My Dear
Admiral — I have received and carefully read your letter of the 3rd, in reply to mine of the 1st instant, and admit all you say about prominently mentioning my name to the Department.
But your remark: “As to historians, I can do nothing.”
This is so; but the difficulty is, that the historians derived their erroneous account of the battle from your report of the 6th of May, 1862, and from the diagram which you sent to the Department, as the true order of sailing into the battle with the forts.
Those who have written on the subject are not to be blamed for using the official reports of the occurrences; but in seeking for the correction of that report, I hope to prevent similar error and confusion in the future.
I do so with the greatest reluctance, as a duty to the officers under my immediate command, and to myself, and I appeal to your sense of justice whether I could do less.
You state, “I have just re-read my (your) report of May 6th, and your (my) two reports following, and cannot conceive how you could be more prominently mentioned to the Department.”
In the former, you are reported as leading the right column in the gun-boat
Cayuga, and as having preceded me to the quarantine station.
How could there have been a “right” and left column practically, when I led my division to the attack and passage of the forts an hour before you lifted anchors in the
Hartford, and your center division?
What I did was done by your orders and inspiration, and to you the world has given the credit of the attack and its success, as fully as it gave to Lord Nelson the credit of the battle of the
Nile; but did it detract from his glory that the report of the battle
described how it was fought, and the exact position of his own vessel, and those of his subordinates?
This matter has been the subject of much discussion among officers then commanding vessels
in my division; all say that no vessel of your center division came up abreast of, or lapped their vessels.
Practically, the effect of your verbal order was, to divide the fleet into four divisions, viz:
1st.
The mortar fleet,
Commander Porter.
2d.
The first division of the gun-boats, under my command, to which was added the two sloops-of-war,
Pensacola and
Mississippi, of which the gun-boat
Cayuga (with my division flag) was the leading vessel.
3d.
The center division, with your flag on the
Hartford, and
4th.
The rear division, bearing the flag of
Captain H. H. Bell.
The first, center, and rear divisions went up to the attack in single file, or line ahead.
I went up at the head of my division at 2 P. M., or as soon thereafter as it took the
Pensacola (the next vessel astern of the
Cayuga), to purchase her anchors — supposed to be about twenty minutes. You followed without lapping the sternmost vessel of my division, and the division of gun-boats commanded by
Captain Bell followed in the wake of your division.
The fact practically was that the first division, the mortar fleet, covered the advance, the second was the vanguard, the third the main body of the fleet, and the fourth the rear, and that the advance being made up a river and line ahead, the diagram does not give any idea of the action other than to produce confusion and error.
How could it be otherwise when no vessel of the third division lapped any one of the second?
I enclose a copy of this (to us) unfortunate diagram, as attached to your report of the battle, which you will notice places the
Cayuga (my flag gun-boat) third in line of my division, whereas, according to your own statement (of two columns abreast), that gun-boat should have been recorded as first in line, leading.
I would ask of your friendship and your fairness whether this diagram gives the faintest idea of the action, and whether if the names of the vessels were altered, it would not apply equally well or better to many other battles.
As an evidence how far the
Cayuga was ahead of the rest of the fleet the first news received at the
North is announced in the New York
Times of Sunday, April 27, 1862, thus: “An important report from the rebels.--One of our gun-boats above
Fort Jackson and San Philip.
Washington, Saturday April 26th.
The Richmond
Examiner of the 25th, announces that one of our gun-boats passed Fort San Philip, sixty miles below New Orleans on the 24th.
The report was telegraphed to
Norfolk, and brought to
Fortress Monroe under a flag of truce, and received from there to-day by the Navy Department.”
The next rebel telegram announced the arrival of the fleet before the city.
The
Cayuga in the interval had captured the
Chalmette regiment, five miles above the forts, and cut the telegraphic communication, so that the fleet were not again reported until they arrived opposite the city.
Now, my dear admiral, you have entirely misconceived the object of my addressing you. It is not to complain that you have not mentioned me prominently in your dispatch, but it is because in your report of the battle, dated May 6th, and the accompanying diagram, you do not give the circumstances of the fight as they occurred, but those which would apply to your former plan which was abandoned.
From that report, the reader would infer that the fleet went to the attack of the forts in two columns abreast, when it was done in single column (line ahead)--that the
Hartford was the leading vessel, when in reality it was ninth in line astern of the
Cayuga, in a single line or line ahead, and there was no left or right of line, but single file.
That you should for a moment leave so erroneous a report or record uncorrected, is a matter of surprise to your officers, and that you should not have made the correction as soon as your attention was called to it is still more embarrassing to us.
They know that under your orders, I led the vanguard of your fleet, not as represented on the diagram you have filed, but in an entirely different order, and received forty-two certificates in the way of rebel shots striking my vessel, in corroboration of what is known to every one of our gallant companions in that engagement.
I have delayed my reply, both because I have been occupied, and since have heard you were ill, which I deeply regretted, and because I wished to be certain that I said nothing in haste that would be annoying to you, or improper in me to say, and I hope you will now see the matter as I and others do. and make the correction so necessary to justice in your report dated May 6, 1862, and substitute a diagram of the actual positions your vessels and officers occupied in the line of attack, in
