WHEN Flag Officer Farragut—soon to be made Rear Admiral for this night’s work—looked about him from the quarter deck of the Hartford that glorious morning of the 24th of April which had made his name immortal, he counted fifteen of the seventeen vessels in his three divisions that had started with him the night before to pass the forts.
The Kennebec, as we learned later, had been disabled and had dropped back out of the fight; and the Varuna had run into a nest of rebel gunboats above the forts and had been sunk on the left bank of the river. Barring the loss of two of his smallest ships, his victorious fleet was now above the dreaded forts, and practically intact and ready for anything he might require of them at a moment’s notice.
So we all steamed up two or three miles above the forts and anchored, and the flagship signaled the fleet, “Go to breakfast.”
We gathered at the morning meal in the wardroom of the Richmond with very different feelings from those of the night before, for by a great providence death had not come to our mess and our little circle was unbroken, although two junior officers were among the dead and wounded. But in the hour of victory one does not stop to mourn for those who have gone on before; it is accepted as the fortune of war!
We had, of course, many personal experiences to relate and to compare, and there were some who said that the worst was yet before us; but as a rule we were very happy, and so well satisfied with our success that we did not think much of the future as we enjoyed our well-earned breakfast.
Coming up from the table and looking along the shore with my marine glass, I espied a large Confederate flag flying from a flagstaff on the river-bank where there was evidently a camp. As we all felt just then as though we owned the earth and the richness thereof, I went to Captain Alden and, on the ground of priority of discovery, asked permission to go on shore with my boat and pull down the flag.
The captain laughed at my eagerness and gave me leave to take the second cutter and go to the flagship and present my petition for permission to pull the flag down to Commodore Farragut.
I had the boat called away at once and started for the Hartford. I was taken into the cabin and there stated my case. “Why, certainly, Mr. Kelson,” said Farragut good-naturedly, “go ahead and pull down all the Confederate flags you can find. And, by the way, make my compliments to Captain Alden and tell him we shall proceed up the river at once.”
As I went over the side, Captain Boggs of the Varuna came on board to report the circumstances attending the loss of his ship.
Off I went in great glee. I landed, left a single boat-keeper in the boat, and with my eleven men walked up to the staff and was just hauling down the flag when my coxswain said, “Good Lord, Mr. Kelson, here comes a regiment of rebs!”
I looked, and sure enough, not quite a regiment, but a large body of Confederates in gray were marching down toward us and were already within easy gunshot. I supposed, of course, that we were to be called upon to surrender, and gathered my little body of men close together, hoping to be able to make a successful retreat to the boat, when the Confederates halted and I saw that they were all officers, about forty in number.
One stepped out from their midst and approached us; and as I came forward to meet him he saluted and said, “Whom have I the honor of addressing, sir?”
He was a fine looking fellow and his uniform was as fresh as though it had just come out of a tailor’s shop, while I was unshaven and was wearing my very oldest fatigue suit, that was powder stained after last night’s fight.
I informed the officer of my name, rank, and to what ship I belonged and he responded: “I am Colonel ——, in command of the —— Regiment, Louisiana Home Guards, and am commanding here at Camp Chalmette. With the guns of the Federal fleet bearing upon us, I consider it my duty to surrender my command to the forces of the United States!”
Never in all my varied experiences, before or since that morning, have I been so embarrassed as on the occasion when this remarkably spruce and very fluent gentleman tendered me his sword, and the other officers in their turn, in strict seniority, also handed me their side arms in token of their surrender “to the forces of the United States,” as represented by me and my boat’s crew!
I did my very best, however, to preserve my dignity and to give a strictly official air to the whole proceeding. But there was something so supremely ridiculous in these forty officers loading me down with their weapons, when I had come on shore merely for a flag, that I could scarcely conceal my mirth.
I informed them that I should duly present the matter for consideration to our fleet commander, and saluting with great solemnity retired to my boat, making the best show of my twelve sailors possible under the circumstances.
I carried my boat load of swords off to the Hartford, and Farragut sent Captain Broom with a file of marines to parole the officers and to return them their side arms. I held on to the flag, however, and I should have had it to this day had it not been lost at a church fair, where it had been borrowed for decorative purposes, some years later.
By ten o’clock the fleet got under weigh and steamed slowly up the river, keeping a careful lookout at every bend for the “line of batteries” of which we had so long heard but which we never discovered.
As a matter of fact we did not find a gun placed in position to oppose us until we came to Chalmette, three miles below the city, where half a dozen old 32-pounders opened upon us, but were at once silenced by the leading ship before the fleet could get within range.
All day of the 24th we steamed quietly up the river, past the sugar plantations, where sheets were hung out as flags of truce, and the only people visible were negroes who waved their hats to us in joyous welcome as we passed.
That night we anchored, getting under weigh early the next morning, and just at noon we rounded the bend in the river below the city, and New Orleans was in sight!
We steamed up close in to the levee, which was alive with people, and where great heaps of cotton bales were blazing that had been fired by the authorities to prevent them from falling into our hands. At the same time the unfinished iron-clad Louisiana came drifting down stream all ablaze.
Just at this time a sudden thunder-storm burst upon us, and the rain fell in torrents as we dropped our anchors in the stream nearly opposite the mint. It was, altogether, a scene not easily to be forgotten.
The fruitless negotiations which followed between Farragut and Mayor Munroe, that came so near terminating in the bombardment of the city by the fleet, are all matters of history, and could not here be even intelligently summarized, except at great length.
As is known, on May 1 General Butler and his troops came up to New Orleans and took formal possession of the city we had captured; and from that time it was fully restored to the Federal government, from which it had been alienated for more than a year.
A portion of the fleet, with the Richmond as the flagship, soon after ascended the Mississippi, receiving in turn the surrender of Baton Rouge and Natchez, but meeting with the first check at Vicksburg, where, in response to our demand, the city government by a bare majority of one vote declined to surrender; and as we, unfortunately, had no co-operating troops, we could not well enforce our demand, or, indeed, have held the city if we had been able to capture it.
Two regiments of troops at that time would have prevented the necessity for the terrible campaign of Vicksburg and the sacrifice of fifty thousand lives in the prolonged struggle which was to come.
The morning we sighted Vicksburg, as we were carefully feeling our way up the river, where ships of the size of ours had never before been seen, I had the morning watch, and while yet a few miles below the city we saw a curious-looking boat drifting down stream with two negroes as its occupants, who were directing their frail craft with rude paddles. As they came near us the darkeys made signs that they wished to communicate, so I slowed our engines and the men paddled alongside, and, catching the rope that was thrown to them, to our surprise both climbed on board, setting adrift their little craft, which was merely an old mortar-box.
The men were brought to me, and proved to be two very intelligent negroes, who, hearing by underground telegraph that “Massa Linkum’s big ships had whopped out de Confeds at New Orleans, and were coming up river to set de niggers free,” had improvised a boat, and had trusted to the current to drift them down to the ships.
They seemed perfectly convinced that our principal mission was to set them free, which, as it was before the Emancipation Proclamation had been written, was very far from being the case. In fact, it was directly the reverse, and commanding officers were as yet forbidden to receive or to harbor escaped slaves.
General Phelps had already got himself into trouble because he declined to return these fugitives to their masters, and it seemed at first as though these poor fellows would have to be put on shore, where their fate, if captured after having run away to us, might easily be imagined.
But Captain Alden of the Richmond was a very kind-hearted man, and he intimated unofficially that if the presence of these men was not brought to his notice he should know nothing about them. While their fate was thus hanging in the balance, the poor fellows were in a terrible state of anxiety; but when they learned that they might go to work as wardroom servants, without pay, their gratitude seemed to know no bounds.
To close this episode here, Jacob, the elder of the men, became my special servant on board of the Richmond; and when I later obtained a command, he went with me, rated as captain’s steward, and for two years he was my devoted servitor, and never have I had a more faithful, humble friend than this runaway slave.
It was a relief to both army and navy when Butler’s common-sense classification of the negroes as “contraband of war,” cut the Gordian knot and enabled us to grapple successfully with one of the most difficult problems of the war, although why we should have been so long in thus solving it always passed my comprehension.
Finding that Vicksburg would not surrender to the naval forces, we ran down the river to New Orleans, and after several months of preparation returned to Vicksburg, convoying a detachment of three thousand troops in river-boats. But as the rebels had been improving the shining hours by establishing a series of heavy batteries on the heights overlooking the river, and had a garrison of ten thousand men, we were no better able to cope with Vicksburg than we had been earlier in the summer.
We gallantly ran the batteries with our fleet, but we were no nearer to capturing the stronghold from above than from below. So in July we ran the batteries again, down river and at night this time, giving up the capture of Vicksburg to the army; and we all know the history of that long and tedious siege.
Preparations now commenced in good earnest for the naval attack upon Mobile, and we learned that for that service several of the new monitors were to be sent out to our fleet. But Farragut, now admiral, was a very old-fashioned sailor, with a strong prejudice in favor of wooden ships: he had gained all his victories in such ships, and he said he was too old a dog to learn new tricks.
So, as will be remembered, when he finally went into the Mobile fight, his flagship was still the wooden ship Hartford; and singular enough, the only vessel he lost in that memorable battle was the new iron-clad, Tecumseh. She was sunk by a torpedo, and went down with Captain Craven and one hundred and thirteen of her crew!
Had Farragut taken that vessel as his flagship, as he was urged to do, he would undoubtedly have lost his life with the others.
I was myself a witness of an exhibition of his aversion to iron-clads. On the 4th of July, 1862, our fleet and the squadron of Admiral Charles H. Davis were lying above Vicksburg where the two fleets had met a few days before. Davis’s flagship was the Benton, an iron-clad of which you will hear more later on in this narrative, and he was quite proud of her.
On the 4th Admiral Davis invited Admiral Farragut to go down with him in the Benton and “try the batteries,” as he worded it. As this was an excursion entirely after Farragut’s own taste, he at once accepted, and the two admirals steamed down the river on the trial trip.
The Benton carried a very heavy armament, but she was slow, and, being built on two hulls, did not handle well in a strong current. Arrived in good position, the ship opened fire on the upper shore battery, and the rebels were quite ready to respond.
They had lately received a new Whitworth gun, which they had just got in position, and they brought this into play on the Benton. By a sorry chance a shell from it entered one of the Benton’s bow ports and burst, killing and disabling several men.
This was getting exciting, and Farragut, after striving for a long time to control himself, burst out: “D—n it, Davis, I must go on deck! I feel as though I were shut up here in an iron pot, and I can’t stand it!”
And on deck he went, only compromising at last, through the entreaties of his friend, by entering the conning turret. This was the same instinct that sent him aloft in the Mobile fight. He wanted to see what was going on, and such a thing as fear of personal exposure never entered his mind.