Scarcely a generation had passed before the influence upon the country of the war of 1812 began to decline. The idea of complete isolation, and freedom from "entangling alliances" With, what we were pleased to call, the effete monarchies of Europe, took complete possession of the public mind; and war, that relic of a barbarous age, was regarded as impossible with such a remote, enlightened, prosperous and practical people as Americans.
Congress had little use for an army, and much less for a navy; and all plans looking to preparation for war were deemed chimerical. The navy was allowed to die out, practically, and the Navy Department wasted its energies in vain efforts to overcome the apathy or indifference of the legislative branch of the Government.
Our mercantile marine, extending to the most distant shores, whose sails whitened every sea, a source of national pride and of wealth, was already beginning to show signs of that decadence which, a generation later, led to its partial extinction; our carrying trade was gradually but surely passing to foreign bottoms; our naval prestige was on the wane: we were ceasing to be a maritime people.
It was in this state of naval affairs that the opening of the Civil War found us.
Our Naval Administration was regarded with such scant respect as to border, at one critical period, on contempt.
At the very outset of the Secession movement, the relief of Fort Sumter was the cause of much anxious thought. Councils were divided. The several members of the Cabinet were comparative strangers to each other; the whole country was in a state of ferment.
The President, after giving the subject much careful consideration, finally decided that it was his duty to make the attempt to succor the beleaguered garrison in Sumter.
Those who do not recall the particulars connected with the proposed relief of Fort Sumter in '61 are reminded that a small force consisting of the Powhatan, Pawnee, Pocahontas and Harriet Lane, under the command of Captain Samuel Mercer, a post captain of the old school, was ordered to rendezvous, on the 5th day of April, 186i, ten miles due east of Charleston Light. The utmost secrecy was maintained in regard to this expedition. The Powhatan had just returned from a cruise and had been put out of commission at the New York Navy Yard. In view of the projected movement, the Navy Department, by an order dated April 1, 1861, directed her to be recommissioned.
On the same day (April 1) the President, without a hint to the Navy Department, telegraphed to the commandant of the New York Navy Yard, directing him to fit out the Powhatan, without delay, adding "she is bound on secret service, and you will under no circumstances, communicate to the Navy Department the fact that she is fitting out." At the same time the President ordered Lieutenant, the late Admiral, D. D. Porter, at that time a comparatively young officer, to the command of the Powhatan, as the successor of Capt. Mercer, and directed him to proceed to Pensacola for the relief of Fort Pickens, thus diverting the heaviest ship, and the senior officer, from the force destined for the relief of Fort Sumter. In addition to this, Captain Samuel Barron, an officer who enjoyed a very high reputation, but who was a southerner, and was believed at the time to hold a commission in the Confederate Navy, was ordered by the President to relieve Captain Stringham as officer of detail. The effect of this order, if carried out, would have been to place a disloyal officer in control of the navy. These orders are of such an exceptional nature that they are given here in full.
[CONFIDENTIAL.]
EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 1, 1861.
To the Secretary of the Navy.
Dear Sir:—You will issue instructions to Captain Pendergast, commanding the home squadron, to remain in observation at Vera Cruz—important complications in our foreign relations rendering the presence of an officer of rank there of great importance.
Captain Stringham will be directed to proceed to Pensacola with all possible dispatch, and assume command of that portion of the home squadron stationed off Pensacola. He will have confidential instructions to cooperate in every way with the commanders of the land forces of the United States in that neighborhood.
The instructions to the army officers, which are strictly confidential, will be communicated to Captain Stringham after he arrives at Pensacola. Captain Samuel Barron will relieve Captain Stringham in charge of the Bureau of Detail.
(Signed) ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
P. S.—As it is very necessary at this time to have a perfect knowledge of the personnel of the navy, and to be able to detail such officers for special purposes as the exigencies of the service may require, I request that you will instruct Captain Barron to proceed and organize the Bureau of detail in the manner best adapted to meet the wants of the navy, taking cognizance of the discipline of the navy generally, detailing all officers for duty, taking charge of the recruiting of seamen, supervising charges made against officers, and all matters relating to duties which must be best understood by a sea officer. You will please afford Captain Barron any facility for accomplishing this duty, transferring to his department the clerical force heretofore used for the proposed specified. It is to be understood that this officer will act by authority of the Secretary of the Navy, who will exercise such supervision as he may deem necessary.
(Signed) ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The dire confusion these conflicting orders gave rise to may be better imagined than described.
The parties to the secret of the Fort Pickens relief expedition are believed to have been President Lincoln, Secretary of the State Seward, General Scott, Captain, the late General, M. C. Meigs, and Lieutenant, the late Admiral, Porter.
It is quite true that the existing conditions of the country were altogether exceptional. The times were "out of joint." Washington was full of spies. No man dared trust his neighbor. Ties of family and life-long friendship were in many cases sundered. But making every allowance for a state bordering on chaos, the method of procedure in this case brings out in the strongest light the utter lack of respect for the Navy Department, as a working organization, in a great national crisis. The military head of the army was naturally in the secret, but there was no military or naval head of the navy; and the civil head, able as he eventually proved to be, was at that time, little known to his colleagues of the Cabinet.
The relief of Fort Sumter, feasible perhaps in the earliest days of the Secession movement, was now deemed impracticable by the highest military and naval authorities. Mr. Seward, who was, from the first, opposed to the measure, had given assurances to the insurgent leaders that it would not be attempted. Mr. Lincoln, on the other hand, decided that it was his imperative duty to make the attempt at all hazards.
On the 28th of March information was received by the administration that it would be impracticable to re-enforce the garrison and that the provisions on hand would be exhausted in about two weeks. The President then declared he would send supplies to the fort; and if the Secessionists forcibly resisted, on them would be the responsibility of initiating hostilities. This conclusion, though it conflicted in some degree with the views of the military authorities, the President felt to be a political necessity. He could not, he said, consistently, with his convictions of his duty, order the evacuation of Sumter; and it would be inhuman on his part to permit the heroic garrison to be starved into surrender, without an attempt to relieve it.
The Secretary of State did not concur in these views and argued against the measure. The President had fully decided on his course, however, and the next day, March 29th, issued the necessary orders.
As the expedition was of a military character, the Secretary of War commissioned Mr. G. V. Fox, then a private citizen, to command the expedition, and gave him his written instructions.
But Mr. Seward persisted in his opposition to the President and the rest of the Cabinet; and as he had given assurances to the southern leaders that Sumter would be evacuated by the Federal forces, he now proceeded to make good his word by rendering abortive the plans of the President. To accomplish this he actually usurped the authority of the War Department and the Department of the Navy, calling to his assistance Captain Meigs, of the army, and Lieutenant Porter, of the navy. The result of their joint effort was the drawing up, for the President's signature, of the confidential order already given, and the sending of the telegraphic dispatches diverting the Powhatan and the senior officer from the Sumter expedition. The failure of the Sumter expedition was thenceforth a foregone conclusion.
On receipt of the extraordinary order which practically placed a Secessionist officer in control of the navy, Mr. Secretary Welles at once appealed to the President, who promptly disavowed the order. "Mr. Seward," he said, "had been there with two young officers. One was Captain Meigs, another was a companion, a naval officer named Porter. Mr. Seward had these young men here as clerks to write down his plans and orders."
On matters being explained, the President frankly acknowledged that the paper "was an improper one, and must be regarded as cancelled; that he had signed it without due consideration; and that such a thing should not occur again." And it never did to the end of his administration.
On the same day of the promulgation of the orders referred to, namely, April 1st, the President received from the Secretary of State a memorandum entitled "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration. April 1st, 1861."
The gist of this very remarkable paper, as given by Mr. John G. Nicolay in "A Short Life of Lincoln," is as follows: "After a month's trial, you, Mr. Lincoln, are a failure as President. The country is in desperate straits and must apply a desperate remedy. That remedy is to submerge the South Carolina insurrection in a continental war. We must declare war against France and Spain. Some new man must take the executive helm and wield the undivided Presidential authority. I should have been nominated in Chicago and elected in November, but even now am willing to take your place and perform your duties."
In this "incident of phenomenal strangeness," as Mr. Nicotay terms it, we have the key of this "comedy of errors."
"Mr. Lincoln's unselfish magnanimity is the central marvel in the whole affair," adds Mr. Nicolay. His answer to Mr. Seward's memorandum ended the argument, and the incident was "closed, never again to be alluded to during Mr. Lincoln's life. There was, thenceforth, no doubt as to who was master.
From the attitude assumed by one so high in authority as the Secretary of State, second only to that of the President himself, we cease to wonder how a high-spirited young officer as Lieutenant Porter then was, should, when sent for and consulted by Mr. Seward, readily fall into any plan which promised active service and a chance for distinction and promotion.
The episode was a painful one to all concerned. It is very creditable to Mr. Seward, that he at once realized, and frankly acknowledged his mistake in interfering with matters that did not pertain to his office. He soon came to see the true character of Mr. Lincoln, whose measure he had, up to that time, failed to take.
Explanations made and accepted by those concerned, the Navy Department resumed the full control of its own affairs.
Knowing Admiral Porter as I did, knowing how amenable he was to law and regulations, I am fully persuaded that, had there been a Board of Navy Commissioners attached to the Secretary's office, he would not have placed himself under the orders of the Secretary of State. Mr. Gideon Welles, with his patriarchal appearance and gentle manners, did not at that time appeal to the average naval officer with any great degree of force.
Had such a one as Commodore John Rodgers, the first President of the Board of Navy Commissioners, been in office, or Charles Morris, or one of their successors, who would have brought down, had the office continued, the traditions of the service, Lieutenant Porter would not have ventured to set his authority at defiance. Indeed, it is more than doubtful if Mr. Seward himself would have done so.
Such is the danger of amiability in the exercise of military authority. It invites insubordination.
It may be mentioned in passing that Fort Jefferson, on the Dry Tortugas, and Fort Taylor, at Key West, were saved to the Union cause, not by the Navy Department, but through the instrumentality of Commander, the late Rear-Admiral, Thornton A. Jenkins, and Captain, the late General, "Baldy" Smith, both officers being at that time members of the Light House Board.
Let us now turn to the Port Royal expedition, and subsequent events off Charleston, S. C., and note the workings of our system of naval administration.
It is scarcely necessary to premise that, for the individual members of the naval administration of that day, I have always entertained the most profound respect. It is the system, only, to which reference is made. The individuals themselves, composing the naval administration, were gentlemen of exceptional ability. That fact, indeed, makes the case against the system all the stronger. In a former paper (Naval Administration, II) was mentioned the Advisory Board, known as the Committee of Conference. It Was composed of Captain S. F. DuPont, Chairman; Major J. G. Barnard, U. S. Engineers, the military member; Prof. A. D. Bache, Superintendent of the U. S. Coast Survey, the civil member; and Commander, the late Rear-Admiral, C. H. Davis, junior Member and Secretary.
The province of the head of the Coast Survey was to furnish the topographical and hydrographical information necessary to the formation of plans of naval operations. These plans were very comprehensive. They embraced the whole of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, including the Mississippi river; contemplating not only such operations as were necessary to make the blockade effective, but also operations of a purely military character.
From this it will be seen that the Committee of Conference was of the nature of what we came to know later as a Strategy Board. Its labors were of great service in enabling the Department to take prompt measures for the occupation of portions of the southern coast. The capture of the forts at Hatteras Inlet was the first fruit of its labors. This was followed by the capture of Port Royal.
The Committee of Conference was born of the necessity of the times, and to supply a radical defect in our naval organization. When that committee was broken up, as it soon was, by the assignment of its members to other duties, there was no one left upon whom the duty could devolve, of directing naval operations. The outline of a naval campaign had been mapped out for the Department, as already explained; and the machinery set in motion. But such was the vast amount of labor imposed by the war, and the political conditions of the country, upon the exceptionally capable head of the Department, and his very able assistant, that they had not the time, amid their constant and exacting duties, to give to the study of some of the war problems presented for their considerations, and there was no office to repeat it once more, no Strategy Board, no General Staff, to which the Secretary of the Navy could submit such questions.
The choice of objective is one of the determining factors in war. In the present case this choice was left to Admiral DuPont, who, "after mature deliberation," selected Port Royal, as the objective of the fleet under his command.
It may be readily conceded that, under certain conditions, the choice of objective should be left to the officer responsible for the success of the campaign. Here, then, we may, without disparagement to the Navy Department, give Admiral DuPont the entire credit for a wise choice.
But subsequent operation (mainly in regard to Charleston) demonstrated, in a marked degree, the necessity of a Strategy Board, or, as we prefer now to call it, a General Staff, the members of which, unhampered by executive, or administrative duties, or the distractions inseparable from a quasi civil office, could give their whole time and attention to the military questions incident to the campaign in progress, for the benefit of the Secretary of the Navy.
There were reasons, mostly sentimental, why it was desirable that Charleston should be captured. But, from a military point of view, the reduction and occupation of that city was not ° sufficient importance to warrant a serious attempt in that direction. The government's policy was to keep only just enough troops in and about that district to occupy the attention of the Confederate authorities and prevent them from sending the troops for the defense of Charleston, to re-enforce the army under Lee.
But the Navy Department was not satisfied with this passive policy. It wanted a more aggressive course. It wanted Admiral DuPont to capture Charleston with his iron-clads, the monitors, under his command.
"There is no place that the American people would so delight to see captured as Charleston," wrote the Secretary of the Navy to Admiral DuPont, under date of June 5, 1862.
This opinion, well grounded no doubt, coupled with the fact that the confidence of the Assistant Secretary, Mr. Fox, in the monitor class of vessels was so profound as to lead him to say that "One monitor alone would cause the immediate evacuation of Charleston," forces upon one the conviction that, as a purely military question, the situation at Charleston was not understood by the Department.
On the 27th of September, 1862, Admiral DuPont left his station under orders for Washington whither he was summoned for the purpose of conference.
He returned to his command October 21. About six months later, or on April 7, 1863, Admiral DuPont with nine ironclads made a determined attack on the forts commanding the entrance to Charleston harbor.
He met with a decided repulse. In his report of the action to the Department the Admiral wrote, "I determined not to renew the attack, for in my judgment it would have converted a failure into a disaster. I will only add that Charleston cannot be taken by a purely naval attack, and the army could give me no co-operation."
This wholly unlooked for result was a great disappointment to the Navy Department and gave rise to correspondence with Admiral DuPont in which both sides exhibited some little feeling.
The Admiral in his letter of June 3, 1863, wrote to the Department, "When I left Washington (referring to his visit in October, '62), there was really nothing matured, though I was firmly impressed with the fixed determination of the Department that Charleston should be attacked; and that, with the ironclads, the attack must be successful."
Again, after alluding to the defects of the monitors, especially to their want of offensive powers, Admiral DuPont adds, these facts, however, seemed not to have changed the views of the Department, and, in accordance with its previous orders and its well known determination to effect the capture of Charleston, I determined to make the experiment, and to risk, and possibly to lose, whatever prestige pertained to a long and successful professional career, in order to meet the necessities of war and the wishes of the Department." He might have omitted the "necessities of war."
The Admiral felt that he was the victim of a false conception of the situation of Charleston, by the Department; and that his professional reputation was to be sacrificed to a defective system of naval administration. There was no staff attached to the Secretary's office to prevent placing Admiral DuPont and his command in the utterly false position of being called upon to solve an insoluble problem, viz.: the capture of Charleston without adequate co-operation by the army.
The failure of the attack of the monitors on the forts did not make much impression on the Navy Department.
Admiral Dahlgren, immediately on his arrival as the successor of Admiral DuPont, July 4, 1863, took up the same hopeless task.
A year had elapsed since the failure of the attack of the nine ironclads, when, on the loth of May, 1864, Admiral Dahlgren called together the commanding officers of the Ironsides and the monitors to discuss the question of attacking Fort Sumter. I was one of those summoned, being then in command of the monitor Nantucket.
Those present were Commodore S. C. Rowan, commanding the New Ironsides; Commanders George H. Cooper, commanding monitor Sangamon; Napoleon B. Harrison, the Catskill; Lieutenant- Commander Edward Simpson, the Passaic; Lieutenant Commander S. B. Luce, the Nantucket; Lieutenant-Commander Wm. Gibson, the Lehigh; Lieutenant-Commander John L. Davis, the Montauk; Lieutenant-Commander L. C. Miller, temporal in command of Nahant, and Lieutenant-Commander Joseph M. Bradford, aid to Admiral Dahlgren. The question was as to the advisability of attacking Sumter "Seriously, in order to lessen its offensive and defensive power, etc., etc."
Lieutenant-Commanders Bradford, Simpson, Gibson and voted for attacking.
Commodore Rowan, also, with certain qualifications; the others were strongly opposed to attacking.
May 12, another meeting of monitor captains was called. A full discussion took place. The question had been carefully thought over and discussed among ourselves since the first meeting, and was now thoroughly threshed out with the result of a modification of views on the part of some of those present. I, for one, saw reason for changing my opinion. When the question was put once more: "Is it advisable to attack Sumter and reduce its powers offensive and defensive, with the present force of seven monitors and the Ironsides, having reference to all questions involved?" the vote stood—No: S. C. Rowan, Captain Joseph Green (who was to have the Nahant), George H. Cooper, Harrison (Napoleon B.), Gibson, Luce, Davis (seven). Yes: Simpson, Bradford (two).
While operations of some sort seemed advisable, the object to be gained by attacking Sumter was not quite clear. To me, individually, we were groping in the dark; and the other members of the council impressed me as being in pretty much the same state of mental obscurity. There was no one present who seemed to understand the problem to be solved, and able to state it in concise terms. The well-known views of the Navy Department, moreover, only served to complicate the question.
The line of attack on Charleston was, according to our military authorities, by way of James Island. But as it required a force of about 40,000 men, the attempt was not approved of in Washington.
Charleston was considered a minor objective, and the troops could not be spared from the more important operations elsewhere. A military force was maintained there, by us, barely sufficient to occupy the attention of the Confederate authorities and prevent them from sending troops from South Carolina to re-enforce Lee in Virginia, as already stated.
Under existing conditions the navy could not look to the army for adequate co-operation. The question, then, resolved itself into the simple one of taking Charleston by the monitors alone.
The Navy Department, as has been shown, thought this could be done. The Monitor and Merrimac fight had given an exaggerated idea of the military value of that class of vessels. And the capture of Port Royal, by the fleet under Admiral DuPont, had blinded the Department as to the conditions at Charleston. The two cases were entirely dissimilar. Here was the Department's mistake.
To resume: From the Nantucket I was transferred to the command of the Pontiac, and on the 5th of January, 1865, was ordered to report to General Sherman, then in Savannah, for duty in Savannah river in connection with the army.
On reporting at headquarters, General Sherman indicated in a few, short, pithy sentences, and by the aid of a map, his plan of campaign from Savannah to the north. General Slocum, commanding the left wing of the army, was to move up to Sisters' Ferry, about forty miles above the city, and cross the Savannah river by means of a pontoon bridge into South Carolina. The object in having a gunboat (the Pontiac) was that it might go up the river above the ferry in order to protect the pontoon bridge from molestation by the Confederates supposed to be in force somewhere in the direction of Augusta. "When I get on solid ground," he said (for much of that part of the country was inundated), "somebody will have to get out of the way!" And he added, in the pleasant style of banter, with which he was accustomed to talk to naval officers: "You navy fellows have been hammering away at Charleston for the past three years. But just wait till I get into South Carolina; I will cut her communications and Charleston will fall into your hands like a ripe pear." And that is just what actually came to pass.
After hearing General Sherman's clear exposition of the military situation the scales seemed to fall from my eyes. "Here," I said to myself, "is a soldier who knows his business!" It dawned upon me that there were certain fundamental principles underlying military operations which it were well to look into; principles of general application whether the operations were conducted on land or at sea.
Leaving Pocataligo, his army now well in hand, General Sherman marched on Columbia and captured the city with little difficulty. This led to the immediate evacuation of Charleston, February 17, 1865, or a little over three years after capture of Port Royal.
A few weeks later I accompanied Admiral Dahlgren, by invitation, in a ramble about the deserted streets of Charleston. On the 14th of April, I was in Fort Sumter and witnessed the hoisting of the flag by General Anderson, and heard the oration delivered on that occasion by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Charleston and the forts were ours at last; but not through the efforts of the monitors.
Charleston fell into our hands just as General Sherman said it would, by severing her communications.
There was, then, I learned, such a thing as a military problem; and there was a way of solving it; or, what is equally important, a way of determining whether, or not, it was susceptible of solution.
In the case of the reduction of Charleston, it appeared that there were three methods proposed:
1st. General Sherman's plan, which was eminently successful.
2nd. The movement by way of James Island, and the co-operation of the land and naval forces. This was entirely practicable with adequate support of troops; and
3rd. The Navy Department's plan, or, to be more exact, the Navy Department's view, which was to capture Charleston by the monitors alone, without the co-operation of the army. This was wholly impracticable.
The lessons to be drawn from this experience are that the Secretary of the Navy should have, if only in justice to himself, a staff of naval experts to lean upon; that this staff should be attached to, and made part of, his office, and be under his immediate supervision; and that the members of this staff should be prepared for staff duty by a special course of study.
In other words, the Civil War demonstrated conclusively the necessity of a War College and of a General Staff. We have the one; let us now have the other without more ado.