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In the Diary of Gideon Welles, President Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy, there appears a casual remark by Lincoln, which, although spoken in jest, recalled °ne of the most anxious days of the Civil War. Welles wrote that on a spring day of 1862 . . when the
President, with Stanton and some others, was going down the river in a steamer the long line of boats on the Maryland side near the Kettle Bottom Shoals attracted attention and someone inquired concerning them. 'Oh,’ said the President, 'that is Stanton’s navy’.” The boats had been located there in the Potomac for several weeks prior to the President’s cruise; they consisted of some 50 to 60 river craft—barges and canal boats partially loaded with stones and gravel.
The story of "Stanton’s navy” goes back to the Sunday of 9 March 1862—weatherwise a "beautiful warm Sunday” but militarily "gloomy.” Captain John A. Dahlgren, commandant of the Washington Navy Yard, remembered ". . . sitting in my office about 10% in the morning when the President was announced at the door. 1 went out. Senator Browning [Orville H. Browning of Illinois, a longtime Lincoln friend] was with him. He had, as he said, 'frightful news’.” The Merrimac [formerly the USS Merrimac, seized and converted to an ironclad by the Confederacy and known to the South as the Virginia] "had come out yesterday, smashed the Cumberland and compelled the Congress to surrender, just where they lay off Newport News. The Minnesota was ashore in trying to attack her, and the Roanoke, having a broken shaft, kept under the guns of Fort Monroe; so our naval force was reduced rather quickly. The President did not know whether we might not have a visit here, which would indeed cap the climax! I could give but little comfort; such a thing might be prevented, but not met. If the Merrimac entered the river, it might be blocked; that was about ill that could be done at present.”
Captain Dahlgren then went along to the White House with Lincoln in the President’s carriage. Of Lincoln’s war-worn appearance, as early as March 1862, Dahlgren observed: "Poor gentleman, how thin and wasted he is!” At the White House a hasty conference proceeded over the "frightful news.” Among those present besides Dahlgren were Welles, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of State William H. Seward, Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, and Major General George B. McClellan, then Lincoln’s commanding general, who was now especially concerned about the Union troops at Newport News.
In the course of the meeting "I suggested,” wrote Captain Dahlgren, that "vessels be got ready for blocking the Potomac. The President directed McClellan,
Meigs and myself to arrange for the blocking, and the Secretary of War joined our party in the next room.” At two o’clock in the afternoon, the President’s carriage returned Captain Dahlgren to the Navy Yard. There, he wrote, "I had hardly dined when the Secretaries of War and State were announced and, after a little chat, we started in a steamer to view the locality where the Merrimac might come. I pointed it out.” Stanton "authorized me to lay hands on the river boats.” About 9 p.m., Captain Dahlgren "was able,” he wrote, "to telegraph the President that all the measures were in progress.”
That same evening, while a "full force” was already loading the boats with stones and gravel, Captain Dahlgren evidently felt duty-bound to telegraph his superior, Secretary Welles, inquiring whether the Stan- ton-authorized project had the Navy Secretary’s concurrence—to which Welles answered emphatically not. At the White House meeting, Welles had told Lincoln that the Merrimac, "with her heavy armor,” would not be able to cross Kettle Bottom Shoals, and Welles’s comment about the deep draft of the Merrimac had sufficiently relieved Secretary Seward. The evening telegram from Captain Dahlgren was apparently Welles’s first knowledge of what was going on, of the fact that both the President and Stanton had gone over his head in an essentially naval matter. Lincoln, although consenting to the project, had forbidden that the boats be sunk unless it became known that the Merrimac was really approaching.
About 2 a.m. of 10 March, Captain Dahlgren was "roused from my sleep by a telegram from the Secretary of the Navy that I suspend further operations for blocking the channel.” News had reached Washington that on the very morning of that anxious Sunday the Union ironclad, the famed Monitor, had arrived and, in the historic clash of the ironclads, had forced the Merrimac to retire from the scene. The late report was because of a breakdown of telegraph service from Fort Monroe.
Fear that perhaps the Merrimac was already on her way up the Potomac had animated the White House conference that Sunday. The best, if exaggerated, description of the occasion appears in Welles’s diary. "The President,” Welles wrote, "was so excited that he could not deliberate or be satisfied with the opinions of non-professional men but ordered his carriage and drove to the navy yard to see and consult with Admiral [then Captain] Dahlgren, who had to a great extent
the President’s regard and confidence.” Captain Dahlgren himself noted, however, that as he rode in the carriage to the White House with Lincoln "the President was not at all stunned by the news but was in his usual suggestive mood.”
At the White House meeting, Welles recalled, both Lincoln and Stanton "went repeatedly to the window and looked down the Potomac—the view being uninterrupted for miles—to see if the Merrimac was not coming to Washington.” According to Welles, Stanton was "the most frightened man ... at times almost frantic” and was apprehensive that the Merrimac would "disperse Congress” and "destroy the Capitol.” Welles’s scorn of Stanton arose from personal resentment ofJ Secretary of War who often tried to usurp the Navy Secretary’s authority. Still it must be remembered that the whole Lincoln administration was concerned, fro® the beginning to the end of the Civil War, that Washington would be invaded by a Confederate force- Lincoln himself always took special care to see that Washington was well-protected by Union troops.
That Stanton, not Welles, authorized the collecting and loading of the river boats—with Lincoln’s consent—did illustrate Stanton’s readiness to interfere in naval matters; however, as is plain from Captain Dahl- gren’s own words, the blocking project was Dahlgtf115 idea. The collection of river craft, viewed weeks later’ was really "Dahlgren’s navy”—not Stanton’s. The Secretary of War could be blamed for other military foil®5 but not this one.
Lincoln himself must have recalled that DahlgrCfl had originally proposed the idea, but the Preside® enjoyed ribbing Stanton, who may well have been standing near him at the time and over-hearing remark. Stanton’s rejoinder, if any, was lost on the ri'ef breeze.
As Welles noted in his diary, Dahlgren did posses’ the President’s regard and confidence (though Welle5 thought Dahlgren "cautious” and "timid”); henCC Lincoln’s evident willingness to accept Dahlgren’s su? gestion. The close friendship between Lincoln & Dahlgren had been exemplified that January of when, on one of Lincoln’s frequent visits to the N®j Yard, he confided a thought probably never express^; or at least not recorded, elsewhere. "For the first time- Dahlgren recalled, "I heard the President speak of1 bare possibility of our being two nations.” Yet, to 1 people, then and now, the President’s determinab°n to save the Union seemed never to waver.