ing an attack, had already obstructed ernment, the Moniteur, though generally this entrance from the sea, the operation became unnecessary. In Europe, these measures were denounced as a barbarous mode of warfare, and a sin against nature. The English press was especially virulent in its censure, and characterized the obstruction of Charleston Harbor, by the sinking of the "stone fleet," as an atrocious barbarity, almost unparalleled in the history of the world. The British Government, even, was induced to protest, through its representative at Washington, against the act. Earl Russell, in his dispatch, had declared that "such a cruel plan would seem to imply despair of the restoration of the Union, the professed object of the war; for it could never be the wish of the United States Government to destroy cities from which their own country was to derive a portion of its riches and prosperity. Such a plan could only be adopted as a measure of revenge and of irremediable injury against an enemy." His lordship moreover declared that "even as a scheme of embittered and sanguinary war, such measure would not be justifiable. It would be a plot against the commerce of all maritime nations, and against the free intercourse of the Southern States of America with the civilized world." The official organ of the French Gov a very slowly, and still upright when they had felt the bottom. One ship out of the sixteen, the Robin Hood, with upright masts, stood solitary sentinel over the wrecks. As evening came on she was set on fire, and gave us as the crown of our novel experiment, the rare sight of a ship on fire at sea. The light-house on Morris Island was blown up by the rebels on the night of December 19, while the fleet was lying off the harbor." so reticent, did not hesitate to characterize the "stone fleet" as a vindictive prosecution of the war, and a provocation to the indignation of the world. European opinion on the subject, however, had been formed on the statements of the American press, which had misrepresented the purpose of the Federal Government, declaring, with unreflecting exultation, that the stone fleet was intended to destroy forever the harbors in which it was to be sunk. An authoritative correction of the misapprehension of the objects and effects of the plan of obstruction was made by Mr. Seward directly to Lord Lyons, who thus stated it in the report of his conversation on the subject with the Secretary of State: "Mr. Seward observed that it was altogether a mistake to suppose that this plan had been devised with a view to injure the harbors permanently. It was, he said, simply a temporary military measure adopted to aid the blockade. The Government of the United States had last spring, with a navy very little prepared for so extensive an operation, undertaken to blockade upward of three thousand miles of coast. The Secretary of the Navy had reported that he could stop up the large holes' by means of his ships, but that he could not stop up the 'small ones.' It had been found necessary, therefore, to close some of the numerous small inlets by sinking vessels in the channels. It would be the duty of the Government of the ENGLAND ON STONE FLEETS. 651 United States to remove all these ob- 'Mr. Seward said that the best proof structions as soon as the Union was he could give me that the harbor of restored. It was well understood that Charleston had not been rendered inacthis was an obligation incumbent on the cessible was, that in spite of the sunken Federal Government. At the end of the vessels and of the blockading squadron, war with Great Britain, that Government a British steamer, laden with contrahad been called upon to remove a vessel band of war, had just succeeded in getwhich had been sunk in the harbor of ting in." Savannah, and had recognized the obli- There were those who were prepared gation and removed the vessel according- to justify the design, even if it were inly. Moreover, the United States were tended perpetually to block up the harnow engaged in a civil war with the bors of the Southern coast, by the naval South. He was not prepared to say career of Great Britain, so aboundthat, as an operation in war, it was un- ing in precedents of unscrupulous warjustifiable to destroy permanently the fare. An English writer* reminded his harbors of the enemy; but nothing of indignant countrymen that, "on the the kind had been done on the present evacuation of the city and port of Alexoccasion. Vessels had been sunk by the andria and embarkation of the troops, rebels to prevent the access to their in 1807, five vessels, laden with stone, ports of the cruisers of the United were sunk in the narrow passage by States. The same measure had been which our (British) squadron, under the adopted by the United States in order command of Admiral Lewis, had entered to make the blockade complete. When and then sailed; concluding that it would the war was ended, the removal of all be the last exit of any vessel from the these obstructions would be a mere mat-port-erroneously, however, as it has ter of expense; there would be no great subsequently appeared." difficulty in removing them effectually. Besides, as had already been done in the case of Port Royal, the United States would open better harbors than ernment. better harbors than those which they closed. "I asked Mr. Seward whether the principal entrance to Charleston Harbor had not been recently closed altogether by vessels sunk by order of this Government; and I observed to him that the opening of a new port thirty or forty miles off, would hardly console the people of the large town of Charleston for the destruction of their own harbor. To this remarkable precedent was added another,† which received the formal sanction of the British King and Government. It was given in this dispatch, marked "most secret," addressed by Lord Hobart to Sir N. S. Hammond, controller of the navy : "DOWNING STREET, Fb. 9, 1804. "It being thought advisable, under the present circumstances of the war, that an attempt should be made for carrying into execution the project suggested in the inclosed paper for choking up the entrance into the harbor of Boulogne; and the success of such an enterprise depending in a great measure upon the secrecy and dispatch with which the preparations may be made, I have the King's command to signify to you that you take these preparations under your immediate control, and that you communicate confidentially with Mr. supplying him with such funds and giving him such orders for the purchase of vessels, and providing the materials which you may judge necessary for accomplishing the object in view. As soon as the vessels shall be sufficiently laden, you will give instructions that they should proceed with all possible expedition to the Downs, where further orders will proceed from Lord Keith. HOBART." ished," said the London Morning Post,* "to find a contemporary journal indirectly palliating the destruction of the port of Charleston by the precedent of our having proposed to sink ships, in 1804, in front of the harbor of Boulogne. Can it be necessary to draw out in words the obvious distinction between military and commercial ports-between a harbor widened and defended for the express purpose of the conquest and subjugation of England, and a harbor valuable to its own country merely in fostering the commerce of all the maritime nations of Europe? To block up permanently the mouth of the Garonne, and to destroy thereby the port of Bordeaux, would have been the corresponding barbarity, though it is one which no European Government ever imagined. But for England to have destroyed the port of Boulogne in 1804, even if she had done so, would have been simply equivalent to the blowing up of Sebastopol by Turkey and her allies in 1856." This distinction between military and commercial does not now, if ever it did, apply to the port of Boulogne, to Alexandria, in Egypt, or to those harbors of which Savannah, it is believed, was one that the English attempted to "choke up" during their war with America. To these precedents might be added others, some of which occurred upon the very coast against the obstructions on which England is now, with a not unnatural regard for its own interests in an illegal trade, so intensely indignant. The English writers who had denounced the stone fleet as indicating principles of barbarity worthy only of East India pirates, strove to parry those thrusts which brought home to themselves similar acts. Their ingenuity of fence is manifest in such verbal tours de maître as the follow-sisting of the Massachusetts Twenty-sixth ing: "We confess we are infinitely aston The control of the Federal Government over the coasts of the enemy was still further extended by the success of two minor naval expeditions. A Nov. force of nineteen hundred men, con- 26. * Supposed to be a semi-official organ of Lord Palmers. ton. OCCUPATION OF SHIP ISLAND. and the Connecticut Ninth Regiment, with Captain Manning's battery of artillery, rendezvoused at Fortress Monroe, and thence sailed in the steamtransport Constitution to Ship Island. This expedition was under the temporary command of Brigadier-General W. Phelps, during the absence of General Butler, who remained at the North to further the ultimate purposes of the enterprise. General Phelps arrived at Ship Dec. Island on the evening of the 3d 3. of December. It had been in the occupation of the Federal Government since September, when the enemy had abandoned it to a small naval force, which took possession of the island and a half-finished fort upon it. On his arrival, General Phelps accordingly found the United States vessels of war, the Massachusetts and R. L. Cuyler, in the harbor with several prizes, and a hundred and seventy sailors under a naval lieutenant, garrisoning the incomplete fortification at the west end of the island. Phelps landed his force, notwithstanding the marshy ground was little favorable for occupation. "The land," said the General in his report, "is in no respect suitable for a camp, especially in view of such instructions as one of the regiments present particularly needs. Should the stay here be of long continuance, huts with floors will be necessary." Ship Island is situated in longitude 89°, a little north of latitude 30°, within the domain of the State of Mississippi. It is about sixty miles from New Orleans, nearly the same distance from 653 the North-East Pass, at the mouth of the Mississippi River, forty miles from Mobile, and ninety from Fort Pickens. It lies between Horn Island, on the east, and Cat Island, on the west, and is distant about five miles from each. Some ten or twelve miles to the north, on the mainland of Mississippi, are the towns of Biloxi, Pascagoula, and Mississippi City. These towns are favorite summer resorts for the wealthy planters and merchants of the Gulf States, and not being easily approached in consequence of a bar off their shores, were places of refuge for the enemy's small vessels. Ship Island is somewhat undulating, and extends in a slight curve about sev-en miles east-north-east and west-southwest. At West Point (the western end), where the fort is placed, the island is little more than an eighth of a mile wide, and is a mere sand spit, utterly barren of grass or foliage of any kind. The eastern end, or East Point, is about three-quarters of a mile in width, and is well wooded with pine, cedar, and live oak. The whole island contains somewhat less than two square miles of territory. Excellent water can be obtained in unlimited supply by sinking a barrel anywhere in the saturated soil. There is a natural pasturage upon which a few cattle can thrive tolerably, but most of the island is left free to the alligators and such reptiles as abound in the swamps and lagoons of that region. A brick building, a few scattered huts, and a stone light-house are the only evidences of a civilized occupation. The island possesses a very superior harbor, into which vessels drawing nineteen feet can be carried at low water. It is situated north of the west end of the island. The anchorage ground, with a depth of water equal to that on the bar, is five miles long, and averages three and a quarter miles in width. The harbor is safe from the most dangerous storms in the Gulf those from the eastward and southward-and might be easily entered during these storms without a pilot, if good light-houses were placed in proper positions. The rise and fall of the tide is only from twelve to fourteen inches. General Phelps' first step, after landing his force, was to issue a proclamation, which was singularly ill-adapted to the presumed purpose of conciliating the insurgents of Mississippi and Louisiana. His next was to proceed to Biloxi, Dec. on the mainland, where he landed 31. a considerable force and took possession of a small fort abandoned by the enemy on his approach. Biloxi, however, was not at that time permanently held by the Federal troops. Large reinforcements were subsequently sent to Ship Island, and finally General Butler himself departed Feb. 20, to assume the command there. 1862. The expedition to the coast of Florida, though less imposing, was more fruitful of immediate advantage. This was accomplished by a single vessel: the United States steamer Hatteras, Commander George F. Emmons. This active officer succeeded in destroying a number of the enemy's small vessels, seizing a fort, and obtaining possession of Ce- Jan. 5, dar Keys, without meeting with 1862. the least resistance. This is the name given to a group of islands situated on the west coast of Florida, within the Gulf of Mexico. By the occupation of Cedar Keys, the western terminus of the Florida Railroad, which crosses the State from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, the enemy were forced to make the long circuit of the whole peninsula to keep up their communications between the opposite coasts. The forts having been dismantled, one or two active cruisers were thought sufficient to retain the command of this important point until, in the course of future operations, it might be utilized for a greater enterprise. |