by Thomas Dixon
CHAPTER XX
THE ANACONDA
While General Joseph E. Johnston was devoting his energies to a campaignto change the date of his commission and his friends organizing theiropposition to the President at Richmond, Gideon Welles, the quiet,unassuming Secretary of the Navy at Washington, was slowly but surelydrawing the mighty coil, the United States Navy, about the throat of theSouth. He made little noise but the work he did was destined to becomethe determining factor of the war.
The first blow was struck at North Carolina.
On August 26, 1861, at one o'clock the fleet quietly put to sea fromFortress Monroe. On Tuesday they arrived at Hatteras Inlet, opened fireon the two forts guarding its entrance and on the twenty-ninth a whiteflag was raised. Seven hundred and fifteen prisoners were surrendered,one thousand stand of arms, and thirty pieces of cannon. At a singleblow the whole vast inland water coast of North Carolina on her Soundswas opened to the enemy with communications from Norfolk, Virginia, toBeaufort. A garrison of a thousand men could hold those forts for alltime with the navy in command of the sea.
Burnside followed with his expedition into the Sounds, captured RoanokeIsland and the fall of Newbern was inevitable. Every river-mouth andinlet of the entire coast of North Carolina was now in the hands of theFederal Government save the single port of Wilmington.
The moral effect of this blow by the navy was tremendous in the North.It was the first token of renewed power since the defeat at Bull Run.The navy had not only turned the tide of defeat in the imagination ofthe people, the achievement was one of vast importance to the North andthe most sinister import to the South.
The Federal Government had gained the first important base on theSouthern coast for her blockading squadron and given a foothold for themilitary invasion of North Carolina.
The President at Richmond was compelled to watch this tragedy inhelpless sorrow. The South had no navy with which to dispute the commandof the sea and yet she had three thousand miles of coast line!
With swift, remorseless sweep the navy struck Port Royal, SouthCarolina, and established the second secure base for the blockadingsquadrons.
The Beaufort district of South Carolina captured by this expedition wasone of the richest and most thickly settled of the State, containingfifteen hundred square miles. It produced annually fifty million poundsof rice and fourteen thousand bales of cotton. And in its populationwere thirty thousand slaves suddenly brought under the power of theFederal Government.
The coast of Florida was next pierced. The blockade of the enormouscoast line of the South was declared at first an impossibility. Withinless than a year the United States Navy had established bases withinstriking distance of every port. New ships were being launched,purchased or chartered daily and the giant Anaconda was slowly windingits terrible coil about the commerce of the Confederacy.
Jefferson Davis was not the man to accept this ominous situation withouta desperate struggle. The man who had substituted iron gun carriages forwood in the army consulted his Secretary of the Navy on the possibilityof revolutionizing the naval-warfare of the world by the construction ofan iron-clad ship of first-class power. In his report to the ConfederateNaval Committee, Secretary Mallory had developed this possibility twomonths before the subject had been broached in the report of GideonWelles in Washington.
"I regard the possession of an iron-armored ship," Mallory urged, "as amatter of the first necessity. Such a vessel at this time could traversethe entire coast of the United States, prevent all blockade, andencounter with a fine prospect of success their entire navy. Inequalityof numbers may be overcome by invulnerability, and thus not only doeseconomy but naval success dictate the wisdom and expediency of fightingwith iron against wood, without regard to first cost."
The President of the Confederacy gave his hearty endorsement to thisplan--and summoned the genius of the South to the task. At the bottom ofthe harbor of Norfolk lay the half-burned hull of the steam frigate_Merrimac_ which the Government had set on fire and sunk on destroyingthe Navy Yard.
The _Merrimac_ was raised. A board was appointed to draw plans andestimate the cost of the conversion of the vessel into a powerful,floating, iron-clad battery. In the crippled condition of the NorfolkNavy Yard the task was tremendous and the expense would be great.
The President ordered the work prosecuted with the utmost vigor. Day andnight the ring of hammers on heavy iron echoed over the quiet harbor ofNorfolk. Blacksmiths were forging the most terrible ship of war thatever sailed the seas. If the hopes of her builders should be realized,the navy of the North would be swept from the ocean and the proudestships of the world be reduced to junk in a day.