Lincoln's Admiral Read online

  Although Scott’s plan was never formally adopted, its basic concept eventually evolved as the strategy with which the Union successfully fought the war, with the addition of invasion forces to speed up the Confederacy’s collapse. The first step in this evolution began when President Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the South’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

  The unenviable task of sealing the enemy’s ports fell to Lincoln’s secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles. The fifty-eight-year-old, short, stocky Welles wore a huge white beard that made him look like a biblical prophet. He had been active in Connecticut politics for many years, earning a reputation first as an outspoken editorialist for the Hartford Times and Weekly Advertiser, then as an ardent supporter of the Jacksonian Democrats. He had served five years as the Hartford postmaster, a highly political post awarded for his support of John Niles, the Hartford Times publisher, who won a senatorial seat in 1835. During the presidency of James Polk, he served as chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing in the Navy Department. Welles had broken with the Democratic Party, to which he had been closely allied for so many years, and joined the new Republican Party over the issue of slavery. A supporter of states’ rights, he abhorred the Southern attempt to expand slavery using that doctrine as a catalyst. Although he had no real naval experience to bring to the wartime post of secretary of the navy, Lincoln selected Welles in part because he perceived him as an honest man.

  The navy Welles had inherited from his decidedly pro-South predecessor, Isaac Toucey of Connecticut, was in chaos. With war quickly approaching, Toucey had permitted over half of the navy’s warships to remain on foreign stations, instead of bringing them home to bolster forces stationed at naval facilities in Southern states. Had this been done, it is likely that both the Norfolk and Pensacola navy yards, and the large quantity of resources stored in them, would not have fallen into rebel hands. In addition, some 25 percent of naval officers had resigned and “gone south,” as it was described. A large number of Southern-born officers remained in the navy, but many Northern government officials distrusted their loyalty, even when, as in the case of Captain Farragut, they had abandoned homes and most of their possessions because of their loyalty.

  Welles was faced with the need to rebuild the navy, or what was left of it, in order to carry out the President’s order to block Southern ports to all traffic. He soon found himself locked in a power struggle with Secretary of State Henry Seward, who sought to control the Navy Department. Seward, a close friend of Lincoln’s, thought nothing of bypassing Welles and going directly to the President to discuss naval issues.

  Surrounded by men he did not trust and faced with the rivalry of the powerful Seward, Welles turned to the only man he did trust, Gustavus Fox, a businessman from Massachusetts with extensive naval experience. Fox had been appointed a midshipman in 1838 and had served in various stations, including the Mexican War, before resigning as a lieutenant to enter the woolen manufacturing business. Highly regarded by those who knew him, with numerous powerful people among his friends, Fox had been called on by General Scott in February 1861, when he needed suggestions concerning the reinforcing of Fort Sumter before the rebellious South Carolina moved against the island fort. Fox had quickly produced a plan for sending troops and supplies to bolster the fort’s small garrison, but it had been rejected by President James Buchanan. However, the new Lincoln administration sent Fox to Fort Sumter to meet with its commanding officer, Major Robert Anderson, and to determine what was needed to defend the fort. When Fox returned to Washington, his original plan was revived, and relief ships were sent south. Unfortunately, South Carolina forces compelled Fort Sumter’s surrender before the relief force arrived.

  Welles nominated Fox to the new post of assistant secretary of the navy, as soon as Congress approved its creation. Together, Welles and Fox set about the job of building the navy to fight the war. Vessels of all sizes and types were purchased or chartered and rapidly converted to warships. When this system proved incapable of producing the number required, a huge shipbuilding program was begun. Among the new vessels built was a shallow-draft, steam-driven gunboat of Russian design that was ideally suited for close work in coastal waters and rivers.

  Welles formed an advisory board to recommend the best way to use the navy’s available resources to conduct the most effective blockade. The board’s report on the Gulf Coast concentrated on two key areas: Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana. With five paragraphs devoted to Mobile and eleven pages to New Orleans, it was obvious that the board saw the latter as the most critical location on the Gulf. The report recommended that the capture of New Orleans be undertaken, but not until enough ships with sufficient armament could be assembled to contend with the two forts that dominated the Mississippi River south of the city.

  Meanwhile, Captain David Farragut passed the time in Hastings-on-Hudson waiting. Impatient with inactivity, Farragut spent long hours wandering over the beautiful hills around the village, many with extraordinary views of the Hudson River. His strolls soon raised questions in the minds of local citizens. Some asked if he might be a Confederate spy sent to observe naval preparations along the river. Or perhaps he was a saboteur determined to destroy the aqueduct running from the Croton Reservoir to New York City, through which the city received most of its water supply. After all, they said, it passed just a few yards behind his rented cottage. People who had made little or no sacrifice in the Union cause carefully watched the comings and goings of a man who had lost nearly all his worldly possessions and many of his dearest friends in support of the Union.

  The months dragged on for Farragut, but there was so little naval action during that period that he probably didn’t feel he was missing much, although he awaited the mail each day in hope of receiving orders. When they finally did arrive, in mid-September 1861, they were disappointing. He was instructed to proceed to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to participate in a retirement review board that was to pass judgment on every naval officer on the active list. It wasn’t the kind of duty he wanted, and what made matters worse was that the board was under the direction of Commodore Hiram Paulding, for whom Farragut had little respect.

  Meanwhile, a series of events in the Gulf of Mexico had both embarrassed the United States Navy and emphasized the importance of capturing New Orleans. In June, the commerce raider Sumter had broken through the blockade and escaped Union pursuers to begin a noted and costly - for the Union - career on the open seas. She had been a bark-rigged steamer named Habana that happened to be at New Orleans when the war began. The Confederate navy bought her, fitted her out as a warship, and under command of Captain Raphael Semmes, she dashed past the blockading fleet at the mouth of the Mississippi River. On October 12, the iron-plated ram Manassas slipped out of New Orleans and attacked the Union steam sloop Richmond, causing so much confusion that four blockading vessels fled the scene. Two Federal ships, the Richmond and the Vincennes, managed to get stuck on a sand bar for several hours. Coming under enemy fire, the Vincennes’s commander hastily dumped his guns over the side in an effort to lighten the ship and release her from the bar.

  The Northern press berated the ships’ commanders, the navy in general, and Secretary Welles in particular following public disclosure of each episode.

  It was painfully obvious to Welles and Fox that attempting to blockade the mouth of the Mississippi was not realistically possible. Besides, in addition to being the Confederacy’s major commercial port, New Orleans was quickly becoming its center for naval construction, especially of the kinds of vessels that could guarantee the South continued control of the river. The only solution was to capture and occupy New Orleans and deny its assets to the government in Richmond. The question remained: How was it to be done, and who could do it? The conventional wisdom among Union military minds was to launch a combined army and navy assault down the river from Cairo, Illinois, which many believed could be more easily accomplished than to try to sail warships up the enemy-infested river 100 miles fro
m the Gulf to the city. A major obstacle to the southern route lay in the two powerful forts south of the city that dominated a tight turn in the river and effectively blocked the waterway to enemy vessels. In 1815, a British fleet had spent nine days and expended over 1,000 shells, in attempting to pass Fort St. Philip on its way to New Orleans. Since then, the second and more powerful Fort Jackson had been built across the river and a little south of Fort St. Philip. With the guns of these powerful forts focused on the same stretch of the river, most government officials and military leaders on both sides of the war considered that portion of the river impassable by invading ships.

  Before the war, Fox had commanded merchant ships calling at New Orleans. He felt he knew the river well enough to recommend that the city be assaulted by a fleet moving upstream from the coast. The fleet would include transports carrying army troops to occupy the city once it fell to the navy. Fox’s familiarity, though, did not take into account that the Confederate army had reinforced both Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip. He was blinded by the great success experienced by the navy when a squadron commanded by Commodore Samuel Francis du Pont had outgunned the Confederate forts protecting the entrance to the harbor at Port Royal Sound, South Carolina, and captured them on November 7. In August, Commodore Silas H. Stringham had accomplished a similar feat, reducing the two forts at Hatteras Inlet. These two victories proved that the old adage that ships could not successfully fight a fort was out of date. The introduction of the steam engine and its contribution to the maneuverability of warships had forever changed the equation in such a confrontation.

  Fox believed that if the two forts at Hatteras and the two at Port Royal could be silenced by naval gunfire, then so could the two on the Mississippi River. But there were several factors he either chose to ignore or failed to consider in his enthusiasm. One was the strength of the two river forts. No one in the Union camp had solid intelligence concerning the current status of either Fort Jackson or Fort St. Philip. The other was that the Union fleet would be virtually trapped in a river some 700 yards wide, reducing its ability to maneuver. Running past these two forts would be made more difficult by a series of barriers the rebels had erected across the river to prevent ships from rushing past. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that ships traveling up the river had to reduce speed as they approached the forts in order to negotiate the sharp bend in the river just above them. The conditions a fleet attacking these forts would encounter would be very different from those confronted by the fleets attacking the forts along the coast.

  The victories at Port Royal and Hatteras persuaded Welles, with some prompting from Fox, to set aside the idea of attacking New Orleans from the north. It was, in any event, an army scheme with little real chance of success since the invading force would have to travel hundreds of miles of enemy-controlled river. Instead, they would focus on capturing the city through the use of naval forces steaming upriver from the Gulf. To reinforce their conviction, they met with Lieutenant David Dixon Porter, who had just returned from duty with the Gulf Blockading Squadron. His ship, the steam frigate Powhatan, had been stationed near the mouth of the Mississippi. The two questioned Porter, who was the son of the famous commodore and stepbrother to Farragut, about the Mississippi Delta and the approaches to New Orleans. He proved to be an extremely observant man with a storehouse of critical information. When told of the plan to attack New Orleans from the south, Porter wholeheartedly endorsed the idea, adding only that he believed a bombardment of the forts by mortar boats was essential to their reduction.

  The mortar boats Porter was recommending were different from other naval vessels. They were usually old sailing schooners that had been extensively converted for their new use and were usually towed into position for action by either steamers or sailors in rowing boats. Each carried only a single gun, a thirteen-inch stubby cannon that resembled a seated frog with its mouth open. These fired an unusually heavy projectile, weighing some 285 pounds, that was usually equipped with a timed explosive device set to go off when it landed on its target. Though these mortars had only a short range, the size and weight of the shell and its explosive capacity had a devastating effect on a fort. Porter pledged that both forts would be rendered uselessss, if not completely destroyed, in forty-eight hours of bombardment by these guns.

  Filled with enthusiasm, Welles and Fox went to Lincoln, who was quickly won over to the project. Next, General McClellan was advised of the proposal. At first, he was critical of the idea, expecting that Welles and Fox would require 50,000 army troops for the job, men he couldn’t spare. When they explained it was to be a purely naval operation, and that it would require only about 10,000 soldiers to occupy the city and garrison its forts after they fell to the navy, McClellan agreed to provide the troops the navy needed.

  A great deal rode on the success or failure of an attack on New Orleans: The navy could strike a blow that would have a crippling effect on the Confederacy, taking from it the South’s largest city and most important port. Success would go a long way in erasing from the public’s mind the earlier failures of the Gulf Blockading Squadron, when the Manassas had attacked and scattered Federal warships, and the Sumter’s escape into the open seas from New Orleans. Failure, on the other hand, might mean the total destruction of a large fleet of costly warships under the powerful guns of the river forts.

  Naval planners expected that New Orleans itself would offer less resistance than would the forts. Because almost everyone, North and South, thought that when the time came for Union forces to attack New Orleans, the attack would originate from the north, most of the city’s recently constructed defenses faced in that direction. The only important exception were the two forts. Because of this, naval planners expected the two forts to be the main obstacles to capturing the city from the south. While the Confederate navy and army were facing upriver watching for an invading fleet, the Federal fleet would attack through the back door, the mouth of the Mississippi River. The Union strategists believed the capture of New Orleans depended on first reducing the two forts. Farragut’s daring and single-minded purposefulness would prove them wrong.

  After months of anxious waiting, Farragut’s time had come. The final and perhaps most important question remaining was the selection of the man who would command the fleet sent to take New Orleans. When the deed had been done, just about everyone involved claimed he had been the one to put forth David Farragut’s name for this most important duty. The actual selection process was probably less grandiose, but did include recommendations from those who knew Farragut or were familiar with his record. Secretary Welles reviewed a list of potential candidates. The obvious choices were Commodores du Pont, Charles Wilkes, and John Goldsborough, but all three were already on important duty and should not be moved. Then came a list of captains, some of whom were not on active duty at the moment, but were awaiting orders. One of the latter was Captain David Glasgow Farragut.

  Most of the men on that list had fine if not distinguished careers. Farragut tended to stand out as an officer who was greatly admired by others. Commodore Joseph Smith, chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, strongly supported the selection of Farragut, describing him as bold and impetuous, “with a great deal of courage and energy.” But could he lead a squadron into war? Smith responded that the answer would be “determined only by trial.” Smith had been favorably impressed by Farragut’s performance in building the Mare Island Navy Yard from nothing more than a barren piece of land in just four years. Fox claimed he was impressed by the speed with which Farragut had left Virginia when the state seceded because it showed a man of unquestioned superiority and loyalty. Porter, whose rank prevented him from seeking the assignment for himself, something the overly ambitious officer would surely have done if he could, also supported the selection of his stepbrother, whom he knew to be a sound and reliable officer.

  It was Secretary Welles, of course, who would make the final decision on who would command the fleet. He thought Farragut a fine, imaginati
ve officer. During his earlier service in the Navy Department, he had had the opportunity to hear Farragut describe how American naval forces could capture the fortress castle at Veracruz during the Mexican War. But Welles was looking for a man who already had a reputation as a great naval leader, and there was nothing really distinguishing about his career, except perhaps the longevity of it. Farragut’s greatest accomplishment appeared to be the construction of the Mare Island facility, certainly not the type of assignment that would recommend a man for such an important wartime assignment as the taking of New Orleans. Welles was looking for a man with a reputation to match the great British commander Horatio Nelson. The problem he faced in reaching this goal was that the United States Navy had not been engaged in a great naval battle of the type from which a Nelson would emerge since the War of 1812, a half a century earlier.

  Perhaps in the end, it was not so much the selection of Farragut that won him the post, but the elimination of another man from the list of candidates before Welles. Lieutenant John A. Dahlgren, the inventor of the famous cannon called the Dahlgren gun, was, by a special act of Congress, commander of the Washington Navy Yard. This post would not normally be given to a mere lieutenant, but this particular lieutenant was different. He was President Lincoln’s favorite naval officer. The President had been pressing Secretary Welles to find a vacant captaincy into which he could promote Dahlgren. Welles personally disliked Dahlgren, and saw the ambitious naval officer as a potential rival with direct links to the President as strong as, and perhaps stronger than, his own. He would certainly not want to give such an important assignment to a man who was sure to use the mission’s success - if it was successful - to further his own career and influence.

  So, in the end, and by whatever process, Captain David Farragut was the sole candidate to command a naval squadron on the most daring and important assignment yet conceived by the Navy Department during the Civil War. But would Farragut, a southerner, accept an assignment that was sure to cost many Southern lives? After all, members of his own family lived in or near New Orleans. It was an important question that had to be answered before he was offered the command. Other Southern officers who had remained with the Union had expressed their desire for posts that would not require them to engage in actual combat against their brethren. Would Farragut be one of them?