Lincoln's Admiral

by James P. Duffy

  Life inside the ram, taking shells and ramming from all directions, was reaching the breaking point. Two monitors moved in for the kill as the Tennessee and the Hartford parted. The Manhattan fired her huge fifteen-inch guns at close range, doing considerable damage to the ram’s iron plate. The Chickasaw’s Lieutenant Commander Perkins pushed his vessel right up to the stem of the ram and fired his eleven-inch guns into her casement at from ten to fifty yards’ distance. The series of rapid blows finally succeeded in penetrating the casement and brought a portion of the structure down. Among the killed and wounded from the Chickasaw’s pounding was Admiral Buchanan, who was discovered under a section of metal with a badly broken leg.

  Unable to continue in command, he turned full authority over to Captain Johnston. Both men knew this meant the unenviable task of surrendering would fall to the captain, for there was nothing left to be done. The ram could hardly move, for her stack was now completely shot away. In addition, the exposed steering chains had been de-strayed. The mighty Tennessee could no longer steer or gather any speed.

  At 10:00 a.m. after taking a pounding that would have sunk any ship in the Federal fleet, Johnston had the Confederate battle flag lowered, and a white flag raised in her place. The battle for Mobile Bay had ended.

  The victory had cost the Union one monitor, along with ninety-three of her crew. Other losses included fifty-two killed, and 170 wounded. The flagship had suffered twenty-five killed. Quartermaster Knowles was present when Farragut viewed the lines of dead sailors and officers laid out on the deck. “It was the only time I ever saw the old gentleman cry, but the tears came in his eyes, like a little child.”

  WHEN THE BATTLE for Mobile Bay was over, and the prisoners and wounded had been taken care of, Admiral Farragut, weary from the day’s exertions, sat down at the desk in his cabin to write a brief note to his wife, Virginia. He wanted to be sure that when she heard the news of the battle, she would be comforted by the kknowledge that he had survived. “The Almighty has smiled on me once more,” he wrote. “I am in Mobile Bay. The Tennessee and Buchanan are my prisoners. It was a hard fight, but Buck met his fate manfully.”

  The first information to reach Washington concerning Farragut’s victory came in a telegram from General Butler, who was on the James River in Virginia. A staff officer brought him several copies of a Richmond newspaper describing the battle in some detail. Alone in his tent, the old general roared, “Three cheers for Farragut!” The three cheers that followed brought a group of his officers running in fear that something had happened to him. Butler telegraphed the news to Fox in Washington and dashed off a note of congratulations to the Admiral.

  Among the hundreds of congratulatory messages received by Farragut was a note from President Lincoln thanking him for his “brilliant success.” Lincoln ordered that every navy yard, plus the Washington Arsenal, fire a 100-gun salute in celebration of the taking of Mobile Bay. Soon afterward, the President issued a proclamation that he asked be read at every religious service throughout the Union on the following Sunday. In it he called on every citizen to give thanks to Admiral Farragut and General Sherman for their “glorious achievements,” Farragut at Mobile Bay, and Sherman at Atlanta.

  In the following three weeks, the forts were taken by combined naval and army forces, and the entire lower bay was controlled by the Federal government. Farragut remained active during this time, but his health began to deteriorate.

  Unaware of Farragut’s condition, Welles selected him to lead a naval expedition against Fort Fischer, North Carolina, in support of Federal invasion forces. Before the actual order had been published, a letter arrived from Farragut, dated August 27, 1864. In it he told the secretary that his strength was almost exhausted, and his health was giving out. “I have been down in this Gulf and the Caribbean Sea nearly five years out of six, with the exception of the short time at home last Fall, and the last six months have been a severe drag upon me, and I want rest if it is to be had.”

  The officers and men around him began to write home of their concern for the admiral. They, who knew him so well, could clearly see that he was in fact suffering greatly from exhaustion and ill health.

  On December 12, a tired but buoyant Farragut arrived in New York aboard his flagship. He and Flag Captain Drayton were treated as the heroes they had proven to be, by thousands of officials and citizens who had turned out to greet them. Following seemingly endless ceremonies in which everyone wanted to greet and shake hands with the great naval officer, Farragut returned to Hastings-on-Hudson to spend some peaceful time with Virginia and Loyall. The latter was given special leave from West Point to greet his father.

  On December 22, 1864, the rank of vice-admiral was created by Congress, and Farragut was immediately promoted. The following month, he and Virginia visited Washington, where they socialized with President and Mrs. Lincoln. At the President’s personal invitation, the couple attended Lincoln’s second inauguration. In the summer of 1866, Farragut was named the first admiral of the navy, and joined President Andrew Johnson on a tour of the nation.

  In June 1867, the navy regulation against wives sailing aboard navy ships was waived by President Johnson, without any request from the admiral, and Virginia joined her husband on a triumphant world tour. They sailed on board Farragut’s new flagship, USS Franklin, a 4,000-ton frigate with a crew of 750 men and officers, and boasting thirty-nine guns.

  The Farraguts visited France, Germany, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, England, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Holland, and Greece. Everywhere they went, thousands cheered them, and heads of state and crowned monarchs greeted and entertained them. Included was Queen Victoria, whose sentiments had been with the defeated Confederacy.

  During the winter of 1869, Farragut suffered several heart attacks, which limited his official activities considerably. After celebrating his sixty-ninth birthday, on July 5, 1870, he made an inspection of the Portsmouth Navy Yard. While there he found the sailing sloop Dale, which was laid up in the yard. Accompanied by the old sailor who was the Dale’s caretaker, he paced her decks and spoke of what she had looked like at sea with her sixteen guns blazing. Suddenly he stopped, turned to the caretaker, and said, “This is the last time I shall ever tread the deck of a man-of-war.”

  In less than a week, his weakness confined him to bed. On August 14, 1870, Admiral of the Navy David G. Farragut died of a stroke.

  A memorial service, held at Portsmouth, was attended by Welles, Fox, and many of the men who had fought under Farragut during the war. He was temporarily interred at Portsmouth. Conspicuously absent was President Grant, who, as a political statement, chose not to attend. This was Grant’s retaliation against the admiral because Farragut had declined to support him in his campaign for the presidency.

  Grant’s absence from the memorial service caused such an uproar among the public and press, who had not forgotten the old man’s gallantry and deeds, that the White House was inundated with letters and telegrams condemning the President.

  Plans originally had called for interring the admiral at Annapolis, but Virginia acquiesced to a request from the leading citizens of New York City that they be permitted to bury him in New York. Responding to public condemnation and pressure, President Grant attended the funeral services, held on September 30, 1870, even marching in a torrential downpour along with 10,000 soldiers and thousands of former sailors and past and present officials. It was a day of mourning in the city, with all public buildings closed and draped accordingly. Farragut was laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Following the burial, General George Meade remarked to another general officer, “I believe that the Admiral was more beloved than any other commander of the late war, either of the Army or Navy.”

  Twenty-eight years after his death, Admiral Farragut’s spirit was once again at sea, standing alongside the man who would become the third admiral in the United States Navy, following Farragut and David Porter.

  On the night of April 30, 1898, Commodore George Dewey sa
t in his quarters aboard his flagship, the Olympia, outside the entrance to Manila Bay, where a powerful Spanish fleet was at anchor. He reviewed the battle plans for the following day with the captains of his Asiatic Fleet. Carefully studying the plans, he asked himself, “What would Farragut have done?”

  The next day, Dewey took his ships into the bay and destroyed the Spanish fleet, thus avenging the destruction of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor earlier that year. He did so without the loss of one American life.

  When Dewey sailed triumphantly into New York Harbor to a spectacular hero’s welcome on September 29, 1899, his ship flew the pennant of his personal hero, Admiral Farragut. Farragut’s strategy of bypassing powerful enemy strongholds has been passed from one generation of military leaders to another. It was the strategy used by General Douglas MacArthur, when he decided to pass Pacific islands with strong Japanese garrisons in favor of more important targets. These powerful island fortresses were allowed to wither away once they were cut off from their supply bases, just as Forts Jackson and St. Philip did when New Orleans was taken.

  Following his death, great statues of Farragut were erected in Washington, New York, and Boston. Hundreds of poems were written in his honor, as were dozens of songs. Although the naval part of the Civil War has not received as much attention as the great land battles of that conflict, the name David Farragut will last in our collective memory as long as those of Grant and Lee, and just as deservedly so.

  Now then, your broadside, shipmates all,

  With grape well loaded down!

  May garlands filled with sunshine fall

  To gild his silvered crown!

  I give the name that fits him best -

  Ay, better than his own -

  The Sea King of the sovereign West,

  Who made his mast a throne!

  - “A Toast to the Vice Admiral,” Oliver Wendell Holmes

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  © James P. Duffy

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