In mid-February 1865, Union Major General William Tecumseh Sherman departed the recently captured city of Columbia, South Carolina, to march north and link with Federal forces in North Carolina. While he was certainly accustomed to working independently behind Confederate lines, it was important that the general be informed of the capture of Wilmington and the possibility of an open supply line from that port to his divisions. By late February, Sherman was sending out scouts to find friendly forces in eastern North Carolina. Two such men—in the uniforms of Rebel officers—brought word to Wilmington that Sherman wished urgently to communicate with the Union commander there. Volunteers were called for to carry encrypted dispatches through enemy lines to locate Sherman's army somewhere near the border with South Carolina. The most unusual among these was a team of Sailors that set out on 4 March from Wilmington.
The leader of this small party was Acting Master H. Walton Grinnell. Born in New York City on 19 November 1843, Grinnell came from a seafaring family. His grandfather, Cornelius, had been a privateer captain during the Revolutionary War, and his uncle and father had co-founded a shipping company in 1825 that was so successful it permitted Grinnell's father to retire in 1850 and focus on supporting polar exploration.
The elder Henry W. Grinnell funded and provided ships to the U.S. Navy for the 1850 and 1853 voyages to find the British explorer Sir John Franklin, contributed to the Hayes Expedition of 1860, and would support the Hall Expedition of 1871; he also went on to found and serve as the first president of the American Geographical and Statistical Society. Uncle Joseph Grinnell was a whaling merchant, packet trader, and four-term representative in the U.S. Congress.
Favorable Consideration
H. Walton Grinnell was enrolled in the New York City Free Academy when the war broke out, but he immediately joined the Navy. He was first "mentioned in dispatches" on 25 November 1861. Captain F. B. Ellison's report of a 22 November engagement off Pensacola, Florida, between the USS Richmond and Confederate forts McRae and Pickens commends Acting Master's Mate Grinnell's report as "very full, and embrac[ing] every incident worthy of note." Ellison went further, stating that "The valuable assistance of this young gentleman . . . in carrying my orders and the accuracy of their execution deserve my warmest praise, and I trust his application for a warrant as a midshipman may receive the favorable consideration of the Navy Department."
Two years later, Grinnell (now on board the Monongahela) was again singled out for his conduct while leading a two-howitzer team of Sailors in a landing party that helped the Union Army capture Port Aransas off Corpus Christi, Texas. Landing with three regiments of infantry under Brigadier General Thomas E. G. Ransom, Grinnell and his party made the 22-mile march across Mustang Island to Aransas to help capture the Rebel garrison there. Ransom reported that "The conduct of the naval party of Acting Ensign H. W. Grinnell and ten seamen from the Monongahela, in charge of two howitzers, in landing and accompanying the expedition from Corpus Christi Pass was of the most satisfactory character." His sentiments were echoed by Commander J. H. Strong of the Monongahela and forwarded to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. Strong again mentioned Grinnell as the leader of a 12-man howitzer team that landed and helped the Army in January 1864. Between landings, Grinnell took part in the battles of New Orleans and Mobile Bay. By early 1865, Grinnell—only 22 years old—was a seasoned veteran.
Call for Volunteers
The Union commander at Wilmington, Major General John M. Schofield, knew in late February that Sherman was approaching North Carolina—but where, and in what condition, were his men? Schofield called for volunteers to make contact with Sherman. Probably he never expected any response from the local naval vessels and was surprised when Acting Master Grinnell of the screw gunboat Nyack responded to his request. Grinnell was joined by three other Sailors from the vessel: Acting Ensign H. B. Colby, Seaman Thomas Gillespie, and Joseph Williams, ship's painter.
On the evening of Saturday, 4 March, the four-man team set out from Wilmington in a small dugout, armed with Sharps rifles, revolvers, and only two days' rations. Their orders were simple—find General Sherman (assumed to be at that time near the Pee Dee River in South Carolina) and deliver the encoded dispatch Schofield had provided; failure would mean capture and, probably, death.
Under cover of darkness, the party paddled up the Cape Fear River for 12 miles. At that point it encountered the advance picket of the Confederates, which it managed to pass undetected. Unfortunately, additional pickets near Livingston's Creek were found to be so heavily posted that Grinnell deemed it "more prudent" to abandon the boat and attempt to reach General Sherman's forces on foot. On the morning of 5 March the party went ashore and headed for the Wilmington and White Hall Road. In the village of Summerville the men destroyed weapons found among the citizenry and were told that a group of Confederate cavalrymen was waiting to intercept them at Livingston's Bridge.
Two Days in Hiding
Word of their presence had evidently preceded the Sailors. Grinnell and his men went to ground, hiding for two days in the nearby hut of a local Negro, who presumably fed as well as sheltered them. On Tuesday, 7 March, they received word that the cavalry, grown tired of waiting, had recrossed the river, leaving open the road for the Union Sailors. That evening, with a black guide, they set out for Whiteville, "advancing with caution and moving only by night."
While the naval team was hiding in Summerville, the four corps of Sherman's army had crossed the Pee Dee River near Cheraw, South Carolina, on 6 March and were heading for Fayetteville, North Carolina. By the next day, most of the army was over the state line and, by noon, advance elements of 20th Corps had reached Mark's Station on the Wilmington, Charlotte & Rutherfordson Railroad southwest of Fayetteville. On 8 March the last of Sherman's men left South Carolina, the two columns of 15th Corps uniting at Laurel Hill and going into camp there only 45 miles from Fayetteville. Progress had been slowed by heavy rains that made this day one of "the most disagreeable . . . of the whole campaign." Sherman remarked simply, "It was the damnest marching I ever saw."
While at Laurel Hill, Sherman, satisfied that Union troops were in Wilmington, decided to send the following message to their commander:
We are marching for Fayetteville, will be there Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and then march for Goldsboro. If possible, send a boat up Cape Fear River, and have word conveyed to General Schofield that I expect to meet him at Goldsboro. We are all well and have done finely. The rains have made our roads difficult, and may delay us about Fayetteville, in which case I would like to have some bread, sugar, and coffee. We have abundance of all else. I expect to reach Goldsboro by the 20th instant.
Corporal James Pike of the Fourth Ohio Cavalry and two men of Major General Oliver Otis Howard's command, Sergeant Amick and Private Quimby, were selected to carry the dispatch. Their instructions were to cross the Lumber River at Campbell's Bridge and proceed as directly as possible to Wilmington, avoiding Lumberton and Elizabethtown.
"Tedious and Difficult Marching"
Farther downstream, Grinnell was suffering from the same rains; his official report describes the advances through Green Swamp on the nights of 7 and 8 March as "tedious and difficult marching." Even sticking to high ground could not have been much help to the Sailors, as this part of the North Carolina coastal plain is the home of an unusual landform known as pocosin.
Derived from an Algonquin word meaning "swamp on a hill," pocosins are made of spongy soil that gives the ground a bog-like feel. Of the Green Swamp's 16,000 acres, 13,000 are pocosin. In addition to the boggy soil, the swamp was also thick with evergreens and a dense undergrowth of wiregrass. Nonetheless, by the morning of 9 March, Grinnell and his men had navigated the 20 or so miles of the swamp and bivouacked on the outskirts of Whitesville. The fact that they were able to find their way through the swamp probably had much to do with the unnamed "Negro guide" Grinnell mentioned; also, having taken only two days rations from the Nyack, the blacks who had sheltered the team probably also provisioned them with food for their continued journey.
Dawn on Thursday, 9 March, saw the torrential rains of the previous day continue unabated. The roads became a sea of mud and water, bogging down Sherman's men along the Lumber River and its adjacent swamps. According to historian John G. Barrett:
The wagons and artillery could only be dragged along by the mules with the assistance of soldiers who either tugged at ropes out ahead of the teams or put their hands to the wheels. The teamsters, reins in one hand, constantly punctuated the air with a dexterous whip lash to remind the poor mules of their "black military heart" and endless faults. Every sentence was ordained with an oath. "Such a wild scene of splashing and yelling and swearing and braying had rarely greeted mortal eyes and ears," wrote one Ohioan of Sherman's army. After darkness the work was carried on in the eerie light of thousands of torches and blazing pine trees.
The Union Sailors' scout of Whitesville revealed that the Confederates were holding it in force. Despairing of ever reaching General Sherman on foot, Grinnell settled on a desperate plan to "impress" horses and, by a "bold dash," break through the pickets on the far side of Whitesville along the Lumberton Road. Leaving their camp at swamp's edge, Grinnell and his men moved out, passing undetected until they reached the White Hall road to the northeast of Whitesville. There they found a small picket of Rebels.
After verifying that there was no nearby reserve, the Sailors made a quick dash and captured the two men, disarming them before the startled Confederates were aware of what was happening. The men were members of Company A, 51st North Carolina Infantry, who "represented their regiment as being much demoralized." Grinnell released them on parole after compelling the Soldiers to accompany his team for about five miles, leaving them "apparently much satisfied at their capture."
Grinnell reported "a night and a day of hard riding" through the rains of 9 March and into the 10th. Sherman's forces, meanwhile, had advanced to within 15 miles of Fayetteville but were still slowed by the abysmal roads. Resting through the night of 10 March, Grinnell reached the treacherous Lumber River near the town of Lumberton on the afternoon of Saturday, 11 March.
The difficulty of their advance is indicated by the fact that, whereas it had taken from the evening of 7 March until the morning of 9 March to navigate roughly 20 miles through Green Swamp on foot, it took from the afternoon of 9 March until the afternoon of the 11th to cover a similar distance from Whitesville to Lumberton on horseback. There, along the Lumber River, Grinnell finally found definite information of Sherman's whereabouts farther upstream. The general had been delayed by the weather and, on 10 March, the need to pause and repair the roads and concentrate his men for the advance into Fayetteville.
On the 11th, the Union army was hobbled by the burning of several bridges over the Lumber River—accidentally torched when Federal "bummers" touched off stores of resin along the river that floated downstream afire and ignited the wooden structures.
Chasing after Sherman, Grinnell encountered a Confederate scouting party "near the creeks"—presumably the network of streams feeding into the Lumber River to the northwest of Lumberton. The Rebels fled into the woods on the approach of the four Sailors. Sherman's men had passed nearby over the past several days, and quite probably the Rebel scouts were loath to engage what they thought may have been the point of a larger force. Grinnell reported "quite a strong Union feeling" in parts of Robeson County, which they had entered at Whitesville, as well as "a very large number of deserters from the rebel army"—which may have included these men. As Grinnell rode through the creeks, Sherman's 17th Corps entered Fayetteville 30 miles to the northeast; by sundown the 14th and 20th Corps were also in the city.
On the morning of Sunday 12 March, Grinnell met the rearguard of the Union army along the Lumber Bridge Road, about 20 miles outside Fayetteville. With all roads into Fayetteville blocked by Union artillery and supply trains, and with the Sailors mounted on horses thoroughly worn out by the hard ride, it was 1300 that afternoon before Grinnell reached Fayetteville proper and presented himself to General Sherman. It had been eight days since the Sailors left the Nyack.
General Sherman "Much Surprised"
In delivering the dispatch, Grinnell recorded what may have been the understatement of the war: "General Sherman . . . expressed himself much surprised at receiving it through the Navy and by such a route." Unfortunately for Grinnell and his exhausted companions, their efforts had been trumped literally minutes previously by the arrival of a fellow naval officer, Acting Ensign Charles Ainsworth, in command of the army tug Davidson. This vessel had set out from Wilmington after the arrival of the couriers Sherman sent from Laurel Hill on 6 March and carried more recent dispatches that superceded those borne by Grinnell. Ainsworth pulled into Fayetteville "shortly after noon," while Grinnell and his men rode in punctually an hour later. Grinnell's team did locate the Union army "quite twenty-four hours in advance of any other communication," but ultimately lost the race to find the general himself.
Ainsworth brought word of the imminent arrival of a small naval flotilla under the command of Lieutenant Commander George W. Young, which had set out from Wilmington on the morning of 11 March. Whereas the Davidson had been sent to get through as quickly as possible and establish contact, Young's force had been ordered by Major General Alred H. Terry to clear Cape Fear of Confederates all the way to Fayetteville. Because of rising water following the heavy rains, Young, on board the Eolus and accompanied by boat crews from the Nyack, Maratanza, and Lenape, paused at Devil's Bend on the night of 11 March because of "the circuitous route" of the river and so did not reach Fayetteville until the evening of the 12th.
En route, Young passed the Davidson as she returned downstream to Wilmington, having departed Fayetteville at 1800 on 12 March. In addition to messages from Sherman and many weeks' worth of mail from his men, the tug bore Grinnell, Colby, Gillespie, and Williams, who had been ordered by the general to communicate as soon as possible with Commander Young. Grinnell anticipated meeting Young on the river and had taken the time on the afternoon of 12 March to write his report of the expedition. History does not record the reaction of Commander Young or of the Nyack men in the small flotilla to the realization that their mates had survived; having taken only two days of rations, nobody had anticipated an eight-day trek.
"This Rather Novel Naval Scout"
In his official report, Grinnell praised the conduct of the three men who had accompanied him, saying they had been "ever ready to encounter any dangers or hardships that came in their way." Closing by signing himself as "Acting Master, U. S. Navy, Commanding Expedition, Fayetteville, N.C.," Grinnell thanked Commander Young "for giving me permission to undertake this rather novel naval scout."
Word of Grinnell's expedition reached Admiral Porter, commanding the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, who passed the report to Secretary Welles, saying:
SIR: I beg leave to call your attention to the report of Acting Master Walton Grinnell, of the Nyack. The necessity of communicating with General Sherman was apparent. These officers and men volunteered for the service, and most handsomely performed it, reflecting credit upon themselves and the Navy.
Grinnell Around the World
Following the expedition to find General Sherman, Grinnell was promoted to acting lieutenant. He stayed in the Navy until 1868. At that time, while serving on board the Susquehanna in the Asiatic Squadron, he declined promotion and was honorably discharged. The reason behind this decision was an offer from the Imperial Japanese Navy of a commission as a captain.
Eager to modernize their military, the Japanese sent Grinnell to Heigo Naval School to train seamen. Almost immediately, Grinnell was made inspector-general, with the rank of rear admiral, a position in which he served from 1868 until 1870. After travelling and exploring through Korea and Manchuria, he served as naval advisor to the Republic of Ecuador in 1872. For the next two decades Grinnell, despite making several trips to the United States, retained his commission in the Japanese Navy and saw active service at the Battle of the Yalu in 1894.
Grinnell was honorably discharged from the Japanese Navy as a vice admiral at the end of the war. Returning a few years later to the United States, he found his native country at war with Spain and again entered the U.S. Navy, this time as a volunteer lieutenant serving on board the USS Iowa throughout the conflict. Grinnell died on 2 September 1920 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
References:
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Official Records, Navy, Series 1, Vol. XII, pp. 82, 90-91, Vol. XVI, pp 778-9, Vol. XX, pp. 679-82, and Vol. XXI, p. 48.
John G. Barrett, Sherman's March Through the Carolinas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956 (1979 ed. used), 135-37.
"Henry Walton Grinnell." Dictionary of American Biography. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.
Officers of Navy Yards, Shore Stations, and Vessels, 1 January 1865, North Atlantic Squadron: Part 2, Naval Historical Center at http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/cw/nasquad2.htm.
Mystic Seaport, Henry Grinnell Letters, at http://www.mysticseaport.org/library/manuscripts/coll/coll008/coll008.cfm#N1045
Civil War Landscapes Association listing for 12 March 1865 at http://www.civilwarlandscapes.org/cwla/chr/calendar/1865/650312.htm.
Freshwater Fishing Opportunities In Eastern North Carolina at http://216.27.49.98/pg03_Fishing/pg3d6.htm#Lumber
North Carolina Outdoors at http://www.northcarolinaoutdoors.com/places/coast/greenswamp.html