four hundred men. The conflict was incessant and terrific. Fort after fort we invested. The enemy's gunboats carried sixty-four-pounders. He had also two guns which threw shells weighing one hundred and twentyfour pounds. One of these shells killed fifteen of our men.

By the 3d of April, 1865, preparations were made for the final assault upon Spanish Fort, the possession of which would render the surrender of the city inevitable. The gunboats and the batteries on shore opened simultaneously their bombardment. The patriot sharpshooters crept forward from trench to trench and from ridge to ridge, until, by their accurate and deadly fire, they drove the rebel gunners from their pieces. During all the day, until midnight, the conflict continued. The guns, being then all silenced, the rebels surrendered. At two o'clock of the morning, March 9th, our troops entered the intrenchments. General Canby's report the next morning said:

"Spanish Fort and its dependencies were captured last night. We have twenty-five officers and five hundred and thirty eight enlisted men prisoners, and have taken five mortars and twenty-five guns.. The major part of the garrison escaped by water. Blakely is already invested, and will be assaulted to-day, unless the works are stronger than I now believe them to be."

Our monitors and gunboats, cautiously removing torpedoes, worked their way up almost within shelling distance of Mobile. At the same time the troops formed for an assault upon the only remaining works protecting the town. The rebel intrenchments were strong, formidably armed, amply manned, and it was well known that the garrison would fight des perately. No ordinary ability or valor could carry such works. One man behind such intrenchments was equal to ten men before them. But officers and soldiers were alike determined. The hateful rebel banner floated over the streets of Mobile. It was the only sea-port, with the exception of Galveston, where that banner was still unfurled. Tidings of a constant succession of victories were constantly reaching the ears of our soldiers, redoubling their zeal. Officers and men were alike resolved that, cost what it might in blood and woe, that banner should go down, and that the National flag should again wave over the city redeemed. Steele held the right, Smith the centre, and Granger the left. At the given signal, the whole majestic line swept forward under a terrific fire from the enemy's batteries and gunboats. Reckless of the storm, they pressed forward, cutting their way through the thick abatis, trampling upon the torpedoes, which exploded beneath their feet, leaping the ditches, and, with loud cheers, clambering the ramparts. The victory was complete. Twenty guns and two thousand four hundred prisoners fell into our hands.

The rebels immediately evacuated the city, retreating into the interior. Our victorious troops marched into Mobile, and at two o'clock of March 10th, 1865, the star-spangled banner floated over the city which rebellion had dishonored and almost ruined, but which the patriot army had rescued disloyalty and shame.

capture of Mobile merits far more minuteness of detail than the this history will allow. It was a noble deed, nobly accomplished.

There was not, perhaps, throughout the whole war, any campaign in which there was displayed higher qualities of generalship or more heroic daring. But should we attempt to do justice to all individual or regimental acts worthy of record, our narrative would crowd the pages of many volumes. About the middle of June, 1864, just before the naval attack upen Mobile, the steamship Alabama, which had long been the pest of the seas, ingloriously avoiding all collision with armed vessels, but robbing and burning helpless merchantmen, was caught in the harbor of Cherbourg, by the United States steamship Kearsarge. There was no escape for the Alabama without a fight. The Kearsarge was vigilantly watching for the piratic craft, about ten miles from the mouth of the harbor. The Alabama, after waiting in port five days to prepare for the conflict, on Sunday morning, June 19th, steamed out of the harbor, and bore down upon the Kearsarge. They were both third-class sloops-of-war, of nearly the same armament and tonnage.

The Alabama was built in a British port, armed with British guns, and manned by British sailors, under the command of an American traitor. The gunners had been carefully trained in Her Majesty's practice-ship Excellent. Her battery consisted of eight guns-one one-hundred-pounder rifle, one sixty-eight-pounder rifle, and six thirty-two-pounders.

The Kearsarge was built in an American port, armed with American guns, and manned by American sailors, under the command of an American patriot. Her battery consisted of seven guns-two eleven-inch Dahlgrens, throwing shell and hollow shot of one hundred and thirty-eight pounds, four thirty-two-pounders, and one twenty-eight-pounder rifle.

In a conflict of one hour and ten minutes the Alabama was torn to pieces, and sunk like lead beneath the waves of the British Channel. The carnage on board the ship had been awful. Her decks were slippery with blood, and the wounded, in large numbers, had been carried into the hold. These all, with many who were attending them, went down with the ship. Eighty or ninety of the survivors, as the ship was ingulfed, were left struggling in the waves. The Alabama was accompanied from Cherbourg by an English yacht, the Deerhound, owned by John Lancaster. After the Alabama had surrendered and sank, Captain Winslow, of the Kearsarge, humanely asked Lancaster to assist in rescuing the drowning men, his prisoners, who had surrendered. Lancaster picked up Semmes, the captain of the piratic craft, and several others of the officers and crew, and, instead of placing them on board the Kearsarge, regardless of England's professed neutrality, steamed off to Cowes, and set them at liberty. Here the wretch who had roamed the sea, not like a warrior, but like a pirate, and who had committed to the flames more than ten millions of private property, was lauded by English journals, and feted by English merchants, as though he had been a hero meriting the world's applause. This act of English dishonor, added to a thousand others during the war, stung the National heart to the quick, and added to that universal spirit of indignation, which was already almost irrepressible throughout the land. The sentiment of the community towards England may be inferred from the following extract from one of the New York journals, published at this time :

"It is now a matter of history that British agents helped to excite the rebellion at the South. Our rebels are fighting with British guns, and British powder, and British bullets. The British send them food and clothing. The British press encourages them to keep up the war. British peers are not ashamed openly to avow their sympathy with the rebels. The rebel navy is composed of British vessels. When robbing our mer chant-ships, these pirates display the British flag. The Alabama was manned by a British crew, trained in a British man-of-war. The rebellion is a British institution from top to bottom."

When the question was asked Captain Winslow, why he allowed the Deerhound so to insult the American flag as to run away with his prisoners, and why he did not either stop or sink her, he replied that he could not believe that a vessel carrying the flag of the Royal Yacht Club would perpetrate so dishonorable an act; and when he saw that the Deerhound was actually steaming for England, he said that he trusted to the honor of Semmes, that he would still consider himself as lawfully a prisoner. The regret of the nation was universal that Captain Winslow had thus allowed Semmes to escape, and that he had placed any reliance in the honor of a man who had violated his oath, renounced his service, betrayed his country, turned pirate on the high seas, and, for two years, burned and destroyed defenceless merchantmen, ever skulking from a fight till he could no longer endure the taunts upon his cowardice. It has often been our duty to speak in the highest terms of the bravery of the rebel army; but the career of the Alabama in cautiously avoiding every armed ship, and in plundering and burning defenceless merchantmen, merits only contempt.

The Rev. A. H. Quint, of Massachusetts, one of the most heroic chaplains in the United States army, in a speech before the National Council of Congregational Clergymen, in Boston, in June, 1865, said, in words which met with a response in almost every patriot heart :

"When I was in the service of my country, and saw my comrades fall; when I saw friends from Wisconsin, Indiana, and New York, fall side by side, I knew that they fell by British bullets, from British muskets, loaded with British powder, fired by men wearing British shoes, and British clothing, and backed by British sympathy."

Such sins cannot be forgiven unrepented of. Throughout the whole of the United States there is a feeling of intense and just indignation in view of the encouragement which the British Government and the higher classes of the British people gave to the rebels. Such crimes are not soon forgot

ten.

CHAPTER XLII.

CAPTURE OF FORT FISHER AND WILMINGTON.

(From November, 1864, to February, 1865.)

SAILING OF THE FLEET-BOMBARDMENT AND ASSAULT.-FAILURE OF THE EXPEDITION.-VIEWS OF GENERALS WEITZEL AND BUTLER-WANT OF HARMONY BETWEEN THE NAVAL AND LAND FORCES.-NEW EXPEDITION.-SAILING FROM BEAUFORT.-SUBLIME SPECTACLE.-FURIOUS GALE. INCIDENTS OF THE BOMBARDMENT.-VALOR OF SAILORS AND SOLDIERS. — HEROISM OP THE COMMANDERS.-TRIUMPhant Results.

EARLY in August, 1864, arrangements were made for a naval and military expedition on a grand scale. A large fleet, under Admiral Porter, was collected in Hampton Roads. Several months were employed in the arduous preparations. It was not until Monday evening, December 12th, 1864, that the transports and smaller vessels of the fleet, seventy-five vessels in all, got under way. The next morning the line-of-battle ships, the Ironsides, and the monitors followed. The fleet consisted of seventy-three war-vessels, carrying six hundred and fifty-five guns, and a large number of transports, conveying about ten thousand men under General Butler.

After encountering a severe storm off Cape Hatteras, the fleet on the 14th anchored at Beaufort, in North Carolina. The next day the armament reached the vicinity of Fort Fisher, at the mouth of Cape Fear River, the most formidable fortress which defended the approaches to Wilming ton. Unfortunately, a severe storm arose, which prevented the immediate disembarkation of the troops. Several days were thus lost, and the enemy was enabled to gather reënforcements, and to make ample preparations to repel the assault. The violence of the storm was such that the vessels were compelled to draw off to sea again, but reappeared on the 23d.

It was not until noon of Saturday, the 24th, that the fleet got into position to open fire upon the fort. The bombardment was terrific. Thirty shots a minute of balls and shells of largest calibre fell upon the works of the foe. A torpedo-boat was also exploded near the fort, which, however, inflicted no serious injury. The bombardment was continued until dark, and was resumed the next morning, and continued all the day.

Under cover of this tremendous fire, a body of troops was landed, Sunday afternoon, to storm the fort. More than twenty thousand shots were thrown from fifty kinds of war-vessels. The rebels responded with only about twelve hundred shots. The ground in front and rear of the fort was torn up with shells, and many of the guns were dismounted. Still the fort itself was but slightly injured.

About three thousand men were landed to storm the fort. tempt was not made, for reasons stated as follows by General letter to Admiral Porter:

VOL. II-34

But the at Butler, in a

"Upon landing the troops, and making a thorough reconnoissance of Fort Fisher, both General Weitzel and myself are fully of opinion that the place could not be carried by assault, as it was left substantially uninjured as a defensive work, by the navy fire. We found seventeen guns protected by traverses, two only of which were dismounted, bearing up the beach, and covering a strip of land, the only practicable route, not more than wide enough for a thousand in line of battle.

"General Weitzel advanced his skirmish line within fifty yards of the fort, while the garrison was kept in their bomb-proofs by the fire of the navy, and so closely that three or four men of the picket line ventured upon the parapet, and through the sally-port of the work, capturing a horse, which they brought off, killing the orderly, who was the bearer of a dispatch from chief of artillery of General Whiting, to bring a light battery within the fort, and also brought away from the parapet the flag of the fort.

"This was done while the shells of the navy were falling about the heads of the daring men who entered the works, and it was evident, as soon as the fire of the navy ceased, because of the darkness, that the fort was fully manned again, and opened with grape and canister on our picket line.

"Finding that nothing but the operations of a regular siege, which did not come within my instructions, would reduce the fort, and in view of the threatening aspect of the weather, wind arising from the southeast, rendering it impossible to make further landing through the surf, I caused the troops with their prisoners to reëmbark, and see nothing further that can be done by the land forces. I shall therefore sail for Hampton Roads as soon as the transport fleet can be got in order. My engineers and officers report Fort Fisher to me as substantially uninjured as a defensive work."

Admiral Porter was not satisfied with this result. Indeed, it is evident that there was a want of harmony between the commanders of the land and naval forces. Admiral Porter replies:

"I wish some more of your gallant fellows had followed the officer who took the flag from the parapet, and the brave fellow who brought the horse out from the fort. I think that they would have found it an easier conquest than is supposed. I do not, however, intend to place my opinion in opposition to General Weitzel, whom I know to be an accomplished soldier and engineer, and whose opinion has great weight with me."

The subsequent statements of the rebel officers entirely confirmed the opinion of Generals Butler and Weitzel, that the fort was substantially uninjured by the navy fire. The disappointment of the community in view of this failure was very great. There was a strong disposition to censure General Butler for refusing to attempt the assault, and he was soon relieved of his command. In his farewell address to his soldiers, he said: "I have refused to order the useless sacrifice of such soldiers, and I am relieved from your command."

General Grant was not at all satisfied with the result of the expedition, but was fully convinced that the fort could be taken by direct assault. Preparations were accordingly made to renew the attack by the same fleet