v1.1.2 / chapter 62 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* While winter kept large-scale campaigning at a minimum, small-scale actions kept both sides occupied, though brought no great success for either. In Charleston, South Carolina, Confederate General Beauregard had introduced a new weapon, a man-powered submarine named the HUNLEY, to attack Federal blockaders. The HUNLEY did manage to sink a Federal warship, the HOUSATONIC, but at the loss of the submarine and the crew. The HUNLEY's ill-fated attack was still a landmark in the history of submarines, the first time such a weapon had actually sunk another ship.
Federal efforts during the time didn't even achieve that much distinction. A Federal invasion of Florida commanded by Quincy Gillmore was thwarted at Ocean Pond, and a daring raid on Richmond cooked up by Judson Kilpatrick ended up a complete fiasco for the Union in almost every respect. The rebels had their own fiascos as well: George Pickett led an assault to evict the Yankees from their stronghold at New Berne on the North Carolina coast, but the attack was completely bumbled.
* Down in Charleston, South Carolina, General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard shared in the discouragement that was becoming common across the Confederacy, with much of his frustration focused on Jefferson Davis. However, a man with as big an ego as Beauregard rarely became so discouraged as to simply throw up his hands and give up.
Beauregard was taking extraordinary measures to try to deal with the Union forces blockading the city. He had promoted the development and use of the DAVID torpedo-boat, which had performed an ineffectual attack on the USS NEW IRONSIDES back in October. He was also promoting an even more unconventional weapon, a man-powered submarine named the HUNLEY. This infernal machine had been invented in 1862 by a prosperous engineer and Confederate States Army captain from Mobile, Alabama, named Horace L. Hunley. Sketchy records indicate that Hunley built several submarines for the Confederacy, but only his last design, the HUNLEY itself, would become famous, or possibly infamous.
The HUNLEY was little more than a big steel boiler, about 40 feet (12 meters) long with two hatches on top, one fore and one aft. The vessel was hand-cranked by a crew of eight, directed by an officer who peered through a porthole to see where the craft was going. Ballast tanks were filled to submerge the HUNLEY and the water was pumped out to return to the surface. A keel weight could in principle be unbolted in an emergency to allow the submarine to pop back to the surface. A rudder controlled horizontal direction while a set of diving planes controlled vertical direction to the extent buoyancy allowed.
The HUNLEY was armed with a 90 pound (40 kilogram) torpedo with contact detonators, dragged behind on a 200 foot (61 meter) line. The idea was that the HUNLEY would swim underneath a Union blockader and then rise again, dragging the line underneath the target's keel until the torpedo made contact and exploded. Tests in Mobile Bay had demonstrated that the HUNLEY was potentially useful. The vessel could stay underwater for up to two hours, and trial attacks on flatboats demonstrated that it could inflict damage to an unsuspecting target. The crude submarine was dismantled, loaded on freight cars, and shipped to Charleston along with its creator.
General Beauregard was enthusiastic about the new weapon, but his optimism proved misplaced. On her first trial, the HUNLEY ran into a sudden squall that caused the vessel to founder and sink. Only two of her crew got out. The Confederates raised her, but not long afterwards the submarine sank again: the HUNLEY had been moored to a steamer that got underway unexpectedly, turning the submarine over and sending her to the bottom. Only three of her crew escaped.
The Confederates wrote off the incident as a freak accident and raised the HUNLEY again. After being cleaned out and put back into serviceable condition, the submarine was again cruising under the waves of Charleston harbor. Then, on 15 October 1863, the HUNLEY went for a dive. Bubbles came to the surface, but the HUNLEY did not. All hands, including Horace Hunley himself, were lost. The vessel was found by a helmet diver and raised a few days later. Beauregard was present when the submarine was opened up, and he reported: "The spectacle was indescribably ghastly. The unfortunate men were contorted into all sorts of horrible attitudes ... the blackened faces of all presented the expression of their despair and agony."
The HUNLEY was still put back into service, though Beauregard gave orders that it never submerge again. It was fitted with a spar torpedo for operation as a torpedo boat. It sank again after it fouled a cable on a ship, and seven more men were lost.
Astonishingly, the Confederates raised the vessel once more and were even able to find a crew willing to get into it. On the night of 17 February 1864, the vessel crept out into Charleston harbor in the darkness and made for the Union screw sloop HOUSATONIC. At 8:45 PM, the HUNLEY was spotted as she approached the HOUSATONIC, but the ship didn't have time to escape. The HUNLEY struck the HOUSATONIC squarely, setting off a magazine, and sent the ship to the bottom. Five Union sailors died, but the water was shallow and the rest of the crew managed to hang on to the rigging, which remained upright long enough to allow them to be rescued.
The HUNLEY was the first submersible to actually sink a ship, but the submarine and all her crew went to the bottom with the HOUSATONIC. About 38 men had died in the HUNLEY, and it can only be regarded as a blessing that the Confederates did not raise her once again. In fact, the HUNLEY remained on the bottom until the year 2000, when it was finally raised, with such fragments of the crew as still existed given a proper burial.
* General Quincy Gillmore, in charge of the US Army forces around Charleston, had other things to occupy his mind besides bizarre new rebel weapons like the HUNLEY. Gillmore was then preparing to conquer Florida for the Union.
In mid-January, Gillmore had received a visitor, President Lincoln's 25-year-old personal secretary John Hay, who arrived in Army uniform with a major's rank and a document from Lincoln with a grand proposal. The President was very enthusiastic about his "Proclamation Of Amnesty & Reconstruction", and was working through agents in Louisiana and Arkansas to collect the ten percent of loyal voters that would allow those two states to become good members of the Union once more. Hay had Unionist friends in Florida who had written him to suggest that the reconquest of the state would be straightforward. Floridians, they said, had no deep enthusiasm for the Confederate cause and wanted to return to the Union.
It was getting pretty late in the day for anyone to take much stock in such glib proposals, but Gillmore was frustrated and bored with the stalemate at Charleston, and in fact he had been proposing his own campaign in Florida to War Secretary Stanton and General Halleck. Gillmore's intelligence told him that the state was protected only by a small force of state militia. The state's capture would reward the Union with natural resources, plus black men to fill up Union regiments. He could seize it with just one of his divisions, now sitting idle outside Charleston.
Hay was telling Gillmore precisely what he wanted to hear, and Gillmore was eager to be off. Hay was to accompany the invasion force, carrying stacks of loyalty oaths for the faithful Unionists who presumably would be quick to pledge their allegiance once more to the Stars & Stripes. Gillmore wanted to leave almost immediately, but was forced to wait on Hay. The general was so enthusiastic that he wrote Lincoln on 21 January: "There will not be an hour's delay after the major is ready ... I have every confidence in the success of this enterprise." Lincoln had heard this sort of thing and it seems unlikely he found it encouraging.
Due to various hangups, the expedition didn't actually begin until 6 February, when Brigadier General Truman Seymour's division of about 8,000 men boarded twenty transports at Hilton Head. They set off down the coast, escorted by two gunboats, and steamed up the Saint John's estuary to occupy Jacksonville the next morning. The Federals had already occupied Jacksonville twice before; the place was ruined and generally deserted. Hay started collecting signatures on loyalty oaths, and also made an investment in local property, partly to establish residency to provide him with qualification for political office once Florida returned to the Union fold.
In the meantime, the two gunboats steamed further up the estuary, carrying small forces to occupy the towns of Picolata and Palatka. Gillmore set his main force into motion on 8 February, advancing westward along a rail line. His objective was Lake City, 60 miles (96 kilometers) inland. By the next morning, Union cavalry had arrived in Baldwin, 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the coast, where the rail line crossed Florida's only other rail line, which ran roughly north-south. Federal infantry followed soon after.
Gillmore's cavalry continued to range westward, but on hearing rumors that the rebels were building up forces in Lake City, the troopers decided to fall back east instead of getting into a fight they lacked the numbers to win. When they linked back up with the main force, they found that Gillmore had halted his advance anyway.
Gillmore had also heard that the Confederates were massing a force to meet him, but that wasn't why he had lost his aggressiveness. The real reason was a simple matter of logistics. Gillmore had hoped to supply his troops along the rail line and had methodically included a locomotive of the appropriate gauge among the supplies of the expedition. The locomotive would haul hardtack and ammunition using captured boxcars. Unfortunately, although his cavalry had managed to seize plenty of boxcars, the locomotive had broken down. Gillmore decided to return to Hilton Head to set matters straight. He departed from Jacksonville on 13 February, leaving Seymour in command, with instructions to hold on to Baldwin and consolidate the coastal holding the Federals had seized.
* Seymour was not content to sit quietly and wait for Gillmore to return. Seymour was a West Pointer, with distinctions from the Mexican War and all through the current conflict. He had been a gun captain at Sumter when the war began, had fought gallantly under McClellan, and after having been transferred to the coastal command, had won further distinctions leading an assault on Battery Wagner, where he had been wounded.
Seymour thought Gillmore lacked aggressiveness. On 18 February, on his own initiative, Seymour decided to resume the attack on Lake City. Detachments had reduced his offensive force to about 5,500 men, which was about as many as the rebels had to oppose him at Lake City, but he felt that if he pressed his attack hard, the Confederates would simply scatter.
Seymour pushed his men westward as fast as he could drive them. They finally made contact with a Confederate force under Brigadier General Joseph Finnegan at about noon on 20 February, near a swamp named Ocean Pond, just west of the town of Olustee, about a dozen miles (20 kilometers) short of Lake City. The battle lasted until about 4:00 PM. It only lasted that long because Seymour refused to give up, sending his men forward on one futile and bloody attack after another. The Federals were winded from the forced march and lack of food, while the Confederates were rested and fighting from good defenses in swampy terrain that gave the Yankees little room to maneuver. Seymour was finally forced to call it quits when his regiments began to fall apart under the strain.
The Federals had demonstrated considerable determination up to that time, losing 1,861 men, with more than 700 of those casualties killed or captured. One of the hardest-hit was a black regiment, the Eighth United States Colored Infantry, which was torn to pieces. The rebels lost about 946 men, with less than a hundred killed or missing. Seymour had taken a lopsided beating. The Yankees went back the way they came under the cover of darkness. They had no ambulances or wagons, and the many wounded had to be carried on litters. Both the wounded and the able-bodied seethed with resentment over the bumbled campaign, and could only be thankful that the Confederates did not pursue them. The column arrived back in Jacksonville on the morning of 22 February.
When Gillmore returned, he found out that the Confederates had retaken Baldwin and were digging in, possibly to prepare for an assault in which they would drive the Yankees into the ocean. Gillmore belatedly sacked Seymour and braced for an attack. In fact, the Union handhold around Jacksonville would remain intact for the rest of the war, for whatever good that would do the Federal cause. However, the idea that Florida was ready to fall into the Union camp at the first touch had been thoroughly discredited. Hay went to Key West to pick up a few more signatures, only to find the place populated by "thieves and vipers", and then returned shame-faced to Washington DC.
The newspapers howled about the Federal humiliation in Florida, blasting Lincoln for losing almost 2,000 men in what they interpreted as an attempt to add a new state whose electors would vote for him in the upcoming presidential election. Hay was bitterly attacked as well, with the papers suggesting that he had been motivated by the lure of a Congressional seat. Hay expected to be grilled by his boss on return to the White House. However, although some witnesses said Lincoln was stung by the accusations that he had thrown away men's lives for his own political purposes, Hay found the President calm about the matter. They'd taken a chance and failed. Lincoln took many chances and often failed, and went right back to taking chances.
* In fact, even as the invasion of Florida bumbled to its unfortunate end, Lincoln was taking a chance on another scheme, one promoted by Union cavalry general Judson Kilpatrick.
Kilpatrick was obnoxious to those who did not find him simply silly, but like many people with a big head of steam he did have the virtues of being energetic, aggressive, and bold. In mid-February 1864, these qualities led him to go over the heads of the generals above him and make a proposal to high civilian officials of the Lincoln Administration.
Kilpatrick believed that the defenses of Richmond were poorly manned, with most of the troops in the front lines with Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. That meant that a strong force of cavalry moving fast might well be able to penetrate deep into the city, free Union prisoners, and incidentally distribute pamphlets describing Lincoln's December "Proclamation of Amnesty & Reconstruction" to encourage Confederates to return to the Union. The raiders would be able to return to Union lines before the Confederates could mobilize the strength to deal with them.
Kilpatrick was telling the leadership what they wanted to hear. Both the President and Secretary of War Stanton liked the plan. Kilpatrick's immediate superior, Major General Alfred Pleasonton, was not so enthusiastic. Pleasonton was almost certainly annoyed at Kilpatrick's lobbying over his head, but there were other reasons to be unhappy with the scheme.
Kilpatrick was full of fire and smoke and had no great instinct for careful planning and preparation. Military organizations can take spit and polish to foolish extremes, but nobody could accuse Kilpatrick of an excessive concern over appearances. His troopers always seemed a little grimy and worse for wear, and things simply didn't happen crisply when he was involved. The whole scheme was a long shot, and the record of success of the Army of the Potomac in winning long shots was not very good, particularly when someone who was careless of details was in charge. Besides, any soldier with sense knew the idea that pamphlets might be able to sway Southerners after so many years of bitter war was a complete fantasy.
Still, it was hard to argue with trying to keep the faith with thousands of Union prisoners in Confederate hands. Pleasonton's objections were ignored and Kilpatrick put the wheels of his scheme into motion. He was given command of 4,000 cavalry, and printing offices began to churn out bundles of pamphlets.
As knowledge of the plan began to spread through the high command of the Army of the Potomac, annoyance spread along with it. General John Sedgwick, temporarily in command of the Army of the Potomac while Meade was temporarily absent, protested in telegrams to the War Department. The only effect was that Sedgwick ended up on Secretary Stanton's blacklist. The generals finally had to resign themselves to the scheme. The entire force involved was not so great that even losing it all would do great harm, though any conscientious officer had to detest the wastage of men and horses due to overblown ego of a glory-hound cavalry brigadier. When Meade returned, he decided to go along, there being not much else he could do under the circumstances, arranging to perform a major demonstration to distract the rebels and improve the raid's chances for success.
* One of Kilpatrick's chief lieutenants in the coming raid was 21-year-old Ulric Dahlgren, son of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren. Ulric Dahlgren had joined the Union Army in 1862 at age 19, being given a captaincy and an appointment by Secretary Stanton to General Hooker's staff. This might have been favoritism, but the young Dahlgren proved to be a good soldier and an excellent cavalry officer, with an appealing combination of boldness and refined manners. He promised to go far and was quickly promoted, but his career seemed to have been ended when he was badly wounded during the cavalry skirmishing that surrounded the Battle of Gettysburg. His right leg was amputated.
After convalescing, he joined his father in the fleet besieging Charleston, and then returned to Washington DC to get his pegleg and a promotion to colonel. He heard about Kilpatrick's raid and was determined to sign up. Since it was clear Dahlgren could still ride and fight, Kilpatrick was glad to have him on board; in fact, Dahlgren was to play the key part in the raid. While Kilpatrick and the bulk of his cavalry distracted the Confederates, Dahlgren was to cross over the James, loop around south of Richmond with 500 troopers, and dash into the city to free the 15,000 Union prisoners in the main prison camp at Belle Isle.
* The plan went into motion on 28 February. Sedgwick moved his VI Corps upriver, and Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer took a cavalry brigade on a fast diversionary raid towards Charlottesville, in the shadow of the mountains to the West. Robert E. Lee went for the bait and moved to respond, and that evening Kilpatrick and his troopers went across the Rapidan downstream at Ely's Ford.
The next day, 29 February, Leap Year's Day, the raiders moved quickly. They were in good spirits, believing they had every prospect of success, and enjoyed fine weather. They supplemented their rations with poultry and other provisions stolen from Virginia farms, whose owners swore helplessly at the swarm of Yankees galloping over their property, and inflicted such destruction on Confederate resources as they could while in a hurry. Dahlgren's group moved ahead and out of contact with the bulk of the force.
That afternoon clouds rolled in and the weather turned nasty. By evening, the troopers were being pelted with freezing rain and the whole adventure didn't seem quite so jolly. They spent the night in the saddle, trying to keep on the move, but the Confederates were now aroused and the raiders had to deal with bushwhackers who shot at them out of the dark, to then disappear. A signals officer riding with the main body sent up rockets, but got no response from Dahlgren's party. This was no surprise given the foul weather, but it still did nothing to improve confidence. The main body slogged on into the gray and dreary dawn of 1 March. By midmorning they were outside the defenses of Richmond.
Kilpatrick found the defenses more formidable than expected and turned timid. He brought up six guns and sent skirmishers forward, but the more the Yankees pushed, the more they learned that they weren't going to simply march into Richmond unopposed. The defenses were strong, and though they were being manned by Confederate War Department clerks and whoever else might be scraped up, these rebels had as much nerve for a fight as any of Lee's men. They were fighting from fixed positions and could do just fine, as long as they followed orders and shot straight.
Dahlgren's people were supposed to be listening for the sound of guns and respond in kind, but Kilpatrick and his men heard nothing. When the sun finally went down after a day of idle skirmishing, Kilpatrick decided to withdraw, leading his men north of the Chickahominy to set up camp for the night. The men had no tents, and one of the participants said: "A more dreary, dismal night would be difficult to imagine, with rain, snow, sleet, mud, cold, and wet to the skin, rain and snow falling rapidly, the roads a puddle of mud, and the night as dark as pitch."
Sitting there freezing was obviously no good, and so Kilpatrick decided to organize his men for another try at Richmond. This was time-consuming, and while he was at it his group was attacked by regular Confederate cavalry under Wade Hampton, backed up by two artillery pieces. There was a bitter, confused fight in the darkness, with much swearing and the rebels calling out: "GIT, YOU DAMNED YANKEES!" The rebels were finally driven off, but with their location known, the raiders obviously had to move on. They managed to find a more secure campsite after dawn on 2 March, and settled down to get some rest and, hopefully, get news of what had happened to Dahlgren and his men.
* Later that day, in the afternoon, about 260 of Dahlgren's men came riding into Kilpatrick's camp, with a story to tell. As they told it, Dahlgren's group had moved quickly and confidently at first, leaving destruction behind them, and then on 1 March reached the plantation of Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon. He wasn't there, but Mrs. Seddon was, and Dahlgren enjoyed playing the dashing cavalryman, enjoying a glass of blackberry wine with Mrs. Seddon and exchanging chitchat. She told him that she had once been courted by John A. Dahlgren, and then the young colonel told her that he had to be on his way.
This was the sort of chivalry that had been fashionable earlier in the war, before the bloodshed, looting, and burning had got so out of control, but Ulric Dahlgren was still very young and full of romantic illusions. Just how thin these illusions were was proven a short time later. Dahlgren's command had picked up a young slave boy named Martin Robinson, who said that he knew a place where the James might be forded. However, when the riders got there, the river was swollen from the rains and entirely impassable. Martin Robinson was just as surprised as the rest, but Dahlgren decided that the slave boy had deliberately deceived him. Dahlgren had him lynched on the spot from the branch of a tree. Some of Dahlgren's troopers went back to Secretary Seddon's plantation and burned his barns. So much for chivalry.
Such acts of spite might have done something to vent the frustrations of the cold and wet raiders, but it did nothing to improve their situation. They rode along the north bank of the river, unable to cross so they could enter Richmond from the south, and didn't make it to the outskirts of the city until evening. By this time, Kilpatrick had abandoned his attack, such as it was, and the Confederate defenses were fully alert. There was nothing for Dahlgren to do but admit failure and try to get his men away as best he could.
They rode north through the night, harassed by Confederates who would pop up, shoot at them, and then vanish again. During the night the party split in two, with about 200 men remaining with Dahlgren and the other 300 going off on their own. The 260 men who had stumbled into Kilpatrick's camp were the survivors of that 300.
* They had no idea of what had happened to Dahlgren. The whole raid was clearly a bust in any case, and so Kilpatrick led his men down the James Peninsula towards Union lines over the next few days. They arrived at Union lines to be cheered by black soldiers in Union blue. The muddy and miserable troopers arrived to find few accommodations for them; so they simply evicted the black troops from their comfortable tents, and took their supplies.
A few stragglers came in later and managed to complete the story. Dahlgren and his band of 200 had made good time on 2 March, performing a daring crossing of the Mattapony River on scows while under fire, but that night they ran into an ambush by rebel cavalry, backed up by militia and armed local civilians. Dahlgren had tried to bluff his way out, brandishing a pistol and crying out: "Surrender, you damned rebels, or I'll shoot you!" Dahlgren was hit with four bullets simultaneously, dead before he hit the ground. The rest of his command was shot or captured, in some cases tracked down by bloodhounds, except for the few troopers who managed to slip through the net to tell the story.
That wasn't the end of the matter. Dahlgren's body was stripped of its clothes, his artificial leg was taken as a souvenir, and one of his fingers was cut off to allow removal of a ring. His body was displayed in Richmond in an open coffin as a public attraction. Worse, papers were produced that were said to have been removed from Dahlgren's pocket that detailed how the raiders intended not merely to set loose Union prisoners, but then lead them to murder Jefferson Davis and the Confederate cabinet and spread destruction through the helpless city.
The documents were published in Southern newspapers and there was widespread outrage. Braxton Bragg denounced the "fiendish and atrocious conduct" of the Yankees. Davis, in his usual cool way, was calmer about the matter, only chuckling when he read from one of the papers that "Davis and his cabinet must be killed on the spot." In a remark more characteristic of his adversary Lincoln than himself, Davis then turned to Judah Benjamin and said, casually: "That means you, Mr. Benjamin."
Some of Davis's cabinet members weren't so amused. Secretary of War Seddon, no doubt thoroughly annoyed at the torching of his property, passed the papers on to Robert E. Lee, along with a suggestion that the Federals captured from the raid ought to be hanged. Lee was not one to overreact. He replied that there was reason to wonder if the papers had actually been written by the Federals, or were a fabrication of some hotheaded Confederates; that no such atrocities had actually been committed; and that hanging the men would invite similar reprisals against Confederate in Union hands. The prisoners were spared the noose.
However, Lee's doubts about the validity of the papers cut both ways: they might be false, but they might be true. He sent copies of the papers along with a message across the lines to General Meade, asking if the papers reflected Union policy. Meade replied emphatically that such actions had not been considered or authorized by himself, President Lincoln, or General Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick denied everything. Meade privately expressed concerns that the papers were perfectly valid. Although it would have been foolish of Dahlgren to carry such dangerously incriminating documents on a raid into enemy territory when there was no particular good reason to do so, people sometimes do foolish things; and more to the point, it was hard to say what a clown like Kilpatrick was capable of.
Custer's brigade had returned from its dash on Charlottesville on 1 March. They had kept handily out of reach of the Confederates and suffered few casualties, leaving destruction in their path and returning to Union lines with hundreds of captured horses and a horde of ex-slaves in their wake. There was much in Custer that was like Kilpatrick, and in fact Custer was at least as big a show-off and glory hound. The difference was that when push came to shove, Custer seemed to know what he was doing. No doubt some Federal officers wondered if things might have worked out better if Custer had gone to Richmond while Kilpatrick went off on a diversion, instead of the other way around.
* The final result of the entire exercise was a loud barking contest in the newspapers. The Confederate press railed against the destruction caused by the raiders and the mad schemes proposed in the papers supposedly taken from Dahlgren. A Richmond paper caustically observed that the most prominent casualty of the raid was Martin Robinson. Northern papers gloated over the damage caused and the dilapidation of the Southern countryside reported by the cavalrymen. As far as Martin Robinson was concerned, a rabid New York editor replied that the treacherous slave had received "a fate he so richly deserved."
A few details had to be tied up. Admiral Dahlgren wrote General Butler to request that a message be sent across Confederate lines to ask for the return of Ulric Dahlgren's body for a decent burial. The raiders also needed a little attention. They had suffered a little over 340 casualties and lost about a thousand horses, losses of no great significance in the larger scheme of things but painful in themselves.
The survivors were sent back up the Potomac by ship from Fortress Monroe, to rest and refit in Alexandria. They were refitted, but not granted the rest they had expected. The provost guard in Alexandria was staffed by black soldiers and when a Michigan trooper was told by one such soldier that riding in the town was forbidden, the cavalryman replied by drawing his sabre and killing the guard. As punishment, the entire command was told to return to the front lines along the Rapidan immediately.
* Since heavy fighting on the main battle fronts was generally in suspension for the winter, Lee decided to turn his attention to the troublesome Yankees holed up along the North Carolina coast. The Federals there hadn't been strong enough to be a serious threat, but there were enough of them to engage in almost continuous raids where they destroyed crops and livestock and even burned down whole towns. Such measures were not only an insult, they were also effective, depriving the Confederacy of badly-needed supplies. In early January, Lee transferred troops to North Carolina for an attack on New Berne, while a number of boats were transferred by rail to the Neuse River.
Major General George Pickett was chosen to lead the attack on New Berne. In late January, he moved out from Kinston with 4,500 men, supported with cavalry and 14 guns. The attackers moved in three columns, intending to close on New Berne from three directions after dawn on 1 February. However, the commanders of two of the columns found the Yankee defenses much too formidable and refused to press their attacks. The other column, under Brigadier General Robert F. Hoke, made headway, but without support it was doomed. Pickett was forced to call the whole thing off.
The offensive was a bust, but the Confederate Navy did manage to pull some glory out of it. The boats that had been ported to the Neuse, carrying over 300 officers and men under the leadership of Commander John Taylor Wood, were to deal with the three Federal gunboats thought to be at the scene. The boats crept onto the scene in the dark hours of the morning, with the crews paddling quietly in hopes of sneaking up on the gunboats and boarding them. They found only one Union gunboat, the side-wheeler UNDERWRITER, which was armed with four guns. The Confederates closed in on the gunboat and were not spotted until they boarded her. A short, nasty close-quarters fight took place on the UNDERWRITER's deck. The Federals were overwhelmed and forced to surrender.
Federal gunners along the shore realized there was a fight going on, and when they then saw the ship had fallen into rebel hands, they started firing on her. The UNDERWRITER's steam was down, Commander Wood could not flee with his prize, so he ordered the vessel burned while he and his men escaped upstream in their boats. It was a fine demonstration of skill and nerve on the part of the rebels that did something to compensate for their humiliation on land. Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory called it a "brilliant exploit".
