0^ ■^ .^ <-^.^^ u -^ ■^ ,,^ %\ "^ V^ ^-. I? \. ■^<: ■^^ ^' % . '^r .^^ ''^y> ^'^^■ a: ' ^x ^^ $ z^:^ % #e ^ » s u ' ^ 9 ' ,0 ' ^. % I \ ^ o^ s •> " ' . A- N .,i,-"-. '■■(■> - <<• ,^-" : /.' / V >^' "^. : .f ' -, ■':'^ ^^A ^"/ <^-^ ^^ '"^ sO o ^ J^ -'-^- > "i-. LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. BY CHARLES COWLEY, \y JUDGE- ADVOCATE, S. A. B. SQUADRON, Author of " History of Lowell," " Famous Divorces of all Ages," '* Reminiscences of James C. Ayer," etc., etc. LOWELL, MASS. Published by Penh allow Printing Company. Boston— Lee & Shepard. 1879. vVym^ Copyright, 1879. By Charles Cowley. All rights reserved. PREFACE. It was my custom, while on the Staff of Admiral Dahlgren, to note briefly, from time to time, incidents that took place in the Squadron under his command. I also carefully noted the events that had taken place in that Squadron in Admiral Dupont's time, as they were related to me by those who had been eye-wit- nesses thereto. Since my return to civil life, it has been my custom to examine the successive histories of the late War that have appeared, and to note their errors and their excellencies, in relation to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, and in relation to the Department of the South, which cooperated with that Squadron. These pages will show how little attention, com- paratively, most of our historians have bestowed upon the naval and military forces whose services, suffer- ings and sacrifices are here passed in review. The mingling of narrative and criticism has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. In the pres- ent case, I indulge the hope that it may have the effect to secure to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron its proper place in the history of the War. 6 PREFACE. Without concealing my personal predilection for the Cause of the Union, I have sought to treat the Lost Cause with entire candor. Though I am not prej^ared to say, with General William F. Bartlett, that "I am as proud of the men who charged so bravely with Pickett's Division on our lines at Gettysburg, as I am of the men who so brave- ly met and repulsed them there f I am prepared to say with him, that, notwithstanding the great and wide- spread demoralization which attended it, ''the War developed and proved, on both sides, the noblest quali- ties of American manhood. It has left us soldiers and sailors, once foes, now friends, a memory of hard-fought fields, of fearful sacrifices, and of heroic valor." Since these pages were in type, the pardon of Captain Small, which was foreshadowed on page 54, has become an accomplished fact. I learned, long ago, that it was Senator Wade, and not General Hawley, who made the faux pas at the Navy Department, recorded on page 124; but failed, by inadvertence, to make the proper correction until that page had been printed. CHAELES COWLEY. Lowell, Mass., 1879. "History is false to her trust when she betrays the cause of truth, even under the influence of patri- otic impulses. It is not true that all the virtue was in the Whig camp [during the Eevolution,] or that the Tories were a horde of ruffians. They were conserv- atives, and their error was in carrying to excess the sentiment of loyalty [to their King, just as the error of the Confederates lay in carrying to excess the sen- timent of loyalty to the State,] which is founded in virtue. Their constancy embittered the contest. Their cause deserved to fail; but their sufferings are entitled to respect. Prejudice has blackened their name ; but history will speak of them as they were, with their failings and their virtues." — James L. Pettigru. "We have, we can have, no barbarian memory of wrongs, for which brave men have made the last expi- ation to the brave." — Eufus Choate. "And the men who, for conscience' sake, fought against their government at Gettysburg, ought easily to be forgiven by the sons of men who, for conscience' sake, fought against their government at Lexington and Bunker Hill." — William F. Bartlett. LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. CHAPTER I. Blockades — Steam Navies — The Southern Block- ade — Our Blockading Squadrons — Compte de Paris — The Steamer Iroquois in Chase of the R. E. Lee. Blockades are of two kinds — ^military and commercial. Military blockades have been practiced from the earliest times ; they are merely the naval equivalent of sieges by land — having for their object the capture of the ports invested. Commercial blockades have for their principal object the crippling of the enemy by stopping his imports, and by isolating him from the commercial world. So long as commerce was held in contempt, as it was in all the great monarchies and re- publics of antiquity, there was no occasion for lo LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS this form of warfare. It was not until the exploits of Vasco de Gama and Cokimbas had opened the great routes, as well as the great commodities, of modern commerce, that the Dutch Provinces of Spain, in their grand strug- gle for independence, struck a powerful blow at their truculent foe by establishing the first commercial blockade — that of the Scheldt. The blockade which the United States enforced against the ports of the Southern Confederacy, was peculiar. It combined the objects of a military, with those of a commercial blockade : and our Supreme Court recognized it as possessing a two-fold character — as valid by municipal law, and as sanctioned by international law. Had the^ Federal leaders thoroughly com- prehended the difficulties and complexities and the enormous magnitude of the work of block- ading the three thousand miles of coast between the Potomac and the Rio Grande, when the Executive Proclamation of Blockade was issued, on the nineteenth of April, 1861, the hand of President Lincoln might have been stayed. Of all the great blockades in European history, the only one that can be compared with the Federal blockade of the South, was that which was enforced by Great Britain against France LIFE A FL OA T A ND A SHORE. 1 1 and her allies-^ — with one brief intermission — from the time of the Revolution to the fall of Napoleon. ■•'•' The power which chiefly made the Federal blockade so effective — the power without which indeed the Civil War might have had a different termination — was that of steam. The power of steam, which enabled the Federal government to transfer a vast army, in one week, from the seaboard of the Atlantic to the valley of the Mississippi, — the power of steam, of which the South was substantially deprived, when, one by one, its interior lines were cut by the Federal forces, and especially when Sherman disabled all the railroads from Atlanta to the Sea, — this power, and this alone, enabled the Federal Navy to post its pickets at the mouth of every harbor, river, inlet, sound or bay, from Maryland to Mexico ; to arrest all operations of commerce, substantially, save with two obscure ports ; to recover all the Sea Islands from North Edisto to Tybee ; to make similar conquests on the coast of North Caro- lina ; to run the batteries on the Mississippi ; to plant the Star-Spangled Banner over New *See Cowley's Blockades of History, in Dahlgren's Maritime International Law, pp. 137-142 : also, London Quarterly Review^ October, 1876. 12 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS Orleans ; and to perform a thousand other feats which, without a Steam Navy, would scarcely have been attempted. Innumerable coast-line indentations multi- plied a thousand fold the difficulties which the vast extent of the Southern seaboard presented to the blockading iorces. Every sound, bay, inlet, harbor or estuary from Cape Henry to Matamoras, offered shelter to inward bound craft laden with contraband of war, as well as to cotton-carriers outward bound. Terrible tem- pests lashed the shores of the Atlantic, and the Gulf coast bristled with reefs and rocks. The ports of Virginia and North Carolina were naturally the first to receive the attention of the Federal Navy. On the thirtieth of April, notice of the establishment of the blockade at those ports was given by Flag Officer Pender- grast at Hampton Roads, agreeably to the requirements of international law.'-' On the eleventh of May, Captain McKean appeared off Charleston in the Steam Frigate Niagara, and gave notice of the blockade of that port, where his movements were watched with curious interest. Having boarded half a ♦Our prize courts released such ships as were seized for breach of blockade, without previous notice and warning. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 1 3 dozen neutral vessels, and ordered them off the whole Southern coast, Captain McKean pro- ceeded to the Gulf, and arrived off Pensacola May 25th. On the twenty-sixth of May, Captain Poor arrived off Pas a I'Outre in the Steamer Brooklyn, and gave notice of the blockade of the Mississippi. About the same time. Commander Porter arrived in Mobile Bay in the Steamer Powhatan, and gave notice of the blockade of Mobile. On the twenty-eighth of May, Flag Officer Stringham arrived off Charleston in the Steamer Minnesota, and thenceforth "the Venice of America" and all the ports of South Carolina were under close surveillance for four years. On the thirty-first of May, the Steamer Union began the blockade of Savannah. On the seventh of June, P'lag Officer Mer- vine reached Key West, and posted his pickets along the West coast of Florida and in the Gulf. On the second of July, Commander Alden, then commanding the steamer South Carolina, sent in notice of the blockade of Galveston. On the twenty-third of the same month, Flag Officer Stringham sent in notice of the blockade of Appalachicola. Considering the vast length of this line of pickets, and the fewness of the ships engaged, 14 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS the establishment of this blockade seems rather, a subject for merriment than for serious con- sideration. Mr. Welles found only forty-two ships in commission, March 4, 1861 ; and of these three were in the Mediterranean, seven on the coast of Africa, three in the East Indies, and two in Brazil. Only four ships were then in Northern ports available for service. At first, men laughed at the attempt of the Secretary of this ludicrously small Navy to blockade a coast measuring 3,,549 statute miles, (much of it having a double shore to be guarded,) and containing 189 harbors, river openings, or indentations ; but they were soon taught that, as Lord Macaulay had said, "it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learned." For, farcical as it seemed at the outset, this blockade soon became a matter of the most serious moment. Three days after the notifica- tion of the blockade by Flag Officer Pendergrast, the Federal Navy, small as it was, began to send in its prizes. ''The rapid rise in the prices of all imported commodities in the insurgent States presented," as the Count of Paris most justly observed, "the exact measure of the efficiency of the blockade. "■••'•■ ♦History of the Civil War, vol. 2, p. 434. The words of the learned and candid Count mitrht lead to the inference LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 1 5 When Congress met, in December, the Secretary of the Navy reported 136 vessels purchased, 34 dismantled vessels repaired and put in commission, and 52 vessels in process of construction ; making a total of 264 ships, 2,557 guns, and 22,000 men. The vessels engaged in this blockade duty were grouped into two squadrons : — the Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which consisted of 22 vessels, carrying 296 guns and 3,300 men, under Flag Officer Stringham, and which had for its field of operations the whole Atlantic coast from Norfolk to Cape Florida ; — and the Gulf Block- ading Squadron, which consisted of 21 vessels, carrying 282 guns, and 3,500 men, under Flag Officer Mervine, and which had for its field the entire Gulf coast from Florida to the Rio Grande. These squadrons were re-enforced as fast as new ships could be built, or old ships bought and repaired. More than two hundred vessels were built, and more than four hundred purchased during the War ; the latter represent- ing every style of marine architecture — "From Captain Noah down to Captain Cook." that oiii-fifst prizes were taken after the disaster of Bull Run, July 21, 1861. But the fact is that three prizes were captured as early as April. Thenceforward prizes were taken almost daily until all the o;reat ports of the South were recovered. Lists of all the prizes are appended to Mr. Welles' Report for 1865 i6 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S The number of men in. the naval service was rapidly increased from 7,500 to 51,500. Referring to the officers and seamen in this service, on the page already cited, the Count of Paris, in whose luminous narrative many of our naval operations are more ade- quately recorded, and more generously applaud- ed, than in some of the works of our own historians, says : — "Their task was the more arduous on account of its extreme monotony. To the watches and fatigues of every kind which the duties of the blockade service involved, there were added difficulties of another character. It was necessary to instruct the newly-recruited crews, to train officers who had been taken from the merchant navy, and to ascertain, under the worst possible circumstances, the good and the bad qualities of merchant vessels too quickly converted into men-of-war. In these junctures, the Federal Navy displayed a perseverance, a devotion, and a knowledge of its profession, which reflect as much honor upon it as its more brilliant feats of arms." To make the blockade more effective, the Atlantic Squadron, in September, was divided into two. Flag Officer Goldsborough took com- mand of the North Atlantic, guarding the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina ; while P'lag ■ LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 17 Officer Dupont was assigned to the South Atlantic, guarding the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The Gulf Squadron was also divided. Flag Officer McKean took command of the East Gulf, from Cape Canaveral to Pensacola ; while Flag Officer Farragut was assigned the com- mand of the West Gulf, from Pensacola to Matamoras. But before these divisions were fully con- cluded, Dupont and Farragut severaWy signal ized their accession to their respective commands by capturing the best of the enemy's positions for their own head-quarters, — the one at Port Royal, the other at New Orleans. Admiral Goldsborough having held the command of the North Atlantic about one year, was relieved by Admiral Lee, who held that command about two years, when Admiral Porter succeeded him. The period of Porter's command was brief, but brilliant, for it was signalized by the bombardment and capture of P'ort Fisher, and the recovery of Wilmington and all that remained unredeemed of North Carolina and Virginia. Admiral Dupont, as will more fully appear hereafter, retained the South Atlantic Squadron till July, 1863, when he was relieved by Admi- 1 8 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S ral Dahlgren, who hauled down his flag two years later at Washington, when the two Atlan- tic Squadrons, reduced to a shadow of their former greatness, were united under the com- mand of Admiral Radford. In the East Gulf, the command fell suc- cessively on Admirals Lardner, Bailey and Stribling. Admiral Farragut retained the com- mand of the West Gulf till after the capture of Mobile in 1864; and his successor was Admiral Thatcher, to whose command the East Gulf was added at the close of the war. Each of these fleets had its own history, (partly recorded, but mostly unrecorded,) its own perils and privations, its own battles and heroes, its own triumphs and trophies, its own griefs and glories. Of each, there remain many honorable recollections, which are fast vanish- ing into gloom. A few years more, and the last of us who have survived the perils of this arduous service, will have passed away to be no more seen. Local tradition may, for a time, preserve, with many a fond exaggeration, and with many a pardonable mvention of love or glory, the memory of some of the lesser lights in our naval firmament, and the grander luminaries will shine forever : but, for the rest, little will be LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 19 known of them in the next age, unless it has been, or soon is, recorded. There were, of course, many experiences which were common to all our squadrons — the dreary monotonous routine of man-of-war duty— and especially the incesant watching, the frequent chasing, and occasional capture, of the blockade-runners ; though too often, the chase ended, like all other pursuits of this mortal life, in disappointment and defeat. No blockade-runner, probably, ever effected her escape after a harder chase than that of the Steamer R. E. Lee, which was chased during the whole of the sixteenth of August, 1863, by the Steamer Iroquois, on leaving Wilmington for Nassau, with a cargo of cotton, having among her passengers Duke Gwinn and his daughter Lucy. The Iroquois was then under the command of Captain Case ; the Lee under that of the famous blockade-runner. Captain John Wilkinson, formerly a Lieutenant in the United States Navy, who tells the story as follows : — "We passed safely through the blockading fleet off the New Inlet Bar, receiving no damage from the few shots fired at us, and gained an offing from the coast of thirty miles by daylight. By this time our supply of English coal had been exhausted, and we were obliged to commence upon North Carolina coal 20 LEA VES FROM A LA WYERS of very inferior quality, and which smoked terribl3\ We commenced on this fuel a little after daylight. Very soon afterwards the vigilant look-out at the mast-head called out *Sail ho!' and in reply to 'Where away?' from the deck, snng out 'Kight astern, sir, and in chase.' The morning was very clear. Going to the mast-head I could just discern the royal of the chaser ; and before I left there, say in half an hour, her top-gallant sail showed above the horizon. By this time the sun had risen in a cloudless sky. It was evident our pursuer would be alongside of us by mid-day at the rate we were then going. The first orders given were to throw overboard the deck-load of cotton and to make more steam. The later proved to be more easily given than executed; the chief en- gineer reporting that it was impossible to make steam with the wretched stuff filled with slate and dirt. A moderate breeze from the north and east had been blowing ever since daylight and every stitch of canvas on board the square-rigged steamer in our wake was drawing. We were steering east by south, and it was clear that the chaser's advantages could only be neutralized either by bringing the 'Lee' gradually head to wind or edging away to bring the wind aft. The former course would be running towards the land, besides incurring the additional risk of being intercepted and captured by some of the inshore cruisers. I began to edge away there- fore, and in two or three hours enjoyed the satisfac- tion of seeing our pursuer clew up and furl his LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE. 2 1 sails. The breeze was still blowing as fresh as in the morning, but we were now running directly away from it, and the cruiser was going literall}- as fast as the wind, causing the sails to be rather a hindrance than a help. But she was still gaining on us. A hapjDy inspiration occurred to me when the case seemed hopeless. Sending for the chief engineer I said 'Mr. S., let us try cotton, saturated with spirits of turpen- tine.' There were on board, as -a part of the deck load, thirty or forty barrels of 'spirits.' In a very few moments, a bale of'cotton was ripped open, a bar- rel tapped, and buckets full of the saturated material passed down into the fire-room. The result exceeded our expectations. The chief engineer, ;m excitable little Frenchman from Charleston, very soon made his appearance on the bridge, his eyes sparkling with triumph, and reported a full head of steam. Curious to see the effect upon our speed, T directed him to wait a moment until the log was hove. I threw it myself; — nine and a half knots. 'Let her go now sir?' I said. Five minutes afterwards, I liove the log again ; thirteen and a quarter. We now began to hold our own, and even to gain a little upon the chaser; but she was fearfully near, * * near enough at one time for us to see distinctly the white curl of foam under her bows, called by that name among seamen. I wonder if they could have screwed another turn of speed out of her if they had known that the 'Lee' had no board, in addition to her cargo of cotton, a large amount of gold shipped by the Confed- 22 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS erate Government? There continued to be a very slight change in our relative positions till about six o'clock in the afternoon, when the chief engineer again made his appearance, with a very ominous ex- pression of countenance. He came to report that the burnt cotton had choked the flues, and that the steam was running down. 'Only keep her going till dark, sir,' I replied 'and we will give our pursuer the slip yet.' A heavy cloud-bank was lying along the horizon to the south and east ;_ and I saw a possible means of escape. At sunset the chaser was about four miles astern and gaining upon us. Calling two of my most reliable officers, I stationed one of them on each wheel-house, with glasses, directing then> to let me know the instant they lost sight of the chaser in the growing darkness. At the same time, I ordered the chief engineer to make as black a smoke as possible, and to be in readiness to cut oiF the smoke, by closing the dampers instantly, when ord- ered. The twilight was soon succeeded by darkness. Both of the officers on the wheel-houses called out at the same moment, 'We have lost sight of her,' while a dense volume of smoke was streaming far in our wake. 'Close the dampers,' I called out through the speaking tube, and at the same moment ordered the helm 'hard a starboard.' Our course was altered eight points, at a right angle to the previous one. I remained on deck an hour, and then retired to my state-room with a comfortable sense of security. We had fired so hard that the very planks on the bridge LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 23 were almost scorching hot, and my feet were nearly blistered."=* On examining the Log of the Iroquois, I find this entry, repeated, with unvarying mo- notony, ao^ain and again, watch after watch, from morning to night : — "In chase of a strange Steamer." A little more steam on the engines of the Iroquois, could it only have been obtained, would have made a fortune for Captain Case, and secured a splendid windfall for every one of his officers and crew. The Lee ran the blockade no less than twenty-one times under Wilkinson, carried out from 6,000 to 7,000 bales of cotton, worth two millions of dollars in gold, and carried into the Confederacy return cargoes of equal value. But on November 9th, 1863, the first time she at- tempted to run in under another commander, she was captured by the Steamer James Adger, and sent to Boston as a prize. f From this notable example, — ^surpassing in protracted interest anything like it in my own experience, — the reader will learn some- thing of the labor, the care, the fun, the frolic, and the peril, too, of that exciting service. ♦Narrative of a Blockade-Runner, pp. IGl-lGO 1 1 Lowell's Decisions, 36. CHAPTER II. First South Atlantic Prizes — Charleston Priva- teers — Capture of the Savannah, Petrel, and Beaure- gard — Confederate Steamer ISTashville — Mason and Slidell's Missidn — Nelson in Chase of Napoleon. It was my fortune to serve in the South Atlantic Squadron only, seeing no other except as a visitor. My reminiscences will therefore be confined to the South Atlantic Fleet, and to the Military Department of the South, with which that fleet cooperated. The first prize captured off Charleston was the Ship General Parkhill, which had been warned ofi" May 12, but disregarded the warn- ing, and was taken by the Niagara in attempting afterwards to run the blockade. The following was the notice endorsed on her Log: — "Boarded May 12th, and ordered off the whole Southern coast of the United States of America, it being blockaded. R. L. MAY, Lieutenant, U. S. S. Niagara." . LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 25 The second of the Charleston prizes was the Schooner Savannah, captured by the Brig Perry, June 3rd. She had been a pilot-boat at Charleston before the War. Her burden was fifty-four tons, and her armament one i8-pound- er mounted on a swivel amidships. She was commanded by Thomas H. Baker, of Charles- ton, and manned by twenty-two men. She had run the blockade of Charleston one day only before her capture, intending to cross the Gulf stream, proceed to Abaco, and then lie off Hole- in-the Wall to capture any vessels of the United States that she could intercept on the voyage to and from Cuba. The next day she fell in, as Mr. Greeley relates, "with the Brig Joseph, of Rockland, Me., laden with sugar from Car- denas, Cuba, for Philadelphia. Setting an American flag in her main rigging, to indicate her wish to speak the stranger, the privateer easily decoyed the Joseph within speaking dis- tance, when he ordered her captain to lower his boat and come ^ on board. This command having been readily obeyed, the merchantman was astounded by the information, fully authen- ticated by the i8-pounder aforesaid, that he was a prize to the nameless wasp on whose deck he stood, which had unquestionable authority from Mr Jefferson Davis to capture all vessels belong- 26 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S ing to loyal citizens of the United States. There was plainly nothing to be said ; so the Yankee Skipper said nothing ; but was held a prisoner on board his captor, while a prize-crew of eight well-armed men was sent on board the Joseph, directed to take her with her men into Georgetown, S. C," where she was condemned as prize of war by the Confederate prize court. When the Savannah, afterwards, on the same day, hove in sight of the Perry, the cap- tain, at once, to follow the quaint narrative of Mr. Greeley, "made all sail directly toward her, expecting, by the easy capture of a second richly laden merchantman, to complete a good day's work, even for June. On nearing her, however, he was astonished in turn by a show of teeth — quite too many of them for his one heavy grinder. Putting his craft instantly about, he attempted, by sharp sailing, to escape; but It was too late. He was under the guns of the U. S. Brig Perry, Lieut. E. G. Parrott com- manding, which at once set all sail for a chase, firing at intervals, as signals that her new acquaintance was expected to stop. The Savannah did not appear to comprehend ; for she sent four shots at the Perry, one of which passed through her rigging. So the chase con- tinued till 8 o'clock p. :.!., when the Perry had LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE. 2 7 hauled so close to the puzzling little craft as to order her by trumpet to heave to, when the schooner lowered all her sails, and her officers ran below. In a few moments, the two quarter boats of the Perry were alongside and their crews leaped upon the flyaway's deck ; when all remaining mystery as to her character was thor- oughly dispelled. Her men at once stepped forward and surrendered their side-arms ; and preceiving there was no bloodshed the leaders soon emerged from the cabin, and did like- wise. All were promptly transferred to the Perry, and returned in her to Charleston bar; whence they were dispatched, on the 7th, as prisoners, in what had been their own vessel, to New York.-" The Federal authorities, at first, threatened to treat the officers and crew of the Savannah, as pirates. But after having recognized Con- federate soldiers as prisoners of war, and not as murderers, they could not reasonably with- hold belligerent rights from Confederate sailors, whether serving in public ships of the Confed- eracy, like the Atlanta and Alabama, or in private armed cruisers bearing Confederate letters of marque. And when the Confederate States had captured a large number of Federal ♦American Conflict, vol. 1, p. 598 28 LEA VES FROM A LA WYER'S soldiers, and when President Davis threatened, as he did in a letter to President Lincoln, to punish Federal prisoners in the same manner in which his privateers were punished, the Fed- eral authorities were forced to recede from their untenable position. But I doubt whether the sunny-hearted Lincoln or his astute Secretary of State ever seriously contemplated the public execution of Southern privateers as pirates. If the Savannah perished prematurely, the Brig Jefferson Davis, which left Charleston a short time after, upon the same business, had better success.' She had previously been a Slaver, called the Echo, and had been condemn- ed as such two years before. Her armament consisted of a 32-pounder gun, placed amid- ships, mounted on a pivot, so that it might be used in all directions, and on each side a 32- pounder and a 12-pounder; and she was manned by 260 men. The Jefferson Davis was painted black and looked like the craft which the poet described, "Built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark." She spread terror through New England and ran in as near as the Nantucket Shoals, making on her way prizes valued roughly at ;^225,ooo. After a brief but brilliant career, this famous privateer, (for she carried letters of marque LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 29 from the President whose name she bore,) on August 17th grounded on the bar of St. Augustine, and was lost. Captain Coxetter and all his crew returned in triumph to Charleston. ••'■ The third Charleston prize was the Ship Amelia, captured by the Wabash and Union, June 1 8th. The anniversary of the battle of Waterloo proved a Waterloo to her. Previous to "this, ( June 8th,) the Union had taken the Brig Hallie Jackson off Savannah. On the ninteenth of July, the Schooner Dixie ran the blockade of Charleston to cruise as a privateer. She carried four guns : her burden was 150 tons ; her commander, Thomas J. Moore, had letters of marque from President Davis On the fourth day after leaving Charles- ton, she fell in with and captured the Bark Glen, from Portland, Maine. Two days later, she cap- tured the Schooner Mary Alice, of New York, with a cargo of sugar, from the West Indies : but this prize was promptly recaptured by the block- ading fleet. Another week passed, when the Dixie captured her third and last prize, the Bark Rowena of Philadelphia, with a cargo of coffee. Captain Moore transferred himself to his prize. On the night of August 27th, the Rowena and^ ♦Appletou's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, p. 586. 30 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S Dixie ran safely into Charleston, narrowly es- caping capture by the Federal blockaders, which were too few in number for that wide-mouthed, many-channeled port. The fourth of the Charleston prizes was the Schooner Petrel, taken by the St. Lawrence, July 28th. She had previously borne the name of Governor Aiken, and had been a United States revenue cutter at Charleston. She had been out of Charleston but a few hours when she fell in with the St. Lawrence, which she mistook for a merchantman. The St. Lawrence encouraged the mistake by pretending to run away until both had got into deep water, and the Petrel had approached within close range of the St Lawrence. Then, suddenly, an 8-inch shell was discharged from the St. Lawrence's Paixhan gun, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky ; it fell into the Petrel's hold, exploded, and sent her to the bottom in an instant. Four of the crew went down with her: the rest were picked up by the St. Lawrence's boats. They suppos- ed they had heard a clap of thunder, and mis- took the flashes of the St. Lawrence's guns for lightning. It took some time to satisfy them that they had had a fight with a Federal frigate, and had been made prisoners of war. Then some of them appeared sad ; some glad ; some puzzled and amused ; and some indifferent. LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE. 3 1 The commander of the Petrel, William Perry, held a letter of marque from President Davis ; and though his little craft carried but a single gun, he would, doubtless, have made havoc among our merchantmen, had not the St. Lawrence, in this summary manner, "prevailed on him to stop." He and his officers and men were all taken to Philadelphia, and, after lying for some time in jail, were exchanged as prisoners of war. The fifth of the Charleston prizes, the Brigantine Hannah Balch, was recaptured by the Confederate Steamer Winslow off Hatteras, on her way to the prize court. Three more prizes, the Middleton, Alert, and Watson, taken August 16, October 3 and 15, by the Roanoke and Flag, complete the list of Charleston captures, down to the arrival of Dupont at Port Royal, on the Eve of Guy P'avvkes' Day, November 4, 1861. On the twelfth of November, 1861, the Steamer William G. Anderson, cruising in the Bahama Channel, captured the Schooner Beau- regard, which had run the blockade of Charleston, only one week before, to cruise as a privateer. She was "a long, low, rakish looking craft," re- sembling the ships of the pirates who infested those waters from 181 2 to 1820. Her burden 32 LEA VES FROM A LA WYERS was about a hundred tons, and her armament a single 24-pounder pivot gun ; and she was manned by a captain, two lieutenants, a purser and twenty-two seamen. On sighting the Anderson, the Beauregard ran towards her till she came within four miles, when her captain "suddenly hauled by the wind," probably dis- covering that the stranger was an armed vessel of the Navy, and not a defenceless trader. And now the Anderson in turn gave chase, and in two hours brought the Beauregard under her lee, fired a gun, and ordered the captain to come on board with his papers. . The privateer captain obeyed that order, and showed a letter of marque signed by Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, and countersigned by Robert Toombs, Secretary of State, and bearing the seal of the Confederacy. '■•" In his dispatch to the Navy Department, Lieutenant William C. Rogers, the commander of the Anderson, (who, like all his officers, was a volunteer,) says : — ♦Neither Harper, nor Greeley, nor the Count of Paris, nor Lossino-, nor Boynton, mentions the Dixie. Harper, alone of these authorities, mentions the Jefferson Davis ; while the Count alone mentions the Beauregard ; and he errs, as in the case of the Savannah, in saying that she captured "a few prizes." Vol 1, p. 430. There is a good account of the Beauregard in Putnam's Rebellion Record, vol. 2, pp. 429, 430, Gilbert Hay was her commander. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 33 **We put a prize-master and a crew on board, and transferred the prisoners to our ship, placing them in double irons. On boarding her the crew were found in a drunken state, com- mitting all the destruction they could — throwing overboard the arms and ammunition, spiking the gun, and cutting the sails and rigging to • pieces. She was otherwise in bad order and poorly found, and having but a short supply of water. Having twenty-seven prisoners, and no room for them on board the W. G. Anderson, I decided, as we were within three days' sail of Key West, to take them and the vessel into that port and deliver them to the proper authorities." There were several other privateers that sailed from Charleston, and from Savannah, of which I have learned but little — such as the Brig Bonita, previously a Slaver ; the iron Steamer James Grey; the Schooner Sallie, which ran out of Charleston and captured the Brig Granada and the Betsy Ames, which were con- demned as prizes by Judge Magrath in the Confederate Admiralty Court at Charleston and sold by the Confederate States Marshal. The Savannah, the Petrel, the Dixie, the Sallie, the Jefferson Davis, and the Beau- regard, were strictly privateers. I now come to a vessel of another sort On the 26th of Octo- 34 LEA VES FROM A LA IVYERS ber,'"'" the Confederate Steamer Nashville ran the blockade of Charleston under the command of Lieutenant Robert B. Pegram,-f then of the Confederate States Navy, but previously of the Federal Navy, to cruise, not as a privateer, but as a public armed vessel of the Confederacy, t The Nashville narrowly escaped being- captured as promptly as the three privateers whose fate I have just now recorded. The Steamer Connecticut, which was sent in pur- suit of her, put into Burmuda in search of her before the Nashville arrived. The Nashville captured and destroyed one prize, the Ship Harvey Birch, of New York. She afterwards ran the blockade of Beaufort, North Carolina. At a later period, she entered the Ogeechee, and landed a cargo of arms in ♦This is the correct date. See the Case of tHe United Sra^es, iu Papers rehiting to the Treaty of Washiuijton — Geneva Arbitration, vol. 1, p. 132; and the Case of Great Britain, ihid, p. 232; as well as the Counter Case of Great Britain, ihid, vol. 2, pp. 295, 3:1:7. But in the Argu- ment of the United States, Messrs. Gushing, Evarts and AVaite give the erroneous date of August 26th. Ihid, vol. 3, p. 138. The same error disfigures the Opinion of Mr. Adams. Ihid. vol. 4, pp. 212-214. tCompare his commission, in Putnam's Rebellion Record, vol. 3, p. 410, with the commissions of officers in the Federal Navy, in Lossing's History of the Civil War, vol. 1, p. 560. LIFE AFLOAT A ND A SHORE. 3 5 Georgia, but was blockaded by the Federal fleet, and prevented from getting out. Week after week, she lay under the guns of Fort McAllister, — "As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." Finally in Febuary, 1863, she was destroyed by the Monitor Montauk.'--" She seems to have been meant for special service on occasions of emergency, and especi- ally for duty in connection with the diplomacy of the Confederacy. Messrs. Mason and Slidell, the envoys to Great Britain and France, were to have been carried out by her. The Tribunal of Arbitration, at Geneva, unanimously decided that Great Britain was not liable for the damages done to the commerce of the United States by the Nashville. Such also was the decision of that Tribunal upon the claim of the United States for damages done by the Davis, the Sallie and other privateers from Charleston. These claims had no such foundation as those for damages done by the *No historian of the late Civil War gives us anything like a clear or connected account of the Nashville. The Count of Paris, or rather his translator, errs, as in the case of the Sumter, in calling her a "privateer." Vol. 2, p. G45. Boynton calls her *'a very fine and fast English blockade-runner." History of the Navy &c. vol. 2, p. 436. As well call her a Chinese war iunk. 36 LEA VES FROM A LA WYER'S Alabama, the Florida and other cruisers fitted out in British ports. -'' On the night of the twelfth of October — the same night of extreme darkness on which the Confederate Flag Officer HoUins attempted to raise the Federal blockade of the passes of the Mississippi — the Steamer Theodora, formerly called the Gordon, ran out of Charleston, and carried to Cuba James M. Mason and John Slidell, the Confederate Envoys to Great Britain and France. The subsequent seizure of the envoys by Captain Wilkes on board the British Mail Steamer Trent has been related with all desirable fulness by most of the historians of the late War ; although, I apprehend, that the question of the rightfulness of that seizure is generally but little better understood than when Captain Wilkes sent across the bow of the Trent that famous shell which, like the shot of Lexington, was "heard round the world." I was in Boston when Mason and Slidell were brought to Fort Warren as prisoners of war — when the great banquet was given to Captain Wilkes — when Governor Andrew "slop- ped over," as he had done before, when he kissed the gun in the Senate Chamber, — and *But see Harriett Martineau's remarks on this subject iu lier Autobiography. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 37 when even the learned Chief Justice Bigelow, for the first, last and only time in his career, soiled the ermine by using it ad captandiun vidgiis with opinions which his sober second thought disaffirmed. All the newspapers applauded Wilkes. His pluck was cheered in every public assembly : "his praise was in all the churches." Even conservative statesmen, like the late Edward Everett, hastened to say, by way of preludes to lyceum lectures, that there was a precedent for the seizure of these envoys in the capture by Great Britain of Henry Laurens, while on his way, during our Revolutionary War, in a block- ade-runner from the United States to Holland. It was only here and there that I met a clear- sighted, hard-headed lawyer like Judge Abbott, who shook his head ominously, and said, ''This wont do. We can never justity, on our principles, the seizure of any belligerent on his passage in a neutral ship from the port of one neutral to the port of another." The great natural sagacity of President Lincoln enabled him to view this seizure by the clear, cold light of reason : and he insisted that Seward, (who was the ablest of his lieutenants, though never his master) should inform Her Britannic Majesty that Captain Wilkes had acted without authority. 38 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S Suppose that, in the late Turko-Russian War, an Ambassador of the Porte had been seized by the captain of a Russian cruiser on board an American steamboat plying between New York and Havanna, and taken thence to Cronstadt, and there incarcerated as a prisoner of war: I apprehend that the American Eagle, that blessed Bird of Freedom, would have screamed quite as loudly as the British Lion growled over the act of Captain Wilkes. Some such case, as I have been told, was put by the President, hypothetically, in one of his conversations with Mr. Seward. Had not the darkness of the night, the number and width of the channels of Charleston, and the fewness of our fleet off the bar, prevented the capture of the Theodora, a case that ranks among the most famous in the history of international relations, would not have occurred. And what honors would not have been paid to the blockading captain who should have captured the Theodora with her distinguish- ed passengers. They were to have sailed in the Nashville, as I have said ; and how promptly the Federal cruisers bounded over the waves to catch them, appears from the fact that one of them, as already stated, actually reached St. Georges, the port of their supposed destination LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 39 in the Bahamas, before the ship in which they were to have sailed, left Charleston. By chang- ing the time of their departure, and their port of destination, as well as the vessel in which they sailed, the Confederate Envoys placed the Federal cruisers at the greatest disadvantage. How extremely difficult it is to intercept an enemy at sea, without knowing his destination, was strikingly illustrated by the experience of Lord Nelson, when in pursuit of Admiral Brueys' fleet, which carried General Bonaparte and the **Army of Egypt" to the scene of their glory and their shame. Even Nelson, "the first and last of the Titans of the sea," did not escape cruel outcries of "delatoriness and incapacity," which, though they ''redoubled his anxiety," could not increase his untiring vigilance and sleepless activity. The incidents of this chase are thus related by Lamartine in his admirable Memoirs of Celebrated Characters : — "Bonaparte embarking at Toulon an expe- ditionary force, on board the most formidable fleet that had navigated the Mediterranean since the Crusades, left the English ministers in doubt as to the object he had in view. Did he propose to pass the Straits, and attack Great Britain in one of her European islands or in the Indies "i Was it his intention to seize Constantinople, and 40 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS from thence to dictate to Russia and Austria, and to command the seas of Europe ? Lord St. Vincent, the admiral in chief command of the naval forces of England on the coasts of France, Italy and Spain, dared not abandon the blockade of Cadiz and the French ports ; he therefore dispatched Nelson, as the bravest and most skillful of his lieutenants, to watch, pursue, and, if possible, destroy the French armament. Nelson, successively re-enforced by sixteen sail of the line, hoisted his flag in the Vanguard, and hastened after the enemy without any cer- tain indication of their course. After touching at Corsica, already left behind by Bonaparte, and examining the Spanish seas, he returned to Naples on the i6th of January, 1798, discourag- ed by a fruitless search, and in want of stores and ammunition, While there, the reports of the English consuls in Sicily apprised him of the conquest at Malta by the French, with the subsequent departure of the fleet as soon as that island was reduced, and directed his thoughts towards Egypt. **The intrigues of Lady Hamilton, animated by her double attachment to the queen and to Nelson, obtained from the Court of Naples, notwithstanding their avowed neutrality, all the supplies necessary for the English squadron LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 41 before they resumed their dangerous cruise. ■'•'■ In a few days Nelson was ready to put to sea ; he touched at Sardinia, coasted the shores of the Peloponnesus, searched the Levant in its full extent, dispatched small vessels to look into the road of Alexandria, where the French had not yet appeared, traversed the Egyptian sea, sailed along one side of Candia while the Republican fleet passed by on the other, came close to Malta, vainly interrogated every ship or boat coming from the Archipelago, learned that there was already an outcry against him at home for his delatoriness or incapacity, exclaimed against the winds, crowded additional sail, braved con- tinual tempests, and finally, on the ist of August, at early dawn, discovered the naked masts of the French fleet at anchor in the Bay of Aboukir." The victory of the Nile then won by Nelson was the most complete that had ever been wor^ at sea since the invention of gunpowder ; and must have shamed those carping critics who had *The fatal attachment between Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, 'like the passion of Antony and Cleopatra, ''inflamed the coasts of the Mediterrenean, changed the face of the world, and carried on to glory, to shame, and to crime, a hero entangled in the snares of beauty." See Lamartine's fine memoir of Nelson, quoted in Cowley's Famous Divorces of All Ages. 42 LEA VES FROM A LA WYERS stung the pride of Nelson with their senseless calumnies. CHAPTEE III. Battle of Port Ko3^al— General T. F. Drayton — Occupation of the Sea Islands — General T. W. Sherman's Army — Battle of Port Royal Ferry — Bobert Small — Ter-centennary of Charles Fort — Battle of Secessionville — Blunder of General Ben- ham — ^Victory of General Evans — General Stevens. Had not the name of Dupont shone among the brightest in the American Navy, he would not have been assigned to the command of the fleet of seventeen men-of-war and thirty-three other vessels, which left Hampton Roads, Oct- ober 29th, 1 86 1, for Port Royal. His heart may well have swollen with both professional and pa- triotic pride, as he gave the signal, ''Weigh anchor," to a fleet manifold greater than had ever before been assembled under any American commander. The terrible tempest which sepa- rated his fleet off Hatteras, has often been compared with that which overtook the Duke LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 43 of Medina Sidonia and the Spanish Armada, nearly three centuries before : and many devout souls in the Confederate States regarded it as a sign of Divine displeasure towards the Federal- ists, and as a proof of the favor of Almighty God for the cause of the South. The battle of Port Royal was the first oc- casion on which a Steam Navy fought land batteries while sailing in a circle ; though some- thing like it was attempted by Admiral Dundas, seven years earlier, in the harbor of Sebastopol.* Like the later capture of New Orleans, it was wholly the work of the Navy, and the Army merely held what the Navy acquired. The Federal force engaged was so much greater than that of the Cenfederates, in the number and weight of guns, that to have failed of success would have covered it with disgrace. The merit of Dupont lies in having effected his object with but little loss. ♦Kiuglake's Invasion of the Crimea, vol. 2, chapter 17. Admiral Hamelin's signal to the French fteet on that occasion, — "Za France regardes vous" — deserves to he bracketed with that which thrilled the tars of Nelson on the morning of Trafalgar, — "England expects every man to do his dnty;" or with the famous "sentiment" with which Bonaparte roused the energies of his Colonels on the mornino- of the Pyramids, — "From yonder summits forty centuries look down upon you." 44 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S If, as the Duke of Wellington s-aid, the art of war consists in the accomplishment of great results by small sacrifices, the credit due to Dupont can hardly be overstated. It is not often that a soldier fights in his own village and on his own estates. But General Thomas F. Drayton's plantation was hard by the fort which his valor defended, and his house stood a mile or so distant, within a few yards of the beach, commanding one of the finest views of land and sea in the whole archipelago of St. Helena. Like Dahlgren, Pegram, and many other officers, the sad fatalities of the civil war compelled General Drayton to fight against his own brother. Captain Percival Drayton, who commanded the Steamer Pocahontas in, the fleet of Dupont. , There is a noble essay of Lord Macaulay in which Colonel John Hampden, mortally wounded at Chalgrove, by Prince Rupert's cav- alry, is pictured to us ''with his head drooping, and his hands leaning on his horses neck, mov- ing feebly out of the battle. The mansion which had been inhabited by his father-in-law, and from which in his youth he had carried home his bride, Elizabeth, was in sight." With similar feelings doubtless the Confederate Gen- eral Drayton looked back upon that comfortable LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 45 mansion where he had so often sat listening to the melancholy music of the sea, and thinking of the possible future of that magnificent bay, in which all the Navies of the world might ride. Lossing and the Count of Paris give excellent detailed accounts of the battle of Port Royal. More condensed summaries are given by Greeley, Harper, Boynton, and many others. The reports of Admiral Dupont and Secretary Welles to the President, must not be overlooked. '••■ As long as Mr. Welles was in office, persistent attempts were made to belittle him. Whatever he achieved, the merit of it was attributed to Mr. Fox, Mr. Faxon, or some body else. Many denied him the credit due for his reports, which are among the most mast- erly State papers ever penned by a public man. Now that he is no more, the truth may perhaps be told without offence. Mr. Welles had admir- able assistants : but he filled, really as well as nominally, the first place in his Department. In the matter of style, which is of no small importance, (for "the style is the man,") he is without a superior among all the men of learning who have filled his place, not excepting Bancroft, the historian, or Secretary Thompson, *See also General Draytou's Report, Id Putuam's Re- bellion Record, vol. 11, p. 101. Also vol. 3, pp. 304-318. 46 LEA VES FROM A LA WYERS the keen analyzer and expositor of the relations of the Papacy and the Civil Power. •••■ This victory of Dupont was achieved exactly one year from the day when South Caro- lina began her preparations for secession — namely, on the day following the election of President Lincoln. During the year, the armies of the Union had met with so many Big Beth- els, Bull Runs, Ball's Bluffs, and Belmonts, that the people of the North had become much dis couraged. But upon the recovery of the Sea Islands by Dupont, "the winter of our discon- tent" at once became glorious summer ; and even the growlers of the press became cheerful, hopeful and happy. The late William S. Robinson called attention to this coincidence of dates in his "Warrington" letters, and added : "Verily this has been an eventful and glorious year ; and I^ who have been complaining and scolding at the government for inactivity, should feel ashamed of myself, did I not think that complaint and un- easiness and criticism on the part of the press and people had been useful in bringing the ad- ministration up to its present position." ♦Mr. Pollard notices the contrast between '*the won- derful energy" displayed by Mr. Welles, and the '-feeble administration" of the Confederate Navy, in his Lost Cause, pp. 192, 224. LIFE AFLOAT A ND A SHORE. 47 Charming self-complacency ! As if the Ad- ministration had actually been stimulated in its efforts by clamors tending directly to baffle and discourage it. By the capture of Port Royal we gained an admirable naval depot and a firm foothold in the region of the Sea-Islands Cotton. It also af- forded a grand theatre for those Anti-Slavery experiments in which General Hunter, General Saxton, Chaplain French, Colonel Higginson, E. L. Pierce, and many other gentlemen, and many ladies, too, distinguished themselves . Beaufort district was one of the richest and most thickly settled in the Palmetto State. It contained about 1,500 square miles, and pro- duced, annually, 50,000,000 pounds of rice, and 14,000 bales of cotton. It then had a pop- ulation of about 40,000, of whom more than three-fourths were slaves. Beaufort was named for the beautiful Ga- brielle d'Estrees, mistress of Henry the Fourth of France, who made her Duchess of Beaufort. She it was, more than Duperron or D'Ossat, who prevailed upon that amorous monarch to renounce Protestantism, and make his peace with Rome. While the ships of Dupont were spinning round the ellipse in Port Royal Harbor, General 48 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS R. E. Lee was on his way to the Confederate Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida for the purpose of directing and super- vising the construction of a line of defence along the coasts of those States, He established his headquarters at Coosawhatchie, on the railroad, about midway between Charleston and Savan- nah. '•'" But as Colonel Taylor, of his Staff, writes, "beyond the prosecution of this work of fortifying the coasts and rivers, nothing of importance occurred during his three months' stay in this department. He was in Charleston at the time of the great conflagration." Early in March 1862 he returned to Richmond. The military force, which was assigned to occupy the Sea Islands, consisted of three bri- gades numbering about fifteen thousand men, besides artillery, the whole under General Thomas W. Sherman. The brigades were as follows : — FIRST BRIGADE. Brigadier-General Egbert S. Viele. Third New Hampshire Volunteer .Infantry. Eighth Maine Forty-sixth New York '' ' " Forty-seventh New York ** " Forty-eighth New York ** *' *Four Years with Gen. Lee, p. 37. LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 49 SECOND BRIGADE. Brigadier-General Isaac I. Stevens. Eighth Michigan Volunteer Infantry. ^ Fiftieth Pennsylvania " " ; One Hundredth Pennsylvania'-'" " Seventy-ninth New Yorkf *' *^ THIRD brigade:. Brigadier-General Horatio G. Wright Sixth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry. Seventh Connecticut " ** ' Ninth Maine Fourth New Hampshire ** " Third Rhode Island Dupont and Sherman cooperated admirably in recovering and picketing all the Sea Islands from the North Edisto River to Wassaw Sound. No forcible resistance was made to them by the Confederates until New Year's Day, 1862, when a determined stand was made under Generals Gregg and Pope at Port Royal Ferry, on the Coosaw River. General Isaac I. Stevens and Captain C. R. P. Rodgers commanded the Federal military and naval forces respectively. Mr. Lossing's account of the battle of Port Royal Ferry is the best that has yet appeared. *Commonly called "Roundheads." fColonel James Cameron, the first commander of this regiment, called "Highlanders," was killed at Bull Run. 50 LEA VES FROM A LA WYER'S ' Why the Confederate forces made this stand at Port Royal Ferry, will readily appear when one remembers that "the Shell Road," that beautiful and only thoroughfare by land between Beaufort and Charleston, strikes the Coosaw at this ferry, nine miles north of Beau- fort. By this brief battle the Federal forces succeeded in destroying the Confederate works and in burning their houses ; still, the Coosaw River continued, for three years longer, the dividing line between the opposing pickets ; the Confederates holding the left bank, and the Federals holding the right of that stream. The Eighth Michigan sustained the heaviest fire of grape and canister from the Confederates, and here its major, A. B. Watson, was mortally wounded. "••' On March 31st, 1862, the Department of the South was established under General Hun- ter, and the name of his predecessor was no more heard in South Carolina, Georgia and ♦See Lossing, vol. 2, p. 127; the Count of Paris, vol. 1, p. 464 ; and the reports of Dupont, Rodgers, and others, in Putnam, vol. 4, pp. 1-10 This battle is not mentioned by Mr. Greeley, though his narrative does contain, as he says, "accounts (nec- essarily very brief) of many minor actions and skir- mishes which have been passed unheeded by other his- torians." Neither does Harper's History mention it. J LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 51 Florida, till another and far greater Sherman marched his pic-nic party from Atlanta to the Sea. The new commander divided the depart- ment into three districts — the Northern, under General Benham ; the Southern, under General Brannan ; and the Western, under General L. G. Arnold. '••" The adjutant-general of this depart- ment was Major Charles G. Halpine, the famous *'Miles O'Reilly," who indited some of his best effusions at Port Royal. The more striking events in this depart- ment have, of course, their place in most of the histories of the War ; but none save those who shared its severe picket duty, or the severer picket duty of the cooperating ships, can duly appreciate the importance or the irksomeness of the part which it faithfully performed. Upon the maintenance of a picket line of 250 miles in this department depended our holding the archipelago of St. Helena ; and upon that again depended Sherman's Grand March. Colonel Higginson sums up this work in these words : — "The operations on the South Atlantic coast, which long seemed a merely subordinate and incidental part of the great contest, proved ♦Hunter's Order is in Putnam, vol. 4, p. 353. 52 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER: S to be one of the final pivots on which it turned. All now admit that the fate of the Confederacy ^vas decided by Sherman's march to the sea. Port Royal was the objective point to which he marched and he found the Department of the 'South, when he reached it, held almost exclus- ively by colored troops. Next to the merit of those who made the march, was that of those who held open the door."--' Much has been said about the attempt to close the harbor of Charleston by sinking ships in its principal channels. Why the Federal Navy might not thus seal up a hostile port, as Cardinal Richelieu did Rochelle, it is dificult to see. But it is useless now to discuss what might have been. Sixteen vessels loaded with stone were sunk in the Main Channel. But two or three spring tides, (those flood tides which attend the full moon,) washed the "stone fleet" out of the way. Harper's History states that, "in a few weeks, the Ashley and Cooper Rivers made for themselves a new channel, better than the previous one." Greeley thinks "the partial closing of one of the passes, through which the waters of the Ashley and Cooper rivers find their way to the ocean, was calculated to *Army Life in a Black Regiment, p. 263. LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE. 5 3 deepen and improve the remaining."'-'" But the fact is, there never was a partial closing of the ship channel. The sixteen old whalers, loaded with stone and sunk checkerwise there, disap- peared like phantom ships. While the people of Charleston were com- plaining of this imaginary peril, a real and over- whelming calamity came upon them, and a large portion of "the Venice of America" was reduc- ed to ashes. The daring stratagem of Robert Small, the slave pilot of the Confederate Steamer Planter, plying between the city of Charleston and the forts which defended it, has not escaped the notice of Mr. Lossing, or of the Count of Paris. It was one of the most brilliant personal exploits in a war in which brilliant deeds were not uncommon on either side. Small not only brought to the Federal fleet a useful vessel and four heavy cannon ; but he brought also valuable information. From him we learned that General Pemberton, who had succeeded General Lee in this department, had determined to abandon Cole's Island, and was strengthening the defences of James' Island. Small's intimate knowledge of the River and Bay of Stono enabled him to pilot the ♦Harper, vol. 2, p. 733; Greeley, vol. 2, p. 458. 54 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS Unadilla, the Pembina and the Ottowa as far towads Charleston by that channel as beyond Legareville — a service of the greatest import- ance to the Navy, although the benefit of it was lost by the failure of the Army to move with the requisite force and celerity on that line.'-'' Small afterwards became an Acting Master in our Squadron, and commanded the Planter till the end of the War. He has since been a State Senator, and is now a Representative in Congress. It is true, he has been convicted of accepting a Five-Thousand-Dollar Bribe. But his conviction was procured by the testimony of a single witness, and that witness an accomplice ; and there is doubt as to its justness. And even if he was guilty, it was at a time when all around him, including men who had been brought up under the most favorable conditions, were rolling in wealth obtained by bribes. The generosity of Governor Hampton may yet pardon Small. If the Governor hesi- tates to condone the bribe-taking on account of the "stealing" of the Planter, let him ponder on ♦Small's bold exploit was not done suddenly, as the Count of Paris infers. Vol. 2, p. 234. It was known to scores of Charleston slaves, who kept the secret well. Strange that neither Greeley nor Harper deigns to notice Small, though the latter reports speeches by village poli- ticians at flag-raisings. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 55 the pithy remark of another gallant son of the Palmetto State : "You cant expect much moral- ity for twelve dollars a month. ""''^" Small's life had been passed at hard labor without even twelve dollars a month. On the twenty-seventh of May, occurred the three hundreth anniversary of an event which, if we had had not been so strenuously engaged in making history that we had little leisure for recalling it, might have been celebrat- ed from Maine to Mexico — the landing of the first European settlers in the United States. These settlers were Norman Protestants, and their expedition, which consisted of two small vessels under the command of Jean Ribaut, was fitted out under the auspices of Admiral Coligny, the famous Huguenot chief, who perish- ed with many thousands of his co-religionists in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Captain Ribaut was an officer of great merit. He was accompanied by Rene de Ladonniere, afterwards Governor of Fort Caroline, and other gentlemen of high repute in their day. The expedition left France on the eighteenth of February — a day destined to distinction in ♦Admiral Steadmaii's remark, when voting for a lenient sentence on a sailor, found guilty of stealing, by a naval general court-martial in 1865. 56 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S the history of the South as the day of President Davis' inauguration, and the day of the evacua- tion of Charleston. After landing near St. Augustine and at other points on the coast of Florida and Georgia, on the twenty-seventh of May, 1562, Captain Ribaut entered that spacious and beautiful bay which, "because of the fairnesse and largenesse thereof," (as Ladonniere relates,) he named Port Royal. He spent several days in exploring the rivers which enter this bay, and in examin- ing the coast. Upon this shore he erected a column of stone engraven with the arms of his native France. Ribaut has sometimes been called the discoverer of Port Royal, but he was not. The Spanish navigator, Vasquez de AUyon, had been there more than forty years before — .in 1520. Having determined to plant a colony here, he built a fort, the walls being formed of a kind of concrete made largely of oyster shells, and called coquina. The remains of these walls are still visible on Old Fort Plantation, at the mouth of Battery Creek, about six miles from Beaufort. As this fort was to contain only twenty-six men, it was only twenty-six fathoms long and thirteen wide. Captain Ribaut called it Charles Fort in honor of his King, Charles LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 57 the Ninth, and placing it under the command of Captain Albert de la Pierria, he turned his prows toward France. The solitude of the wilderness is as de- pressing as the solitude of the sea ; and the eniiui endured by the little garrison of Charles Fort, "with no civilized neighbors from the North Pole to Mexico," can only be compared with that which our own Navy experienced dur- ing the long blockade of the South. It drove them to sickness — to dispair — to insanity. In a mutiny which arose, Albert was put to death by his own men, and Nicholas Barre was chosen commander ; but the fear of coming famine and the want of provisions made the men desperate. They obtained food from the Indians for some time. Finally, they built a rude pinnace — the first sea-going vessel ever constructed on this Continent — and embarked for France. After incredible sufferings from hunger and thirst, they were picked up by an English vessel, the captain of which presented some of them to Queen Elizabeth ; and glad they were to see once more their native Normandy. Mr. Simms has illustrated the sojourn of Albert de la Pierria at Port Royal in the Lily and the Totem. Colonel Higginson, whose regiment of blacks was encamped for some time 58 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS near Charles, Fort, during the late War, gives extracts from the narratives of Ribaut and Ladonniere in his American Explorers. '-•=" From Captain Ribaut this Continent re- ceived the name of Nouvelle France ; and here began that series of efforts to establish French supremacy in America, which were renewed, again and again, for more than two hundred years, till the conquest of Canada by General Wolfe in 1759. In fact this dream of a French empire was not wholly dismissed till the sale of Lomsiana in 1801 ; an act to which the great First Consul consented only from inevitable necessity, declaring to our Commissioners that, but for the certainty that Great Britain would seize Louisiana in the war then impending, he would rather cut off his right arm than cede that territory to the United States. On the sixteenth of June, 1862, the Fed- eral forces in the northern district of this de- partment, aided by three of our gunboats, made an assault on the Confederate works, which should have been made several weeks earlier, or not at all. I refer to the battle of Seces- sionville, more often called the battle of James' ♦See also Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World, De Brey's Florida, and the learned work of Professor Rivers. LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 59 Island. The Confederate farces in. this district had been increased two days before to 2,000 men, under General N. G. Evans ; the batteries at Secessionville being under Colonel T. G« Lamar, of the First South Carolina Artillery. The Federal troops on the island outnum- bered the Confederates more than three to one, but the latter had, of course, an immense advantage in position, and not much more than half of the former were engaged at all. The principal fighting was done by General Stevens' division. The first brigade commanded by Colonel William W. Renton, made the as- sault in the most gallant manner. This brigade consisted of the Eighth Michigan, Lieutenant- Colonel Graves ; the Seventh Connecticut, Lieutenant-Colonel J. R. Hawley ; and the Twenty-eighth ^Massachusetts, Lieutenant-Col- onel M. Moore. It was gallantly supported by the second brigade, commanded by Colonel Daniel Leasure, consisting of the Seventy-ninth New York, Lieutenant-Colonel Morrison ; the One Hundredth Pennsylvania, Major Daniel A. Leckey ; and the Forty-sixth New York, Colonel Rudolph Rosa. Two companies of the Eighth Michigan under Captains Ely and Doyle, and one com- pany of Colonel Serrell's New York Volunteer 6o LEA VES FROM A LA WYER'S Engineers under Captain Sea-s, formed the storming party. Captain Rockwell's Connecti- cut Light Battery and Captain S. M. Sargeant's company of the First Massachusetts Cavalry, followed in the rear. The Count of Paris praises these young and inexperienced troops as having "behaved like veterans." They had to advance upon a nai;row ridge of sand not over 200 yards wide, swept by grape and canister from six cannon, (one of which was sighted by Lamar himself,) and exposed to a murderous fire from rifle-pits and sharp-shooters on both flanks and in their rear. The crossing of the famous bridge of Lodi could hardly have been more terrible.'"'" The batteries they attacked were protected by an insuperable abatis, a ditch seven feet deep, and a parapet nine feet high. The Count of Paris says, "They advanced with the bayonet without firing a shot, and had already passed the last hedge, situated some five hundred yards from the work, before its defenders had become aware of their approach. Colonel Lamar had scarcely collected a few men, and fired his seige-gun once, when the assailants were al- ♦At St. Helena, Bonaparte said, it was at Lodi, as he crossed the bridge with Lannes, that he felt the first spark of his all-devouring ambition — which the battles of Tou- lon, Milesimo and Monte Notts had failed to kindle. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 6i ready in the ditch. One of the most sanguin- ary close combats was engaged on the parapet itself; it was five o'clock in the morning, the day was hot, foggy and damp ; the combatants were soon enveloped in dense smoke. The boldest among the Federals had penetrated into the entrenchments, and planted on them the flag of the Eighth Michigan; but they could not capture the redoubt, the guns of which, loaded with grape, swept the summit of the ridge, and opened several gaps in the ranks of the regi- ments which Stevens had sent to their assistance." The gallant Colonel Fenton threw the Eighth Michigan as far to the right as possible, and used every effort, as General Stevens says, "to bring on, in support, the Seventh Connecti- cut and the Twenty-eighth Massachusetts ; but the terrible fire of grape and musketry from the enemy's works cut the two former regiments in two, the right going to the right and the left to the left, whither, finally, the whole of the Twenty-eighth Massachusetts took its position, and where thev were joined, with scarcely an interval of time, by the One Hundredth Penn- sylvania and the Forty-sixth New York, of Leasure's brigade. These regiments had been brought up with great promptness and energy 62 LEA VES FROM A LA WYER'S by Colonel Leasure, and the right of the One Hundredth had pushed up to and joined the Seventy-ninth in their charge." The battle became a massacre. Stevens says, "The Eighth Michigan made the most heroic exertions, and suffered the most terrible losses. Captains Pratt, Church, Guild, and Lieutenant Cattrell, commanding companies, were killed, and Captains Doyle and Lewis and Lieutenant Bates, commanding companies, were wounded on or near the parapet of the work. -•;:• •:::■ Qf twcnty-two officers of that regiment who went into action, twelve were killed and wounded." , If we had "Highlanders" on our side in this battle, so had the South — a Charleston bat- talion composed largely of Scots and the de- cendants of Scots, under Major David Ramsay, (son of the historian,) who was subsequently mortally wounded at Fort Wagner. In less than half an hour, that gallant regiment lost two-fifths of its whole force. The total loss on our side "was nearly 600, including more than sixty officers. The Confederate loss was 207. This assault on Secessionville was made by General Benham, in violation of the instructions of General Hunter, and against the advice of LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 63 Generals Stevens and Wright. Had the same force assaulted these works a month earlier when Robert Small brought the information of General Pemberton's designs, the result might have been different. As is stated in the Military and Civil History of Connecticut, this movement was an inexcusable blunder from beginning to end. "Ten thousand men were sent to make a five days' march on three days' rations ; and the sequel was that they arrived without food, tents, or cooking utensils. The only cooking utensil the field and staff of the Sixth had, was a gallon camphene can, with nozzle and top cut off. In this were cooked potatoes, pork, beef, coffee, tea, — food of every sort, — for three weeks." The battle of Secessionville has been shamefully slighted by compilers of histories. Harper's work, while treating many engage- ments of our Civil War more copiously than any other narrative, devotes but a few lines to Secessionville. John S. C. Abbott and many others omit to notice it. Horace Greeley and the Count of Paris tell the story of this combat clearly and fairly but more briefly than one could wish. Lossing's account is of inferior merit. The Military and Civil His- tory of Connecticut contains a good account of 64 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS the distinguished part which the Connecticut regiments sustained in this battle; but it is avowedly devoted to the Connecticut men alone, and the heroes of New York, Michigan and Pennsylvania are left unmentioned. In Putnam's Rebellion Record the reports of all the commanders on both sides, with praiseworthy fairness, are printed in full.'-'* Mr. Guernsey, who compiled that portion of Harper's History which relates to the Department of the South, thinks it "a great mistake," on Pemberton's part, to abandon Cole's Island. Pemberton not being one of Mr. Pollard's pets, like Johnston and Beauregard, this movement is condemned in the History of the Lost Cause. President Davis, however, had a high opinion of Pemberton's abilities, though he finally sent Beauregard to relieve him, to hush the clamor of the politicians and the press. I cannot but think that this officer was as wise as any of his critics. The lesson thundered from the cannon of Dupont at Port Royal, that uncovered batteries cannot successfully resist the converging fire of heavily armed fleets, had not been lost on him. He therefore withdrew from a position which, from the depth of the adjacent waters, might easily be assailed with *Vol. 5. pp. 209-221 ; vol. 12, pp. 494-504. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 65 effect by the Navy, and strengthened to the utmost those inner fortifications which, from the shallowness of the water, were practically beyond the Navy's reach. Two of our gunboats, the Ellen and the Hall, which managed to get into this action, when the tide rose high enough to enable them to approach, obtained an excellent range, and as General Stevens says, "did very great execution among the ranks of the enemy.'^ Besides this, the great length of the Confederate line when Pemberton assumed command, might well alarm even a less wary commander. General Stevens, soon afterward, took command of the second division of General Burnside's corps in Virginia. But it was written that his sun should go down at noon. On Sep- tember 1st, 1862, at Chantilly, seeing the Army about to be attacked at a great disadvantao:e, he ordered a charge by his own divison, and sent one of the captains of his staff to other division commanders for assistance ; but none of these, except General Kearney, would take the repon- sibility of' acting without orders from their superiors in command. General Kearney saw the supreme peril of the situation, and felt as Admiral Villeneuve felt on a similar occasion, when he signalled, "Every captain who is not in action is not at his 66 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS post." ''Yes/' replied Kearney, "I'll support Stevens in anything/' and at once put his columns in motion. By this bold movement, Pope's Army was saved ; 'and the battle of Chantilly, which promised victory to the Confederates, ended in their defeat. But General Stevens was shot in leading his troops to the charge. General Kearney, riding accidentally in the darkness of the night within the Confederate lines, was also killed. Stevens was a native of Andover, Mass., a son of the late Nathaniel Stevens, and a brother of Oliver Stevens, the District Attorney of Suffolk. He had^ previously been Governor of Oregon, and had sat in Congress. To sooth the South, he had favored the largest conces- sions to their demands ; but when the dissolution of the Union by force was attempted, he tendered his sword to the Federal Administra- tion. His services were accepted, but he was not given the rank to which he justly thought himself entitled by virtue of his education and previous service, because of his former affilations. One of the newspapers bitterly complained that whereas General Stevens had been Chairman of the Breckenridge Democracy, in i860, and had professed himself a friend of the South and LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE, 67 its peculiar institutions, and had a few months before partaken of the hospitalities of Charleston, he now came with a hostile force on an abolition crusade.*^' CHAPTER lY. Battle of Pocotaligo — Battle of Coosawhatchie — Attempt to raise the Blockade of Charleston — Battle between the Iron-Clads and the Forts— Dupont's Prizes. The Charleston and Savannah Railroad was of the first importance to the Confederate forces in this department, because, upon an attack at either end of that line, the force at the other end could be relied on for support. Colonel B. C. Christ, with the Fifteenth Pennsylvania, two Companies of First Massachusetts Cavalry, and a section of the First Connecticut Battery, had destroyed several miles of this railroad, by order of General Stevens, shortly before the battle ♦See Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1862, article * 'Stevens." In the article on the Army Operations of this year, the battle of Secessionville is not mentioned. Injustice to General Benham, I refer to an able de- fence of his conduct, in Putnam, vol. 6, pp. 236-241. 6S LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S of Secessionville, but the damages had been promptly repaired by the Confederates. The Count of Paris, combining in himself the instincts and accompHshments of a soldier, a sailor, a scholar and a statesman, has given an admirable account of the attempts which our military and naval forces, under General Bran- nan and Captain Steedman respectively, made to cut this railroad in October, 1862, and of the battles which they fought at Pocotaligo and at Coosawhatchie.* The attack of the Confederate rams on the Federal gunboats off Charleston, on January 31st, 1863, is imperfectly recorded by all the historians of the late war. And I venture to observe that too little attention has been given to the peculiar circumstances under which that attack was made, and which, in fact, probably led to it ; for on no other occasion did the Con- federate rams ever assume the offensive at Charleston. It must be remembered that, on the pre- ceding day, the Steamer Isaac Smith, while mak- ing a reconnoisance on the Stono, went too far ♦Volume 2, pp. 622-G26. Greeley's account, (vol. 2, p. 462,) and Lossing's, (vol. 3, p. 189,) are less full, and both exaggerate the losses on our side. See the reports of the commanders on both sides in Putnam, vol. 6, pp. 34-41. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 69 up that stream, and was destroyed on her re- turn by three batteries, which were suddenly unmasked at one of the many bends in that serpentine channel. It must also be remembered that two of the strongest vessels of the blockading fleet had gone to Port Royal to coal, leaving the blockade exceptionally weak just at that time. It must also be remembered that the noble blockade-runner, Princess Royal, (the gross pro- ceeds of which steamer, with her cargo, even at a marshal's sale in Philadelphia, amounted to ^360,000) had just been run ashore and captured by the blockading fleet, and was lying off the bar, almost challenging an eflbrt on the part of the Confederates to wrest her from our grasp. Moreover, one of these rams had been re- cently built by the proceeds of a great fair, held by the ladies of Charleston, who had not shrunk from the greatest exertions and sacrifices for the cause of Southern Independence ; and there was a general demand on the part of the ladies who led society in Charleston for a demonstration by the Confederate Navy, commensurate with their own efforts, for that cause. " It was known," says the Charleston Cou- rier of February 2d, in its glowing account of this " Brilliant Naval Victory ;" '' it was known 70 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S that the vessels guarding the approaches to the city were of wood, and could not cope with the mailed rams whose grotesque ugliness and saucy- look we had so often admired." It was also known that the New Ironsides was soon to join the blockading fleet. "'■•' Besides all this, it was well known through- out the South that Napoleon the Third had re- cently made overtures to Great Britain and Rus- sia, looking to mediation and recognition of the Southern Confederacy, and even to intervention in its behalf,f and though the reply of Russia was not all that could be desired by the Confed- erates, or by Napoleon himself, it strongly indi- cated that a few more victories in the field of battle, especially if accompanied by the break- ing of our blockade, might secure that recog- nition which had thus far been withheld. Practically then, (strange to say,) Great Britain was thus the only obstacle in the path of that recognition which France proposed, and to which her Emperor was billing to add an alli- *Boynton innocently remarks, "No one of our iron- clads seems to have been at that time off the harbor," vol. 2, p. 432 As though any of our iron-clads had been there before. tAppleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1862, article, "Pub- lic Documents," contains this correspondence. The De- partment of State also printed it. LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE. 7 1 ance offensive and defensive with the Confeder- ate* States. If then the Federal blockade of Charleston could be raised, might not Great Brit- ain withdraw her negative upon the policy of France ? It was with reference to this, as I have been told, that a Southern preacher preached a power- ful and passionate political sermon from the text, " There is a lion in the way," vehemently de- nouncing the British Lion for placing himself across the track of Southern Independence, when the Pope of Rome had recognized and blessed the standard of the South as equal in the temporal order with the banner of St. Peter. The Federal fleet, at this time, consisted of the Housatonic, Captain W. R Taylor, senior officer present ; the Mercedita, Captain F. S. Stellwagen ; the Flag, Commander J. H. Strong; the Quaker City, Commander J. M. Frailey; the Key Stone State, Commander W. E. Le- Roy ; the Augusta, Commander E. G. Parrott ; the Unadilla, Lieutenant-Commander S. P. Quackenbush : the Memphis, Lieutenant-Com- mander P. G. Watmough ; the Ottawa, Lieu- tenant Commander W. D. Whiting ; the Stettin, Lieutenant C. J. Van Alstine ; together with the Schooner Blunt and the Yacht America. The fleet of Flag Officer Ingraham con- 72 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS sisted of his Flagship, the Palmetto State, an iron-clad steamer, built after the style of the Atlanta, commanded by Captain Rutledge ; and the Chicora, another iron-clad steamer, of the same style of construction, commanded by Cap- tain Tucker; with three steamers acting as tend- ers — the Governor Clinch, the Ettiwan, and the Chesterfield. The Palmetto State, approaching the Mer- cedita unsuspected in the darkness, was hailed by her watch officer : " What steamer is that ? Drop your anchor. Back — back. Steer clear of us and heave to." Captain Rutledge answered : "This is the Confederate States Steamer Pal- metto State," — at the same time ramming the Mercedita through amidships, at and below the water line, and discharging a seven-inch shell from his bow gun, which, entering the starboard side of the Mercedita, passed through her con- denser and the steam drum of her port boiler, and exploded, passing through her port side, killing and scalding her men, and so completely disabling her, that Captain Stellwagen at once hauled down his flag. The Confederate Captain ordered him to send a boat, which was done, and Lieutenant Commander Abbot went aboard and gave his parole in behalf of himself and all the officers and crew. Upon this pledge, not to serve I LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 73 Sullivan's Island. "^1 2 3 4 Beach Channel. Shoals. • 5 • 6 • 7 Main Channel • • 8 • 9 • 10 '""Folly'"'"''*' Island. The dotted line indicates the bar. The Agues 1—10 show the positions of the blockading vessels. The rams passed down the main ship channel, crossed the bar, and turning, one to the right, the other to the left, attacked the first vessels they met. Then turning to the north- east, (the battle ended,) they recrossed the bar, lay seven hours in the beach tihannel and then returned to the inner harbor of Charleston. The distance from the right to the left of our line was about twelve miles. 74 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S against the Confederate States until regularly exchanged, Abbot was allowed to return to his ship, but no further steps were taken to secure her. Meantime, the Chicora attacked the Key Stone State, giving her a shot from her bow gun and afterwards a broadside. In the fight which ensued, the Chicora sent a shot through both the chimneys of the Key Stone State, and struck her with ten rifle shells, (two of them bursting on her quarter ^eck,) killing twenty of her crew, including her surgeon, and wounding twenty more, and utterly disabling her. By this time other vessels of our fleet, hear- ing guns and signals of distress, came from their several stations off the bar to the help of their consorts. Seeing these, the Confederate Flag Officer speedily abandoned the struggle. On his return to Charleston, he and General Beau- regard issued a proclamation that the blockade had been raised. A counter statement was made by the captains of the blockading fleet, and no ship attempted to act on the faith of the pro- clamation. Although the greater part of the fighting on the Confederate side was done by the Chi- cora, the narratives of Greeley, Lossing, Boyn- ton, and a score more writers, erroneously credit 1 LIFE A FL OA T A ND A SHORE. 7 5 \ the Palmetto State with two separate battles, first with the Mercedita, and then with the Key Stone State.-'' None of our historians seem to have read the testimony before the naval court of inquiry touching this battle. A question arose, whether the parole of the Mercedita's officers and crew was binding upon them, after the Confederate fleet had abandoned them. A similar question arose a few months later, when the Army Steamer, George Wash- ington, was destroyed by the Confederates near Beaufort. The officer in command ran up a white flag, and then ran away, with his men, to the Beaufort shore. They were fired on, as they ran through the marshes, by the Confederates, who treated their attempt to escape as a resum- tion of hostilities. Admiral Semmes followed these precedents, when he struck his flag to the Kearsage, and then jumped overboard. It seems clear that it is the right, if not the duty, of a prisoner of war to escape if he can ; ♦The reports of all the commanders on b 'th sides are printed in Putnam's Rebellion Record, vol 6, pp. 401- 415. But the editor should have punctuated them with the names of the several vessels referred to. Not beini; able in the darkness to identify the opposing ships, these commanders had to use descriptive phrases. N'»t one reader in ten thousand can now tell to what vessels these phrases apply. 'je LEA VES FROM A LA WYERS and the duty of a captor to hold his prisoner if he can. By neglecting to follow up the capture of the Mercedita, by putting a prize master on board of her, it would seem pretty clear that Commodore Ingraham abandoned his conquest, and thereby relieved his prisoners from their parole. Considering that, as Commodore Ingraham says, (in his official dispatch to Secretary Mall- ory,) " everything was most favorable for " the Confederate rams, the wonder is, that they did not achieve in fact what the Confederate commanders claimed to have achieved. Had the Confederate Captain Buchanan been in command of these rams, the result might have been different. The Confederate Rams passed within the shadow of a great opportunity ; but they failed to take advantage of it ; and it never occurred again. During seven mortal hours after the battle, these rams lay at anchor, at the entrance of Beach Channel, waiting for the rising of the tide to take them back to the city. Most of the Federal vessels returned to their stations out- side the bar in full view. I have been told, and can readily believe, that during this time, some of the younger officers and men of the rams became disgusted with the situation, and impa- LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE, yy tient to resume the fight. Could the Confederate States have had, but for one hour, the services of Farragut, or of Porter ; or could the soul of one of those old Titans of the sea, under whom the English, French, Dutch, and American Nav- ies won their great historic renown, have entered into and taken possession of Ingraham on that dark winter's morning ; how different might the course of events have been ! Having had but little personal connection at any time with the operations on the southern part of the coast assigned to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, my journal contains noth- ing touching various events which occurred in that region additional to what will be found in the narratives of the historians, to whose vol- umes I so often refer: — such as the destruction of the Nashville, which even Dupont calls a "privateer;" the storming of Fort McAllister; the bombardment and capture of Fort Pulaski ; and the capture of the Atlanta. One of the very best accounts of the battle between the Weehawkin and the Atlanta, June 17, '4863, will be found where one rarely looks for a graphic picture of a battle, in Judge Sprague's decision condemning the Atlanta as a prize."'-" ♦2 Sprague's Decisions, p. 253. The opinions of Judges Sprague, Lowell, and Blatchford, in prize cases, are valuable to the historian as well as the lawyer. yS LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S The battle between the iron-clads and the forts of Charleston, had been long in prepara- tion ; and when it was finally fought, April 7th, 1863, it was witnessed and reported by many of the ablest writers in all the leading newspapers, both North and South. The best of the reports is that of William Swinton, the historian of the Army of the Potomac, in the JVew York Times/'' It is not my purpose to fight this battle over again ; but merely to correct some of the errors, and supply some of the omissions of the popu- lar historians. All of these writers state that General G. T. Beauregard commanded the Department, and Brigadier-General R. S. Ripley, the First Mili- tary District, at the time of the battle ; but none of them give the names of the subordinate commanders or of their commands. Bragadier- General Trapier, commanding second subdivision of this district, was present at Fort Moultrie ; Brigadier-General Gist, com- manding first subdivision, at Fort Johnson ; Colonel R. F. Graham, commanding third sub- division, on Morris Island, and Colonel L. M. Keitt, commanding Sullivan's Island, at Battery Bee, attending to their duties and awaiting the development of the attack. *It is reprinted in Putnam, vol. 0, pp. 502-512, and with it is tliat of tlie Charleston Mercury. LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 79 The fortifications engaged were those which formed what General Ripley called his *' first circle of fire." There were 'six of them — Sum- ter, Moultrie. Bee, Beauregard, Wagner and Gregg ; and they were commanded and garri- soned as follows : — Fort Sumter — Colonel Alfred Rhett ; Lieutenant Colonel J. A. Yates, and Major Ormsby Blanding, with seven companies of the First South Carolina Artillery. Fort Moultrie — Colonel William But- ler, and Major T. M. Baker, with five companies of the First South Carolina Infantry. Battery Bee — Lieutenant Colonel J. C. Simkins, with three companies of the First South Carolina Infantry. Battery Beauregard — Captain J. A. Sit- greaves, with two South Carolina companies — one of Artillery and one of Infantry. Battery Wagner — Major C. K. Huger, with two companies of the First South Carolina Artillery. Battery Gregg — Lieutenant H. R. Les- esne, with a detachment of the First South Carolina Artillery. Several companies of the Twentieth South Carolina Infantry, under Captain P. A. McMi- chael, stood on Sullivan's Island to repel any 8o LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S attack by land ; while the Twenty-first South Carolina Infantry, under Lieutenant Colonel Dargan, occupied Morris Island, for the same purpose. The Confederate iron-clads Chicora and Palmetto State, under Captain J. R. Tucker, lay above Fort Sumter, the principal point of at- tack, but took no part in the engagement. Dupont led the attack with his pennant fly- ing from the Ironsides. His ships advanced in single file — four monitors, the flag-ship, three monitors, and the iron-clad, Keokuk, as follows : 1. Weehawken, Captain John Rodgers ; 2. Passaic, Captain Percival Drayton ; 3. Montauk, Commander John L. Worden ; 4. Patapsco, Commander Daniel Ammen ; 5. New Ironsides, Commander Thos. Turner; 6. Catskill, Commander George W. Rodgers ; 7. Nantucket, Commander Donald M. Fairfax ; 8. Nahant, Commander John Downes,; 9. Keokuk, Lieut.-Commander A. C. Rhind. Captain Joseph F. Green lay outside with the Steamers Canandaigua, Housatonic, Una- dilla, Wissahickon, and Huron, as a force in re- serve. General Seymour lay below, with a mil- itary force, ready to assist the Navy by a descent upon Morris Island, or upon Sullivan's Island, or in any other way. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 8i The sky and the sea shone like seas of glass, ** the blue above, and the blue below ;" no sound was heard, no shot was fired on either side, and not a man was seen on the decks of the monitors, as our turtle-backed fleet steamed along in front of Morris Island, until it came within range of Sumter. Then, at ten minutes past three, the batteries of that grim fort opened, and those on Morris and Sullivan's Islands promptly joined. The ships of Dupont, formed in line of bat- tle, (not ** huddled helplessly together," as Boynton erroneously states,) instantly returned the fire of the forts. The thunder of artillery became terrific ; the water seemed to boil and hiss, when struck by solid shot or exploding shell ; clouds of smoke and flashes of fire filled the air for two miles, from Sullivan's to Morris Island. The result is known to all. In thirty min- utes Dupont became ** convinced of the utter impracticability of taking the city of Charleston with the force under his command ;" and every one of his commanders concurred in this view. Brave as Dupont was, the defences of Charles- ton had been so perfected by the Confederates, that he feared and said that " a renewal of the attack on Charleston would be attended with 82 LEA VES FROM A LA IVVER'S disastrous results, involving the loss of this coast."'-"' But the Rev. Dr. Boynton thinks that **Dupont was mistaken in all his main opinions.'' Many writers have stated the number of guns engaged on the Confederate side to be 300 ; some, 350 ; and some, 400. But there were not 300 guns mounted in all the defences of Charleston ; and the guns of the second and third circles of fire were not engaged. The nine Federal iron-clads carried thirty- three guns, twenty-three of which were actually used. The six Confederate works mounted seventy-six guns, of which sixty-nine were actu- ally used. No matter how often the experiment is 'made ; as often as sixty-nine guns are used against twenty-three, afloat or ashore, I venture to predict that the sweet goddess of Victory will bestow her most bewitching smile on the party that has the heaviest artillery. The Federals fired 139 fires — 96 shells, 30 solid shot, and 13 cored shot. Of these, 55 struck the walls of Sumter, two of the shells passing through her walls. The Confederates fired 2,229 shots, with 21,093 pounds of cannon powder, and hit the iron-clads 248 times. ♦The reports of Dupont and his captains are ap- pended to Secretary Welles' report for 1863, and reprinted, in substance, in the second volume of Boynton. ^ ' LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE. 83 It is true, the guns of the Federals were of larger calibre than most of those on the Confed- erate side, so that the weight of metal was more nearly equal, (as General Ripley suggests ;) and the Federals had also a broad mark to aim at, while the Confederates had much smaller tar- gets ; — but the advantage of position was clearly with the Confederates.* Mr. Lossing suggests that, *' Had a suffi- cient supporting land force been employed in vigorously attacking the Confederates on Morris Island, and keeping the garrisons of Battery Gregg and Fort Wagner engaged while the squadron was attacking Fort Sumter, the result might have been different." It is seldom worth speculating on what might have been. But an answer to Mr. Lossing's suggestion is found in the failure of all subsequent attempts to carry Wagner by storm, and in the terrible sacrifices of life which they involved. Admiral Dupont remained in command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron three months after this repulse. During his command 32 prizes were taken at Charleston, although, it is to be noted, no part of the blockading fleet lay within the Bar, namely: — *See the reports of the Confederate commanders in Putnam, vol. 10, pp. 517-535. 84 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S Albert, Aquilla, Anna Dees, Antelope, Amelia, Belle, Coquette, Cambria, Cora, Cata- lina, David Crockett, Dixie, '^' Emily St. Pierre, Elizabeth, Eliza, Flash, Guide, Hettivvan, Hav- elock, Louisa, Maria, Mary Teresa, Mercury, Major E. Willis, Neptune, Patras, Providence, Princess Royal, Rebecca, Stettin, Sarah and Secesh. In his time, the Yacht America was cap- tured by the Steamer Ottovva, and transferred to the Army. She is now in the hands of Gen- eral Butler. Besides Charleston, upwards of twenty other ports were guarded by this squadron ; and more prizes, in the aggregate, were taken at these other ports than at Charleston. Some of Du- pont's prizes were very valuable, as the Atlanta, valued at $350,000 ; the Cambria, $191,000 ; the Lodona, $246,000 ; the Princess Royal, $360,- 000 ; the Stettin, $226,000, etc. Within two months after Ingraham's at- tempt to raise the blockade with the rams, three European men-of-war touched off the bar, and sent a boat to the city with dispatches to their consuls. I refer to the British Steam Sloop Desperate, February 27 ; the British Frigate *She had been a privateer. See page 29. She was sold for $30,000. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 85 Cadmus, March 2, and the French Steamer Milan, March, 30. In Duponi's time, no foreign vessel of war was prevented from visiting any blockaded port. This was in conformity with the proclamation of blockade and the practice of the most liberal nations ; though at a later period, it was held by his successor that '* the intervention of our lines of attack" prevented this.-'-' CHAPTER V. Admiral Dahlgren in command — Descent on Morris Island — General Strong — Storming of Fort Wagner — Morris Island evacuated — Naval Assault on Fort Sumter — Blockade-running — Torpedo At- tack on the Ironsides — Loss of the Weehawken. Admiral Dahlgren relieved Admiral Du- pout, July 6, 1863. General Gilmore had pre- viously relieved General Hunter, and a joint movement was made upon Morris Island. Pre- paratory to this movement, Folly Island, which General Beauregard had not fortified at all, was occupied by General Vogdes, who secretly, with great adroitness, erected a battery on the north- ♦Dahlgren's Maritime International Law, pp. 54-60. 86 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S em extremity of the island, and placed 47 pieces of artillery in position within pistol shot of the Confederates, on Morris Island, without being discovered at all. The great importance of this bold achievement of Vogdes, will readily appear when one considers the position of this Island, which commands Stono Harbor, Stono Inlet, the water approaches to James Island, and the south- erly extremity of Morris Island. While most of the writers, on the Federal side, bestow little praise on Vogdes, Pollard takes occasion to give Beauregard a lecture for his " want of vigilance " in not guarding against this surprise. ■'•'■ The historians of the War trace, more or less accurately, the progress of the descent upon Morris Island, henceforth famous in history ; but none of them have caught sight of the strik- ing and picturesque figure of the youthful Gen- eral Strong, springing upon the lower forts with the agility of a deer, waiving aloft his sword, and shouting to his troops, ** Come on. Brigade." In jumping impatiently from the launch into the surf beating upon the beach, his high-topped cavalry boots were filled with water, and his clothes wet through. Thereupon he threw off his coat and hat, and sat down upon the bank, ♦History of the Lost Cause, p. 430. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE, ^7 while his faithful negro boy made a bootjack of himself, and removed the incumbrances. Time was then too precious to waste on hose, so Gen. Strong led the charge of July loth in his stockings, getting his feet repeatedly cut by oys- ter shells at different points on tlie beach. In the Romances, falsely called Histories, of different wars, one sees the General hand- somely dressed, cavorting upon a horse richly caparisoned. In the grim and bloody reality, the General more often fights in a plight as un- presentable as that of the gallant Strong. Na- poleon crossed the Alps wrapped in a grey over- coat and mufler, mounted upon an humble mule, led by a young mountaineer, who did not know him ; but David paints him wrapped in imperial purple, bounding over the Alps upon a fiery stallion. In all the annals of modern war, no example can be found where an army thus approached an enemy's shore in boats, landed under a fire of artillery and infantry, and disloged the enemy from his fortifications. The descent on Morris Island almost recalls Caeser's descent on Brit- ain, or the landing of William the Norman at Hastings. It is remarkable that the Charleston Mer- cury foreshadowed this ** assault from barges " 8S LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS on the very morning it was made, but closed by saying, '* We see no ground for agitation." This descent would not have been attempted without the aid of the Navy. Admiral Dahlgren, with his flag flying from the Catskill, led four monitors over the bar at four o'clock in the morn- ing, as follows : — 1. Catskill, Commander George H. Rodgers ; 2. Montauk, Commander D. McN. Fairfax ; 3. Nahant, Commander John Downes ; 4. Weehawken, Commander E. R. Colhoun. These monitors approached as near to Mor- ris Island as the depth of water would permit, and moved along in front of that island, shelling the Confederates vigorously as they retreated, and finally opening fire on Wagner. On that day, they fired 534 shell and shrapnell, and the Steamer Catskill was struck sixty times. Lieut- enant-Commander Francis M. Bunce, with four navy howitzer launches, with picked crews, cov- ered the landing, approaching Light House Inlet by way of Folly Island Creek, at day-break, and engaging the rifle-pits and batteries of the Con- federates. The regiments here engaged were the Ninth Maine, the Third New Hampshire, the Sixth and Seventh Connecticut, the Forty -eighth New York, and the Seventy-sixth Pennsylvania. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 89 The Confederate force engaged numbered about seven hundred, and consisted of the Twenty-first South Carolina volunteers, Colonel R. T. Graham ; two companies of the First South Carolina artillery, Captains John C. Mitchell, (son of the Irish refugee,) and J. R. Macbeth; and a detachment of the First South Carolina infantry, Captain Charles T. Haskell. ''Our men," says the Charleston Courier, *' were exposed during the whole fight to a mur- derous fire from the four monitors, who hurled their enormous missiles with telling effect." The Edgefield Advertiser said, the roar of the Federal guns was heard, and the reports counted, in that district, distant 130 miles. Not since the capture of Port Royal, had the Federals achieved such important results with such small losses. Only fourteen were killed, and less than a hundred wounded ; while the loss of the Confederates, in killed and wounded and captured, was 294. Captains Langdon Cheves and Charles T. Haskell, and Lieuten- ant John S. Bee, were among the killed ; and among the wounded was Captain J. R. Macbeth, son of the Mayor of Charleston, and nine other commissioned officers. After sleeping all night without tents, and almost without food, on the morning of July go LEA VES FROM A LA WYER'S nth, the Ninth Maine, the Seventh Connecticut and the Seventy-sixth Pennsylvania, under Gen- eral Strong, made an assault on Wagner. The Seventh reached the ditch ; but the other regi- ments, especially the Pennsylvania regiment, then commanded by Major Hicks, failed to come up in support; and Strong, with tears of grief and mortification rolling down his cheeks, exclaimed bitterly, •' It is useless," and ordered a retreat. The Confederate loss was very small — one officer and five privates killed ; one officer and five privates wounded. The loss on the Federal side has often been understated. The Confed- erates buried 95 of the Federals (chiefly of the Seventh Connecticut) within their lines, and captured 210 prisoners, eighty of whom were wounded. How many others were killed and wounded, I never learned ; but the correspond- ent of the Philadelphia Iiiqttircr stated that 350 men who had been wounded in the assault, were carried in the Steamer Cosmopolitan to Hilton Head. Among the wounded was Lieutenant- Colonel Rodman of the Seventh Connecticut, and Major Hicks of the Seventy-sixth Pennsyl- vania, who was also captured. Greeley, Harper, Lossing, Pollard, and oth- ers, couple the losses of the loth with those of LIFE AFLOAT A ND A SHORE. 9 1 the nth, and their statements are confused and inaccurate.* The second assault on Wagner was made on Saturday night, July 18. If the Federals had gained much by opening the . ** parallels," the Confederates had gained more by reenforce- ments from North Carolina and Georgia. General William Taliafero, one of Stone- wall Jackson's veterans, commanded the Con- federate forces at Wagner, (Beauregard and Ripley being his superior officers,) which con- sisted of the Charleston Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Gaillard and Major Ramsay ; the Fifty- first North Carolina, Colonel McKeatchin ; and the Thirty-first North Carolina, Lieutenant Colonel Knight. There were also two compan- ies of the First South Carolina, Captains Tatum and Adams ; two companies of the Sixty-third Georgia, Captains Buckner and Dixon ; and Captain DuPass' company of light artillery ; — ■ all under Lieutenant Colonel Simkins. They were reenforced during the battle by the Thirty- second Georgia, Colonel Harrison. The guns of Sumter and Gregg joined with those of Wag- ner in pouring their fire upon the assaulting columns. *Greeley, vol. 2, pp. 475-476 ; Harper, 740 ; Lossiug, vol. 3, p. 202; Pollard, 431. 92 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S The assault was preceded by a teriffic bom- bardment from the New Ironsides, from the five monitors, Montauk, (carrying the flag of the Ad- miral,) Catskill, Nantucket, Weehawken, and Patapsco, and also from the gunboats Paul Jones, Ottowa, Seneca, Cheppewa, and Wissahickon, as well as from several sand batteries on Morris Island. This bombardment lasted eight hours, (not "forty-eight," as Pollard's types make him say,) during which nine thousand shell were hurled at the fated fort. It ceased only when diarkness came on, and when its further continuance would have involved the slaughter of the assaulting column. The brigades which Strong and Putnam led in this assault, were formed for this special service. Some of the regiments had never met before, and had never before seen their brig- ade commanders or the colonels who so soon succeeded them in command. Strange to say, many of those who fought in that terrible com- bat, cannot agree as to the composition of these brigades. Gen. Gillmore's statement of the com- position of these brigades is not followed by Greeley or Lossing, and is not entirely correct. Colonel Robert G. Shaw led the attack with the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts (colored). LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 93 Among the non-commissioned officers and priv- ates was a son of the famous Frederick Douglass, with many other superior men. But at this time, all the commissioned officers were white. They went forward at ** double quick" with great en- ergy and resolution ; but on approaching the ditch they broke : the greater part of them fol- lowed their intrepid colonel, bounded over the ditch, mounted the parapet, and planted their flag in the most gallant manner upon the ram- parts, where Shaw was shot dead ; while the rest were seized with a furious panic, and acted like wild beasts let loose from a menagerie. They came down first on the Ninth Maine, and then on the Seventy-sixth Pennsylvania, and broke both of them in two. Portions of the Ninth and Seventy-sixth mingled with the fugitives of the Fifty-lourth, and could not be brought to the fort. They ran away like deer, some crawling upon their hands and knees. The Sixth Connecticut, Colonel John L. Chatfield, followed the Fifty-fourth, and made a furious charge. In spite of the most deadly fire, they leaped over the ditch, bounded upon the parapet, drove the Thirty-first North Carolina with the bayonet, and entered the south-east salient of the fort. It is a fact, (though Northern historians omit to mention it,) that this gallant 94 LEA VES FROM A LA WYERS regiment took possession of the south-east angle of the fort, and held it for three mortal hours. But it cost a terrible sacrifice of life. The sur- vivors fought with the dead bodies of their com- rades lying three deep around them. Finally, for want of support, they surrendered ; few, if any, of them being able to get out. General Strong exerted himself to the ut- most to push on other regiments in support of the heroic Sixth. He placed himself at the head of a battallion containing what remained of the immortal Seventh Connecticut, and to them he made his last appeal. Here Strong fell, mortally wounded, and the command of the column passed rapidly from one to another until every Federal colonel and lieu- tenant-colonel present at the fort had been killed, wounded or captured. When it finally broke, the ranking officer was Major Plimpton of the Third New Hampshire, who led its shattered fragments into the sheltering gloom. What the column of Strong failed to accom- plish, the column of Colonel Putnam was not likely to achieve. Colonel Chatfield was the sen- ior Colonel ; he had commanded a brigade be- fore, and was entitled to lead this second column ; but he waived his rank, declaring his preference to stand or fall with the Sixth. He had fallen, LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 95 mortally wounded, before Putnam's column ad- vanced. The second charge was not less furious than Strong's. Putnam was killed almost as soon as he reached the fort ; but his colonels continued the assault unflinchingly ; falling back only when no possibility of success remained. Putnam's own regiment, the Seventh New Hampshire, Lieutenant Colonel Abbott, distin- guished itself greatly. The Confederates were moved to admiration by the resolute courage of the Forty-eighth and One Hundreth New York, Colonels Barton and Dandy, and of the Sixty- second and Sixty-seventh Ohio, Colonels Steele and Voris. It was near midnight when the last shat- tered regiment recoiled from this terrible carn- age ; and the Confederates poured upon their flying foes a murderous fire of grape and can- nister. It was a retreat oi unutterable horrors. Men fell from the ramparts of Wagner, some- times breaking their limbs by the fall. They rolled one upon another into the ditch, and were drowned in the water or smothered by their own dead or wounded comrades falling upon them. They dragged themselves upon their hands and knees over the hills and ridges of sand. To hundreds of poor fellows who lay, hour after hour, maimed and mangled, on the bloody 96 LEA VES FROM A LA WYER'S beach before Wagner, and, piled one upon an- other, in the ditches around it, — with their bones broken and their wounds bleeding, — choking with thirst and writhing in agony, — praying, cry- ing, lingering, dying; — it seemed as if morning would never come, — as if Nature herself felt outraged, and denied the light of day to a planet presenting so ghastly a scene. Seldom, indeed, has the glad sun risen, or the sad sea sobbed, over so horrible a spectacle. Blood, brains, bow- els, bones, arms, legs, hair, fragments of bodies, black and white, all mingled together, with sand, mud, grass, water, patches of clothing, broken gun - stocks and gun-barrels, belts, bayonets, boots, shoes, and all the accompaniments of mil- itary art and life. The Confederates say they buried six hun- dred of the Federal dead upon the ocean beach. The wounded who survived were taken to prison hospitals in Charleston, where, as "Personne" wrote, their blood flowed " by the bucketful.'* The wounds were generally severe, being in- flicted at short distances, so that " amputations were almost the only operations performed." The ladies of Charleston, as might have been expected, were moved to many acts of kindness towards these suffering soldiers ; and their sympathy brought upon them the slurs of LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 97 the local press as " troublesome and obtrusive persons in female garb," who ought to be ** im- pressed into service as nurses." Buried with his own sable soldiers, Shaw rests by the moaning sea, *' Like Scipio sleeping on the upbraiding shore." The time may come, when the opposite sec- tions of our restored Union will unite to erect here a monument to the memory of the heroes of both races, who fell on either side. Such a shaft would swell the heart and fill the eye of every departing and returning sailor. Pilgrims from afar would come to gaze upon it, and to lift their hats to it, and walk around it, and to be consecrated by meditating on its glorious mem- ories. Of such a monument who would not say, with Webster at Bunker Hill, *' Let it rise to meet the sun in his coming. Let the earliest light of the morning greet it, and parting day linger and play upon its summit." No detailed report, by regiments, of killed, wounded and missing, on the Federal side, has ever, to my knowledge, been published. The general reports vary — from 1,500 to 2,500. Among the killed were Colonels Putnam and Shaw, and Lieutenant Colonel Green of the Sixth Connecticut. Among the severely wound- ed were General Strong and Colonel Chatfield, 98 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S (who died of their wounds,) General Sey- mour, and Colonels Barton, Jackson and Emery. Among the captured were Lieutenant Colonel Bedell of the Third New Hampshire, and Major Filler of the Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania. The causualties among company officers were as fearful as among the field officers. The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, (for example,) which went in under Colonel Shaw, came out, shattered and reduced one-half, under a boy lieutenant, with sergeants in command of its companies. "-•'■ The defence of Wagner was conducted with courage fully equal, and with military skill more than equal to the assault. The Confederate loss in killed, wounded and missing, was 174. Their greatest losses were incurred in their effi)rts to expel from the south-east salient the Sixth Con- necticut, where the Federal dead were "packed as thickly as sardines." Among their killed were Lieutenant Colonels J. C. Simkins and P. C. Gaillard, and Captains W. H. Ryan and W. T. Tatum, with other officers of superior merit. Here, too, the gallant Major Ramsay, law- yer and scholar, Grand Master of the South *In Siborne's History we read that, at Waterloo, even brigades fell to the command of lieutenants ; a hun- dred officers (including ten generals) having been killed, and five hundred wounded, on the side of the Allies, and still more on the side of Napoleon. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 99 Carolina Grand Lodge of Masons, was mortally wounded — not, however, by the assailants, but by an accidental shot from one of the garrison."''*' When the flag of Wagner was shot down dur- ing the long bombardment, like another Sergeant Jasper, he lashed it to a mast and returned it to its place. The history of this encounter has not yet been written, by any body, with satisfactory ful- ness and accuracy. Such of the facts as have been preserved, have been embroidered with curious and absurd fictions. Mr. Greeley, for example, says, that, "after advancing a few hun- dred yards under a random fire from two or three great guns," the Fifty-fourth halted for half an hour, during which it "was addressed by General Strong and its Colonel !" The innocent historian had evidently read and with childlike simplicity believed, the story that Napoleon paused and harangued the Guard before the final charge at Waterloo. The fact *He was the first Master of Franklin Lodge, Charles- ton, in which it was my fortune, on taking up my residence there, to be initiated into the mysteries of sym- bolic masonry. It is remarkable as illustrating the uni- versality of this order, that in the elaborate preamble and resolutions passed by that lodge on the occasion of his death, there is nothing which might not have been adopted by any Northern lodge. loo LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS is, the Fifty-fourth did not arrive till the brigades had been formed for this assault. Hence it happened, that it was placed so strangely, form- ed in two lines, in advance of the right of the first brigade, which was formed in line by com- panies, at half distance. This glowing fiction probably arose from this fact : the step of the Fifty-fourth on start- ing was the "left oblique," and, naturally enough, these new troops crowded badly on the centre ; so that Shaw had to halt twice to ''dress ranks," before they took the double quick.* The only "address" given by Strong, at that time, was, "Forward, the Fifty-fourth" — as the only Waterloo "speech" from Napoleon to the Guard was, "Gentlemen, the road to Brus- sells."f No commander out of Bedlam ever thought of halting troops under fire to indulge in elephantine harangues or sesquipedalian orations. The best account of the assault on Wagner is that of "Personne" in the Charleston Courier ^ *If I criticise Greeley more than others, it is because, on the wliole, I like him better than they. Lossing mix- es the later incidents of this battle with the earlier events ; and Harper passes them over in silence. Better things may be expected in the forthcoming volumes of the Count of Paris, touching the last years of the War. ^Messieurs — Le chemin a Bruxelles. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. loi which none of the Northern historians seem to have seen.-^ But, like every other narrative of the combat which I have read, it is disfigured by errors. It were well if each surviving regimen- tal commander made a separate report to the commander-in-chief, as is the custom in the Navy But some of them, (like Colonel Straw- bridge of the Seventy-sixth Pennsylvania,) would have little to report, that one would care to read. Admiral Dahlgren has left us a detailed re- port on the services of the Federal fleet at Charleston from July lO to September 8, 1863, which is accessible to all.f Whatever he has there omitted will doubtless be supplied in his memoirs now preparing for the press. Had Wagner been attacked on the loth, or I ith, with any thing like the force and reso- lution with which it was assaulted no the i8th, it might have been taken, and the lives of many hundreds of brave men saved. Many lives might also have been saved, had Putnam's brigade been pushed in earlier. It was ready *See Charleston Courier of July 20, 21, 22, 24, 1863. " Personne " was F. G. Fontane, who, like the Confeder- ate General Whiting, passed much of his early life in Lowell, Massachusetts. Both were pupils of the Lowell High School. Cowley's History of Lowell, p. 172. fSee Putnam's llecord, vol. 10, pp. 183-190. The same volume contains the reports of the Confederate command- ers, pp. 534-557. See also Gilmore's Operations &c. I02 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS and waiting for the word of command while Strong's brigade was getting " pulverized." Stevenson's brigade should also have been push- ed in to support Putnam. Greeley, Lossing, and the other historians, relying too much on Gillmore's account, omit to mention that this army was divided into three (not two) brigades, and that in consequence of Strong and Sey- more being Jiors dit combat, and Gillmore being too far in the rear, the third brigade received no order to advance till it was too late to save the battle. Gillmore should have posted himself at least near enough to the fort to know when Strong and Seymour fell, and to push in the supports in time. On Sunday morning while many of the Federal dead and wounded were still lying on the beach, the Admiral sent Flag Lieutenant Preston and Sergeon Duvall, under a flag of truce, to the Confederate General, offering to send his own surgeons to take care of the Fed- eral wounded. General Taliafero declined this offer. At a later period, the Confederates proposed that each government should send its own surgeons with medicines, hospital stores, etc, to minister to its soldiers in prison, but this was refused by the Federals. '•'■ *See the conclusion of the Vindication of the Confed- eracy against the charge of Cruelty to Prisoners. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 103 Six days after the battle Wagner, the Fed- eral Steamer Cosmopoliton met the Confeder- ate Steamer Alice, under flags of truce, midway between the fleet and the batteries, and ex- changed 105 prisoners. While the exchange was making, the officers indulged in friendly conversation, and the Confederates, through their telescopes, scrutinized with curious inter- est the grim Ironsides, and her strange little turtle-backed consorts, the monitors. On the night of August 5th, a Federal picket launch, with Acting Master Haines and twenty men, was attacked by the Confederate Steamer Juno under Lieutenant Porcher, inside of Cummings Point. Ten of the crew jumped overboard, but two of them, after swimming two miles, became exhausted, and swam ashore on Morris Island, and surrenderd. The others continued swimming till they reached the picket ships, and were saved. The rest were captured. On August 21, General Gillmore, having mounted several heavy siege guns so as to com- mand the city, summoned General Beauregard to surrender ! Under the circumstances, Beaure- gard would have been excusable if he had couch- ed his reply in the prohibited word of the famous Cambronne, which Victor Hugo has almost sanc- tified in Les Miserables ; but he was too polite I04 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S for that. At first he thought of treating it as the demand of the sock-and-buskin hero, Gen- eral Bum. But upon the second thought he de- termined to treat it seriously, and ** fired the Southern Heart," with a letter denouncing Gill- more for not giving him more time to remove the women and children before shelling the city. Finally he refused to move an inch, or to send away either " chick or child." On the nighty of August 22, 1863, Sum- ter received one of those heavy bombardings which Admiral Dahlgren has included in the re- port already cited. The night was black with tempest. But by this time, the Navy had be- come familiar with the thunder of their heavy guns. Standing on the turret of the Patapsco, as the battle was about to begin, Captain Steph- ens recited to the officers around him, the whole of Bayard Taylor's " Crimean Episode," begin- ning, " Sing us a song," the soldier cried. The outer trenches guarding, While the heated guns of the camp allied Grew weary of bombarding. So General Wolfe recited Gray's Elegy, rowing across the St. Lawrence to climb the heights of Abraham, where he fought and fell the next morning. On the night of September 3rd, the Con- federate Major Warley, who, had been wounded LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 105 during that day's bombardment, was captured with eight men, by the Federal pickets, while on his way in a boat from Morris Island to Charles- ton. By the sixth of September, Gillmore's par- allels and batteries had approached so close to Wagner as to ensure its capture at the next as- sault. All that day, a terrible bombardment was kept up, attended with many casualties to the Confederates ; and General Terry was preparing for an assault the next morning. But during the night Taliafero quietly evacuated Wagner and Gregg, and shipped his forces to the city, leav- ing Morris Island in possession of the Federals. A few nights before the evacuation, while the Confederate Steamer Sumter was transport- ing troops from Morris Island to the city, she was mistaken by Fort Moultrie for a Federal vessel, fired on and sunk. By this accident, five men were killed, others wounded, and twenty drowned. The rest numbering about 600 were saved by barges. The feat of Commodore Perry in transfer- ring himself and his flag to the St. Lawrence when the Niagara was destroyed during the bat- tle on Lake Erie, has been greatly applauded. ■•''■ *ror Perry's peculiar tactical methods and combina- tions, see Ward's Navaf Tactics, pp. 76-80. io6 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S Captain T. H. Stephens, of the iron-clad Pa- tapsco, performed a similar feat during the great bombardment of September 8, 1863. Commo- dore Rowan of the Ironsids, fearing that the Patapsco had attracted too much of the enemy's fire, signalled to him to " Drop down below.' Whereupon, Captain Stephens coolly pushed off in his boat, pulled over to the Ironsides, and begged Rowan to let the Patapsco remain where she was. " Wait a moment," he said, ** and see how completely my guns command Bee." Com- modore Rowan waited, and Lieutenant Com- mander Bunce, the Executive Officer of the Pa- tapsco, put in a couple of most perfect shots — seeing which, Commodore Rowan immediately replied, " Captain Stephens, stay where you are ; you seem to have taken Battery Bee under your exclusive charge." Not a word can be said to belittle the gallant feat of Perry. But I have known Admiral Dahlgren again and again to move about from vessel to vessel during the bombardments of Charleston forts, and have myself accompanied him in his barge on more than one such occa- sion. On the night of September 8, 1863, a gal- lant attempt was made to carry Fort Sumter by storm. Major Stephen Elliott, who had relieved LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE, 107 Colonel Rhett in command of the fort about the time when Gillmore reported that he had demol- ished it, made the following report : — "Having for several nights expected a boat attack, I had one-third of the garrison under arms on the parapet, and the remainder so posted as to reinforce with promptness. At i A. M. this morning I saw a fleet of barges ap- proaching from the eastward. I ordered the fire to be reserved until they should arrive within a few yards of the fort. The enemy at- tempted to land on the southeastern and south- ern faces ; he was received by a well directed fire of musketry, and by hcind-grenades, which were very effective, demoralizing him ; fragments of the epaulment were also thrown down upon him. The crews near the shore sought refuge in the recesses of the foot of the scrap, those further off in flight. The repulse was decided and the asault was not renewed "His loss is four men killed, two officers and seventeen men wounded, and fifteen officers and ninty-two men captured. We secured five stand of colors and five barges ; others were disabled and drifted off. One gunboat and Fort Johnson and the Sullivan's Island batteries en- filaded our faces, and contributed to prevent the renewal of the assault. Many of the shots io8 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS struck the fort. The garrison, consisting of the Charleston Battahon, behaved admirably ; all praise is due to Major Blake, his officers and men, for the promptness and gallantry displayed in the defence. Not one of my men hurt. One of our gunboats assisted during the fight." This gallant attempt to storm a " demol- ished" work has been the subject of repeated misrepresentation. Lossing says, ** a portion of the men of the squadron attempted the import- ant enterprise of surprising and capturing Fort Sumter, without Gillmore's knowledge!' Greeley says, " no notice was given to, and of course no cooperation invited from, General Gillmore.."'"'' Admiral Dahlgren says, in a narrative which, I trust, will yet be published : — " It was arranged that the columns should co-operate — that of the squadron moving outside of Cummings' Point, and that of the army from the inside. It was past midnight, on the 8th September, when a fine naval column of 450 picked men, well officered, pushed rapidly at the gorge and South East faces, landed, and ran up the debris of the gorge wall. The enemy opened a rapid and destructive fire from above, while Moultrie and Johnson flanked with a fire of shells our boats and uncovered men. Thus the attack ♦Lossing, vol. 3, p. 210. Greeley, vol. 2, p. 481. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 109 on a fort which Gen. G. assumes he had demol- ished, necessarily failed. So much did I desire the expected co-operation of the land column, that I went in person to the scene of action to secure the connection, but it came not. Gen. G. says his troops were detained by low tide un- til after the naval attack had failed, which seems far from satisfactory in view of the fact that it was near midnight when Lieut. Preston returned from Gen. G. with the assurance that the con- certed action was understood and arranged." A part of the correspondence in relation to this joint assault has been printed in Gillmore's book ; the rest of it will probably appear in the Admiral's Memoirs, now in preparation by his devoted and accomplished widow. The follow- ing dispatch is all I need offer to vindicate the truth of history against the errors of Greeley and Lossing : — Sept. 8th. Admiral Dahlgren : I deem it of vital importance that no two distinct parties should approach Sumter at the same time for fear of accident. I will display a red light from the fort when taken — 1 ask you to do the same if your party mounts first. Our countersign is " Detroit." Let us use it in challenging on the water. (Signed,) Gen. Gillmore. no LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS Among the officers here captured were Lieu- tenant Commander E. P. Williams, who after- wards perished with the ill-fated Oneida ; Lieu- tenants S. W. Preston and B. H. Porter, who were killed at Fort Fisher, the former of whom was attached to Admiral Dahlgren's staff. Our historians have wandered far from the facts in their statements touching the commerce of Charleston pending our blockade. Whatever may have been the " misinformation" upon which Mr. Welles founded the statement in his report for 1863 ; Greeley, Lossing, Boynton, and oth- ers, writing two or three lustrums later, have no excuse for saying that "as soon as our iron-clads were within the bar," July 10, 1863, ''the harbor of Charleston was entirely stopped. "•■'" Mr. Greeley is here more deeply in error than others ; he attributes this result to " the terrible missiles of Gillmore." The fact is, block- ade running was not stopped, and never could be wholly stopped, without more vessels than Dahlgren ever had until after the fall of Wil- mington. There are six different channels to Charleston, of such configuration that vessels of light draught, taking advantage of dark nights, could elude the vigilance of the blockading fleet. *Boynton, vol. 2, p. 486; Lossing, vol. 3, p. 210; Greeley, vol. 2, p. 482. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 1 1 1 Here is an advertisement from the Charles- ton Courier of December 17, 1863 : BLOCKADE STOCKS. BEE, CHICORA, COBIA, PET. For sale by H. H. DeLEON. 461, King-street, opposite Citadel Square. The same paper contains a much longer advertisement from the Bee Company, of which the editor says : — ** These gentlemen have already sold up- wards of ^700,000 worth of goods, which has saved to the purchasers at least ^150,000 to ^200,000 on the previous ruling prices." The following paragraph from the Charles- ton Mercnryoi April 26, 1862, shows how boldly the blockade-running was carried on, before the establishment of the inside blockade by the capture of Morris Island ; it is a sample of many more : — "On Saturday last, nine sailing vessels among which were the schooners Wave and the Guide, started from this harbor to run the block- ade. Just as they were crossing the bar they encountered the United States gunboat Huron, Lieut. Downes, and other blockading vessels, which immediately opened fire. The Wave, the, 1 1 2 LEA VES FROM A LA WYERS Guide, and two others of the nine saihnsf vessels, were forced to yield. The crews were detained as prisoners on board the enemy's ships tintil Wednesday last, when those who had been taken aboard the Guide were landed on Gibbes Island." On November 13, 1863, the Mercury an- nounced the payment of handsome dividends by three blockade-running companies, one of them being $500 per share. During the whole of Dupont's command, the Charleston newspapers reported the arrival and departure of vessels from that port as res:- ularly and as openly, but of course not as nu- merously, as before the war. Even after Dahl- gren established his iron-clad fleet inside the bar, and posted his pickets every night in the throat of the harbor, between Sumter and Moul- trie, these arrivals and departures were from time to time announced, but more guardedly, except when the blockade-runner had been run aground, or badly shelled. We have been accustomed to berate the commercial classes of Great Britain for export- ino; oroods to the Confederate States, in violation of our blockade. But probably more goods were carried into the Confederate States through the instrumentality of merchants in the United States than by all the merchants of Europe. LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE. 1 1 3 More secrecy was observed by those residing in New York, who engaged in this business, than was observed in running the blockade of Mex- ico ; but it is none the less true, that, in the Civil War as in the Mexican War, the munitions of war were furnished in very large quantites to the enemies of the United States by citizens of the United States. Good old Horace Gree- ley used to say, not only in his , despondent hours, but also in his more hopeful moods, that the ideas and vital aims of the South were " more generally cherished " in New York than in South Carolina or Louisiana. '•"'■ But I am satisfied that by far the greater part of the importing and exporting business that was carried on in violation of our blockade, was carried on, not by clandestine merchants of the North or of Great Britain, but by the Con- federate Government itself, by the Bee Company of Charleston, and similar organizations at Wil- mington, Mobile, and other ports, together with the various mercantile firms of the South. The moral and religious sense of the South was not at all offended by this traffic. The Southern Christian Advocate applauded the Chi- cora Importing and Exporting Company of Charleston for bringing through the blockade, ♦American Conflict, vol. 2, p. 8. 114 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS gratis, twenty cases of Scriptures for the South- ern Bible Societies, when the freight thereon would have been $10,000; and also for prohibit- ing the importation of any spirituous liquors up- on their steamers. The attempt of Lieutenant W. T. Glassell to blow up the Ironsides with the torpedo steam- er David, October 5, 1863, was equal in audacity and adroitness to the more successful attempt of. Lieutenant Commander Gushing to blow up the Ram Albemarle. With his little cigar-shaped boat, he ran into the centre of the inside block- ading fleet, in the night, and steamed for the Ironsides. When hailed by the officer of the deck, he answered, " A boat from the Live Yan- kee — I am coming alongside," — at the same time shooting the hailing officer, '•'■ and exploding the torpedo which projected from his bow. Fortun- ately, the Ironsides escaped serious injury, and captured Glassell and one of his crew. The David and the rest of those on board returned in safety to Charleston. On November 4, 1863, four of our scouts effected a landing at the southeast angle of Fort Sumter. After reconnoitering in the darkness for a few minutes, they were hailed by the sen- try, but they escaped. ♦Acting Ensign Charles W. Howard. He was buried on Morris Island. LIFE A FL OA T AND A SHORE. 1 1 5 On the night of November 19, 1863, Gen- eral Gillmore made an attempt to surprize and capture Fort Sumter. He asked no aid from the Navy ; but Admiral Dahlgren, hearing of it, and anxiously desiring its success, ordered his pick- ets to cover the assaulting party. His private journal contains the following entry, dated No- vember 20th : — *' Last night the Army undertook to feel the force in Sumter, and sent 200 men in boats for the purpose. At 30 yards a dog barked and aroused the garrison, which fired, wounding two of our men. The rumor was, the night before, that an attack was to be made, and I ordered the monitors on picket to cover our men. At 3 in the morning I was aroused by a report that a musketry fire had opened from Sumter. A few shots were fired by the forts, and then there was quiet. Our party concluded that there were 200 men in Sumter." The thoughtful care of the Admiral for the Army column on this occasion shines by contrast with the failure of Gillmore to support the Navy column on September 6th. On November 29, according to the Charles- ton newspapers, (which had published daily the number of shot and shell fired upon the city, since August 22,) the first fatal casualty occur- ii6 LEAVES FRO 31 A LAWYER'S red ; a negro being killed by a Parrott shell. Two days later, a Mrs. Hawthorn was mortally wounded by a fragment of shell. The use of St. Michael's spire as a target for the Federal artil- lery, provoked a blast from William Gilmore Simms, which began thus : — "Ay, strike, with sacrilegious aim The temple of the Living God ; Hurl iron bolt, and seething flame, Through aisles which holiest feet have trod ; Tear up the altar, spoil the tomb, And, raging with demoniac ire, Send down, in sudden crash of doom, That grand, old, sky-sustaining'spire."* On December 6th, the monitor Weehawken suddenly sunk at her anchorage off Morris Isl- and. Both Greeley and Lossing attribute this disaster to her hatches being left open when a gale came on ; but neither of them can have seen the testimony taken before the naval court of inquiry convened on that occasion, or that court's findings, though the entire record was printed. The Weehawken had probably been more seriously injured by getting aground, three months before, than was discovered at the time ; and her loss was probably caused by the parting of the hull proper from the "overhang," to which the hull was secured by rivets. The story of the gale coming on and filling her through * Charleston Mercury, December 2, 10, 1863. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 117 the hatches, is without foundation. ■-•'•■ Thirty-one of her crew went down with her. Another * life" was lost, which " the dignity of history " has not deigned to notice. The crew of the Weehawken had a pet. (What man-of- war's crew has not 1) It was a noble chanticleer, who felt as much at home on this iron-clad as in his own native barnyard. He had many '* taking ways," and had done many things that his proud ship-mates loved to tell of. When the Atlanta was captured, and Captain Webb came aboard the Weehawken to give up his sword, chapman strut- ted to the ship's side, and ''took a look" at the captain ; he then mounted the pilot-house, flap- ped his wings, and crowed lustily three times ; giving '' the honors of war," in behalf of the United States, to the distinguished prisoner. When the Weehawken got aground one day, near Fort Sumter, and lay with her hull badly exposed, shelled by the Confederates, and in desperate peril of destruction, chapman paced the deck in pensive silence for four hours. But as soon as she had been got off, without loss, he mounted the pilot-house, and poured from his melodious breast a song of thanksgiv- ing and joy, which was reechoed from the walls of Sumter. Never did he hear the crew '' piped *Greeley, vol. 2, p. 484; Lossing, vol. 3, p. 211. ii8 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS to quarters," but his voice " Rose like an anthem rich and strong," to second the call. After having thus *' braved the battle and the breeze " during the whole cruise, this noble fowl was " sucked down " with the Weehawken, and perished miserably with the ship of which he was the pride and boast. ** If he had been killed in one of them long bom- bardments," said an " old salt," who had survived him, " I shouldn't have felt so bad. That's what we all expect. But to see him fluttering on the waves and going down like a mere land-lubber ; it's too much for me to think of." Then lifting his sleeve to wipe the similitude of a tear from his starboard cheek, he added, " I tell you, Judge Cowley, on the word of a man, I'd rather 'a' lost half my prize money than have lost the cock of the old Weehawken." CHAPTER YI. Heroic Endurance of Charleston — Destruction of the Housatonic and the Maple Leaf by Torpedoes — Capture of the Columbine and the Water Witch — Dahlgren's Council of War — Attempt to Surprise Fort Johnson — Bombardment of the Batteries on the Stono — Battle of Honey Hill — Battle of Devaux's Neck — General Sherman at Savannah. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 1 19 The war had lasted nearly three years, when William Gilmore Simms published, in Charles- ton, his famous Ode, " Souls of Heroes," the third stanza of which ran thus : — " There are thousands that loiter, of historied claim, Who boast of the heritage shrined in each name, — Sting their souls to the quick, 'till they shrink from the shame, Which dishonors the names and the past of their boast ; Even now they may win the best guerdons of Fame, And retrieve the bright honors they've lost ! " No wonder that many faltered, for the con- flict had involved terrible sacrifices of life and treasure ; and the dream of Southern Independ- ence was farther from realization than when An- derson hauled down his flag at Sumter. But the spirit of the proud leaders remained unbroken. Haskell, Cheves, Bee, Simkins, Ramsay, Ryan, Pringle, Gary, Blum, Frost, Harleston, and many more — the flower of the youth of Charleston — had fallen in the bloody struggle ; but others came forward with alacrity to carry on the con- flict. All ages and both sexes suffered. ** A fire consumed her young men, and her maidens were not given in marriage." " Our City by the Sea, as the Rebel City known," had earned her title to a fame hardly less than Tyre, Syracuse, Jerusalem, La Rochelle, Lon- donderry, Saragossa, or Genoa, for the lion- I20 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S hearted courage and resolution and the heroic constancy and endurance of her people. If some had become reckless and desper- ate, it was no more than happens in all wars. No such demoralization prevailed at Charleston as was witnessed at Wilmington, which (as Cap- tain Wilkinson observes ) " was infested with rogues and desperadoes, who made a livelihood by robbery and murder. It was unsafe to ven- ture into the suburbs at night, and even in day- light there were frequent conflicts in the public streets, between the crews of the steamers in port and the soldiers stationed in the town, in which knives and pistols would be freely used." On February 17, 1864, Lieutenant Dixon ran outside the Bar with the David, and repeat- ed upon the Housatonic the experiment of Glas- sell upon the Ironsides. The David was seen and hailed by the watch officer of the Housa- tonic, but it was too late. The David exploded her torpedo with fatal effect ; but both went to the bottom together. The boats of the Canan- daigua saved most of the officers and crew of the Housatonic ; but Ensign E. C. Hazeltine, and four others, one of whom bore the famous name of Theodore Parker, perished. Lieutenant Dixon and all who were with him shared the same fate. Many a man-of-war, and many a merchant- man, bears upon her books names that have been LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 121 assumed, (as that of this great " heretic " preach- er probably was,) to conceal the true name, and to efface the memory of the man who bore it. How many life tragedies have ended thus ! I have known ship-masters, bankrupt merchants, broken clerks, unhappy husbands, members of the bar, physicians and clergymen, who had been beaten on the race-course of life, finding the shelter and oblivion, for which their hearts yearn- ed, in the Navy, shipping as George Washington, John Adams, or Benjamin Franklin, but more often and more humbly, as John Smith, John Jones or John Brown. The Federal Army Transport Steamer Maple Leaf, was also sunk by a torpedo, April 1st, 1864, in the St. John's River, Florida. Nine days later, another steamer of the same sort, the General Hunter, was destroyed, and her quarter-master killed, in the same manner in the St. John's. If one David lay at the bottom of the sea, other torpedo-boats, built cigar-wise, were ready to carry on the work of destruction. The Steamer Memphis was attacked by one in the North Edisto, March 6th, and the Steam Sloop Wabash by another, off Charleston, April i8th; but both were beaten off. Other attempts were made at various places to capture or destroy vessels of this squadron. 122 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS The Steamer Marblehead, attacked in the Stono, off Legareville, on Christmas Day, 1863, made a determined resistance, which, with the aid of the Pawnee and other vessels, was successful. But the attack on the little Steamer Columbine in the St. John's, May 23rd^ and that on the Water Witch, in Ossabaw Sound, June 3rd, were successful. Each of these vessels was suddenly boarded in the night by an armed force too powerful to be conquered, and became a prize to the Confederate States. Hundreds of casualties on both sides, occurred from the precision of aim of the sharp- shooters. While General Taliaferro was in command of Wagner, Captain Waring, of his staff, was shot dead by a minnie ball from one of our sharp-shooters, twelve hundred yards distant, while standing by the side of his chief. I have myself seen a sentry shot dead on Cum- mings Point by a minnie ball from Sumter, five-eighths of a mile distant. Frequent as these casualties were, hardly any one ever guarded against them. The Duke of Wellington, I may say, regarded such acts as murders. They never decide any thing. General Samuel Jones succeeded General Beauregard as Confederate commander of the Department of the South. On the Federal side, LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 123 General John G. Foster relieved General Gill- more. Admiral Dahlgren having obtained leave of absence, Commodore Rowan took command of the squadron ad mteriin. On resuming his command in May, 186/^, the Admiral held a council of his nine iron- clad captains touching the feasibility of another naval attack on Charleston. All these officers expressed themselves ready and willing to en- gage in another attack with the greatest alacrity; but their judgment was against it. Only two voted in favor of an attack ; and these were among the youngest holding commands, — Lieu- tenant Commanders George E. Belknap and Joseph N. Miller ; while seven voted in the negative, one of the seven being Commodore Rowan. It this prudence did not suit everybody, it was enough for the Admiral, that it was approved at the time by the Navy Department and afterwards by Sherman. In a letter to the Admiral, at the close of the War, General Sherman wrote — what he has again and again said in substance in my hearing, both before and since — " I now thank you in person for not having made the hazardous experiment ; for when the time did come to act seriously, your fleet was perfect, well manned and admirably 124 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS suited to aid me in the execution of the plan which did accompUsh the fall of Charleston, and more too." ." In war," said Napoleon, " it is always and everywhere difficult to know the truth." Some time after this council was held, a clamor was raised because Charleston had not been taken, and two members of Congress called at the Navy Department to urge that the Admiral should be relieved by an officer of a more belli- cose mind. The question was put to these gentlemem by Mr. Fox, "Whom do you recom- mend for this {^lace V "Well : Commodore Row- an," was the reply. ''He is a fighting man ; he is there chafing on account of the backward- ness of the Admiral. Put him in command, and he will go into Charleston right off." Fancy the blank looks which these Congressmen exchane^- ed with one another, when Mr. Fox read to them the Admiral's dispatch inclosing the report of this council of war; by which it appeared that he had again and again changed the form of the question voted on, with the view to get from the council a vote in favor of an attack, while Commodore Rowan and the rest of these officers voted seven to tivo against the propo- sition in every form. One of the Congressmen, General Hawley, who fought like a Trojan under LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 125 Stevens at Secessionville, frankly owned his mistake, and avowed his determination never again to meddle with matters out of his own sphere. Let no one draw from this an inference unfavorable to the great merit of the present gallant and honored Vice Admiral of the Navy. His record throughout the War, especially while in command of the Ironsides, is full of proofs of his undaunted courage and extraordi- nary professional skill. The Admiral afterwards told m^ that, if he could have got from this council a vote that would justify an attack, he would have made it, whatever the result might have been. I recalled to his attention the proverb, that councils of war never fight, and Orme's explanation of that proverb, — that "as the commander never con- consults his officers in this authentic form ex- cept when great dificulties are to be surmount- ed, the general communication increases the sense of risk and danger, which every one brings with him to the consultation.""^'^ I also cited to the Admiral all the ex- amples I had met with in history, where bril- liant victories had been won, on land and sea, in battles which had been fought contrary to the advice of such councils. ♦Orme's History of Hindustan, vol. 2, p. 171. 126 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S As I expatiated on the battle of Plassy, which was fought by General Clive after a council had voted 13 to 7 against fighting, and on which Great Britain founded her Indian Empire, — the Admiral answered me : — ''And havent there been as many examples to the contrary ? There was Benham over here (pointing across Morris Island towards Secessionville.) He fought against the advice of his commanders ; and you know the result. My first business is to hold this coast. I am to run no risk of loosing this coast, for the sake of taking Charleston." At that time, the captains and pilots of blockade runners received from $1,000 to $5,- 000, besides perquisites, for a single successful trip, occupying a week. Common seamen were paid $100 a month in gold, and $50 bounty at the end of every successful voyage. I had been of counsel, at an early period of the War, for the keeper of one of the Charleston hotels, and had succeeded in induc- ing Mr. Welles to release him from Fort Warren, where he had been incarcerated for running the blockade. And I should be sure of a welcome reception from him if I went to Nassau, and thence took passage in one of those long, low, narrow, lead-colored, short-masted, rakish-look- LIFE A FL OA T A ND A SHORE. 1 2 7 ing blockade runners to Charleston. I thought that, with from $10,000 to $25,000 I could hire pilots, in Nassau or in Charleston, to pilot our iron-clads to the city, and I offered to try the experiment ; though well aware that, in case of discovery, I should die the death of a spy, like Major Andre and Colonel Hayne. If a blockade-runner could enter Charles- ton with a good pilot, so ( it seemed to me ) could our iron-clads, with one of the same pilots; no matter how many torpedoes might lie along the channel. But the Admiral had to look at the question from other points of view ;"■•'■ and the attempt was not made. According to the report of General Gillmore, "it was the constant and studied practice of the Confederate commanders to circulate exaggerat- ed and erroneous reports concerning the means of defence ; — and to such an extent and with such skill was this ruse made use of, that with few exceptions, neither the inhabitants of the city, nor the troops defending it, possessed any correct knowledge of the channel obstructions. '*Such a semblance of necessary and S3^stem- atic labor in their construction, management, and repair, was kept up, and such an affectation of secrecy concerning their real character and *DahlgTen's Maritime International Law, pp. 17, 78. 128 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S of confidence in their efficiency was assumed, in order to keep all knowledge or suspicion of the huge fiction from us, that the blockade- runners themselves knew almost nothing of the really harmless character of the hidden obstruc- tions they were told to avoid." And General Gillmore contends "that there was nothing in the shape of channel obstructions or torpedoes that could prevent or seriously retard the passage of our fleet up to Charleston city or above it, in 1863 and 1864, by using the channel left open for blockade-runners ; that such channel obstructions and torpedoes as did exist, were not regarded by the enemy as at all formidable, or likely to afford them much protec- tion in the event of an actual attack ; and that at no time during the war was their condition any better, or their efficiency any more to be relied on, to delay the passage of a fleet, than when the city came into our possession in February, 1S65."- But if General Gillmore supposes that it was the submarine obstructions alone that prevented this council from favoring, or the Admiral from making, another attempt to cap- * Supplementary Report to Engineer and Artillery Operations against the Defences of Charleston Harbor, pp. 25, 27. LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 129 ture Charleston in 1864, he is greatly mistaken. How serious the torpedo and other submarine obstructions were, sufficiently appears in the affidavits and reports appended to Mr. Welles' Report for 1865, pp. 252-300. But these were by no means the only obstacles. The officers who sat in this naval council, as well as the Admiral, saw that, while Gillmore, with the aid of the Navy, was engaged in cap- turing Morris Island and destroying the offen- sive power of Sumter, the genius and rescources of Beauregard and his able lieutenants created other and more powerful defensive works inside of Sumter. So that Ripley could justly boast that his second aud third "circles of fire" were now more to be relied on than his first circle at the time of Dupont's attack. Pollard puts it well when he says, Beauregard ** had re- placed Sumter by an interior position, had ob- tained time to convert Fort Johnson from a forlorn old fort into a powerful earthwork, and had given another illustration of that new system of defence practiced at Comorn and Sebastopol, where, instead of there being any one key to a plan of fortification, there was the necessity of a siege for every battery, in which the besiegers were always exposed to the fire of others. "■••' *Pollard's Lost Cause, p. 437. I30 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S On June 13th, 1864, General Ripley, the Confederate commander of the First Military- District of the Department, sent a letter by flag of truce to General Schimmelfennig, the Federal commander of the District, inlorming him that five generals and forty-five field officers of the Federal Army, prisoners of war, had been con- fined in Charleston, in a part of the city which was. exposed, day and night, to the fire of the Federal guns. A copy of this letter was at once forwarded to the Admiral, who denounced it as " a threat to murder," for which Generals Jones and Ripley should be hanged, if they were taken. But we had as many places where Con- federate shells fell as they had where our shells fell ; and it was determined to retaliate.'-' The place finally selected by General Jones for the confinement of Federal prisoners of war, was the Charleston Race Course. It is strange, that while the horrors of Andersonville, Sauls- bury, Libby, and Belle Isle, have been recited, more or less at length, in scores of narratives, the hardships of the Charleston Race Course have been left unnoticed and unsung. Although the Federal Army and Navy at once threatened to retaliate, it was brutal busi- *See the correspondence on that subject, in Welles' Report for 1864, pp. 351-355. It is of ten-fold greater interest than much of the matter found in the histories. ' LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 131 ness ; and human nature shrank from it. Three months later, however, General Jones was notified by flag of truce that six hundred Con- federate officers, prisoners of war, had been confined, under the fire of the Confederate shells, in a stockade, near Cummings Point, Morris Island; that they had been provided with tents, and with supplies of food approximating as nearly as possible the rations allowed by the Confederates to our prisoners ; and that when- ever General Jones should remove the Federal prisoners from under our fire, and should give notice by flag of truce of that fact, these six hundred Confederate officers would be removed from under the Confederate fire. To the reproach of humanity, the Confed- erates persisted in keeping hundreds of our prisoners upon the Race Course at Charleston. " Here," wrote James Redpath, " upon an open field, without shelter from burning sun or bleach- ing storm, our poor boys were turned out to sicken and die. Their beds at night were the sods of the earth — their habitations only such burrows as they could excavate with their hands in the sandy soil. Two hundred and fifty-seven of these unfortunate heroes never left the en- closure alive, and were buried upon the spot where they threw off their mortal armor." Of 132 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S course, the retaliatory stockade on Morris Island was maintained as long as the Race Course out- rage was continued. Early in the morning, on Sunday, July 4th, 1864, two regiments of infantry, the One Hun- dred and Twenty-seventh New York, and Fifty- second Pennsylvania, with a detachment of sixty men from the Third Rhode Island Artillery, all under the command of Col. William Gurney, embarked in boats from Morris Island, hoping to effect a landing on James' Island, and to surprise and capture Fort Johnson and Battery Simkins. These works are about two miles nearer Charles- ton than Cummings Point. _ This movement was made in consequence of information that the Confederate garrison then on James' Island, had been reduced to a skeleton. It was a bold move- ment, and promised brilliant results. I could not resist the impulse to accompany the assaulting party as a volunteer, as one or two other naval officers did. But the embarkation of the troops was delayed two hours beyond the time assign- ed, and the tide had gone down, so that some of the boats got aground, and failed to reach James' Island. That portion of the assaulting party that reached the island was even more unfortu- nate. Colonel Gurney, of the New York regi- ment, without the knowledge of his command, LIFE AFL OAT AND ASHORE. 1 3 3 remained on Morris Island, and in his absence the command devolved upon Colonel Hoyt, of the Pennsylvania regiment, who, however, seems not to have been aware of the fact. He was separ- ated from his command, and taken prisoner. Lieutenant Colonel Conyingham, upon whom the command now devolved, looked about for Colonel Hoyt, and became a prisoner himself. Then ensued confusion baffling description. One company of the New York regiment and the Rhode Island artillery-men landed un- observed within fifty yards of Fort Johnson ; they were soon discovered by the garrison ; but upon one volley being fired, some officer,(I could never learn whom,) gave the order to retreat to the boats, and thus this opportunity to capture these important works was lost. The Confederate force then on James' Island was small — some re- ports putting it as low as 150. Our loss in killed, wounded and captured must have exceeded the whole number of men in the two forts assailed; for we lost 137 enlisted men and six officers. At the late Mr. Greeley's request, I placed in his hands my notes of this well-conceived but abortive movement, to be used in his American Conflict. He seemed well pleased to get these notes, but probably never looked at them again. No mention is made of this affair in his book, 134 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS ' nor in any other history of the war,''-' although, as Admiral Dahlgren said, '* it came near decid- ing the fate of Charleston." It is related that once in their agony for want of a good general, the Scots exclaimed, " O for an hour of Dundee." With Gurney lagging be- hind, with Hoyt and Conyingham captured, with no known commander to direct them ; with bat- teries opening upon them from all directions, — " cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them " — ^^in their supreme need of a general, our troops looked anxiously to the mound where Strong, Putnam, Chatfield and Shaw, had led their forces to the jaws of death ; and then made their way back to the place of embarkation. More fortu- nate than many others, I escaped, with only a a flesh wound from a shell. During the week following this attack on Johnson and Simkins, the monitors Lehigh and Montauk, and the Pawnee, McDonough and Racer were actively engaged in bombarding the *It* was reported in Mason's dispatches to the Neio York Herald of July 12, and more fully in the Herald of August 1st, which led to the convening of a court of in- quiry touching the conduct of Colonel Gurney. The findings of the court have not been made public; but General Schimmelfennig, in a conversation with me, con- firmed the strictures in the Herald. See letters and or- ders appended to Mr. Welles' Report for 1865, pp. 252, 346. LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE. 1 3 5 batteries in the Stono. Admiral Dahlgren's dis- patches contain an account of these operations, which our historians pass by unmentioned. General Foster cooperated, three of his lieu- tenants playing important parts — Generals Hatch, Binney, and Schimmelfennig. The last named officer rose very high in the esteem of both Army and Navy. When the history of our Civil War is written as it should be, his services will ensure his renown ; albeit -his clissouant, consonant name Almost rattles to fragments the trumpet of fame." Some of the most interesting chapters yet to be written in the history of the War, are those relating the operations of sailors and marines when transferred to the shore, and organized as naval land batteries and sailor infantry. Two such batteries, with four guns each, were formed by Admiral Dahlgren in November, 1864 ; and they were supported by four half companies of sailor skirmishers, and four companies of marines. ■"••■ Commander Preble was placed in command of *• the Fleet Brigade," as this force was called ; and he has given an account of it in the Preble Family Memorial. Although it ♦Dahlgren's Dispatches, with Welles' Report for 1865, pp. 215—220, 346 ; Preble's Dispatches, Ihid, 308-312. 136 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S bore an important and distinguished part in all the engagements on the TuUifinny and the Coo- sawhatchie, this brigade is scarcely mentioned in the histories of the War. The object of these operations was to cut the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, and prevent the Confed- erates from sending troops to oppose Sherman in Georgia, by. employing them here. This object was largely accomplished, but not without considerable loss ; the Confederate commanders having a perfect knowledge of the country, while the Federal commanders knew nothing of it, and again and again mistook the way. The most unfortunate battle in which the Fleet Brigade participated, was that of fioney Hill, November 30th. Besides the Fleet Brigade, three brigades of General Foster's army participated, com- manded, respectively, by General Hatch, Gen- eral Potter, and Colonel A. S. Hartwell of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry ; together vv'ith two batteries of the Third New York Artillery, and two companies of the Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry. The Thirty - fifth United States Colored Troops led the assault, but stuck in an impassa- ble marsh which lay in front of the Confederate Battery. There, a galling fire of grape and can- LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 137 ister, as well as musketry, was opened upon them, and they were forced to retire. Colonel James C. Beecher (half-brother of Henry Ward Beecher) followed; but his regi- ment, the Thirty-second United States Colored Troops, could not get near enough to produce much effect. So with other regiments: the Fifty- fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts: the Fifty- sixth, One Hundred and Twenty-seventh, One Hundred and Forty-fourth, and One Hundred and Fifty-seventh New York; the Twenty-fifth Ohio; the Thirty-fourth and One Hundred and Second United States Colored Troops. Although necessarily fighting at a disad- vantage, with the enemy behind entrenchments, and themselves completely exposed, the Federal troops fought nobly during seven hours. Previ- ous to the battle there were three hours of hot skirmishing. The Confederate loss in this battle was in- significant. The Federal killed, wounded and missing, numbered 740. Among the wounded was the Rev. Colonel Beecher, and Lieutenant Colonel E. C. Geary. The best account of the battle of Honey Hill is that of Samuel W. Mason who was pres- ent, in the New York Herald of December 9th, 1864. 138 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S Better success was achieved the following week at Deveaux's Neck. After two engage- ments on December 6th and 7th, the railroad was cut, and ten Confederate regiments, which otherwise might have made trouble for Sherman, were detained and kept on the defensive. It was the universal testimony of the offi- cers present, both of the Army and Navy, that the sailors and marines behaved admirably in camp and battle. It was particularly remarked by Army officers, that from the Fleet Brigade there were no stragglers. So far from our tars requiring to be forced to face danger and death in any form, it was necessary to compel them, by threats of punishment, to avoid exposing them- selves recklessly. Bayard Taylor said or sung : " The bravest are the tenderest; The loviug are the daring." I have seen many illustrations of this. But I have also seen many examples to the contrary. The insensibility displayed by our motley force of whites, blacks, mulattoes, and octoroons, on the Tullifinny and the Coosawhatchie, was re- volting. I have again and a2:ain heard our men carelessly shout, " You are gone up," to their comrades falling mortally mangled by their side. Familiarity with the horrors of war tends always to make men brutes. For example : after the battle of the Pyramids, (as Miot relates,) the LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 139 whole way through the desert of Egypt was tracked with the bones and bodies of men and horses that had perished in those dreadful wastes. In order to warm themselves at night, the French army gathered up the dry bones and bodies of the dead which the vultures had spared, and made fires with them. By a fire composed of this fuel Bonaparte and his jaded Generals lay lay down in the desert of the Pharaohs to sleep!* General Sherman burned the city of At- lanta on November I5tb, 1864; and cutting loose from his base in the West, struck out boldly to find a new base in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron and in the seaboard which that Squadron had captured three years before, and still held. In saying this I do no injustice to the Army in this Department, which, as General Schimmelfennig said, " could at no time be considered in any other light than as a landed force serving to render the blockade more effective," It has been argued that " the Grand March," was really a retreat ; that Sherman had moved too far from his base when he advanced from Chattanooga to Atlanta ; and could not have escaped destruction, had he remained *See Miot's Memoirs of the War in Egypt, and Rocca's Memoirs of the War in Spain. I40 LEAVES ORFM A LAWYERS where he was. President Davis was weak enough to call it a retreat and to predict for Sherman " the fate that befell Napoleon in the retreat from Moscow." But to my mind this argument only enhan- ces the magnitude of the movement. Has any captain since the days of Alexander ever con- ceived such a retreat? When, by any move- ment, a commander accomplishes all the sub- stantial result of a hundred victories, he has a right to call that movement by the term that best pleases him. Sherman had not been cavorting over Georgia many days before we learned from Confederate deserters that he was moving at the rate of fifteen miles a day, probably towards Savannah or Port Royal, but possibly towards Pensacola, or even Mobile. On the 25th, we learned that he had reached Milledgeville, and was '' smashing things." Exactly where Sherman would meet us, we knew, must be de- termined by circumstances. So the Admiral made preparations to meet him at Savannah River, at Wassaw Sound, at Ossabaw Sound, at St. Catherine's Sound, and also at Brunswick. Red, white, and blue rockets were sent up every night by our gun-boats at all these points, to inform the Army that the Navy was near. On LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 141 December I2th,'''' Captain Duncan and two scouts, after having drifted down the Ogee- chee in a canoe, brought the Admiral a note from General Howard, of Sherman's right wino:. They left Howard on the evening of the 9th, and reached the Fleet in Ossabaw Sound on the afternoon of the nth. On the next day, General Kilpatrick, Sher- man's Chief of Cavalry, communicated with the Bark Fernandina, Acting Master Lewis West, one of our squadron, in St. Catherine's Sound. On Monday morning, December 12th, I was sitting as Judge-Advocate of a Naval Gen- eral Court Martial in the cabin of the Steamer Canandaigua, Captain N. B. Harrison, at Port Royal, trying Francis Anderson for stealing $600 from Walter Allen, Paymaster of the monitor Nantucket, (now editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser,) when the Mttle Steamer Dandelion ran in at full speed with Captain Duncan and General Howard's dispatch. This gratifying news spread like wild-fire. It was wig-wagged from ship to ship — handker- chiefs being used where flag signals were not at ♦See the reports of Sherman and his generals in Put- nam's Rebellion Record, vol. 9, pp. 5, 6, 7, 16, 24, 166 Also, the dispatches of Dahlgren and his commanders, appended to Mr. Welles' Report for 1865. Also Sherman's Memoirs etc. 142 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS command. While the Admiral was dictating dispatches to Secretary Welles at Washington and to General Foster up the Broad River, to inform them of the fact, I sent the glorious intelligence by the Steamer Queen to the New York Herald, which must, of course, announce the great arrival of Sherman ** in advance of all other journals." The excitement, the exhileration, ay, the rapture, created by this arrival, will never be forgotten by the officers and crews of the Fed- eral vessels who then saw the beginning of the end of the war, and of their own wearisome service. ^ The Admiral at once started South in the Harvest Moon. As soon as the trial of Ander- son was finished, the flag of the Naval General Court Martial was hauled down ; and the Canandiagua followed the Admiral to the South. Fort McAllister fell on Tuesday ; and on Wed- nesday, December 14th, General Sherman him- self^ came on board the Harvest Moon in Was- saw Sound, and remained with us all night. It was arranged that Savannah should be attacked simultaneously by the Navy in front, and by the Army in the rear, and on the next day the Admiral carried the General to Fort McAllister, (which General Hazen's Division had captured LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 143 two days before,) where General Sherman left lis to rejoin his Army.''-" Already the idol of the Army, this brilliant officer became equally the idol of the Navy. The General and the Admiral at once became personal friends and faithful and indefatigable coadjutors, and so continued to the end. The severities of the service and the loss of his son had told heavily upon the Admiral ; but from the day when he caught the light of Sherman's bright eyes as he stepped on boara the Flagship in Wassaw Sound, he seemed to grow younger and more buoyant every day. The increasing elasticity of his mind is manifest in all his dis- patches. Writing on that night to Secretary Welles, while the jaded General lay near him asleep, the Admiral said, — 'T cannot express to the department my happiness in witnessing and assisting in this glorious movement, so accept- able to our great country. My only wish now is to do my part." How faithfully he did that part, the General has repeatedly attested in words of the warmest praise. The affection which the Ad- tSeo Report of Secretary Welles for 1874. The dis- patches printed with the Reports of the Navy Depart- ment for 1864 and 1865, contain full accounts of many transactions not recorded elsewhere. This mine has been little worked by the historians. 144 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS miral bore towards General Sherman was warmly reciprocated. No doubt, no suspicion, ever started on either side: their hearts were as guileless as they were brave ; and they were incapable of envy or jealousy. Most fit it was that, five years later, when the Admiral died suddenly upon his lounge, in Washington, the first that viewed his lifeless form (outside of his own family) was the illustrious General whom he met on that memorable day in Wassaw Sound. General Sherman came aboard again three days later, and proceeded with us in the Harvest Moon to Port Royal, where arrangements were made to reenforce the Army at the head of the Broad River with Carman's Brigade, with the view to get possession of the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, and prevent the escape of General Hardee and the Confederate Army in Savannah. On the night of December 20th, General Sherman again came on board the Harvest Moon, and proceeded with the Admiral first by the Flag-ship, and afterwards (when she grounded) by the Admiral's barge, to Ossabaw Sound. Just before reaching Ossabaw next morning, the Army Steamer Red Legs brought a dispatch from Captain Dayton, Sherman's adjutant, with news that Hardee had evacuated '' LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 145 Savannah the night before, and retreated to Hardeeville. The Confederate commander saw the- scheme of Sherman to shut him up in Savannah and there capture him. So he ''Folded his tents like the Arabs, And silently stole away." Early in the following evening, the Admiral received a note from Sherman, enclosing tele- grams from Howard, saying that the Confederate Steam Ram Savannah, Commodore Tatnall, lay out of Howard's reach, and adding — "Tatnall intends to run the Block- ade TONIGHT ! " Never had Dahlgren received a more sug- gestive message. Could it be, that the Confed- erate Navy had rallied its powers on the approach of death } Would Tatnall repeat with the Savannah the experiment of Webb with the Atlanta .? If he did, the Nantucket and the Passaic lay in his path, and the fate of Webb would probably be Tatnall's too. But war has its accidents. Might not a daring and experienced officer, like Tatnall, possibly pass our fleet "^ He might, — though the chances were strongly against him. Had he succeeded in running the blockade with the Savannah, he might have turned South and raised the blockade of every port as far as the Gulf of Mexico, by ramming and sinking or 146 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER! S driving off every one of our blockading ships. What damage might he not afterwards have done, whatever course he had taken ? But — never mind what he might have done — he attempted nothing brilliant at all. He blew up both his iron-clads, and fled. On December 21st, the Admiral trans- ferred his flag to the Steamer Wissahickon, Lieutenant Commander Andrew Johnson, and we proceeded up the Savannah River, accom- panied by the Steamer Winona, Lieutenant Commander Dana, and two tugs. At four o'clock we anchored at Elba Island, a short distance below Savannah; and the channel obstructions making it dangerous to push the vessels up further we proceeded to the city in the tugs. The Army of Sherman had already entered Savannah from the rear. The General himself followed the next day, and established his head- quarters in the stately mansion of Charles Green on Macon street, opposite St. John's Episcopal Church. None of us will ever forget the delight with which we viewed the commercial emporium of Georgia, sitting like a fair crowned queen upon a high bluff, where the proud, lordly river bends with a graceful curve, and folds (as it were) his great arm lovingly around her. The poets, both LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 147 great and small, of our squadron, poured out copious effusions on this occasion, which were printed by the flag-ship press and in the papers of the city. One of these, perhaps, might be spared by an indulgent critic. It began thus : — *' My heart with rapture greets thee, Savannah, O, Savannah." Hardee's rear guard had not reached the left bank of the river before General Leggatt's Division entered the city. A bright little Jewess living on one of the great squares of the city, said to me a few days later, — "When we retired, the tent lights of our soldiers glimmered in the square, the same as usual. The following morn- ing those tents were gone, and others pitched in their stead, occupied by blue-coated Yankees.'* Not wishing to give offence to the dark-eyed daughter of Abraham, I spoke of the city as *' occupied " merely by us. In an unguarded moment I used the word " captured." It had barely passed my lips, when she replied with in- dignant emphasis, " Our city has not been cap> tured, Sir. Your General Sherman only came here to save himself from being captured by General Hood. Our army was short of stores, and General Hardee, who is a personal friend of mine, has merely gone away for supplies. He will return very soon, and if your army don't get 148 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS aboard your gunboats and leave this city, Gen- eral Hardee will take them prisoners every one.'' The city was barren of provisions, alike for man and beast. Sherman's foragers and his ** bummers," who were excellent judges of horses, had picked up some thousands of them on their march. Many of these perished for want of food in Savannah ; many others were killed to save their board. For a time, there was danger of famine. But this peril soon passed ; the weather was delightful ; the scenery was beautiful ; rapid communication was opened with the North, and all were happy. The order that prevailed was remarkable. Savannah was as quiet as it ever was. No scenes of drunkenness, debauchery and ruffianism, such as soon afterward disgraced Wilmington, were witnessed there. The intercourse of the officers of the Navy with the officers of the Army while at Savannah was most cordial and joyous. Upon getting acquainted with Sherman's commanders, I formed a high opinion of almost every one of them. Their confidence in each other and in their chief was great, and it was well placed. Great as is Sherman's military re- nown now, I cannot but think that it will shine with a richer lustre hereafter. Though no Puritan, he has some of the traits of Oliver Cromwell. Historians say that Crom- LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 149 well '* was accustomed to unbend among his offi- cers in a manner that none but a man with a kind heart and a good conscience could do ;" — a remark which I often recalled on seeing Sher- man's easy familiarity with the officers of the Navy as well as those of the Army. His hearty appreciation ot the alacrity with which the Ad- miral and all the officers of the fleet responded to all his desires, was often expressed. Calling at his head-quarters in Savannah, one morning, while he was planning his march through the Carolinas, I collected and took with me some of the best maps that we had aboard the flag-ship, of the region he was to traverse. *' Just the very thing I wanted," he exclaimed, with exhuberant joy. When I told him the Harvest Moon and the Pontiac had been placed at his service to transport his right wing to Beaufort, he exclaim- ed, •' Why, your Admiral anticipates all my wishes." That he is capable of unbounded wrath. Secretary Stanton, General Halleck, and many others, learned to their sorrow. But I never, except once, saw him exhibit any but the noblest and pleasantest, ay, the sweetest, traits. Even his most serious hours were irradiated with flashes of gaiety that recalled the traditional elan of Napoleon. ISO LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS The time, the only time, when I saw him displeased, was when he received news of the manner in which Butler *' craw-fished off," C^s Sherman expressed it,) after landing at Fort Fisher. In consequence of the failure of Butler on that occasion, it was doubtful, for some days, whether Sherman's army would not be ordered to proceed to North Carolina by sea, and thus be prevented from cutting their expected swath through South Carolina. One reads with surprise the remark of the Rev. Dr. Boynton, that, although " much impor- tant service was performed " by the Navy, about this time, '* particularly at Charleston and Savannah," yet the limits of his work do not allow ** more particular mention " of that service. One wonders why it is that ** the assistance which the Navy rendered the army of Sherman, after it reached the sea, cannot be adequately pre- sented in " The History of the Navy during the Rebellion." Where else should one look for it — especially when all the compilers of more gen- eral narratives pass it over almost in silence ? The bombarding of Charleston and its de- fences continued intermittently, month after month, each day's operations being a repetition of the last. I here give the record of one day, as a sample of hundreds : — LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE, 1 5 1 On January 29th, 1864, 156 shots were fired at the south angle of Fort Sumter, 139 of which struck. The bombardment began at day- light and ceased at dark. One hour's work repaired the damage which the fort sustained during the day. In the afternoon the flagstaff was shot away ; and the following account of the replacing of it is from a journal kept by a Confederate officer in the fort : — **it was first replaced upon a small, and afterwards upon a larger staff by Private F. Shafer, Co. *A,' Lucas Batallion, who stood on the top of the traverse, and repeatedly waved the flag in sight of the enemy. He was assisted by Corporal Brassin- ham and Private Charles Banks of the same corps, and by Mr. H. B. Middleton of the Signal Corps, who was acting as adjutant of the post in the absence of the regular officer. They were exposed to a rapid and accurate fire of shells. At the close of the scene, Shafer, springing from the cloud of smoke and dust of a bursting shell, stood long waving his hat in triumph. It was a most gallant deed, and the effect upon the garrison was most inspiring." The Christmas holidays brought to the Admiral at Savannah, information from Captain Scott, senior naval officer off Charleston, that Commodore Tucker, the commander of the Con- 152* LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS federate naval forces in Charleston, meditated a raid on the blockading fleet with his three Iron- clads, Chicora, Palmetto State, and City of Charleston, assisted by several torpedo boats like the David. It certainly would have been creditable to Tucker to have made one more effort to enhance the fame of the Confederate Navy. If he had not destroyed or beaten off the blockading fleet, he could, perhaps, have run the blockade, stood oat to sea, and fought a gallant fight with such wooden steamers as pursued him. But while he meditated, the Admiral reenforced the fleet off Charleston; and by New Year's Day, no less than seven of the turtle-backs lay ready to give Tucker a warm reception. The result was, no raid was at- tempted. CHAPTER TIL Fort Fisher — Death of Preston and Porter — Loss of the Patapsco by a Torpedo — Bon Mot of Farragiit — Destruction of the Dai Ching — Occupa- tion of Charleston and Georgetown — Captain Belk- nap's Memorandum — Charleston Prizes — The last of the Blockade-Runners. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE, 153 While General Sherman remained at Sav- annah, and the Admiral's flag-ship lay in the river below, I had my last opportunity to meet Lieutenant Preston, formerly of Dahlgren's staff, who, after being captured at Sumter and subsequently exchanged, had been attached to the staff of Admiral Porter. I made a visit to tlie fleet off Wilmington, running up the coast in the prize Julia, The weather was extremely bad, and we encountered a gale which would probably have been fatal to our rickety craft, had it not been "on our quarter," or behind us. The Julia lay low in the water ; and with her convex deck which covered her half-way from her stem to her waist, she cut through the waves instead of leaping over them. The strain on her was fearful. She shivered in every part, and could not have shaken worse if she had had a violent attack of St. Vitus' Dance. I was never more impressed with the awe, the power, and the mystery of the Sea, than when tossed about in this fragile ship, which seemed ready at any instant to break in two or in three and leave us to the mercy of the pitiless storm. Still, perhaps, it is this awe, this power, this mystery, which lends to the Sea its most powerful attraction. Somebody says — Strip this old world of all its myi^tery, discover its last and uttermost secret, and I am sure I should 1 54 LEA VES FROM A LA WYER'S find it a stupid and dreary place to live in. 1 believe in God, not because I know him, but because I do not know him ; because he is mysterious, the profound, the infinite ; because he is ever and forever Unknown. If my thought once could capture him and make him its prisoner, it would immediately tire of him and seek for a greater. Any thing that we can draw a circle around straightway becomes no longer a goal, but a point of departure. Hence, then Jts I stand before Old Ocean, I hail it as a type of the infinite. My soul revels in its vastness. Thankful for all it reveals, T am still more thankful for all that it only suggests. Here I have that sense of inward expan- sion, of soul-quickuing, of slow up-climbing and out- reaching of thought, which is always the eff'ect of standing in the presence of any great, grand, inspir- ing object in Nature or in art. No wonder sailors are superstitious. The sea is more than they can understand, familiar as they are with it. It speaks to them in an awful voice ; it deals with them in most impressive ways. It is at once their cradie and their grave. At length, the storm ceased, and before we reached Porter's flag -ship there was a great calm. My recollections of that visit are most pleasant ; though saddened by the reflection that I shall never again see, on this earth, my gallant friend, Preston, nor his gallant shipmate. Porter, who was his comrade in the attack on Sumter, his comrade in the Confederate prison, his com- LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE. \ 5 5 rade in the fleet under Admiral Porter, and finally his comrade in death at Fort Fisher. As I was about to proceed to Fortress Munroe, Preston said, " Call and see us on your way back. We'll take a walk through the city to- gether." I replied, " I hope we shall, but you are going on another forlorn hope, (alluding to the assault on Sumter, and the expedition with the powder-boat, as well as to the part which he was soon to take in the second assault on Fort Fisher ;) and God alone knows how it will end." ' Well, it's a fact, "'he said, ^' that both of us have had poor luck in volunteering to do more than our own particular duty. You had your leg smashed, and I had to rust in a rebel prison. This thing that we are going into at our next attack, is really soldiers' business, and not just the thing for sailors ; but I hope we shall come out all right. One thing . I can» tell you : we shall take Fort Fisher next time, whatever may be- come of me. For myself, I feel a good deal like Byron when he said, ' Here's a sigh for those who love me, And a smile for those who hate ; And whatever fate's above me, Here's a heart for any fate.' " "That's well put, Preston," I rejoined; "but there is another verse of Byron's — the last he ever wrote — which comes to my mind just now : 156 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS * Seek out— less often sought than found — A soldier's grave, for thee the best ; Then look around, and choose thy graund, And take thy rest.' " Here Lieutenant Porter joined us. Mutual good wishes were exchanged, and we parted — never to meet again this side immortality. On the fif- teenth of that month, (January, 1865,) Preston and Porter led a column of fourteen hundred sailors and marines in an assault on the sea-face of P'ort Fisher — a work calling for a column of from six to ten thousand men ; — Fort Fisher fell, but both these brave officers fell with it. Preston possessed the elements of a great commander. He was loved and admired by all who knew him.--' I shall not forget the cheerful tones of his invitation : " We'll take a walk through the city together." They rang in my ears when, a few months later, I did ** take a walk through the city " of Wilmington. Though alone, I felt that I was not alone ; and if the souls of heroes, ascended to glory, ever return to the scenes of their earthly life, then I know that Preston was indeed present with me ; and *One of his admirers wrote an appreciative ode on him in the Army and Navy Journal, beginning, " Fallen at a stroke, and in an hour forgot ! O, brave young spirit, can this be the lot Of all that great ambition that would soar Above all heights that men had reached before?" LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 157 the interest that I felt in that city was doubled by the thought that it was for this that Preston had died. In anticipation of another naval attack on Charleston, the Confederate Torpedo Corps laid many new torpedoes along the channel by which our vessels must pass, if they attempted to reach the city. On the night of January 15th, the monitor Patapsco passed over one of these newly laid torpedoes, which exploded under her, sending her to the bottom with eight officers and fifty-four men. One old boatswain who sur- vived the loss of this vessel, grimly remarked, as he came on board the flag-ship, with his clothes dripping wet, ** We were told to dredge for torpedoes, and nobody need cry because we found one." A remark not unworthy to be brack- etted with the following boTi mot of Admiral Farragut. When he was fighting his great battle below New Orleans, one of the best of his ships, the Mississippi, was badly rammed by the Confederate Ram Manassas. The smashing which she received was fearful: but Farragut merely remarked, Yoil cant make ome- lettes without bi'eakijig eggs! On January 26th, the steamer Dai Ching got aground in the Combahee, exposed to the fire of a Confederate battery. She was courageously 158 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S defended by Lieutenant Commander J. C. Chap- lin and all his officers and men for seven hours, during which she was struck upwards of thirty times, and her decks shot through in seven places; she was destroyed. Acting Ensign Frank- lin S. Leach, commanding the tug Clover, having disobeyed positive orders of his superior officers, and deserted his duty during the combat in which the Dai Ching was lost, was at once relieved of his command, placed under arrest, and turned over to me for trial by a Naval General Court Martial. The case was clear and the offence grave. But President Lincoln had often ex- pressed his unwillingness to approve a sentence of death for offences committed in the Navy ; and the conduct of the accused had previously been good. The sentence of Leach was dismis- sion from the service and five years' confinement at hard labor in the penitentiary ; and it was approved by Secretary Welles. A part of it was afterwards remitted by President Johnson. After the occupation of Fort P'isher and Wilmington, Charleston alone remained accessi- ble to blockade-runners ; and although a portion of Porter's fleet was transferred to Dahlgren, and the blockade made tighter than ever, the necessities of the Confederate Army prompted those engaged in this business to run the most LIFE AFL OAT AND A SHORE. 1 59 desperate risks ; and, for a time, Maffit, Wilkin- son, and others of the most noted blockade run- ners, turned their eyes towards Charleston. On February ist, Captain Maffit in the Owl, Captain Wilkinson in the Cameleon, (formerly the noted Tallahasse,) together with the Chicora, the Carolina, and the Dream,^left Nassau with supplies for the army of General Lee. "The proud army which, dating its victories from Bull Run, had driven McClellan from before Richmond, and withstood his best effort at Antietam, and shattered Burnside's host at Fredericksburg, and worsted Hooker at Chancellorsville, and fought Meade so stoutly, though unsuccessfully, before Gettysburg, and baffled Grant's bounteous re- sources and desperate efforts in the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania, on the North Anna, at Cold Harbor, and before Petersburg and Richmond," was actually in peril of famine, •*'•■ and well de- served these efforts for its relief. The Stag and Charlotte were captured ; the Owl had a shot through her bows, and went back ; the Chicora got in and out again, and re- turned to Nassau on February 23, with news of the evacuation of Charleston. " As we turned *Americau Conflict, vol. 2, p. 745. Here it is that the generous Greeley, laying down pen and spectacles, and waving aloft his historic white hat, wafts to the Confed- erate Army a proud and tender farewell. i6o LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S away from the land," says Wilkinson, with a touch of real pathos, " our hearts sank within us, while the conviction forced itself upon us, that the cause for which so much blood had been shed, so many miseries bravely endured, so many sacrifices cheerfully made, was about to perish at last." General Sherman moved like a thirty-day clock. His march through Georgia occupied a month ; he staid at Savannah a month ; he ca- vorted through the Carolinas in a month. The incidents of his advance through the Carolinas, far more important than his march through Georgia, have been recorded in a terse and graphic style in Sherman's own Memoirs, and need not be repeated here. By February 7th, Sherman had reached Lowry's, and he wrote to Dahlgren in cypher : ''Watch Charleston close. I think Jeff. Davis will order it to be abandoned, lest he lose its garrison as well as guns." Beauregard, who had, for the third time, been placed in command of this Department, viewed the situation as Sherman did. Hardee, who had succeeded Ripley in command of the Charleston District, concurred with Beauregard. But Davis took a different view, and was incens- ed at Beauregard and Hardee for evacuating LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. i6i Charleston. General Sherman gave the Con- federate President credit for more military sa- gacity than he really possessed. General Foster had suffered so much from an old wound, that he became unfit for active service, and on February 9th, he was relieved by General Gillmore. The manner in which Gill- more writes, in his supplement, of the move- ments made by the army in his Department, as well as by Admiral Dahlgren's fleet, in coopera- tion with Sherman, is misleading. None of these movements were serious. They were all feints. The advance of Hatch's brigade towards Charles- ton along the line of the Charleston and Savan- nah Railroad ; the advance of Potter's brigade, and of Captain Stanley's fleet up Bull's , Bay ; the advance of the Ottowa and Winona on the Combahee ; the operations of the Pawnee and Sonoma on the Togadoo and Wadmelaw ; the bombarding of the batteries on the Stono by the Lehigh, Wissahickon, McDonough, Smith and Williams ; in a word, all that was done in aid of Sherman, was done, as Sherman expressed it, "just to make the enemy uneasy on that flank," and prevent the concentration of his forces against Sherman's army. Some of the incidents of the day when Charleston was ** repossessed," have been relat- 1 62 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S ed by Greeley and by Lossing,-'' but none of the historians of the War relate the movements of our fleet on that day. Captain George E. Belk- nap, who commanded the advance picket mon- itor, Canonicus, on the night of February 17th, furnished me the following : — '* U. S. S. Canonicus, Port Royal, S. C. Memorandum for yiidge Cowley concerning the Evacuation of Charleston. On the night of February 17th, 1865, the monitor Canonicus had the advance picket duty,, supported by the monitor Mahopac and several tugs and picket boats. The wind was fresh from the N. W. Throughout the entire night the army and naval batteries on Morris Island kept up a heavy fire on the rebel batteries on Sullivan's Island, to which the rebels replied by an occa- sional gun from Moultrie during the first watch. Heavy explosions were heard in the direction of James' Island. Towards morning, heavy fires broke out in the city, and explosions occurred from time to time. At break of day, all the tugs and picket boats, with the exception of the tug Catalpa, returned to the bar anchorage. About 6.30, a. m., the Canonicus got under way, and steamed up the channel towards Fort Moultrie, the Mahopac and the Catalpa follow- ♦Greeley, vol. 2, p. 702 ; Lossing, vol. 3, p. 464. LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 163 mg ; but the air was so hazy, and so filled with smoke, that only a dim outline of the city and the adjacent islands could be seen. About 7.30, a. m., the sun cleared the atmosphere a little, and the Canonicus approached to within long range of Moultrie, and threw two shells into that work, being, as events afterwards demonstrated, the last hostile shots fired in the siege of Charles- ton. These shots eliciting no response, a tug was immediately despatched to Captain Scott, senior officer present inside the bar, to inform him that no movement was discoverable on Sulli- van's Island. The rebel flag was still flying there, however, as well as on Castle Pinckney, Fort Marshall, and in the city ; and somie twenty min- utes after throwing the shells into Moultrie, a magazine blew up in Battery Bee. Judging from these indications that a party of rebels still re- mained on the island to complete the destruction of their stores and magazines, it was not deemed prudent to risk a boat's crew on shore until the state of affairs was better known, nor, (with the recent fate of the Patapsco staring us in the face,) was it deemed justifiable to risk the Canonicus in a further reconnoisance up the channel. Soon after the explosion in Battery Bee, all hands were piped to breakfast, and the Canon- i64 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S icus steamed slowly down towards Wagner Buoy;, passing the Mabopac on our way down. When nearly down to Wagner Buoy, an Army boat was observed to push off from Cummings' Point, and pull in the direction of Sumter ; and a few min- utes later, a boat, showing a white flag, was dis- covered pulling over from Sullivan's Island. The Canonicus was immediately put about, and was soon steaming up the channel again at full speed. A boat was also manned, and armed, and sent in charge of Acting Ensign R. E. Anson, to land on Sullivan's Island, and bring off the rebel flag, flying on Moultrie, if possible. In the meantime, the Army boat and a boat from the Mahopac had communicated with the boat carrying a flag of truce, and now all three boats were pulling for the coveted prize — the Moultrie flag. The Army boat had the start, however, and after a hard pull reached the beach a few lengths ahead of the other boats. Mr. Anson then changed his course, and landing at Fort Beauregard, hoisted the national colors on that work ; the Mahopac's boat, pulling in the opposite direc- tion, soon put the flag on the flag-staff of Battery Bee. Slow-matches, leading into all the princi- pal magazines, had been fired, but all, with the exception of the one applied to the magazine at Battery Bee, failed to go ofl". LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 165 While this exciting scene was being enacted, another boat pushed off from Battery Gregg, on Cummings' Point, filled with our soldiers, who, in a few minutes, occupied Sumter, and placed the flag again on the ruins of that work. As the officer jumped ashore with the colors in his hand, the crews of the Canonicus and Mahopac joined with the Army in nine rousing cheers at the glo- rious termination of all their trials and discom- fitures, anxieties and hard work, at this fountain- head of treason and rebellion. A little later, the tug Catalpa steamed into the harbor, and took possession of Mount Pleasant Battery, while a boat from the Catskill landed at Battery Mar- shall. By this time Captain Scott had arrived at the front, and about one o'clock the Admiral ar- rived, and went up to the city in the Harvest Moon. The evacuation of Sullivan's Island must have been very hurriedly conducted, as the guns and amunition were left in perfect condi- tion, very few of the former being spiked. In some of the batteries, cartridges were found ly- ing on the gun carriages, and projectiles imme- diately under the muzzles of the guns, as though they had been abandoned in the act of loading. The last shot fired at the naval branch of the seige, was fired from a rifled gun in Moul- trie, at the Canonicus, on the 4th of February. 1 66 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S The projectile was an eight-inch shell, and struck the ship just abaft the smoke-stack, explodinp^ on the impact, but doing no other harm than cut- ting away a boat davit. May 12, 1865. GEORGE E. BELKNAP." Landing on Sullivan's Island, some time af- ter, I found silence, solitude and desolation on every side. I examined all the fortifications, not forgetting the solitary grave of Osceola ; and then, like the priest in the Illiad, I '' Silent went to the billowy beach of the vast and voicefiil sea." Gazing on the wrecks, old and new, of blockade runners, strewn all along the beach, and on the many deserted works of defence, hearing no sound save the melancholy plashing of the waves, I thought of the awe-inspiring scene which lives forever on the canvas of Tintoretto — showing the earth, desolate and disordered, as it may ap- pear when the race of man shall have passed away. Passing up the channel, we gazed intently through our glasses upon the fortifications form- ing the second and third circles of fire, of which we had heard so much ; pilotted by a pilot lately captured from a blockade-runner, whom the Fleet Captain threatened with immediate death if he ran us upon a torpedo ; and, finally, with a LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 1 67 tumult of conflicting emotions, we landed on the wharf safely. And thus, after a siege which will rank among the most famous in history, Charleston became ours. •' A scarred city," it was, as Pol- lard well says, " blackened by fire, with evidences of ruin and destruction at almost every step." All the aspects of Nature were delightful. The warm sunshine, the fresh air, the foliage of the wild orange, the palmetto, the roses in bloom, the violets, the geraniums, &c., were as delight- ful as when Macready landed in Charleston, twenty-one years before. '•■' He says, " The white houses, with their green verandahs and gardens, were light and lively to me, and the frequent view of the river afforded olten a picturesqe ter- mination to the street." But the grass was growing in the deserted streets, and scarcely a white face was to be seen. To the Afric-Americans, it seemed as if the trumpet of Gabriel had really sounded, and the "year of jubilee" had come. They went into ecstacies as they thought that, at last, at last, they were free. Never, while memory holds power to retain anything, shall I forget the thrill- ing strains of the music of the Union, as sung by our sab!e soldiers when marching up Meeting *Macready's Eeminiscences and Diaries, p. 539. i68 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS street, with their battle-stained banners flapping in the breeze, their black skins shining and their white eyes glaring with wild delight ; — " Softening AVith Afric's mellow tongue Their broken Saxon words." The conduct of the IVTayor of Charleston was not what would have been expected from an experienced lawyer and a gentleman of culture like Mr. Macbeth. He neither called the city council together, like the Mayor of Savannah ; nor came out to meet the Federal forces, like the Mayor of Columbia. He merely sent "two aldermen sandwiched between two other citi- zens," to say that the Confederate Army had gone. The most ignorant hoodlum that the caprices of rumsellers ever tossed into the civic chair, could hardly have acted with less dignity in a critical hour. Had the city officials of Charleston kept their wits about them, and at- tended vigilantly to their duty, the terrible de- struction of life and property which occurred upon the withdrawal of General Hardee, might have been avoided. When Georgetown was evacuated, one week later, the authorities there acted far more becomingly than those of "the Liverpool of the South." They sent at once to Admiral Dahlgren the following surrender, sign- ed by the Intendant and Wardens : — LIFE AFLOAT AND A SHORE. \ 69 Sir : Whereas the confederate forces have evac- uated this town, the undersigned, intendant and wardens in council assembled, agreeably to your de- mand, do hereby surrender the town of Georgetown to the United States forces under your command, pledging ourselves upon honor in our official capacity, as far as lies in our power, to prevent any act inimi- cal to the United States forces garrisoned here, claim- ing such protection of persons and property as is us- ually accorded to communities in our situation. Thereupon the Admiral issued a proclama- tion, putting Georgetown under martial law, but continuing the intendant and wardens in the ex- ercise of many of their functions ; providing for the poor, and prohibiting "the sale or gift of all spirituous liquors." The senior naval line offi- cer present was made Post Commandant ; the senior marine officer was made Provost Marshal ; while the Judge- Advocate of the fleet was des- ignated as Provost Judge. This arrangement, of course, ended when, a few days later, the Army arrived. To correct the falsifications of various writers, it may be stated that the first troops to enter Charleston were two companies of the Fifty-second Pennsylvania Infantry, and a sec- tion of about thirty men of the Third Rhode Island Artillery. Other troops poured in rapid- ly during the afternoon, and marched through I/O LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S the streets singing ''John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave," "Shouting the Battle cry of Freedom," and other Union songs, in tones that must have made the bones of John C. Calhoun rattle in his coffin. General Schimmelfennig, after fighting and winning, with the loss of ninety men, a battle on James' Island, (which later events proved to be unnecessary,) approached Charleston from the southwest, crossed the Ashley, and, entering the city, proclaimed martial law, and put an end to the disorder of the morning. Fifteen prizes were captured or destroyed at the approaches of Charleston during Dahl- gren's command, and a larger number at the ap- proaches of Savannah and other ports guarded by this squadron. The Charleston prizes were the Beatrice, Clotilda, Cyclops, Constance, Celt, Columbia, Deer, Flora, Lady Davis, Mab, Presto, Prince Albert, Syren, Transport, and a lighter. The Columbia, which was an iron-clad ram of the Atlanta pattern ; the Lady Davis, which was the first vessel put in commission in the Confed- erate Navy ; the Transport, the Mab, and three torpedo boats, like the David, were captured at the evacuation of the city, and were not sent to a prize court, because, in the opinion of the Navy Department, they were not distributable as LIFE AFL OAT AND A SHORE, 1 7 1 prize. This opinion would seem to be in accord with the decision of the Supreme Court, '"••■ though this interpretation of the prize act was new ; and the blockaders of Charleston thought it hard that it should be applied to their prizes. One of Dahlgren's prizes was the Evening Star, which afterwards acquired a terrible re- nown. She was lost at sea, October 3, 1866, when 244 passengers, including a whole French opera troupe, perished with her.f A famous law- suit in New Orleans turned on the question which of two of her passengers survived the other. By the Common Law, the younger is presumed to survive ; but by the Civil Law, both are held to perish together. The last prize taken at Charleston was the Deer,| which entered the harbor, lulled to sleep * The Syren, 13 Wallace, 329 ; 1 Lowell, 282 ; Dahlgren's Maritime luteruational Law, p. 146. Strange to say, this case is not noticed in Baker's admirable edition of Ilal- leck's International Law. fSee note to Browne's Divorce and its Consequences. I 1 Lowell's Decisions, 95. The appendix to Mr. Welles' Report for 1865, p. 466, requires correction. The actual captor of the Deer was the Catskill, Lieutenant Command, er Edward Barrett. The extraordinary ovations with which Captain Barrett and his officers have been honored on ascending the Mississippi in the Plymouth, show that the cities of the southwest are full of hearts that are gladdened, as of yore, at the sight of the Star Spangled Banner flying at the peak of a Federal man-of-war. 1/2 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS by the old Confederate signal fires, (which were now kept burning for the purpose of decoy,) and was seized before she discovered her mis- take. The Federal fleet now occupied the in- ner harbor, while the three Confederate Rams, which had so long guarded the channel — the Chicora, Palmetto State, and City of Charleston — lay in fragments beneath the waves, having been blown up by Commodore Tucker.''-' It was claimed by certain traders that the occupation of the city terminated, ipso facto, the blockade of the port ; but I held that it did not, and that Charleston and Savannah were closed lor all purposes of commerce until reopened by the Proclamation of the President. This view was sustained by the Secretaries of State, and of the Navy ; and the blockade remained till the close of the war. The pretence put forth by Boynton, after the repulse of the Monitors in 1863, "that the *"The buruing and blowing up of the iron-clads Palmetto State, Chicora and Charleston, was a magnifi- cent spectacle. The Palmetto State was the first to ex- plode, and was followed by the Chicora, about nine o'clock, and the Charleston, about eleven, A. M. The latter, it is stated, had twenty tons of gunpowder on board. Pieces of the iron plates, red hot, fell on the' wharves and set them on fire. The explosions were terrific. Tremendous clouds of smoke went up forming beautiful wreaths." — Charleston Courier. LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 173 occupation of Charleston was of very little im- portance," is unworthy of any historian. It is the fox's cry, ''Those grapes are sour." Equal- ly untrue is it, that ''Admiral Dahlgren, with his monitor guards within the bar, sealed the port of Charleston as effectually as if his fleet had been anchored between Sumter and the wharves"''-." Perhaps, it is true, that "it could have been captured by a determined attack, such as was made at New Orleans, Mobile and Fort Fish- er."f But it is no disparagement to either side to say that the Confederates made far greater efforts in defending than the Federals in attack- ing it, and that thereby they kept us out of it. When, at last, it fell into our hands, Pollard, the Confederate historian, took up the cry of "sour grapes." He says : "The vital points of the Confederacy were far in the interior, and as we had but few war vessels, our ports and har- bors were of little importance to us." It was a bon mot of Henry Ward Beecher, " Whom God abhors he sends to sea." And so thousands of our sailors felt, during the long blockade. Lord Macaulay says, "No place is ♦Professor Bernard's book on the Neutrality of Great Britain during tlie American Civil War, pp. 28G — 291, contains much that is of value touching blockade-running at Charleston. tBoynton, vol. 1, p. 430—431. 174 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S so propitious to the formation either of close friendships or of deadly enmities as an Indiaman, [or a man-of-war blockading a hostile coast.] There are very few people who do not find a voyage which lasts several months insupportably dull. Anything is welcome which may break that long monotony — a sail, a shark, an alba- tross, a man overboard. ■''' "-'' The inmates of the ship are thrown together far more than in any country-seat or boarding-bouse. None can escape from the rest except by imprisoning himself in a cell in which he can hardly turn. All food, all exercise, is taken in company. It is every day in the power of a mischievous person to inflict innumerable annoyances ; it is every day in the power of an amiable person to confer little services. It not seldom happens that serious distress and danger call forth in genuine beauty and deformity heroic virtues and abject vices, which, in the ordinary inter- course of good society, might remain during many years unknown even to intimate associ- ates." ■'"" Most grateful was the relief which came with the occupation of Charleston. Upon getting acquainted with the people of Charleston, I found them frank, affable, and free from sectional bitterness. As the South *Macaiilay's Essay on Hastings. LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 1 75 Carolina pickets were among the first to aban- don the barbarous practice of shooting our pickets ; so the South Carolina people were in my experience among the first to recognize the fact that their construction of the Federal Constitution was no longer admissible. I often mentioned the fact, that, when the Constitution was formed, their construction of that instrument was as common in the North as it afterwards became in the South, and that those who contended for our modern interpre- tation of it resisted its adoption because it was open to that interpretation. In the Massachu- setts Convention of 1788, the delegates from Middlesex voted 25 to 17 against its adoption. "The vote of the whole Convention was 187 to 168, — only a majority of 19 in favor of the Constitution, in Massachusetts. Had the Con- stitution been submitted to a vote of the people of Massachusetts, it is highly probable that it would have been rejected. Seldom has a greater result depended upon so small a cause. The change of ten Delegates from the Valley of the Merrimack would prob- ably have defeated the adoption of the Constitu- tion of the United States. Such a change would clearly have placed Massachusetts against that scheme of o-Qvernment ; and Madison, 1/6 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS looking anxiously out of his Virginia home, wrote : — 'The decision of Massachusetts, in either way, will decide the vote of this State.' Those views of State Rights and State Sovereignty which culminated in our Civil War, were as strenuously maintained by thousands of the men of Middlesex and other Northern Counties, in 1789, as in Charleston or any other Southern City in 1 861. ''"'•■ Just as the entire coast blockaded by this squadron had thus been recovered, I had an attack of pneumonia, which, though short, was severe and sharp, and for a time seemed likely to be decisive. It had been my fortune to confront death in different forms — in perils from sickness, and from railroad accidents, as well as in perils of the sea and of battle, both on land and sea ; and whether I contemplated it as the end of life or as only an event of life, I had come to look upon it with something like equanimity. I was not destitute of the " good hope," which John Morley says creates at the hour of sunset no mean paradise, — " that the earth shall still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still receive a constant augmen- tation, and each good cause yet find worthy ♦Cowley's Historical Sketch of Middlesex County, in the Middlesex County Manual p. 77. LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. lyy defenders when the memory of my own poor name and personahty had long been blotted out of the brief recollection of men forever." Brilliantly as Mr. Morley sets forth ''the blessedness of annihilation," and " the peace of anticipated non-existence," no pomp of rhetoric can conceal the wretched affectation that lurks beneath. Whatever sublime stoic philosophic indifterence pious positivists like Mr. Mill, Mr, Morley, and Miss Martineau, may educate themselves to feel touching their own immor- tality, "the gift of eternal life" is a priceless boon. A million times better than this *' good hope " of Mr. Morley, at the supreme moment, is the humble prayer-hymn of Toplady, so often sung by the open coffin-lid : — " Rock of ages, cleft for me, '" Let me hide myself in thee." For hours I lay in such exquisite pain that I was unable to move hand or foot ; yet near enough to the ward-room to hear the careless remarks of the officers present. If what was said of my character and services was sufficient- ly flattering, I was not greatly edified by such remarks as these : — "I guess the Jack will never be hoisted for him again," (alluding to the flag which is always hoisted when a Naval General Court-Martial convenes.) "I understand Captain is going to take his place," 178 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS " It is a good time for him to die now ; the Ad- miral will give him a big funeral," &c., &c.-'-' More encouraging was a remark made by the Doctor : '' Well, if he lives till this time to-mor- row without getting worse, I guess he'll pull through." A few days later, the body of Lieutenant Bradford, Ison of the Fleet Surgeon, was taken from the Potters' Field, where the Confederates had buried it, (he having been captured in the assault on Sumter and died in prison in Charles- Ion,) and buried with all naval and military hon- ors in the Magnolia Cemetery. Returning from these obsequies with Fleet Captain Bradford, I was told by him that, had I died as he expected, the Admiral designed to give me *' the funeral of an Achilles." Since then, the Admiral, the Fleet Captain, the surgeon who attended me with such thoughtful care, and the captain who expected to succeed me, have all descended to the tomb, while I, for whom the grave then yawned, sur- vive them all ! ♦People that are not hard-hearted sometimes make most brutal remarks. A friend of mine, who once lay- sick of yellow fever in a New Orleans hospital, and who recovered when, by custom, he should have died, says, he heard the head-3urgeon twice inquire of a subordinate in impatient tones, two days in succession, "Aint dead yet ?" The cot he lay on was wanted for another. LIFE AFL OA T AND A SHORE. 1 79 CHAPTER YIIL Destruction of the Harvest Moon — Death of Gen- eral Scliimmelfennig — The Federal Flag restored over Sumter — Distinguished Visitors in Charleston — As- sassination of President Lincoln. On March ist, occurred the last casualty in our fleet by the sub-marine devices of the Con- federates. The steamer Harvest Moon, used for the time being by the Admiral and his staff, in lieu of the flag-ship, was steaming down Win- yaw Bay, when, before breakfast, the explosion of a torpedo was heard below, and in less than a minute the vessel lay at the bottom. Fortu- nately only one man was killed ; — and the vessel not being entirely submerged, everything of value was soon recovered. Several Confederate ves- sels were lost accidentally by torpedoes intended for the Federals.* *See Barnes' Sub-marine Warfare. Also, Admiral Porter's article in the North American Beview., September- October, 1878 ; Captain Simpson's article in the Galaxy^ September, 1877 ; Edinburg Bevieiv, and Westminster Iievieiv, October 1877. By a slip of the pen, or an error of the types, Admiral Porter is made to say that the Wa- bash and the Minnesota were " lost," by torpedoes, (p. 231,) which is not true. i8o LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS Within a month after the recovery of Charles- ton, several officers of the Federal Army and Navy had purchased plantations near that city, and prepared to make their abode there. The inducements to do this were strong, and the prospect of making handsome returns on capital invested in cotton-planting was highly flattering. It was demonstrated to me by my managing man that the plantation which I had bought, between the Ashley and the Wando, would yield ten thousad dollars in crops, in one season, after paying all expenses. The sceptical spirit in which I offered to give all the profits of that year, exceeding two thousand dollars, to any man who would pay me that sum therefor, semed to surprise my neigh- bors, who, however, admitted my doubts to be well founded when, at the end of the year, I found myself a loser rather than a gainer by my experiment as a cotton-planter. On April loth, 1865, Gen. Schimmelfennig was compelled by failing health to relinquish the command of the Northern District of this Department and return North after twenty month's service. In his farewell letter to Ad- miral Dahlgren he traced with rapid strokes the history of his own services, and said: — "When General Grant forced the enemy LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. i8i back from the Rappahannock to Richmond, troops in my front received marching orders. I immediately attacked ; these troops were not sent north, and the commanding officer in Charleston called for re-enforcements from Virginia. "When General Sherman fought his battles before Atlanta, I again, under orders from Gen- eral Foster, attacked the enemy, and the result was that troops were sent from Atlanta to Charleston, though the enemy outnumbered us two to one. "Once more, when General Sherman was about to force his way over the North Edisto river, I attacked and harassed the enemy con- tinually for a week. Not a man was detached from Charleston ; and when General Hardee finally evacuated the city he had a force nearly double to that of all the troops operating against Charleston under General Gillmore. "I mention these facts. Admiral, merely in order to add that I should never have been ABLE TO ATTAIN THESE RESULTS WITHOUT THE HEARTY AND MOST EFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE OF THE FLEET UNDER YOUR COMMAND." The Admiral had become much rittached to this officer, who was a Prussian by birth, and who had been trained in the Army of the 1 82 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S Kaiser. On going aboard the Steamer Mas- sachusetts, which carried him to Philadelphia, he was honored with a salute by the Navy, which touched him much. *'I thank your Ad- miral," he said ; ''I thank him much, and you, too, and all your brothers of the Navy. You have all been good brothers to me; I never wanted any thing done, but you did it. But all is past now. I shall never have another command." Then, suddenly realizing his own condition, struggling with his feelings as though his great heart would break, he added " I am going home to die, Judge Cowley; I am going home to die!" A few weeks after, this intrepid spirit passed to the life beyond life. Many of the ladies^ and gentlemen who assisted in restoring the Federal flag over Sum- ter, April 14, 1865, published accounts of that event and of Charleston as it then was ; but the best articles that I have seen touching the terri- tory about Charleston are those in Harper's Magazine for December, 1865, and November, 1878. No historian of these times has omitted the restoration of the flag by Anderson to the fort which he had surrendered, four years before. President Lincoln took a deep interest in that event, and invited George Thompson of England, the eloquent coadjutor of Clarkson LIFE AFLOA T AND ASHORE. 183 and Wilberforce, to unite with William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher and other cham- pions of freedom in America, in the services of that memorable day. The oration of Mr. Beecher was worthy of his renown. He commenced with his head un- covered, as usual ; but the high wind behaved outrageously and blew his hair about in all direc- tions, like smoke and flame from a burning brush- heap. So Mr. Beecher quietly put on his hat, (a black, felt, uncanonical article,) and wore it to the end. One battery was delayed in firing the salute ordered for the occasion, so that its guns were booming after the oration began. The reports happened to be so timed that they fell upon the ear exactly at the close of sentences. Collusion was suspected between the orator and the gunner, but the orator denied all privity with any plan to punctuate his oration with cannon. Two or three extracts indicate the elevated spirit of this oration : " Are we come to exult that Northern hands are stronger than Southern ? No; but to rejoice that the hands of those who defend a just and beneficent gov- ernment are mightier than the hands that assaulted it ! Do we exult over fallen cities ? We exult that a Nation has not fallen. We sorrow with the sorrow- ful. We sympathise with the desolate. We look upon this shattered fort, and yonder dilapidated city, 1 84 LE Ay ES FROM A LAWYER'S wnth sad eyes. We exult, not for a passion gratified, but for a sentiment victorious ; not for temper, but for conscience ; not — as we devoutly believe — that our will is done, but that God's will hath been done." '■'' There is scarcelj^ a man born in the South who has lifted his hand against this banner, but had a father who would have died for it. Is memory dead ? Is there no historic pride ? Has a fatal fury struck blindness or hate into eyes that used to look kindly toward each other; th : read the same Bible; that hung over the historic pages of our national glory ; that studied the same Constitution T'* The peroration was admirable. The follow- ing sentence was spoken with marked emphasis, and was most heartily applauded ; none dream- ing that when the tidings of this event reached the capital, Abraham Lincoln would be welter- ing in his blood : " We offer to the President of these United States our solemn congratulations that God has sus- tained his life and health under the unparalleled burdens and sufferings of four bloody 3^ears, and per- mitted him to behold this auspicious consummation of that national unity for which he has waited with so much patience and fortitude, and for which he has labored with such disinterested wisdom. -^ ^ ^ ^.:- *This paragraph was put in type by William Lloyd G'arrison in tlie office of the Courier, which published the oration and an account of the commemorative services, on the followiu"- day. IJPE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 1S5 To the officers and men of the army and navy, who have so faithfully, skillfully and gloriously up- held their country's authority, by suffering, labor and sublime courage, we offer a heart-tribute beyond the compass of words. Upon those true and faithful citizens, men and women, who have borne up with unflinching hope in the darkest hour, and covered the land with their la- bors of love and charity, we invoke the divinest bless- ing of Him whom they have so truly imitated. But chiefly to Thee, Grod of our fathers, we ren- der thanksgiving and praise for the wonderous provi- dence that has brought forth from such a harvest of war the seed of so much liberty and peace." There were passages in Dr. Storr's prayer which fell upon the ear like harmonies of celes- tial music : " Remember those who have been our enemies and turn their hearts from wrath and war to love and peace. Let the desolations that have come on them suffice, and unite them with us in the ties of a better brotherhood than of old; that the cities and homes and happiness they have lost may be more than re- placed in the long prosperity they shall hereafter Help us who are here assembled before Thee, and who never again shall be so assembled until we stand before Thy bar, to consecrate ourselves afresh, on this historic day, to the welfare of our land ; to the cause, and the cross, and the truth of our Lord ; that we may 3 86 LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS live evermore to Thy glor}^, may walk in Tliy liglit,, may die at last in Thy perfect peace, and may rise to our rest in the bosom of Thy love." The lofty charity expressed in these pas- sages shone by contrast with the barbaric bit- terness and sectional rancor that disfigured the famous funeral sermon at Savannah, which Bishop Elliott preached, a few months earlier^ over Bishop-General Polk : yet, the sermon of Bishop Elliott was not wanting in passages of exquisite tenderness and beauty. Addressing the dead body before him, he said : "Thou art very welcome to me, my brother; welcome in death as in life. "'•-" "''" Thy ashes shall repose beneath the shadow of the Church of Christ." On the day following the Sumter fete, an immense throng crowded the African Church to greet and hear William Lloyd Garrison, George Thompson, Henry Wilson, and others from the North, Thousands being unable to gain admit- tance, a supplementary meeting was held at Cit- adel Square. There was one scene in the church, pre-arranged by Mr. Redpath, which those who witnessed it will never forget. It was that of the eloquent natural orator, Samuel Dickerson, and his two daughters, full-blooded blacks, and eman- cipated slaves, presenting to the brave old Gar- rison a wreath of the most beautiful flowers of LIFE A FL OA T AND A SHORE. \ 8; that semi-tropical climate, together with a wel- come to Charleston, and the thanks and bene- dictions of their race. That scene, I venture to predict, will live again hereafter on the painter s burning" canvas and on the historian's pictured page. Mr. Garrison's unstudied speech, — "I have been an out-law, with a price set upon my head, for thirty years, for your sakes ; but I never ex- pected to look you in the face, or that you would ever hear of anything I might do in your be- half," — showed how truly he had learned and practiced that duty of self-sacrifice and of self- denying labor for others which Christianity en- joins as the sublimest duty of man. The principal addresses on that day rose to real eloquence. What contributed to make them so was the consciousness that the speakers were greater than their words — that there was in them " something greater than all eloquence, — action, — noble, sublime, God-like action." The most eloquent of the speakers on that day was George Thompson, whose decease, at a ripe old age, in his own native land, has been telegraphed by the Atlantic Cable since these pages were put in type. "It is hard." he said, "to believe that I am at once in the cradle and the grave of treason, secession 1 88 LEAVES FROM A LAWYER'S and slavery. To me it lias been given to see two great, pure, signal, glorious triumphs effected. To me has been given the unspeakable privilege of being a co-laborer with Wilberforce and Clarkson, who led the way in the great struggle for British abolition — the abolition of the internal slave-trade, and its child, slavery. To me, also, it has been given to see their triumph, to see them go up to heaven, presenting at the throne of the heavenly grace a million of broken manacles, and Africa redeemed from her English spoiler. Now it is my privilege to be the co-worker and companion in joy of the Wilberforce of America — William Lloyd Garrison. For thirty years and more my heart has been with you ; with you on the planta- tion, with you on the auction block, with j^ou in your unrequited toil, with you in your sufferings, separa- tions, and scourgings ; and now I am with you in your freedom. ***** =^ * During the thirty years that have elapsed be- tween my first and last visit, a revolution has taken place at the North. I left the colleges on the side of slavery. I returned and found the colleges on the side of liberty. I left America when there was but one man [John Quincy Adams] in the House of Con- gress who dared to present an anti-slavery petition. I returned and found scarce a man in Congress who would not deem himself honored by being selected to present such a petition. I left America with the news- papers of the country and the literature of the country LIFE AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 189 on the side of slaverj^ I returned and find the news- papers and literature, the best and most popular works published in the country, on the side of freedom. I find the man who towers the highest in the estima- tion of the people of the North is the man most earn- estly, most sincerely, most uncompromisingly devoted to the cause of universal, impartial freedom." In the evening of. that clay, a delegation of colored wqmen called on Mr. Beecher. Four of these women had been caught in the act of carrying food, medicines, and bandages in the night to prisoners on the Race Course, and had been lashed on their backs for thus seeking to do what the Church prays God to do — *' to show pity upon all prisoners and captives." One of them had received seventy-five lashes on her bare back for her humanity and kindness toward these suffering men. On Easter Sunday, April i6th, Mr. Beecher preached in the same Church. But as the hour struck when the the sound of the church-going bell would have been heard if all the bells of Charleston had not been removed or melted into cannon, I left for Cuba in the Steamer Mary Sanford, and did not hear him. '' From the sublime to the ridiculous," said Thomas Paine, "there is but a step." Parting from Beecher at Charleston, when in the zenith IQO LEAVES FROM A LAWYERS of his fame, I met him a,o;ain, ten years later, in the Supreme Court at Brooklyn, when brought to trial there by one who went with him to Charleston as his parasite and pi-otcge. Previous to sailing, I took a walk with Sen- ator Wilson to the churchyard of St. Michael's Church, and showed him, in a thicket, covered with brambles and weeds, the grave of the elo- quent Hayne, the antagonist of Webster, Wil- son's own predecessor in the Senate, in the great Nullification Debate of 1830. Neither of us spoke for some minutes. Words had lost their power, as we stood by the grav^e of that apostle of secession, and gazed on the ruin which his doctrines had brought upon the city of his love. Tears filled Mr. Wilson's eyes, and his fea- tures bore the evidence of strong emotion as he stood thoughtful, silent, motionless, as if rivetted to that charmed spot. At length, I broke the silence by saying that, if I only had the power of a painter, I would try my hand on a scene which, in the hands of a good artist, would Uve for centuries. " What do you mean T inquired Wilson. *• Why, I would take for my subject * The Successor of Daniel Webster at the Grave of Robert Y. Hayne!'" " It would be good," Wilson rejoined, v" I would not have missed this for all there is in Charleston besides !" PYag Ship "Philadelphia." Ch .^^ r-% Vi ,>^\ .^"-^ c^ % W ^^z- v^' '^^\ A''^ ^-P V 1 fl ^ o O' ^•^y^ >^ ^^ 'c^^ ^%K^ >°, ■•>/' •A v° % ^;^^o;v^--\^^ I. ^™«^ ^^^i^-.^wx^^/.^V im^ : % ..^> %"'<^ y ^ .X^^^-: o . v ^ /\ r^^ r; *-^ ''*.. '- •i^% '^>*^s%*:S' ^ ?/ "' ..-^^^ s^-^ ^*.