A destroyer now building is to be named Stevenson and, I fear, not many people in or out of the naval service will know after whom it will be named, for few know today that one of the most militant navy daredevils of our Civil War was John Henry Stevenson, a member of the Pay Corps.
He was born in New York City in 1839, of North Ireland stock, and graduated from the present College of the City of New York then known as the Free Academy. He was a slender youth of medium height, not robust but a good horseman and strong swimmer. With aquiline nose, prominent chin, flashing gray eyes and wearing his dark hair long, like Cushing of the Navy, Custer of the Army, and Pickett of the Confederacy, he looked the militant character which he afterward proved to be. At times during the Civil. War he wore the popular Burnside beard.
In 1859 he married Henrietta L. Storey of that well-known New York family and had several children, two daughters and several grandchildren being still alive.
Young Stevenson passed through his adolescence in the period of bitter feeling between the people of the northern and southern states preceding our Civil War. He was an ardent unionist and frequently listened to the impassioned speeches which the situation evoked. Eventually came the capture of Fort Sumter by the seceding South Carolinians, and six days later a stupendous mass meeting was held in Union Square with Major Anderson on the stand displaying the flag of the fortress on its broken staff. Stevenson's Irish was up. In spite of the fact that he was of delicate physique, had a wife and young child, and held a lucrative position in the New York City Gas Company, he presented himself at a Broadway recruiting booth a few days later and became a private in President Lincoln's 90-day volunteer army. Almost immediately his raw New York regiment was on the march, but in its rain-soaked, muddy encampment in Washington Stevenson fell ill from an infection of his throat and lungs, was invalided home, and missed the Battle of Bull Run, not recovering until long after his 90-day enlistment had expired. It probably was well for him that this happened, for his regiment was almost decimated in the battle and many of its members were made prisoners and confined in Fort Sumter.
After he was convalescent a heavy cough persisted, so his doctor recommended a. sea trip for recuperation in pure air and he crossed the Atlantic to visit his father's home of early days in Ireland. When he returned, the urge to fight for the Union was still in him but he was dissuaded from returning to the army on account of its rigorous camp life. Instead, he obtained. in September 1862, an appointment as Acting Assistant Paymaster in the Navy and was assigned to the U.S.S. Satellite of the Potomac Flotilla, a collection of the most incongruous vessels ever assembled for war purposes. There were yachts, lighthouse tenders, ferry boats, and paddle-wheel river steamboats, all converted into gunboats to patrol the Potomac River and its Virginia tributaries and prevent Confederate concentrations for the invasion of Maryland below Washington. The Satellite was a side-wheel steamboat. The task of the Flotilla extended below the Potomac, including the mouth of the Rappahannock.
Stevenson joined at a period of feverish activity in the Flotilla. Lee had invaded Maryland above Washington and the bloodiest battle of the war, Antietam, had been fought to a draw, forcing the Confederate Commander, although undefeated, back into Virginia. Both armies were preparing for another onslaught and the Flotilla was alertly watching for any activity on the Virginia side of the Potomac which might indicate directional. movements of the Confederate army.
But watchful waiting was not Stevenson's forte and at his request he was allowed to join a company of bluejackets sent to General "Fighting Joe" Hooker to take part in the impending battle near Fredericksburg. Although in the thick of it he got back without a scratch, but it was in this bloody and rather disastrous encounter that Stevenson realized he wanted to fight rather than to feed in time of war.
When he returned to the Satellite she was engaged in reconnaissance at the mouth of the Rappahannock. One cold December day it was observed that the enemy was making signals across the mouth of that river, and the Satellite's commander prepared to shell the signal party, but Stevenson begged him to refrain, saying that if he were given a boat's crew that night he would capture the whole party and its outfit.
With two boats he crept through the darkness with muffled oars, reached the beach under a concealing bluff, and landed his whole party except two boatkeepers to shove the boats off and anchor them. From a surprised and captured beach picket he learned that the signal party was part of the 55th Virginia Cavalry under Captain Charles Lawson conducting a recruiting station about 10 miles from the river.
Such a prospect was a delight to Stevenson. He crept upon and captured the astonished signalmen and their outfit, crept on through undergrowth and ditches and behind fences, eluding cavalry pickets, and stampeded Lawson's detachment, capturing Lawson himself and bringing him and a number of his command back to the Satellite as prisoners.
When in later years Stevenson was induced to relate this adventure to a brother officer the latter said:
"You made a thorough job of it, didn't you?"
"Not quite," Stevenson replied, "I couldn't bring back the horses."
For this daring action he was cited for bravery, upon the recommendation of his commanding officer, by Rear Admiral Harwood then commanding the Flotilla.
The Confederates vowed vengeance for their humiliation and nine months later, when the Satellite was again at anchor off the mouth of the Rappahannock, they boarded and captured her one dark night, but vainly searched for Stevenson, for he had been transferred to the U.S.S. Princess Royal, Western Gulf Blockading Squadron, some months before, thus escaping probable confinement in Libby Prison for the duration of the war.
Farragut had taken New Orleans about a year earlier and most of the Squadron was co-operating with General Grant in clearing the Mississippi River. Both army and navy sick and wounded were camped at Donaldsonville, a town on a deep bend in the river about 75 miles above New Orleans. A small fort and Garrison were established there and the Princess Royal, a screw steamer and former British blockade runner, was anchored off the town for its protection. Donaldsonville was soon besieged by a large Confederate force much in excess of its garrison and a demand was made for its surrender. When this was refused the garrison was warned to send women and children to places of safety as the town and fort were to be taken by assault. Paymaster Stevenson then conceived a plan to reconnoiter the Confederate camp and ascertain the intended plan of attack. Getting permission to go ashore as if on afternoon leave, he disguised himself, after getting into town, as a bedraggled refugee and slipped past the Union pickets without discovery after nightfall. After he got through they discovered and fired upon him as he fled, which was exactly what he wanted in order to make his escape appear genuine. He ran into the enemy's camp, risking further pot shots from both sides, and when taken before the Confederate provost marshal he claimed to be a Confederate prisoner from New Orleans escaping from the Princess Royal. Upon being further questioned he gave such complete and accurate information of the Princess Royal's armament that he was received with open arms, enlisted in the Confederate force, and was given the run of the camp, gaining in a day or so complete knowledge of the Confederate plan of attack.
His next problem was to get back to the Princess Royal. If he were discovered slipping into Donaldsonville he would be revealed as a spy and the Confederates would change their plan, so he decided that he must slip away in the opposite direction toward New Orleans, try to reach the river undetected, and worm his way back along its edge.
Waiting on the third night until well after taps when all around him appeared to be sleeping, he crept out of camp to the rear undetected and made for the river in the darkness. When still some distance from it he was discovered, fired upon and pursued by a patrol but succeeded in eluding his pursuer by dodging about through undergrowth. After lying low until search for him seemed abandoned he reached the threes edge and saw the outline of a gunboat offshore. Picking a place where he was concealed except in her direction, he made a flare and signaled until he got her attention and identified himself. Very soon a boat under muffled oars appeared to take him off, and he found himself aboard the U.S.S. Winona, which had come up the river and anchored for the night below the town.
When returned to the Princess Royal next morning he was severely reprimanded by Captain Woolsey for absence without leave but when he gave Woolsey the complete Confederate plan of attack further disciplinary action was suspended, and preparations made afloat and ashore to meet the assault as planned.
Stevenson's disappearance was not taken seriously by the Confederates. He had given them the impression that spying for them was more to his taste than fighting and it seemed apparent that he had fled to avoid the battle and get back home to New Orleans. So the assault was made exactly according to the information he brought back, and the dispositions made in accordance with it resulted, after a 4-hour contest, in a complete repulse with over 1,500 Confederate killed and wounded, and the siege of Donaldsonville was abandoned.
Captain Woolsey expunged his reprimand and cited Stevenson for "conspicuous bravery and risk of life in obtaining the information which led to the Confederate defeat."
Scarcely a month passed before Stevenson was again on a daring and perilous adventure. On the night of July 9 Captain Woolsey sent the U.S.S. New London down the river with important dispatches for Farragut at New Orleans in connection with the surrender of Port Hudson by the Confederates, but early next morning Woolsey learned that the New London was grounded and disabled 12 miles down the river and was under fire from the Confederates on shore. Stevenson thereupon volunteered to go down to the New London under the protection of the levee, get the dispatches from her commanding officer and take them by hook or by crook to New Orleans, a distance of more than 75 miles through the enemy's country, saying that he would tie a piece of lead to the dispatches and keep near the river so that he could throw them into it if captured. Creeping by night close under the levee he reached the New London and obtained the dispatches. Again by night he went on down, swimming, floating, and crawling under cover of the levee and hiding in thickets during the day to sleep. While so hiding he would leave his dispatch pouch hidden or buried near the river's edge.
One day he awoke from his sleep in a patch of woods and found himself in the hands of four Confederate guerrillas who took him to their captain at a camp near the river. Stevenson's claim that he was merely a "swamp rat," as hoboes in that region were called, although he looked the part and nothing was found on him, didn't gel with the guerrilla captain, who believed him to be a spy and ordered his captors to "take him out and string him up and fill him full of lead."
Having only rope enough to hang him with, they threw it around his neck and marched him to a tree without binding him, but before they could "string him up" a rain of shot and shrapnel fell upon the camp from a Federal gunboat coming up the river and Stevenson's captors scattered and fled for cover. Stevenson, discarding his noose, dashed to the river, recovered his dispatches, and crept down under the levee's protection. At a bend he saw the Federal vessel and signaled her frantically with his shirt on a stick but for a time she ignored it and continued on. When almost in despair, however, his signal was read arid a boat was sent to his rescue. The gunboat proved to be the Kineo. Her executive officer, Lieutenant Frederick Rodgers, refitted Stevenson and he continued his hazardous journey with many narrow escapes and reached his destination. Again he was the subject of commendatory reports both from Captain Woolsey and Admiral Farragut, and as a testimonial of appreciation from the latter he was transferred to the U.S.S. Pensacola, one of the largest under Farragut's command.
Then the armies of the west swept eastward and Admiral Porter, who had been Farragut's chief assistant in clearing the Mississippi, was transferred to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. His orders added "take with you your personal staff, and a number of officers not exceeding five may be included." Porter included Stevenson and he was assigned to the U.S.S. Massasoit, a double-ended side-wheel gunboat. A year and a half elapsed, however, before another opportunity for daring came to him. Grant was then encircling Lee in Virginia and Sherman had cut through the Confederacy to Atlanta and from there on through Georgia to Savannah on the coast, reaching there just before Christmas, 1864. Grant, then in supreme command of the Federal armies, had ordered him to continue north through the Carolinas to Virginia, thus completing the encirclement of the Confederate armies.
Before Sherman left Savannah the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, with the aid of an army sent from Hampton Roads, captured Fort Fisher at the mouth of the Cape Fear River about 200 miles up the coast. Much to Stevenson's disappointment the Massasoit was on detached duty in the James River and did not rejoin the squadron until some days after the engagement. He was in time, nevertheless, for another perilous assignment. Admiral Porter feared that General Sherman, not knowing Fort Fisher had fallen, would come up the coast to invest it instead of going more directly northward through the Carolinas to join Grant. Porter also feared that Sherman would have started on this route before a vessel could reach Savannah to inform him it was not necessary. The only sure way seemed to be to slip a messenger through the hostile coastal route to find and intercept him. From Porter's knowledge of Stevenson's exploits on the Mississippi he felt that he was the man to do it and Stevenson accepted the mission with alacrity.
Stevenson has left no record of this perilous journey, maybe because he did not get shot at or get a noose around his neck. It appears that he impersonated a Confederate straggler from Fort Fisher trying to reach his home in the South, and as there were many such home-seeking stragglers at that time he was aided rather than hindered on his journey; also that he broadcast the fall of Fort Fisher as much as possible on his way hoping the news would reach Sherman in case they failed to meet. He reached Savannah before Sherman left, however, and as the homeseeking straggler ruse would not work for a return North, he remained with the army until it reached Fayetteville on the Cape Fear River. From there he returned down the river to the Squadron on the U. S. gunboat Eolus, which had fought her way up the river with further dispatches for Sherman.
All that is officially known about this daring trip appears in the following words in a report of Rear Admiral Porter:
General Sherman had not heard of the capture of Fort Fisher and I suspected he might march down on Fort Fisher and leave the main road, when he ought to connect with General Grant's army. I called for a volunteer to carry despatches through the enemy's country. Mr. Stevenson volunteered and carried the despatches safely to General Sherman, through the enemy's country, at the risk of his neck, for had they caught him they would have hung him.
Sherman then fought his way through to Grant, thus completing the vast encirclement of the Confederate forces, and in three months the war was over, ending Stevenson's opportunities for daring adventure. Temporary officers were rapidly mustered out of the services and about six months later Stevenson was honorably discharged as an Acting Assistant Paymaster, but his record was so outstanding that he was commissioned by President Johnson Passed Assistant Paymaster in the regular Navy, and after a brief return to the North Atlantic Squadron was transferred to the U.S.S. Pawnee of the South Atlantic. Except for the opportunity to visit strange places it was a humdrum cruise of three years, but near the end of it he was informed that President Grant, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, had advanced him fifteen numbers for "extraordinary heroism in the Civil War." This advanced him into the next higher grade, and he was returned home, examined, and promoted to Paymaster.
His next cruise was on the Asiatic Station, U.S.S. Lackawanna, during which he indulged his thirst for adventure by visiting, at more or less personal risk, localities little known to occidentals. He has left interesting letters of those experiences too numerous to include in this article. One, however, is rather unique. On the Island of Jesso (he doesn't mention its location) he was entertained by the chief of a tribe called the Aines with a bear hunt. When the bear was brought to bay a hunter would advance upon him holding a long, sharp, pointed dagger with hilt against his right breast and point toward the animal. When the bear reared upon his hind legs and seized the hunter in a bear hug he squeezed the dagger into his heart and collapsed. The fact that the hunter often failed to survive the bear hug merely added zest to the hunt. The chief himself killed a bear in this manner with little injury to himself and presented the dagger to Stevenson. It is still preserved in his family.
After the Lackawanna cruise and a stretch in charge of our depot of stores at Nagasaki, Stevenson was returned to the United States for special duty at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia and then returned to the depot at Nagasaki. From this he was detached in the autumn of 1878 and sent to the New York Navy Yard.
In the following June it was brought to the attention of President Hayes by Secretary of the Navy Robeson that Stevenson's advancement of fifteen numbers was not commensurate with other advancements for Civil War heroism, and the President, by and with the consent of the Senate, advanced him fifteen numbers more for "gallant and conspicuous conduct in battle and extraordinary heroism" to date back to June, 1863, the time of his exploits on the Mississippi; extending his rank of Paymaster back to that time.
This advancement brought him to the top of his grade early in 1881, but after he had passed the mental and professional examination his medical board found him not in physical condition for promotion. This finding, however, was set aside by the convening authority and another board immediately appointed, which passed him and he was commissioned Pay Inspector.
After completing his duty at the New York Yard he was ordered as Fleet Paymaster of the North Atlantic Squadron on the U.S.S. Tennessee. It was then that this writer, making his postgraduate cruise, met this distinguished man. He was then becoming gray haired and wore a heavy, drooping, graying moustache. He was rather reserved with his brother officers in the wardroom excepting two old Civil War associates, Fleet Surgeon Archibald Rhoades and Fleet Engineer W. B. Brooks. With them and with the Commander in Chief, Rear Admiral Jouett, he often swapped yarns of the Civil War. His chief pastime in his spare moments was bridge whist, at which he was always very solemn and painstaking. In addition to this he was a prodigious reader. He was very fond of young people and very kindly to us steerage youngsters. We were too much in awe of him to try to draw him out about his exploits, but we had a much older man in our mess, Pay Clerk Van Brunt, who knew a lot about them.
In 1890 this writer was awarded first prize for solving a whist problem in a popular magazine. Some months later, when my ship was at League Island Navy Yard, Stevenson, then on duty there, came on board. Immediately he poked a finger into my chest and exclaimed:
"You are the man I want to see. Come to the Hamilton Club tomorrow evening for dinner and an evening at whist. I want you to help me beat Work."
I felt rather dazed at the whist table next evening, for my prize winning was a fluke of luck. We did "beat Work"; he was not the tycoon of whist and bridge which he became in later years; and I spent several pleasant evenings at the exclusive Hamilton Club afterward during which I noted the comradeship between Stevenson and the club members so different from his reserve with most of his messmates on the Tennessee.
Stevenson had two qualities not conducive to service popularity in time of peace, an uncompromising forthrightness and an impatience with red tape. When he was General Storekeeper at the New York Navy Yard in 1887 an order came to sell at auction a large accumulation of Civil War stores no longer needed. A board, not including Stevenson, was appointed by the Commandant to conduct the sale and a number of articles not likely to tempt bidders was omitted from the auction and sold by open purchase. Stevenson, as custodian only, had no voice in the matter but the bureaucrats, knowing his tendency to cut red tape to expedite results, apparently suspected that he had, and appointed a court of inquiry in which he was made a collateral defendant. Secretary of the Navy Whitney, after reviewing the proceedings, found that there was. "no sufficient ground for questioning the good faith and honest motives of the officers having to do with the conduct of the sale."
Two years later when Stevenson was Commissary Officer at the Naval Academy he decided that the subsisting of the cadets had fallen into a rut of mediocrity and proceeded in a forthright manner to improve it. For awhile the cadets never fared better but it tangled Stevenson in the red tape of his Bureau, and his forthright defense of his action seems to have antagonized the Paymaster General and the Secretary of the Navy, no longer Whitney, and resulted in his detachment from the Academy.
Less than two years later, when he was examined for promotion to Pay Director, that Paymaster General was senior member of his board and that Secretary of the Navy was the reviewing authority. The majority of the board found Stevenson qualified for promotion but the senior member submitted a dissenting minority report citing the New York sales irregularities and the Naval Academy "extravagance" as his reasons, and the reviewing authority disapproved the board's recommendation.
Much public sympathy ensued and another board was appointed omitting the former senior member but substituting for him the senior member of the court of inquiry which investigated the New York sales. During this examination Stevenson asked this officer:
"What, if anything, did you find in the entire investigation that reflected on my integrity?"
The officer's reply was: "Nothing whatever."
Nevertheless he, too, submitted a dissenting report and in spite of a second recommendation for promotion the same reviewing authority disapproved it.
Public indignation brought about the appointment of a third board but the futility of another recommendation for promotion was obvious and this board recommended retirement for physical disability.
Stevenson was then placed on the retired list September 25, 1893.
He never displayed the slightest ill will toward his detractors and treated the whole procedure with tolerant good humor. He was a great souled man "sans peur et sans reproche."
It probably was a fortunate outcome, for promotion would have brought him nothing but confining office work at a time when he really was in impaired health and needing rest and recuperation for an unforeseen and arduous assignment.
Came the Spanish-American War. A huge depot of supplies for the fleet in the Atlantic had to be established in New York. Red tape had to be scrapped and supplies obtained ad lib. and expedited to the fleet with as little paper work as possible. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, under whom this branch of war work fell, immediately picked Stevenson as the man for the job and he was restored to active duty and placed in charge of the depot. He accomplished this strenuous work with outstanding ability. It is said that he remarked:
"I would rather be court-martialed for failure to follow the regulations than for failure to supply the fleet."
It was, however, a further strain upon his precarious health, and ten months after the war, June 14, 1899, his intrepid soul passed on.