Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE ATLANTIC COAST ABANDONED.

323

they inspired in the breasts of the Union people developed quite a widespread loyalty. A Union convention was called to assemble at Jacksonville on the 10th of April, to organize a loyal State Government, when, to the dismay of those engaged in the matter, General Wright prepared to withdraw his forces, two days before the time when the convention was to meet. General Trapier would of course return, so the leaders were compelled to fly for their lives with the National troops, instead of attempting to re-establish a loyal government. In consequence of a sense of insecurity caused by this event, very little Union feeling was manifested in Florida during the remainder of the war.

Dupont returned to Port Royal on the 27th of March, leaving a small force at different points to watch the posts recovered. He found Skiddaway and Greene Islands abandoned by the Confederates, and the important Wassaw and Ossabaw Sounds and the Vernon and Wilmington Rivers entirely open to the occupation of National forces. So early as the 11th of February, General Sherman, with the Forty-seventh New York, had taken quiet possession of Edisto Island, from which all the white inhabitants had fled, burning their cotton on their departure. By this movement the National flag was carried more than half way to Charleston from Beaufort. And so it was, that on the first anniversary of the attack on Fort Sumter, the entire Atlantic and Gulf coast, from Cape Hatteras to Perdido Bay, excepting the harbor of Charleston and its immediate surroundings, had been abandoned by the insurgents, and the National power was supreme. To Dupont and the new Commander of the Department of the South (General Hunter) Charleston was now a coveted prize, and they made preparations to attempt its capture. That movement we will consider hereafter..

Turning again to Hampton Roads, we see General Butler and some troops going out upon another expedition, with his purpose a profound secret, but which proved to be one of the most important movements of the first year and a half of the war. It was the expedition against New Orleans.

We have seen' that so early as September, 1861, General Butler was commissioned by the Secretary of War to go to New England and “raise, arm, and uniform a volunteer force for the war," to be composed of six regiments. Unavoidable collision with the efforts of State authorities to raise men ensued, and at one time it seemed as if Butler's mission would be fruitless. To give him more efficiency, the six New England States were constituted a Military Department, and Major-General Butler was made its commander while engaged in recruiting his division. He worked to that end with untiring energy, in the face of opposition; and it was not long before his six thousand troops and more were ready for the field. The Government had then turned its attention to the posts on the Gulf of Mexico and its tributary waters, and the seizure of Mobile and New Orleans, and the occupation of Texas, formed parts of its capital plan of operations in that region. Butler was called upon to suggest the best rendezvous for an expedition against Mobile. He named Ship Island, off the coast of Mississippi,

1 See page 108.

324

EXPEDITION AGAINST NEW ORLEANS.

between Mobile Bay and Lake Borgne (a low sand-bar, lying just above low. water, and averaging seven miles in length and three-fourths of a mile in width), as the most eligible point for operations against any part of the Gulf Coast. Thither some of his troops were sent, in the fine steamship Consti tution, under General J. W. Phelps, whom Butler well knew, and honored as a commander at Fortress Monroe and vicinity. The Constitution returned, and two thousand more of the six thousand men embarked, when an electrograph said to Butler, in Boston, "Don't sail. Disembark."

The Government was then trembling because of the seeming imminence of war with Great Britain, on account of the seizure of Mason and Slidell. They were in Fort Warren, and the British Government had demanded their surrender. This made the authorities at Washington pause in their aggressive policy, to wait for the development of events in that connection. But the tremor was only spasmodic, and soon ceased. The work against treason was renewed with increased vigor. Edwin M. Stanton, who was in Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet during the closing days of his administration'-a man possessed of great physical and mental energy, comprehensiveness of intellectual grasp, and great tenacity of will, had

[graphic]

EDWIN M. STANTON.

Jan. 13,
1862.

superseded Mr. Cameron as Secretary of War," and a conference between him and General Butler resulted in a decision to make vigorous efforts to capture New Orleans, and hold the lower Mississippi.

When that decision was referred to General McClellan, the latter thought such an expedition was not feasible, for it would take fifty thousand men to give it a chance of success, and where were they to come from? He was unwilling to spare a single man of his more than two hundred thousand men then lying at ease around Washington City. His question was promptly answered. New England was all aglow with enthusiasm, and its sons were eagerly flocking to the standard of General Butler, who asked for only fifteen thousand men for the expedition. Already more than twelve thousand were ready for the field, under his leadership. Two thousand were at Ship Island; more than two thousand were on ship-board in Hampton Roads; and over eight thousand were ready for embarkation at Boston.

[ocr errors]

President Lincoln gave the project his sanction. The Department of the Gulf was created, and General Butler was placed in command of it. On the 23d of February he received minute orders from General McClellan to co-operate with the navy, first in the capture of New Orleans and its approaches, and then in the reduction of Mobile, Galveston, and Baton Rouge, with the ultimate view of occupying Texas. To his New

1862.

1 See page 146, volume I.

THE NATIONALS AT SHIP ISLAND.

325

England troops were added three regiments, then at Baltimore, and orders were given for two others at Key West and one at Fort Pickens to join the expedition. On paper, the whole force was about eighteen thousand, but when they were all mustered on Ship Island they amounted to only thirteen thousand seven hundred. Of these, five hundred and eighty were artillerymen and two hundred and seventy-five were cavalry.

a Feb. 25, 1862.

On the day after receiving his instructions, General Butler left Washington and hastened to Fortress Monroe. To Mr. Lincoln he said, "Good-bye, Mr. President; we shall take New Orleans or you'll never see me again;" and with the assurance of Secretary Stanton, that "The man who takes New Orleans is made a lieutenant-general," Butler embarked at Hampton Roads," accompanied by his wife, his staff, and fourteen hundred troops, in the fine steamship Mississippi. Fearful perils were encountered on the North Carolina coast, and vexatious delay at Port Royal; and it was thirty days after he left the capes of Virginia before he debarked at Ship Island. There was no house upon that desolate sand-bar, and some charred boards were all the materials that could be had for the erection of a shanty for the accommodation of Mrs. Butler. The furniture for it was taken from a captured vessel.

[ocr errors]

March 25.

July, 1861.

When the war broke out, there was an unfinished fort on Ship Island, to which, as we have observed, Floyd, the traitorous Secretary of War, had ordered heavy guns. The insurgents of that region took possession of it in considerable force, and, during their occupation of it for about two months, they made it strong and available for defense. They constructed eleven bomb-proof casemates, a magazine and barracks, mounted twenty heavy Dahlgren guns, and named it Fort Twiggs. When rumors of a heavy naval force approaching reached the garrison, they abandoned the fort, burnt their barracks, and, with their cannon, fled to the main. On the following day, a small force was landed from the National gun-boat Massachusetts, and took possession of the place. They strengthened the fort by building two more casemates, adding Dahlgren and rifled cannon, and piling around its outer walls tiers of sand-bags, six feet in depth. Then they gave it the name of their vessel, and called it Fort Massachusetts. The Constitution arrived there with General Phelps and his troops on the 3d of December, and on the following day • Dec. 4. he issued a proclamation to the loyal inhabitants of the southwestern States, setting forth his views as to the political status of those

'Sept. 16.

1 Parton's General Butler in New Orleans, page 194.

2 The captain of the Mississippi appears to have been utterly incompetent. On the night after leaving Hampton Roads, he ran his vessel on a shoal off Hatteras Inlet, and barely escaped wrecking. On the following day it struck a sunken rock, five miles from land, off the mouth of the Cape Fear, and an hour later, while leaking badly, it was hard fast on the Fryingpan Shoals, and partly submerged, when relief came in the gun-boat Mount Vernon, Commander O. S. Glisson, of the blockading squadron off Wilmington. The Mississippi was taken to Port Royal and repaired, and was again run aground while passing out of that harbor, when her commander wis deposed.

3 See page 123, volume I.

4 This fort was on the extreme western end of the island. It was nearly circular in shape, and built of brick. The sand-bags made its walls bomb-proof. Outside of the fort was a redoubt, built of sand-bags, upon which a heavy Dahlgren gun was mounted, so as to command the channel leading into the really fine harbor, in which vesseis might find shelter from the worst storms on the Gulf.

These were the Twenty-sixth Massachusetts, Colonel Jones, Ninth Connecticut, Colonel Cahill, and Fourth Battery Massachusetts Artillery, Captain Manning.

326

PROCLAMATION OF GENERAL PHELPS.

States and the slave-system within their borders. It pointedly condemned that system, and declared that it was incompatible with a free government, incapable of forming an element of true nationality, and necessarily dangerous to the Republic, when assuming, as it then did, a political character. He pictured to them the blessings to be derived from the abolition of slavery,

[graphic][merged small]

and declared that his motto and that of his troops coming among them was, FREE LABOR AND WORKING-MEN'S RIGHTS.

This proclamation astonished Phelps's troops, provoked the pro-slavery officers under his command, and highly excited the people to whom it was addressed, who heard it, and who used it effectually in "firing the Southern heart" against the "abolition Government" at Washington. It was too far in advance of public opinion and feeling at that time, and General Butler, whose views were coincident with the tenor of the proclamation, considering it premature, and therefore injudicious, said, in transmitting his brigadier's report of operations at Ship Island, that he had not authorized the issuing of any proclamation, " and most certainly not such an one." So General Phelps and those of his way of thinking were compelled to wait a year or two before they saw a public movement toward the abolition of slavery.

sea.

All winter Phelps and his troops remained on the dreary little island, unable, on account of great and small guns in the hands of the neighboring insurgents, to gain, a footing on the adjacent shore, and waiting in painful anxiety, at the last, for the arrival of General Butler and the remainder of his command, who, at one time it was feared, had gone to the bottom of the Their advent produced joy, for the troops well knew that the stagnation of the camp would soon give place to the bustle of preparations for the field. That expectation was heightened when, a few hours after he landed, Butler was seen in conference with Captains Farragut and Bailey, of the navy, who were there, in which his Chief of Staff, Major George C. Strong, and his Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Godfrey Weitzel (both graduates of West Point) participated. The latter had been engaged in the completion of the forts below New Orleans, and was well acquainted with all the region around the lower Mississippi.

At that conference, plan of operation against the forts below New

CAPTURE OF BILOXI AND PASS CHRISTIAN.

327

Orleans and the city itself was adopted, and was substantially carried out a few weeks later.

While preparations for that movement were in progress, some minor expeditions were set on foot. One against Biloxi, a summer watering-place on the Mississippi Main, was incited by the conduct of some Confederates who violated the sanctity of a flag of truce, under circumstances of peculiar wickedness. A little girl, three years of age, the daughter of a physician and noted rebel of New Orleans, was cast upon the shore at Ship Island after a storm, in which it was supposed her father had perished. She was kindly cared for by Mrs. Butler; and, as the child knew the name of her grandfather in New Orleans, the General determined to send her there. Fo that purpose Major George C. Strong, General Butler's chief of staff, too her in a sloop, under a flag of truce, to Biloxi, with money to pay he expenses to New Orleans. There she was left to be sent on. The sloop grounded on her return in the evening, and, while in that condition, an attempt was made to capture her by men who had been witnesses of Major Strong's holy errand. By stratagem he kept the rebels at bay until a gunboat came to his rescue.

On the following day, an avenging expedition, commanded by Major Strong, proceeded to Biloxi. It was composed of two gun-boats (Jackson and New London), and a transport with the Ninth Connecticut, Colonel Cahill, and Everett's battery on board. Fortunately for the Biloxians, they were quiet. Their place was captured without opposition, and the Mayor was compelled to make a humble apology in writing for the perfidy of his fellow-citizens in the matter of the flag of truce.

Leaving Biloxi, Major Strong went westward to Pass Christian. While his vessels lay at anchor there that night, they were attacked by three Confederate gun-boats, that stole out of Lake Borgne. The assailants were repulsed. Major Strong then landed his troops, and, making a forced march, surprised and captured a Confederate camp three miles distant. The soldiers had fled. The camp was destroyed, and the public stores in the town on the beach were seized and carried away. Major Strong also captured Mississippi City.

[graphic]
« PreviousContinue »