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  William Porter was as much a glory hound as his brother. He saw in the approaching Confederate ram his opportunity to lift himself above the ranks of the other gunboat commanders, and he was determined “to go up and destroy her.” In truth, the Arkansas was a prize that had eluded two flag officers and could bring a great deal of fame and recognition to the man whose boat sank her.

  As the enemy boats neared, Lieutenant Stevens ordered the Arkansas’s engines started. When both roared into life and belched smoke, her crew cheered. With lines to the shore quickly cut, the Arkansas slowly swung out toward the center of the river to meet the oncoming gunboats. Seeing their favorite preparing for action, the thousands of people lining the eastern shore cheered their support of her as loudly as they could.

  The big ironclad headed straight for the Essex, intending to ram her. She gradually picked up speed for nearly 300 yards, coming within easy pistol shot of the gunboat, when suddenly her starboard engine snapped a connecting rod and stopped dead. The force of the ram’s port engine and the power of the river current swung her around and drove her into the thick brush and trees lining the western bank. Now her vulnerable stern faced the enemy boats. Unable to maneuver his vessel so he could fire his guns to any effect, and desiring to keep the ram out of enemy hands, Lieutenant Stevens quickly issued handguns to his crew and ordered them to abandon ship. As the men scrambled across the deck and onto the shore, Stevens and several other officers set lines of gunpowder alight and made their own escape. As the ram caught fire, she somehow broke loose and drifted into the river. Porter fired several shells at her but did little or no damage. The shelling was not needed, for the flames inside the ironclad raged, consuming everything that would burn. The heat building up inside the iron vessel caused her loaded guns to fire wildly into the river and against the nearby shore. Then the magazine was caught in the blaze, and the once-glorious ram, the last of a short line of giant ironclads on which the Confederate Navy had pinned its hopes, exploded and blew apart. Within minutes, nothing was left of her but pieces of rubble floating on the surface of the river.

  In his report of the engagement, William Porter claimed it was the hot fire his boat poured into the Arkansas that had caused her demise. Both Farragut and Davis refused to believe his story, because they heard what actually happened from the commanders of the other boats. In General Van Dorn’s report of the incident, he went to lengths to discredit Porter’s claim that his boat was responsible for destroying the ram, saying, “She was no trophy won by the Essex.”

  Like his brother David, William was quick to write letters to those in Washington who could help further his career. To Welles, he wrote an erroneous account of the death of the Arkansas in which he gave full and direct credit for the destruction of the ram to the Essex. He followed this with an error-filled account of why his vessel had failed to destroy the Confederate ironclad while she was tied up at Vicksburg. The Essex had joined the Ellet Rams when they attacked the Arkansas on July 22. It was the only gunboat that had any real opportunity of shelling the ram, since the Ellet boats were armed with only two howitzers each, which were virtually useless against the Arkansas. Porter placed the blame for that earlier failure to destroy the Arkansas not where it belonged, on what Farragut called “the unmanageableness of his vessel,” but instead on what he claimed was the lack of cooperation from Flag Officers Farragut and Davis.

  From Hampton Roads, David Porter supported his brother’s claims and urged Welles to remove Davis from his command. David Porter was evidently seeking command of the river flotilla for himself. On October 1, 1862, Porter was granted what he had sought with such cunning and duplicity, when Davis was returned to Washington. Porter was promoted to flag officer and given command of the newly reorganized Mississippi Squadron, with responsibility for the river north of Vicksburg. Below Vicksburg the river remained the responsibility of David Farragut.

  In answer to General Williams’s call for help, Farragut hastily organized the crews of several vessels, many of whom were ashore on leave. He rushed upriver with the Hartford, the Brooklyn, and four gunboats. The flag officer was determined not to leave the ram operational in the river before he was himself forced to take his large ships back to sea. Farragut arrived at Baton Rouge at noon on August 7. By then, Breckinridge had learned of the fate of the Arkansas and had withdrawn entirely. Two days later Farragut steamed downriver toward New Orleans, leaving the four gunboats Essex, Oneida, Kineo, and Katahdin, and the small ram Sumter, behind to guard the river around Baton Rouge from further attack.

  On the return trip down the river, Farragut halted briefly at the town of Donaldsonville, Louisiana. For several months, this small river town had been used by rebel guerrillas to attack Union boats steaming up and down the river. Town officials had been warned several times that the fleet would destroy the town if the shooting at Union vessels was not stopped. On the trip to Baton Rouge, the Brooklyn was fired on by riflemen hidden along the town’s wharves. Return cannon fire drove them off, but they later came back to harass an army transport. Farragut had sent word earlier to Donaldsonville that all women and children should be evacuated because he planned on shelling the town on his voyage downriver.

  In front of Donaldsonville, the Hartford and the Brooklyn fired into the town for a brief period. The shelling set fire to several warehouses along the wharves, and drove out the Confederate riflemen who had attempted to pick off gun crews on the sloops. Small boats landed several parties of marines and sailors, who quickly swept through the town in search of the home of the local guerrilla leader, Captain Phillippe Landry. Finding Landry gone, the men set his home ablaze. Fires were also set at the town’s two hotels.

  Upon arriving back at New Orleans, Farragut was delighted to learn that he had been commissioned the first rear admiral in the United States Navy. General Butler honored him with a fifteen-gun salute, which the Hartford joyously returned. That night an army band serenaded the new rear admiral. Along with the commission came a vote of thanks from the Congress to the men and officers of the fleet for their “successful operations on the lower Mississippi River, and for their gallantry displayed in the capture of Forts Jackson and St. Philip and the city of New Orleans, and in the destruction of the enemy’s gunboats and armed flotilla.”

  Farragut attempted to assuage the feelings of General Butler, whose role in the engagements had been belittled by David Porter. Porter’s report gave the impression that he, not Butler, had sent the troops around the rear of the forts. Writing to Butler, Farragut expressed his desire to share with the army the honor of taking Mobile next.

  To Virginia and Loyall he wrote, “Yesterday I hoisted my [admiral’s] flag at the main, and the whole fleet cheered, which I returned with a most dignified salute. I called all hands, and read an Act of Congress complimentary of their achievements.” Farragut then began preparing his fleet for the trip downriver and into the Gulf. The ships were to steam to Pensacola for badly needed repairs.

  Meanwhile, far up the Mississippi, General Van Dorn was carrying out his plans to fortify Port Hudson. General Daniel Ruggles’s force was detached from General Breckinridge and sent to Port Hudson to begin the work. Port Hudson stands on a commanding height nearly eighty feet above the river, near a hairpin turn that forces vessels to reduce their speed. Along those bluffs, Captain James Nocquet, a talented Confederate Army engineer, built battery positions for the guns Van Dorn shipped down from Vicksburg. When Nocquet was finished with his work, the Confederate army had constructed a bastion stronger even than Vicksburg. Now 300 miles of the Mississippi River, from Port Hudson to Vicksburg, and including the intersection with the vital Red River, were solidly in Confederate hands.

  On August 14 the Federal ram Sumter lost power while patrolling the river above Port Hudson and was run aground. Fearing an attack from Confederate troops in the area, the sailors abandoned her and fled the scene aboard a small steamer. While a group of rebels attempted to remove her two thirty-two-pounders, another Unio
n gunboat came on the scene. Rather than lose their prize, the rebels set her ablaze. When the enemy had passed, they returned and managed to rescue the two cannons from the river. These were added to the batteries at Port Hudson.

  The following week, amid accusations of rape and looting by the Baton Rouge garrison, and anxious over a rumored Confederate attack against New Orleans, General Butler withdrew all Federal army troops from the Louisiana capital. The only Union presence remaining at Baton Rouge was provided by the four gunboats and one ram left by Farragut to guard the city’s port facilities. The naval officers, unable to prevent Confederate troops from occupying the city in the usual manner, threatened Baton Rouge officials that if such an occupation took place, they would destroy the entire town through a naval bombardment.

  At New Orleans, Farragut had once again to look after the needs of his fleet. Nearly every ship under his command required repairs, some extensive. In addition to the toll taken by enemy guns, the receding water level left many hulls with bottom damage from scraping the riverbed. The narrowness of the river in many places caused numerous collisions that left the sides of numerous ships and boats damaged.

  Back in Gulf waters, Farragut was once again able to resume active command of the ships he had left to conduct the blockade of Confederate ports. The blockade had not been especially successful, due in part to the fact that the best fighting ships of Farragut’s squadron had joined him in the Mississippi River campaign. Of those left on blockade duty during the river campaign, a dozen were old sailing ships that could do little against the steam-powered blockade runners employed by the Confederacy. The powered craft of the blockade squadron included two small screw steamers and three larger side-wheelers. In truth, the squadron maintaining the blockade while Farragut was on the Mississippi was little more than a token Union naval presence in the Gulf.

  Matters improved quickly for the blockade and the crews now that the Admiral was free of the river. Farragut’s requests for additional ships were answered when newly commissioned vessels arrived from the north for blockade duty. Two ships that had been on duty in the Gulf for a long time, and whose crews suffered from an epidemic of scurvy, were sent home. Blockade duty provided Farragut’s crews with the opportunity for badly needed rest from the tensions and anxieties of being up the long river in the heart of the Confederacy.

  In other parts of the country, bad news plagued the Union during the second half of 1862 and the first half of 1863. The Union Army of the Potomac faltered in its invasion of Virginia, owing in part to the constant change in its commanding general. Frustrated by the army’s lack of aggressiveness, President Lincoln replaced General George McClellan with General Ambrose Burnside in November 1862. In January 1863, Burnside was himself replaced by General Joseph Hooker. “Fighting Joe” Hooker lasted until that June, when General George B. Meade was given command. In mid-December 1862, the Army of the Potomac sent more than 106,000 men against Confederate positions guarding Fredericksburg, Virginia. The daylong assault failed to dislodge a Confederate force of 72,000 commanded by Lieutenant Generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and James Longstreet, in what became known as the First Battle of Fredericksburg. The Federal army suffered 12,700 killed or wounded at Fredericksburg in what one Union soldier described as “a great slaughter pen.” In its first Vicksburg campaign, a Union army under the command of Major General Ulysses S. Grant failed to secure the city in part because a Confederate force under General Van Dorn managed to get behind Union lines and capture or destroy $1.5 million in supplies.

  Farragut’s squadron was not immune to the Union’s run of bad luck. Two places along the coast gave the new rear admiral the most difficulty. One was the great port of Mobile, Alabama. The port was inside Mobile Bay, the entrance to which was protected by several forts, including the powerful Fort Morgan. Rebel and European ships slipped in and out of Mobile Bay almost at will. One infamous incident at Mobile Bay resulted in an injustice that permanently damaged the career of the grandson of Commodore Edward Preble, hero of the naval war against the Barbary pirates. Commander George H. Preble of the gunboat Oneida was on station off Mobile Bay when, at 5:00 p.m. on September 4, 1862, what appeared to be a British warship approached. The vessel was actually the Confederate cruiser Florida. Built in Liverpool, she was an exact copy of a British warship. Because of this, and the fact she was flying the English ensign, Preble approached her with caution. All ships’ commanders on blockade duty had been warned to deal delicately with vessels of foreign powers.

  The Florida steamed as straight as an arrow toward the entrance to Mobile Bay. This contributed to the deception since a blockade runner would normally have attempted to avoid coming too close to a Union warship. The Oneida steamed toward the intruder, and Preble hailed her several times but received no response. Preble then fired several shots across her bow. When she failed to stop, he followed with a broadside that did considerably more damage than was visible to him. Preble kept up his firing until both ships came within range of Fort Morgan’s guns, at which time he returned to his station.

  Preble brought much of his trouble on himself by filing an incomplete report of the incident with Farragut, his commanding officer. He made it sound as if he had failed to fire on the enemy ship until it was well past his position, and that he had done it little damage. The Florida’s skipper, Captain James N. Maffit, later described the damage inflicted on his ship by the Oneida as making her “a perfect wreck.” It took nearly four months to make the Florida seaworthy again.

  With few facts concerning the incident in his hands, Secretary Welles decided to make Preble an example to other ships’ commanders who might be “timid” in the performance of their duties. After twenty-seven years of service, Preble’s name was struck from the rolls of the navy without so much as a hearing. Public pressure forced President Lincoln to reinstate him in February 1863, but Welles assigned him to command a sailing ship in European waters, where he remained for the rest of the war. In 1872, following years of campaigning, Preble received the court-martial hearing he wanted. Among those who testified was Captain Maffit. The court found that Preble “did all that a loyal, brave, and efficient officer could do to capture or destroy” the rebel cruiser.

  While the Florida affair embarrassed Rear Admiral Farragut, he knew Preble to be a competent and brave officer. Once the complete facts of the incident were known to him, he wrote Welles expressing his belief that Preble had hesitated firing on the cruiser because she appeared to be a British warship. It was, Farragut wrote, Preble’s desire to “avoid giving offense to foreign nations in enforcing our blockade.”

  Captain Maffit again succeeded in embarrassing the United States Navy in January 1863, when he ran his vessel through a Union blockade that had been established around Mobile Bay especially to prevent the Florida from reaching the open seas. One of the blockading vessels, the gunboat Cuyler, under Commander George F. Emmons, unsuccessfully chased her for nearly three months. The Confederate cruiser went on to an illustrious career as a commerce raider. By the time bad health forced Maffit to relinquish command of the cruiser in August 1863, she had taken fifty-five prizes.

  Although it provided much-needed rest, blockade duty could be a dismal service for sailors of the Federal navy. Days and sometimes weeks of tedious, routine work left the crews in less than top condition when their boring duty was suddenly broken by the approach of a blockade runner or an enemy cruiser. Hours of practice drills and firing their guns at targets did little to relieve the feeling that they were no longer a part of the war. Sailors often wrote home of the hardships they endured while lying off the coast, waiting for something to happen. The ships were subject to the ravages of powerful tropical hurricanes and winter gales. Many had to seek temporary relief in Pensacola to repair damages caused by the weather. The crews in several sections, especially those along the Texas coast, were often struck down with yellow fever or scurvy. Although the blockade has received considerably less attention than the more exciting g
reat land battles of the war, most historians agree that it was the strangling effect of the blockade, the largest ever imposed until that time, which brought the Confederacy down, not the Union army’s force of arms. During the term of the blockade, from April 1861 until the close of the war, 1,504 ships were captured by the blockading squadrons, with a value exceeding $30 million.

  The Southern attitude concerning the impact of the blockade is evident from the amount of money spent and the effort exerted by the Confederate government in attempting to break it. The development of ironclad gunboats, submarines, and rams was the direct result of the struggle against the blockade. The Richmond government, which spent millions of dollars on vessels designed to break the blockade, would much rather have used the money to build oceangoing ships. These could have taken cotton from Southern ports to Europe and returned with supplies needed for the war effort.

  Equally troublesome to Farragut as Mobile Bay was the Texas coast from the Sabine River to the Rio Grande. This low, sandy shore provided numerous locations for small rebel boats to meet incoming supply ships and offload them with virtual immunity. Farragut had only a handful of ships to attempt to control several hundred miles of Texas coast. In October 1862, he ordered a force of five Union vessels into Galveston Bay to capture the city of Galveston. Under the command of Commander William Renshaw of the gunboat Westfield, the expedition included three other gunboats, the Harriet Lane, the Clifton, and the Owasco, as well as the mortar schooner Henry James. They accomplished their mission with little resistance. Holding the city proved to be a far greater problem, since Commander Renshaw had too few troops to conduct an effective occupation.

  During the next few months, the Federal naval forces controlled Galveston by day but withdrew to the waterfront district while Confederate cavalrymen freely roamed the city at night. In an effort to help Renshaw hold the city around the clock, Farragut had two gunboats transferred to Galveston, the Corypheus and the Sachem. From New Orleans, the army sent three companies of the Forty-second Massachusetts Infantry. The newly combined army/navy command was now large enough to control most of the city during the night, but not of sufficient size to defend it against a concerted attack by regular Confederate forces massing nearby. The Massachusetts troops were stationed along Galveston’s waterfront, where they could be aided by the firepower of the gunboats if attacked by a substantial enemy force.