Lincoln's Admiral Page 14
A few hours after the army transports left Baton Rouge, the Hartford, which had been having engine trouble, steamed away from the city and headed north to Natchez. Farragut planned on assembling as many ships as possible for an assault on Vicksburg. A few miles north of Baton Rouge, the Hartford ran aground. The crew worked frantically to free her, but the mighty warship remained stuck fast in the mud. Reversing her engines proved fruitless, as did rocking her from side to side, which was accomplished by having the crew run first to one side, then to the other. The failed efforts frustrated Farragut, who knew that the level of the river could drop rapidly at any time. If this happened, his ship might be stuck indefinitely in the river, a standing target for every Confederate soldier and cannoneer along the riverbanks.
The gunboat Itasca arrived and added her efforts to those of the Hartford, and still the ship refused to move. Farragut sent the gunboat to the nearby river town of St. Francisville, where a ferry and a lighter were docked. The entire day of May 14 was spent transferring the Hartford’s coal, guns, and shot to the Itasca and the ferry and lighter. It wasn’t until ten-thirty the following morning that the Itasca was able to pull the Hartford free, to the grateful cheers of the sloop’s sailors and marines.
While Farragut struggled to free his ship from the Mississippi mud, 1,500 miles away in Washington, President Lincoln sent a request to Congress that Farragut be given a vote of thanks for his capture of New Orleans. The vote was not taken for two months but was the first step leading to Farragut’s selection as the first rear admiral in the United States Navy.
In midafternoon of Sunday, May 18, Farragut finally arrived at Natchez, accompanied by the Itasca. Awaiting him were the Brooklyn, the Richmond, and the Iroquois. They were all anticipating news from Lee concerning the situation at Vicksburg. When word arrived by way of the gunboat Kennebec, which Lee had sent downriver, it was not good. On Sunday afternoon, Lee had anchored in the river and sent a small boat toward the city with his demand that Vicksburg be surrendered. The boat was met by a rebel gunboat, which took the communiqué on board and promised to deliver it to the proper authorities.
Unlike New Orleans, Natchez, and Baton Rouge, Vicksburg was a strongly defended city that would not fall easily to the Federal fleet. After retiring from New Orleans to Jackson, General Lovell had sent 4,000 veteran Confederate troops to Vicksburg well in advance of the Union progress upriver. The arrival of these men, who were the best Lovell had available, strengthened the determination of the local militia and state forces in the city not to surrender without a fight.
On May 12, Lovell assigned overall command of the defense of Vicksburg to a distinguished and accomplished army engineer, Brigadier General Martin Luther Smith. A graduate of the West Point class of 1842, Smith had overseen the improvements of the fortifications guarding the entrance to New Orleans that had so successfully withstood Porter’s mortar bombardment. Smith immediately set about establishing a series of seven batteries along the river south of Vicksburg. Those batteries were manned by experienced artillerymen and boasted twenty-six cannons, and were mounted along a three-mile stretch of bluffs overlooking the river. The bluffs, ranging in height from 150 to over 200 feet, gave the Confederate guns, which included a variety of rifled and smoothbore cannons, complete command of the river. Their height prevented most naval guns from reaching them since the latter could not be elevated enough to fire up the bluffs. Ships traveling the river would be subjected to a plunging fire in which shells could pass directly down through a vessel, causing her to sink rapidly.
While he waited for a reply, Lee surveyed the situation around him. He quickly concluded that the guns mounted on the high bluffs, combined with the speed of the river’s current, made passing Vicksburg extremely difficult if not impossible. The river was running at about three knots while the ships could make no more than eight knots. Above the city, the river makes a sharp U-turn before turning again and continuing north. Ships approaching this turn would be forced to slow down, especially the larger sloops, which would make them nearly stable targets for the rebel gunners. While the ships struggled against the current, enemy guns would be raining shells down on them from relative safety. Lee was not at all enthusiastic about attempting to pass the Vicksburg batteries with anything approaching the luck the fleet had below New Orleans.
By the time the sun set along the western shore, Lee had received three replies to his surrender demand. Vicksburg’s mayor, Laz Lindsay, asserted that the city’s residents would never permit him to surrender. Brigadier General Smith, who commanded most of the troops defending Vicksburg, wrote simply, “Having been ordered to hold these defenses, it is my intention to do so.” The most flamboyant reply came from Colonel James L. Autrey, military governor of the district. “Mississippians don’t know, and refuse to learn how to surrender,” Autrey wrote. “If Commodore Farragut or Brigadier General Butler can teach them, let them come and try.”
Lee knew he was outgunned, but decided to test the resolve of Vicksburg’s defenders anyway. He sent Mayor Lindsay a message in which he said his gunboats would shell the city if it did not surrender within twenty-four hours. He warned Lindsay to evacuate the city’s women and children to a place of safety. Lee received no reply to his threat. Indeed, the twenty-four hours came and went without any guns firing. The citizens of Vicksburg waited patiently, most of them taking refuge in their basements, but the roar of cannons did not disturb the peace.
His bluff having been called, Lee waited for reinforcements from downriver. On May 20, Farragut arrived aboard the gunboat Kennebec for a personal inspection of the situation. The remainder of his fleet was ordered to assemble at Grand Gulf, fifty miles south of Vicksburg. Farragut quickly recognized the futility of trying to run the Vicksburg batteries as he had the New Orleans forts. With batteries positioned both south and north of the city, and taking the current into consideration, he estimated it would take a ship about fifty-five minutes to travel from below the southernmost battery to a point beyond the range of the northernmost battery. And most of this time it would be subject to fierce bombardment from the shore batteries, including several at the level of the river and those on the bluffs high above.
Farragut asked Brigadier General Williams if he thought his detachment of 1,500 men could successfully assault the city or any of its fortifications. Williams had received erroneous intelligence that the city was garrisoned by 8,000 soldiers and that another 10,000 were near enough to be rushed to support them, should a Union landing be attempted. He told Farragut he could do nothing in the face of such odds. The position Williams took was totally defensible, even if he had had the correct figures concerning the city’s defenders, who numbered well in excess of 4,000 men. The odds against a successful landing were overwhelming, and once ashore, his men would be badly outnumbered by an enemy infinitely more knowledgeable about the terrain.
Farragut, who was at Vicksburg against his own better judgment, decided there was little he could do against this rebel stronghold at the time. His ships were in dire need of repair, his guns could not reach the batteries on the bluffs, he did not have enough army troops to attempt a landing, and he was running dangerously low of supplies, including coal to fuel his steam engines. He was now 400 miles north of New Orleans, the closest place that could serve as a repair and refueling depot. In addition to these difficulties, the river was beginning its annual decline, having earlier been at its highest point in years. He decided to return to New Orleans and await the outcome of the approaching battle at Corinth, Mississippi. Having withdrawn from Tennessee, General Beauregard had selected this small town near the Tennessee/Mississippi border as the place he would take a stand against the invading Union army commanded by General Henry Halleck. The result of this battle could decide whether additional rebel troops would be available to reinforce those defending Vicksburg or whether Union troops could be sent to attack it.
War news from the east was mixed. The Army of the Potomac was only eight miles from Richmon
d but seemed unable to capture the rebel capital. A dark cloud, in the form of a 16,000-man Confederate army led by Generals Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and Richard S. Ewell, began a long, successful sweep up the Luray Valley area of the Shenandoah, leading toward a victorious battle at Front Royal, Virginia, on May 23 against forces commanded by General Nathaniel Banks.
On May 23, Farragut joined the Hartford and the other ships of his fleet at Grand Gulf. He left six boats behind at Vicksburg to conduct a blockade of the river south of the city. Remaining at Vicksburg were the corvettes Oneida and Iroquois and the gunboats Sciota, Winona, Katahdin, and Wissahickon.
Within a few hours of returning to his fleet, Farragut decided that he should make at least one attempt to force Vicksburg to submit before returning to New Orleans. At four o’clock the following afternoon, May 24, the fleet dropped anchor four miles south of the first Vicksburg batteries. After several reconnaissance during the next two days, Farragut, who had fallen ill with one of the many river-related fevers that were plaguing his crews, ordered a limited shelling of the town. The Union commanders were surprised when the batteries on the bluffs failed to return fire. Actually, the Confederate artillery commanders were waiting for an attempted landing before beginning their devastating fire. The landing never took place, and the fleet, its commanders satisfied that they could accomplish nothing without a strong army to attack the city and the batteries from the rear, withdrew downriver.
At Grand Gulf, the ships were attacked by several light batteries hidden along the riverbanks on both sides. The troop transport Laurel Hill suffered heavy shelling, and several of the shells damaged her boilers, disabling them. Unable to maintain power, she drifted helplessly down with the current. On board, dozens of soldiers had been killed or badly wounded. Captain Craven, aboard the Brooklyn, returned the fire, aided by several gunboats. The town itself was shelled, at a cost of much damage and several lives.
When the fleet reached Baton Rouge, Farragut was annoyed to see that the United States flag that had been flying over the city’s arsenal had been removed. After dropping anchor, the Hartford’s chief engineer, James B. Kimball, went ashore with several sailors in search of a laundress to do his laundry. Before the boat could land, a group of mounted men arrived and opened fire from the shore. Kimball and two other sailors were wounded in the attack. In retaliation, Farragut ordered the Hartford and the Kennebec to shell the town. The firing did considerable damage and continued until a group of citizens appeared in a rowboat, waving a white flag. They told Farragut that the shooting had not been the work of local people, but of guerrillas over whom local officials had no control. The city’s mayor pleaded with Farragut, who was in a towering rage over the wounding of his men. He claimed no resistance would be offered by Baton Rouge if the flag officer would only halt the shelling. Farragut, by now disgusted with the chicanery of Southern mayors, roared at the cowering officials that if another attack against his ships or men occurred, he would order his entire fleet to level the city, town, or plantation from which the offending shots were fired. Before continuing down the river to New Orleans, Farragut put General Williams’s troops ashore to occupy the town, and left two gunboats behind in support.
Upon arriving back at New Orleans on May 30, Farragut found messages from Welles and Fox waiting for him. He was surprised by their contents. Following congratulations on taking the forts and New Orleans were rebuffs for not doing the same at Vicksburg and for not continuing upriver to Memphis, where he could link with the Western Flotilla, commanded by Flag Officer Charles H. Davis. Davis had replaced Foote, who was suffering from the effects of a wound that refused to heal. The flotilla was comprised mostly of ironclad gunboats that had acquitted themselves well as they fought down the river, finally destroying a large Confederate gunboat force and capturing Memphis.
Farragut was irritated by the way in which Welles and Fox assumed that his fleet of mostly oceangoing ships could steam up the Mississippi River with such ease. He wrote both the secretary and the undersecretary of his need for additional ships, the extensive repairs required on the ships he had with him, his concern over neglect of the ships remaining in the Gulf on blockade duty, his constant shortage of supplies, and the fact that the enlistments of half his crews had expired and the men were clamoring to go home. His greatest concern, however, was the falling level of the river. He told Welles he feared that if he returned upriver, especially if he went as far as Memphis, which is 400 miles north of Vicksburg, his ships would not be able to descend the river until the following spring, “if at all.” He pleaded with Fox for an ironclad of the Monitor type, which, he wrote, was “worth all the gunboats in the river.”
Farragut was also concerned for the safety of the gunboats he had left on duty near Vicksburg. Although they were out of range of the enemy’s guns along the bluffs and could hold their own against rebel gunboats, he feared something far more dangerous. Hidden away in the Yazoo River, near Vicksburg, was a new Confederate ironclad ram, CSS Arkansas. One hundred sixty-five feet long and thirty-five feet wide, the twin-screw gunboat was still in the final stages of construction, but rumors about her had reached the Union fleets on both ends of the river. She was known to have ten guns, and a crew of 200 men. No one in the Union camp knew when she might suddenly appear, but all eyes were on the alert for what was expected to be a dreadful vessel, and all ears listened for the cry “The Arkansas is coming!” Farragut knew his gunboats would be no match for the rebel ironclad, and wanted to order them to join him at New Orleans.
Washington would have none of what some saw as Farragut’s timidity. Notwithstanding the condition of his ships or his supply problems, he was to return to Vicksburg and close the river to enemy traffic.
To his wife, Virginia, he wrote, “They will keep us in this river until the vessels break down and all the little reputation we have made is evaporated. They expect me to navigate the Mississippi nine hundred miles in the face of batteries, ironclad rams, etc. They expect impossibilities.” He failed to see any real value in the Navy Department requiring that he endanger his ships and men on a foolish venture. His own opinion was that Mobile was the next most important target for his energies. Welles and Fox, apparently standing by an earlier plan for the linking of the two river fleets regardless of the conditions in the river, disagreed. A reluctant Farragut made preparations to return upriver to Vicksburg.
In the predawn hours of June 8, Flag Officer Farragut once again got his fleet under way, steaming upriver instead of down, as he would have liked. Along with the flagship Hartford, the fleet included the Brooklyn, the Richmond, the gunboat Pinola, several army transports, and sixteen mortar boats along with their accompanying gunboats. Porter, anxious not to be left out this time when a large city was captured, used the gunboat Octorara as his flagship. General Butler, probably seeing there was no glory to be gained at Vicksburg, decided to stay in New Orleans. Instead, he sent 3,000 troops along to join the command of General Williams, who was to leave a strong garrison at Baton Rouge and take command of the troops to be used against Vicksburg.
Along the way, the larger ships had the usual problems of groundings, including the Hartford, which was stuck in the mud for nearly twenty-four hours. “It is a sad thing to think of having your ship in a mud bank,” wrote the obviously despondent Farragut, “five hundred miles from the natural element of a sailor.” The flag officer had reason to be despondent. He had already been to Vicksburg, and although he considered that he might be able to run the batteries surrounding the city, he would then be stuck upriver. The Vicksburg batteries would be between him and his line of supplies. Unlike the forts in the lower Mississippi, these batteries would not be isolated and forced to surrender until a powerful Union army attacked and captured Vicksburg. He saw this voyage as a futile and costly exercise. His fleet had lost more anchors, and he had seen more vessels damaged than he had witnessed in his many decades at sea. Fighting in this river was much more difficult than the bureaucrats in Washi
ngton imagined. “The elements of destruction in this river are beyond anything I ever encountered,” he wrote Welles, but to no avail.
Finally, after a long and tedious journey, struggling against the current and the declining water level, the Union fleet anchored near Warrenton, Mississippi, seven miles below Vicksburg. All ships were at the anchorage by late morning of June 25. When he arrived, Farragut had hoped to receive word that Davis’s fleet was at anchor north of Vicksburg. He was disappointed to learn that no Union vessels could be seen upriver. This meant he would have to attempt to pass the batteries without the additional firepower of the Western Flotilla.
It was at this point that a courageous and irrepressible United States Army officer named Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Ellet entered the scene. Alfred was the younger brother of Colonel Charles Ellet. Charles was a highly talented engineer who had been responsible for the construction of numerous bridges, including the 1,010-foot bridge spanning the Wheeling and Ohio rivers, the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time. Charles Ellet had developed the concept of using steam-driven vessels as rams against large ships, but failed to find support for the idea. During the Crimean War, he traveled to Sebastopol and attempted to convince the Russian navy that steam-powered rams could break the Allied blockade of that city. The Russians turned him away, as did a series of American secretaries of war, until the Confederate ironclad ram Virginia sailed into Hampton Roads, Virginia, on March 8, 1862, and successfully attacked and sank two Federal warships by ramming them.