Address of the Hon. H. A. Herbert, Secretary of the Navy, Before the Class at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, R.I., August 10, 1896.
In the early part of the seventeenth century the inspired code of Christian ethics was profoundly impressing the human mind throughout all Western and Southern Europe, the literature of liberty handed down through the dark ages from Greece and Rome was also an active living force, and these two forces had nowhere else so successfully co-operated to form free, just and stable government as in the British Isles. It was there that Hampden and Sidney had already lived and died, and it was there that the people had even then made good their claims to the protection of the Magna Charta, of the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights. True religious liberty was, however, as yet unknown even in England, and to secure for themselves and their posterity this right and the blessings of self-government, the love of which had been instilled into them by English institutions, the early settlers of the American colonies braved, in the little ships of that day, the dark waters of the wide Atlantic. Some of the immigrants came from Holland and other countries by the sea, but it was the English language, English laws and English ideas that were to dominate in all the thirteen historic colonies.
Fortunately the newcomers found here a virgin soil in which to sow the seeds of liberty. No monarchical establishments stood in the way, no ideas of caste and privilege were to be eradicated. The wide Atlantic had kept the soil intact until man was ready to plant in it free institutions.
The settlers of the colonies sat themselves down close to the sea and to the rivers that ran into the sea. It was the sea and the rivers that ran into it that were to furnish them their means of transportation and intercommunication, and it was the three thousand miles of ocean, separating them from the home government to which they owed allegiance, that rendered it impracticable for that government to dominate them completely. It was the wide expanse of sea, therefore, to which the American colonies were largely indebted for the measure of self-government they enjoyed even when not yet ready to assert their complete independence.
When the war of the Revolution began, the geographical position of the colonies, all lying along or near the shores of the Atlantic, was in a military point of view especially disadvantageous. Their coast stretched over 1883 statute miles, and all along this entire line their indisputable possession of the sea enabled the British to select bases from which to sever communication between the widely separated armies of the colonies.
The colonists did not surrender the seas without a struggle; they were naturally a seafaring people and made many gallant fights upon the ocean. In October, 1776, the colonial government had, building and built, twenty-six war vessels, though many of these never got to sea. Several of the colonies had built vessels of their own, and such was the activity of American cruisers that they were said to have captured altogether in 1776 as many as three hundred and twenty sail. Many supplies and munitions of war that were to be useful in the long struggle to follow fell into their hands. In 1778 the American cruisers captured and destroyed four hundred and sixty-seven sail of merchantmen, and throughout the war such was the enterprise and courage of American sailors that British shipping was always more or less in danger. In 1779 Paul Jones made his celebrated cruise in the Bon Homme Richard and captured the Serapis after one of the most memorable battles in the history of naval warfare.
But the little fleets of the Americans were eventually swept from the seas. Their successes whenever achieved had served to inspire hope in the patriot armies, but the enemy was never seriously crippled by anything the colonies could do at sea—he was only exasperated.
Arnold's gallant struggle for the control of Lake Champlain promised results that were really strategically important, but his efforts ended in defeat, and Lake Champlain and Lake George were left in the hands of the British. The Americans soon had of their own resources nothing to rely on but their land forces. Communication between these was over such extended lines, and marches of armies and transportation of supplies over the bad roads, which through the interior connected the colonies together, were so difficult, that the cause of independence was plainly hopeless without the aid of some naval force.
The British at different times established on the Penobscot, at Newport, at Gardiner's Bay, in the Chesapeake, at Charleston and Savannah, bases from which they could carry on offensive operations, and quite often it happened that they were able by their ships to relieve their troops from distress. In the very outset of the war the British army at Boston, besieged on Dorchester Heights, must have surrendered but for the fleet which came to its assistance and carried it away to Halifax. That same year a fleet seized New York and the British held it during the whole war as a permanent base, thus interposing between the American forces operating in New England and those in the South and West.
It was fortunate for the cause of independence that steam was not being used in those days as a propelling power of vessels. Clinton with a fleet of swift and sure steam war-ships and transports might have sent an expedition promptly to the relief of Burgoyne, who had cut loose from his base on Lake Champlain, and that general need not have surrendered at Saratoga. So also if the British fleets had been propelled by steam they could have promptly forced their way up the Delaware, and Philadelphia must thus have fallen long before it did. As it was, the capitol city of the new government when it did fall was captured by an expedition escorted by naval vessels up the Chesapeake and landed at Elkton, on the Elk River near by. The city thus captured by the sea power of Great Britain was relieved by the sea power of France; it was evacuated and the British troops were transported down the Delaware to New York for fear the mouth of the river should be blockaded by the French.
Nowhere during the long continuous struggle was the effect of the failure or success of British naval operations more apparent than in the South. The attack on Charleston in June, 1776, failed, and as a consequence of that failure South Carolina remained in the hands of the Americans for three years. Afterwards, in 1780, when Charleston fell before a combined attack, South Carolina was overrun by the British. Savannah was captured in 1778 and Georgia was overrun. The force that under General Greene regained South Carolina and Georgia had made long and tedious marches from Virginia.
Situated as the colonies were, it soon became apparent to Washington, their great leader, that the sea power of the enemy gave him an advantage that rendered well nigh hopeless the cause of independence unless the Americans also could call sea power to their aid. Fortunately, at last, aid was to come from France. Washington communicated with De Grasse, the commander-in-chief of the French fleet, and made with him the combinations that were to result in the surrender of Cornwallis and his army at Yorktown. He subsequently put the case thus, in view of the next campaign:
"With your Excellency I need not insist upon the indispensable necessity of a maritime force capable of giving you an absolute ascendency in these seas…You will have observed that, whatever efforts are made by the land armies, the Navy must have the casting vote in the present contest."
When the French and American forces beleaguered Cornwallis by land, and De Grasse with the French fleet held fast the lines of escape by water, the British commander surrendered his army and independence was won.
In the War of 1812 similar conditions existed. The United States had grown from three millions to over six millions of inhabitants. It had a small Navy whose gallant deeds in that war shed imperishable luster upon officers and men. There is no portion of our history over which the patriotic American lingers with more of pride than over the terrible combats our ships fought with the English, whenever the chances of battle were at all equal. But these duels at sea and the very considerable damage inflicted upon English commerce decided nothing. In spite of its gallant struggles, our little Navy of that day was practically swept from the seas by the British almost as effectually as in the Revolutionary war. The enemy chose his points of attack along a line of sea-coast that extended from the northern part of Maine to the western boundary of Louisiana. The means of communication, of transporting troops and supplies from one portion of our country to another were almost as primitive as in the war of the Revolution. The British landed expeditions on the borders of the lakes from Canada, in New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico, and through the Chesapeake Bay, striking at the center of our long line of sea-coast. They succeeded in capturing Washington and destroying the capitol of the United States.
A naval expedition, during the War of 1812, out on the high seas; or on one of the great lakes, upon our Northern border, headed for no one knew what point upon our shores, with no spies to report its purposes, with no pickets to tell of its movements, was naturally an object of undefined terror. The unexpectedness with which expeditions thus appeared from Canada was doubtless one of the causes contributing to the demoralization which American historians confess with so much reluctance to have existed, during the larger part of the war, among the American troops, especially along our Northern border. No government can by any plea whatever justify a state of unpreparedness for war. As our country was situated in 1814, after our little Navy had been driven from the seas, whether or not it successfully resisted an expedition sent by water against any part of its soil, depended as a rule, on luck rather than on the courage of its people, or the strategy or generalship, of its enemy. The British captured Washington because the Americans were not in luck; they were struck at a point which, it had been supposed, would not be assailed, and which they were not prepared to defend. In the battle of New Orleans we were in luck; we were able to assemble troops there and we had a general to lead them.
The victories won by Macdonough on Lake Champlain, by Perry on Lake Erie, and by Andrew Jackson at New Orleans raised our prestige and, together with the gallant deeds of our little Navy on the high seas, brought us out of that war with credit. But here again was illustrated, as in the Revolutionary war, the vulnerability of our long lines of coast and the absolute necessity to the United States of a navy.
When the great Civil War of 1861 came on, conditions had changed. The population of the United States had grown to thirty millions. It had extended westward to and even beyond the Rocky Mountains. A distinctive feature of the situation then was that, for intercommunication, water transportation was being supplemented and to some extent supplanted by railroads. There was indeed a network of railroads covering the whole country—the South as well as the North—but notwithstanding this, transportation by water was nevertheless a factor in the great struggle about to ensue, that was quite as potential and, in some respects, even more decisive than in the war of the Revolution and of 1812.
The Confederacy, strategically considered, was largely a compact body of states. Its railroad communications, though not equal to those of the North, were nevertheless sufficient. When the armies of the Union sought to invade its territory from different points, the Confederacy had the advantage of interior lines. By these lines it might have concentrated its armies now upon one and then upon another point, in such manner possibly as to have given it ascendency; but all the advantages which would otherwise have been derived from interior and shorter lines were completely neutralized by the naval power of the United States.
The Confederacy had entered upon this conflict for independence without a navy; it struggled manfully to create one. It constructed here and there good ships and fought them gallantly, but they were unequal to the forces they were to meet. The career of destruction upon which the Merrimac had successfully entered at Hampton Roads was arrested by the Monitor. It was not long after this combat that the Confederates felt compelled to destroy their famous vessel to prevent it from falling into the hands of the United States.
The Albemarle, the Mississippi, the Arkansas, the Tennessee, and other ships, constructed with so much pains and industry by the Confederates out of their slender resources, fell one after another into the hands of the enemy or were destroyed. Speaking largely, the Confederacy therefore had no navy. The exploits of the Alabama and the Shenandoah, when noised abroad through the Confederate army, were well calculated to improve its morale and certainly did inspire its soldiers with the belief that the destruction being wrought in the enemy's commerce would aid in bringing the United States to terms. But it can scarcely be alleged that these ships were of any real value to the cause of the Confederacy. The destruction of commerce, amounting in value to about $15,000,000, did not seriously cripple the immense resources of the United States. It assuredly did not dispirit the armies of the Union or incline its voters to make peace. On the contrary, the moral effect of these raids upon commerce, although they were sanctioned by the cruise of Paul Jones in the North Sea during the Revolutionary war, and of the Essex and other ships during the War of 1812, was only to exasperate the people of the United States and to excite them to still more patriotic efforts, if possible, to put down the Confederacy, which, as the people were then taught by their newspapers to believe, was resorting upon the high seas to piratical and uncivilized methods of war.
The military situation of the Confederacy was this: Five millions two hundred thousand of white people had engaged in a desperate effort to establish and maintain their independence; they had four millions and a half of slaves to produce food and cotton; they had iron and coal in abundance, but were without furnaces or foundries or workshops; they were poorly supplied with arms; they were at the time producing the cotton that clothed the world, but they had few cotton manufactories and practically no other factories whatever; they had imported everything they used except what was produced from their soil. With cotton they might have bought ships, arms and munitions of war, and might have maintained abroad the financial credit of their government. But the United States Navy was everywhere at their doors; every part of the long line of sea-coast which hemmed them in was successfully blockaded; instead of the abundant supplies of things, essential to their home life and the life and success of their armies, which would have come to them had they been able to assert dominion over the sea, only scant articles of necessity were brought in now and then through the blockade. The advantage of the interior lines of communication which the Confederates would otherwise have enjoyed was neutralized by the necessity of keeping garrisons in Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Brunswick, Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, Galveston, and other ports. It was impossible to say when an army might be landed at any one of these points. Who shall estimate the value to the United States of the services of its Navy which thus isolated the Confederacy, cut it off from communication with the outside world, and at the same time compelled it to guard every point against a raid like that which had destroyed the capitol of the United States in 1814?
Had the Confederacy instead of the United States been able to exercise dominion over the sea; had it been able to keep open its means of communication with the countries of the Old World, to send its cotton abroad and to bring back the supplies of which it stood so much in need; had it been able to blockade Portland, Boston, Newport, New York, the mouth of the Delaware and the entrance of Chesapeake Bay; had it possessed the sea power to prevent the United States from dispatching by water into Virginia its armies and their supplies, as the United States was blockading and intercepting everywhere its supplies, it is not too much to say that such a reversal of conditions would have reversed the outcome of the Civil War.
But this brief generalization of the results of naval operations on the Chesapeake and on the high seas as they affected the military operations, gives no adequate idea of all that was really wrought by the Navy of the United States during that memorable conflict. When the Civil War came on, the influence of sea power had become vastly extended by reason of the changes which had been wrought by the substitution of steam for sail in the propelling of vessels. Every river that permeated the Confederacy was to bear upon its bosom a hostile fleet. Fortress Monroe speedily became a great base of supplies, and the gunboats above it on the James River were a continual menace to the capitol of the Confederacy. When McClellan's army, routed on the battle-field of Chickahominy, eventually made a successful stand upon Malvern Hill against the victorious troops of General Lee, the gunboats in the James powerfully aided in repelling the desperate assaults upon that position, by hurling huge shells from 15-inch guns into the charging columns of the Confederates; and finally the war was practically closed by the army under Grant operating along the line of the James. This line had been opened and kept open by the Navy, and it ran from Fortress Monroe as its base, which base had been successfully maintained for four years by the Navy of the United States.
Port Royal, captured and securely held by the Navy, became a base of operations which continually threatened both Charleston and Savannah. These two cities were thus both beleaguered at the same time by the naval force at Port Royal, and the Confederacy dared not for a moment send away from them troops that otherwise might have filled up the ranks so terribly depleted upon the battle-fields of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Pensacola when it was captured became another base of operations, necessitating continual vigilance and watchfulness by Confederate troops to prevent incursions into Alabama and Florida. Farther west and permeating the very heart of the Confederacy were the Ohio River, the Tennessee, the Cumberland and the Mississippi like a great inland sea dividing the Confederacy in twain; and flowing into the Mississippi were the Yazoo, the Big Black, the Arkansas, the White and the Red rivers. All these were scenes of naval operations.
One of the first victories achieved in the West was at Fort Henry, where the Confederates, after a brilliant attack by the gunboats, were compelled to surrender to the officer in command of them. The demoralizing effect upon the Confederates of this engagement was quickly followed up by the battle at Fort Donelson, in which the gunboats co-operated, and by a raid of gunboats far up the Tennessee River and into the heart of north Alabama, near Florence. On both the Tennessee and Cumberland and throughout all the territory in Tennessee and north Alabama traversed by these rivers, "Yankee gunboats" soon became common, and they were a continuing menace and annoyance to the Confederates, who in the outset had little counted upon this factor in the conflict upon which they had entered.
Numerous engagements occurred between shore batteries and gunboats, and the moral effect produced by these vessels is vividly remembered by every intelligent Confederate who followed carefully the progress of events. Sometimes the victories in these combats between the batteries on shore and the "tinclads," as they were called because their armor was thin, were with the batteries, and ex-Confederates remember to this day the great joy that spread throughout the Confederacy when it was reported, as it sometimes was, that gunboats had been overcome by horse artillery. It would be difficult to overestimate the value to the Union of the services rendered by the frequent and so often unlooked-for incursions of vessels of war into the heart of the Confederacy.
John H. Morgan, the celebrated raider, was really captured by the gunboats on the Ohio when returning from a raid which had otherwise, at least in part, been successful. He was taken prisoner with the remnant of his command because the gunboats following along the river prevented him from re-crossing the Ohio.
The value of the Mississippi River was early apparent, and the government at Washington sent expeditions along it contemporaneously from the North and the South. Farragut, after having passed and captured in a desperate fight Forts Jackson and St. Philip, took possession of New Orleans, the principal city of the Confederacy. Nothing accomplished by the armies of the Union up to this time was equal strategically to the capture of this great city, which was never retaken.
Porter and Davis came down the river from Cairo, and after a desperate combat succeeded in passing the batteries at Vicksburg, thus temporarily effecting a junction with Farragut's fleet from below. But the Mississippi did not as yet pass permanently into the hands of the Union forces. Island No. 10, above Memphis, by the combined efforts of the naval and military forces had previously been captured with its garrison. After the passage of Vicksburg by the upper Mississippi fleet, the Confederates made a desperate effort to keep the river closed from Vicksburg to Grand Gulf, between which points was the mouth of the Red River. Farragut had found it necessary to fall back and join his fleet below Grand Gulf, which could not be passed without serious loss; and Porter, while Vicksburg and its batteries remained in possession of the enemy, found it impracticable to maintain permanently the stretch below. The Mississippi between Vicksburg and Grand Gulf therefore remained for months in the hands of the Confederates, who improved, as far as their resources permitted, their armaments at these two points and also at Port Hudson, which lay between them. Some of the most desperate fighting of the Civil War occurred at these points between the Union gunboats and the batteries on shore, the Confederates retaining their positions with great tenacity. From the country tributary to the Red River they were drawing valuable supplies for their armies farther east.
As part of these naval operations in the Western rivers, gunboats ran up the White River as far as Duvall's Bluff, where they destroyed the bridge of a railroad leading from Little Rock eastward. They also made excursions up the Yazoo River and the Big Sunflower, destroying gunboats the Confederates were building, as well as vast quantities of supplies that were being accumulated in that rich alluvial country.
These incursions of the gunboats into the interior were of course not always successful; many brilliant and gallant feats were done in the encounters which ensued, both by the Federal and Confederate forces.
In the summer of 1863 Grand Gulf and Port Hudson fell, and finally, on the 4th day of July, Vicksburg with its garrison surrendered, thus opening permanently to the forces of the Union the Mississippi River. The capture of all these places was effected in large part by the armies of the United States, but in each and all the operations leading up to these results the cooperation of the naval forces was effective and absolutely essential.
When the Mississippi River had finally throughout its whole length passed permanently into the possession of the Union, it soon began to be apparent that the Confederacy, hemmed in on all sides, cut in two and threatened in so many directions by the naval and land forces of the United States, could not long survive the unequal contest it was waging.
It may be of interest here to note the much larger degree of success achieved by the Union forces prior to the summer of 1863 in the Southwest than in the East. The armies of the Tennessee and of the Cumberland had, as their names imply, rivers along which to operate and gunboats to help them on these lines, and by the spring of 1863 these armies had won many victories and made substantial advances. The army of the Potomac, though large and well equipped, and though its soldiers fought gallantly, had accomplished little. This army had been operating mainly along lines where the naval forces of the Union could not help it; there were no rivers along which gunboats could ply. It was, as has heretofore been said, only when it changed its base of supplies to Old Point Comfort and operated along the line of the James, opened and held for it by the Navy, that this great army succeeded in winning and keeping the territory for which it was fighting.
Of course it is not possible within the limits of a single lecture to properly apportion between the Army and Navy credit for the final outcome of our great Civil War. So complex were the operations of these two arms of the service and so intimately interdependent were they that the solution of the problem suggested would require at the hands of a great strategist a thorough analysis of the whole history of that wonderful struggle. I have attempted no such task; only a brief review to recall facts which, if not forgotten, have apparently been underestimated by the general public.
The operations of the Civil War were carried on upon an extensive scale. There were enlisted in the armies of the Union altogether 2,672,341 men; the Navy never at one time contained more than fifty-two thousand. The armies represented every hamlet in the United States; there were very few of the older families that did not have some blood relative in their ranks. Soldiers returning to their firesides naturally familiarized their friends and neighbors with the exploits of the armies in which they had served; and these soldiers have, in large part, written the history of the war. Regimental, brigade, division and corps histories have been published almost without number. Soldiers and their intimate friends numbered by the millions have been the readers of these books, while those who were personally concerned in the operations of the Navy were relatively few, and most of them were common sailors, drawn largely from the merchant marine. These men have not written, and they have not to any great extent read histories; but they were men who, with the officers of their corps, helped to make history during the trying times of the Civil War, and their deeds have never been exploited before the public as they deserve to be. The historian who shall take up the subject, with the time and ability to do justice to it, will render an invaluable service to his country. He will not only rescue from the partial forgetfulness into which it has fallen one of the most brilliant chapters of that memorable war, but he will also set clearly before the public mind the influence of sea power as a factor in the past history of this country. This he will never be able to do without demonstrating, at the same time, that we cannot afford to be without a navy in the future.
The situation as it was during the Civil War may be, to some extent, repeated in the future in a war with a foreign naval power. The sea-coast over which the Confederacy was annoyed and attacked is still the sea-coast of the United States, and added to that is the coast from Maine to Cape Henry and from Puget Sound to the Gulf of California. All this is assailable in the future, and all this is to be defended by the United States. It is not at all likely that any foreign country could, with success, invade the interior of our country, but we are still vulnerable from the sea. Our ports can be blockaded, our commerce can be destroyed, we can be isolated from the world, our flag can be humiliated and insulted unless we understand and appreciate the value of sea power. We must stand always ready and able to defend and maintain the integrity of our country, its honor and dignity at home and abroad.
In conclusion, Mr. President and gentlemen, I am glad to have the opportunity of making the contribution, insignificant as it is, to the literature of the War College, a grain of mustard-seed cast into what I know to be fertile soil.
This institution is at last, I think, on a sure foundation and destined to become a permanent feature in our naval administration. For its present position and future prospects it is indebted primarily to the officers who have had it in charge, and secondarily to the zeal and fidelity with which those sent here, year after year, have lent themselves to the honest work they found awaiting them within these walls. The Navy, for this College, owes a debt of gratitude to Admiral Luce, who was its early and fast friend; to Captain Mahan, who made a world-wide reputation by the lectures he delivered here; and to Captain Taylor, who has brought it to its present state of efficiency in practical work.
The opinion was once widely entertained that this College was intended for a post-graduate course and that, this being so, it should be located, if allowed to exist at all, at the Naval Academy. I was of this opinion myself until three years ago on a personal visit I inspected its workings and examined fully into its plans and purposes. Then I discovered, what the public is beginning to understand, and what the Navy itself is now coming fully to appreciate, that it is in no sense a post-graduate course that is being pursued in these walls; that not only are the theory and art of war being thoroughly studied and developed here, but knowledge is being acquired and practical information is being amassed without which the Navy Department cannot possibly, in the event of war, utilize the naval resources of our country.
Ships and guns, and torpedoes and men, are all of little use unless officers know how to fight them. Individual ships, however bravely and skillfully they may be handled and fought, can accomplish but little if officers do not know when, where and how to dispose them; while at the same time skill in handling, courage in fighting, and knowledge of the proper disposition of ships in battle, will often all be of little avail without continual and prompt supplies of everything needed in the exigencies of war, all of which must be reckoned for beforehand. Successful war means all of these things and more besides. It means, if the exigency requires, the exertion by a nation of its utmost power, the utilization of all its resources, the tapping of every source of supply, the employment of every manufactory, every ship and every man that can be useful, and all this with the utmost promptitude and dispatch. Further than this, plans of attack and defense must be devised, and these cannot be successfully made without the most accurate knowledge of harbors, inlets, safe and unsafe passages, tides and everything else pertaining to the possible theaters of impending war. A study of these and of still other problems constitute the work which, I am glad to say from a careful personal inspection of results, you have been successfully performing during the years just passed. I congratulate you, gentlemen, and you particularly, Mr. President, upon the results you have achieved. For myself I shall rejoice, if when I shall lay down the office I now hold, it can be said I contributed, in such a manner as I could, to the successful workings of this institution.