“Nature points out the English Turn as the position to be strongly fortified, and it is there the enemy will most likely make his strongest stand and last effort to prevent our getting up. If this point is impassable there is solid ground there, and troops can be brought up and landed below the forts and attack them in the rear while the ships assail them in front. The result will doubtless be a victory for us. If the ships can get by the forts, and there are no obstructions above, then the plan should be to push on to New Orleans every ship that can get there, taking up as many of the mortar-fleet as can be rapidly towed. An accurate reconnoissance should be made, and every kind of attainable information provided before any movement is made.
“Nothing has been said about a combined attack of army and navy. Such a thing is not only practicable, but, if thus permitted, could be adopted. Fort St. Philip can be taken with three thousand men covered by the ships; the ditch can be filled with fascines, and the walls can be easily scaled with ladders. It can be easily attacked in front and rear.”
—D. D. PORTER.
Farragut stood facing his destiny, imperishable fame or failure. He was determined to run by the forts with his ships. It was plain to him that nothing more would be accomplished by the mortars. He would not cumber his fleet during the passage by towing the mortars as Porter desired him to do. Once above the defenses, and the enemy’s fleet overcome, he would either push on to New Orleans past the batteries, which he knew were at Chalmette, or cover with his guns the landing of the army through the bayou in the rear of the forts. In his heart he was determined, if events favored him, to push right on seventy-five miles up the river to New Orleans without waiting for the army. Porter’s views expressed in his letter to the conference gave no support to these plans. He speaks of three methods of attack: First, by running the forts; second, bombardment by the whole fleet, mortars included, with a view to the reduction of the defenses; and third, a combined attack of the navy and army. The first method, which was Farragut’s plan and the plan that succeeded, he strongly condemns. He feared the result of leaving an enemy in the rear. Some of the commanding officers agreed with him.
On the next day Farragut issued a General Order, which bears date one day earlier than its issuance, and is at once a reply to Porter’s communication to the conference of officers and an announcement of the flag-officer’s determination to challenge all objections, run the forts, conquer or be conquered.
No one can read Commodore Bell’s journal and Flag-Officer Farragut’s general order without seeing that there was cause for disappointment in the fleet. After a bombardment of three days the defense was still vigorous and the Confederates were undismayed. As a consequence of this Farragut had lost the little faith he ever had in mortars, and was prepared to carry out his own plans, differ as they might from the instructions of the Navy Department.
Farragut had a stupendous undertaking before him. A river with a current of three and a half miles an hour against the line of attack; two forts on opposite sides of the stream mounting 126 guns, and above them the Confederate steamers carrying 40 guns, while in the river, both above and below the forts, rafts were floating ready to be fired and cut loose on the first sign of an attempt to pass the boom. His fleet consisted of 8 steam sloops-of-war, 15 gun-boats, 1 sailing sloop, and 19 mortar-schooners. The 17 vessels which were to attempt the passage carried 166 guns and 26 howitzers. It is true that the mortar-shells were of assistance to Farragut in the passage, as they helped his own guns to distract the fire of the enemy and added to the confusion and distress in Fort Jackson. But that the passage would have been made in the darkness without the assistance of the mortars has never been seriously questioned, and is proved by Farragut’s successful passage of Fort Morgan at the battle of Mobile Bay in broad daylight, which involved exactly the same principles of attack and was achieved without the use of a single mortar. The protraction of the bombardment gave the Confederates just six days more to push forward the work on the iron-clad and the fleet. Mr. Welles, in “The Galaxy,” quotes a dispatch from Porter himself which shows his recognition of the fact that the Confederates were strengthening their defenses during this period. Porter says, speaking of the siege, that the enemy was “daily adding to his defense and strengthening his naval forces with iron-clad batteries.”
What was the situation of affairs in Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip about this time—the 22d of April—as shown by the testimony before the Confederate Court of Inquiry! In the two garrisons of 1100 men, 4 soldiers had been killed and 14 wounded—7 guns of the armament of 126 had been disabled. The barracks and citadel of Fort Jackson had been destroyed by fire.
There was nothing more to burn. Whenever the gun-boats approached the defenses a vigorous fire was opened on them by both forts, but when they retired the soldiers withdrew to the casemates out of reach of the mortar-fire.
And up to this time the mortar-flotilla had fired more than 13,500 shells. Porter had expected to reduce the forts to a heap of ruins in forty-eight hours, but at the end of ninety-six hours the defense was as vigorous as ever.
Did Porter believe that Farragut’s passage of the forts and appearance before New Orleans would result in a speedy downfall of the defenses and the capture of the river and city? He did not, and he was very uneasy about the fleet after it passed the forts. He wondered how Farragut would return down the river to the mortar-fleet and to the army. He could not appreciate the fact that it was not necessary for him to come back; that all the defenses must soon fall, Forts Jackson and St. Philip among them, as the effect of the occupation of the river and New Orleans. He feared that Farragut was caught in a trap. He thought he would find the forts harder to take than ever, and that he would have to fight his way down the river and attack them again. All this appears in the letter of Commander Porter, which is given below. It was written to Farragut from below the forts on the morning after the passage, three days before they surrendered. The italics are not in the original:
“MORTAR-FLOTILLA, April 25th, 1862.
“Dear Sir:
“Captain Boggs has arrived. I congratulate you on your victory. I witnessed your passage with great pleasure. My hopes and predictions were at last realized. You left at the forts four steamers and the famous iron-clad battery; they are mounting guns on it, and one thousand men are at work on it. She is unhurt and moves about with the stream. How fast she is I don’t know. One of the steamers is iron-clad on the bow. The McRae is also at the fort. I sent a summons to surrender, but it was politely declined. As we have used up all the shells in the schooners, and wishing to be unhampered with the mortar-vessels, sent everything down and collected boats and spars.…
“They are moving all their heavy guns upon the riverside. You will find the forts harder to take now than before unless their ammunition gives out. I threw bombs at them all day, and tantalized them with rifle-shot, but they never fired a gun. I hope you will open your way down, no matter what it costs. I am sending some of the schooners down to blockade back of Fort Jackson to prevent their escaping by way of Barataria.
“D. D. PORTER.”
Porter overlooks the difference between his hopes and his predictions, as shown by his communication to the conference of officers, which he says are realized in this letter, and Farragut’s achievement. He had opposed the plan of attack by which Farragut succeeded.
Porter’s letter to the Secretary of the Navy, written before the surrender, also shows his distrust of the result of Farragut’s bold ascent of the river, leaving an enemy in his rear. He says, speaking of the Confederate iron-clad below Farragut’s fleet at the forts, “She mounts sixteen guns, and is almost as formidable as the Merrimac. This is one of the ill effects of leaving an enemy in the rear.” And again, “These forts can hold out still for some time. I would suggest that the Mystic and Monitor, if they can be spared, be sent here without a moment’s delay to settle the question.”
On the 28th of April, three days later, the forts surrendered, and Farrag
ut, who was then in possession of New Orleans, did not find it necessary to open his way down the river as advised by Porter, to whom the surrender must have been a surprise.
What was the immediate cause of the surrender of the forts? This is exactly the question that was asked of Colonel Edward Higgins, who had commanded Fort Jackson, by the Confederate Court of Inquiry, and his reply was: “The mutiny of the garrison.” But what was the cause of the mutiny? General Duncan, who had commanded the lower defenses, including the forts, answered this in his report: “The garrison mutinied on the night of the 27th of April, giving as a reason that the city had surrendered and there was no further use in fighting.” And why did the city surrender? Was it because Porter bombarded Fort Jackson 75 miles below the city, for six days, disabling, up to the night of the passage of the fleet, only 9 guns of the armament of 128, with a loss to the Confederates of less than 40 men in both garrisons?1 Or was it because Farragut dashed through the fire of the forts, destroyed the Confederate fleet, and then pushed on past the Chalmette batteries 75 miles up the river, cutting off all communication, till he anchored before the city with his torn fleet?
* * *
1 The following official statements made by Confederate and Union officers are given to show the condition of Fort Jackson and the garrison after the bombardment. On the 30th of April, 1862, in a letter to Adjutant-General Bridges, Colonel Edward Higgins says: “I have the honor to report that on the morning of the 27th of April a formal demand for the surrender of Forts Jackson and St. Philip was made by Commander Porter; the terms which were offered were liberal, but so strong was I in the belief that we could resist successfully any attack, either by land or by water, that the terms were at once refused. Our fort was still strong.”
General Duncan, commanding all the lower Confederate defenses, says after the passage: “We are just as capable of repelling the enemy to-day as we were before the bombardment.”
General Weitzel, of the United States Engineer Corps, in a report of the condition of Fort Jackson dated in May, 1862, says: “Fort St. Philip, with one or two slight exceptions, is to-day without a scratch. Fort Jackson was subjected to a torrent of 13-inch and 11-inch shells during 140 hours. To an inexperienced eye it seems as if this work were badly cut up. It is as strong to-day as when the first shell was fired at it.”
Captain Harris, of the Coast Survey, whose map of the forts is published in Porter’s article, says in his report after the surrender that of the “75 guns in Fort Jackson 4 guns were dismounted and 13 carriages were struck.” But this was not done by the mortars alone. The fleet did its share in the passage. Granting that the injury of 11 gun-carriages permanently disabled 6 guns, the disablement of 10 guns in 75 is scarcely worth considering, with 116 guns in both forts still intact.
Comparing the losses on both sides during the bombardment and the passage of the forts, it will be seen that Farragut’s loss, nearly all of which occurred in the passage of the lower defenses on the night of the final attack, was four times the Confederate list of killed and wounded at the forts during the entire siege. Does this look as if Fort Jackson had been disabled by the mortars before the final attack?
Colonel Edward Higgins on the 27th of April says: “Orders had been issued to the officers and men to retire to the casemates of the fort the moment the bombardment began; but when it became necessary to repel the attack our batteries were instantly in readiness and were at once engaged in a most terrific conflict with the enemy.”
I have taken no notice in this article of a letter written to Admiral Porter by the above-mentioned Colonel Higgins dated April 4th, 1872, ten years after the occurrence of the events which he professes to describe. This letter is useless as evidence, because it contradicts Colonel Higgins’s own report to the Confederate authorities quoted here. Surely the official evidence of a man fresh from the scene of action is to be believed in preference to an account given by him ten years afterward in a letter.—W.T.M.
CHAPTER 11
STONEWALL JACKSON IN THE SHENANDOAH.
John D. Imboden, Brigadier-General, C.S.A.
Soon after the battle of Bull Run Stonewall Jackson was promoted to major-general, and the Confederate Government having on the 21st of October, 1861, organized the Department of Northern Virginia, under command of General Joseph E. Johnston, it was divided into the Valley District, the Potomac District, and Aquia District, to be commanded respectively by Major-Generals Jackson, Beauregard, and Holmes. On October 28th General Johnston ordered Jackson to Winchester to assume command of his district, and on the 6th of November the War Department ordered his old “Stonewall” brigade and six thousand troops under command of Brigadier-General W. W. Loring to report to him. These, together with Turner Ashby’s cavalry, gave him a force of about ten thousand men all told.
His only movement of note in the winter of 1861–62 was an expedition at the end of December to Bath and Romney, to destroy the Baltimore and Ohio railroad and a dam or two near Hancock on the Chesapeake and Ohio canal.1 The weather set in to be very inclement about New Year’s, with snow, rain, sleet, high winds, and intense cold. Many in Jackson’s command were opposed to the expedition, and as it resulted in nothing of much military importance, but was attended with great suffering on the part of his troops, nothing but the confidence he had won by his previous services saved him from personal ruin. He and his second in command, General Loring, had a serious disagreement. He ordered Loring to take up his quarters, in January, in the exposed and cheerless village of Romney, on the south branch of the upper Potomac. Loring objected to this, but Jackson was inexorable. Loring and his principal officers united in a petition to Mr. Benjamin, Secretary of War, to order them to Winchester, or at least away from Romney. This document was sent direct to the War Office, and the Secretary, in utter disregard of “good order and discipline,” granted the request without consulting Jackson. As soon as information reached Jackson of what had been done, he indignantly resigned his commission. Governor Letcher was astounded, and at once wrote Jackson a sympathetic letter, and then expostulated with Mr. Davis and his Secretary with such vigor that an apology was sent to Jackson for their obnoxious course. The orders were revoked and modified, and Jackson was induced to retain his command. This little episode gave the Confederate civil authorities an inkling of what manner of man “Stonewall” Jackson was.
A CONFEDERATE OF 1862.
In that terrible winter’s march and exposure, Jackson endured all that any private was exposed to. One morning, near Bath, some of his men, having crawled out from under their snow-laden blankets, half-frozen, were cursing him as the cause of their sufferings. He lay close by under a tree, also snowed under, and heard all this; and, without noticing it, presently crawled out, too, and, shaking the snow off, made some jocular remark to the nearest men, who had no idea he had ridden up in the night and lain down amongst them. The incident ran through the little army in a few hours, and reconciled his followers to all the hardships of the expedition, and fully reëstablished his popularity.
In March Johnston withdrew from Manassas, and General McClellan collected his army of more than one hundred thousand men on the Peninsula. Johnston moved south to confront him. McClellan had planned and organized a masterly movement to capture, hold, and occupy the Valley and the Piedmont region; and if his subordinates had been equal to the task, and there had been no interference from Washington, it is probable the Confederate army would have been driven out of Virginia and Richmond captured by midsummer, 1862.
Jackson’s little army in the Valley had been greatly reduced during the winter from various causes, so that at the beginning of March he did not have over 5000 men of all arms available for the defense of his district, which began to swarm with enemies all around its borders, aggregating more than ten times his own strength. Having retired up the Valley, he learned that the enemy had begun to withdraw and send troops to the east of the mountains to coöperate with McClellan. This he resolved to stop by an aggressive demon
stration against Winchester, occupied by General Shields, of the Federal army, with a division of 8000 to 10,000 men.
BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN D. IMBODEN, C.S.A. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
A little after the middle of March, Jackson concentrated what troops he could, and on the 23d he occupied a ridge at the hamlet of Kernstown, four miles south of Winchester. Shields promptly attacked him, and a severe engagement of several hours ensued, ending in Jackson’s repulse about dark, followed by an orderly retreat up the Valley to near Swift Run Gap in Rockingham county. The pursuit was not vigorous nor persistent.2 Although Jackson retired before superior numbers, he had given a taste of his fighting qualities that stopped the withdrawal of the enemy’s troops from the Valley.
The result was so pleasing to the Richmond government and General Johnston that it was decided to reënforce Jackson by sending General Ewell’s division to him at Swift Run Gap, which reached him about the 1st of May, thus giving Jackson an aggregate force of from 13,000 to 15,000 men to open his campaign with. At the beginning of May the situation was broadly about as follows: Milroy, with about 4087 men, was on the Staunton and Parkersburg road at McDowell, less than forty miles from Staunton, with Schenck’s brigade of about 2500 near Franklin. The rest of Frémont’s army in the mountain department was then about 30,000 men, of whom 20,000 were concentrating at Franklin, fifty miles north-west of Staunton, and within supporting distance of Milroy. Banks, who had fortified Strasburg, seventy miles north-east of Staunton by the great Valley turnpike, to fall back upon in an emergency, had pushed forward a force of 20,000 men to Harrisonburg, including Shields’s division, 10,000 strong. General McDowell, with 34,000 men, exclusive of Shields’s division, was at points east of the Blue Ridge, so as to be able to move either to Fredericksburg or to the Luray Valley and thence to Staunton. Not counting Colonel Miles’s, later Saxton’s, command, at Harper’s Ferry, which was rapidly increased to 7000 men, sent from Washington and other points north of the Potomac, before the end of May, Jackson had about 80,000 men to take into account (including all Union forces north of the Rappahannock and east of the Ohio) and to keep from a junction with McClellan in front of Richmond. Not less than 65,0003 of these enemies were in the Valley under their various commanders in May and June.
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