v1.1.1 / chapter 17 of 93 / 01 sep 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* In May 1862, the Confederacy's situation was desperate. The Union Army was advancing up the James River Peninsula, the Confederate ironclad VIRGINIA had been destroyed, and the Federals, having consolidated their hold on New Orleans, were steaming up the Mississippi River and seizing more Southern towns and cities. A fleet of Confederate ram vessels did successfully score serious blows on Union gunboats upriver, but that was one of the few consolations to the South at a time when it seemed that the Confederacy's days were numbered.
* Through the end of April and into early May 1862, General George McClellan
continued implementing his plans for the smashing blow that would drive the
rebels out of their fortifications at Yorktown and along the Warwick river,
clearing the way for a Federal advance up the James River Peninsula. Lincoln
waited with strained patience. A request for Parrott guns drew a sharp
response from the President on 1 May 1862:
YOUR CALL FOR PARROTT GUNS ... ALARMS ME CHIEFLY
BECAUSE IT ARGUES INDEFINITE PROCRASTINATION.
Both McClellan and Lincoln were undoubtedly relieved when McClellan
jubilantly wired the War Department on 4 May:
YORKTOWN IS IN OUR POSSESSION.
GEO. B. MCCLELLAN.
This was perfectly true, but following telegrams showed it to be less
inspiring than it seemed. Confederate General Joe Johnston had been waiting
in an agony of anticipation for the blow to fall on Yorktown. Johnston knew
that superior Federal forces would quickly overwhelm the town's weak
defenses, and as Union siege machinery around Yorktown fell into place,
Johnston decided it was time to get out.
On the afternoon of Saturday, 3 April 1862, Johnston's artillery began to fire busily and noisily as rain fell from the skies. The firing fell silent around midnight. By the next morning, the rain had stopped, and Federal probes found the trenches around Yorktown quiet and empty. The rebels had pulled out during the night, departing in such haste that they left behind 56 heavy naval guns, nearly all in perfect working order and some even with ammunition left stacked beside them. The rebels were not, however, in such a hurry that they failed to bury cannon shells connected to trip wires. These "torpedoes" killed several careless Federals, and McClellan angrily ordered that Confederate prisoners be put to work to dig up the "murderous and barbarous" devices.
Whatever dismay the escape of the Yorktown garrison might have caused in Washington, McClellan was pleased that he had forced the rebels out of their entrenchments without bloodshed. In light of his inflated estimates of their strength, this was a major accomplishment. Now that the Confederates were on the run, it was absolutely important to pursue them and hopefully catch them in disorder. The result was all the bloodshed anyone could have conceived of.
* The Federals had been surprised by the evacuation of Yorktown and were cautious because of the torpedoes the rebels had left behind. Union cavalry didn't move out in pursuit until about noon, and the five divisions of infantry that followed didn't leave until hours later. The fact that the soldiers also had to march through a driving thunderstorm did not make their progress any faster, though it slowed down the Confederates as well.
McClellan wasn't supervising the advance. He remained in Yorktown to organize an amphibious leapfrog up the York that would hopefully cut off the retreating Confederates, and passed command of the advancing forces to Brigadier General Edwin Sumner, a 65-year-old regular who had been with the Army since 1819. Sumner was strict disciplinarian with a tremendous roaring voice that gave him the nickname "Bull". His men liked him for his bearing, toughness, and courage. Unfortunately, he was also unimaginative and highly inflexible.
Federal cavalry caught up with the rebels late that afternoon. Johnston ordered several brigades of infantry under Major General James Longstreet to perform a rearguard defense. The rebels occupied the second line of defenses east of Williamsburg, arranged around the earthwork fort that had been named Fort Magruder. The rearguard held up the Federal advance for the evening while Johnston and the rest of his men struggled to get away.
The next morning, 5 May, Sumner's men threw themselves at the Confederates during a torrential downpour. A division under Brigadier General Joe Hooker made contact in front of Fort Magruder early that morning and got into a long, stubborn fight. The Federals were eventually forced back as the rebels concentrated their forces against Hooker's men; for some reason, Sumner did not commit his other available forces to the attack. By about 4:00 PM, Hooker's division had been driven back about a mile and a half (2.4 kilometers), but then help finally arrived, in the form of a division led by Brigadier General Philip Kearny.
Kearny was the most dashing general in the Union Army. He had lost an arm in the Mexican War, made millions in private life, and distinguished himself in battles in Europe, leading charges with his horse's reins in his teeth while swinging a saber with his good arm. The war had brought him back home and now he was in his element. He moved his men up the road to the battle as fast as he could, ordering a column of wagons that impeded his movement to be thrown off the road or burned, shouting: "I will show you what fire feels like unless you set the torch to your cowardly wagons!" Kearny's men forced the rebels back again, while Kearny himself rode in the thick of the firing to motivate his troops: "Don't flinch, boys! They're shooting at me, not you!" The rebels definitely were shooting at him: two of his staff officers were shot from the saddle and killed as they followed him.
In the meantime, another fight was taking shape about two miles (3.2 kilometers) to the north. Earlier in the day, the Federals had found unoccupied fortifications along the Confederate lines, and had sent a brigade under Brigadier General Winfield Scott Hancock, a burly 38-year-old regular officer famed for his loud voice and fluent profanity. Hancock's brigade moved into the empty defenses about noon where they would be in a position to threaten the rebel flank. Hancock recognized he had an opportunity, but Sumner refused to send him the reinforcements he needed to exploit it. Then, at about 5:00 PM, Hancock noticed the Confederates massing to attack him. Longstreet had finally seen the threat, having been unaware of the empty fortifications, since the only person who really knew the layout of the defensive line was Magruder, who was down sick. Longstreet sent a division under Major General Daniel Harvey Hill and a brigade under Brigadier General Jubal A. Early to drive the Federals out.
The rebels hit Hancock's position hard. Hancock, who was too smart to simply blindly hold his ground, ordered his men to fall back over the crest of a ridge in the rear and then to lay low. The Confederates thought they had the Yanks on the run and excitedly pressed their attack up the ridge until they got about 30 paces from the top, when Hancock ordered his men to stand up and fire. The first volley smashed into the Confederate line, to be followed by more volleys that murderously cut up the startled rebels. As the enemy advance faltered, Hancock galloped to the front of the line and shouted in his thunderous voice: "FORWARD! CHARGE!" -- with the commands framed in a "blue haze" of Hancock's grand profanity. His men rushed forward with bayonets leveled into the now disoriented rebels, who broke and ran.
McClellan had arrived from Yorktown as Hancock's fight was developing and sent up reinforcements. By the time they got there, they weren't needed any more, since the Federals held the field. By that time, darkness was falling and the fighting was over. Longstreet had fulfilled his defense of the retreating Confederate army, and his men withdrew in the night. The Battle of Williamsburg was inconclusive, though it did result in plenty of casualties, numbering about 1,600 for the rebels and 2,200 for the Federals. It was significant in that both sides had shown their ability to fight. They were not the amateurs they had been at Manassas. Despite the bad weather, mud, and confusion, rebels and Yanks had fought as military units, not as a disorderly mobs. It also bred respect among the troops for their commanding generals, even though neither Johnston nor McClellan had been involved in the fight.
Johnston had been pressing forward with the main body of his force when he came upon an artillery piece that was mired in the mud. The lieutenant in charge of the battery was about to abandon it, as orders were that nothing should slow down the retreat, but Johnston said simply: "Let me see what I can do." -- and in one of the gestures that so endeared Johnston to his men, he got off the horse, waded into the mud in his general's uniform, took hold of a spoke, and shouted: "Now, boys! All together!" The gun was pulled free, and the story circulated around the army.
On his part, McClellan made the rounds of his regiments to buck up their morale, stopping to ask ritualistic questions of his men: "How do you feel, boys?!"
"We feel bully, General!"
"Do you think anything can stop you from going to Richmond?!"
"NO! NO!"
Winfield Scott Hancock emerged as the star of the battle. HANCOCK WAS SUPERB, McClellan wired Washington, inadvertently angering both Hooker and Kearny who felt with justice that they had been through worse fighting, but McClellan managed to placate them. From that time on, the newspapers called him "Hancock the Superb".
* The muddy and weary Confederates continued their retreat up the Peninsula, while on 6 May the amphibious move that McClellan had been planning went into operation. A division under Brigadier General William B. Franklin began to come ashore at Eltham Landing, at the head of the York River, to help establish a bridgehead at nearby West Point. Johnston ordered some of his forces to move forward to meet the Federal landing. The next morning the rebels hit the Yankees hard, inflicting about 200 casualties and bottling up the Union advance.
Much of the fighting was done by a brigade of Georgians and Texans under a 30-year-old West Pointer, originally from Kentucky but now a Texan, named Brigadier General John Bell Hood. Johnston had not wanted a large-scale fight since that might had slowed down his retreat, and he later reprimanded Hood: "General Hood, have you given an illustration of the Texas idea of feeling an enemy gently and then falling back? What would your Texans have done, sir, if I had ordered them to charge and drive back the enemy?" Hood replied solemnly: "I suppose, General, they would have driven them into the river, and tried to swim out and capture the gunboats."
* On 6 May, while fighting was raging on the Peninsula, President Lincoln arrived on at Fort Monroe, accompanied by Secretary of War Stanton and Secretary of the Treasury Chase. The President was there to confer with McClellan and hopefully find out what the delays were, and also to do a little warfighting himself.
Lincoln did not intend to interfere with McClellan's offensive. The President's concern was the ironclad CSS VIRGINIA, anchored at Norfolk across the James. The withdrawal of Joe Johnston's army had left Norfolk defenseless, and Secretary Stanton suggested that a small force might be able to retake the naval yard from the Confederates and capture or destroy the VIRGINIA. The Confederates were perfectly aware of the threat but didn't have the resources to do much about it. As far back as 27 April, Johnston had ordered Major General Benjamin Huger in Norfolk to make preparations for an evacuation.
McClellan had been preoccupied with crushing Johnston's army and had given no serious thought to the VIRGINIA. Lincoln, surprised by McClellan's indifference, decided to deal with the matter himself, using the garrison of Fort Monroe for the purpose. The commander at Fort Monroe was Major General John E. Wool, a 78-year-old a veteran of the War of 1812, two years older than Winfield Scott. Wool tended to tremble and become absent-minded, but he was still active enough to ride a horse and told the President he would be glad to conduct the operation.
After some confusion in selecting landing sites, with the President and Secretary Chase doing some personal reconnaissance in separate tugboats, on the night of 9 May General Wool, accompanied by Chase, landed 5,000 men to the east of Norfolk, while Lincoln and Stanton stayed behind to coordinate movements from the rear. The exercise gave Lincoln experience in the bureaucracy of the Union Army. He asked an officer: "Where is your command?" The officer replied: "I am awaiting orders." Lincoln asked another: "Why are you here? Why are you not on the other side?" The officer replied: "I am ordered to the fort." Lincoln grew so frustrated that he threw his stovepipe hat to the floor and said: "Send me someone who can write!" The President dictated an order that the advance be pressed.
Despite the confusions, everything was going well. General Wool and Secretary Chase arrived at Norfolk the next morning, only to find that the 9,000-man Confederate garrison had pulled out ahead of them. The general and the secretary were met just short of the city limits by a delegation of city officials, led by the Mayor, William W. Lamb, who handed over the keys of the city with, as an observer remarked, "all the formality of a medieval warden." While he droned on, dragging out the ceremony as long as he could Confederate demolition teams scrambled to complete their efforts at wrecking the naval installation.
The CSS VIRGINIA was offshore. Her captain, Josiah Tattnall, who had been in charge of the scratch fleet that had feebly opposed the Federals at Port Royal, ordered that the ironclad be lightened so it could be taken upriver to defend Richmond. The crew worked until midnight, heaving everything that could be spared overboard. Then it was discovered that a west wind had reduced the tide to the point where there was no way to take it upstream no matter how much it was lightened. Tattnall ordered the VIRGINIA run aground on a nearby island and set on fire. At dawn on 11 May 1862, the fires reached the powder magazines, and the ironclad blew itself to fragments. The crew marched upriver along the James to the to help man the defenses of Richmond. That same day Lincoln returned to Washington, his single adventure in Presidential combat command completed to his satisfaction.
McClellan telegraphed his congratulations and said it would allow him to make his own movements "much more decisive." The sight of the President of the United States amateurishly conducting a small-scale military operation must have seemed a bit silly. An Army officer observing Lincoln as the President steamed around on a tugboat, looking for a landing point, described him as "dressed in a black suit with a very seedy crepe on his hat, and hanging over the railing he looked like some hoosier just starting for home from California with store clothes and a biled shirt on." However, the job had been done energetically and quickly, and McClellan could have learned a lesson on decisiveness from it.
McClellan was not interested in taking hints from amateurish civilians. He declined to come down to Fort Monroe to confer with Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, despite the fact (or possibly because of it) that his relations with them were bad and could use some work. McClellan's distrust of the President and the Republicans around him had plenty of justification in fact but, like his intelligence estimates, was becoming less and less connected to reality. Democratic allies of the general were sending him letters warning him of the "scoundrels" in Washington, and stating that the time would soon come when they would get what they deserved.
The slow poisoning of McClellan's attitude was bad enough, but the potential for trouble was greatly magnified by the fact that the officer corps of the Army of the Potomac was tightly tied to him. Anything McClellan felt would be quickly communicated down the chain of command to the entire force. The general mistrusted his superiors, and his superiors mistrusted him. Nothing good could come of such a relationship.
* Back on the Mississippi, John Pope's seizure of Island Ten had an invigorating effect on Flag Officer Andrew Foote's morale, at least for a while. In mid-April 1862, Foote had taken his ironclads and mortar boats downstream to Fort Pillow, excited at the prospect of taking the place.
Then Halleck had ordered Pope and his soldiers away. There was no way that Foote's warships could take Fort Pillow by simple intimidation, since the place was situated on high bluffs overlooking the river and well-armed with cannon. There was nothing very useful to do. Foote kept his fleet anchored five miles (8 kilometers) upriver from Fort Pillow, except a single gunboat and mortar boat. The gunboat stood guard, while every half-hour during the day the mortar boat lobbed a 13 inch (33 centimeter) shell into the fort "to the great interest and excitement of the occupants."
This was boring and pointless work, with no useful result other than to harass the rebels. Foote's morale collapsed again. His Donelson wound still refused to heal, and he was often feverish. He sent a request to Navy Secretary Welles to be transferred to shore duty, and it was granted with regret. On 9 May, he made his farewells. He took off his cap and said to the men assembled on his flagship that he was sorry he could not stay with them until the war was over. He would remember what they had shared "with mingled feelings of sorrow and pride."
He left the vessel for a transport with an officer on either arm to hold him up, and was seated on a chair. As the transport left, the men cheered, and Foote had to hide the tears running down his face. They cheered again and threw their caps in the air. Foote, overcome, rose and cried back at them: "God bless you all, my brave companions! ... I can never forget you! Never! Never! You are as gallant and noble men as ever fought in a glorious cause, and I shall remember you to my dying day!"
After returning from sick leave, Foote would be given soft shore duty assignments back East. He was replaced by Captain Charles Henry Davis, a 55-year-old Bostonian who had been chief of staff to DuPont at Port Royal. On taking command, his impression of his situation was of the dullness of the whole thing. That impression turned out to be dangerously misleading.
* The eight Confederate steam rams that had escaped upstream from New Orleans docked at Memphis on 9 May, while the scratch fleet's effective commander, J.E. Montgomery, held a council of war with the captains of the other vessels. The fall of New Orleans had left them angry, and fearful that they might be hemmed in by Davis's ironclads from upstream and Farragut's warships from downstream. Whatever the odds, it seemed wisest to attack now instead of wait for the odds to get worse.
The next morning, Sunday 10 May 1862, the Union ironclad CINCINNATI was standing guard over MORTAR 10 while it tossed 200 pound (90 kilogram) shells into Fort Pillow. The Union sailors weren't expecting a fight; the ship's steam was down and they were scouring the ship for weekly inspection. At about 7:00 AM, however, a lookout shouted in alarm and the crew saw the rebel rams turning the bend, about a mile away, giving the Federals about eight minutes to react.
The Union gunboats cast off and tried to build up steam by throwing anything that would burn into the furnace, but the Confederates came on them too quickly. The gunboat CINCINNATI fired a broadside at the lead ram, the GENERAL BRAGG, and managed to swing around to prevent the ram from striking her at a right angle. The resulting glancing blow still tore an opening 6 feet deep and 12 feet long (2 by 4 meters) in the CINCINNATI. A second ram, the SUMTER, smashed into the CINCINNATI, followed by a blow from a third ram, the COLONEL LOVELL. The ironclad shuddered and went down in shallow water, with her crew clinging to the pilot house.
The sailors of the Union fleet sitting idly upstream had not a clue of what was happening until they heard the boom of cannons, and then set off downstream as fast as they could get their steam up, with the gunboat MOUND CITY leading the way. As it turned out, the MOUND CITY was a little too far in the lead: a fourth rebel ram, the GENERAL VAN DORN, smashed head-on into Union gunboat. The ironclad managed to limp to the bank and sink with her nose out of the water.
The Confederates had pushed their luck and gotten away with it, but they knew they couldn't get away with it much longer. They turned tail and went downstream to the protection of Fort Pillow. Montgomery led the scratch fleet back to Memphis to a rousing reception, reporting that if the Federal fleet remained at its present strength, it would "never penetrate father down the Mississippi."
It was boldly done. With inferior weapons, the Confederates had taken the Yankees by surprise and bloodied them, made fools of them, much like they had at the Head of the Passes the previous October. Montgomery's confidence had some justification, but he failed to factor in the payback the Yankees had so recently dealt out for their previous humiliation.
* Those particular Yankees were on the move. After the fall of New Orleans in April, Flag Officer David Glascow Farragut spent almost two weeks refitting and resupplying his damaged vessels, and then proceeded up the Mississippi as his orders specified. It was a hell of a trip. All Farragut had were his deep-draft screw warships, excellent for fighting on the open ocean but poorly suited to river warfare, which required flat-bottomed paddle-wheeled craft. His ships ran aground often; their sails were of no use on the river and keeping the big vessels fueled was laborious; and the 1,400 troops brought along came down with malaria and dysentery.
The ships still carried a lot of guns and the Confederates could offer little resistance. Baton Rouge, the Louisiana state capital, surrendered quietly on 12 May 1862, the state government having fled inland to the town of Opelousas the week before. Natchez, Mississippi, fell a few days later. A Louisiana woman wrote in her diary, reflecting the naive ideas of warfare popular in the early days of the war: "This is a most cowardly struggle, These people can do nothing without gunboats ... These passive instruments do their fighting for them. It is as best a dastardly way to fight." Reality was proving a rude shock for the Confederacy that spring.
The ultimate target of Farragut's drive was Vicksburg, Mississippi, the center of trans-Mississippi commerce of the Confederacy, a rail hub to the east fed by the Red, Arkansas, and White rivers from the west. Lincoln regarded its capture as more important than that of New Orleans, having told David Porter during his White House visits earlier in the year: "We may take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can still defy us from Vicksburg. It means hog and hominy without limit, fresh troops from all the states of the Far South, and a cotton country where they can raise the staple without interference."
The fall of New Orleans had alerted the rebels to the importance of Vicksburg, and small detachments of troops and artillery began to arrive there, starting on 1 May. On 18 May, one of Farragut's ships, the sloop ONEIDA, arrived at Vicksburg, and the ship's captain, Commander Samuel Phillips Lee, sent the Confederates an ultimatum ordering them to surrender the city. Five hours later Lee got a response from the city's military governor, Colonel James L. Autrey: "Mississippians don't know, and refuse to learn, how to surrender to an enemy. If Commodore Farragut or Brigadier General Butler can teach them, let them come and try."
Autrey had called Lee's bluff. The guns of Farragut's ships could not be elevated enough to be effective against the rebel fortifications being built along the high ground of the town, and there were enough Confederate troops in the city to easily repel the soldiers Farragut had with him. More rebel troops were rumored to be on the way. Farragut concluded there was nothing else to be done for the moment. He went back downstream to New Orleans, leaving garrison forces at Natchez and Baton Rouge.
Natchez had been reoccupied for a short time by the Confederates in the interim, and the unlucky citizen of that town who had carried Farragut's demand to surrender to the mayor was jailed for treason and almost executed. General Beauregard had to personally intervene to save the poor fellow's life. It appeared Vicksburg was going to be a problem for the Federals.
* While Farragut was struggling upstream, Major General Benjamin Butler was settling into his role as military dictator of New Orleans. The first thing to do was to put the fear of Federal law into the citizens. The women of the city were a particular problem in this respect, since no Southern gentleman would ever treat a proper lady with the slightest public disrespect, and, accustomed to such privilege, the women used it to its full advantage to snub, insult, and generally harass Union men. After a woman dumped a bucket of slop from a window onto Farragut's head, Butler acted. He issued General Order Number 28 on 15 May:
BEGIN QUOTE:
As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous non-interference on our part, it is ordered that hereafter, when any female shall, by word, gesture, or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier on the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.
END QUOTE
This wordy and indirect proclamation, which would have been laughable in a more modern and irreverent age, was shrewdly calculated. Even hinting that Southern womanhood might be insulted was enough to raise enraged howls all over the South. Beauregard responded with a proclamation of his own, asking: "Shall our mothers, our wives, our daughters and our sisters be thus outraged by the ruffianly soldiers of the North, to whom is given the right to treat, at their pleasure, the ladies of the South as common harlots?" He called for the South to drive out the invader.
Overseas, proper Englishmen were just as indignant. Butler couldn't have outraged people much more if he had let his men gang-rape the women in the streets. The outrage was fine by Butler, who cared little for being hated, and in fact seemed to enjoy it. He was no proper gentleman, no gentleman at all, and felt not the slightest obligation to play by anybody else's rules. The order was certainly effective. The women of New Orleans became discreet, and nobody gave any occasion to find out how the doctrine Butler had outlined in his General Order Number 28 was to be implemented in practice.
The menfolk of the city were circumspect as well, with much greater reason. Butler had ordered the arrest of William Mumford, the gambler who had torn down the US flag from the roof of the mint. Mumford was still wearing a scrap of it in his lapel when they grabbed him. Butler wrote the War Department: "They have insulted our flag -- torn it down with indignity. This outrage will be punished in such a manner as in my judgement will caution both the perpetrators and abettors of this act, so that they shall fear the stripes if they do not reverence the stars in our banner."
Later that spring, on 7 June, Mumford was condemned to death by a court-martial. He was publicly hanged from a window of the mint building. Since Mumford had torn down the flag before the Union had taken possession of the city there was technically no legal case against the man. Southerners regarded his execution as an act of murderous tyranny, and it is hard to argue now that it wasn't. That was fine, even desireable, as Butler saw it, since it helped convince the men of New Orleans that it would not be wise to test the patience of Federal authority.
If Butler did like being hated, he had certainly made the most of it. He became known over the South as "Beast" Butler; chamberpots were sold with his likeness in them; cartoons showed him with hoofs and horns. Jefferson Davis later proclaimed him "an outlaw and common enemy of mankind" and, in response to the execution of Mumford, ordered that Butler be hanged immediately if captured. Butler was all the more hated because he was not only ungentlemanly, he was efficient at it. His reputed competence at laying his hands on the valuables of the citizens of New Orleans led to a second nickname: "Spoons".
Not all the citizens of New Orleans found Butler's reign completely disagreeable. His administration of the city, if corrupt, was more efficient in keeping the streets clean of trash, including thieves and gangs, than any prewar administration had ever been. He also made sure that the poor were fed and employed them on public works projects, funded by seizing the assets of wealthy locals who wouldn't take a loyalty oath to the Union. By such means, Butler undermined the authority of prominent secessionists in the city and maintained order in the streets.
In addition, New Orleans had long had a free black community, including men of wealth and stature, though as the debate over slavery had grown more acid they had found their rights increasingly restricted. Butler began to raise a number of black regiments, known as the "Louisiana Native Guards" or the "Corps d'Afrique", which would be among the first armed black regiments in the US Army. There would be others.
* McClellan continued his amphibious buildup of forces at West Point. On 10 May, he put those forces in motion, while the rest of his army moved up the Peninsula after Johnston's retreating army. The movement was on the slow side, and it was a stretch to call it a "pursuit". Phil Kearny privately referred to McClellan as the "Virginia Creeper". All the same, the advance seemed irresistible and seemed certain to capture Richmond in due time.
As McClellan approached Richmond, a flood of refugees poured into the city from the peninsula, doubling the city's population to 80,000. Preparations were made to evacuate the government to South Carolina. Jefferson Davis sent his wife Varina and their four children to Raleigh, North Carolina. On 14 May, Jefferson Davis consulted with General Lee concerning the best line of defense, should the capitol have to be abandoned. Lee suggested the Staunton River, 160 kilometers (100 miles) to the southwest, but then added with a rare burst of emotion: "But Richmond must not be given up. It shall not be given up!"
While the threat from McClellan's army was growing greater every day, Richmond faced a more immediate menace. With the CSS VIRGINIA destroyed, there was nothing on the James River that could prevent Union vessels of the blockading squadron from steaming up river and putting Richmond under bombardment. Work on river defenses had been proceeding at a frantic pace under Colonel Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee's eldest son. The linchpin of these defenses was at Drewry's Bluff, which rose 60 meters (200 feet) above a sharp turn in the river. This was about the last place along the James where Federal vessels could be stopped before they would be in a position to fire on the city. Stone-filled cribs were sunk and old ships were scuttled in the river as obstructions, while the defenders laboriously hauled big naval guns into position on the bluff. They worked all through that night in a drenching rain.
At 7:35 AM the next morning, 15 May 1862, the Union Navy showed up as expected, in the form of the ironclads GALENA and MONITOR, as well as three smaller wooden vessels. The GALENA moved forward towards the batteries. The Confederates opened fire on it and scored two hits, but the ship's captain, Commodore John Rodgers, did not respond until he felt he was in the right position. The boom of big guns went on for hours, rattling the windows in Richmond. The GALENA inflicted damage on the rebel battery, but was taking a pounding in return. The high elevation of the Confederate guns allowed them to fire downward on the Federal ironclad and repeatedly penetrate its thin deck armor. The MONITOR moved up about 9:00 AM to help, but the twin guns could not be elevated high enough to allow them to hit the batteries, and the MONITOR soon returned downstream. The other three vessels were too vulnerable to get within range and remained where they were, enduring a hail of bullets from Confederate riflemen on both sides of the river.
A little after 11:00 AM, a shot penetrated one of the GALENA's gun ports and set the ship on fire. Commander Rogers decided he'd had enough and retired downstream. The rebels cheered and threw their caps in the air. The GALENA had taken roughly 50 hits. Her railings were gone, her smokestack riddled, and of her crew 13 were dead and 11 wounded. Her inadequate armor was worse than useless, since it simply helped generate more fragments to shred her sailors. The ship was later rebuilt, but the armor was removed and she served as a wooden gunboat.
* The Union Navy's attack on Richmond had been turned back, but the real threat, McClellan's drive on the city from his base at West Point, continued to grow larger. On that same day, 15 May, Federal soldiers reached a large southern mansion named the White House and found a note on the door:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Northern soldiers who profess to reverence Washington, forbear to desecrate the home of his first married life, the property of his wife, now owned by her descendants. A Grand-daughter of Mrs. Washington.
END QUOTE
That granddaughter was Mrs. Robert E. Lee. The appeal to McClellan's chivalry was effective. Although he pitched his headquarters tents on the grounds and set up a supply dump by a river landing there, he stationed guards around the house to keep it safe, and had Mrs. Lee escorted through rebel lines under a flag of truce. McClellan was treading on holy Virginia ground, and when on the next day he came to St. Peter's Church, where George Washington had been married, he "could not help kneeling ... and praying."
On 17 May, it seemed as though his prayers had been answered. He received news from Secretary Stanton that as soon as McDowell had been joined by a division sent by Banks from the Shenandoah Valley, the combined force of 40,000 men would march south to link up with the Union armies on the peninsula.
This was welcome. The main geographic obstacle that confronted McClellan in his advance up the peninsula was the Chickahominy River, which ran from north of Richmond in a protective arc that ultimately flowed into the James to the southeast. To accommodate the arrival of McDowell and his men, McClellan split his forces, half north of the Chickahominy, half south of it.
