CHAP. XV.

RAID INTO NORTHERN ALABAMA.

1567

mand, and retired to mineral springs in Alabama, for the restoration of his impaired health. Halleck took possession of Corinth, and was soon afterward called to Washington to perform the duties of General-in-Chief of all the armies of the Republic. He left General Thomas in command at Corinth, and General Grant of his old army, with enlarged powers.

When General Buell moved from Nashville to join Grant, he sent the ener getic General Mitchel southward, as we have observed. After Mitchel left the more cautious Buell, his was a sort of independent command, and he pushed on vigorously. On the 4th of April, he was at Shelbyville, Tennessee, sixty miles from Nashville, where he established a depository of supplies. There he left the railway, and after rapid marches with a light supply-train, he crossed the State line on the 10th into Alabama, and was in front of Huntsville on the morning of the 11th before the dawn. Fatigue parties tore up the railway at each end of the town, while the cavalry marched directly into the place. The unsuspicious sleepers were awakened by the clatter of the horses' hoofs in the streets. The surprise was complete. The inhabitants, wrote an eye-witness, "flocked to door and window, exclaiming, with blanched cheek and faltering tongue, 'They come! they come! the Yankees come!' Men rushed into the streets half-dressed, the women fainted, the children screamed, the darkies laughed, and for a time a scene of perfect terror reigned." The spoils of this bloodless victory were seventeen locomotives, more than a hundred passenger cars, and a large amount of supplies of every kind; also one hundred and sixty prisoners. By it Mitchel secured the control of the Charleston and Memphis Railway from Tuscumbia on the west to Stevenson on the east, a distance of about one hundred miles. He also won the control of the Tennessee River for about the same distance.

This work was accomplished without the loss of a single man; and when Corinth fell into the possession of the Nationals at the beginning of June, all Kentucky, western and middle Tennessee, and northern Mississippi and northern Alabama, were recovered from the Confederates. It was confidently expected that East Tennessee would be immediately released from the power of the insurgents; but General Buell, who had now joined Mitchel, would not listen to the earnest entreaties of that officer, to add that loyal and sorely oppressed region to the emancipated territory. The way had been prepared by General Negley and others. Negley had climbed over the almost impassable mountains northeast of Stevenson, driven the Confederates from Jasper (June 7), and appeared on the Tennessee River opposite Chattanooga. He needed only a little help to enable him to seize and hold that key to East Tennessee and Northern Georgia. The help was

refused by General Buell. When, at the middle of Junc, the East Tennesseeans saw the insurgents evacuate Cumberland Gap, voluntarily, they surely expected the long hoped-for deliverance, by the advent of National troops; but Buell refused to walk in at that open door. That cautious leader and the fiery Mitchel could not work in harmony, and the latter was now transferred to another field of duty.

Mitchel had performed important services for the National cause by the exercise of judicious audacity. He smote so swiftly and effectually, that he appalled his enemies; and one of the most daring enterprises undertaken during the war was put in motion by that general. It was an effort to break up railway communication between Chattanooga and Atlanta. For this purpose he employed J. J. Andrews, who had been in the secret service of General Buell. With twenty-two picked men Andrews walked to Marietta in the guise of Confederate citizens of Kentucky seeking in Georgia freedom from persecution. At Marietta they took the cars for a station not far from the foot of the Great Kenesaw Mountain, and there, while the conductor and engineer were at breakfast, they uncoupled the engine, tender and a box-car, from the passenger train, and started up the road at full speed, answering questions where they were compelled to stop by saying they were conveying powder to Beauregard. They had passed several trains before they began their destructive work. Then the next train that reached the broken spot, had its engine reversed and became a pursuer. Onward they sped with the speed of a gale, passing other trains, when, at an important curve in the road, after destroying the track, Andrews said, exultingly, "Only one more train to pass, boys, and then we will put our engine to full speed, burn the bridges after us, dash through Chattanooga, and on to Mitchel, at Huntsville."

The exciting chase continued many miles. The pursued having less burden than the pursuers, were fleetest; but so much time was lost in stopping to cut telegraph wires and tear up the track, that at length the pursued were prevented from doing either, for the pursuers were close upon them. Finally their lubricating oil became exhausted; and such was the speed of the engines that the brass journals on which the axles revolved were melted. Fuel failing, the fugitives were compelled to leave their conveyance fifteen miles from Chattanooga. They took refuge in the tangled woods of Chickamauga Creek. A great man-hunt was organized. The mountain passes were picketed; and thousands of horsemen and footsoldiers, with several blood-hounds, scoured the country in all directions. The whole party were finally captured, and thus ended one of the most exciting events in human history. The sequel was that Andrews and seven

CHAP. XV.

CAPTURE OF MEMPHIS.

1569 of his companions were hanged. To each of the survivors of that daring raid, the Secretary of War presented a bronze medal, in token of approval.

While these events were occurring in the interior of Tennessee, Commodore Foote had been busy on the Mississippi River. He went down that stream from Island Number Ten, with his armed vessels, and transports bearing Pope's army, to attempt the capture of Memphis, but was con fronted at the first Chickasaw Bluffs, eighty miles above that city, by a Confederate flotilla under Captain Hollins, and three thousand troops under General Jeff. Thompson, who occupied a military work on the bluff called Fort Pillow, then in command of General Villepigue, an accomplished engineer. Foote began an attack on the 14th; but General Pope's troops, who had landed on the Arkansas shore, could not co-operate because the country was flooded. Pope was soon called by Halleck to Shiloh, and the navy was left to do the best it could. Foote was soon obliged to turn over the command to Captain C. H. Davis, on account of the painfulness of his foot from a wound received at Fort Donelson.

On the 10th of May, Hollins, who had reorganized his flotilla, attacked Foote, and was assisted by the heavy guns of Fort Pillow, but the Confederate vessels were repulsed. For a fortnight afterward the belligerent fleets watched each other, when a "ram" squadron, prepared by Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr. (the builder of the Niagara Suspension Bridge), joined Foote's flotilla, and prepared to attack the foe. The Confederates, having heard of their disaster at Corinth, fled precipitately to Memphis on the 4th of June. Two days afterward the National flotilla won a victory over the Confederate squadron in front of that city, when Memphis passed into the possession of the Union forces, and it was speedily occupied by troops commanded by General Lewis Wallace. For a short time after these events, there was a lull in the storm of war westward of the Alleghany Mountains.

We left General Burnside and Commodore Rowan in Albemarle Sound after the capture of Roanoke Island and Elizabeth City and vicinity, preparing to make other important movements on the coast of North Carolina. They appeared in the Neuse River, eighteen miles below New Berne, on the evening of the 12th of March (1862); and early the next morning National troops led by Generals Foster, Reno and Parke, about fifteen thousand strong, were landed and marched against the defences of that town. The Confederates, under General Branch, who were inferior in numbers, occupied a strongly intrenched position. The Nationals moved against them at daylight on the morning of the 14th. The Confederates sustained a severe battle with great bravery and skill until, closely pressed on all sides by superior numbers, they broke, and fled across the Trent

closely pursued by Foster. They burned the bridges behind them and so escaped, leaving their killed and wounded and two hundred men, who were made prisoners. The Nationals then took possession of New Berne; when General Parke proceeded to capture Fort Macon, on a point of Bogue Island near the entrance to Beaufort harbor. In this enterprise the National troops were assisted by gun-boats controlled by Commander Samuel Lockwood. The garrison made but slight resistance, and on the 25th of April, it was surrendered. At the same time the National troops under General Reno were quietly taking possession of important places on the coast of North Carolina, and threatening Norfolk in the rear. Plymouth, Winton and Washington were occupied by the National forces. Garrisons for these places so widely dispersed Burnside's troops, that he could no longer make aggressive movements, and he remained quietly in his department until he was summoned to Fortress Monroe at the middle of July. He held almost undisputed sway over the coast region from the Dismal Swamp to the Cape Fear River.

At the close of 1861, the National authority (as we have observed) was supreme along the Southern coast from Warsaw Sound, below the Savannah River, to the North Edisto well up toward Charleston. At the close of the year, General T. W. Sherman, in command in that region, directed his chief engineer, General Q. A. Gillmore, to reconnoitre Fort Pulaski, and report upon the feasibility of a bombardment of it. It was done, and Gillmore reported that it might be reduced by planting batteries of rifled guns and mortars on Big Tybee Island southeast of Cockspur Island, on which the fort stood. Explorations were made to discover some channel by which gun-boats might get in the rear of the fort, and a New York regiment was sent to occupy Big Tybee Island. A channel was found, and land troops under General Viele, borne by gun-boats commanded by Captain John Rodgers, went through it to reconnoitre. Another expedition composed of land troops under General Wright, and gun-boats commanded by FleetCaptain Davis, were sent by Admiral Dupont up to the Savannah River, by way of Warsaw Sound, Wilmington River and St. Augustine Creek, in rear of Fort Pulaski. The gun-boats of Rodgers and Davis had a skirmish with Tattnall's "musquito" fleet; and having accomplished their object, the whole National force returned to Hilton Head, to the great relief of the inhabitants of Savannah, who supposed the expedition was abandoned. Soon afterward, however, the Nationals made a lodgement on Jones's Island, and erected a heavy battery at Venus's Point, also a smaller one on Bird Island, and so effectually closed the Savannah River in the rear of Fort Pulaski. It was absolutely blockaded near the close of February

CHAP. XV.

EVENTS ON THE SOUTHERN COAST.

1571

(1862); and on the 8th of March General David Hunter arrived as successor of General Sherman in command of the Department of the South, and he and Commodore Dupont, who was in command of the navy on that coast, acted in concert.

With great skill General Gillmore had planted his siege-guns on Big Tybee Island that commanded the fort; and on the 10th of April (1862), after Hunter had demanded its surrender and the commander of the fortress had refused compliance, thirty-six heavy rifled cannons and mortars were opened upon it under the direction

of Generals Gillmore and Viele. It was gallantly defended until the 12th, when it was so battered that it was untenable, and it was surrendered. This was an important victory, for it enabled the Nationals to close the port of Savannah against the blockade-runners, which had become numerous and bold all along our coast.

S. F. DUPONT.

In the meantime Commodore Dupont and General Wright had been making easy conquests on the coast of Florida. Early in February they captured Fort Clinch, on Amelia Island, which the Confederates had seized, and drove the insurgents from Fernandina. The Confederates speedily abandoned their other forts along the coasts of Florida and Georgia, which the Nationals took possession of; and a flotilla of gun-boats and transports, bearing land troops under Lieutenant T. H. Stevens, went up the St. John's River and captured Jacksonville on the 11th of March. St. Augustine was taken possession of at about the same time by Commander C. P. Rodgers, and the alarmed Confederates abandoned Pensacola and all their fortifications on the main opposite Fort Pickens. When Dupont returned to Port Royal, he found General T. W. Sherman in possession of Edisto Island; and before the first anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Sumter, the whole coast from Cape Hatteras to Perdido Bay west of Fort Pickens,