v1.1.1 / chapter 7 of 93 / 01 sep 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* While the Union reorganized in the East, the struggle for the West intensified. The fight for Missouri became increasingly bloody, while Kentucky teetered on the edge. On the coastlines, the Union began to turn the blockade against the Confederacy from a paper policy to one with teeth.
* The sideshow war in the mountains of western Virginia that had taken McClellan to the top bogged down in the rugged terrain after his departure, In fact, the Confederates tried to turn the tables on the Federals by organizing a counteroffensive, under the command of highly regarded Robert E. Lee.
Since going South, Lee had been acting as a military advisor to Jefferson Davis, a role in which his obvious talents were not being put to much good use. On 29 July 1861, Davis sent him to the mountains to see if he could "retrieve the disaster we have suffered." The situation there was not promising for the Confederacy. The area was remote and inaccessible, the locals were strongly Unionist, and the Confederate forces in the area were sickly and demoralized. Worse, Lee's position was as an advisor to local commanders, and he had no command authority himself. The local commanders were in general inept and often quarrelsome. Particularly frustrating were Henry A. Wise, the previous governor of Virginia; and John B. Floyd, also an ex-governor of Virginia, and who had played such a curious role as President Buchanan's shifty Secretary of War. The two men were more interested in fighting each other than the enemy.
Given a poor military position and worse leadership, the results were predictably disastrous. Following weeks of blundering and quarreling, the Confederates were forced to abandon their efforts in western Virginia in mid-September. On Friday, 13 September, Lee was recalled to Richmond. Lee briefed Jefferson Davis on the dismal campaign. Davis was as unyielding in personal loyalty as he was in his opinions, and the situation had been hopeless anyway. Lee retained his confidence. Unfortunately, the newspapers did not know or care about the details and savaged Lee, calling him "Granny Lee" and "Evacuating Lee". Lee was a man of great emotional discipline, but being abused by armchair strategists in newspaper offices was too much. He wrote his wife: "I am sorry ... that the movements of our armies cannot keep pace with the expectations of the editors."
* One of the clauses in Lincoln's outline plan for the conduct of the war had referred to "operations in the west". Frank Blair and Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon had done an impressive job in securing Missouri for the Union, however irregular their means had been. The Federal government still needed to tighten its grip on the upper Mississippi to prevent the Confederacy from cutting what was left of the Union in half, as well as to retain staging areas where an offensive down the great river could be organized to perform that same division on the Confederacy. Accordingly, on 23 July 1861, John Charles Fremont was sent to Saint Louis to take charge of the department.
Fremont, the "Pathfinder", had explored and mapped the passes through the Rockies that opened the way to the territories beyond. He had helped take California from Mexico and make it a state of the Union. He had become one of the state's first senators, a millionaire, and the in 1856 the first Republican candidate for president. He had been in France when the war broke out, but came back to Washington DC, where Lincoln gave him the rank of major general and ordered him west. Fremont arrived in Saint Louis on 25 July. Lincoln had told him while seeing him off from the door of the White House: "I have given you carte blanche. You must use your own judgement, and do the best you can."
For the moment, the Federals had the upper hand in Missouri, and so Fremont's concerns were elsewhere. He focused his attention on the waterways of the Midwest, which provided avenues into the Confederacy over which invasion forces could travel. The Mississippi flowed southeast past Saint Louis, separating Missouri and Illinois. Farther south along the river was the town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri; then Commerce, Missouri; and then, at the southernmost tip of Illinois, where the Ohio joined the Mississippi, the strategic town of Cairo (pronounced "KAY-row", not "KAI-row"). To the east, the Ohio snaked along the northern border of Kentucky and the southern borders of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Not too far upriver from Cairo, the Tennessee River flowed into the Ohio at the town of Paducah, Kentucky. A little farther upstream, the Cumberland added its waters to the Ohio as well.
The Tennessee and the Cumberland were natural pathways into rebel territory. The Tennessee cut through western Kentucky and Tennessee, then ran across northern Alabama. The Cumberland twisted through western Kentucky, across the northern regions of Tennessee, and then back into central Kentucky. They were both navigable by steamships along much of their length.
However, Fremont's resources were limited for the moment. He had only about 23,000 troops and a third of them were 90-day men, getting ready to go home. New recruits were flooding in, but he had little in the way of weapons or equipment, and no money. His inadequate force was confronted with the chaos that Lyon had left in his wake. Fremont's intelligence reports told him there were 25,000 soldiers in the secessionist state guard that were preparing to rise against him, and worse, a 50,000-man Confederate army in Arkansas and Tennessee was apparently massing to invade Missouri.
Fremont was understandably nervous. He was particularly concerned for the safety of Cairo, which his intelligence service told him was in imminent danger of capture by the rebels, but was only garrisoned with about 600 Federals. If the Confederacy occupied Cairo, rebel guns would be able to block traffic between the Mississippi and the Ohio. Fremont threw together a force of about 3,800 men and personally marched them to Cairo at the end of July 1861. As it turned out, Fremont's assessment of enemy strength was about two times too big, and the rebels had problems of their own. However, his fears were quickly given substance by an unexpected disaster. General Lyon had finally, fatally, pushed his luck too far.
* After being thrown out of Boonville by Lyon on 16 June, the secessionist forces had retreated southwest over the Ozarks. After a short rest, Lyon had pursued them. By the beginning of August, his forces had advanced to the town of Springfield, Missouri. Unfortunately, he had started out with only 7,000 poorly trained and equipped men, and due to attrition and the departure of 90-day volunteers, his command had dwindled to only 5,400. Lyon's force was a mixed lot: a core of regulars, a few regiments of Missouri volunteers, two Kansas regiments, and one regiment of 90-day men from Iowa. The Missouri volunteers were mostly the Saint Louis Germans that Blair had helped organize, under the command of General Franz Sigel, who had fled Germany after the revolution of 1848. The Iowa men were about ready to go home, but had agreed to hang around for a few days in case Lyon was going to have a battle. They had no liking for Lyon -- few did -- but they admired his toughness.
Suddenly Lyon found himself in serious trouble. He advanced from Springfield to find himself confronted by a Confederate force that he estimated at 20,000 men. Lyon knew he had to retreat, but feared that the rebels would fall on his column and destroy it during the march back northeast.
Fremont could offer little help. He had only 6,000 men in the northeast part of the state, under the command of energetic but blustery Brigadier General John Pope, who months ago had helped escort Lincoln to Washington. Unfortunately, Pope's troops had their hands full dealing with rebel guerrillas and keeping secessionist unrest held down. Other forces were too far away to help. Reinforcements were arriving, but they were unprepared for combat, and Fremont remained concerned about the vulnerability of Cairo.
Lyon was essentially on his own. He wrote Fremont: "I find my position extremely embarrassing." On 6 August 1861, he fell back to Springfield. The Confederates followed, and Lyon concluded that he had absolutely no choice but to attack them.
The Confederate force was in fact nowhere near as formidable as he thought. It numbered only about 12,000 men, still greatly outnumbering Lyon, but the rebels were even more poorly trained and armed than the Federals, and they suffered from a divided command. Major General Sterling Price commanded the majority, about 7,000 effectives, consisting of secessionist Missouri militia with no uniforms; no tents; and antiquated weapons, when they had real weapons at all. The command arrangements were informal, and in fact many of these men had little interest in the Confederacy or the whole question of secession. They just didn't like being pushed around by Lyon and his kind.
The militia as a group had little concept of military discipline and drill. One company, led by county lawyers, called its members to quarters with the courtroom cry of: "Oyez! Oyez!" -- and addressed their commanding officer as "Jedge". A veteran of the militia wrote after the war that any regular army officer given command of this mob would have spent six months whipping them into shape, during which time the Yankees would have overrun all of Missouri once and for all. He also noted that although the militia's weapons were generally ancient, the militiamen were very comfortable with them, and that the militiamen did not scare easily.
They adored Price and called him "Pap". There was much to admire about Price, particularly in comparison to unbalanced and violent-minded Lyon. Price's long record of distinguished public service made him a respected figure. His struggle against the Federals was not motivated by any particular liking for the Confederacy. He simply wanted to see to it that Lyon and his kind were restrained.
The remainder of the rebel force was about 3,200 regular Confederate troops with reasonable training and equipment, under the command of Brigadier Ben McCulloch of Tennessee, plus about 2,200 Arkansas militiamen. McCulloch was a colorful sort, a 40-year-old who had been a Texas ranger and a friend of Davy Crockett, and he looked the part.
This mixed force had made camp at Wilson's Creek, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southwest of Springfield. After Lyon withdrew to Springfield on 6 August, Price decided that the Federals should be attacked immediately. McCulloch was cool to the idea, since he had a low opinion of Price and his militia, and was unsure that his orders allowed him to be operating in Missouri at all. The two men had an angry argument, with Price telling McCulloch that the Missouri militia would attack alone if they had to: "You must either fight beside us, or look on at a safe distance and see us fight all alone with the army you dare not attack even with our aid." McCulloch finally agreed to the attack, under the stiff condition that he would be in command. The attack was ordered for the night of 9 August.
Unfortunately, it rained that night. Since few of the soldiers had proper ammunition boxes, their paper cartridges would be quickly soaked in the rain, and so the march was cancelled. If any of them were disappointed, they weren't for long, for the next morning, Saturday 10 August 1861, Lyon attacked them from north and south. Lyon himself led about 4,200 men moving down from the north, while Frans Sigel, the senior officer among the German Unionists in Lyon's ranks, circled around with about 1,200 men to hit the rebels from the south. Lyon apparently had just a low opinion of Price's Missourans as McCulloch did: hopefully, the encircling attack would panic them and put them to flight.
He was wrong; they really didn't scare easily. Sigel made his attack on time, but did not push very hard. McCulloch hit back and scattered them. Lyon drove into the rebel lines along a low ridge and got into a ferocious exchange of fire. A Confederate officer later called it a "mighty mean-fowt fight", and the ridge would be known from that time on as "Bloody Hill".
The troops at Wilson's Creek were almost as raw and disorganized as those at Manassas, but something was different about this battle. Price's men did not scatter and run; they stood their ground and traded fire with the Yankees. The antique weapons used dictated close-range fighting. Regiments walked up to the firing line, fired a volley, reloaded, fired again, soaking up hits until they were broken apart, and then another regiment was thrown onto the grindstone. Under such brutal conditions numbers made all the difference, and sometime around 11 AM the Federals started to crack.
Lyon rode among his men, trying to rally them. A bullet creased his scalp, a second struck his thigh, a third hit his ankle, and then his horse was killed. He limped to the rear, fearing defeat but not inclined to call it quits. He found another horse and led his troops forward one more time. A bullet hit him in the heart, knocking him off the horse and killing him. He was 43 years old. Exhausted, the Federals gave way and fell back through Springfield towards the town of Rolla, 110 miles (180 kilometers) away, about halfway between Springfield and Saint Louis.
The Confederates did not pursue, since they were disorganized and had taken a fair bloodying themselves. The Federals had lost about 1,300 killed or wounded, a good quarter of their attacking force. The rebels took about 1,200 casualties. Lyon's attack had been a calculated risk to save his army from complete destruction. To that extent he had succeeded, at the cost of his own life.
The victory made the Confederates dangerously overconfident. Yankees were no match for rebels, so they thought, and there was no need to finish them off. Price was unable to take advantage of the rebel victory, since Jefferson Davis ordered McCulloch to return to Arkansas with his troops. Unable to purse the defeated Federals, Price and his men slowly moved northwest, towards the town of Lexington.
* Wilson's Creek had handed the Confederacy a great opportunity to regain control of Missouri, but it was thrown away. Nathaniel Lyon had been crazy and rash and had paid for it with his life, but along the way he had purged the secessionists from the governmental apparatus of the state of Missouri. Their vacant seats had been replaced by obedient Unionists, and the machinery would from that time on work against the Confederacy. Furthermore, the rebel victory galvanized Fremont, forcing him to put his notions of grand strategy on hold. He sent five regiments to Rolla and demanded reinforcements from the War Department.
Fremont, unfortunately, lacked political finesse. He had headquartered himself in a three-story mansion in Saint Louis, insulating himself from the outside world with a staff of foreign-born officers who strutted around in jackboots and gold braid, generally irritating everyone who had to deal with them. A European military observer commented that Fremont was "inclined to dictatorship." A Union soldier described him a little more colorfully as a "spread-eagle, show-off, horn-tooting general."
Coupled to this imperial elitism was a certain administrative incompetence. Fremont was forced to buy a lot of things in a great hurry, and such careless dealings were bound to be wasteful or corrupt. Ironically, Fremont was getting into trouble not because he was too crooked, but because he wasn't crooked enough. The Blairs had been Fremont's sponsors in the Lincoln Administration, and they did not find him sufficiently considerate of their interests and those of their business associates.
Despite these problems, Fremont had been getting some things done. He had bought river steamers and had them rebuilt into gunboats, and ordered the construction of 38 mortar boats. He had also made an appointment that would have consequences he could not have imagined: on 28 August, he put Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant in command at Cairo.
* U.S. Grant had actually been born Hiram Ulysses Grant, but when he arrived at West Point in 1839, they entered his name incorrectly as Ulysses Sampson Grant. He liked the new name the army had given him, and left it as entered. In 1861, there was nothing in Grant's appearance or past history that would have much impressed an onlooker. He was 39 years old, quiet, nondescript, even shabby in appearance. He had been regular army and had served with distinction in the Mexican War, finding something in combat that appealed to him. However, he had left the army seven years previously under a cloud of drunkenness, and had spent the intervening time sliding down to poverty, finally reduced to working as a clerk in his father's general store.
When the war came, he helped organize a company of soldiers in his hometown of Galena, Illinois. He was offered the captaincy of the company, but turned it down, believing that as a West Pointer he should settle for no less than a colonel's rank -- which, given the scarcity of trained officers, was a perfectly reasonable assumption. He went with the company to Springfield, Illinois, to seek his fortune and was pressed into service by Governor Richard Yates as a mustering officer, in which capacity he attracted favorable attention. He paid visits to Nathaniel Lyon and Frank Blair to see if he could swing an appointment. This failing, he went to see an old West Point classmate, Major General George B. McClellan, who was at the time the commander of the Department of Ohio. Though Grant waited for two days McClellan, somehow unsurprisingly, would not see him.
Grant was discouraged, but then Governor Yates offered him command of the 21st Illinois, a volunteer regiment that was in a state of chaos and near-mutiny under its current colonel. Grant quickly put the regiment in order and led it in marches against Confederate guerrilla bands in Missouri. Grant's competence further impressed Governor Yates, as well as Illinois Congressman Elihu B. Washburne. When the state was allowed to name four brigadier generals, Grant was among the chosen. Fremont was also impressed with Grant, seeing in this quiet fellow an "unassuming character" given to "dogged persistence" and "iron will".
* Even considering some of the positive aspects of Fremont's leadership, he was still out of his depth. On 30 August 1861, he proved it beyond doubt by issuing an astounding proclamation in which he declared martial law, detailed that any unauthorized persons found armed within his jurisdiction would be summarily shot, and declared that the property of all those engaged in rebellion against the Federal authority would be seized.
This included human property: slaves confiscated from rebels would be promptly freed. Emancipation had come to Missouri whether anyone liked it or not, including Lincoln. The President didn't like it much. On 2 September, Lincoln sent Fremont a politely worded letter to point out that the execution of captured rebels would certainly lead to the execution of captured Federals, accomplishing little other than making the war more even vicious than it already was. Fremont was not to execute anyone without approval from Washington. More importantly, the emancipation of slaves would antagonize Kentuckians and the "Southern Union friends" that the President still believed existed down South. Lincoln requested that Fremont modify that part of the proclamation.
As further evidence of his questionable judgement, Fremont refused to do so unless the President publicly ordered him to, and sent his wife Jessie Fremont, who acted as his personal secretary and informal second-in-command, off to Washington to present his case to the Commander-in-Chief. The President duly issued a public order instructing Fremont to modify the proclamation, and sent Postmaster General Montgomery Blair to Saint Louis to, in effect, figure out what the hell Fremont thought he was doing.
When Jessie Fremont got to Washington, she was made to wish she stayed home. Mrs. Fremont was assertive and energetic, but the situation called for tact, and she displayed very little of it, apparently hinting that her husband believed he could set himself up on his own if he wanted to. She denied this later, but it was entirely consistent with General Fremont's behavior. When she lectured Lincoln that only an emancipation proclamation could prevent England and France from recognizing the Confederacy, the President cut her off with uncharacteristic rudeness: "You are quite the female politician."
Of course she lost her temper. Though the President tried to placate her, she "left in anger", the President said later, "flaunting her handkerchief in my face." The next day Frank Blair Senior, father of Montgomery and Frank Junior, a man of great influence and a long-time friend of Jessie's, gave her a stiff scolding: "Who would have expected you to do such a thing as this, to come here and find fault with the President?!"
In short, General Fremont was in trouble, and the only thing that saved him for the moment was the fact that he was the hero of the extreme Republicans whose support Lincoln required. The President sent Major General David Hunter to Saint Louis to assist General Fremont. Whether that meant assisting Fremont out of his job was left unspecified for the time being.
* Although the President worried that Fremont's proclamation might tip Kentucky into the Confederate camp, it actually had the odd effect of drawing the state decisively into the Union.
Confederate forces in the region were under the command of Major General Leonidas K. Polk, a West Pointer who had become an Episcopal bishop in Lousiana. When the war came, his old colleague Jefferson Davis made him general and put him in charge of the defense of the central Mississippi. General Polk wasn't exactly thrilled with the assignment. Although General Fremont was worried about what the Confederates might do to him, the Confederates had much more reason to worry about what Fremont might do to them.
The focal point of the struggle was Cairo, where Ulysses Grant was building up his forces. The little town was dirty, humid, and prone to flooding that reduced its streets to rivers of mud. One of the advantages of such conditions was that the troops training there were so miserable that they were looking forward to going into combat. Downstream from Cairo along the Mississippi were obvious vulnerable points where the Federals could make trouble for the Confederacy, such as the Kentucky towns of Columbus and, further south, Hickman. The Federals were clearly preparing to move on Columbus and were making Polk nervous. Upstream from Cairo along the Ohio was Paducah, Kentucky, the gateway to the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers; a Federal seizure of Paducah would also be a setback for the Confederacy.
While the controversy over Fremont's proclamation was keeping Lincoln and his people busy in Washington, on 3 September 1861, Polk's forces moved north from Tennessee to occupy Columbus and Hickman. Kentuckian neutrality, such as it was, was finally over and significantly, it had been violated by the Confederates, though Grant had been preparing to move himself before Polk beat him to the punch. There was an immediate furor in the Confederacy over this action and the Confederate Secretary of War, L.P. Walker, ordered Polk to withdraw at once, but Jefferson Davis overruled the order.
Grant reacted swiftly, throwing everything he could on steamboats and moving upstream to occupy Paducah on 6 September. He notified Fremont but did not wait for approval. The Unionist Kentucky legislature backed up Grant's move by requesting Union assistance to expel the Confederate invaders. Governor Magoffin resigned and went South to work for the Confederacy.
Brigadier General Robert Anderson, the hero of Sumter, who had been sent to Ohio in the spring to raise troops, was in charge of the Federal military forces intended to occupy Kentucky. He was in no condition for the job. He was too old, and the combined stresses of the siege of Fort Sumter and his divided feelings for North and South weakened him. Furthermore, he had few soldiers, since most of the regiments that he had raised had either been sent to Saint Louis or to Washington. Fortunately, he had two West Point-trained subordinates to help: Brigadier Generals William T. Sherman and George H. Thomas.
Sherman had offered his services to the government after Sumter, and been offered a brigadier's commission by Lincoln. Sherman turned it down and asked for a colonel's rank instead, saying he wanted to work his way up. Lincoln, who was continually plagued by people asking him for as much as they could get out of him, was astonished, but gave Sherman command of a new regiment of regulars. Sherman saw action at Bull Run, leading to his promotion to brigadier general a month after the battle, and then was sent West.
Thomas was a Southerner, a Virginian, who had remained loyal to the Union. Earlier in the year, Lincoln had hesitated to give Thomas a general's commission since other Virginians like Lee and Johnston had joined the Confederacy, but had agreed to do so when Sherman reassured the President that Thomas was loyal to the Union. Coming away from the interview with the President, Sherman ran into his friend Thomas on the street and congratulated him: "Tom, you're a brigadier general!" Thomas was notoriously unflappable and hardly blinked; Sherman grew worried and asked: "Where are you going?"
Thomas replied: "I'm going south." Sherman cried out: "My God, Tom! You've put me in an awful position! I've just made myself responsible for your loyalty!"
Thomas amiably replied: "Give yourself no trouble, Billy. I'm going south at the head of my troops." Thomas could not pass up having some fun at his exciteable friend's expense. Thomas would not go south just yet, however. Anderson sent Sherman to Saint Louis to plead for reinforcements and sent Thomas to take charge of the Kentucky Home Guard, while Anderson himself set up headquarters in Louisville and stepped up recruiting efforts.
In the meantime, the Federal apparatus in Kentucky was doing whatever it could to ensure its own survival, arresting individuals regarded as insufficiently loyal and holding them, as had become the fashion of the times, without pretense of due process. The quiet life that Kentucky had enjoyed over the summer was over, and the battlefront of the war now extended all along the border between Tennessee and Kentucky.
* The success of the Union cause in Kentucky was offset by still another Federal defeat. While Nathaniel Lyon had been marching through southwestern Missouri towards his violent encounter with the rebels at Wilson's Creek, another Union force under Colonel James A. Mulligan was moving northwest with about 3,500 men to secure that part of the state.
Mulligan's forces occupied the little town of Lexington on the Missouri River, and fortified themselves on a hill outside the town. After defeating Lyon at Wilson's Creek, General Price decided that Mulligan's isolated garrison would be an ideal target, and moved north with his ragtag army. Mulligan had warning of Price's march towards him, but decided to stand and fight, even though he was completely outnumbered. This proved foolish. Price quickly besieged Lexington and the Federals surrendered in a few days. If Wilson's Creek had frightened Fremont and other Union leaders, Lexington terrified them. It now appeared that the rebels were in a position to take back all the prizes that Lyon had won for the Federal cause.
The threat was more apparent than real. Price was weak and knew it, and quickly retreated back down to the town of Neosho, in the southwest corner of the state. He had successfully seized Federal supplies and equipment and thrown the Union high command into confusion, but Missouri remained, if fitfully, under Federal control.
* Elsewhere, the Federal government ensured that loyal states stayed loyal. Although Lincoln had decided it unwise to arrest the Maryland legislature in April, after Bull Run the secessionists of the legislature became more assertive. In mid-September, the legislature met for another special session in Frederick; acting on rumors of a planned insurrection, Lincoln ordered troops to surround the town and pick up those who seemed disloyal. Dozens were arrested, including Baltimore Mayor George Brown, with local Unionists helpfully pointing out supposed troublemakers.
They would be imprisoned for at least two months -- conveniently ensuring that secessionist legislators wouldn't stand in state elections in November and would lose their seats to Unionists. Most of them prisoners were then released after taking a loyalty oath. All Maryland political prisoners would be released by the end of 1862, though it would hard to call it an "amnesty", since most had never been tried on charges.
* In fact, even though the Confederacy had won victories at Manassas, Wilson's Creek, and Lexington, the strategic balance had shifted towards the Federals: Missouri and Kentucky were in Union hands, more than less, and the blockade was starting to become effective. In support of the blockade, the Federals further tipped the balance in their own favor with a small but significant amphibious military operation.
The southeastern Atlantic coast of the Confederacy was dotted with estuaries and port towns: Portsmouth and Norfolk in Virginia, at the mouth of the James; Plymouth and Edenton in North Carolina, on Albemarle Sound at the mouth of the Roanoke; Wilmington, North Carolina, near the mouth of the Cape Fear River; Charleston, South Carolina; Beaufort and Port Royal, South Carolina; and Savannah, Georgia. Along this seaboard there were islands that were isolated and easily seized. One particularly attractive target was a long chain of barrier islands that guarded the coast of North Carolina, and isolated Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound from the open sea. The region was an ideal haven for Confederate blockade-runners and commerce raiders, and taking it away from the Confederacy would put a dent in their maritime activities.
As early as June, the Federal naval command had considered the taking control of this strip of sand, and on 26 August 1861, a Federal fleet left Hampton Roads and headed south. The flotilla was led by the powerful wooden steam frigates MINNESOTA and WABASH, 3,000 ton (2,725 tonne) craft armed with 28 nine inch (23 centimeter) guns, 14 eight inch (20.3 centimeter) guns, and two ten inch (25.4 centimeter) pivot guns. Next in line was the SUSQUEHANNA with 15 eight inch guns and other smaller pieces. There were two other steam warships and an antique sail frigate, a revenue cutter, two chartered merchantmen with 900 soldiers on board, and a tugboat named FANNY. The fleet was under the command of hard-nosed Flag Officer Silas Stringham; the Army contingent was under the command of Major General Benjamin F. Butler. Butler had been relieved of command at Fort Monroe on 18 August. Having no assignment elsewhere, he had remained there and looked seaward for new opportunities.
The fleet's target was a narrow gap named Hatteras Inlet in the middle of the barrier island chain. The inlet was guarded by two makeshift forts, Fort Clark and Fort Hatteras. Fort Clark had only five guns; Fort Hatteras was bigger and better-designed, with roughly 20 guns, but they were of small caliber and their powder supply was defective.
On the morning of Wednesday, 28 August 1861, the fleet drew up along the shore from the forts and began to pound them. A gale blew up in the evening, forcing the ships to withdraw, but troops were rashly landed anyway until the weather got so rough the operation could not be continued, leaving about 300 men stranded on the island without hope of support. Fortunately for the Federals, the Confederates didn't feel confident enough to attack them. By the morning the seas had subsided and the bombardment continued. There were more screw-ups. One ship bombarded a herd of cattle, thinking they were Confederate cavalry, and the landing force had the bad luck to occupy Fort Clark, which had been abandoned during the night, at the same time the fleet decided to bombard it. A soldier was wounded in the hand, making him the only Federal casualty in the operation.
The Confederates were taking a pounding and their own return fire was ineffective. At noon, they called it quits and surrendered. The rebels refused to surrender to the landing force, however, arguing that it was the navy that had defeated them and that the soldiers couldn't have taken the forts in a year. The Federals were flexible on this point of pride, and allowed the rebels to surrender to the "armed forces" of the United States.
The original intent of the mission was simply to plug Hatteras Inlet by sinking hulks to block channels to the sea, but Stringham and Butler agreed it would be wiser to install an occupation force. Two regiments and some of the smaller warships were left there while the fleet returned to Hampton Roads for reinforcements. When they arrived, Butler hurried to Washington. He got hold of Montgomery Blair and Gustavus Fox, and all three men went to the White House and roused Lincoln out of bed at midnight. Butler later claimed that Lincoln, still in his nightshirt, was so ecstatic at the news that the President and Fox danced merrily around the room.
The Confederates were as dejected as Lincoln was elated. There was nothing they could do to eject the Federals, and the Yankess could obviously move at will against any point on the North Carolina coast. A newspaperman in Raleigh wrote: "The whole of the eastern part of the state is now exposed to the ravages of merciless vandals ... Our state is now plunged into a great deal of trouble." Confederate newspapers were fond of the overblown, but in this case the newspaperman would prove entirely accurate.
* Having found it easy to make troubles for the rebels off the coast of North Carolina, the Navy decided to play the same game in the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi delta provided another fine place for Confederate blockade runners and commerce raiders to play hide-and-seek with the Yankees. The obvious solution was to seize New Orleans, but the Federals weren't ready for such an ambitious move. They could, however, take an intermediate step. There was a small island off the coast of the state of Mississippi named Ship Island that would be very useful as a base for patrolling the delta and as a staging area for any attack on New Orleans. The Navy simply sailed in and seized Ship Island, effectively unopposed, on 17 September. The Anaconda was starting to draw its coils tighter around the Confederacy.
