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 manoeuvre, 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 a 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.[V] 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.

[Footnote V: Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, vol. i, p. 461.]

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.

It next became the task of the Union forces to hold firmly, by adequate defensive measures, the line they had gained; while the great mass of troops heretofore employed along the Mississippi in offensive operations were transferred farther east, to drive yet another column through a second natural line of cleavage from Nashville, through Georgia, to the Gulf or to the Atlantic seaboard. How this new work was performed under the successive leadership of Rosecrans, Grant, and Sherman, does not fall within the scope of the present work. Although the light steamers of the Mississippi squadron did good and often important service in this distant inland region, the river work of Farragut's heavy sea-going ships was now over. In furtherance of the great object of opening the Mississippi, they had left their native element, and, braving alike a treacherous navigation and hostile batteries, had penetrated deep into the vitals of the Confederacy. This great achievement wrought, they turned their prows again seaward. The formal transfer to Admiral Porter of the command over the whole Mississippi and its tributaries, above New Orleans, signalized the fact that Farragut's sphere of action was to be thenceforth on the coast; for New Orleans, though over a hundred miles from the mouth of a tideless river, whose waters flow ever downward to the sea, was nevertheless substantially a sea-coast city.

As the opening of the Mississippi was the more important of the two objects embraced in Farragut's orders, so did it also offer him the ampler field for the display of those highest qualities of a general officer which he abundantly possessed. The faculty of seizing upon the really decisive points of a situation, of correctly appreciating the conditions of the problem before him, of discerning whether the proper moment for action was yet distant or had already arrived, and of moving with celerity and adequate dispositions when the time did come—all these distinctive gifts of the natural commander-in-chief had been called into play, by the difficult questions arising in connection with the stupendous work of breaking the shackles by which the Confederates held the Mississippi chained. The task that still remained before him, the closing of the Confederate seaports within the limits of his command, though arduous and wearisome, did not make the same demand upon these more intellectual qualities. The sphere was more contracted, more isolated. It had fewer relations to the great military operations going on elsewhere, and, being in itself less complex, afforded less interest to the strategist. It involved, therefore, less of the work of the military leader which was so congenial to his aptitudes, and more of that of the administrator, to him naturally distasteful.

Nevertheless, as the complete fulfilment of his orders necessitated the reduction of a fortified seaport, he found in this undertaking the opportunity for showing a degree of resolution and presence of mind which was certainly not exceeded—perhaps not even equaled—in his previous career. At Mobile it was the tactician, the man of instant perception and ready action, rather than he of clear insight and careful planning, that is most conspicuous. On the same occasion, with actual disaster incurred and imminent confusion threatening his fleet, combined with a resistance sturdier than any he had yet encountered, the admiral's firmness and tenacity rose equal to the highest demand ever made upon them. In the lofty courage and stern determination which plucked victory out of the very jaws of defeat, the battle of Mobile Bay was to the career of Farragut what the battle of Copenhagen was to that of Nelson. Perhaps we may even say, borrowing the words of an eloquent French writer upon the latter event, the battle of Mobile will always be in the eyes of seamen Farragut's surest claim to glory.[W]

[Footnote W: "The campaign of the Baltic will always be in the eyes of seamen Nelson's fairest claim to glory. He alone was capable of displaying such boldness and such perseverance; he alone could face the immense difficulties of that enterprise and triumph over them."—Jurien de la Graviere, Guerres Maritimes.]

Up to the time of Farragut's departure for the North, in August, 1863, the blockade of the Gulf sea-coast within the limits of his command, though technically effective, had for the most part only been enforced by the usual method of cruising or anchoring off the entrances of the ports. Such a watch, however, is a very imperfect substitute for the iron yoke that is imposed by holding all the principal harbors, the gateways for communication with the outer world. This was clearly enough realized; and the purpose of Farragut, as of his Government, had been so to occupy the ports within his district. At one time, in December, 1862, he was able to say exultingly that he did so hold the whole coast, except Mobile; but the disasters at Galveston and Sabine Pass quickly intervened, and those ports remained thenceforth in the hands of the enemy. On the Texas coast, however, blockade-running properly so called—the entrance, that is, of blockaded Confederate harbors—was a small matter compared with the flourishing contraband trade carried on through the Mexican port Matamoras and across the Rio Grande. When Farragut's lieutenant, Commodore Henry H. Bell, visited this remote and ordinarily deserted spot in May, 1863, he counted sixty-eight sails at anchor in the offing and a forest of smaller craft inside the river, some of which were occupied in loading and unloading the outside shipping; to such proportions had grown the trade of a town which neither possessed a harbor nor a back country capable of sustaining such a traffic. Under proper precautions by the parties engaged, this, though clearly hostile, was difficult to touch; but it also became of comparatively little importance when the Mississippi fell.

Not so with Mobile. As port after port was taken, as the lines of the general blockade drew closer and closer, the needs of the Confederacy for the approaching death-struggle grew more and more crying, and the practicable harbors still in their hands became proportionately valuable and the scenes of increasing activity. After the fall of New Orleans and the evacuation of Pensacola, in the spring of 1862, Mobile was by far the best port on the Gulf coast left to the Confederates. Though admitting a less draught of water than the neighboring harbor of Pensacola, it enjoyed the advantage over it of excellent water communications with the interior; two large rivers with extensive tributary systems emptying into its bay. Thanks to this circumstance, it had become a place of very considerable trade, ranking next to New Orleans in the Gulf; and its growing commerce, in turn, reacted upon the communications by promoting the development of its railroad system. The region of which Mobile was the natural port did not depend for its importance only upon agricultural products; under somewhat favorable conditions it had developed some manufacturing interests in which the Southern States were generally very deficient, and which afterward found active employment in the construction of the Tennessee, the most formidable ironclad vessel built by the Confederates.

For all these reasons the tenure of Mobile became a matter of serious consequence to the enemy; and, as Farragut had from the first foreseen, they made active use of the respite afforded them by the unfortunate obstinacy of the Navy Department in refusing him permission to attack after New Orleans fell. The enterprise then was by no means as difficult as the passage of the Mississippi forts just effected; and once captured, the holding of the harbor would require only the small number of troops necessary to garrison the powerful masonry fort which commanded the main ship channel, supported by a naval force much less numerous than that required to blockade outside. The undertaking was therefore not open to the objection of unduly exposing the troops and ships placed in unfortified or poorly fortified harbors, which received such a sad illustration at Galveston; but it was dropped, owing, first, to the preoccupation of the Government with its expectations of immediately reducing the Mississippi, and afterward to the fear of losing ships which at that time could not be replaced. Hesitation to risk their ships and to take decisive action when seasonable opportunity offers, is the penalty paid by nations which practise undue economy in their preparations for war. When at last it became urgent to capture Mobile before the powerful ironclad then building was completed, the preparations of the defense were so far advanced that ironclad vessels were needed for the attack; and before these could be, or at least before they were, supplied, the Tennessee, which by rapid action might have been forestalled like the similar vessel at New Orleans, was ready for battle. Had she been used with greater wisdom by those who directed her movements, she might have added very seriously to the embarrassment of the United States admiral.

When Farragut, after an absence of nearly six months, returned to his station in January, 1864, it was with the expectation of a speedy attack upon Mobile. On his way to New Orleans he stopped off the bar, and on the 20th of January made a reconnaissance with a couple of gunboats, approaching to a little more than three miles from the forts commanding the entrance. He then reported to the department that he was satisfied that, if he had one ironclad, he could destroy the whole of the enemy's force in the bay, and then reduce the forts at leisure with the co-operation of about five thousand troops. "But without ironclads," he added, "we should not be able to fight the enemy's vessels of that class with much prospect of success, as the latter would lie on the flats, where our ships could not get at them. By reference to the chart you will see how small a space there is for the ships to manoeuvre. Wooden vessels can do nothing with the ironclads, unless by getting within one or two hundred yards, so as to ram them or pour in a broadside." He repeats the information given by a refugee, that the ironclad Nashville would not be ready before March, and that the Confederate admiral announced that when she was he would raise the blockade. "It is depressing," he adds, "to see how easily false reports circulate, and in what a state of alarm the community is kept by the most absurd rumors. If the Department could get one or two ironclads here, it would put an end to this state of things and restore confidence to the people of the ports now in our possession. I feel no apprehension about Buchanan's raising the blockade; but, with such a force as he has in the bay, it would be unwise to take in our wooden vessels without the means of fighting the enemy on an equal footing." Having made this reconnaissance, he went on to New Orleans, arriving there January 22d.

It appears, therefore, that, regarded as a naval question, Farragut considered the time had gone by for an attempt to run the forts of Mobile Bay, and that it would not return until some ironclads were furnished him by the Department. The capture of the forts he at no time expected, except by the same means as he had looked to for the reduction of those in the Mississippi—that is, by a combined military and naval operation. In both cases the navy was to plant itself across the enemy's communications, which it could do by running the gantlet of his guns. It then remained for the land forces either to complete the investment and await their fall by the slow process of famine, or to proceed with a regular siege covered by the fleet. Without the protection of the ships in the bay, the army would be continually harassed by the light gunboats of the enemy, and very possibly exposed to attack by superior force. Without the troops, the presence of the ships inside would be powerless to compel the surrender of the works, or to prevent their receiving some supplies. But in the two years that had very nearly elapsed since Farragut, if permitted his own wish, would have attacked, the strengthening of the works and the introduction of the ironclads had materially altered the question. He was, it is true, misinformed as to the readiness of the latter. The vessels that were dignified by that name when he first returned to his station, took no part in the defense, either of the bay or, later, of the city. He was deceived, probably, from the fact that the Confederates themselves were deceived, with the exception of a few who had more intimate knowledge of their real value; and consequently the reports that were brought off agreed in giving them a character which they did not deserve.

An attack upon Mobile had been a cherished project with General Grant after the fall of Vicksburg. It was to that—and not to the unfortunate Red River expedition of 1864—that he would have devoted Banks's army in the Southwest; moving it, of course, in concert with, so as to support and be supported by, the other great operations which took place that year—Sherman's advance upon Atlanta and his own against Richmond. It was to Mobile, and not to Savannah, that he first looked as the point toward which Sherman would act after the capture of Atlanta; the line from Atlanta to Mobile would be that along which, by the control of the intervening railroad systems, the Confederacy would again be cleft in twain, as by the subjugation of the Mississippi. For this reason chiefly he had, while still only commander of the Army of the Tennessee, and before he succeeded to the lieutenant-generalship and the command of all the armies, strenuously opposed the Red River expedition; which he looked upon as an ex-centric movement, tending rather to keep alive the war across the Mississippi, which would fade if left alone, and likely to result in the troops engaged not getting back in time or in condition to act against Mobile.

As Grant feared, so it happened. The expedition being already organized and on the point of starting when he became commander-in-chief, he allowed it to proceed; but it ended in disaster, and was the cause of forty thousand good troops being unavailable for the decisive operations which began two months later. Not until the end of July could a force be spared even for the minor task of reducing the Mobile forts; and until then Farragut had to wait in order to attack to any purpose. By the time the army in the Southwest, in the command of which General Canby relieved Banks on the 20th of May, was again ready to move, Sherman had taken Atlanta, Hood had fallen upon his communications with Chattanooga, and the famous march to the sea had been determined. Farragut's battle in Mobile Bay therefore did not prove to be, as Grant had hoped, and as his passage of the Mississippi forts had been, a step in a series of grand military operations, by which the United States forces should gain control of a line vital to the Confederacy, and again divide it into two fragments. It remained an isolated achievement, though one of great importance, converting Mobile from a maritime to an inland city, putting a stop to all serious blockade-running in the Gulf, and crushing finally the enemy's ill-founded hopes of an offensive movement by ironclads there equipped.

[Illustration: Entrance of Rear-Admiral Farragut's Fleet into Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864.

REFERENCE

1. Tecumseh. 2. Manhattan. 3. Winnebago. 4. Chickasaw. 5. Brooklyn. 6. Octorora. 7. Hartford, Flag-ship. 8. Metacomet. 9. Richmond. 10. Port Royal. 11. Lackawanna. 12. Seminole. 13. Admiral's barge Loyall. 14. Monongahela. 15. Kennebec. 16. Ossipee. 17. Itasca. 18. Oneida. 19. Galena. ——— Course of chasing vessels. ...... Course of chased vessels.

EXPLANATION OF DIAGRAM FROM THE FIVE STANDPOINTS OF THE MOBILE FIGHT.

No. 1. Ships lashed together and running in from sea and the monitors running out of Monitor Bay to take their station inside or eastward of the line.

No. 2. Running up the channel in line of battle, and engaging Fort Morgan, leading ship Brooklyn encounters what she supposes to be torpedoes; monitor Tecumseh is struck by one and sinks; Brooklyn backs astern, causing confusion; Flag-ship takes the lead and passes up and engages the ram Tennessee and the gunboats of the enemy.

No. 3. Running fight with the enemy's fleet, which ends in the capture of one, destruction of another, and the ram and one gunboat take shelter again under Fort Morgan.

No. 4. Fleet pass up and are in the act of anchoring when the ram Tennessee is seen coming out to attack them.

No. 5. Shows the manner the attack was made by the fleet upon the ram by ramming her in succession and keeping up a constant fire upon her at the same time.

The points of contact are shown by the sketch in the northeast corner of the plate.

D. G. Farragut. Washington, D. C. March 1, 1865.

De Krafft's flotilla bombarding Fort Powell.]

The city of Mobile is itself some thirty miles from the Gulf, near the head of a broad but generally shallow bay which bears the same name. The principal entrance from the Gulf is between Mobile Point—a long, narrow, sandy beach which projects from the east side of the bay—and Dauphin Island, one of a chain which runs parallel to the coast of Mississippi and encloses Mississippi Sound. At the end of Mobile Point stands Fort Morgan, the principal defense of the bay, for the main ship channel passes close under its guns. At the eastern end of Dauphin Island stood a much smaller work, called Fort Gaines. Between this and Fort Morgan the distance is nearly three miles; but a bank of hard sand making out from the island prevents vessels of any considerable size approaching it nearer than two miles. Between Dauphin Island and the mainland there are some shoal channels, by which vessels of very light draft can pass from Mississippi Sound into the bay. These were not practicable for the fighting vessels of Farragut's fleet; but a small earthwork known as Fort Powell had been thrown up to command the deepest of them, called Grant's Pass.

The sand bank off Dauphin Island extends south as well as east, reaching between four and five miles from the entrance. A similar shoal stretches out to the southward from Mobile Point. Between the two lies the main ship channel, varying in width from seven hundred and fifty yards, three miles outside, to two thousand, or about a sea mile, abreast Fort Morgan. Nearly twenty-one feet can be carried over the bar; and after passing Fort Morgan the channel spreads, forming a hole or pocket of irregular contour, about four miles deep by two wide, in which the depth is from twenty to twenty-four feet. Beyond this hole, on either side the bay and toward the city, the water shoals gradually but considerably, and the heavier of Farragut's ships could not act outside of its limits. The Confederate ironclad Tennessee, on the contrary, drawing but fourteen feet, had a more extensive field of operations open to her, and, from the gradual diminution of the soundings, was able to take her position at a distance where the most formidable of her opponents could neither follow her nor penetrate her sides with their shot.

Between the city and the lower bay there were extensive flats, over which not even the fourteen feet of the Tennessee could be taken; and these in one part, called Dog River Bar, shoaled to as little as nine feet. To bring the Tennessee into action for the defense of the entrance and of the lower bay, it was necessary to carry her across these flats—an undertaking requiring both time and mechanical appliances, neither of which would be available if an enemy were inside to molest the operations. As the Tennessee was distinctly the most formidable element in the dangers Farragut had to encounter, and as the character of the soundings gave her a field of action peculiarly suited to utilize her especial powers, which consisted in the strength of her sides and the long range of her heavy rifled guns, it was particularly desirable to anticipate her crossing the upper bar by the fleet itself crossing the lower. That done, the Tennessee was reduced to impotence. It was not done, for two reasons. First, the Navy Department did not send the ironclads which Farragut demanded; and second, the army in the Southwest, having wasted its strength in a divergent operation, was unable to supply the force necessary to reduce Fort Morgan. That the delay was not productive of more serious consequences was due to the impatience or recklessness of the Confederate admiral, and to the energy with which Farragut seized the opportunity afforded by his mistake.

Six months passed before the moment for decisive action arrived. Though devoid of military interest, they were far from being months of idleness or enjoyment. The administrative duties of so large a command drew heavily upon the time and energies of the admiral, and, as has been said, they were not congenial to him. When the Tennessee crossed Dog River Bar, which she did on the 18th of May, Farragut felt that he must be on the spot, in case she attempted to execute her threat of coming out to break up the blockade; but up to that time he was moving actively from point to point of his command, between New Orleans on the one side, and Pensacola, now become his principal base, on the other. From time to time he was off Mobile, and for more than two months preceding the battle of the Bay he lay off the port in all the dreary monotony of blockade service. The clerical labor attaching to the large force and numerous interests entrusted to him was immense. Every mail brought him, of course, numerous communications from the Department. "I received your letter last evening," he writes to a member of his family, "but at the same time received so many from the Department that my eyes were used up before I came to yours, so that mine to you will be short and badly written." A very large part of this correspondence consisted of letters from United States consuls abroad, forwarded through the State Department, giving particulars of vessels fitting or loading for the Confederacy or to break the blockade. "Nearly all my clerical force is broken down," he writes on another occasion. "The fact is, I never saw so much writing; and yet Drayton, who does as much as any of them, says it is all necessary. So I tell them to go on. I do not mind signing my name. Although I write all my own letters, some one has to copy them. My fleet is so large now that it keeps us all at work the whole time."

But while he spoke thus lightly of his own share in these labors, the confinement, the necessary attention to and study of larger details, even while he intrusted the minor to others, and the unavoidable anxieties of a man who had so many important irons in the fire, and at the same time was approaching his sixty-fourth year, told upon him. To this he bore witness when, after the capture of the Mobile forts, the Department desired him to take command of the North Atlantic fleet, with a view to the reduction of Wilmington, North Carolina. "They must think I am made of iron," he wrote home. "I wrote the Secretary a long letter, telling him that my health was not such as to justify my going to a new station to commence new organizations; that I must have rest for my mind and exercise for my body; that I had been down here within two months of five years, out of six, and recently six months on constant blockade off this port, and my mind on the stretch all the time; and now to commence a blockade again on the Atlantic coast! Why, even the routine of duty for a fleet of eighty sail of vessels works us all to death; and but that I have the most industrious fleet-captain and secretary, it would never be half done. It is difficult to keep things straight." "I know," he writes on another occasion, "that few men could have gone through what I have in the last three years, and no one ever will know except yourself perhaps.... What the fight was to my poor brains, neither you nor any one else will ever be able to comprehend. Six months constantly watching day and night for an enemy; to know him to be as brave, as skilful, and as determined as myself; who was pledged to his Government and the South to drive me away and raise the blockade, and free the Mississippi from our rule. While I was equally pledged to my Government that I would capture or destroy the rebel."

Besides his labors and the official anxieties due to his individual command, he again, as in 1862, felt deeply the misfortunes with which the general campaign of 1864 opened, and especially in the Southwest. There was continually present to the minds of the leaders of the United States forces during the war the apprehension that the constancy of the people might fail; that doubtful issues might lead to a depression that would cause the abandonment of the contest, in which success was nevertheless assured to perseverance and vigor. Grant's memoirs bear continual testimony to the statesmanlike regard he had, in planning his greater military operations, to this important factor in the war, the vacillation under uncertainty of that popular support upon which success depended. The temperament of Farragut reflected readily the ups and downs of the struggle, and was saddened by the weaknesses and inconsistencies of his own side, which he keenly appreciated. "I am depressed," he writes, "by the bad news from every direction. The enemy seem to be bending their whole soul and body to the war and whipping us in every direction. What a disgrace that, with their slender means, they should, after three years, contend with us from one end of the country to the other!... I get right sick, every now and then, at the bad news." "The victory of the Kearsarge over the Alabama," on a more auspicious occasion, "raised me up. I would sooner have fought that fight than any ever fought on the ocean"; and his exultation was the greater that the first lieutenant of the Kearsarge had been with him in the same capacity when the Hartford passed the Mississippi forts.

But, while thus sensitive to the vicissitudes of his country's fortunes, he did not readily entertain the thought of being himself defeated. "As to being prepared for defeat," he wrote before New Orleans, "I certainly am not. Any man who is prepared for defeat would be half defeated before he commenced. I hope for success; shall do all in my power to secure it, and trust to God for the rest." And again: "The officers say I don't believe anything. I certainly believe very little that comes in the shape of reports. They keep everybody stirred up. I mean to be whipped or to whip my enemy, and not to be scared to death." "I hope for the best results," he wrote a week before forcing the passage into Mobile Bay, "as I am always hopeful; put my shoulder to the wheel with my best judgment, and trust to God for the rest"; or, in more homely language: "Everything has a weak spot, and the first thing I try to do is to find out where it is, and pitch into it with the biggest shell or shot that I have, and repeat the dose until it operates." "The Confederates at Fort Morgan are making great preparations to receive us. That concerns me but little"—words used not in a spirit of mere light-heartedness, but because it was a condition he had from the first accepted, and over which he hoped to triumph; for he continues, "I know they will do all in their power to destroy us, and we will reciprocate the compliment. I hope to give them a fair fight if once I get inside. I expect nothing from them but that they will try to blow me up if they can."

Amid such cares and in such a spirit were spent the six months of monotonous outside blockade preceding the great victory that crowned his active career. The only relief to its weariness was a bombardment of Fort Powell, undertaken by the light-draft steamers of the squadron from Mississippi Sound in February, to create a diversion in favor of Sherman's raid from Vicksburg upon Meridian, which was then in progress. The boats could not get nearer to the work than four thousand yards, and even then were aground; so that no very serious effect was produced. A greater and more painful excitement was aroused by the misfortunes of the Red River expedition in April and May. Begun on unsound military principles, but designed politically to assert against French intrigues the claim of the United States to Texas, that ill-omened enterprise culminated in a retreat which well-nigh involved the Mississippi squadron in an overwhelming disaster. The Red River was unusually low for the season, and falling instead of rising. There was not, when the army retired, water enough to enable the gun-boats which had ascended the river to repass the rapids at Alexandria. The army could delay but for a limited time, at the end of which, if the boats had not passed, they must be left to their fate. Farragut, who was in New Orleans when the news arrived, wrote bitterly about the blunders made, and was sorely distressed for the issue to the navy. "I have no spirit to write," he says. "I have had such long letters from Porter and Banks, and find things so bad with them that I don't know how to help them. I am afraid Porter, with all his energy, will lose some of his finest vessels. I have just sent him some boats to help him." The boats, however, were saved by the skill and energy of Colonel Joseph Bailey, the chief-of-engineers in Franklin's corps of Banks's army; by whom was thrown across the river a dam, which raised the water on the shoals sufficiently for the boats to cross.

A more pleasant incident occurred to vary the sameness of the blockade days, in the presentation to the admiral, by the Union League Club of New York, of a very handsome sword, with scabbard of massive gold and silver, the hilt set in brilliants. The gift was accompanied by a letter expressive of the givers' appreciation of the brilliant services rendered to the nation, and was a grateful reminder to Farragut, then watching before Mobile for his last grapple with the enemy in his front, that his fellow-countrymen in their homes were not wanting in recognition of the dangers he had incurred, nor of those he was still facing on their behalf.

The time was now close at hand when the weary and anxious waiting, which the admiral afterward so feelingly described, was to be exchanged for the more vigorous action he had so long desired. The co-operation of a division from Canby's army was assured toward the end of July; and at the same time the long-promised, long-delayed monitor ironclads began to arrive. As the want of these and the presence of the enemy's ironclads had been the reasons which, in Farragut's opinion, had made necessary the postponement of the purely naval part of the combined operation, a short description of the vessels which formed so potent an element in his calculations will not be out of place.

The idea of the monitor type of ironclads, which was then the prevalent one in the United States Navy, was brought by John Ericsson from his home in Sweden, where it had been suggested to him by the sight of the rafts with a house upon them crossing the waters with which he was familiar. In its conception, the monitor was simply a round fort, heavily plated with iron, resting upon a raft nearly flush with the water, and provided with the motive power of steam. The forts, or turrets, as they are commonly called, might be one or more in number; and each carried usually two heavy guns, standing side by side and pointing in exactly the same direction, so that if discharged together the projectiles would follow parallel courses. Within the turret the guns could be turned neither to the right nor to the left; if such a change of aim were wished, the turret itself was revolved by steam machinery provided for the purpose. When loading, the port through which the gun was fired was turned away from the enemy; so that if a shot happened to strike at that time it fell on the solid armor. Above the gun-turret there was a second of much smaller diameter, which did not revolve. It was also heavily plated and designed to shelter the commanding officer and those charged with the steering of the ship. So much inconvenience was, however, experienced from smoke and from concussion when these steering turrets were struck, and their dimensions were so contracted, that many captains preferred to remain outside, where they could see better, their orders being transmitted to the helmsmen through the sight-holes pierced in the armor. Of these ironclads, four accompanied Farragut in his attack upon Mobile Bay. Two, the Tecumseh and Manhattan, came from the Atlantic coast, and were sea-going monitors. They had each but one turret, in which they carried two fifteen-inch guns, the heaviest then in use afloat. The other two were river monitors, built at St. Louis for service in the Mississippi. They were consequently of light draught, so much so that to obtain the necessary motive power they each had four screw propellers of small diameter, and they carried four eleven-inch guns in two turrets. Their names were the Winnebago and the Chickasaw. The armor of the two single-turreted monitors was ten inches thick, and that of the river monitors eight and a half inches.

The Tennessee, to which these were to be opposed, was a vessel of different type, and one to which the few ironclads built by the Confederates for the most part conformed—called commonly the broadside ironclad, because the guns, like those of ships-of-war generally, were disposed chiefly along the sides. Her hull was built at Selma, on the Alabama River, and thence towed to Mobile to be plated; it being desirable to take her down the river while as light as possible. She was two hundred and nine feet long and forty-eight feet wide, drawing, as has been said, fourteen feet when loaded. Upon her deck, midway between the bow and the stern, was a house seventy-nine feet long, whose sides and ends sloped at an angle of thirty-four degrees and were covered with iron plating, six inches thick on the forward end and five inches thick on the other end and the sides. With the inclination given, a cannon ball striking would be likely to be turned upward by the iron surface, instead of penetrating. The sloping sides of the house were carried down beyond the point where they met those of the vessel, until two feet below the water. There they turned and struck in at the same angle toward the hull, which they again met six or seven feet under water. Thus was formed all round the ship a knuckle, which, being filled-in solid and covered with iron, was a very perfect protection against any but the most powerful ram. The Tennessee herself was fitted with a beak and intended to ram, but, owing to the slender resources of the Confederacy, her engines were too weak to be effective for that purpose. She could only steam six knots. Her battery, however, was well selected and powerful. She carried on each side two six-inch rifles, and at each end one seven-inch rifle—six guns in all. There were, besides the Tennessee, three wooden gunboats, and Farragut was informed that there were also four ironclads; but this, as regards the lower bay at least, was a mistake.

It will be seen from this account, and from the description before given of Mobile Bay, that the advantages of the Tennessee were her great protective strength, a draught which enabled her to choose her own position relatively to the heaviest of the enemy's ships, and the superior range and penetrative power of her guns, being rifles; for while there were cannon of this type in the United States fleet, the great majority of them were smooth bores. The ironclads opposed to her had only smooth-bore guns, incapable of penetrating her side, and therefore only able to reduce her by a continued pounding, which might shake her frame to pieces. The chief defects of the Tennessee as a harbor-defense ship, for which she was mainly intended, were her very inferior speed, and the fact that, by an oversight, her steering chains were left exposed to the enemy's shot. This combination of strong and weak points constituted her tactical qualities, which should have determined the use made of her in the impending battle.

Although the ironclads were, as Farragut esteemed them, the controlling factors in the defense and attack, the Tennessee was by no means the only very formidable obstacle in the way of his success. Except the ironclads, the fleet he carried into Mobile Bay was not substantially stronger than that with which he fought his way up the Mississippi; but since that time the enemy had done much to strengthen the works which he now had to encounter. The number of heavy guns in Fort Morgan bearing upon the channel was thirty-eight. In Fort Jackson, excluding the obsolete caliber of twenty-four pounders, there were twenty-seven, and in St. Philip twenty-one—total, forty-eight; but in caliber and efficiency those of Morgan were distinctly superior to those of the river forts, and it may be considered an advantage that the power was here concentrated in a single work under a single hand. The gunners of Fort Morgan, moreover, had not been exposed to the exhausting harassment of a most efficient bombardment, extending over the six days prior to the final demand upon their energies. They came fresh to their work, and suffered during its continuance from no distraction except that caused by the fire of the fleet itself. While, therefore, Fort Gaines could not be considered to support Morgan by any deterrent or injurious influence upon the United States fleet, the latter work was by itself superior in offensive power to the two Mississippi forts.

To the general defense the Confederates had here brought two other factors, one of a most important and as yet unknown power. As the sand bank extending eastward from Dauphin Island was to some extent passable by light gunboats, a line of piles was driven in the direction of Fort Morgan nearly to the edge of the channel. Where the piles stopped a triple line of torpedoes began, following the same general course, and ending only at a hundred yards from Fort Morgan, where a narrow opening was left for the passage of friendly vessels—blockade runners and others. Had the electrical appliances of the Confederacy been at that time more highly developed, this narrow gap would doubtless also have been filled with mines, whose explosion depended upon operators ashore. As it was, the torpedo system employed at Mobile, with some few possible exceptions, was solely mechanical; the explosion depended upon contact by the passing vessel with the mine. To insure this, the line was triple; those in the second and third rows not being in the alignment of the first, but so placed as to fill the interstices and make almost impracticable the avoidance of all three torpedoes belonging to the same group.

These arrangements were sufficiently well known to Farragut through information brought by refugees or deserters. They—the power of the works, the disposition of the torpedoes, the Tennessee and her companions—constituted the elements of the problem which he had to solve to get his fleet safely past the obstacles into the bay. Although not disposed to lay as much stress as others upon the torpedoes, which were then but an imperfectly developed weapon, prudence dictated to him the necessity of passing between them and the fort; and this was fortunately in accordance with the sound policy which dictates that wooden vessels engaging permanent works, less liable than themselves to penetration, should get as close as possible to the enemy, whose fire they may then beat down by the rapidity of their own. There were certain black buoys floating across the channel, between the piles and Fort Morgan, and it was understood that these marked the position of the torpedoes. The admiral's flag-lieutenant, Lieutenant (now Captain) John C. Watson, had examined these buoys in several nightly reconnaissances; but, although he had not been able to discover any of the mines, the assurances of their existence could not be disregarded. His examination doubtless had some effect upon the admiral's instant determination, in the unforeseen emergency that arose during the action, to pass over the spot where the hidden dangers were said to lie; but in the dispositions for battle the order was given for the fleet to pass eastward of the easternmost buoy, where no torpedoes would be found.

The closeness of this approach, however, and the fact that the line of the channel led in at right angles to the entrance, had the disadvantage of obstructing the fire of the broadside wooden vessels, in which the offensive strength of the fleet, outside the monitors, consisted. The guns of those ships, being disposed along the sides, were for the most part able to bear only upon an enemy abreast of them, with a small additional angle of train toward ahead or astern. It was not, therefore, until nearly up with the fort that these numerous cannon would come into play, and exercise that preponderating effect which had driven off the gunners at Forts St. Philip and Jackson. This inconvenience results from the construction of such ships, and can only be overcome by a movement of the helm causing the ship to diverge from her course; a resort which led a witty Frenchman to say that a ship-of-war so situated is like a shark, that can only bite by turning on its back. The remedy, however applicable under certain circumstances and in the case of a single ship, causes delay, and therefore is worse than the evil for a fleet advancing to the attack of forts, where the object must be to close as rapidly as possible. There are, however, on board such vessels a few guns, mounted forward and called chase guns, which, from the rounding of the bows, bear sooner than the others upon the enemy toward whom they are moving. To support these and concentrate from the earliest moment as effective a fire as possible upon the works, Farragut brought his ironclads inside of the wooden vessels, and abreast the four leaders of that column. The heavy guns of the monitors could fire all around the horizon, from right ahead to right astern; and the disposition had the additional great advantage that, in the critical passage inside the torpedo buoys, these all-important vessels would be on the safer side, the wooden ships interposing between them and the sunken dangers, which threatened an injury far more instantaneous and vital than any to be feared from the enemy's shot and shell.

The position of the ironclads being determined by these considerations, the arrangement of the wooden ships for the attack conformed to the admiral's principle, that the greatest security was to be found in concentrating upon the enemy the heaviest fire attainable from his own guns. As at Port Hudson, a large proportion of the fourteen vessels he purposed to take in with him were of the gunboat class, or a little above it. Resort was accordingly again had to the double column adopted there; the seven ships that had the most powerful batteries forming the right column to engage Fort Morgan. The lighter ones were distributed in the other column, and lashed each to one of the heavier ships, in an order probably designed, though it is not expressly so stated, to make the combined steam power of the several pairs as nearly equal as possible. Among the gunboats there were three that had side-wheel engines, the machinery of which is necessarily more above water, and so more exposed than that of a screw—a condition which, although their batteries were powerful for their tonnage, emphasized the necessity of sheltering them behind other ships during the furious few minutes of passing under the guns of the fort.

The sum of these various considerations thus resulted in the fleet advancing into action in a column of pairs, in which the heaviest ships led in the fighting column. To this the admiral was probably induced by the reflection that the first broadsides are half the battle, and the freshest attack of the enemy should be met by the most vigorous resistance on his own part; but it is open to doubt whether one of these powerful vessels would not have been better placed in the rear. Upon a resolute enemy, the effect of each ship is simply to drive him to cover while she passes, to resume his activity when relieved from the pressure of her fire. The case is not strictly similar to the advance of a column of troops upon a fortified position, where the head does the most of the fighting, and the rear mainly contributes inertia to the movement of the mass. It is at least open to argument that a fire progressively diminishing from van to rear is not, for the passage of permanent works, a disposition as good as a weight of battery somewhat more equally distributed, with, however, a decided preponderance in the van. The last of the ships in this column received a shot in the boiler, which entirely disabled her—an accident that may have been purely fortuitous, and to which any one of her predecessors was in a degree liable, but also possibly due to the greater activity of the enemy when no longer scourged by the more powerful batteries which preceded. She was saved from the more serious results of this disaster, and the squadron spared the necessity of rallying to her support, by the other admirable precautions dictated by Farragut's forethought.

Subjected thus to analysis, there seems much to praise and very little to criticise in the tactical dispositions made by the admiral on this momentous occasion. But the tactical dispositions, though most important, are not the only considerations; it is the part of the commander-in-chief to take advantage of any other circumstances that may make in his favor. Until the forts were passed the character of the bottom left Farragut no choice as to the direction of his attack. There was but one road to take, and the only other question was the order in which to arrange his ships. But there were two conditions not entirely within his control, yet sure to occur in time, which he considered too advantageous to be overlooked. He wanted a flood tide, which would help a crippled vessel past the works; and also a west wind, which would blow the smoke from the scene of battle and upon Fort Morgan, thereby giving to the pilots, upon whom so much depended, and to the gunners of the ships, the advantage of clearer sight. The time of the tide, in most quarters a matter of simple calculation, is in the Gulf often affected by the wind. The wind, on the other hand, in the summer months, blows from the south during the early morning, and then works round to the westward; so that the chances were in favor of his obtaining his wishes.

The dispositions taken by the Confederates to meet the assault which they saw to be impending were more simple; they having but a small mobile force, and their fortifications being tied to their places. A seaport liable to attack is a battle-field, in utilizing whose natural features, so as to present the strongest tactical combination against entrance or subjection by an enemy, the skill of the engineer is shown; but, unlike battle-fields in general, much time and study is allowed to develop his plans. In the case of Mobile Bay, the narrow and direct character of the approach by the main ship channel left little opportunity for skill to display itself. To place at the end of Mobile Point the heaviest fort, enfilading the channel, and to confine the latter to the narrowest bed, compelling the assailant into the most unfavorable route, were measures too obvious to escape the most incapable. To obtain the utmost advantage from this approach of the enemy, the little naval force was advanced from Mobile Point, so as to stretch at right angles across the channel just within the torpedo line. There, without being incommoded by the fire of the fort, or in any way embarrassing it, they secured a clear sweep for their guns, raking their opponents; who, being for the time unable to deviate from their course, could not reply to this galling attack. By gradually retiring, the Confederate gunboats could retain this superiority during the advance of their foes, until the latter reached the wide hole within, where there was room to manoeuvre. This position and the subsequent course of action described comprise the tactical management of the Southern vessels during the engagement. It was well devised, and made probably the best use of the advantages of the ground possible to so inferior a force. The Tennessee took position with them, but her after action was different.

As the day of the last and, with the exception of the Essex fight of his boyhood, the most desperate battle of his life drew near, a certain solemnity—one might almost say depression—is perceptible in the home letters of the admiral. Had the action proved fatal to him it could scarcely have failed to attract the attention which is similarly arrested by the chastened tone of Nelson's life and writing immediately before Trafalgar; and although there is certainly none of that outspoken foreboding which marked the last day of the English hero, Farragut's written words are in such apparent contrast to the usual buoyant, confident temper of the man, that they would readily have been construed into one of those presentiments with which military annals abound. "With such a mother," he writes to his son a week before the battle, "you could not fail to have proper sentiments of religion and virtue. I feel that I have done my duty by you both, as far as the weakness of my nature would allow. I have been devoted to you both, and when it pleases God to take me hence I shall feel that I have done my duty. I am not conscious of ever having wronged any one, and have tried to do as much good as I could. Take care of your mother if I should go, and may God bless and preserve you both!" The day before the action he wrote the following letter to his wife, which, as his son remarks in his Life of the admiral, shows that he appreciated the desperate work before him:

"FLAG-SHIP HARTFORD, "OFF MOBILE, August 4, 1864.

"MY DEAREST WIFE: I write and leave this letter for you. I am going into Mobile in the morning, if God is my leader, as I hope he is, and in him I place my trust. If he thinks it is the proper place for me to die, I am ready to submit to his will in that as in all other things. My great mortification is that my vessels, the ironclads, were not ready to have gone in yesterday. The army landed last night, and are in full view of us this morning, and the Tecumseh has not yet arrived from Pensacola.

"God bless and preserve you, my darling, and my dear boy, if anything should happen to me; and may his blessings also rest upon your dear mother, and all your sisters and their children.

"Your devoted and affectionate husband, who never for one moment forgot his love, duty, or fidelity to you, his devoted and best of wives,

"D. G. FARRAGUT."

A more touching and gratifying testimony of unwavering attachment, after more than twenty years of marriage, no wife could desire. It was an attachment also not merely professed in words, but evidenced by the whole course of his life and conduct. Infidelity or neglect of a wife was, in truth, in the estimation of Admiral Farragut, one of the most serious of blots upon a man's character, drawing out always his bitterest condemnation.

A pleasing glimpse is at this same period afforded of his relations to the surviving members of his father's family, who still remained in or near New Orleans, and from whom by the conditions of his profession he had been separated since his childhood. "My dear sister," he writes, "has sent me a Holy Virgin like the one Rose gave me. She said it was blessed by the archbishop, who said I was good to the priests. I only tell you this," adds the admiral dryly, "to show you that they did not succeed in impressing the bishop with the idea that I had robbed the church at Point Coupee." This is not the only mention of his sister during this time, and it is evident that two years' occupation of New Orleans by the Union forces had done much to mollify public sentiment; for immediately after the surrender he had written home, "It is a strange thought that I am here among my relatives, and yet not one has dared to say 'I am happy to see you.'"

On the 8th of July General Canby, accompanied by General Granger, who was to have immediate charge of the land operations against the Mobile forts, had called upon the admiral to make the preliminary arrangements. Somewhat later Canby sent word that he could not spare men enough to invest both Gaines and Morgan at the same time; and at Farragut's suggestion it was then decided to land first upon Dauphin Island, he undertaking to send a gunboat to cover the movement. Granger visited him again on the 1st of August, and as the admiral then had reason to expect the last of his monitors by the 4th, that day was fixed for the attack and landing. Granger was up to time, and his troops were put ashore on the evening of the 3d; but the Tecumseh had not arrived from Pensacola. The other three had been on hand since the 1st, anchored under the shelter of Sand Island, three miles from Fort Morgan.

To Farragut's great mortification he was unable to carry out his part of the programme; but on the evening of the 4th the Tecumseh arrived, together with the Richmond, which had been for a few days at Pensacola preparing for the fight. "I regret to have detained you, admiral," said Craven, the commander of the monitor, "but had it not been for Captain Jenkins (of the Richmond), God knows when I should have been here. When your order came I had not received an ounce of coal." In his report of the battle, Farragut warmly acknowledged the zeal and energy of Jenkins, to which he owed the seasonable arrival of this important re-enforcement. "He takes," he said, "as much interest in the fleet now as formerly when he was my chief-of-staff. He is also commanding officer of the second division of my squadron, and as such has shown ability and the most untiring zeal.... I feel I should not be doing my duty did I not call the attention of the Department to an officer who has performed all his various duties with so much zeal and fidelity." Farragut has been charged with failure to notice adequately the services of those under him; but the foregoing words, which are not by any means unparalleled in his dispatches, show that he could praise cordially when he saw fitting occasion.

The night of August 4th was quiet, the sea smooth, with a light air just rippling the surface of the water. At sundown it had been raining hard, but toward midnight cleared off, the weather becoming hot and calm. Later on a light air again sprang up from the southwest. The admiral was not well, and slept restlessly. About three in the morning he called his servant and sent him to find out how the wind was. Learning that it was from the quarter he wished, he said, "Then we will go in in the morning." Between four and five the lighter vessels got under way and went alongside those to which they were to be lashed. When daybreak was reported Farragut was already at breakfast with the captain of the Hartford, Percival Drayton, and the fleet-surgeon, Dr. James C. Palmer, who had left his usual post at the hospital in Pensacola to superintend the care of those wounded in the approaching battle. It was then about half-past five; the couples were all formed, and the admiral, still sipping his tea, said quietly, "Well, Drayton, we might as well get under way." The signal was made and at once acknowledged by the vessels, which had all been awaiting it, and the seamen began to heave round on the cables. The taking their assigned positions in the column by the different pairs consumed some time, during which the flag-ship crossed the bar, at ten minutes past six. At half-past six the column of wooden vessels was formed, and the monitors were standing down from Sand Island into their stations, in gaining which some little further delay was caused. At this time all the ships hoisted the United States flag, not only at the peak where it commonly flies, but at every mast-head as well.

It had been the intention of the admiral to lead the column of wooden vessels with his own ship; but at the earnest request of many officers, who thought the fleet should not incur the greater risk consequent upon having its commander in so exposed a position, he reluctantly consented to waive his purpose, and the Brooklyn was appointed to this post of honor. To this selection contributed also the fact that the Brooklyn had more than the usual number of chase guns, the advantage of which has been explained, and also an arrangement for picking up torpedoes. Bitterly afterward did Farragut regret his yielding on this occasion. "I believe this to be an error," he wrote in his official report of the battle; "for, apart from the fact that exposure is one of the penalties of rank in the navy, it will always be the aim of the enemy to destroy the flag-ship, and, as will appear in the sequel, such attempt was very persistently made." "The fact is," he said in one of his letters home, "had I been the obstinate man you sometimes think me, I would have led in the fleet and saved the Tecumseh"—meaning, doubtless, that, by interposing between that important vessel and the buoy which marked the torpedo line, he would have prevented the error which caused her loss. Some notes upon the action found afterward among his papers contain the same opinion, more fully and deliberately expressed. "Allowing the Brooklyn to go ahead was a great error. It lost not only the Tecumseh, but many valuable lives, by keeping us under the fire of the forts for thirty minutes; whereas, had I led, as I intended to do, I would have gone inside the buoys, and all would have followed me." The Hartford took the second place in the column, having secured on her port or off side the side-wheel gunboat Metacomet, Lieutenant-Commander James E. Jouett.

While the monitors were taking their stations, the Tecumseh, which led their column, fired two shots at the fort. At five minutes before seven, the order of battle now being fully formed, the fleet went ahead. Ten minutes later Fort Morgan opened fire upon the Brooklyn, which at once replied with her bow guns, followed very soon by those of the fighting column of wooden ships; a brisk cannonade ensuing between them, the monitors, and the fort. In order to see more clearly, and at the same time to have immediately by him the persons upon whom he most depended for governing the motions of the ship, Farragut had taken his position in the port main-rigging. Here he had near him Captain Jouett, standing on the wheel-house of the Metacomet, and also the pilot, who, as at Port Hudson, had been stationed aloft, on this occasion in the maintop, so as to see well over the smoke. As this increased and rose higher, Farragut went up step by step until he was close under the maintop. Here, without losing touch with Jouett, he was very near the pilot, had the whole scene of battle spread out under his eyes, and at the same time, by bracing himself against the futtock shrouds, was able to use his spy-glass more freely. Captain Drayton, however, being alarmed lest he might be thrown to the deck, directed a seaman to carry a lashing aloft and secure him to the rigging, which the admiral, after a moment's remonstrance, permitted. By such a simple and natural train of causes was Farragut brought to and secured in a position which he, like any other commander-in-chief, had sought merely in order better to see the operations he had to direct; but popular fancy was caught by the circumstance, and to his amusement he found that an admiral lashed to the rigging was invested with a significance equivalent to that of colors nailed to the mast. "The illustrated papers are very amusing," he wrote home. "Leslie has me lashed up to the mast like a culprit, and says, 'It is the way officers will hereafter go into battle, etc.' You understand, I was only standing in the rigging with a rope, that dear boy Watson had brought me up," (this was later in the action, when the admiral had shifted his position), "saying that if I would stand there I had better secure myself against falling; and I thanked him for his consideration, and took a turn around and over the shrouds and around my body for fear of being wounded, as shots were flying rather thickly."

Shortly after the monitors and the bow guns of the fleet began firing, the enemy's gunboats and the Tennessee moved out from behind Morgan and took their position enfilading the channel. Twenty minutes later, through the advance of the column, the broadsides of the leading ships began to bear upon the fort; and as these heavy batteries vomited their iron rain the fire of the defense visibly slackened. Amid the scene of uproar and slaughter, in which the petty Confederate flotilla, thanks to its position of vantage, was playing a deadly part quite out of proportion to its actual strength, the Tecumseh alone was silent. After the first two shots fired by her, which were rather the signal of warning than the opening of the battle, she had loaded her two guns with steel shot, backed by the heaviest charge of powder allowed, and, thus prepared, reserved her fire for the Tennessee alone. "I believe," wrote Farragut in a private letter, "that the Tecumseh would have gone up and grappled with and captured the Tennessee. Craven's heart was bent upon it."

The two columns, of ironclads and of wooden vessels lashed together in pairs, were now approaching the line of torpedoes and the narrow entrance through which lay the path of safety; and the broadsides of the heavy sloops which led—the Brooklyn, the Hartford, the Richmond—supported by the less numerous but still powerful batteries following, and by the guns of the turreted ironclads, overbore the fire of the works. All promised fairly, provided the leaders of the two columns pushed rapidly and unhesitatingly in the direction assigned them. But almost at the same moment doubt seized them both, and led to a double disaster. As Craven, leading the monitor column, and then about three hundred yards in advance of the Brooklyn, drew up to the buoy, to the eastward of which he had been directed to go, he saw it so nearly in line with the point beyond that he could not believe it possible to pass. "It is impossible that the admiral means us to go inside that buoy," he said to the pilot; "I can not turn my ship." Just then the Tennessee moved a little ahead, to the westward; and Craven, under the double impulse of his doubt and of his fear lest the hostile ironclad should escape him, changed his course to the left and pushed straight for her, the Tecumseh heading to pass the buoy on the wrong side.

The movement thus indicated, if followed by the succeeding monitors, would throw that column across the path of the wooden ships if the latter endeavored to obey their orders to pass east of the buoy. At the same moment there were seen from the Brooklyn, in the water ahead, certain objects which were taken to be buoys for torpedoes. The ship was at once stopped and backed, coming down upon the Hartford, her next astern, which also stopped, but did not reverse her engines. The Richmond followed the Hartford's movements, and the two ships drifted up with the young flood tide, but with their heads still pointed in the right direction, toward the Brooklyn; the stern of the latter vessel, as she backed, coming up into the wind so that her bows turned toward the fort. Fortunately, the rear ships were some little distance off; but Farragut, ignorant of the cause of the Brooklyn's action, saw his line of battle doubling up and threatened with an almost inextricable confusion, in the most difficult and exposed part of the passage, under a cross-fire from the fort and the enemy's vessels. Immediately upon this frightful perplexity succeeded the great disaster of the day. Craven, pursuing his course across the suspected line of danger, had reached within two hundred yards of the Tennessee, and the crews of both vessels were waiting with tense nerves for the expected collision, when a torpedo exploded under the Tecumseh, then distant a little over five hundred yards from the Hartford. From his elevated post of observation Farragut saw her reel violently from side to side, lurch heavily over, and then go down head foremost, her screw revolving wildly in the air as she disappeared.

It was the supreme moment of his life, in which the scales of his fortunes wavered in the balance. All the long years of preparation, of faithful devotion to obscure duty awaiting the opportunity that might never come—all the success attending the two brief years in which his flag had flown—all the glories of the river fights—on the one side; and on the other, threatening to overbear and wreck all, a danger he could not measure, but whose dire reality had been testified by the catastrophe just befallen under his own eyes. Added to this was the complication in the order of battle ahead of him, produced by the double movements of the Brooklyn and Tecumseh, which no longer allowed him to seize the one open path, follow his own first brave thought, and lead his fleet in person through the narrow way where, if at all, safety lay. The Brooklyn, when she began to back, was on the starboard bow of the flag-ship, distant one or two hundred yards, and falling off to starboard lay directly in the way athwart the channel. The second monitor, Manhattan, of the same class as the Tecumseh, had passed ahead; but the two light-draughts, the Winnebago and Chickasaw, were drawing up abreast of the three ships thus massed together. As they passed, the admiration of the officers of the flag-ship was stirred to see Captain Stevens, of the Winnebago, pacing calmly from turret to turret of his unwieldy vessel, under the full fire of the fort; while of Perkins, in the Chickasaw, the youngest commander in the fleet, and then about twenty-seven years of age, an officer of high position in the flag-ship says, "As he passed the Hartford he was on top of the turret, waving his hat and dancing about with delight and excitement."

But as they went thus gallantly by, the position of these vessels, combined with that of the Brooklyn relatively to the flag-ship, forbade the latter's turning in that direction unless at the risk of adding to a confusion already sufficiently perilous. A signal was made and repeated to the Brooklyn to go ahead; but that vessel gave no sign of moving, her commander being probably perplexed between his orders to pass east of the buoy and the difficulty of doing so, owing to the position into which his ship had now fallen and the situation of the monitors. But to remain thus motionless and undecided, under the fire of the fort with the other ships coming up to swell the size of the target offered to its gunners and to increase the confusion, was out of the question. To advance or to recede seemed alike dangerous. Ahead lay the dreaded line of torpedoes; behind was the possibility of retreat, but beaten, baffled, and disastrous. All depended upon the prompt decision of the admiral. If he failed himself, or if fortune failed him now, his brilliant career of success ended in the gloom of a defeat the degree of which could not be foreseen. In later days, Farragut told that in the confusion of these moments, feeling that all his plans had been thwarted, he was at a loss whether to advance or retreat. In this extremity the devout spirit that ruled his life, and so constantly appears in his correspondence, impelled him to appeal to Heaven for guidance, and he offered up this prayer: "O God, who created man and gave him reason, direct me what to do. Shall I go on?" "And it seemed," said the admiral, "as if in answer a voice commanded, 'Go on!'"

To such a prompting his gallant temper and clear intuitions in all matters relating to war were quick to respond. Personal danger could not deter him; and if it was necessary that some one ship should set the example and force a way through the torpedo line by the sacrifice of herself, he was prepared by all his habits of thought to accept that duty for the vessel bearing his flag. Describing the spirit in which he began an arduous enterprise, after once deciding that it should be undertaken, he said: "I calculate thus: The chances are that I shall lose some of my vessels by torpedoes or the guns of the enemy, but with some of my fleet afloat I shall eventually be successful. I can not lose all. I will attack, regardless of consequences, and never turn back." To a mind thus disciplined and prepared, the unforeseen dilemma presented before the barriers of Mobile Bay caused but a passing perplexity. Like the Puritan soldier who trusted in God and kept his powder dry, Farragut met the overthrow of his carefully arranged plans and the sudden decision thrust upon him with the calm resolution of a man who has counted the cost and is strengthened by a profound dependence upon the will of the Almighty. He resolved to go forward.