CHAPTER XXVII
THE LIGHT THAT FAILED
The struggle which Jefferson Davis was making to parry the force of the mortal blows delivered by the United States Navy at last gave promise of startling success.
The fight to establish the right of the Confederacy to arm its allies under letters of marque and reprisal had been won by the Southern President. The first armed vessel sailing under the orders of Davis which was captured by the navy had brought the question to sharp issue. The Washington Government had proclaimed the vessels flying the Confederate flag under letters of marque to be pirates and subject to the treatment of felons.
The Captain and the crew of the _Savannah_ when captured had been put in irons and condemned to death as pirates. If the Washington Government could make good this daring assumption, the power of the Confederacy to damage the commerce of the North would be practically destroyed at a blow.
Davis met the crisis with firmness. He selected an equal number of Federal prisoners of war in Richmond and threw them into a dungeon below Libby Prison. He dispatched a letter to Washington whose language could not be misunderstood.
"Dare to execute an officer or sailor of the _Savannah_, and I will put to death as felons an equal number of Federal officers and men. I have placed them in close confinement and ordered similar treatment to that accorded our prisoners from the captured vessel."
Socola received a message summoning him to the house on Church Hill. A courier had arrived from Washington. The Government must know immediately if this threat were idle or genuine. If Jefferson Davis should dare to execute these thirteen officers and men, the administration could not resist the storm of indignant protest which would overwhelm it from the North.
Socola read the cipher dispatch by the dim light of the candle in his attic and turned to Miss Van Lew.
"My information in the State Department is of the most positive kind. The prisoners have been put in the dungeon set apart for condemned felons and they but wait the word of the execution of the men from the _Savannah_, to be led to certain death. It may be talk. We must know. Apply for permission to visit the condemned men and minister to their comfort--"
"At once," was the prompt response. "I've made friends with Captain Todd, the Commandant of Libby Prison; I'll succeed."
Crazy Bet appeared at Libby Prison next morning with a basket of flowers for the condemned men. Captain Todd humored her mania. Poor old abolition fanatic, she could do no harm. She was too frank and outspoken to be dangerous. Besides, it was a war of brothers. His own sister was the wife of Abraham Lincoln. These condemned men were the best blood of the North. It was a pitiful tragedy.
Miss Van Lew, with a market basket on her arm, watched for Socola's appearance from the office of the Secretary of State. The young clerk was walking slowly down Main Street and turned into an unused narrow road at the foot of the hill.
Crazy Bet, swinging the basket and humming a song, passed him without turning her head.
"It's true," she whispered quickly, "all horribly true. Thirteen of the finest officers of the Union army have been condemned to death the moment the crew of the _Savannah_ are executed--among them Colonel Cochrane of New York and Colonel Paul Revere of Massachusetts. The dispatch must go to-night."
"To-night," was the short answer.
Within an hour Socola's courier was on his way to Washington with a message which unlocked the prison doors of the condemned men on both sides of the line.
Abraham Lincoln stoutly opposed a repetition of the effort to treat Confederate prisoners as outlaws, no matter where taken by land or sea. Davis had established the legality of his letters of marque and reprisal beyond question.
The United States Navy in the first flood of its victories made another false step which brought to the South an hour of brilliant hope. Captain Wilkes overhauled a British steamer carrying the royal mail and took from her decks by force the Commissioners Mason and Slidell whom Davis had dispatched to Europe to plead for the recognition of the Confederacy. The North had gone wild with joy over the act and Congress voted Wilkes the thanks of the nation as its hero.
Great Britain demanded an apology and the restoration of the prisoners, put her navy on a war footing and dispatched a division of her army to Canada to strike the North by land as well as sea.
The hard common sense of Abraham Lincoln rescued the National Government from a delicate and dangerous situation. Lincoln apologized to Great Britain, restored the Confederate Commissioners and returned with redoubled energy to the prosecution of the war. In answer to the shouts of demagogues and the reproaches of both friend and foe, the homely rail-splitter from the West had a simple answer.
"One war at a time."
Jefferson Davis watched this threat of British invasion with breathless intensity. He saw the hope of thus breaking the power of the navy fade with sickening disappointment.
There was one more hope. The hull of the _Merrimac_ had been raised from the bottom of the harbor of Norfolk and the work of transforming her into a giant iron-clad ship capable of carrying a fighting crew of three hundred men had been completed, though her engines were slow.
But the enthusiastic men set to this task by Davis had accomplished wonders. Their reports to him had raised high hopes of a sensation. If this new monster of the sea should succeed single handed in destroying the fleet of six vessels lying in Hampton Roads, the naval warfare of the world would be revolutionized in a day and overtures for peace might be within sight.
The Norfolk newspapers, under instructions from the Confederate Commandant, pronounced the experiment of the _Merrimac_ a stupid and fearful failure. Her engines were useless. Her steering gear wouldn't work. Her armament was so heavy she couldn't be handled. These papers were easily circulated at Newport News and Old Point Comfort among the officers and men of the Federal fleet.
The men who had built the strange craft knew she was anything but a failure. With eager, excited hands her crew finished the last touch of her preparations and with her guns shotted she slowly steamed out of the harbor of Norfolk accompanied by two saucy little improvised gunboats, the _Beaufort_ and the _Raleigh_.
Her speed was not more than five knots an hour and she steered so badly the _Beaufort_ was compelled to pull her into the main current of the channel more than once.
The Federal squadron lay off Newport News, the _Congress_ and the _Cumberland_ well out in the stream, the _Minnesota_, _Roanoke_ and _St. Lawrence_ further down toward Fortress Monroe. The _Congress_, _Cumberland_ and _St. Lawrence_ mounted one hundred and twenty-four guns, twenty-two of them of nine-inch caliber. Their crews aggregated more than a thousand men.
The new crack steam frigates _Minnesota_ and _Roanoke_ had crews of six hundred men each and carried more than eighty guns of nine and eleven-inch caliber. That any single craft afloat would dare attack such a squadron was preposterous.
It was one o'clock before the strange black looking object swung into the channel and turned her nose up stream toward Newport News.
The crews of the _Congress_ and the _Cumberland_ were lounging on deck enjoying the balmy spring air. It was wash day and the clothes were fluttering in the breeze.
They couldn't make out the foolish-looking thing at first. It looked like the top of a long-hipped roof house that had been sawed off at the eaves and pushed into the water. The two little river steamers that accompanied the raft seemed to be towing it.
"What 'ell, Bill, is that thing?" a sailor asked his mate on the _Congress_.
Bill scanned the horizon.
"I give it up, sir," he admitted. "I been a sailin' the seas for forty years--but that's one on me!"
A battle signal suddenly flashed from the _Cumberland_ and down came the wash lines.
The _Beaufort_ with a single thirty-two-pounder rifle mounted in her bow was steaming alongside the port of the strange craft. A puff of white smoke flared from her single gun and its dull roar waked the still beautiful waters of the Virginia harbor.
The _Merrimac_ flung her big battle flag into the sky and her tiny escorts dropped down stream to give her free play. The _Congress_ and the _Cumberland_ were surprised, but they slipped their anchors in a jiffy, swung their guns in haste and began pouring a storm of shot on the iron sides of the coming foe.
The _Merrimac_ moved forward with slow, steady throb as though the shot that rained on her slanting sides were so many pebbles thrown by school boys. She passed the _Congress_ and pointed her ugly prow for the _Cumberland_. The ship poured her broadside squarely into the face of the Merrimac without damage and the bow gun roared an answer that pierced her bulwarks.
Through the thick cloud of heavy smoke that hung low on the water the throbbing monster bore straight down on the _Cumberland_, struck her amidship and sent her to the bottom.
As the gallant ship sank in sickening lurches her brave crew cheered her to her grave and continued firing her useless guns until the waves engulfed the decks. When her keel touched the bottom her flag was still flying from her masthead. She rolled over on her beam's end and carried the flag beneath the waves.
The Confederate mosquito fleet, consisting of the little gunboats _Patrick Henry_, _Teaser_ and _Jamestown_, swung down from the river now, ran boldly past the flaming shore batteries and joined in the attack on the Federal squadron.
The _Congress_ had set one of her sails and with the aid of a tug was desperately working to reach shoal water before she could be sunk. Her captain succeeded in beaching her directly under the guns of the shore batteries. At four o'clock she gave up the bloody unequal contest and hauled down her colors.
The _Minnesota_, _Roanoke_ and _St. Lawrence_, in trying to reach the scene of the battle, had all been grounded. The _Minnesota_ was still lying helpless in the mud as the sun set and the new monarch of the seas slowly withdrew to Sewell's Point to overhaul her machinery and prepare to finish her work next day.
The _Merrimac_ had lost twenty-one killed and wounded--among the wounded was her gallant flag officer, Franklin Buchanan. The _Patrick Henry_ had lost fourteen, the _Beaufort_ eight, the _Raleigh_ seven, including two officers.
The Federal squadron had lost two ships and four hundred men.
But by far the greatest loss to the United States Navy was the supremacy of the seas. The power of her fleets had been smashed at a blow. The ugly, black, powder-stained, iron thing lying under the guns of Sewell's Point had won the crown of the world's naval supremacy. The fleets of the United States were practically out of commission while she was afloat. The panic at the North which followed the startling news from Hampton Roads was indescribable. Abraham Lincoln hastily called a Cabinet meeting to consider what action it was necessary to take to meet the now appalling situation. Never before had any man in authority at Washington realized how absolute was their dependence on the United States Navy--how impossible it would be to maintain the Government without its power.
Edwin M. Stanton, the indefatigable Secretary of War, completely lost his nerve at this Cabinet meeting. He paced the floor with quick excited tread, glancing out of the window of the White House toward the waters of the Potomac with undisguised fear.
"I am sure, gentlemen," he said to the Cabinet, "that monster is now on her way to Washington. In my opinion we will have a shell from one of her big guns in the White House before we leave this room!"
Lincoln was profoundly depressed but refused to believe the cause of the Union could thus be completely lost at a single blow from a nondescript, iron raft. Yet it was only too easy to see that the moral effect of this victory would be crushing on public opinion.
The wires to Washington were hot with frantic calls for help. New York was ready to surrender at the first demand. So utter was the demoralization at Fortress Monroe, the one absolutely impregnable fort on the Atlantic coast, that the commander had already determined to surrender in answer to the first shot the _Merrimac_ should fire.
The preparations for moving McClellan's army to the Virginia Peninsula for the campaign to capture Richmond were suddenly halted. Two hundred thousand men must rest on their arms until this crisis should pass. All orders issued to the Army of the Potomac were now made contingent on the destruction of the iron monster lying in Hampton Roads.
By one of the strangest coincidences in history the United States Navy had completed an experiment in floating iron at precisely the same moment.
While the guns of the battle were yet echoing over the waters of the harbor, this strange little craft, a floating iron cheese box, was slowly steaming into the Virginia capes.
At nine o'clock that night Ericsson's _Monitor_ was beside the panic-stricken _Roanoke_.
When C. S. Bushnell took the model of this strange craft to Washington, he was referred to Commander C. H. Davis by the Naval Board. When Davis had examined it he handed it back to Bushnell with a pitying smile:
"Take the little thing home, and worship it. It would not be idolatry, because it's made in the image of nothing in the heaven above or the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth."
Wiser councils had prevailed, and the floating cheese box was completed and arrived in Hampton Roads in time to put its powers to supreme test.
The _Merrimac's_ crew ate their breakfast at their leisure and prepared to drive their ugly duckling into the battle line again and finish the work of destroying the battered Federal squadron.
The _Merrimac_ had fought the battle of the day before under the constant pounding of more than one hundred guns bearing on her iron sides. Her armor was intact. Two of her guns were disabled by having their muzzles shot off. Her nose had been torn off and sank with the _Cumberland_. One anchor, her smoke stacks and steam pipes were shot away. Every scrap of her railing, stanchions, and boat davits had been swept clean. Her flag staff was gone and a boarding pike had been set up in its place.
With stern faces, and absolutely sure of victory, her crew swung her into the stream, crowded on full steam and moved down on the _Minnesota_.
Close under the ship's side they saw for the first time the cheese box. They had heard of the experiment of her building but knew nothing of her arrival.
Her insignificant size was a surprise and the big _Merrimac_ dashed at her with a sullen furious growl of her big guns. The game little bulldog swung out from the _Minnesota_ and made straight for the onrushing monster.
The flotilla of gunboats had been signaled to retire and watch the duel.
From the big eleven-inch guns of the _Monitor_ shot after shot was hurled against the slanting armored walls of the _Merrimac_.
Broadside after broadside poured from her guns against the iron-clad tower of the _Monitor_.
The _Merrimac_, drawing twenty feet of water, was slow and difficult to handle. The game little _Monitor_ drew but twelve feet and required no maneuvering. Her tower revolved. She could stand and fight in one spot all day.
The big black hull of the _Merrimac_ bore down on the _Monitor_ now to ram and sink her at a blow. The nimble craft side stepped the avalanche of iron, turned quickly and attempted to jamb her nose into the steering gear of the Southerner--but in vain.
For two solid hours the iron-clads pounded and hammered each other. The shots made no impression on either boat.
Again the _Merrimac_ tried to ram her antagonist and run her aground. The nimble foe avoided the blow, though struck a grinding, crushing side-swipe.
The little _Monitor_ now stuck her nose squarely against the side of the _Merrimac_, held it there, and fired both her eleven-inch guns against the walls of the Southerner.
The charge of powder was not heavy enough. No harm was done. The impact of the shots had merely forced the sloping sides an inch or two.
The captain of the _Merrimac_ turned to his men in sharp command.
"All hands on deck. Board and capture her!"
The smoke-smeared crew swarmed to the portholes and were just in the act of springing on the decks of the _Monitor_, when she backed quickly and dropped down stream.
After six hours of thunder in each other's faces the _Monitor_ drew away into the shoal waters guarding the _Minnesota_.
The _Merrimac_ could not follow her in the shallows and at two o'clock turned her prow again toward Sewell's Point.
The battle was a drawn conflict. But the plucky little _Monitor_ had won a tremendous moral victory. She had rescued the navy in the nick of time. The Government at Washington once more breathed.
From the heights of rejoicing the South sank again to the bitterness of failure. For twenty-four hours her flag had been mistress of the seas. Jefferson Davis saw the hope of peace fade into the certainty of a struggle for the possession of Richmond.
The way had been cleared. McClellan's two hundred thousand men were rushing on their transports for the Virginia peninsula.