of his exploit Farragut reaped the material fruits of the celerity in which he believed; and which he had reluctantly for a space postponed, at the bidding of superior authority, in order to try the effect of slower methods. These being exhausted, he owed to the promptness of his decision and action that the Louisiana, on whose repairs men were working night and day, did not take the advantageous position indicated to her by the officers of the forts; and that the Mississippi, the ironclad upon which not only the designers, but naval officers, founded extravagant hopes, was neither completed nor towed away, but burned where she lay. The flaming mass, as it drifted hopelessly by the Hartford, was a striking symbol of resistance crushed—of ascendency established over the mighty river whose name it bore; but it was a symbol not of moral, but of physical victory.

It was elsewhere, far and wide, that were felt the moral effects which echoed the sudden, unexpected crash with which the lower Mississippi fell—through the length and breadth of the South and in the cabinets of foreign statesmen, who had believed too readily, as did their officers on the spot, that the barrier was not to be passed—that the Queen City of the Confederacy was impregnable to attack from the sea. Whatever may have been the actual purposes of that mysterious and undecided personage, Napoleon III, the effect of military events, whether on sea or shore, upon the question of interference by foreign powers is sufficiently evident from the private correspondence which, a few months after New Orleans, passed between Lords Palmerston and Russell, then the leading members of the British Cabinet.[R] Fortunately for the cause of the United States, France and Great Britain were not of a mind to combine their action at the propitious moment; and the moral effect of the victory at New Orleans was like a cold plunge bath to the French emperor, at the time when he was hesitating whether to act alone. It produced upon him even more impression than upon the British Government; because his ambitions for French control and for the extension of the Latin races on the American continent were especially directed toward Louisiana, the former colony of France, and toward its neighbors, Texas and Mexico.

[Footnote R: See Walpole's Life of Lord John Russell, vol. ii, pp. 349-351.]

The sympathies, however, of the classes from whom were chiefly drawn the cabinets of the two great naval States were overwhelmingly with the South; and the expressions alike of the emperor and of his principal confidants at this time were designedly allowed to transpire, both to the Southern commissioners and to the British Government. On the very day that Porter's mortar schooners opened on Fort Jackson, Louis Napoleon unbosomed himself to a member of the British Parliament, who visited him as an avowed partisan of the Confederate cause. He said that while he desired to preserve a strict neutrality, he could not consent that his people should continue to suffer from the acts of the Federal Government. He thought the best course would be to make a friendly appeal to it, either alone or concurrently with England, to open the ports; but to accompany the appeal with a proper demonstration of force upon our coasts, and, should the appeal seem likely to be ineffectual, to back it by a declaration of his purpose not to respect the blockade. The taking of New Orleans, which he did not then anticipate, might render it inexpedient to act; that he would not decide at once, but would wait some days for further intelligence.[S] Similar semi-official assurances came from different persons about the emperor; and the members of the Cabinet, with a single exception, showed little reserve in their favorable expressions toward the Confederacy.

[Footnote S: North American Review, vol. cxxix, p. 347.]

A few weeks later Mr. Slidell had a conversation with M. Billault, the minister sans portefeuille, one of the most conservative and cautious men in the Cabinet, who represented the Government in the Chambers upon all subjects connected with foreign affairs. Slidell read a note which he had received from Sir Charles Wood, a leading Southern sympathizer in England, denying that the British Government was unwilling to act in American affairs—a denial to which some color is given by the correspondence of Palmerston and Russell before mentioned. In answer, M. Billault declared that the French Cabinet, with the possible exception of M. Thouvenel, had been unanimously in favor of the South, and added that if New Orleans had not fallen its recognition would not have been much longer delayed; but, even after that disaster, if decided successes were obtained in Virginia and Tennessee, or the enemy were held at bay for a month or two, the same result would follow. After an interview with M. Thouvenel, about the same time, Slidell reported that, though that minister did not directly say so, his manner gave fair reason to infer that if New Orleans had not been taken, and no very serious reverses were suffered in Virginia and Tennessee, recognition would very soon have been declared.[T]

[Footnote T: Ibid., vol. cxxix, p. 348.]

In its moral effect, therefore, the fall of the river forts and of New Orleans, though not absolutely and finally decisive of the question of foreign intervention, corresponded to one of those telling blows, by which a general threatened by two foes meets and strikes down one before the other comes up. Such a blow may be said to decide a campaign; not because no chance is left the enemy to redeem his misfortune, but because without the first success the weaker party would have been overwhelmed by the junction of his two opponents. The heart-rending disasters to our armies during the following summer does but emphasize the immense value to the Union cause of the moral effect produced by Farragut's victory. Those disasters, as it was, prompted the leaders of the British ministry to exchange confidences in which they agreed on the expediency of mediation. They did not carry all their colleagues with them; but who can estimate the effect, when the scales were thus balancing, if the navy had been driven out of the Mississippi as the army was from Virginia?



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 incumbent 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, passing 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 passed 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 assume 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 assign 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 compassing 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 pass 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 assembled. 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 pass Vicksburg; not because it was too strongly fortified; not because we could not have passed 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 embarrass, the responsibility of the officer in command on the spot. "Fighting is nothing," he adds, "to the evils of the river—getting on shore, 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 Assistant-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 circumstances, 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 God 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 ashore 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 assembled 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 passage of the fleet before the batteries.



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 constituting 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 pass 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 passed the mortar schooners; and the latter then opened fire, as did the steamers connected with them, which were not to attempt the passage. 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., anchored 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 passed, 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 passed 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 passed 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 prone to exaggerate danger, and his experience had not led him to entertain any high opinion of the enemy's rams. To these circumstances 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 circumstance 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 passed 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 passage 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 passing 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 passage 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 Essex, 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 Essex, 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 circumstances that have been narrated caused him to receive this dispatch below the town; and on the 24th, two days after the descent of the Essex, he departed for New Orleans. Davis assured him that the Essex 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 Essex came in sight. Resistance in her then plight was hopeless. She was set on fire by her commander, the crew escaping to the shore. 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 shores. This could be done by fortifying two points in such strength that to pass 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 multitude 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 passed 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 compass 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 accumulated 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 circumstances, over which he had no control, to justify acting, may be described as his attitude 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 shells 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 circumstances, which excited in the admiral indignation as well as regret. Shortly afterward, two sailing vessels of the squadron, charged with the blockade of Sabine Pass, 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 Pass; 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 principal 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.

At the same time, the effect was to intensify the desire to act—to redeem by success the blot which failures had brought upon his command; and the state of affairs elsewhere on the river was becoming such as to justify enterprise by the reasonable hope of substantial results. A series of circumstances which have been often narrated, and nowhere in a more interesting manner than by General Grant in his personal memoirs, had led to the abandonment of the movement by land upon Vicksburg by the Army of the Tennessee, following the Mississippi Central Railroad. Instead of this original plan of campaign, the Mississippi River was now adopted as the line of advance and of communications. The first move along this new line had been made by General Sherman, who brought with him 32,000 troops, and on the 26th of December, 1862, had landed on the low ground between the mouth of the Yazoo and Vicksburg. On the 29th the army assaulted the works on the hills before them, but were repulsed. Sherman, satisfied that the position there was too strong to be carried, had determined to change his point of attack to the extreme right of the enemy's line, higher up the Yazoo; but the heavy rains which characterized the winter of 1862-'63 in the Mississippi Valley made untenable the ground on which the troops were, and it became necessary to re-embark them. The transports were then moved out into the Mississippi, where they were joined by General McClernand, the senior general officer in the department under Grant himself.

McClernand now decided to attack Arkansas Post, on the Arkansas River, which enters the Mississippi from the west about two hundred miles above Vicksburg. The Post was primarily intended to close the Arkansas and the approach to the capital of the State of the same name; but although fifty miles from the mouth of the river, it was, by the course of the stream, but fifteen by land from the Mississippi. The garrison, being five thousand strong, was thus dangerously placed to threaten the communications by the latter river, upon which the army was to depend during the approaching campaign; and it had already given evidence of the fact by the capture of a valuable transport. This post was reduced on the 11th of January, and McClernand next day started troops up the White River, a tributary of the Arkansas. From this ex-centric movement, which seemed wholly to ignore that Vicksburg and the Mississippi were the objective of the campaign, McClernand was speedily and peremptorily recalled by Grant. The latter, having absolutely no confidence in the capacity of his senior subordinate, could dispossess him of the chief command only by assuming it himself. This he accordingly did, and on the 30th of January joined the army, which was then encamped on the levees along the west bank of the river above Vicksburg.

Serious action on the part of the army, directed by a man of whose vigorous character there could be no doubt, though his conspicuous ability was not yet fully recognized, was evidently at hand; and this circumstance, by itself alone, imparted a very different aspect to any naval enterprises, giving them reasonable prospect of support and of conducing substantially to the great common end. Never in the history of combined movements has there been more hearty co-operation between the army and navy than in the Vicksburg campaign of 1863, under the leadership of Grant and Porter. From the nature of the enemy's positions their forcible reduction was necessarily in the main the task of the land forces; but that the latter were able to exert their full strength, unweakened, and without anxiety as to their long line of communications from Memphis to Vicksburg, was due to the incessant vigilance and activity of the Mississippi flotilla, which grudged neither pains nor hard knocks to support every movement. But, besides the care of our own communications, there was the no less important service of harassing or breaking up those of the enemy. Of these, the most important was with the States west of the Mississippi. Not to speak of cereals and sugar, Texas alone, in the Southwest, produced an abundance of vigorous beef cattle fit for food; and from no other part of the seceded States could the armies on the east banks of the Mississippi be adequately supplied. Bordering, moreover, upon Mexico, and separated from it only by a shoal river into which the United States ships could not penetrate, there poured across that line quantities of munitions of war, which found through the Mexican port of Matamoras a safe entry, everywhere else closed to them by the sea-board blockade. For the transit of these the numerous streams west of the Mississippi, and especially the mighty Red River, offered peculiar facilities. The principal burden of breaking up these lines of supply was thrown upon the navy by the character of the scene of operations—by its numerous water-courses subsidiary to the great river itself, and by the overflow of the land, which, in its deluged condition during the winter, effectually prevented the movement of troops. Herein Farragut saw his opportunity, as well as that of the upper river flotilla. To wrest the control of the Mississippi out of the enemy's hands, by reducing his positions, was the great aim of the campaign; until that could be effected, the patrol of the section between Vicksburg and Port Hudson would materially conduce to the same end.

Over this Farragut pondered long and anxiously. He clearly recognized the advantage of this service, but he also knew the difficulties involved in maintaining his necessary communications, and, above all, his coal. At no time did the enemy cease their annoyance from the river banks. Constant brushes took place between their flying batteries and the different gunboats on patrol duty; a kind of guerrilla warfare, which did not cease even with the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, but naturally attained its greatest animation during the months when their fate was hanging in the balance. The gunboats could repel such attacks, though they were often roughly handled, and several valuable officers lost their lives; but not being able to pursue, the mere frustration of a particular attack did not help to break up a system of very great annoyance. Only a force able to follow—in other words, troops—could suppress the evil. "You will no doubt hear more," the admiral writes on the 1st of February, 1863, "of 'Why don't Farragut's fleet move up the river?' Tell them, Because the army is not ready. Farragut waits upon Banks as to when or where he will go."

Still, even while thus dancing attendance upon a somewhat dilatory general, his plans were maturing; so that when occasion arose he was, as always, ready for immediate action—had no unforeseen decision to make. "The evening of the day (about January 20th) that I reported to him at New Orleans," writes Admiral Jenkins, "he sent everybody out of the cabin, and said: 'I wish to have some confidential talk with you upon a subject which I have had in mind for a long time.... I have never hinted it to any one, nor does the department know anything of my thoughts. The first object to be accomplished, which led me to think seriously about it, is to cripple the Southern armies by cutting off their supplies from Texas. Texas at this time is, and must continue to the end of the war to be, their main dependence for beef cattle, sheep, and Indian corn. If we can get a few vessels above Port Hudson the thing will not be an entire failure, and I am pretty confident it can be done.'" Jenkins naturally suggested that the co-operation of the army by an active advance at the same time would materially assist the attempt. To this, of course, the admiral assented, it being in entire conformity with his own opinion; and several interviews were held, without, however, their leading to any definite promise on the part of General Banks.

Meantime Admiral Porter, who after leaving the mortar flotilla had been appointed to the command of the Mississippi squadron, with the rank of acting rear-admiral, realized as forcibly as Farragut the importance of placing vessels in the waters between Vicksburg and Port Hudson. In the middle of December he was before Vicksburg, and had since then been actively supporting the various undertakings of the land forces. Three days after Grant joined the army, on the 2d of February, the ram Queen of the West ran the Vicksburg batteries from above, and successfully reached the river below. Ten days later, Porter sent on one of his newest ironclads, the Indianola, which made the same passage under cover of night without being even hit, although twenty minutes under fire. The latter vessel took with her two coal barges; and as the experiment had already been successfully tried of casting coal barges loose above the batteries, and trusting to the current to carry them down to the Queen of the West, the question of supplies was looked upon as settled. The Indianola was very heavily armed, and both the admiral and her commander thought her capable of meeting any force the enemy could send against her.

Unfortunately, on the 14th of February, two days only after the Indianola got down, the Queen of the West was run ashore under a battery and allowed to fall alive into the hands of the enemy. The latter at once repaired the prize, and, when ready, started in pursuit of the Indianola with it and two other steamers; one of which was a ram, the other a cotton-protected boat filled with riflemen. There was also with them a tender, which does not appear to have taken part in the fight. On the night of February 24th the pursuers overtook the Indianola, and a sharp action ensued; but the strength of the current and her own unwieldiness placed the United States vessel at a disadvantage, which her superior armament did not, in the dim light, counterbalance. She was rammed six or seven times, and, being then in a sinking condition, her commander ran her on the bank and surrendered. This put an end to Porter's attempts to secure that part of the river by a detachment. The prospect, that had been fair enough when the Queen of the West was sent down, was much marred by the loss of that vessel; and the subsequent capture of the Indianola transferred so much power into the hands of the Confederates, that control could only be contested by a force which he could not then afford to risk.

The up-river squadron having failed to secure the coveted command of the river, and, besides, transferred to the enemy two vessels which might become very formidable, Farragut felt that the time had come when he not only might but ought to move. He was growing more and more restless, more and more discontented with his own inactivity, when such an important work was waiting to be done. The news of the Queen of the West's capture made him still more uneasy; but when that was followed by the loss of the Indianola, his decision was taken at once. "The time has come," he said to Captain Jenkins; "there can be no more delay. I must go—army or no army." Another appeal, however, was made to Banks, representing the assistance which the squadron would derive in its attempt to pass the batteries from a demonstration made by the army. The permanent works at Port Hudson then mounted nineteen heavy cannon, many of them rifled; but there were reported to be in addition as many as thirty-five field-pieces, which, at the distance the fleet would have to pass, would be very effective. If the army made a serious diversion in the rear, many of these would be withdrawn, especially if Farragut's purpose to run by did not transpire. The advantage to be gained by this naval enterprise was so manifest that the general could scarcely refuse, and he promised to make the required demonstration with eight or ten thousand troops.

On the 12th of March, within a fortnight after hearing of the Indianola affair, Farragut was off Baton Rouge. On the 14th he anchored just above Profit's Island, seven miles below Port Hudson, where were already assembled a number of the mortar schooners, under the protection of the ironclad Essex, formerly of the upper squadron. The admiral brought with him seven vessels, for the most part essentially fighting ships, unfitted for blockade duty by their indifferent speed, but carrying heavy batteries. If the greater part got by, they would present a force calculated to clear the river of every hostile steamer and absolutely prevent any considerable amount of supplies being transferred from one shore to the other.

For the purpose of this passage Farragut adopted a somewhat novel tactical arrangement, which he again used at Mobile, and which presents particular advantages when there are enemies only on one side to be engaged. Three of his vessels were screw steamers of heavy tonnage and battery; three others comparatively light. He directed, therefore, that each of the former should take one of the latter on the side opposite to the enemy, securing her well aft, in order to have as many guns as possible, on the unengaged side, free for use in case of necessity. In this way the smaller vessels were protected without sacrificing the offensive power of the larger. Not only so; in case of injury to the boilers or engines of one, it was hoped that those of her consort might pull her through. To equalize conditions, to the slowest of the big ships was given the most powerful of the smaller ones. A further advantage was obtained in this fight, as at Mobile, from this arrangement of the vessels in pairs, which will be mentioned at the time of its occurrence. The seventh ship at Port Hudson, the Mississippi, was a very large side-wheel steamer. On account of the inconvenience presented by the guards of her wheel-houses, she was chosen as the odd one to whom no consort was assigned.



Going up the river toward Port Hudson the course is nearly north; then a bend is reached of over ninety degrees, so that after making the turn the course for some distance is west-southwest. The town is on the east side, just below the bend. From it the batteries extended a mile and a half down the river, upon bluffs from eighty to a hundred feet high. Between the two reaches, and opposite to the town, is a low, narrow point, from which a very dangerous shoal makes out. The channel runs close to the east bank.

The squadron remained at its anchorage above Profit's Island but a few hours, waiting for the cover of night. Shortly before 10 P. M. it got under way, ranged as follows: Hartford, Richmond, Monongahela, each with her consort lashed alongside, the Mississippi bringing up the rear. Just as they were fairly starting a steamer was seen approaching from down the river, flaring lights and making the loud puffing of the high-pressure engines. The flag-ship slowed down, and the new arrival came alongside with a message from the general that the army was then encamped about five miles in rear of the Port Hudson batteries. Irritated by a delay, which served only to attract the enemy's attention and to assure himself that no diversion was to be expected from the army, the admiral was heard to mutter: "He had as well be in New Orleans or at Baton Rouge for all the good he is doing us." At the same moment the east bank of the river was lit up, and on the opposite point huge bonfires kindled to illumine the scene—a wise precaution, the neglect of which by the enemy had much favored the fleet in the passage of the lower forts.

The ships now moved on steadily, but very slowly, owing to the force of the current. At 11 P. M. the Hartford had already passed the lower batteries, when the enemy threw up rockets and opened fire. This was returned not only by the advancing ships, but also by the ironclad Essex and the mortar schooners, which had been stationed to cover the passage. The night was calm and damp, and the cannonade soon raised a dense smoke which settled heavily upon the water, covering the ships from sight, but embarrassing their movements far more than it disconcerted the aim of their opponents. The flag-ship, being in the advance, drew somewhat ahead of the smoke, although even she had from time to time to stop firing to enable the pilot to see. Her movements were also facilitated by placing the pilot in the mizzen-top, with a speaking tube to communicate with the deck, a precaution to which the admiral largely attributed her safety; but the vessels in the rear found it impossible to see, and groped blindly, feeling their way after their leader. Had the course to be traversed been a straight line, the difficulty would have been much less; but to make so sharp a turn as awaited them at the bend was no easy feat under the prevailing obscurity. As the Hartford attempted it the downward current caught her on the port bow, swung her head round toward the batteries, and nearly threw her on shore, her stem touching for a moment. The combined powers of her own engine and that of the Albatross, her consort, were then brought into play as an oarsman uses the oars to turn his boat, pulling one and backing the other; that of the Albatross was backed, while that of the Hartford went ahead strong. In this way their heads were pointed up stream and they went through clear; but they were the only ones who effected the passage.

The Richmond, which followed next, had reached the bend and was about to turn when a plunging shot upset both safety valves, allowing so much steam to escape that the engines could not be efficiently worked. Thinking that the Genesee, her companion, could not alone pull the two vessels by, the captain of the Richmond turned and carried them both down stream. The Monongahela, third in the line, ran on the shoal opposite to the town with so much violence that the gunboat Kineo, alongside of her, tore loose from the fastenings. The Monongahela remained aground for twenty-five minutes, when the Kineo succeeded in getting her off. She then attempted again to run the batteries, but when near the turn a crank-pin became heated and the engines stopped. Being now unmanageable, she drifted down stream and out of action, having lost six killed and twenty-one wounded. The Mississippi also struck on the shoal, close to the bend, when she was going very fast, and defied every effort to get her off. After working for thirty-five minutes, finding that the other ships had passed off the scene leaving her unsupported, while three batteries had her range and were hulling her constantly, the commanding officer ordered her to be set on fire. The three boats that alone were left capable of floating were used to land the crew on the west bank; the sick and wounded being first taken, the captain and first lieutenant leaving the ship last. She remained aground and in flames until three in the morning, when she floated and drifted down stream, fortunately going clear of the vessels below. At half-past five she blew up. Out of a ship's company of two hundred and ninety-seven, sixty-four were found missing, of whom twenty-five were believed to be killed.

In his dispatch to the Navy Department, written the second day after this affair, the admiral lamented that he had again to report disaster to a part of his command. A disaster indeed it was, but not of the kind which he had lately had to communicate, and to which the word "again" seems to refer; for there was no discredit attending it. The stern resolution with which the Hartford herself was handled, and the steadiness with which she and her companion were wrenched out of the very jaws of destruction, offer a consummate example of professional conduct; while the fate of the Mississippi, deplorable as the loss of so fine a vessel was, gave rise to a display of that coolness and efficiency in the face of imminent danger which illustrate the annals of a navy as nobly as do the most successful deeds of heroism.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the failure to pass the batteries, by nearly three fourths of the force which the admiral had thought necessary to take with him, constituted a very serious check to the operations he had projected. From Port Hudson to Vicksburg is over two hundred miles; and while the two ships he still had were sufficient to blockade the mouth of the Red River—the chief line by which supplies reached the enemy—they could not maintain over the entire district the watchfulness necessary wholly to intercept communication between the two shores. Neither could they for the briefest period abandon their station at the river's mouth, without affording an opportunity to the enemy; who was rendered vigilant by urgent necessities which forced him to seize every opening for the passage of stores. From the repulse of five out of the seven ships detailed for the control of the river, it resulted that the enemy's communications, on a line absolutely vital to him, and consequently of supreme strategic importance, were impeded only, not broken off. It becomes, therefore, of interest to inquire whether this failure can be attributed to any oversight or mistake in the arrangements made for forcing the passage—in the tactical dispositions, to use the technical phrase. In this, as in every case, those dispositions should be conformed to the object to be attained and to the obstacles which must be overcome.

The purpose which the admiral had in view was clearly stated in the general order issued to his captains: "The captains will bear in mind that the object is to run the batteries at the least possible damage to our ships, and thereby secure an efficient force above, for the purpose of rendering such assistance as may be required of us to the army at Vicksburg, or, if not required there, to our army at Baton Rouge." Such was the object, and the obstacles to its accomplishment were twofold, viz., those arising from the difficulties of the navigation, and those due to the preparations of the enemy. To overcome them, it was necessary to provide a sufficient force, and to dispose that force in the manner best calculated to insure the passage, as well as to entail the least exposure. Exposure is measured by three principal elements—the size and character of the target offered, the length of time under fire, and the power of the enemy's guns; and the last, again, depends not merely upon the number and size of the guns, but also upon the fire with which they are met. In this same general order Farragut enunciated, in terse and vigorous terms, a leading principle in warfare, which there is now a tendency to undervalue, in the struggle to multiply gun-shields and other defensive contrivances. It is with no wish to disparage defensive preparations, nor to ignore that ships must be able to bear as well as to give hard knocks, that this phrase of Farragut's, embodying the experience of war in all ages and the practice of all great captains, is here recalled, "The best protection against the enemy's fire is a well-directed fire from our own guns."

The disposition adopted for the squadron was chiefly a development of this simple principle, combined with an attempt to form the ships in such an order as should offer the least favorable target to the enemy. A double column of ships, if it presents to the enemy a battery formidable enough to subdue his fire, in whole or in part, shows a smaller target than the same number disposed in a single column; because the latter order will be twice as long in passing, with no greater display of gun-power at a particular point. The closer the two columns are together, the less chance there is that a shot flying over the nearer ship will strike one abreast her; therefore, when the two are lashed side by side this risk is least, and at the same time the near ship protects the off one from the projectile that strikes herself. These remarks would apply, in degree, if all the ships of the squadron had had powerful batteries; the limitation being only that enough guns must be in the near or fighting column to support each other, and to prevent several of the enemy's batteries being concentrated on a single ship—a contingency dependent upon the length of the line of hostile guns to be passed. But when, as at Port Hudson, several of the vessels are of feeble gun-power, so that their presence in the fighting column would not re-enforce its fire to an extent at all proportionate to the risk to themselves, the arrangement there adopted is doubly efficacious.

The dispositions to meet and overcome the difficulties imposed by the enemy's guns amounted, therefore, to concentrating upon them the batteries of the heavy ships, supporting each other, and at the same time covering the passage of a second column of gunboats, which was placed in the most favorable position for escaping injury. In principle the plan was the same as at New Orleans—the heavy ships fought while the light were to slip by; but in application, the circumstances at the lower forts would not allow one battery to be masked as at Port Hudson, because there were enemy's works on both sides. For meeting the difficulties of the navigation on this occasion, Farragut seems not to have been pleased with the arrangement adopted. "With the exception of the assistance they might have rendered the ships, if disabled, they were a great disadvantage," he wrote. The exception, however, is weighty; and, taken in connection with his subsequent use of the same order at Mobile, it may be presumed the sentence quoted was written under the momentary recollection of some inconvenience attending this passage. Certainly, with single-screw vessels, as were all his fleet, it was an inestimable advantage, in intricate navigation or in close quarters, to have the help of a second screw working in opposition to the first, to throw the ship round at a critical instant. In the supreme moment of his military life, at Mobile, he had reason to appreciate this advantage, which he there, as here, most intelligently used.

Thus analyzed, there is found no ground for adverse criticism in the tactical dispositions made by Farragut on this memorable occasion. The strong points of his force were utilized and properly combined for mutual support, and for the covering of the weaker elements, which received all the protection possible to give them. Minor matters of detail were well thought out, such as the assignment to the more powerful ship of the weaker gunboat, and the position in which the small vessels were to be secured alongside. The motto that "the best protection against the enemy's fire is a well-directed fire by our own guns" was in itself an epitome of the art of war; and in pursuance of it the fires of the mortar schooners and of the Essex were carefully combined by the admiral with that of the squadron. Commander Caldwell, of the Essex, an exceedingly cool and intelligent officer, reported that "the effect of the mortar fire (two hundred bombs being thrown in one hundred and fifty minutes, from eleven to half-past one) seemed to be to paralyze the efforts of the enemy at the lower batteries; and we observed that their fire was quite feeble compared to that of the upper batteries." Nor had the admiral fallen into the mistake of many general officers, in trusting too lightly to the comprehension of his orders by his subordinates. Appreciating at once the high importance of the object he sought to compass, and the very serious difficulties arising from the enemy's position at Port Hudson and the character of the navigation, he had personally inspected the ships of his command the day before the action, and satisfied himself that the proper arrangements had been made for battle. His general order had already been given to each commanding officer, and he adds: "We conversed freely as to the arrangements, and I found that all my instructions were well understood and, I believe, concurred in by all. After a free interchange of opinions on the subject, every commander arranged his ship in accordance with his own ideas."

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,[U] 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.

[Footnote U: The full text of this order was as follows. It committed the department to nothing.

"NAVY DEPARTMENT, October 2. 1862.

"SIR: While the Mississippi River continues to be blockaded at Vicksburg, and until you learn from Commander D. D. Porter, who will be in command of the Mississippi squadron, that he has, in conjunction with the army, opened the river, it will be necessary for you to guard the lower part of that river, especially where it is joined by the Red River, the source of many of the supplies of the enemy. I am respectfully, etc.,

"GIDEON WELLES. "Secretary of the Navy."

That five months elapsed between the date of this order and Farragut's action, without anything more definite, shows clearly that the department took no responsibility. On the other hand, it is right to say that it showed a generous appreciation of the effort, and did not complain about the losses.]

"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."