Book III:—the Third winter.
Chapter 1: Fort Sanders.
IN crossing the Chattooga Mountain, Bragg abandons for ever the basin of the Mississippi, in which his valiant army has been fighting for the past two years and a half. Grant contents himself with holding the entrance to the great gap in the Alleghanies, and thinks only of delivering Burnside, who is besieged. While Granger proceeds to his assistance, the other corps hold themselves in readiness to support him and prevent Bragg from taking, in his turn, the Knoxville road. It is, then, necessary to watch the latter closely, without allowing one's self to be carried away in pursuit of him. Hooker will remain at Ringgold until the evening of November 30th, avoiding an engagement with the enemy if the latter remains quiet, but ready to attack him vigorously if he proceeds to Cleveland, or to push as far as Dalton if he evacuate that point. The different divisions temporarily collected under his orders will go into winter quarters in the positions which they occupied on November 23d. Cruft's will deflect from its road to accomplish a holy and sad duty: it is to visit the battlefield of Chickamauga and bury the victims of that cruel struggle, of whom, notwithstanding the care of some compassionate Confederates, the decomposed corpses are still lying, for the most part, in the woods, covered as with a thick shroud by the sere, dead leaves. Sherman, having hastened to Ringgold, receives orders to return also, by easy marches, to Chattanooga, systematically destroying behind him the railway between Ringgold and Chickamauga Station. But Grant's stores are again almost exhausted; the commissary, who feeds a hundred and twenty-five thousand [317] men, has only three hundred and ten thousand rations of salt meat, and procures with difficulty the one hundred and seventy beeves that represent the fresh meat for one day. Hence, on the morrow, the 28th, Sherman will be authorized to lead his six divisions as far as Cleveland and Charleston, in order to feed them for a few days on the resources of a country rich in cattle and grain. Finally, the order is sent to Thomas to set Granger's corps on the road on the morning of the 28th. So as to reach more promptly Knoxville, Wood's and Sheridan's divisions, each man taking forty cartridges and rations for three days, will not be followed by any wagon, but a steamer ascending the Tennessee, loaded with provisions for ten days, will resupply them at Cottonport, between Washington and Decatur. With a view to supporting this movement and employing his cavalry, Grant instructs General Elliott to quit Alexandria with two brigades, to march on Kingston, where he shall collect Byrd's brigade, and to lead these forces to Athens, where he shall meet Granger and unite with him. On his side, General Foster, the designated successor to Burnside, who has just arrived at Cumberland Gap, shall take all the available troops there found—say about three thousand men—and march toward Knoxville. His movement, coinciding with Granger's, will possibly contribute to the prompt raising of the siege. From Ringgold the retreat of the Confederates has not been annoyed. Grose, after having picked up booty on the road, finding Cleburne posted on the slopes of Tunnel Hill, has rejoined his division in the evening. Howard has reached Red Clay Station without meeting the enemy; he has destroyed the road, and, entrusting a cavalry regiment with the care of watching this line, returns to Graysville at one o'clock in the morning. At last, Long, whom we left on the 25th marching on Charleston, retraced his steps on learning that the city was strongly occupied by B. R. Johnson, and, passing by Harrison, re-entered Chattanooga on the evening of the 27th. Bragg has, then, been able finally to halt his army at Dalton, where he finds the provisions, the rest, and the security which it needs to reorganize and instill fresh confidence. We shall leave it there for the moment. Although he received his orders on the 27th at seven o'clock in [318] the evening, Granger had not yet left Chattanooga twenty-four hours afterward, when Grant entered that place. The general-in-chief, rendered impatient by this delay, for which he holds the commander of the Fourth corps responsible, and judging that Thomas has not sufficiently reinforced this corps, gives the direction of the short campaign which is to ensure the safety of Burnside to Sherman, who finds himself, by a fortunate chance, on the road to East Tennessee. He authorizes his most illustrious lieutenant to take with him, besides the troops already intended for the expedition, the whole or a part of the Fifteenth corps. He knows that Sherman will conduct the campaign with the energy necessary to reach Knoxville before December 3d, which will mark the exhaustion of the resources of the garrison. Although the soldiers that have followed him without halting since they left Memphis are well entitled to some rest, Sherman is not willing to deprive himself of their services to accomplish the difficult task which is entrusted to him. Grant hastily makes preparation at the very moment when the destiny of the Army of the Ohio is being decided on the glacis of Fort Sanders. Longstreet and Bragg have remained in telegraphic communication until the evening of the 24th. The first has thus been cognizant of Grant's demonstration on Indian Hill. The abrupt silence which succeeded this exchange of despatches proved to Longstreet that the hostile cavalry is in the field on the left bank of the Tennessee River. On the next day he learns that it has appeared between Cleveland and Charleston. At last, on the 26th and the 27th, first the report of a great battle, then of a disastrous defeat, spreads in the country drained by the Hiawassee: this vague report is soon confirmed by the despatches of several telegraph-operators. A weak general, feeling himself thus isolated and menaced, would have concluded promptly to retreat: the peril of his situation inspires Longstreet, on the contrary, with an energetic resolution. Instead of raising the siege of Knoxville, he decides to attack without further delay. His army, reinforced, is full of ardor and confidence: since he has the time neither to complete the approaches nor to starve out the place, he will make a determined effort to carry it by assault. His lieutenants protest against his decision and raise objections to all projects of attack on [319] the works to the north, the east, or the south. But nothing can shake him. ‘The more complete Bragg's defeat is, the more necessary it is,’ said he, ‘to repair it by a brilliant victory. By retiring without fighting into Virginia we abandon the Army of the Tennessee to its conquerors. This army once destroyed, what shall we be able to do to save the Confederacy? Dragged into the general ruin, we shall be dishonored if we have not risked all while it is yet time. There is safety and honor only in the plan that I have adopted, and of which I order the execution.’ The hour for the assault is fixed for the end of the following night—i. e. for the 29th before daylight: Fort Sanders is the objective point. That is, it is true, the best fortified point, but if the Confederates seize it they are masters of Knoxville. The Union artillery, in truth, enfilades equally the double line which extends as far as the Holston and the breastworks trending in the direction of the north-east. This fort, constructed, of course, without either masonry or shelter with blinds, is not yet completed; the curtains and the flanks of the south-west bastion are only outlined, but batteries posted at the junction of the lines with the two half-bastions afford a very good flanking. The ditch is wide and deep; in the rear of the parapets bales of cotton piled up form thick traverses which ensure to the defenders an effectual protection. The embrasures, very wide, give to the artillery a large field for firing; branches of trees mask them to the enemy. Long and gentle slopes rise from all sides up to the fort; a line of rifle-pits constantly occupied by sharpshooters extends about two hundred and seventeen yards in front of the parapet. The glacis is bristling with abatis, before which spreads an invisible network of wires. The works are mounted with ten pieces of artillery, of which two are Parrott guns of twenty inches bore. An eleventh piece, posted in a battery at the extremity of the north-west front, fronts the right face of the western bastion. The garrison is composed only of two hundred and twenty men belonging to the Seventy-ninth New York, the Seventeenth Michigan, and of two batteries of artillery, one regular, the other from Rhode Island. But the commander of the division, General Ferrero, who has posted himself in the works, and Lieutenant Benjamin, who has the artillery under his [320] orders, know how to inspire this handful of men with their confidence and courage. Longstreet, on his part, neglects nothing to ensure the success of the assault. His last parallel being yet three hundred and twenty-two yards from the works, all the guards of the intrenchments, from the approaches to Fort Sanders as far as the Holston, will endeavor to surprise the hostile sharpshooters, so as to establish themselves in their rifle-pits and there improvise a shelter whence the storming-columns may spring. The most important of these columns, furnished by McLaws, is made up of Wofford's, Humphreys', and Bryan's brigades; it will get in motion a little before daylight, and move against the salient angle of the west bastion; the two brigades which B. R. Johnson has just brought up will serve them as a reserve. On the left, Jenkins will take up a position with Anderson's brigade, and as soon as McLaws shall have cleared the ditch he will attack the point of junction between the works and the line of breastworks trending to the north-east. In fine, to divert Burnside's attention Robertson and Law on the left bank of the Holston will make, at the same moment, a vigorous demonstration against the works on the south, the defence of which the Union general has entrusted to Shackelford. Toward midnight the preliminary movement is executed with unanimity, and succeeds completely. Under cover of the darkness the Confederates, following the Kingston road, approach the positions occupied by the hostile sharpshooters, push them out, make seventy of them prisoners, and take possession of these positions. But the surprise, however successful it was, had the grave inconvenience of putting all the defenders of the works on their guard. During the rest of the night the irregular rattle of musketshots keeps the Federals on the alert. At last, at six o'clock, all the batteries of the besiegers open fire at the same time: Fort Sanders is particularly their objective point. This bombardment, rendered almost inoffensive by the traverses with which the works are provided, is for the Federals a final warning. It is the hour when the garrison relieves the sharpshooters. In sending the fresh guard General Ferrero, by a fortunate inspiration, orders the officer on duty to retake, no [321] matter at what cost, the positions lost during the night. The Confederates, in their turn, are surprised and dislodged at the moment when Longstreet and McLaws are making the final preparations for assault. When the three brigades advance with precaution to form in the rear of the sharpshooters, they find them a few yards in front of the parallel. In spite of the distance which separates them from the works, the Confederate battalions start on the run and drive in the outposts of the enemy without responding to their fusillade. These promptly throw themselves on their left to re-enter the works. Benjamin's guns immediately belch out canister on the assailants and open wide gaps in their ranks, without, however, being able to slacken their course. Longstreet closely follows his men. The unforeseen obstacle of the wire network causes among them a greater disorder than the enemy's fire: their march is delayed, their lines are confounded, the heads of the columns trip, and thus give the artillerists of the fort ample time to reload their pieces; but soon the wires are trampled under foot and disappear under the dead and the dying. The Confederates are on the glacis. This time they must halt to cut the abatis with axes. They avail themselves of this halt to re-form, notwithstanding the well-sustained fire of the defenders who crown the parapet. In one minute a gap is made; the assailants precipitate themselves into the ditch, at the bottom of which they find themselves sheltered from the artillery of the fort. But mounting the parapet is difficult; they receive shots which they cannot return: as fast as some of them climb into the embrasures, they fall back, mortally wounded, on their comrades. Colonel McElroy waves an instant on the works the flag of the Thirteenth Mississippi, to disappear soon afterward. Two other Confederate flags—that of the Seventeenth Mississippi, belonging, as the Thirteenth, to Humphreys' brigade, and that of the Fifty-first Georgia, which is part of Bryan's brigade—are planted in turn on the parapet. The sight of them imparts a fresh ardor to the assailants. Longstreet himself can perceive them by the uncertain twilight, and already believes that he holds the victory. But after a few seconds of hand-to-hand struggle the flags remain in the hands of the Federals. A dozen intrepid men who have penetrated into the bastion are surrounded and disarmed. [322] While the Union foot-soldiers thus fight at close quarters, the artillerists train their pieces on the rear of the column, which has not yet reached the ditch; following Benjamin's example, they light with their hands the fuses of their shells to roll them from the top of the parapet down into the midst of the human mass swaying at their feet. At last, the guns placed so as to flank the two faces of the salient angle attacked by McLaws fire a few canister shots, enfilading the ditch, and send the last missiles of death to the troops which fill it. The assailants are vanquished. The struggle has been short, but perhaps never in the whole course of the war have so many corpses, in so short a time, covered as narrow a space of ground. The battalions that have remained on the glacis dare not enter the fatal ditch wherein an awful, certain, useless death awaits them; they hesitate, disband, and return on the run to the point whence they started. At that moment, in consequence either of an order misunderstood or a thoughtless suggestion, Anderson's brigade advances in turn. Forthwith all the fire of the defence converges on that column, which the early light of day enables the enemy plainly to discern. It encounters the same obstacles as did the first, and clears them with the same ardor; but once at the foot of the parapet it cannot stand the fire and falls back in disorder. Finally, day breaks—a sad, raw day—upon an awful scene. Upward of one hundred and twenty killed and four hundred and fifty wounded men fill the ditch or lie near the glacis and among the stumps of trees, thus marking the bloody track made by the assaulting columns. The total losses of the assailants amount to seven hundred and thirteen men, among whom are two hundred and sixteen prisoners who were found hidden at the foot of the scarp. The defenders have had, on their side, only thirteen men disabled, thanks to their coolness and the manner in which they were directed. Robertson and Law, warned by the sound of the cannonade, made before seven o'clock the attack enjoined upon them. This demonstration was crowned with a complete success. The Twenty-fourth and the Twenty-seventh Kentucky, which occupied the breastworks constructed by Shackelford, were surprised, and abandoned these works, leaving about seventy men in the hands [323] of the enemy. But they soon returned to the charge with the rest of the brigade, and the Confederates, no doubt unwilling seriously to engage in battle, promptly fell back before them. Meanwhile, the unfortunate wounded piled up in the ditch of Fort Sanders see the light of day advancing without any one coming to assuage their sufferings. The Federals, sheltered behind the parapet, hear their moans without being able to extend to them a friendly hand, and the Confederate generals do not wish to acknowledge their reverse by asking permission to remove them. As soon as Burnside sees that the enemy renounces any fresh attack, moved by so much suffering, he proposes a suspension of hostilities. All day long the Federal ambulances aid the Confederates in their work of charity. The men captured in the ditch of Fort Sanders gave to their adversaries the first reliable news of the battles fought around Chattanooga. The news is confirmed by the Confederate officers during the armistice, for the disaster of Missionary Ridge has been officially known for several hours in the camps of the besiegers. By a singular coincidence, at the very moment when Longstreet has just seen his supreme effort fail, while he rallies and encourages the valiant soldiers of McLaws, one of General Ransom's aides-de-camp, who comes up at full speed from Rogersville, the last telegraph-station on the Virginia side, brings him a despatch from Mr. Jefferson Davis ordering him immediately to join Bragg and his vanquished army. A few hours thereafter he receives from Wheeler a message transmitting to him, on the part of the latter, the advice to meet him at Ringgold. But it is too late: the reservations with which Wheeler in his letter has surrounded this message prove to him that instead of finding his chief he would throw himself into the arms of an enemy strong enough to crush him. Soon he learns that Cleveland is in the power of the Federals, and he immediately recalls his trains, already on the way to the south. It was well for him to do so, because before the evening a fresh despatch from Bragg announces the retreat of the Army of the Tennessee as far as Dalton and restores to him full liberty of action. However, he does not forget his companions-in-arms of the Chickamauga. Not having been able to obtain the success [324] which would have compensated for their defeat, he wishes at least to extenuate the consequences of it to them by drawing to him a portion of the Federal army. If he raise the siege of Knoxville, Grant, being reassured concerning the fate of Burnside, will set out in pursuit of Bragg. To make him change his mind it is necessary to oblige him to come and deliver the Army of the Ohio. He will therefore remain in his positions until the approach of a force superior to his own. Ransom is recalled from Rogersville with all the troops of which he can dispose. Vaughn, who occupies Loudon, is to watch the crossings of the Tennessee, ready to fall back toward the north unless he can join Bragg by throwing himself eastward in the Alleghanies. We have seen how correct was Longstreet's calculation. On the morning of the 29th, Sherman sets his army in three columns on the road toward the Hiawassee. Howard again clears Parker's Gap; Davis and Blair cross White Oak Ridge at the two necks in the neighborhood of McDaniel's Gap and Julian's Gap, near Ooltawah. They meet in the evening at Cleveland. The next day the six divisions get in motion toward Charleston. There they will halt to recuperate before taking the road which will lead them by short marches as far as their winter quarters. Already, Howard, surprising the enemy, has not given him time completely to destroy the railway-bridge over the Hiawassee, and every one on arriving at Charleston thinks of the promised rest at the end of this last stage. But hardly has Sherman entered that town, when he is met by General Wilson and Mr. Dana, who have hastily come from Chattanooga to bring him the fresh orders of Grant. There is no time to lose to carry them into execution. The three divisions of the Fifteenth corps, which to deliver the Army of the Cumberland have marched over half the distance from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, have not even been able to enter Chattanooga to rest there one day; they left on the bank of the Tennessee the small amount of baggage they had brought from Vicksburg, and, from the private to the commander-in-chief, each man has only a single blanket, without a change of any article. Intensely cold weather has succeeded the heavy rains. The regular distributions of provisions have ceased since the 23d. The [325] march on Knoxville is the more painful because it must be rapid. But the matter at stake is to carry assistance to comrades in peril —to spare the Army of the Ohio a disastrous capitulation, to the Federal cause a cruel humiliation: nobody complains; each one awaits with impatience the signal to depart. In the night Howard repairs the railway-bridge. The army clears it on the morning of December 1st, and after a march of fifteen miles reaches, on the evening of the same day, the little town of Athens. Long, who, having come the day before, was already on the road toward Columbus, was recalled in haste. During this time Granger has made an effort to repair the delay with which Grant has so sharply reproached him. Having started on the 29th from Chattanooga, he reached on the evening of the 30th the banks of the Hiawassee at Kincannon's Ferry, nearly ten miles below Charleston. A towboat having brought him several lighters, he crossed that river the ensuing day before noon, and on the evening of the 2d joined Sherman at Philadelphia. The latter finds himself at the head of eight divisions, for he has left no force at Charleston: since it was necessary to march to the assistance of Burnside, he wished to do so with forces sufficient to crush Longstreet if he could find the opportunity. While the bulk of the army halts at Philadelphia, Howard, who leads the march, pushes in the direction of Loudon, hoping to surprise General Vaughn and seize the ponton-bridge that Longstreet established a month before at Hurst Ferry in the place of the viaduct, which was completely ruined. Long, who assumed at Sweetwater the duty of outposts, rapidly arrives at Loudon, having carried away on his march a part of the hostile outposts. But Vaughn is on his guard. Loudon, as we know, is on the southern bank of the Little Tennessee, and was, up to the 25th, in direct communication by the railway with the depots at Dalton: it was then Longstreet's base of operations against Knoxville. Hence, as early as the 30th, Vaughn has commenced to destroy the supplies of provisions which he has not been able to send to the besiegers. Thirty-eight wagons and three locomotives which are backed against the broken viaduct are loaded with provisions and run into the river. The balance of the provisions is distributed among the inhabitants. Vaughn, ready to recross the bridge, [326] receives the enemy with firmness and compels Long to halt for Howard. The latter, overtaken by night, has given some rest to his exhausted soldiers, and, although he started the next morning at four o'clock, he arrives too late. Vaughn, not being able to join Bragg, has received orders to fall back on Knoxville. During the night he abandons the town of Loudon, leaving behind him only about thirty wagons, of which he has broken the axles. After having destroyed the ponton-bridge he set out toward the north, and when Howard's troops reach the banks of the river they perceive on the right shore only a curtain of cavalry. The Union artillery opens fire nevertheless, in hopes that the sound of its pieces may be heard in Knoxville, for the fatal day has arrived when the provisions must fail in the place, and the relieving army has not yet crossed the Tennessee. It is necessary, at any cost, to warn Burnside of its approach, so that he may hold on, though famine be the cost. To this end, in the night of the 2d-3d, Sherman orders Colonel Long, accompanied by one of his aides-de-camp, to push forward in advance with the flower of his brigade, and not to allow himself to be halted by the enemy, by any obstacle, nor by fatigue until he has given news to the besieged. He is to ford the Tennessee above its confluence with the Holston, and to follow the left bank of that stream, which the enemy occupies in force at one point only. The entire army will thus pass above that confluence. Sherman, apprised of Howard's delay, thought, of course, that the army would destroy the bridge during the night, and on the 3d at daybreak he caused Blair to take the road to Morgantown, a village situated to the north-east of Philadelphia, on the Little Tennessee, which he hopes to be able to ford. Granger is to follow the Fifteenth corps. Howard remains on the 3d at Loudon, whence he will likewise repair to Morgantown. But having ascertained the existence of a ford called Davis' Ford nearly eight miles below that town, on the road to Unitia, he obtains permission to try the crossing. He will thus spare his troops a great detour and gain one day's march. He immediately goes to work: the enemy's wagons being promptly repaired, are laden by the inhabitants, most of them Unionists, with boards intended for the construction of a foot-bridge. While one regiment crosses the Tennessee [327] by means of some boats at Hurst Ferry and picks up four abandoned guns, the One Hundred and Forty-third New York occupies Davis' Ford: the river at this place is two hundred and seventeen yards wide, the bottom hard, of uniform depth. The wagons, pushed one after another into the water, are ranged like pontons and support a light flooring thrown across their length. The oblique direction which it was necessary to give to the bridge, extending its length to three hundred and twenty-two yards, renders the number of the wagons insufficient; they are supplemented by wooden trestles, the parts of which are cut and made on the spot, and the work, begun on the 4th in the evening, is finished during the night. A foot-bridge for the infantry connects the two shores; the water is low enough to allow the horses and the artillery to ford the river. On the 5th, in the forenoon, all the Eleventh corps is on the north of the Little Tennessee, and ascends the left bank of the Holston. Sherman has experienced greater difficulties at Morgantown. The river has the same width as at Davis' Ford, but the bed of the ford, much cut up, presents various depths, which render impossible the crossing of the infantry and the artillery. It was thus necessary to establish a bridge, and the entire day on the 4th was occupied in this work under the direction of Wilson, the cavalry general, who on this occasion performed the duties of an engineer officer. Most of the houses in Morgantown are demolished, trees are felled, and on the evening of that very day a strong trestle-bridge affords a crossing to the Fifteenth corps, followed by its artillery and equipages. On the 5th, in the morning, Blair sets out on the Knoxville road with his three divisions. Granger and Davis are detained for a while by an accident which happened to the bridge, some of the trusses of which were ill secured for lack of bolts; but before the close of day Granger and Davis will form a third column that will halt between the Fifteenth corps, posted at Marysville, and the Eleventh, camped at Louisville. Therefore, the whole army has cleared the icy waters of the Little Tennessee. No obstacle separates it any longer from Knoxville, the bridges over the Holston being in friendly hands. But the delay fixed by Burnside expired forty-eight hours ago, and Sherman asks himself with anxiety whether, despite his diligence, he [328] shall not arrive too late. Happily, his uneasiness is soon dissipated: an officer who started from Knoxville on the preceding day joins him ere he leaves Morgantown, and brings him the reply to the messages which had been entrusted to Colonel Long. The latter arrived on the morning of the 4th at Knoxville, having reached the Holston bridge without encountering the hostile pickets. He found Burnside sufficiently supplied with provisions, through this way, to be enabled yet a long time to defy famine, and his army full of confidence, since the assault on Fort Sanders was so easily repulsed. At the time when Long was announcing to Burnside his approaching deliverance the Confederates were making preparations for departure. As soon as Longstreet knew, by Vaughn, the approach of the Federal columns he understood that the time had come to raise the siege. Besides, Grant, believing that the capitulation of Knoxville was imminent, caused purposely to fall into his hands, to hasten his retreat, a despatch enumerating to Burnside all the forces sent to his aid: this ruse succeeded beyond the wishes of the Union general, for Longstreet, thus pressed, is going to take several days in advance of the troops intended to pursue him. Only one road remains open to him. While ascending the Holston he will find a country capable of supporting him, will cover a very vulnerable portion of Virginia, and will be Able at the decisive time to bring back to Lee the soldiers who were taken away after the events at Gettysburg. The preparations for departure were made on the 2d, but Longstreet does not hurry, because in order to save Bragg it is necessary to draw Sherman beyond the Little Tennessee. The trains are put in motion on the 3d; the care of them is entrusted to Law's and Robertson's brigades, which, being recalled from their positions on the southwest of Knoxville, leave open the road taken by Long. This column follows the railway, and will ascend the right bank of the Holston to pass on the left at Strawberry Plains. The rest of the army begins to march in the night of the 4th-5th. McLaws and Johnson abandon the intrenchments opposed to Fort Sanders, join Jenkins to the northward of the place, and, passing beyond the range of the Federal works, take the Rutledge road. Martin with the cavalry, including his division and Giltner's and Jones' [329] brigades, is charged with the care of covering the retreat. At daybreak he evacuates the approaches, of which the Federal outposts immediately take possession. The Army of the Ohio is delivered, but Burnside cannot, with his forces alone, pursue Longstreet. Hence the latter is not molested in his first stage, and after a march of nineteen miles he reaches Blain's Cross-roads, where General Ransom awaits him. All his forces are collected at this point on the evening of the 5th. The preparations for this retreat were known to Burnside as early as the 3d, and the despatches forwarded on the 4th informed Sherman of them. The latter, on learning that the Army of the Ohio is no longer in danger, grants for the morrow, the 6th, to most of his soldiers a necessary rest, and repairs to Knoxville with his corps commanders. He himself relates his astonishment when, entering a place which he believed to be reduced to the last extremities, he beheld a park filled with the finest cattle, and when afterward Burnside bade him sit down to a table abundantly served. He understands that the peril has been exaggerated, but, while regretting perhaps to have forced the march of his troops in spite of the bad season, he is not the man to lose his time in retrospective discussions. Haste must be made to despatch after Longstreet forces sufficient to drive him back as far as Virginia, and to send back to Chattanooga the troops which will not be necessary for this operation. For this purpose Sherman comes to take orders from Burnside, his superior officer by seniority. The latter thus finds himself at the head of a large army. He has from twelve to fifteen thousand men around him; Willcox has more than six thousand, the half of whom are on their way toward Knoxville; and Sherman brings nearly forty thousand. It is true that these sixty thousand men could not all undertake an active campaign against Longstreet; the artillery and the wagons of the Army of the Ohio are not supplied with animals, the Fifteenth corps has need of rest, and all the soldiers lack the things necessary to withstand the rigors of winter. However, there might be formed an active army of thirty thousand men, before which Longstreet would be obliged to beat a hasty retreat. Thus would be opened one of the doors to Virginia, through which Grant thinks, next spring, to penetrate the rear of General Lee's army. But Burnside, who [330] from day to day expects his successor, appears to be less concerned about the advantages of such a campaign than about the perils to which Sherman's prolonged absence may expose Grant. He imagines, very wrongly, that Bragg will avail himself of it to attempt an offensive return, and issues to Sherman a positive order to take back to Chattanooga all his forces save the Fourth corps. He calculates that this reinforcement will enable the Army of the Ohio to finish the pursuit of Longstreet. Granger, after having cleared with Davis the Morgantown bridge in the evening of the 5th, pushed out the following day as far as the edge of the Little River, so as to be able promptly to join Burnside while the remainder of the army was resting. The Eleventh corps passed the day on the 6th at Louisville; the Fifteenth corps and Davis' division at Marysville. On the 7th, Sherman returns to take command of these forces: their task is accomplished, they will not go so far as Knoxville, but return by short marches on the road to Chattanooga. We shall leave them for a moment to finish the recital of the incidents of which East Tennessee was the theatre during the last days of the year 1863. General Parke, Burnside's chief of staff, set out on the 7th to follow up Longstreet with detachments of the Ninth and the Twenty-third corps, under the orders of Generals Potter and Manson. He is preceded by Shackelford's cavalry division, which recrossed on the 5th to the right bank of the Holston. On his side, Elliott, in pursuance of Grant's orders, proceeds from Alexandria to Kingston, where he will meet Spears' brigade, that is ascending the right bank of the Tennessee. But his march is delayed, and he joins the Army of the Ohio only in the middle of the month of December. In fine, Willcox, who occupies Cumberland Gap and its approaches with the Fourth division of the Twenty-third corps and three thousand horse under Garrard and Graham, has not lost an instant in trying to break, on the north side, the investment of Knoxville. His cavalry encamps at the foot of the mountain on the banks of Powell River. On the 27th, Graham is in motion; he crosses on the following day Clinch River, at Walker's Ford on the Rutledge road, and bivouacs a little farther on. Proceeding to the right on the [331] morning of the 29th, he halts again for the night in the village of Maynardsville, situate some twenty-five miles from Knoxville. It was then, on the 30th, four days after his departure, that he approached Knoxville and tried to penetrate into the place. His slowness has given the enemy time to be on their guard. Martin has sent a detachment of cavalry to Blain's Crossroads to menace his left flank, while another detains his vanguard nearly eight miles from Knoxville. The coup-de-main failed, and Graham understood that he had to retire quicker than he had come. Immediately the Confederates sprang in pursuit of him. Happily, he succeeded in halting them all day in front of the neck through which the road from Maynardsville to Gravestown crosses Copper Ridge, and, the night having come, he rapidly fell back on Walker's Ford. But the two Confederate detachments, having united, are not long in attacking him. A sharp engagement takes place on the morning of the 2d a few miles from the ford. The Federals, though sharply pressed, succeed in crossing the river after having lost some fifty men, and reach their encampment on Powell River. Meanwhile, General Foster, who, after having succeeded Burnside in North Carolina, must again succeed him at Knoxville, arrived on the 30th of November at Cumberland Gap; but, enlightened by the non-success of Graham, he will resume the Knoxville road only with considerable force. Therefore he gets in motion only on the 6th to molest Longstreet, after hearing that the siege of Knoxville had been raised. His position enables him to fall on the left flank of the Confederate columns that are coming up the long and narrow valley of the Holston. It is seen that Longstreet is surrounded by enemies. As firm in retreating as energetic in attacking, as skilful in taking the offensive to cover his retreat as he was well inspired in the choice of the direction given to his army, he will soon prove to the Federals how imprudent was Burnside in keeping with him only two of the divisions sent by Grant to his assistance. After having joined Ransom on the 5th at Blain's Cross-roads, he falls back on the next day as far as Rutledge. He soon perceives that he is not seriously pressed by Burnside, whose cavalry alone is after him, and that Foster has not yet left Cumberland Gap. He profits [332] by these facts to give a day of rest to his army. The most difficult part of the retreat having been accomplished, he separates from Martin's cavalry, that is instantly required by Bragg: it will proceed to join the latter by crossing the mountains of North Carolina. Jones' cavalry brigade crosses at Bean's Station1 to the left bank of the Holston to cover his trains in motion and reconnoitre on that side for the flank of the principal column. The latter moves, via Mooresburg, on Rogersville, which it reaches in the daytime on the 9th. This point is the last stage in the retreat. In fact, Longstreet was not willing to take up his winter quarters at Rutledge, where the closeness of the hostile cavalry would have prevented him from dispersing his trains in quest of provisions. He has not here to fear the same danger. In occupying Rogersville and the defile of Bull's Gap he covers the two valleys of the Holston and the Nollichucky, a fertile country in which he will be able to subsist his army until spring. It will be all the easier for him to maintain himself there because, on the next day after his arrival, a despatch from President Davis came to authorize him to keep near him Martin's cavalry. The latter, who, fortunately, had not yet started out, immediately receives orders to remain in the neighborhood of Russellville between the Holston and the Nollichucky. The enemy must not be allowed to advance farther. The Federal cavalry only has been able closely to follow Longstreet in his retreat. Shackelford, who started in time, has marched on his tracks without trying to attack him, but picking up the stragglers, the deserters, the broken wagons, that in such a case an army leaves behind it. He thus arrived on the 8th at Bean's Station, where Martin detained him a few hours ere taking the road to the south. On the other hand, Foster started on the 6th, via Tazewell and Walker's Ford, toward the neck of Clinch Mountain, which opens out on Rutledge; but he found on the 7th this passage so strongly occupied that he did not dare to attack it, and proceeded to the south-west to reach Blain's Crossroads by turning the extremity of the chain. While his infantry is making painful progress toward that point, where it will encounter the troops which have come from Knoxville, Garrard and Graham start ahead and join Shackelford before he has [333] reached Bean's Station; but Parke, who has only just then set out, fearing lest the latter should involve himself in difficulty, sends him orders to halt. Shackelford therefore confines himself to sending out on the 9th reconnoitring-parties that follow Longstreet's rearguard to Mooresburg, and Martin's beyond the Holston. Martin's rearguard, formed by Jones' brigade, awaits the Federals in the village of Morristown, and abandons it to them only after a rather sharp engagement, in which the losses amount to some fifty men on each side. The main part of the cavalry is posted at Bean's Station, while the infantry reaches Blain's Cross-roads, where it comes to a halt also. Parke, having only some ten thousand foot-soldiers, does not dare to risk them further in the presence of so redoubtable an enemy as Longstreet. He was right to be prudent, for Longstreet, as soon as he was authorized to keep Martin's cavalry, sought the opportunity to turn against his adversaries. On the 12th he learns that Sherman has left, that Burnside has sent insufficient forces after him, and that the Federal cavalry is isolated nearly twenty-five miles ahead of the infantry. He immediately decides to fall on Shackelford, who, with his four thousand horse, remains at Bean's Station in absolute security. All the infantry, with Johnson's division in front, will bear on that point by a direct march: Law, with the two brigades which have hitherto escorted the trains, finds himself nearly eight miles beyond Rogersville; he receives orders to join Jenkins' division. The cavalry, advancing on the two flanks and protected on the left by the river, on the right by the mountains, must endeavor to prevent the retreat of the enemy. Jones' two brigades, passing to the northward of Clinch Mountain, will occupy, at the neck of Bean's Station Gap, the Tazewell road, while Martin, who is to the southward of the Holston, will cross the river at Kelley's Ferry on the road from Morristown to Rutledge, to attack Shackelford in the rear if he should stand out against him, and quickly to pursue him if he retires. The troops are to take the road on the 13th, so that the attack be made in the morning of the 14th. After a night-march of about twenty-one miles in a cold and heavy rain, the Confederate infantry arrive at the appointed time in sight of Bean's Station. The Federal troopers have taken no [334] precaution to send out reconnoitring-parties and to guard the approaches to their camps. However, measures for defence are promptly taken. Wolford's division, on the first line, rests against the houses of the village and checks the impetus of the assailants. These, exposed to its fire in a plain without shelter, experience severe losses. Longstreet waits in vain for his cavalry to turn the Federal positions. Martin, delayed in his progress, has not yet crossed the Holston; Jones, on the contrary, arrived too soon at Bean's Station Gap, captured some of the enemy's wagons, and retired, instead of waiting for the principal column. Shackelford, who has had time to recover from his surprise, forms his troops across the little valley of which Bean's Station occupies the centre: his left covers the defile. Meanwhile, the rest of the Southern infantry arrive in line. A fresh attack, sustained by a vigorous cannonade, causes the Federal right to give way, while Kershaw, at the head of McLaws' division, throws the left back into the mountain. Night comes to help the Unionists. The defenders of the village, who have held out until the last, avail themselves of the occasion to fall back in turn: they recover their horses and join the rest of the troops. The left wing escapes from Kershaw by following the crest of the mountain, and Shackelford, gathering his forces, establishes himself in a strong position somewhat in advance of Rutledge. The Union losses amount to about two hundred men; those of Longstreet, to two hundred and ninety. He cannot follow up the enemy closely, for he is without news from his cavalry and his infantry needs rest. However, on the morning of the 15th, while McLaws sends Humphreys' brigade into the mountain, Jenkins sets out and arrives promptly enough in front of the Federals' new positions. But these are on their guard and have covered their front with earthworks. Parke, who on the day before was between Blain's Cross-roads and Rutledge, has sent some reinforcements to Shackelford, and detached on the right Ferrero to watch Kelley's Ford. The latter arrives in time to prevent Martin from crossing the Holston and flanking the Union troops. Jenkins, having two brigades only, in vain asks McLaws to support him. Law does not come. Johnson, who remained at Bean's Station, is too distant. The day passes thus without the Confederates deciding to [335] attack, and, the night coming, Shackelford retires on Blain's Crossroads, where Parke concentrates his forces to give battle. But Longstreet does not follow him beyond Rutledge. The season is so rigorous, provisions are so scarce, that McLaws and Law, whose energy is well known, remonstrate against the protraction of a campaign so hard on their men. It would be useless, besides. In fact, on receiving intelligence of the action at Bean's Station, Foster, who replaced Burnside on the 12th, directed on Blain's Cross-roads all the forces he could withdraw from Knoxville. In a few days Parke thus finds himself at the head of twenty-six thousand men and in a condition to withstand all attacks. But the cold, that has already paralyzed the Confederates, does not permit him to molest Longstreet, who, after exhausting the neighborhood of Rutledge, quietly falls back on Russellville. The rich plateau of which Jonesborough is the centre will easily subsist his army during all the bad season. Meantime, the Federals are not resigned to leave him master of a country which they had believed to be finally freed from the Confederate yoke. As soon as the fall of the waters of the Holston has rendered passable the fords in the neighborhood of Blain's Cross-roads, Parke sends his cavalry to the left shore at Nance's Ferry, and pushes it, via New Market, on the Russellville road, while at Strawberry Plains the railway-bridge over which will cross the infantry and the artillery is being repaired. General Sturgis, who has replaced Shackelford in the command of the cavalry, promptly reaches New Market, and on the 28th he advances with an infantry brigade of the Twenty-third corps to the railway-bridge on Mossy Creek. Martin, who had hastened to meet him with his two divisions, attacks him vigorously on the 29th. The Federals, posted beyond the stream, are soon reduced to the defensive: their artillery, seriously threatened, is saved only by the tenacity of the infantry and by a fortunate charge on the part of the First Tennessee cavalry. At last they succeed in repulsing the assailants, but they must await the arrival of Parke to resume the offensive. In the mean time, Grant, leaving Nashville, to which his headquarters have been transferred, arrives at Knoxville on the 30th of December; he promptly recognizes that the Army of the Ohio [336] is not in a condition to undertake a winter campaign. The communications with Kentucky by the Cumberland Gap are so difficult that it has not been able to receive either the clothing, the provisions, or even the ammunition, which it would need. Supplies of provisions sent from Chattanooga by water to Kingston, and thence on wagons to Knoxville, arrived, it is true, on the 28th, but they are very insufficient, and Grant issues to Foster the order to suspend the campaign. Besides, throughout the valley of the Tennessee the soldiers on both sides are more concerned about guarding against the cold than seeking fresh battles. Sherman's return has not been molested by the enemy. His columns took up the line of march in the morning of the 7th. Howard crossed the Little Tennessee at Davis' Ford, where he found the foot-bridge which he had constructed, and arrived at Athens on the 9th. He sent a brigade to Charleston to repair the bridge on the Hiawassee that a detachment of Confederate cavalry had partly destroyed. The rest of the army, after having cleared the Little Tennessee at Morgantown, proceeds more to the eastward: Davis and Ewing, via Madisonville, toward Columbus; Blair, with the two other divisions of the Fifteenth corps, moves on Tellico at the base of the high bluff called Unaka Mountain. Finally, Long with his troopers, crossing this chain, pursues beyond Murphy, on the banks of the Hiawassee, a large train intended for Longstreet, who has thrown himself into the mountains of North Carolina. The army, slowly advancing into a country the resources of which are yet intact, gathers the cattle and grain necessary for its subsistence. Most of the soldiers are exemplary in their bearing and strict discipline: only the Eleventh corps, largely composed of German soldiers, who have brought with them across the sea the spirit of the old lansquenets, distinguishes itself by acts of pillage which the efforts of the honest and religious Howard fail to suppress. On the 14th the entire army is massed on the banks of the Hiawassee. Long has come back without having reached the train he was seeking, but his manoeuvre has rendered uneasy the Confederates. He establishes himself at Calhoun, in front of Charleston, on the Hiawassee, so as to protect, in concert with Elliott, the overland road and the railway from Knoxville to [337] Chattanooga. Sherman will bring back the rest of his troops to this last town. His columns, which are following only one road along the railway, by Cleveland and Tyner's Station, reach on the 16th and 17th the battlefield of November 24th. Davis' division is immediately returned to the Fourteenth corps: Howard joins Hooker in Will's Valley; and Blair, meeting with his fourth division under Osterhaus, conducts the Fifteenth corps to Bridgeport, where Sherman has established his headquarters. Grant has resolved to scatter his armies during the bad season in order the easier to subsist them, and to form at the same time a cordon able to resist a raid by the enemy's cavalry, the only operation which he may attempt just now. Leaving to Thomas all the region between Bridgeport and Chattanooga, he instructs Sherman to post the Fifteenth corps, whose command General Logan has just assumed, on the railway which borders the Tennessee from Stevenson as far as Decatur. Dodge, recently arrived at Pulaski with a detachment of the Sixteenth corps which is almost equivalent to two divisions, will occupy the railway connecting Decatur with Nashville. Thus shall be preserved two lines of supply, without counting that by the river. The position of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee will not take long to describe. We left it on the day following the battle at Ringgold covered by Cleburne, who occupied Tunnel Hill, and massed at Dalton, unable for a time to give the least trouble to its adversaries. This command, so valiant, is greatly discouraged. Desertion increases so that Grant is obliged to take special steps to return to their country the deserters belonging to the States of Kentucky and Tennessee: official Southern documents acknowledge more than ten thousand of them since the 1st of November. All pretexts are good for quitting the ranks. The number of soldiers on furlough increases to more than three thousand; that of men on detailed service, to nearly two thousand. Still, there are yet under arms on the 10th of December thirty-eight thousand seven hundred and forty-four infantry, three thousand three hundred and sixty-nine artillerists, and nearly eight thousand cavalry-say, about fifty thousand men — with one hundred and fourteen pieces of [338] artillery. But rolling-stock and camp-equipage are lacking, the ammunition is not sufficient; the provisions come in with difficulty, because the farmers in Georgia refuse to exchange them for Confederate scrip. Above all, the army will no longer brook the leader whom it makes, not without reason, responsible for its misfortunes. Mr. Davis understands that he can no longer leave Bragg at the head of the army, but, with a sort of defiance of public opinion, he summons him to Richmond to occupy a position analogous to that of general chief of staff, which Lee left vacant nearly two years before. In fine, he gives him for a successor General Hardee, better known by his writings on tactics than by his services on the battlefield. But at the end of eight days, on the 18th of December, this time better inspired, he replaces him by the illustrious general who was vegetating in Mississippi, useless and almost in disgrace, at the head of a skeleton army. Johnston, relinquishing his command to Polk, immediately takes the road to Dalton. He reaches this last point on the 26th of December, and finds the Army of the Tennessee still more weakened since Bragg left it. In fact, the two brigades of Quarles and Baldwin have returned to Meridian, while the bad weather is painfully trying upon the troops encamped around Dalton. We have arrived at the close of the year 1863. However, before terminating this chapter, we must say a few words about the operations of the Confederate cavalry. We left Johnston's cavalry divided between Chalmers and S. D. Lee, who, one to the west, the other to the east, of Eastport, have vainly endeavored to interrupt Sherman's march. It received shortly thereafter an important reinforcement. Forrest, sent off by Bragg, had arrived on the 15th of November at Okalona with some two hundred and fifty men. This small force was to serve as a nucleus to the corps of partisans whom he proposed to raise in the very midst of the hostile lines. West Tennessee, comprised between the Tennessee River and the Mississippi, forms a vast rectangle, of which the railway from Memphis to Corinth is the southern side. It is a fertile country, which was then cultivated by numerous slaves, and the white population of which was therefore passionately devoted to [339] the Southern cause. It had furnished since the outbreak of the war a very large contingent to the Confederate cavalry. Forrest enjoys in that country a great popularity among the young men, who have remained grouped into small partisan bands waging war on their own account, and he counts upon collecting them around him to form a division and take it to Johnston. The plan of his expedition is promptly arranged with the latter and S. D. Lee. Three brigades of Confederate cavalry guard the northern part of the State of Mississippi; they are posted en échelon on the left bank of the Tallahatchie, from New Albany as far as Panola. On the other hand, the Federals strongly occupy the line of railway from Memphis to Corinth, which it is proposed to force. Grierson, the Union general, whose headquarters are at La Grange, has distributed his three cavalry brigades along that line and watches the crossings on the Wolf River, an important stream which flows from Grand Junction to Memphis, and of which the railway follows the left bank. The principal stations are fortified, and in the last-named city Hurlbut holds himself in readiness promptly to bring forward his infantry on any point menaced by the enemy. Forrest counts for his expedition on the mounted brigade of Tennesseeans recently raised by General Richardson; this command, estimated at two thousand men, is reduced, however, by desertions to two hundred and fifty combatants. It is therefore with five hundred mounted men that he takes the road; he is followed only by two guns and four wagons. But General Lee accompanies him to help pierce the hostile line, and crosses with him on the 3d of December the Tallahatchie River. Ferguson's and Ross' brigades, accompanied by Forrest, meet at Ripley a portion of Chalmers' brigades, while this general, with the rest of his men, leaves Panola to make a demonstration against the railway on the west of La Grange. The main column reaches the line at Salisbury on the morning of the 4th. The Federal outposts, sharply pressed by Ferguson, are quickly thrown back upon the detachment that guards the road at this point. This force vainly tries to resist Lee's artillery: it is obliged to fall back in great haste, leaving the way clear to Forrest. To cover this manoeuvre, Lee bears to the west with Ross' brigade, [340] and, avoiding the well-fortified post of La Grange, vigorously attacks in the evening of the same day the post of Moscow. He is repulsed with loss, and retires without having been able to destroy the railway-bridge over one of the branches of Wolf River. But this demonstration, and that made by Chalmers at the same time against Collierville, divert the attention of the Federals, and Forrest arrives at Jackson without having been molested. Colonel Bell was waiting for him there with a small body of troops raised in the country. Received with open arms by the people, Forrest restores the fortified enclosure around that town, which, since the breaking out of the war, has been used alternately by both parties. He assigns to Richardson the western districts, with Brownsville for the centre, and both set about recruiting men and horses, picking up wagons and provisions, as though they were not on all sides surrounded by the Federals. Although they could not be ignorant of his presence at Jackson, the latter leave him alone for more than a fortnight. They are no doubt biding their time to close against him the return road, and do not wish to remove any force from the Memphis and Corinth Railway, which Lee's troopers are always threatening. Finally, toward the 15th of December they make ready to attack him. A column of infantry and cavalry, under the orders of General A. J. Smith, leaves Columbus on the Mississippi and proceeds toward the south against Jackson. A few days thereafter two brigades—one of cavalry under Mizner, the other of infantry under Mower—which were at Corinth start toward the north-west to bar the passage to Forrest as soon as Smith's manoeuvre shall have determined his retreat. Colonel Prince, with several regiments of cavalry, has posted himself to the northward of the Memphis and Corinth Railway to cover the approaches thereto. He has established his headquarters at Sommerville, and pushes his outposts as far as the left bank of the Hatchie. Thomas gave on the 20th the order to General Cook, who commanded the second cavalry division of the Army of the Cumberland, to quit Huntsville with his two brigades, leaving the care of guarding the railways to Sherman's troops, and to move rapidly toward the north-west, via Prospect on the [341] Elk River, to head off Forrest if he should cross the Tennessee River. The time has come for the latter quickly to return to the State of Mississippi. He has collected nearly four thousand men, well mounted, but badly armed and little inured to war: his forty wagons of provisions, his droves of beeves and swine, are going to impede his progress. It is with inexperienced recruits and with cattle instead of artillery that he will have to escape from the flying columns of the Federals. On the 22d he hears that Smith's column has appeared on the north, at Trenton and at McLemoresville—that of Mizner on the south-east, at Jack's Creek. He immediately adopts a course of action. Richardson's brigade shall open the march toward the south: it shall leave Jackson on the 23d in the morning, and shall pass over the Hatchie at Estenaula. It shall be followed, one day's march apart, by the trains, the drove of livestock, and all men without arms, escorted by Colonel Bell and his troopers. About five hundred combatants under the orders of Colonel Wisdom shall go by Mifflin to meet Mizner, who, fearing the overflowing of the Hatchie, has followed the right bank of this stream, and has thus moved away from Prince. Their task is to detain him as long as possible. Forrest with the rest of his troops shall follow the train, ready to go wherever danger may call him. On the 24th, Richardson, after having crossed the Hatchie, was continuing his route with one regiment, when he encountered Colonel Prince, who was hurrying from Bolivar to meet him at the head of the Seventh Illinois. After watching each other for a moment, the two forces spring to the charge, but the Federals, being more numerous and better drilled, in an instant disperse their adversaries. These rally at Estenaula, near the rest of the brigade, that Prince, arriving in the night, does not dare to attack. However, Wisdom has well fulfilled his part. He encountered the Federals on the 24th in the morning near Mifflin, attacked them briskly, and, after having engaged them all day in a skirmish, when he saw himself almost surrounded by superior forces he suddenly took the road to the south-west. Leaving the [342] Union cavalry uncertain as to whether it will follow this route or that to Jackson, he marches all night, clears the Hatchie below Bolivar, and will again meet his chief on the 25th. The latter, as soon as he saw the trains on the road, started ahead with his cavalry after being the last to leave Jackson, and arrived at Estenaula during the night of the 24th-25th. The reverse which befell Richardson proves that he has before him a serious adversary. Instead of avoiding him, he makes up his mind to attack him with all his force while the enemy coming from Columbus and Corinth is yet to the northward of the Hatchie. If he can pass Prince's command, he will be enabled to cross Wolf River and the railway near Memphis; that is to say, far to the westward of the point where the Federals await him. In the morning of the 25th, while Bell causes the wagons, the drove of live-stock, and the recruits to pass over on a ferryboat, the only one found at Estenaula, Forrest divides his forces into two columns to attack the village of Sommerville, to which Prince had retired during the night. Richardson, whose force increases at every step, sleeps at Whiteville, so as to come up with the Federals the next morning by the Bolivar road. Forrest will follow the direct Estenaula road to fall on their left flank when the battle has commenced. This plan is faithfully carried out. Prince, although not expecting the attack on that side, quickly places himself on the defensive: his men, being sheltered, easily hold Richardson. But the sight of the latter's recruits without arms, who have deployed at a distance, begins to trouble them, and a charge by Forrest, who arrives at that moment, scatters them in every direction. Prince himself narrowly escapes, and, though he has lost but forty men out of five hundred, the Seventh Illinois will not be collected together for three or four days. Forrest does not ask anything more, because it only remains for him to deceive Colonel Hatch, who guards the crossings of Wolf River. The latter, being badly informed, has just concentrated his brigade around La Grange. Forrest, marching in a contrary direction, proceeds toward Memphis. His wagons have come up with him: it is now proposed to find the weak point in the enemy's line. A Confederate officer, Colonel Logwood, who was [343] scouting the country in search of recruits, came to designate it to him very opportunely at the moment when he had reached the village of Oakland. All the bridges across Wolf River had been destroyed save one. That of La Fayette had been preserved for communication with Prince; only a few boards from the flooring had been taken off. They were deposited upon the left bank in front of a little fort which commanded the entrance to the bridge, and were replaced when a force presented itself to cross over. Logwood, who had himself gathered this information, had ascertained the small number of the defenders of this work. Forrest resolved to surprise them and thus secure a crossing for his train. He had just sent Major Strange with seven hundred men to make a demonstration toward Memphis: after having passed across Wolf River at Raleigh, Strange was to follow the Grenada Railway as far as Como, the general rendezvous. Two hundred men went to the westward to attract the attention of the enemy to La Grange. During this time Bell started out with an equal force to take possession of the La Fayette bridge. Forrest, who had reserved for himself the most difficult task, was marching as rapidly as possible on his tracks while escorting the wagons. On the 27th, at eleven o'clock in the morning, Bell reached, without being perceived, the approaches to the bridge. His men, springing upon the stationary beams, clear the bridge without minding the volley of musketry fired by the small garrison. They come upon the fort before the Federals have time to reload their pieces. The moment they jump upon the parapet the latter escape on the other side and scatter in all directions. At four o'clock the bed of the bridge is restored, and Forrest's entire column crosses over. Smith and Mizner are distanced. However, the wagons have so much trouble in making headway that Grierson may yet catch up with them and strip Forrest of his booty. In order to deceive him, the latter leads on the westward Richardson's brigade against Collierville, and despatches on the east a small detachment that, after having come up with the enemy, shall retire along the railway. In the mean time, the train with its escort is to proceed rapidly toward the south. Forrest's ruse succeeded [344] all the better because he left at La Fayette soldiers who, disguised as countrymen, gave Grierson false information. The latter brought Hatch's brigade by rail from La Grange to Moscow. Mizner follows him the next day. He soon finds Forrest's tracks, and allows himself to be guided by them without suspecting the road taken by the train. The Union vanguard closely presses the Confederate troopers, and follows them, while exchanging musket-shots, to a point in front of Collierville. In spite of the reinforcement he finds in the garrison of this post, Grierson does not wish to risk a battle in the night. Before daybreak Forrest escapes from him in the direction of Mount Pleasant, where he finds his wagons on the morning of the 28th. Hatch, who has been close on his heels, catches up with him near Hudsonville, but, not daring to attack him with one brigade, waits for Mizner; but when both together resumed the chase they could not gain on the enemy. At last they came to a halt, on the 1st of January, near Holly Springs. The two commands, then turning round, proceeded by short marches, the Federals toward Wolf River, and the Confederates toward the Tallahatchie, on the other side of which Forrest, henceforth at the head of a complete division, took up a position with the rest of General Lee's cavalry. At the eastern extremity of Tennessee the year closes also with a cavalry fight. Bragg's army includes not less than fourteen thousand men, formed in four divisions. Two of them, under Martin, have followed Longstreet. The other two, commanded by Wharton and Kelly, remained to the northward of Dalton after the battle of Missionary Ridge. Wheeler came to resume the command of them about the 1st of December. During Sherman's entire campaign in East Tennessee he had no other anxiety than to cover on that side the vanquished army: the detachment that he pushed as far as Charleston was, as we have seen, promptly driven back by Howard. But after Sherman's return to Chattanooga he sought to molest the communications between that place and Knoxville. A long train of wagons, carrying provisions and the baggage of the Fourth corps, and escorted by the convalescents who were going to rejoin this corps, was leaving Chattanooga under the orders of Colonel Laiboldt, the same who commanded one of Sheridan's brigades in the battle of the Chickamauga. [345] Wheeler, informed of its departure, starts to seek it with Kelly's division. But Laiboldt, who had marched quickly, notwithstanding the bad condition of the roads, arrived on the 27th of December at Charleston ere the Southern troopers, who started too late, could come up with him. The bridge over the Hiawassee is guarded by Long's brigade, that Sherman left at Calhoun. On the morning of the 28th, at the moment when the train was commencing to pass over the river, Wheeler appeared before Charleston and sharply attacked the infantry that was covering the crossing. The latter, being surprised, began to fall back, but Laiboldt resumes the fight, and Long, hurrying up with a handful of troopers, completes the rout of the Confederates, who leave more than a hundred prisoners in his hands. The Federal losses are insignificant; the wagons reach Knoxville without molestation, and Wheeler returns to his encampment. All along the line, from Cumberland Gap to Memphis, the new year, which opens in the midst of a very rigorous season, then finds the belligerents on both sides inactive. Their bold troopers forget for some weeks, near their great fires of cedar and pine, the trials and fatigues of the service in outposts. We shall leave them for the present enjoying this manner of truce, which secures to them a well-merited rest.[346]
Chapter 2: Charleston.
AFTER having related the campaigns of which Virginia and the Valley of the Tennessee were the theatres during the latter half of the year 1863, we must devote a chapter to the operations of the Federals on the long seaboard of the Southern States during the same period. As the title of the chapter indicates, the siege of Charleston, which forms an incident quite independent of these campaigns, alone presents an important interest, and it will take up the greater part of this chapter. Nevertheless, not to omit any fact, we will resume the division adopted in the third chapter of the first book in the third volume, of which this is a sequel, and we shall speak in succession of the four naval divisions which blockaded the Southern States under the name of squadrons—viz. the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, the East Gulf, and the West Gulf. The first, which is always under the orders of Admiral Lee, confines itself, since the Confederates raised the siege of Suffolk, to blockading the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina. Unimportant expeditions up the rivers that cut these coasts, and the destruction of some blockade-runners at the entrance to Wilmington, the only important port that the Federal ships have to watch, break the monotony of the blockade along these inhospitable shores. The official reports mention three large steamers surprised by the blockading fleet at the moment when, with rich cargoes, they were going to enter Wilmington. All three of them ran aground —the Kate on the 12th of July, the Hebe on the 18th of August, and the Venus on the 21st of October. The first, after having been cannonaded by the Federals, was taken off by their adversaries on July 30th, but at the instant when the latter were going to take it [347] into friendly waters the fleet intervened and seized the steamer. The Hebe brought ill-luck to the Federals. These, seeing the vessel abandoned by the crew, who had reached the shore in spite of the heavy weather, wished to seize it, so as to make sure of its destruction, but their boats capsized, leaving some fifteen men on the wreck. Soon a Confederate battery of artillery was posted on the shore, and, supported by skilful sharpshooters, its fire obliged the Union sailors, deprived of all assistance, to jump overboard and swim for the beach to surrender. Taught by this experience, the blockading fleet contented itself, when the Venus went aground, with destroying it with cannon-shot. The enumeration of the expeditions undertaken inland will be brief. From the 24th-30th of June several vessels, ascending the Pamunkey River, supported Keyes' demonstration against Richmond, of which we have spoken in the preceding volume. On the 22d of August a dash skilfully executed by Lieutenant Cushing—whose gallantry we have again occasion to mention—ensured the destruction of a hostile schooner, the Alexander Cooper, at New Topsail Inlet, near Wilmington. Cushing, causing a yawl to be carried by hand over the sandhills, embarked with seven men, proceeded on the inland waters, surprised the Confederates, made ten of them prisoners, and destroyed the schooner. The ship's papers revealed to him a fact really curious and of a nature to make the Americans less exacting in their claims against the violation of the blockade by neutral nations. The Alexander Cooper was a blockade-runner fitted out in New York, and, having been consigned ostensibly to Port Royal, had availed itself of the solitude of the ocean to run in one of the coves of North Carolina occupied by the Confederates, expecting thus to realize larger profits on its cargo. Reconnoissances of the Roanoke River made on the 6th of July, of the James River on the 5th and 6th of August, of the Piankatank River in Virginia on the 11th of August and the 7th of October, were not marked by any incident, and had no other result than costing the lives of several men. The Federals did not succeed in reaching a vessel that their adversaries were building on the Roanoke River, the light draught of which placed it beyond the range of the former's guns: public rumor had represented [348] it as being an ironclad formidably .armed. There was truth in the rumor, and we shall see the vessel in the ensuing year at work under the name of the Albemarle. We shall leave the North Atlantic squadron, which has lost one vessel only, the Sumter—foundered accidentally on the 24th of June—to pass on to the squadron blockading Charleston, and of which Admiral Dahlgren, arrived on the 4th, has just taken the command on the 6th of July. Henceforth it shall not have to fight alone against the formidable works which defend the approaches to Charleston. The Washington Government, taught by experience, has decided to undertake a regular siege of that place, in which the land and sea forces shall render mutual assistance. It has understood that, despite their precious qualities, the monitors cannot, like the fabled salamander, move with impunity in the midst of fire and defy all the offensive and defensive engines of the besieged in order to reach the docks of the rebel city. It is necessary to reduce the forts, and not merely to brave them; to do which the Unionists cannot dispense with the steady fire of siege batteries, nor with the bayonets of soldiers, who at the decisive hour will take possession of the hostile works. The circumstances were particularly favorable to the operations that Gillmore and Dahlgren were going to undertake. When DuPont attacked Charleston in the month of April, Beauregard, who commanded the forces on the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, had more than thirty thousand men under his orders: the garrison at Charleston was upward of eleven thousand. But to create Johnston's army in Mississippi and reinforce Lee's to attempt to save Vicksburg and invade Pennsylvania, it had been necessary to weaken a portion of the coast garrisons, and, on July 10, Beauregard's total forces were reduced to 15,318 men, of whom there were 5206 infantry, 5794 artillery, and 4316 cavalry; the latter could not be of help to him. The garrison at Charleston had dwindled to 2462 infantry, 2839 artillery, and 560 cavalry—say, adding the officers, about six thousand men. It is true that it could be promptly reinforced by two or three thousand from the garrison at Savannah. It was, withal, full of ardor [349] and commanded by eminent leaders. Beauregard, on account of his science and inventive genius, was better able than anybody else to direct the great operations about to commence with an enemy provided with iron-clad vessels and arms so new as rifled ordnance. Therefore, since the battle of April 7th he had sought to offset the weakness of the garrison by completing batteries which formed the second and third lines of defence—a necessary precaution, because provision had to be made for the loss of the first line. According to his own testimony, these two inner lines were not, at the date of April 7th, in a condition to resist the attacks of the monitors if they had succeeded in passing beyond Fort Sumter after having silenced its fire. It was no longer the same at the end of June. The works we described in the third volume had been enlarged, completed, and armed: new batteries were rising around the harbor and commanded every access to it. The Federal Government, which had perhaps lost the opportunity of taking Charleston by a naval dash, having allowed DuPont to pass in the most absolute inaction the months of April, May, and June, so well employed by the defenders of Charleston, did not seem to have suspected the numerical weakness of the latter, who were presenting it a fair chance to approach the place by land. On the coasts of the three States which Beauregard had to defend, and which were also included within the command of Gillmore, the latter found an effective force of 17,463 combatants. Out of this number he could collect ten thousand infantry and one thousand artillery before Charleston. It was a small force, and the Government took care to inform him that this figure could not be increased; but they led him into error by adding that it was superior to that of the garrison. The difference, however, was not great enough to have enabled Gillmore, better informed, to attempt a campaign inland so as to reach Charleston by turning the defences of the harbor. It would have been imprudent thus to move away from the sea, his base of operations. But while remaining within range of the fleet he had the choice of three points of attack: He could land, to the northward of the bar, upon the sandy beach of Sullivan's Island and besiege Fort Moultrie. This operation presented great [350] difficulties, because there was no easy landing-place, and it would have been necessary to transport to Sullivan's Island all the forces collected at the south on Folly Island; but in case of success the manoeuvre would have had decisive results. The Federals, if they had taken Moultrie, would have become masters of the passes and could have promptly demolished Fort Sumter. They might yet resume on the lowlands of James Island the campaign of General Benham, interrupted in the preceding autumn by the reverse at Secessionville. If they had succeeded in seizing this island, they would have effected a landing in the very harbor of Charleston, and, turning all the exterior defences of the place, would have compelled Beauregard to evacuate it. The opinion of the latter is that this operation would have had the best chances of success, and that he had not the force necessary to make it fail. Gillmore would not attempt it: the ground of James Island, cut up with bayous and sloughs, was easy to defend; the Confederates would quickly have thrown up numerous works, and there accumulated the greater part of their force and artillery. In order to conduct regular approaches against the place he preferred, with reason, to select a point where he would have the powerful co-operation of the guns from the fleet. Hence the objective point of his attack could only be Fort Wagner. To land on Morris Island it was only necessary to cross the narrow channel, called Lighthouse Inlet, which separates this island from Folly Island, occupied in force by the Federals. To the southward of Folly Island the estuary of Stono Inlet offered the fleet a pretty safe anchorage and good landing-places, since the Confederates had abandoned the works raised on the point of Cole's Island. The base of operations was, then, assured. The long and narrow sandy spit which forms Morris Island was separated on the west from the mainland by impassable sloughs. The waters which bounded it on the east were deep enough to enable the monitors to come near it within good cannon-range, since the main channel lay along the island at a distance varying from 2167 yards at the bar up to 1301 at Fort Wagner. Once established on the southern extremity of the island, the Federals might then advance toward this fort in full security, protected on one side by the sloughs against an offensive return on the part of [351] the enemy, and assured that on the other side the fleet would attack in the rear all his exterior works of defence. Under these circumstances Gillmore thought he could count on the fall of Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg, situated farther at the extremity of Cumming's Point. Master of these positions, he was calculating to establish there his heavy artillery to batter in breach and reduce Fort Sumter in spite of the distance, as he had reduced Fort Pulaski. If he could not force the enemy to evacuate, he hoped at least to silence his fire. Then was commenced, according to the plan elaborated at Washington, the role assigned to the navy. While Gillmore with his small force was contenting himself with occupying Morris Island, the monitors, having no longer to fear the plunging fire of Sumter's barbette guns, were to push into the very harbor of Charleston, clearing the inside passes of all the obstacles that Beauregard had accumulated there. This last part of the programme was somewhat chimerical, because the powerful artillery that the Confederates could place on these interior lines of defence, the cables stretched in all directions to embarrass the screws of the propellers, and the torpedoes everywhere scattered in profusion would have rendered the execution of it singularly difficult. On the other hand, batteries placed on Morris Island, owing to the distance, could not have bombarded Charleston. The capture of these positions could therefore be considered only as a first step, and to continue the regular siege a considerable army would have been required. But by occupying Morris Island the Federals would have obtained more important results than by the capitulation even of the city. The guns on Cumming's Point enabled a few vessels stationed in the pass to completely close the entrance to the port; they thus replaced the blockading fleet and the armored ships of the squadron, which could give battle elsewhere, and took away from Charleston all its importance. It was even better not to capture the city, for to defend it there were thus detained several thousand soldiers who might serve the Confederacy more usefully elsewhere. From the 12th of June, the day he took command of the military department of the South, Gillmore busied himself in concentrating at Hilton Head and on Folly Island all the forces intended for operations against Charleston. To accomplish this, a [352] number of small posts were evacuated. The landing on Morris Island, the first step in that singular siege, was difficult and perilous. The landing-point was limited to the southern extremity of the island: if the enemy should finish the fortifications which he had commenced, and should place in them a good garrison, the disembarkation would become impossible. Hence it was necessary to conceal with great care all the preparations. Folly Island, bounded on the north-east by the pass of Lighthouse Inlet and on the south-west by that of Stono Inlet, is separated from the mainland by a winding arm of the sea called Folly River: the island is timbered, except in its north-east portion, which, being bare and very narrow, terminates in sandhills covered with brushwood and palmettoes. Vogdes' brigade, which occupied the island, had furrowed it with roads. This force was charged with the task of constructing ten batteries on the sandhills in the neighborhood of Lighthouse Inlet, intended to cover the projected debarkation on the opposite extremity of Morris Island. During three weeks, beginning on the 17th of June, this work was prosecuted in the night, in the greatest silence, and with all requisite precautions not to arouse the attention of the enemy. During these short summer nights the sandhills were excavated so as to shelter the cannon; the wooden platforms, the guncarriages, and the ammunition, landed in Stono Inlet, were brought to the batteries across the island. The sandhills and the brushwood masked by day the work thus accomplished; but, in order not to betray it, it was necessary to throw dry sand upon that which had been freshly turned up, and the color of which was altered by the dampness. When it was necessary to cut through a tree, instead of felling it they set it up as near as possible to the spot where it formerly stood. The better to lull the enemy, the Federals allowed him to break up under their eyes, a few hundred yards from their batteries, the hulk of a blockade-runner, the Ruby, which had grounded a short time before at the entrance of Lighthouse Inlet. In fine, they affected to labor actively at the works constructed on the south end of Folly Island. Beauregard suspected, it is true, that his adversary meditated a dash on Morris Island. As early as the 25th of June he had given warning of it to his government that was asking him for [353] more troops, believing the Federals to be on the defensive. But he lacked the means to prepare an effectual resistance. Being obliged to furnish garrisons for the forts and to occupy the long lines of works thrown up on James Island, he had been able to collect on Morris Island only eight or nine hundred men. The slaves whom he called for not having been furnished to him in sufficient numbers by the local authorities, the white troops, little accustomed to hard labor, had not been able entirely to do the work of the blacks. Two batteries—one on Vincent's Creek, an arm of the sea bounding the northern part of the island, and the other on Block Island, a hummock rising in the midst of sloughs—were to sweep the two extremities of Morris Island, and there was constructed a bridge connecting Morris Island with James Island, to enable the troops that occupied these two islands to support one another. These works were not completed. Besides, the Federals so well lulled the vigilance of their adversaries that Beauregard, writing his report fifteen months later, still believed that all the preparations for the attack had been made within the last two days. All, on the contrary, had been prepared long beforehand: the batteries, carefully masked, were armed and provided with two hundred rounds of ammunition. Almost all of Gillmore's forces were collected on the island—namely, Terry's division, four thousand strong, and that of Seymour, including the brigades of Vogdes and Strong, the first being established a long time on the island, the second counting two thousand five hundred combatants, and among them a negro regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts. In the night from the 8th-9th the Federals had opened a passage through a boom established by the enemy across Folly River. By means of a saw placed at the end of a crossbeam with two branches and moved by two boats they had cut, about three yards under water, the posts which obstructed the channel. A number of boats sufficient to carry fifteen hundred men had been collected in this bayou. Notwithstanding the observatories built on Morris Island, the enemy had not perceived any of these preparations. On the 9th only, having noticed unusual movements of troops, Colonel Graham, who commanded on the island, asked for reinforcements from Charleston. They were to come too late. [354] In the evening of the same day the greater part of Strong's brigade embarked in the boats of which we have spoken, and about fifteen launches belonging to the fleet, themselves loaded with troops, took them in tow. The flotilla, clearing the breach opened in the piles, and following, with the rising tide, the sinuous course of Folly River, debouched at daybreak into the deeper waters of Lighthouse Inlet, where it hid under the shelter of the tall reeds bordering the eastern shore. A few minutes afterward the forty-seven pieces posted on Folly Island, which were unmasked during the night, opened fire, at the same time, on the southern extremity of Morris Island. Colonel Graham hurried to take defensive measures. He had eleven pieces of large calibre, with three hundred and fifty artillerymen and as many infantry. Having perceived the hostile flotilla rather far up the stream on Lighthouse Inlet, he supposed, not without reason, that the Federals would follow a bayou running between Block Island and Morris Island, to land near an old lighthouse on a spit called Oyster Point, so as to attack in the rear the batteries placed upon the southern extremity of the island. He sent his infantry in that direction, while his artillerymen responded as best they could to the artillery of the Federals. But the latter soon received a powerful reinforcement. As early as four o'clock in the morning Admiral Dahlgren, hoisting his flag on the Catskill, passed over the Charleston bar with four monitors; he approached Lighthouse Inlet, and when abreast of the hostile batteries, getting his ships to bear broadside on, he soon covered them with shells. Two hours have thus elapsed; it is nearly eight o'clock in the morning, and the decisive moment has come. While some boats, supported by launches from the fleet armed with howitzers, make a demonstration on Oyster Point, and detain on that side the bulk of the hostile forces, all the rest of Strong's brigade moves down toward the sea; the launches, leaving the boats they were towing, quickly throw upon the beach of Morris Island the troops they were carrying, and return to bring the boats containing the rest of the brigade. The landing is promptly executed in front of the Federal batteries. These remain silent, and an instant afterward the Confederate cannoneers are surrounded by a swarm of enemies: most of them are taken or [355] killed at their pieces, which remain in the hands of the assailants. The boats return to Folly Island to get the remainder of Strong's brigade, while the Federal infantry, hurrying up, threaten to attack Graham at Oyster Point at once in flank and in front. The latter has only time to fall back, rallying the fragments of his troops. Fortunately for him, a tardy reinforcement of some hundred men comes to cover this retreat, which ceases only on the glacis of Fort Wagner. For him the struggle has been bloody and disastrous, for he has lost two hundred and ninety-four men, nearly the half of his effective force. After having followed him far enough, the Federals, broken down by the heat of the day, come to a halt for rest. The monitors, on the contrary, harass him with their large projectiles up to a short distance from Fort Wagner. The undertaking by the Federals was hazardous, but it was well calculated, and it proved a complete success. This success was due, in fact, to a happy diversion by General Terry. He embarked on the 8th on transports, which, ascending Stono River, deposited on the ensuing day almost all his strong division on the low beach of James Island. Posted with nearly four thousand men between Grimball's Cross-roads and Secessionville, supported on his two flanks by gunboats in the waters of Stono River and Big Folly Creek, he was seriously menacing Beauregard, who could not consider his presence as being simply a demonstration. The latter was obliged to reinforce the garrison on James Island, and could not send to Morris Island the troops that might have foiled the debarkation of Strong's brigade. Another demonstration ordered by Gillmore to prevent Beauregard from drawing troops from Savannah did not succeed so well. Colonel Higginson embarked on the same date with a negro regiment, the First South Carolina, on transports to ascend by the South Edisto River and the Pawpaw River as far as Jacksonboroa, where he was to cut the Savannah and Charleston Railroad. The attempt failed, like those which, to reach the same end, had previously been directed against the bridges at Coosawhatchie and Salkehatchie: the narrowness of the rivers and the distance rendered all these expeditions very perilous. Higginson was [356] checked, repulsed, and obliged to retire, after abandoning two guns and burning one of his steamers. The greater part of Seymour's division, collected on the 10th, posted itself strongly on Morris Island, of which it occupied threefourths. It held all the sandhills extending into the sloughs, and pushed its outposts to within six hundred and fifty yards of Fort Wagner, which is connected with the rest of the island only by a narrow spit of sand. The monitors, ranged broadside on at thirteen hundred yards from Fort Wagner, the depth of the water not allowing them to draw any nearer, exchanged all day long with that fort a lively cannonade. More than five hundred projectiles were fired by the fleet without producing any serious harm. The Catskill, on the other hand, attracting by the admiral's flag the fire of the enemy, received upward of sixty shots, without, however, sustaining any heavy damage. Encouraged by his success, Gillmore wished to avail himself of the opportunity to carry by a dash Fort Wagner, of which he did not know exactly the strength, and whose garrison he expected to find discouraged by the late reverse. But it had been reinforced during the evening by a Georgia regiment, and when, on the 11th at daybreak, General Seymour directed two storming-columns against the fort, they were received with a terrible fire. The heads of the columns reached the top of the parapet, but the remainder, crowded into the narrow space which it was necessary to go over in order to reach the fort, was soon in disorder, and in its retreat it dragged away the first assailants. The Confederates buried ninety-seven of the enemy's dead and took one hundred and nineteen prisoners, some forty of whom were wounded. They had only twelve men disabled. In spite of this reverse, the results obtained by the Federals were considerable: the true siege of Charleston could at last be commenced. The first operation with the fleet and the army combined had succeeded well; the auxiliary part of the monitors in the operations to follow was indicated. Admiral DuPont, who had not wished to leave his ships within the bar after the month of April, had scattered them among the different stations in his command; Dahlgren's first care had been, on the contrary, to recall them in front of Charleston, and when he passed the bar with four [357] of them on the morning of the 10th, he was quite determined thenceforth to leave his armored fleet in the passes that his predecessor had considered as too dangerous. It was the only way to employ it successfully against the place, and the event proved that he was right. The position of Fort Wagner rendered regular approaches to it by land very difficult. The sandspit on which it was necessary to proceed, narrowed by the encroachments of the sea since the drawing of the hydrographic charts by the Coast Survey, measured at several points only fifty-four yards in width; near to the fort it was reduced to twenty-seven yards. The front attacked had thus an extension greater than that which could be given to the approaches; furthermore, by digging three feet into the sand, water was found, which prevented giving the intrenchment a sufficient depth. To spare his troops these long, painful, and dangerous labors, Gillmore resolved to attempt a fresh assault as soon as he could establish batteries capable of covering the fort with projectiles. He believed that his artillery, supported by that of the fleet, would dismantle the enemy's pieces, and, paralyzing the defence, would ensure the success of this coup-de-main. Notwithstanding the bad weather, which often interrupted the work, four batteries were completed on the 17th of July: situated at distances from the fort that varied from thirteen hundred to nineteen hundred yards, they mounted twenty mortars and twenty-seven rifled pieces of artillery, fifteen of which were in position and twelve movable. However, Beauregard had well employed these few days of respite. The Government at Richmond, understanding at last the designs of the Federals, sent him important reinforcements. Colquitt's and Clingman's brigades arrived on the 11th and the 15th. The former had occupied James Island, where was already on the ground Hagood's brigade; the second supplied, in successive detachments, a part of the Morris Island garrison commanded by General Taliaferro. The armament of Fort Wagner, composed of twelve pieces of large calibre, was completed by the addition of six smooth-bore guns. This fort, that had the shape of an enclosed work, was protected on one side by the sea and on the other by the waters of Vincent's Creek, [358] and presented a front three hundred and twenty-five yards in extent, protected by a morass impassable throughout, save for about forty-three yards, the breadth of the tongue of firm land that connected it with the rest of Morris Island. The ditch, a very important thing, was provided with a sluice-gate, by means of which high-tide water could be retained. Constructed, of course, without masonry, its batteries were open at the top; but an immense shelter with blinds formed with trunks of trees and plates of sheet iron covered over with a thick layer of sand, could receive all the garrison. This sea-sand, of a very fine grain, that constituted all the soil of Morris Island, was at once very embarrassing to the assailants, because it could not be worked in the trenches, which would fill up with it at the least wind, and very advantageous to the defence, because, on account of its very mobility, it neutralized the effects of the projectiles: these, penetrating the slope, thanks to the elasticity of the sand, caused it to scatter in the air, but it would come down and cover the furrows, thus constantly effacing the tracks of the shells and bullets. Not to revert to this subject, we shall say that, according to the calculations made by General Gillmore on the weight of the projectiles thrown against the fort and the damage resulting therefrom, it required nearly sixty-six pounds of iron to displace two hundred and nineteen pounds of sand.2 Under these circumstances a bombardment could produce no decisive effect unless it were the destruction of the uncovered cannon behind the parapet. While the artillery of Fort Wagner, supported by Sumter's heavy ordnance, sought to delay the construction of the Federal batteries, Beauregard, very uneasy on account of the presence of Terry's division on James Island, made a demonstration on the 16th of July against the positions that the latter had taken near Grimball's plantation. The Confederates, although superior in number, did not seriously attack, but their artillery compelled a prompt retreat on the part of the Federal gunboats, which could [359] not operate on Stono River: the Pawnee was riddled with shots. On the morrow Gillmore recalled Terry's division: he needed all his forces on Morris Island, and could not, as we have said, attempt to occupy James Island, however advantageous might have been this conquest to menace Charleston. On the 18th, at noon, the Federal batteries, opening fire on Fort Wagner, announced to its defenders that a fresh assault was in preparation. The latter responded with ardor, supported by the cannon of Sumter and Battery Gregg. But they were going to struggle with new and more formidable adversaries. At noon Admiral Dahlgren had arrived with five monitors, the armored frigate New Ironsides, and five gunboats, each carrying a piece of very heavy calibre, every vessel being ranged with its broadside bearing on the fort. However, the tide was not favorable, and he was obliged to keep at a distance. Finally, at four o'clock he placed himself with the ironclads at less than three hundred and twentyfive yards from the fort, which he covered with shells. Despite their courage, the Southern artillerists were soon obliged to abandon their pieces and take refuge in their casemates. The fort remained quiet and received in silence all the projectiles which the land and sea ordnance showered upon it until the evening: more than nine thousand, it is said, fell within its enclosure. Only Fort Sumter could respond to this bombardment, but the distance prevented it from causing damage either to the fleet or to the siege-batteries. In order to render the firing from this fort less dangerous to the assaulting columns, Gillmore decided that they should begin to move at twilight. His orders are punctually executed. General Strong claims for his brigade the honor of forming the first column; it advances in good order, having at its head the negro regiment, that the white officers lead for the first time under fire. Vogdes' brigade is ready to support it. The Federal batteries remain quiet; Sumter's cannons redouble, on the contrary, their fire directed against the batteries, and, above all, against the assailants. But they are soon obliged to intermit it. In fact, the garrison, seeing that the Federals are approaching the glacis, spring on the parapet and a terrible fire of musketry mows down the front ranks of the negro regiment. The others advance even into the ditch, [360] which fills with the dead and the dying. But after this effort they withdraw in disorder; their officers are killed while trying to rally them. The troops following them return uselessly to the charge; the fight, bloody for the assailants only, is continued in front of the work in the light of the discharges, without the assailants being able to pass beyond the crest of the glacis. Still, on the right they have obtained a success which might prove decisive. The Thirty-first North Carolina, charged with the task of defending the part of the work resting on the seashore, has cowardly refused to come out of its casemates: the Federals have seized this portion, and if all their forces are brought to bear on that side they will become masters of the position. But the darkness and the tumult of the battle prevent the leaders from perceiving this fact in time. In fact, most of them have fallen: General Strong, Colonel Shaw—a young man of great promise who commanded the black regiment—Colonels Chatfield and Putnam, are killed; Seymour is wounded at the head of the second column. The latter cannot approach the work, for the first column has already been repulsed and riddled in its retreat by the canister from Wagner's cannon, which for the most part have escaped the bombardment as if by a miracle. A new attempt is impossible, and over a hundred Federals who have penetrated into the work are abandoned without any hope of assistance. However, they defend themselves valiantly, repulsing all the attacks made by the garrison, and surrender only in the middle of the night, when the latter is reinforced by a regiment sent in great haste from James Island. The reverse to the Federals was complete and their losses were considerable. They have never acknowledged the total. The Confederates, who had only twenty-eight men disabled during the bombardment and a hundred and forty-six during the assault, buried six hundred dead Federals. They threw pell-mell into the same grave all the negro soldiers and their white officers, including the body of Shaw, trying thus to inflict a last insult on these champions of abolition. They were mistaken, and were giving, on the contrary, a supreme consecration to the equality of the races for which the latter were contending. [361] After this there only remained for the Federals to undertake a regular siege of Fort Wagner. They immediately set themselves to work. The fire of their batteries, which commanded the waters between Cumming's Point and Sumter, rendered the navigation of these waters in the daytime impossible to the Confederates. Hence the supplying of Fort Wagner and the changes in the garrisons could be done only in the night, which was a serious embarrassment. This difficulty obliged Beauregard to renounce the design which he had conceived for a moment after the fruitless assault of July 18th, of throwing all his forces on Morris Island, so as to drive the Federals away from it. He was constrained to resign himself to a defensive role. There was nothing left for him but to prepare for it as best he could. The garrison of Fort Wagner, on which the anxiety incident to the bombardment and the confined air of the casemates in that tropical climate were trying morally and physically, was frequently renewed, and its effective force was maintained at the figure of eleven hundred men. The damages sustained by the fort were repaired, and some defensive works which remained unfinished were promptly completed. In fine, Beauregard told the chiefs of the garrison that their duty was to defend themselves: even if all their artillery were unlimbered, their bomb-proof shelters enabled them to await without any serious danger the assault of the enemy, whom they should always be capable of repulsing, when they came to fight at close quarters, with musketry. Meanwhile, he was taking all his precautions in anticipation of the inevitable day when the Federals should take possession of the entire island. He only asked the defenders of Wagner to delay that day sufficiently to give him time to complete his preparations. Having again become the master of all James Island, he established along the swamps that separate this island from Morris Island some batteries intended to operate on the flank of those of the Federals. New works were constructed on the bay in the rear of Sumter, and armed at its expense. In fact, Beauregard, taught by the experience of Fort Pulaski, knew well that the high walls of that fort would not stand against a prolonged bombardment, and that its artillery would be reduced to silence. Therefore, he took off a portion of it, and exerted himself only to ensure to the defenders some shelter which would [362] afford them a slight protection at least against the increased calibre of the Federal artillery. The bombardment that he was foreseeing took place earlier than he expected. Gillmore had determined to undertake it ere the fall of Fort Wagner. The end which he had in view in trying to take possession of the northern extremity of Morris Island was, above all, to be able to establish breaching-batteries against Fort Sumter. It was the destruction of this fort, and not that of Wagner and of Battery Gregg, which would, as people thought, open the port of Charleston to the fleet, because it was in front of Sumter that it was stopped on the 7th of April, 1861. Gillmore thought that while pushing his approaches to Wagner he might at the same time establish on such parts of Morris Island as he already occupied some pieces of large calibre able, in spite of the distance, to batter the walls of Sumter. The enterprise was all the more uncertain because these pieces were going to be exposed to the fire of Wagner. But Gillmore was counting on the fleet to silence that fire. In fact, Dahlgren, true to the design that he had formed on relieving DuPont, had maintained his entire fleet within the bar, and every day he sent shells into the enemy's works. By reducing Fort Sumter to silence Gillmore expected to open the entrance into Charleston, and, if that were not possible, then to enable him at the least to push with a few ships into the roads, so as to isolate Fort Wagner and force it promptly to capitulate. The construction of the breaching-batteries against Sumter and the approaches against Wagner were carried on at the same time. The positions occupied by the Federals on the 18th of July were carefully intrenched; under the designation of first parallel they formed a strong defensive line, which was, little by little, transformed into works provided with bomb-proof shelters as formidable as Fort Wagner itself; some palisades, networks of wire on the ground, floating obstacles on the bayou bordering the sandhills on the west, protected these positions against any surprise. This first parallel was at once the first breaching-battery and the initial point for trenches, which, rapidly pushed forward, permitted the establishment on the 23d of July of the second parallel, six hundred yards nearer to the enemy. This new position was immediately [363] intrenched, as was the first, and prepared to receive also guns of large calibre. During this time the Federals undertook a work the results of which were not to be proportionate to the effort it cost, but which, from the standpoint of a difficulty overcome, presents an interesting aspect and deserves a special mention. The immense bogs that separate Morris Island from James Island were occupied neither by the Unionists nor by their adversaries, and were much nearer to the city of Charleston than were the batteries intended for action against Fort Sumter. Gillmore thought that if by dint of perseverance he could succeed in planting a battery on that moving ground, he might from it bombard the rebel city, and if he could not bring about its evacuation, he might at the least satisfy public opinion, which at the North so imperatively demanded its chastisement. Colonel Serrell found at seventeen hundred and thirty-four yards in a straight line from Morris Island and seven miles from the city of Charleston a spot where the soil offered more firmness than the rest of the bog. Situated at the confluence of two bayous, this spot was protected by them on the west and on the north—that is to say, on the side of the enemy. A third bayou, leading to the southward, was nearer Morris Island; it was navigable at high tide for small boats, and would thus facilitate transportation. A reconnoissance of the ground made between the 16th and the 20th of July revealed all the difficulties of the enterprise. The mud in the swamp, like gelatine, resists a certain pressure, vibrates to a great distance, but quickly yields under the foot of a man. Soundings indicated that it had a depth of from six and a half to seven and a half yards, and that it rested upon a bed of hard sand. Composed of alluvial soil mixed up with innumerable shells that have gradually covered the bottom of the sea, the surface is overgrown with high grasses similar to the alfalfa, amidst which the Federal workmen could easily conceal themselves. But high tides submerge nearly all the expanse of the bog. At ebb tide a man walking would sink into the mud, according to the localities, often two inches, sometimes ten. But if one stood still the sinking increased rapidly, and in many spots there was even danger of disappearing under the surface. Therefore the first officer to whom the colonel gave orders [364] to go to the quartermaster to request all that was necessary for the first works was so frightened at such an undertaking that he asked, as we are assured, to be furnished with a hundred men eighteen feet high, to the end, said he, that they might work without danger. These difficulties did not stop Colonel Serrell: experiments made with care proved that this mud would stand a pressure, equally distributed, of about five thousand two hundred and fifty pounds to the square yard. It was on this foundation that it was intended to establish a battery capable of receiving and sheltering a two-hundred-pounder Parrott gun (nearly eight inches calibre), weighing more than fifteen thousand pounds. We have seen that the foundation could support a considerable weight, provided it was perfectly poised. But it was to be feared that once the firing had commenced the shaking produced by the recoil of the piece would disturb the equilibrium, and gradually cause the entire construction resting on that moving ground to sink. To avoid this danger, the parapet and the platform were established upon absolutely independent bases. Trunks of pine trees sixteen to twenty yards long were cut down in the woods on Folly Island and carried by the bayou to the location of the battery; four rafts were formed by fastening these logs one to another; then two of the rafts were placed one way, the other two another perpendicular to the first, and all four were joined at their extremities so as to form an immense rectangular floor, leaving an empty square in the middle. The surface of this square had been calculated in accordance with the coefficient of resistance of the superficial yard of mud and with the weight of the cubic yard of sand, so as to be able to bear a parapet of a height and thickness sufficient to shelter the piece and the gunners. The rafts were separated from the mud by alternate beds of grass and tarred cloth, which prevented it from getting in between the logs, and distributed the weight of the load equally. Even the parapet was made up of sandbags piled on one another on three sides of the floor, the fourth being used solely to connect the other three together. The platform of the piece was placed on piles in the space remaining vacant in the middle of the flooring. A square coffer was formed with sheet piles driven into the mud [365] without a pile-driver by the simple weight of a squad of workmen, who suspended themselves to a beam placed across the top of the pile-planks: the sandy bed was reached. Inside the cofferdam grass, cloths, and sand were spread in succession over the mud to keep it down. The whole was covered over with three thicknesses of crossed pine boards fixed on the coffer itself and bearing the platform. In this way the concussion caused by the firing could not be communicated to the raft bearing the parapet, and which was, as it were, floating on the mud. However, if at last the raft should sink, the only thing necessary to do would be to raise it with a few bags, and the mud forced away by its weight would form outside a kind of glacis; whereas inside, the pressure, working upward in the coffer, would result only in sustaining the platform of the cannon. This work could be commenced only on the 2d of August. A workshop was established amid the sandbanks extending a certain distance into the swamp: the sandbags, the timber, the guncarriage, and the ammunition were transported in barges on the bayou, and hauled at high tide to the location of the battery by means of a strong corduroy road. A plank-road laid across the swamp allowed the men to go in on foot: the planks rested upon a thick bed of grass. Platforms were constructed in like manner to answer the purpose of a camp for the supporting troops. Finally, after three weeks of this rough work, prosecuted in the mud, under a burning sun, everything was ready on the 23d of August to place the cannon in position. As its weight would have caused to sink the only boats that could be navigated on the bayou, it was carried by hand across the swamp. Wooden cylinders, thick enough to leave free play to the trunnions, were placed around the breech and the muzzle, and enabled the men to roll the piece like a barrel on two board tracks prepared for that purpose. This piece, the mounting of which had been so arduous, was called by the soldiers ‘The Swamp Angel.’ A false battery was made of reeds, a short distance from there, to deceive the enemy and draw its fire. The second parallel, established on the 26th of July four hundred and sixty-six yards in front of the first, was distant eight hundred and forty-five yards from Fort Wagner and less than [366] two hundred and sixteen from the rifle-pits occupied by the hostile sharpshooters. While this work was being completed the first had been armed with four pieces of large calibre: five other pieces had been placed more to the left in batteries specially directed against Fort Sumter, amid sandhills about forty-two hundred yards from the fort. Among these pieces there was one of extraordinary dimensions: it was a Parrott gun of a diameter of nearly eight inches, the projectile of which weighed three hundred pounds. Never before had such a mass of iron been projected against walls. The placing of the breaching-batteries in the second parallel was much more difficult, because they were within short range of Fort Wagner and exposed to an attack in the rear by the artillery recently placed by Beauregard on James Island. Gillmore did not allow himself to be checked by this double danger. Fortunately for him, Fort Wagner had suffered much from the bombardment of the 24th, the object of which was to protect the completion of the second parallel. The fleet, which no longer left the passes and came every two or three days to send its projectiles into the fort, had dismantled all the pieces facing the sea, had considerably damaged a magazine protected by blindage, and had even shaken for a moment the courage of the garrison. To reduce Fort Wagner to silence it is sufficient, therefore, to resume this fire and to support it with that of the pieces in the first parallel. The work, that time, suffered but little, but the Federals, thanks to this silence, could set up their new batteries without trouble. The Confederate guns on James Island, which had opened fire on the 26th, also remained quiet, no doubt so as not to draw the fire of the besiegers on works yet unfinished. Putting the second parallel into a state of defence was more difficult. Space and soil alike were lacking to give sufficient extension and elevation to the approaches. As the presence of water did not permit the deepening of the trenches, it was necessary to gather at a distance the sand to raise the parapets; and this sand, carried away by the wind—which nothing could abate, for there were only two trees on the entire island—quickly filled up the trenches. In digging the ground the Federal workmen constantly found either coffins, the island having long served as a quarantine for Charleston, or the remains of the victims of the assault on July 18th. To [367] avoid having to exhume them several times, it was decided to bury them in the parapets. Thus the dead answered the purpose of a shelter for the living. The fluctuations of the tides exposed the flanks of the Federal approaches. To the right, on the side of the sea, the space left open was limited. To prevent the enemy from availing himself of it, there was built an open-work jetty lengthening out the parallel, upon which were placed three mitrailleuses, then called Requa batteries, after the name of the inventor, which could sweep all the beach. To the left the difficulty was greater, for the swamp, in which it was impossible to dig any intrenchment, was passable at low tide for the hostile infantry. It was tried in vain to establish palisades and chevaux-de-frise on this moving foundation; the work undertaken in the night was interrupted by the fire from Fort Wagner. Then Gillmore caused to be constructed in rear of the line, on the edge of this swamp, a series of wooden blockhouses to serve as a refuge for the guards of the trenches in case the enemy should attack them in the rear on that side. All these works were accomplished only at the cost of serious losses, owing to the precision of the firing on the part of the Confederate outposts, and particularly of a choice corps called the Charleston Battalion armed with Whitworth rifles that made numerous victims among the assailants. Nevertheless, in the first days of August the Federals found themselves strongly established in their new positions, protected on land by a network of wires, and in the bayou bounding the island on the west by a powerful obstacle composed of chained logs. The garrison did not try any sortie: it contented itself with repairing the damages sustained by the work, with firing on the assailants during the night, when it had not to fear the fire of the monitors, and with supporting the sharpshooters posted in advance of the lines. The Confederate navy, which included in its ranks some bold men impatient of the passive part to which they were condemned, distinguished itself by a small feat of arms. In the night from the 4th to the 5th of August it captured a Federal launch manned by twelve men, who, while patrolling to watch the victualling of Morris Island, had ventured too far into the harbor. [368] From the 1st to the 9th of August the besiegers had almost entirely stopped the fire of their artillery; the fleet alone had sent some shells into Fort Wagner; therefore the garrison had availed itself of the respite to complete the defensive works, to strengthen the blinds and traverses, and to mount four pieces of large calibre sent by Beauregard. But on the 9th all the Federal batteries opened fire to protect the third parallel opened on the preceding night, with the flying sap, three hundred and thirty yards in advance of the right of the second parallel. This operation being successfully accomplished and the two parallels promptly connected together, the works of approach were resumed on the ensuing day in advance of this new line. But the proximity of the enemy daily increased the difficulty. Besides, the greater part of the extra duty performed by the men consisted in the construction and armament of the breaching-batteries—a work which the sand and the heat rendered particularly laborious. On the 10th the approaches had been pushed to within four hundred and thirty-three yards of Fort Wagner: they were then exposed to the fire not only of Fort Sumter and Battery Gregg, but of the works on Sullivan's Island, that fired above this battery. This fire rendered any day-work impossible. In the night the fire from Fort Wagner, supported by the sharpshooters of the Charleston Battalion, entirely checked the assailants, after having inflicted serious losses upon them. They wished to resume the work on the 11th in the evening. The Confederates allowed the men detailed from the negro regiment to issue from the parallel, and they had hardly commenced working when a fierce fire was opened on them. The blacks scattered. A second attempt was not more successful. The progress of the besiegers was absolutely interrupted. On the 13th, Gillmore decided not to attempt another advance before the bombardment which, by destroying Fort Sumter, would enable the fleet, according to him, to blockade and quickly reduce Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg. The armament of the breaching-batteries had been delayed by the construction in the midst of the swamps of the battery which we have described above: this work, the results of which could not compensate for such a loss of time, was nearly finished on the 16th of August. The defensive works of the second and the [369] third parallels had also been completed, despite the very active fire from all the hostile forts. That very day a Confederate shell perforated the shelter with plate-armor established for the telegraph-station, and wounded Colonel Howell, the commander in the trenches. The defective powder sent by the ordnance department was replaced by that from the fleet, which was much superior to the former. Some shots had been fired against Fort Sumter to try the ranges alike by the land-batteries and the heavy pieces of the Federal gunboats. Calcium lights, the cones of which were directed during the night to the waters of Cumming's Point, had made uneasy the small Confederate steamers and embarrassed the supplying of Fort Wagner by forcing Beauregard to use for that purpose rowboats. The latter, on the other hand, had completed all the works undertaken to protect the casemates of Fort Sumter: the blind-protected barrack which closed the gorge, the interior wall of which was exposed to a plunging fire, had been covered on that side with a thick layer of sandbags. The disarmament of the fort continued. Out of the sixty pieces which were there on the preceding month, there remained on the 16th of August but thirty-eight guns and two mortars. The others, for the most part of large calibre, had been distributed among the old forts and the new batteries. Those on James Island had been armed with particular care, and only awaited a signal to open fire. The Federals were going to give this signal. On the 16th, in the evening, Gillmore had an understanding with Admiral Dahlgren to commence the next morning the bombardment by land and sea. The Federal batteries comprised eighteen large pieces and two mortars intended for action against Fort Sumter; ten thirty-pounder Parrott guns and ten mortars, which were to be used for cross-firing on Fort Wagner; and, lastly three coehorn mortars for the service of the third parallel. Some pieces were not yet in position in the breaching-batteries, but this work was to be finished within less than two days without delaying or interrupting the fire of the others. One can imagine what this work was by reflecting upon the fact that it was necessary to drag over the entire length of Morris Island—say, nearly two miles--on moving sands and under a burning sun, cannon weighing [370] fourteen, and one even twenty-four, thousand pounds, besides all the requisite ammunition. Fire was opened on the 17th at daybreak. The breachingbatteries directed their shots on Fort Sumter, and their enormous projectiles were not long in starting its high walls: two monitors came to support them, and the fifteen-inch pieces with which they were armed threw their large round shells into the interior of the fort. During that time the other land-batteries and all the rest of the fleet were uniting their efforts to reduce Fort Wagner to silence. Dahlgren with four monitors had ranged himself, broadside on, at a distance of four hundred and thirty-three yards from that work. The New Ironsides had got as near it as her deep draught permitted; lastly, seven wooden gunboats, keeping at a good distance, fired at it shells under a very elevated angle. The Confederates were ready to respond. The batteries on James Island, the guns of Sumter, of Sullivan's Island, of Gregg, and of Fort Wagner replied with ardor alike to the fleet and to Gillmore's artillery. The fire from the last fort was the most dangerous, on account of its proximity to the assailants. Projectiles rained on the monitors. These vessels were not seriously damaged, but the experience of that day proved that the armor with which they were covered did not shelter their crews from all danger. A well-directed shot sprang the blind-plated shelter placed at the top of the Catskills tower and detached some bolts that killed the commander, Captain George Rodgers, and another officer. Toward nine o'clock the artillerists in Fort Wagner were obliged to cease firing. But as soon as the fleet's fire slackened they resumed their firing with so much precision against the batteries of the second parallel that Gillmore was every moment in apprehension of seeing dismantled and placed out of use the large guns that he had mounted. Fort Wagner had, however, on its ramparts only three pieces of large calibre. On the following day, the 18th, a violent storm from the northeast rendered the firing very uncertain on both sides. The contest with cannon continued, nevertheless, and was kept up without intermission during six days, until the 22d. Suspended during the night, the bombardment was resumed at sunrise and protracted till dark. Several times the breaching-batteries of the [371] second parallel were obliged to train their guns on Fort Wagner, so as to interrupt its fire when it became too sharp and uncomfortable. They had equally to suffer from that of the pieces posted on James Island, to which they could not respond. The ‘Swamp Angel’ added for a while its voice to this formidable concert. This piece being in battery on the 20th, Gillmore sent a summons to Beauregard, and threatened to bombard the city of Charleston itself if he did not evacuate Fort Sumter. After a delay of a few hours only, which Beauregard with reason found to be derisive, the bombardment so impatiently waited for at the North, especially by those who prated about the war without incurring its dangers, commenced on the morning of the 21st. The inhabitants of Charleston were soon reassured. The one piece trained on their city hardly succeeded in throwing into it a few shells, which did no damage, notwithstanding the pretended Greek fire with which they were loaded. On the ensuing day it burst at the thirty-sixth round, and Gillmore, satisfied with the demonstration which he had been obliged to make, did not replace the piece. Its fragments perhaps still lie to-day on the little hill created with so much trouble in the midst of moving ground, silent witnesses to the art employed by men to destroy one another, and over which the whippoorwill, the bird of the swamps, never tires of repeating its solitary plaint. By way of retaliation, the success of the firing on Fort Sumter was complete. The official reports concur on this point in a remarkable manner. It was marked with rare precision, despite the distance of 3250 to 4333 yards. According to Gillmore, leaving out of the account two pieces placed no doubt at too great a distance, twelve Parrott guns fired 4225 shots: their projectiles weighed together 552,683 pounds. Out of this number, 4147 are said to have hit the work. Beauregard, counting all the shots fired against Sumter by the land-batteries and the fleet, reaches the the total figure of 5643, of which 4342 hit the fort and 1301 struck wide of the mark. All of Sumter's cannon were dismantled in succession; the garrison, which had taken refuge in the portions still intact of the casemates, gave up serving the guns from the second day. The work itself was completely ruined: the barbette batteries were destroyed; the masonry facing the [372] sea had lost its blindage and was partly crumbled, uncovering the vaults which shut in the protected batteries. One piece alone, turned toward the harbor, had not been rendered unfit for use. Fort Sumter was no longer anything else than an islet without any offensive power, but the garrison had lost only fifty-two men. It felt itself all the surer of defending the fort against any assault that if the Federals had captured it they would have been exposed to a concentric fire from all the other works, which would not have allowed them to maintain themselves in it. The respite accorded to the besieged in the night by the Union artillery had been employed in carrying away pieces of ordnance and provisions belonging to the fort, which Beauregard no longer considered as being anything more than an advance post for the defence. Gillmore's artillery, having nothing left to destroy, ceased firing on the 23d. The men were exhausted by incessant work; a large number of pieces had burst, making many a victim; the others could be fired only with great precaution. But the results obtained were still more remarkable than the demolition of Fort Pulaski the previous year. Gillmore was counting that the fleet would avail itself of this success to reach up into the inland waters of Charleston. He was expecting from it the investment of the forts on Morris Island, and hoped that it might clear the second line of defence and come and take a broadside position parallel with the very docks of the town and in front of them. He foresaw that the blockade of Battery Gregg and Fort Wagner would bring on, in a few days, the reduction of those works: the naval authorities had always said that Sumter's fire alone prevented the monitors from carrying away the obstacles which had stopped them on the 7th of April. Gillmore believed that the Confederates had not yet transported the armament of Fort Sumter into the forts and the batteries of the second line. On this last point he was in error. These works were already furnished with powerful artillery, and as the land forces were not strong enough to occupy them in a permanent way after they should have been reduced for a moment to silence by the fire from the fleet, Dahlgren could not risk his monitors within the inland waters of Charleston without exposing them to the inability of getting out and to being caught as in a trap. He did not try it: however, if he renounced this [373] dangerous enterprise, it was not, it would appear, because he considered it impracticable, but in the wake of unforeseen incidents, of successive delays which were renewed during nearly three months. In fact, on the 23d he announces to the Navy Department that he is going to force the passage; then he waits until the 26th, and on that day he declares to Gillmore that the musketry-fire of Sumter's garrison will prevent his sailors going in launches to remove the cables stretched across their way. During that time he does not appear to have thought about the investment of Morris Island—an operation which he might have attempted without imprudence, and which would have greatly facilitated the task of the army. The latter was seeing difficulties accumulate in its way. Gillmore had availed himself of the bombardment to resume his works for approaching Fort Wagner—an operation which had been stopped since the 11th by the fire from the fort. But, as we have said, notwithstanding the number of pieces collected to crush the fort with projectiles, the Federals had not completely succeeded in silencing its fire. The field artillery which composed the greater part of the armament of Fort Wagner was placed under shelter in the rear of the merlons as soon as the bombardment began; then when night came it was brought back to the embrasures, whence it launched a deadly fire on the approach-works. In spite of the storm that raised the sea into the trenches, the works were resumed with activity on the 18th, in full sap, beyond the third parallel. Soon the Confederate sharpshooters' fire was added to that of the mounted guns to annoy the besiegers. A sandhill situated some two hundred and fourteen yards in front of the fort offered these sharpshooters a supporting-point and good shelter. On the 21st the trench-guards tried to dislodge them, but they were repulsed with loss. To shield from them the ground recently gained, a fourth parallel was at once run out, partly in full sap and partly in gabions, one hundred and eight yards before reaching the sandhill. The regular bombardment of Fort Sumter ended, as we have said, in the morning of the 23d; during the eight following days the breaching-batteries kept up an irregular fire as much against [374] the ruins of the fort as against the works on James Island, which were doing much mischief in the third and second parallels. The other pieces every time they received a shot, no matter from what point, would respond by firing on Fort Wagner. Finally, the monitors, while sparing their ammunition, took care not to allow themselves to be forgotten. Meanwhile, Gillmore was repairing the damage that the fire of the enemy, and, above all, the accidents the consequence of excessive firing, had caused to his batteries. To replace the pieces that had burst he was obliged to apply to Admiral Dahlgren, who hastened to loan the needed guns. The latter had already furnished him with cannon and marines to arm and serve one of the breaching-batteries. It was, however, necessary to continue the approaches. An effort was made to dislodge the Southern sharpshooters from the sandhills they occupied by establishing on the 26th, in the fourth parallel, naval howitzers and coehorn mortars. The fire from these pieces not having produced the desired effect, that same day, toward seven o'clock in the evening, two regiments of Terry's division captured the position and wellnigh all the men that occupied it. Out of eighty-four Confederates, only about a dozen escaped; the others did not dare to run, lest they should encounter the torpedoes scattered around the fort. The fifth parallel was established before daybreak in that position, two hundred and thirty-eight yards from the fort. The Confederate sharpshooters had no shelter left, for between the sandhills and Fort Wagner there was the isthmus, only twenty-seven yards in width, of which we have spoken above. They therefore shut themselves up within the place. But with their retreat the most difficult part of the siege was going to commence. The cannon on Fort Wagner, which no bombardment had yet been able to dismantle, having no longer that curtain of sharpshooters before them, could thenceforth concentrate their fire on the narrow space in which the besiegers were obliged to proceed: torpedoes had been scattered there in plenty. These torpedoes were either shells, as at Yorktown, or boxes filled with powder, intended primarily to float in the passes: they were buried and provided with a very sensitive percussion apparatus. Placed after the assault of July 18th, they presented a formidable obstacle to any fresh attempts of this [375] character, and increased the dangers of the sap. But the discovery of these engines, which cost the lives of several men, reassured at the same time the besiegers against the much more serious perils of the sallies. By surrounding themselves with torpedoes the Confederates condemned themselves to a passive role. It was a great mistake: the fifteen hundred men who had the means of sheltering themselves in the blindages of Fort Wagner should have retained the means of taking the offensive against the approaches of the Federals that could be guarded only by a small number of combatants: the history of all sieges, that of Sebastopol in particular, taught that to them. In fine, as fast as the besiegers approached the place the danger created by the outline of Morris Island augmented for them: their batteries had to fire above the trenches, and the shells which burst too soon hit their own soldiers. Colonel Purviance, who was in command of the trenches on the 30th of August, was thus killed by a Federal projectile, and it became necessary to displace several pieces to reassure the soldiers exposed to this new danger. The Confederates were not any more exempt from like accidents. Thus, in the night from the 31st of August to the 1st of September the steamer Sumter, that was engaged in supplying the garrison on Morris Island, was sunk by the batteries on Sullivan's Island, which took it for an enemy. Notwithstanding so many obstacles, the trench was opened with gabions in front of the sandhills while the fifth parallel was being established, and on the 27th, in the morning, this approach was only one hundred and eight yards from the place; but after a few hours of daylight the enemy's fire interrupted the work. An attempt was made to resume it, but the gabions were knocked down every moment. No matter how the sappers were relieved, they were nearly all hit, without making any progress. It soon became evident that they could not proceed any farther under the fire to which they were exposed. These growing and fruitless losses, added to the diseases developed by the heat, to the malaria from the swamp, to the work in the water, and to the fatigue incident to extra duty at night, had finally produced great discouragement among the men. Vain attempts were made to employ in the trenches the soldiers under punishment; they [376] availed themselves of the darkness to disappear, and returned in large bodies to their camps. Gillmore resolved to give his works of approach the support of the formidable artillery of which Dahlgren and he had the control to reduce Fort Wagner to utter powerlessness. After having dismantled the pieces of large calibre arming the fort, it was necessary to tear up the parapets, so as to make it impossible to replace in battery the field guns sheltered behind the merlons; and, if not that, then it was necessary to keep up a fire sufficiently strong, and, above all, sufficiently continuous, to prevent the garrison from serving the pieces and employing musketry against the head of the sap. In a word, this garrison once retired behind the shelters protected with blinds, it was necessary to batter in breach these shelters and demolish them. The first part of this task was to be accomplished by the mortars of the land forces and the large howitzers of the navy; the second, by the rifled ordnance, which had hitherto been used to fire against Fort Sumter. Several days were required to change the direction of these pieces, supply necessaries to the batteries and arm them with mortars, enlarge and fortify the fifth parallel, and, briefly, to prepare everything for the new bombardment, which was to continue night and day. Gillmore wished first to complete the destruction of Fort Sumter, hoping thus to decide Dahlgren to clear the pass. The admiral, in fact, crossed at first by bad weather, now alleged that the enemy had mounted new pieces on the top of the ruins of the fort at a height which the cannons of the monitors could not reach, and which gave these pieces a very formidable plunging fire. This assertion, to which Gillmore attached but little faith, was confirmed by the Confederate reports. After a bombardment lasting three days from the morning of the 30th of August till the evening of the 1st of September, in which several monitors had come to take a part, all these pieces were rendered unfit for use, all the casemated batteries were stove in, and the ruin was complete. Therefore Dahlgren announced for the morrow his entrance into the pass. But he again changed his mind a few hours later. Fearing, this time, the musketry-fire from the garrison, he determined to await the reduction of Fort Wagner, and then to attempt, before proceeding any farther, to capture Fort Sumter by storm. [377] A part of his fleet had not ceased firing upon the first of these two forts (Wagner), and had succeeded in dismounting several pieces on the sea-front. The Confederates, to save the others, had been obliged to disarm this facade about the 1st of September. All the fleet was to take part at once in the bombardment of Fort Wagner. All was ready at last on the 5th of September, and at dawn a terrible fire was concentrated upon the work, which, being promptly reduced to silence, could not have been distinguished from a shapeless pile of sand if the Confederate flag, often knocked down by the rain of iron, and each time raised by some courageous hand, had not floated over the crest. Seventeen siege or coehorn mortars filled the fort with bombs, while thirteen large Parrott guns were firing upon the south-west angle of the shelter in which the entire garrison had taken refuge. While the monitors were dividing their shots between Fort Moultrie and the works on Morris Island, the armored frigate New Ironsides, which had a broadside of eight pieces, kept up a ricochet fire on the fort with great precision: its projectiles, rising above the water with a diminished swiftness, went to fall behind the parapets at the entrance to the shelter, and on exploding their fragments reached everywhere. When night came the fleet retired. But the garrison vainly counted upon the darkness to repair the damages of that day and to rest after an experience that had cost it nearly one hundred men out of a total effective force of nine hundred. Soon calcium lights were displayed in the fifth parallel, and their luminous foci lighted up the least details of the work, while the positions of the besiegers remained enveloped in the deepest darkness. Hence the Federal batteries did not slacken their firing for a moment. The work on the approaches, begun as soon as the fire from Fort Wagner was silenced in the forenoon of the 5th, was this time pushed forward with rapidity. On the morning of the 6th, when the New Ironsides again brought her broadside to bear on the fort, the Federal flag, which marked the head of the sap to keep off the fire from the fleet, was only a few yards from the glacis of the fort; the trench, with an oblique direction to the right, trended toward the eastern branch of the work, which was known to have been disarmed, and which [378] the fall of the tide rendered more accessible for an assaulting column. As fast as the day advanced the Federal workmen, encouraged by the absolute silence of the enemy and the precision of their own pieces, became more and more bold. After having timidly shown their heads, they soon worked without any shelter, and even went to reconnoitre the fort on the glacis, avoiding with rare adroitness the torpedoes with which it was strewn. This situation, so new and so strange, coming after long days of slow and perilous labors, stimulated their ardor, and the flag advanced all the time. The distant fire from James Island was even no longer to be apprehended by them, for they were so near the place that the pieces on that island could no longer fire upon them without danger to the garrison, and were obliged to direct their shots more to the rear on the siege-batteries. The situation of the garrison in Fort Wagner was becoming every hour more perilous. The calcium lights rendered very difficult the communications with Charleston in the night, which for a long time had been impossible during the day. The Federals had attempted to land, from some launches, in front of Battery Gregg, to capture it by surprise: they had retired at the first alarm, it is true, but they were evidently preparing for an assault the issue of which was not doubtful. In fine, although the fire of the Parrott guns had been rather irregular, they had at last seriously broken through the blindage, and it was easy to foresee that if this fire continued the shelter would be opened before the 8th. The head of the enemy's sap was going to reach beyond the south front of the work, and thus mask the artillery of the fort. The garrison, exhausted by long vigils, the confined air of the shelters protected by blinds, could not therefore count any more on the support of this artillery. The enemy could reach the crest of the parapet sooner than the garrison, and make them prisoners ere they had emerged from underneath the ground. There was not a moment to lose to avoid this disaster. Beauregard decided in the afternoon of the 6th of September to evacuate Battery Gregg and Fort Wagner: his instructions were full and precise. The operation, a very delicate one, was to commence at sunset. He had estimated, with rare accuracy, the extreme limit of resistance of these works. In fact, the besiegers, having [379] crowned in the evening the crest of the counterscarp in front of the eastern branch, had descended into the ditch and carried away the chevaux-de-frise that covered the foot of the scarp. Everything being ready, Gillmore had issued his orders, so that the assault should take place the next morning at the time when low tide would leave on the beach a space sufficiently large for the formation of the troops. While he was making his final preparations the Confederates issued silently from the fort and took boats at the same moment with the defenders of Battery Gregg. In spite of the calcium lights, this movement escaped the attention of the besiegers, being entirely occupied as they were in the service of their pieces and in the work of the sap. The last guardians of Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg came out of the works after having kindled the matches which were to cause the blowing up of these strongholds, and got aboard without being perceived, leaving behind them about seventy stragglers. They attempted to take along with them a certain number of field guns, but were obliged to leave them on the shore. At one o'clock in the morning the two forts were deserted. But, to the great astonishment of the Confederates, and from a cause which has remained unexplained, the powder-magazines did not explode. Before daybreak some deserters called out to the Federals, who were still digging. Immediately the firing ceased, and the troops, ready for the assault, entered the forts. The bombardment had lasted forty-eight hours without intermission. The thirteen large Parrott guns trained against the blindages had belched out 1173 telling projectiles, weighing about 109,000 pounds: the examination made by the Federal officers proved that the effect produced was insignificant. Since the 19th of July the garrison had lost two hundred and ninety-six men, almost all of them during the latter days. It had abandoned twenty-five cannons to the besiegers. Out of the seventeen pieces which Fort Wagner mounted, only three had been dismounted. The besiegers, on the other hand, had not lost a single piece by the fire from the place, but a large number of guns had been rendered unfit for service, owing either to accidents or to firing too long continued. The Parrott guns of large calibre had, in [380] this ordeal, shown a great firing power, but a great inequality of resistance. The three-hundred-pounder, six two-hundred-pounders, and seventeen one-hundred-pounders had burst during the progress of the siege. It must be said that some of these accidents were caused by the premature explosion of the shells, and could not, therefore, be blamed on the gun itself. The task assigned to the land forces had been accomplished; their feeble effective numbers, as we have said, did not allow them to undertake operations on the main land nor on the islands nearest to Charleston. The army had broken the first defensive line of the place, and established a footing at the entrance to the pass. Henceforth, the port of Charleston was closed to the blockaderunners. The siege operations had been conducted with intelligence and vigor. The Confederates had fought with courage, their sharpshooters had shown much skill, but they had committed several grave errors. In the first place, they were wrong, before the arrival of Beauregard, voluntarily to abandon the positions on Cole's Island which forbade access to Stono Inlet on the part of the Federals, and thus allowed them to establish themselves on Folly Island: then, by concentrating their principal elements of defence on the northern part of Morris Island, they had allowed the enemy to gain a footing on the southern part. Instead of collecting within two enclosed works all the artillery intended for action against the fleet, they would have done better to divide it into small separate batteries, which are far more difficult to silence. In fine, the defence itself of Fort Wagner was too passive, as we have already observed. Still, this defence, gallantly prolonged, gave Beauregard time to arm the second line of works, and thus to close access to the port on the day when Sumter was demolished, when Morris Island fell into the hands of the enemy. Finally, it may be affirmed that the success of Gillmore was due only to the co-operation of the navy. Without the fire from the armored ships, which could approach Fort Wagner and attack in the rear all the counter-approaches that the Confederates would have undertaken, the besiegers never would have brought the siege to a successful issue. The two contending sides, finding themselves face to face with equal arms on the narrow sandbank of Morris Island, would have come into conflict without either being able [381] to gain any ground on the other. It was, then, the navy that decided the victory. Could it profit by it? We doubt it. Dahlgren resumed, it is true, on the 7th, the project agreed upon before the beginning of the operations, and announced his intention to force the passes. But he wished to attempt this operation only after having dislodged Sumter's garrison, of which he greatly feared the musketry. On the 8th he sent the Weehawken into the narrow channel that meanders amidst soundings between Cumming's Point and Fort Sumter, so that this vessel might support within easy range, with its artillery, the attack that he was meditating against the fort. But the Weehawken, driven by contrary currents, was not long in running aground, and became a target for all the batteries on Sullivan's Island. Other vessels came to its assistance, and the New Ironsides took up a position to cover, as against the fire of the enemy, the hull of the Weehawken, the broadside of which was very much exposed. Although there was no success in raising it before the next day, this fire did not cause it to experience any serious damage. However, Gillmore and Dahlgren had both resolved to try, in the night from the 8th to the 9th, a dash to capture Fort Sumter. When they communicated their design to each other, neither of them would yield in regard to the command. It was agreed that the two expeditions should act independently of each other. They would have run the risk of taking the one or the other for the enemy if Gillmore had not prevented the departure of the one that he had organized. Dahlgren, on the other hand, had collected in Stono Inlet some twenty launches, manned with four hundred marines, under the direction of Captain Stevens and three lieutenants of the navy. The evening of the 8th being fine, the flotilla was towed up the passes to Charleston, eight hundred and sixty-six yards from Sumter; but the darkness which prevented the enemy from seeing these preparations caused a great confusion in the formation of the flotilla: several launches were even ignorant of their destination and became lost in the roadstead. Stevens had divided his forces into two columns: that on the left was to land first, on the south-west frontage of the fort, and to draw the enemy's attention to that side. Immediately thereafter Stevens was counting [382] upon availing himself of this diversion to climb the ruins of the south-east facade, which had suffered most from the bombardment. But they were hardly within musket-shot of the fort when the sailors were saluted in every direction by musketry, while the batteries on Sullivan's Island, guided by this discharge, were directing the fire of their artillery on their launches. The most daring among the sailors landed at once on the two fronts, but they were soon checked by escarpments higher than they had expected. Those that followed these, instead of landing to support them, began to fire on friends and foes alike. Projectiles from Fort Moultrie, falling in the midst of the launches, put the finishing-touch to the confusion among the assailants, and Captain Stevens very promptly gave the signal, and even, people say, the example, of retreat. He left behind him, on the fort, his three lieutenants and all who had disembarked with them. These, one hundred and thirty-six in number, of whom some twenty were wounded, were compelled to surrender. Only three men had been killed. This unfortunate enterprise seems to have deeply discouraged Admiral Dahlgren. In spite of many projects formed and then abandoned, he will not again attempt anything serious this year to force the passes to Charleston. It was thus that, recognizing the impossibility of occupying Sumter, and not wishing to risk his launches to take up the obstacles that closed the pass, he asked Gillmore to lend him a steam-transport to launch it against these obstacles and break them—a request which, naturally, was not entertained. Then, six weeks later, he demanded a new bombardment of Sumter, so as, said he, to compel the garrison to confine themselves within their shelter, and thus to allow the fleet to pass without having to fear their fire. Gillmore, who had availed himself of this time to repair Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg, and who had armed them with the most powerful among his Parrott guns, opened fire on the 26th of October. The monitors joined themselves to the land-batteries to cannonade the silent ruins against which the Federals had been working for a long time. Other sections of wall tumbled down, other vaults were laid bare; the large fifteen-inch howitzers of the fleet did much execution inside the fort; but the garrison, letting this storm of iron shot pass over their heads, kept themselves in [383] readiness to lie in ambush at the first signal behind each stone and pile of bricks. At last the firing ceased, and the fleet did not move. The bad season had come: the monitors had fired so much that they had strained their guns and their towers; their keels were covered with barnacles, which impeded their progress, and they needed repairs. Other ships, on the same model, had just been constructed in the North. At last, Dahlgren acknowledged that he was waiting for the arrival of these ships to resume the attack on Charleston. Gillmore confined himself to throwing from time to time some shells on Fort Sumter, so as to prevent the enemy from repairing and arming it. The certainty that all his works might be destroyed in a few hours by the batteries on Cumming's Point was sufficient, any way, for that. The Confederates, reduced to the defensive on their inner line, were henceforth blockaded on the sea side. But, seeing their forts powerless to keep the hostile vessels away from the passes to Charleston, they wished to resort to new and bold ways to destroy them and break the chain that isolated their city from the rest of the world. In all times man, resolved to sacrifice his life, has been enabled to overcome the most redoubtable and bestprotected adversaries. In antiquity one Maccabaeus drew down on himself the elephant of Antiochus; in our day torpedo-boats have sunk armored vessels. The harbor of Charleston was witness to an exploit of this kind. Its date obliges us to reserve the narration of it, but it was preceded by attempts about which we must say a few words in finishing the historical account of the siege of Charleston during the year 1863. We have already often spoken of the defensive torpedoes—that is to say, of apparatus placed at given points, and the explosion of which, produced either by a shock or by the will of a distant agent by means of an electric current, would destroy vessels at a time when they should pass over some of these points. The Russians having already used this system of defence for their coasts during the Crimean War, the Confederates, blockaded as the Russians were, had adopted it, introducing an infinite variety in the construction and mode of ignition of these apparatuses. A special bureau, conducted by the celebrated hydrographer Maury, was established in the Navy Department at Richmond to regulate and direct the use [384] of the torpedoes, which thenceforth played a considerable part in the war as carried on at sea and on the rivers. At the period of which we are speaking a number of Federal vessels had already been made victims of these formidable engines: the fear which they caused contributed more than all the artillery of the forts to protect the harbor of Charleston. They have, however, at times caused bitter deceptions to those who in laying them believed that everything was calculated to ensure the destruction of the hostile ships. Thus during the attack on April 9th the Union flagship, the New Ironsides, cast anchor over the most powerful torpedo of the Confederates, and remained an hour in that position, the danger of which DuPont was naturally ignorant of, without the Confederates being able to succeed in exploding the apparatus, as the current of electricity was interrupted. Bold and ingenious minds had entered the path opened by Bushnell, which seemed closed since the unsuccessful attempts made by Fulton. Bushnell, the true inventor of torpedoes, who was the first to prove that powder could be ignited under water and there produce destructive effects, had connected this invention with that of submarine boats, and tried several times during the war of American independence to cause a torpedo to be fastened to the side of a hostile vessel by means of one of these boats. Thus presented, the problem to be resolved was too complicated. Fulton, some thirty years later, had not succeeded any better than Bushnell. There is nothing astonishing about this, for submarine navigation is hardly better improved to-day than it was at that period. Therefore, the bureau conducted by Maury at Richmond gave no encouragement to the inventors who sought the means of carrying torpedoes even under the hulls of hostile vessels. It was no doubt right in regard to those who thought that it was possible, amidst the troubles of the struggle in a besieged city, to resolve this problem of submarine navigation, which all the advances of science have not yet been able to conquer. A cruel experience proved once more that in time of war we must apply and put in practice systems already known rather than invent new ones. A private citizen, Mr. Hunley, built at his own expense a submarine boat provided with a screw propelled by hand, and designed to affix torpedoes which it towed to the sides of the [385] Federal ironclads while passing underneath their keels. Having on board a willing crew, the boat was about to proceed on its adventurous expedition when it was prematurely submerged by the eddy of a steamer passing by, and went down with two sailors. A fresh crew, commanded by Lieutenant Dixon, raised it and succeeded, it seems, in navigating it into the harbor of Charleston. But one day the inventor himself having wished to take the place of the absent commander, the boat, after plunging under his direction, never rose to the surface. When it was fished out shortly thereafter, it is stated that the crew had perished by being slowly asphyxiated as in a coffin. Mr. Hunley, like the sorcerer of the story who had forgotten the magical words capable of exorcising the demon after having invoked him, did not know how to move the apparatus intended to bring the vessel back to the surface. We may picture to ourselves the anguish of those wretched men seeking in vain the mechanism which could return them to life, and struggling in terrible agony as the respirable air was being exhausted around them. Several months before this disaster a young officer on Beauregard's staff, Captain Lee, had understood that to obtain an efficacious result it was necessary to simplify the attempts of Bushnell and Fulton, and disconnect the use of the offensive torpedo from the difficulties and the hazards of submarine navigation. A narrow boat, not much raised above the water, painted gray, had a good chance in a dark night of escaping from the bullets and shells of the Federals. It was then, in reality, less dangerous than the plunging boat. It was much easier to direct, and therefore offered greater chances of success. In order to increase these chances, it was not to attach surreptitiously the torpedo to the side of its adversary, but, forsooth, itself to cause the torpedo to explode on striking the hostile vessel. To that end the powder-box, furnished with an apparatus detonating on percussion, was fastened at the extremity of a long rod and glided a few feet under water in front of the boat, ready to destroy the first hull against which the pilot of the little boat should bring it in contact. This arrangement, called a spar-torpedo or torpedo with a rod, had already been tried on board the Atlanta: this vessel, which was so promptly dismantled by the Weehawken, carried such a torpedo on its prow, but [386] its lack of swiftness rendered such an engine almost useless and less dangerous than an ordinary rostrum. The merit attaching to Captain Lee was that he had armed fleet and almost invisible boats with this torpedo. Those who knew how to use it had still more merit, for the greater the chances of success, the greater also were the risks incurred. Therefore, in accordance with a biblical comparison dear to the Americans, these little vessels that were to brave their gigantic adversaries, veritable Goliaths, were dubbed ‘Davids.’ Unfortunately for the Confederates, the Secretary of War at Richmond treated with the same disfavor all projects in regard to offensive torpedoes, and it was only after great vexation that Captain Lee could bring about the adoption of his engine on board an old steamboat with which a mariner, Captain Carlin, went outside the passes to seek the Union flagship New Ironsides. He came up to the very ladder of the ship, but, his boat steering badly, he could not run into the ship, and the torpedo did not explode. Without receiving a single shot, Carlin had the luck to get out of the perilous situation in which he had placed himself by replying to the hostile sentinels that his was a Union despatch-boat. A former officer of the Federal navy, Lieutenant Glassell, a man of great audacity, had previously made a similar attempt with a rowboat armed by Captain Lee with a spar-torpedo. His expedition had met the same fate with that of Carlin. Having arrived near the Union corvette Powhatan, he had ordered his men to bend all their oars to come up with it, but either from fear or treason one of them had backed his oars; consequently, the boat had come up to the corvette broadside on, and the torpedo did not explode. Glassell, whom the enemy, being confused, had allowed to get away without sending him a single volley, thought only of beginning anew. Experience proved that it was necessary to have a steamboat, but one smaller and more manageable than that of Carlin. The Government persisting in refusing its co-operation for such attempts, he found a devoted friend, Mr. Stoney, who built at his own expense at Wilmington, where Glassell then was, a small steamboat shaped like a cigar, which, sinking deep into the water and painted gray and blue, must be almost [387] invisible at night. This boat, brought by rail to Charleston and armed with a spar-torpedo, was the first to be dubbed a ‘David.’ Glassell took the command of it, with three resolute men who composed the crew. Their number was a guarantee of success. In the evening of the 5th of October he got under way with the ebb tide, and soon arrived unperceived in the midst of the hostile fleet. He moved toward the great indistinct mass of the New Ironsides, lighted up here and there by the regulation lights: his intention, in fact, was to destroy at the first blow the most powerful of the enemy's ships. This time no accident happened to thwart the Confederate sailors in their audacious attempt. The David, true to Glassell's rudder, who manages it with his feet, having a gun in his hands, advances under a full head of steam against the New Ironsides. The challenges of the Union sentinel, who perceives it three hundred and twenty-five yards off, remain unanswered; but at the moment when the guard is gathering, Glassell, being only some forty-three yards away, shoots dead with his gun the officer on duty, Ensign Howard, expecting thus to cause confusion on board the hostile vessel, and a few seconds thereafter the David strikes the latter abaft the ladder. The torpedo explodes, shakes violently the New Ironsides, and causes an immense body of water to fall back upon its invisible adversary. The fires on the David are extinguished and the machinery refuses to operate: Glassell and two men, believing the boat to be lost, jump overboard under a shower of bullets; one man only remains on board. Despite the fire of the Federals, this man escapes without injury, and soon vanishes in the darkness: having fished up one of his comrades, he revives the fires and brings back the David intact to Charleston. Glassell and the other man, who had life-preservers, were taken by the Federals: the former was picked up in the offing, half dead with cold; the latter was found hanging to the tiller of the New Ironsides. This ship had not been seriously injured; Glassell's torpedo was not sufficiently powerful to shatter its enormous iron hull; fortunately for the Federals, the explosion bore heaviest against one of the main timbers, which had deadened its force. Still, this attempt was not altogether useless: it rendered the Federals yet more circumspect than before, and obliged them, in order to protect their craft [388] against the Davids, to surround them with nets which much interfered with their movements. The monitors, that had so often braved the artillery of the Confederates and escaped from their torpedoes, encountered more formidable enemies in the storms that winter was bringing back more and more frequently on the coast of South Carolina. The monitors were, as we have said, very bad sailers. The vessel called the Monitor had foundered off that coast on the 31st of December, 1862. One year afterward another vessel of the same class, the Weehawken, which we have already followed up in many an engagement, was lost in like manner. On the 6th of December, in the daytime, being made fast to a buoy in the Charleston roads, it went down so suddenly that some twenty men had not time to climb on the bridge and perished with the vessel. The sea, though heavy, was not rough enough to prevent the boats belonging to the rest of the fleet being lowered, and the greater part of the crew was thus saved. It is supposed that the flat bottom of the monitor, strained by a rough cruise and several strandings, had become disjointed, and soon after partly opened in consequence of the shocks which the ship, being very low in the water, had sustained from a choppy and broken sea. Eleven hours thereafter the loss of two launches capsized on the bar swelled the number of disasters caused by bad weather on this dangerous coast. Finally, the year closed in front of Charleston with an attempt, of little importance, by the Confederate troops posted on James Island against the Federal craft occupying the waters of Stono River—namely, the Marblehead, the Pawnee, and the sailing vessel Williams. A pretty sharp artillery engagement took place on Christmas Day near Legareville, and ended with the retreat of the Confederates, who left behind them some men killed and two guns. Almost the entire squadron of Dahlgren being concentrated before Charleston, a few words will suffice us to recall the incidents which occurred on the rest of the coast blockaded by this squadron. On the 17th of August the Federal steamer Norwich, reconnoitring on the St. John's River in Florida, captured two hostile signal-stations with all the personnel. On the 22d of September the crew of the gunboat Seneca destroyed considerable saltworks [389] in the vicinity of Darien, in Georgia. On the 17th of October the sailing schooner Ward, that was watching the entrance to the little bay of Murrell's Inlet to the northward of Georgetown in South Carolina, seized without fighting a hostile craft of the same strength; but three days later a part of the crew, having landed to take in water, were captured by a party of Southern horsemen. The same accident having been renewed under like circumstances in the case of the sailors belonging to the brig Perry that had relieved the Ward, Dahlgren despatched several vessels to Murrell's Inlet, and one of them, the Nipsic, effected a landing on the 1st day of January to destroy a hostile schooner. The operations of the Eastern Gulf squadron may be expressed in a few lines. Still more than elsewhere the Federals sought to destroy the salt-works so numerous on the coast of Florida: in June they destroyed those on Alligator Bay; in July, those on Marsh Island, near to the Ocklockonnee River; finally, in December they destroyed the most important ones on the Bay of St. Andrew. The capture, without fighting, of two blockade-runners on the Suwanee River on the 20th and the 24th of December closes this enumeration, as short as it is insignificant. The purely naval operations of the other Gulf squadron shall detain us still less, although this squadron had an immense stretch of coast to watch, from the Bay of Pensacola in Florida down to the boundary of Mexico at the mouth of the Rio Grande. But, on the one hand, Farragut, with some of his best ships, remained on the Mississippi after the capture of Port Hudson; and, on the other hand, the vessels that have remained at sea under the orders of Commodore Bell will be joined to the expedition that Banks, after a luckless attempt, shall undertake against Texas: the narrative of this expedition belongs to the ensuing chapter. Hence a useless cannonade on October 12th against a blockade-runner which had taken refuge under the fire of Fort Morgan at Mobile, and the engagement of the steamer Bermuda with a party of Confederates, who captured and then lost on November 14th a Federal schooner laden with coal, are the only incidents that we can mention to terminate this chapter.[390]
