that IIood, after making a feint on Rome, had moved 11 miles down the Coosa and was passing that river on a pontoon-bridge: Sherman followed to Rome," and dispatched thence Gen. Cox's division and Garrard's cavalry across the Oostenaula to harass the right flank of the enemy, as he moved northward. Garrard chased a brigade of Rebel cavalry toward the Chattooga, capturing 2 guns. 46 Hood, moving rapidly, had by this time appeared before Resaca, summoning it; but Sherman had reenforced it with two regiments, and Col. Weaver had held it firmly, repulsing the enemy; who had moved up the railroad through Tilton and Dalton, destroying it so far as the Tunnel. Sherman, on reaching Resaca, was evidently puzzled to divine what his adversary meant in thus employing the second army of the Confederacy on a raiding expedition, but resolved to strike him in flank and force him to fight a battle. Accordingly, Howard was impelled westward to Snake creek gap, where he was to skirmish and hold the enemy, while Stanley, with the 4th and 14th corps, moved from Tilton on Villanow, with intent to gain Hood's rear. But Hood had other plans; so Howard encountered no solid resistance at the gap, but had pressed through it by noon, before Stanley had time to gain its rear. Our army was then directed on Lafayette, expecting thus to get into the enemy's rear; but Hood had evidently been cured of his voracious appetite for fighting, and, having very scanty trains, was far too light-footed to be caught. He nimbly evaded Sher 4 Oct. 11. man, slipping around his front, and, moving by his left, was soon out of reach; Sherman halting" in the vicinity of Gaylesville, Alabama, and feeling in various directions for his vanished foe. After the lapse of a week, he was satisfied that his adversary, as if intent on drawing him out of Georgia at all events, had crossed Sand mountain, and was making for the Tennessee. Sherman refused to follow an enemy who would not fight, whom he could not overtake, and who might be able to lead him a profitless wild-goose-chase for months. He detached Stanley, with his (4th) corps, and Schofield, with the 23d, with orders to march to Chattanooga, and thence report to Thomas at Nashville; most of the cavalry, under Wilson, being given similar orders. A single division, under Kilpatrick, was reserved for operations in Georgia. To Thomas was confided the defense of Tennessee, with unlimited discretion as to the use of his resources. A. J. Smith, then on his way from hunting Price out of Missouri, was ordered to report to him. Sherman had of course a full understanding with him, as well as with Grant, as to his plans. Hood's army, he advised them, now consisted of about 35,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry; and he did not turn his back again on Tennessee until assured that Thomas was strong enough to hold it. And now, learning that Hood, after a feint on Decatur, had passed on to Tuscumbia and laid a pontoonbridge across the river to Florence, Sherman turned his face southward, and, gathering up all his garrisons CONFEDERATE NAVAL OFFICERS AND CORSAIRS. 641 holding the railroad, sending some communications, and drawing around back to Chattanooga to aid in the defense of Tennessee, and drawing others forward to Atlanta, he thoroughly dismantled the railroads, burned the founderies, mills, &c., at Rome, and, cutting loose from all his him all his remaining forces, made diligent preparations for the Great March wherewith his name is so inseparably linked, and which so largely contributed to hasten the downfall of the Rebellion. XXIX. THE WAR ON THE OCEAN-MOBILE BAY. THE formation of the Southern | Commissioned and Warrant Officers Confederacy was quickly followed by the resignation of a large proportion -though not nearly all-of the Southern officers of the United States Navy-resignations which should not have been, but were, accepted. Many of these officers had, for fifteen to forty years, been drawing liberal pay and allowances from the Federal treasury for very light work-often, for no work at all: and now, when the Government which had educated, nurtured, honored, and subsisted them, was for the first time in urgent need of their best efforts, they renounced its service, its flag, and their fealty, in order to tender their swords to its deadly foe. Under such circumstances, no resignation should have been accepted, but their names should have been stricken with ignominy from the rolls they disgraced. These recreants made haste to repair to the Confederate capital, where they were received with flattering distinction, and accorded rank in the embryo Confederate navy at least as high as that which they had respectively attained in the service of the United States. The "Register of the VOL. II.-41 in the Navy of the Confederate States," issued at Richmond, Jan. 1, 1864, contained several hundred names-over two hundred of them being noted as having formerly been officers of the U. S. Navy. Some of these lacked even the poor excuse-"I go with my State," as at the head of the list stands their only Admiral, Franklin Buchanan, of Maryland; who entered the service of the United States Jan. 28th, 1815, and that of the Confederacy Sept. 5th, 1861. Of the Captains (twelve) who follow, three were born in Maryland, though one of them (Geo. N. Hollins) claims to be a citizen of Florida; as did another (Raphael Semmes) of Alabama. Of the thirty-six Provisional Captains and Commanders, twelve were born in non-seceding States, though most of them claimed to have since become residents of the sunny South.' 6 Very great ingenuity and nautical (or pyrotechnic) skill was evinced during the war, by the Rebel navy thus constituted, in the construction of rams and iron-clads, and their use for harbor and coast defense, but more especially in devising, con- | part of such as liberal pay, more lib structing, charging, and planting torpedoes, wherewith they did more execution and caused more embarrassment to blockaders and besieging squadrons than had been effected in any former war. Their devices for obstructing the mouths or channels of rivers and harbors were often unsurpassed in efficiency. On the ocean, however, they were hampered by the fact that the Southrons are neither a ship-building nor a sea-faring people; that, while they had long afforded the material for a large and lucrative commerce, they had neither built, nor owned, nor manned, many vessels. They would, therefore, have been able to make no figure at all out of sight of their own coast, but for the facilities afforded them by British sympathy and British love of gain, evading the spirit if not the strict letter of international maritime law. Great ship-building firms in Liverpool and Glasgow, wherein members of Parliament were largely interested, were almost constantly engaged in the construction of strong, swift steamships, calculated for corsairs and for nothing else; each being, when completed, in spite of information from our consuls and protests from our Minister, allowed to slip out of port under one pretext or another, and make for some prëarranged rendezvous, where a merchant vessel laden with Armstrong, Whitworth, Blakely, and other heavy rifled guns of the most approved patterns, with small arms, ammunition, provisions, &c., was awaiting her; and, her cargo being quickly transferred to the embryo corsair, a crew was made up, in part of men clandestinely enlisted for the service, in eral promises, and the cajolery of officers, could induce to transfer their services to the new flag; and thus the unarmed, harmless British steamship of yesterday was transformed into the Confederate cruiser of to-day: every stick of her British, from keel up to mast-head; her rigging, armament, and stores, British; her crew mostly British, though a few of her higher officers were not; and, thus planned expressly to outrun any heavily armed vessel and overpower any other, she hoisted the Confederate flag and commenced capturing, plundering, burning, and sinking our merchant vessels wherever she could fall upon them unprotected by our navy: every British port, on whatever sea, affording her not only shelter and hospitality, but the fullest and freshest information with regard to her predestined prey and the quarter wherein it could be clutched with least peril. Shielded from the treatment of an ordinary pirate, by the Queen's proclamation of neutrality, and from effective pursuit by the mar itime law which forbids the stronger belligerent to leave a neutral harbor within twenty-four hours after the weaker shall have taken his departure, though the latter may have dodged in just out of range of the former, after a keen chase of many hours-one of these corsairs was able to do enormous damage to our commerce with almost perfect impunity; for, by the time her devastations in one sea had been reported to our nearest naval commander, she would be a thousand miles away (but in what direction none could guess), lighting up another coast or strait with the glare of her conflagrations. THE ALABAMA AND THE FLORIDA. 643 If it be gravely held that Great Bri- | after vieing with her consort, the tain was nowise responsible for the Alabama-a new British vessel henceravages of these marauders, then it forth commanded by Semmes-and must be confessed that the letter of with other such from time to time existing international law does no fitted out, in their predatory career. justice to its spirit and purpose, but Each of these habitually approached stands in need of prompt and thor- her intended prey under her proper ough revision. (British) colors, but hoisted the Confederate so soon as the prize was securely within her grasp. Occasionally, a vessel of little value was released on condition of taking to port the crews of several of the most recently burned; a few were bonded, mainly because they carried British cargoes or were insured in British offices; but the great majority were simply robbed of their money, food, &c., and burnt. Among those bonded by the Alabama was the steamship Ariel,' on her way from New York to Aspinwall, with the California passengers and freight; but the. $250,000 which was to have been her ransom, being expressly "payable six months after the recognition [by the United States] of the independence of the Southern Confederacy," has not yet fallen due. Such was the just aların caused by this capture, while several National vessels were anxiously looking for the Alabama, that the Ariel dared not bring the specie from California that met her at Aspinwall, but left it there, until a gunboat was sent for it by the Government; and the specie continued to be so transmitted for some months thereafter. The career of the Sumter, Capt. Raphael Semmes, came to an early and inglorious end, as has already been narrated.' But another and superior cruiser was promptly constructed at Birkenhead to replace her; which our Embassador, Hon. Charles F. Adams, tried earnestly, but in vain, to have seized and detained at the outset by the British Government. Escaping Escaping from Liverpool under the name of Oreto, she was twice seized at Nassau, but to no purpose that island being the focus of blockade-running, and, of course, violently sympathetic with the Rebellion-as was, in fact, nearly every officer in the British naval or military service. Released from duress, she put to sea, and soon appeared as a British ship of war off the harbor of Mobile, then blockaded by Com'r Geo. II: Preble, who hesitated to fire on her lest she should be what she seemed; and in a few minutes she had passed him, and run up to Mobile, showing herself the Rebel corsair she actually was. Preble was promptly dismissed from the service -an act of justice which needed but a few repetitions to have prevented such mistakes in future. Running out' again under cover of darkness, the Oreto, now commanded by John N. Maffitt,' became the Florida, there The merchant ships captured and destroyed by these freebooters were hundreds in number, and the value of vessels and cargoes amounted to many scores of millions of dollars. clergyman of like name, who was Irish by birth, and a noted pulpit orator. 'Nov. 18, 1862. career, was treated as though we had asked Great Britain to aid us against the Confederates, when we had only required that she cease to aid unwarrantably our domestic foes, the popular sense of dishonesty and wrong was with difficulty restrained from expressing itself in deeds rather than words. But the damage thus inflicted was | vateers, not only in their construcnot limited to this destruction-far tion, but throughout their subsequent from it. The paralysis of commerce -the transfer (at a sacrifice) of hundreds of valuable ships to British owners (real or simulated) in order that they might be allowed to keep the seas with impunity-with the waste of money and service involved in sending many costly and formidable steamships to every ocean and almost every port in quest of some corsair, which was plundering and burning, perhaps on one side of a petty island, while the Vanderbilt or Tuscarora was vainly seeking it on the other-which was sure to be anywhere but where it was awaited or sought-and which would drop into the neutral harbor whither its pursuer had repaired for coal, or food, or information, and lie there by his side, bearding him with impunity; taking its own time to depart in peace and safety, because no pursuit was allowed for the next 24 hours such are the bare outlines of a system of maritime injury and annoyance which for years sickened the hearts of stanch upholders of the Union. That the officers of the Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and their confrères, were greeted in every British port with shouts and acclamations, receptions and dinners, as though they had been avowed Britons engaged in honorable warfare with their country's deadly foe, was observed by loyal Americans with a stinging consciousness of the hollowness and fraud of British neutrality which will not soon be effaced. And, when every remonstrance made by our Government or its representative against the favor shown to these pri $ June 12, 1863. Early in May, 1863, the Florida, while dodging our gunboats among the innumerable straits and passages surrounding the several West Indies, captured the brig Clarence, which was fitted out as a privateer and provided with a crew, under Lt. C. W. Read, late a midshipman in our navy. This new buccaneer immediately steered northward, and, sweeping up our southern coast, captured some valuable prizes; among them, when near Cape Henry, the bark Tacony,' to which Read transferred his men, and stood on up the coast; passing along off the mouths of the Chesapeake, Delaware, New York, and Massachusetts bays, seizing and destroying merchant and fishing vessels utterly unsuspicious of danger; until, at length, learning that swift cruisers were on his track, he burned the Tacony (in which he would have been easily recognized), and in the prize schooner Archer, to which he had transferred his armament and crew, stood boldly in for the harbor of Portland; casting anchor at sunset at its entrance, and sending at midnight two armed boats with muffled oars up nearly to the city, to seize the steam revenue cutter Cushing and bring her out for his future use. This was done; but, no sooner ⚫ June 24. |