But such was not the case because a quarter-century earlier, in 1839, Frenchman Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre announced the first commercially successful photographic process. His daguerreotype was built on the work of others who had experimented with various chemicals, plates, and techniques. News of the invention spread across the Atlantic, and galleries popped up across the United States. As years passed and the industry rapidly expanded, enterprising individuals sought to reduce costs. Experiments with less-expensive materials resulted in the introduction of two new formats about 1855: the ambrotype and tintype.
Meanwhile, in Europe a radically different process gained momentum. This was a variation on the talbotype, a format that had been introduced by British inventor William Henry Fox Talbot the same year as Daguerre announced his discovery. Talbot’s concept used a paper negative from which any number of prints could be made, each as good as the first. In practice, however, the quality of the prints did not equal the fine qualities of the daguerreotype, and so it languished. Then in the early 1850s, another Brit, Frederick Scott Archer, perfected Talbot’s process by replacing the paper negative with glass and working with collodion, a sticky chemical cocktail. The results were astounding—and sounded the death knell of the daguerreotype.
In 1854 André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri of France patented the carte de visite, a calling card with a portrait photograph pasted to it. It was relatively slow to catch on, but when it did, in about 1859, the format spread like wildfire. As early as the spring of 1860, photographers in the United States offered a pack of a dozen portraits for about $1.50. Inexpensive, reproducible, and shareable, the little format quickly became all the rage in America as the storm clouds of war broke over a deeply divided republic.
Patriotic young men, dressed in new uniforms and completely unaware of the horrors that awaited many of them, flocked to their hometown galleries to sit for portraits before going off to war in 1861. Many purchased cartes de visite, though ambrotypes and tintypes continued to be produced. Images in all three formats provided the common soldier or sailor in America with a profound individualism once reserved for a select group of gentlemen officers through canvas and oils.
Crisis in Pensacola
By early January 1861, mechanic W. Thomas Morrill and other employees of the Pensacola Navy Yard in Florida were caught in a humanitarian crisis. They had not been paid for two months—the result of civil unrest that disrupted the flow of money and materials to military outposts in the southern states as the country drifted toward civil war. Hunger became a real and present danger.
Morrill had a wife and two children to feed. Many of his fellow workers also had families to support, and no relief was in sight. On 8 January, the workers rallied and appointed a committee to petition the commander of the yard for assistance. The sympathetic officer, Commander James Armstrong, ordered food to be distributed two days later—the same day Florida legislators voted to secede from the Union.
The yard passed into Rebel hands, and Morrill, a member of the local militia, was called to patrol the area. His talents as a mechanic were put to better use in the Confederate Navy, and he became an engineering officer. He eventually joined the crew of the ironclad ram Atlanta and was captured when she grounded during a 17 June 1863 battle against Union monitors. Morrill was held for more than a year in a prison in the North. He survived the war and returned to his family. He died in 1911 at age 74.
First Naval Shot of the War
Among the Union vessels gathered along the South Carolina coast outside Charleston Harbor on 12 April 1861 was the cutter Harriet Lane, named for President James Buchanan’s niece, on temporary transfer to the Navy from the Treasury Department’s Revenue Marine Service. Her captain, John Faunce, had been associated with the Harriet Lane since her construction in 1857.
Faunce and his crew watched the bombardment of Fort Sumter. At one point, a steamer appeared with no ensign. Faunce signaled the ship to show her colors and come to. The vessel did not respond, and Faunce ordered a warning shot fired. This prompted the crew of the mystery vessel, the merchant Nashville, to display the U.S. flag. Faunce allowed the steamer to pass. Some historians credit this event as the first naval shot of the war.
The Harriet Lane was permanently transferred to the Navy soon thereafter, and Faunce and his beloved cutter parted ways. In 1863 the ship was captured by Confederates and converted into a blockade runner. But by the war’s end, she was little more than a hulk, wasting away in Havana. Faunce was dispatched to bring her home. He did so, but the Navy determined she was unfit for duty. Sold to a Boston merchant, the Harriet Lane perished in a storm in 1884. Faunce died seven years later, at age 85.
The Terror of the Rebels along the Coast
A veteran of the U.S. merchant fleet with no formal naval training, John Dutch, 42, impressed everyone after he joined the Navy in 1861. His daring deeds became legend in operations along the South Carolina coast as commander of the bark Kingfisher.
“He is a bold and enterprising man and has thoroughly explored these shores and creeks. He knows every picket and fortified position of the rebels near here. They say he goes in a dugout right under the guns and shoots the pickets of the enemy,” declared one Northern volunteer with the Freedman’s Aid Society in the Palmetto State. “Captain Dutch was energetic, hated the enemy, was a good protector to the islands, and made himself the terror of the rebels along the coast.”
Dutch commanded the Kingfisher in the region until March 1864, when the vessel ran aground and was lost. He received a new assignment on board the monitor Chimo and served along the North Carolina coast for the rest of the war. He received an honorable discharge in 1866. Dutch never returned to the sea. He moved to Savannah, Georgia, and served a four-year stint as inspector of customs and special agent of the U.S. Treasury Department. He eventually returned to the North and became a wood dealer in Exeter, New Hampshire. He died at age 74 in 1895.
Such Men Soon Find Their Death
Navy Lieutenant Francis Winslow was between assignments and with his in-laws near Fayetteville, North Carolina, when secession tore the country apart in late 1860. The rift touched him personally. On the northern side lay his home state of Massachusetts, and on the southern side his wife, Mary, and their four children. After the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861, locals in Fayetteville viewed him with growing suspicion. He decided to leave and escaped by ship to the North. The rest of his family soon followed.
Before the end of the year, Winslow was placed in command of the sidewheel sloop Water Witch and reported to the lower Mississippi River in Louisiana. His abilities came to the attention of his superiors, who rewarded him with a larger ship, the gunboat R. R. Cuyler, and a promotion to commander.
A few months later, the Cuyler was en route to British Nassau when Winslow fell ill with yellow fever. He died at sea on 26 August 1862. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox summarized Winslow’s contributions in a letter to the family: “He was one of our best officers. Loyal to the flag, an accomplished seaman, and possessed of that rare virtue, modest courage. Moreover, he was a Christian and went forth to encounter all perils, because it was his duty. Such men soon find their death, and their eternal reward.”
The Day the War Stopped
John Hart, a Union Navy officer and U.S. Naval Academy graduate, made a big name for himself as commander of the Albatross. A small gunboat with little firepower, she and her crew scored several successes in the Gulf of Mexico. Lieutenant Commander Hart’s most notable achievement occurred on 14 March 1863, when the Albatross ran the batteries of Port Hudson, Louisiana. Lashed to the side of Rear Admiral David Farragut’s flagship the Hartford, the Albatross ran a gauntlet of guns with the sloop-of-war, both vessels suffering minimal loss.
Hart looked forward to more activity on the Mississippi River. Yet three months later he sat in his stateroom, pressed the muzzle of a pistol behind his right ear, and pulled the trigger. Chronic depression had plagued him for most of his 39 years. Separation from his wife and son may have contributed to his suicide.
Fellow officers prepared to bury Hart’s body inland. They made their way into enemy territory and wound up in St. Francisville, Louisiana. There they learned that a church cemetery plot was available for non-resident Masons. Knowing that Hart had been a member, and understanding that fraternal bonds superseded Union and Confederate ties, they appealed to and received help from local lodge brothers.
On 13 June 1863, Hart’s remains were laid to rest. The event is celebrated today in St. Francisville as “The Day the War Stopped.”
Unmasking a Rebel Battery at Freestone Point
The light of dawn on 25 September 1861 revealed suspicious activity along the Potomac River about 25 miles south of Washington, D.C. Workers armed with axes and shovels busied themselves on the Virginia side of the river at Freestone Point. Their actions caught the attention of the U.S. Navy’s Potomac Flotilla anchored at nearby Indian Head.
One of the flotilla’s six vessels was the tugboat James Murray. Her commander, 19-year-old Midshipman John F. McGlensey, had only recently completed his studies at the Naval Academy. Two Union vessels investigated and discovered that the workers appeared to be digging earthworks. The ships fired and were met by a barrage from a masked Confederate artillery battery. As the firing intensified, the Federals observed a small launch anchored in front of the Rebel guns. McGlensey ordered the James Murray in and captured the craft.
Though the flotilla was unable to dislodge the enemy that day, McGlensey received praise for his actions. He went on to participate in operations along the Southern coast and earned his lieutenant’s bars by the end of hostilities. He remained in the Navy and served on various vessels in U.S. and international waters.
McGlensey retired in 1893 as a captain and died three years later at age 54. His wife, Mary Jane, and a son and daughter survived him. He was buried in the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery.
Target Practice at Battery Semmes
By the autumn of 1864, life on the front lines of Richmond, Virginia, had degenerated into one seemingly endless round of artillery shelling. Such was the case at Battery Semmes, a Confederate emplacement dug into the banks of the James River just a few miles south of the capital. The C. S. Navy lieutenant in command of the battery, Hilary Cenas of Louisiana, played a deadly game of target practice with the bluecoats opposite his position.
Cenas had a history of reckless behavior tracking back to his days at the Naval Academy, where he graduated 14th of 20 in the class of 1859. He decided to cast his lot with his native South after the war began. But before he could get away, Federal authorities carried him off to prison. Released before the end of 1861, he joined the Confederate Navy. Cenas eventually ran afoul of his superiors and was more or less banished to Battery Semmes.
After Richmond fell on 2 April 1865, Cenas followed the Army of Northern Virginia and surrendered a week later at Appomattox Court House. He returned to Louisiana and became a paramilitary leader of anti-Reconstruction forces. A gunshot wound suffered during the 5 March 1873 Battle of Jackson Square was cited as his cause of death in 1877 at age 38.
Showdown at Ferrol Harbor
The Confederate ironclad ram Stonewall steamed out of the Spanish port of Ferrol in broad daylight on 24 March 1865, moving deliberately into the Atlantic. Two Union warships awaited her. The commander of the French-built Stonewall, Captain Thomas J. “Jeff” Page, had resolved himself and his crew to their fate. “Coolly and calmly we look things in the face, trusting to the guidance of an all-wise and merciful God and to our own hard exertions,” he wrote in a report.
Page, a veteran officer who had started his career in the U.S. Navy in 1827, had risen to prominence in the antebellum years. When the Civil War began, he joined Virginians in the Confederacy. In January 1865 he became commander of the Stonewall and prepared to wreak havoc on Yankee merchant ships. But mechanical problems and other damage resulted in the near capture of his vessel at Ferrol Harbor. The crew got away, but success was short-lived. Two months later, with the war ended, Page surrendered to Spanish authorities in Havana. He fled to Argentina with his family, eventually settling in Italy. Affectionately known as the “Commodore,” he passed away in 1899 at age 91.