Part 11 (1/2)
Less than two years of life remained to Admiral Farragut when he returned from the Mediterranean. The following summer of 1869 he visited the California coast, where he had not been since he gave up the command of the Mare Island Navy Yard in 1858. The welcome here accorded him was as hearty as that extended in foreign countries, and mingled with the admiration due to the conquering admiral was the recollection of warm mutual affection and esteem engendered by four years of close intercourse. Returning from San Francisco to the East, Farragut was seized at Chicago with a violent illness, in which the heart was affected. For some days his life was despaired of; and although by careful nursing he recovered so as to resume his journey, it is doubtful whether he ever regained the ground then lost. Several severe attacks followed this one; and although he rallied with extraordinary rapidity, thanks to a vigorous const.i.tution, it was apparent that his health was failing. A few months later, in the middle of winter, he consented to take charge of the naval ceremonies in honor of the remains of Mr.
George Peabody, whose body had been brought to the United States in the British s.h.i.+p-of-war Monarch, in recognition of his benevolence to the poor of London. It was his last official duty, and the exposure attendant upon funeral ceremonies in that bleak season was much to be deprecated in a man of his years and failing vigor.
The following summer the Navy Department placed at his disposal the dispatch steamer Tallapoosa, which took him and his family to Portsmouth, New Hamps.h.i.+re; where he became the guest of the late Rear-Admiral Pennock, then commandant of the Navy Yard at that place and a connection by marriage of Mrs. Farragut. It was his last sea voyage, and he appeared to have a presentiment that it was so; for as the s.h.i.+p drew near the yard he arose from his sick bed at the sound of the salute being fired in his honor, dressed himself in full uniform, and went on deck. Looking up with a sad smile at his flag flying from the mast-head, he said: ”It would be well if I died _now_, in harness.” Shortly after his arrival, an old sailor who had charge of the sloop-of-war Dale, then lying dismantled at the wharf, met there the admiral, who had wandered on board. He looked about the s.h.i.+p and, as he left her to go ash.o.r.e, said: ”This is the last time I shall ever tread the deck of a man-of-war.” This prediction proved true. He pa.s.sed quietly away at the commandant's house, on the 14th of August, 1870, aged sixty-nine years; surrounded by his family and loving friends, including many of his old companions in arms. The body was laid temporarily in Portsmouth, the naval officers and citizens of the place uniting to pay every respect to his memory.
In September the Navy Department sent the steam frigate Guerriere to bring the admiral's body to New York. This s.h.i.+p running aground on Nantucket Shoal, the remains were transferred to another vessel and so conveyed to the city. The final and public funeral ceremonies were held on the 30th of September; the day being observed as one of general mourning, the city edifices draped, bells tolled, and minute guns fired.
In the procession was General Grant, then President of the United States, with the members of his Cabinet, many military and naval officers, ten thousand soldiers, and a large number of societies. By these the coffin of the admiral was escorted to the railroad station, whence it was transported to Woodlawn Cemetery, in Westchester County, where the body now lies.
To his memory the United States Government has erected a colossal bronze statue in the national capital, in Farragut Square, the work of Miss Vinnie Ream. A committee of New York citizens have placed a similar memorial, by Mr. St. Gauden, at the northwest corner of Madison Square in that city. There is also a mural tablet, with a likeness of the admiral, in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Incarnation; of which he was a communicant after taking up his residence in New York.
CHAPTER XII.
THE CHARACTER OF ADMIRAL FARRAGUT.
The brilliant and victorious career which has secured for Farragut a leading place among the successful naval commanders of all time was of brief duration, and began at an age when men generally are thinking rather of relaxing their efforts than of undertaking new and extraordinary labors. The two great leaders of the United States armies during the civil war--Grant and Sherman--were not over forty-five when the return of peace released them from their cares; while Nelson and Napoleon were but a year older than these when Trafalgar and Waterloo terminated their long careers. Farragut was nearly sixty-one at the time of pa.s.sing the Mississippi forts, and his command of the Western Gulf Squadron lasted not quite three years, or rather less than the ordinary duration of a naval cruise in times of peace. Though not unprecedented, the display of activity and of sustained energy made by him at such an advanced period of life is unusual; and the severity of the strain upon the mental and physical powers at that age is evidenced by the prostration of Farragut himself, a man of exceptional vigor of body and of a mental tone which did not increase his burdens by an imaginative exaggeration of difficulties. He never committed the error, against which Napoleon cautioned his generals, ”_de se faire un tableau_.” On the other hand, the study of his operations shows that, while always sanguine and ready to take great risks for the sake of accomplis.h.i.+ng a great result, he had a clear appreciation of the conditions necessary to success and did not confound the impracticable with the merely hazardous. Of this, his reluctance to ascend the Mississippi in 1862, and his insistence in 1864 upon the necessity of ironclads, despite his instinctive dislike to that cla.s.s of vessel, before undertaking the entrance to Mobile Bay, are conspicuous ill.u.s.trations; and must be carefully kept in view by any one desirous of adequately appreciating his military character.
As in the case of Nelson, there is a disposition to attribute Farragut's successes simply to dash--to going straight at the enemy regardless of method and of consequences. In the case of the great British admiral the tendency of this view, which has been reproduced in successive biographies down to the latest, is to sink one of the first of naval commanders beneath the level of the pugilist, who in his fighting does not disdain science, to that of the game-c.o.c.k; and it is doubtless to be attributed to the emphasis he himself laid upon that direct, rapid, and vigorous action without which no military operations, however wisely planned, can succeed. In the want of this, rather than of great professional acquirements, will be most frequently found the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful general; and consequently Nelson, who had seen so much of failure arising from slowness and over-caution, placed, and rightly placed, more stress upon vigor and rapidity, in which most are found deficient, than upon the methods which many understand, however ill they may apply them. Like the distinguished Frenchman, Suffren, who is said to have stigmatized tactics as ”the veil of timidity,” yet ill.u.s.trated in his headlong dashes the leading principles of all sound tactics, Nelson carefully planned the chief outlines of operations, in the execution of which he manifested the extremes of daring and of unyielding firmness. There was in him no failure to comprehend that right direction, as well as vigor and weight, is necessary to a blow that would tell; but experience had taught him that the average man wants to be much too sure of success before venturing to move, and hence the insistence upon that one among the features of his military character which to the superficial observer has gradually obscured all others. Vigor even to desperateness of action both Nelson and Farragut on occasion showed--recklessness never. Neither fought as one who beateth the air; and while for neither can be claimed an entire exemption from mistakes, the great outlines of their action can safely challenge hostile criticism.
While, however, both in their respective spheres ill.u.s.trated the great leading principles of war, the circ.u.mstances under which they were called to practice them were too diverse to permit any close comparison, or parallel, to be inst.i.tuted between their actions. Nelson, for the most part, shone upon the battle-field--by his tactical combinations, by the rapidity and boldness with which he carried out plans previously laid, or, on occasion, by the astonis.h.i.+ng _coup d'oeil_ and daring with which, in unforeseen crises, he s.n.a.t.c.hed and secured escaping victory. Farragut in actual battle showed that careful adaptation of means to ends which has a just claim to be considered tactical science; but his great merit was in the clearness with which he recognized the decisive point of a campaign, or of a particular operation, and threw upon it the force under his direction. Nelson acted chiefly against s.h.i.+ps, against forces of a type essentially the same as his own, and accessible in all parts to his attack, because belonging to the same element; he might therefore hope to overcome them by the superior quality of his crews or by his better tactical dispositions. Farragut contended with fortifications, whose military powers, offensive and defensive, were essentially different from those of a fleet. Their endurance so greatly exceeded that of his s.h.i.+ps as to exclude any hope of reducing them by direct attack; and their advantages of position, deliberately chosen and difficult of approach, could not be outweighed by any tactical arrangement open to him to adopt. He was therefore compelled to seek their fall by indirect means, by turning and isolating them, by acting against their communications--a conception not tactical, but strategic.
It is not meant to imply that the military talents of either admiral were confined to the particular field ascribed to him, but simply that in general they were led by circ.u.mstances to ill.u.s.trate that chiefly.
Nelson in his fine campaign in the Baltic evinced his profound intuitions in the science of strategy; and Farragut, as has been said, showed no mean tactical ability in the provisions made for his several battles. The dispositions to be adopted were with him the subject of very careful consideration; and before Mobile he spent hours with his flag lieutenant studying, by the aid of little wooden models, the different positions in which the s.h.i.+ps might be placed. Afterward he had the squadron get under way several times to practice keeping close order, and changing formation and course.
Like all men who have achieved eminence, the secret of Admiral Farragut's success is to be found in natural apt.i.tudes carefully improved, and in a corresponding opportunity for action. How much he was indebted to the latter, is evident from the fact that he had pa.s.sed his sixtieth year before his great qualities were manifested to the world.
He was fortunate also, as was Nelson, in the conditions which he was called to meet. Great as were the difficulties confronting each, and brilliantly as they rose to the demand made upon their energies, it may safely be said that more perfect preparation upon the part of their enemies would either have detracted from the completeness of their victories; or else, by imposing greater deliberation and more methodical execution, would have robbed their exploits of that thunderbolt character which imparts such dramatic brilliancy to the Nile and Trafalgar, to New Orleans and Mobile Bay. A modern torpedo line would not leave the gap by which Farragut first meant to profit, nor would it be crossed with the impunity he found; nor could Nelson in his day, without courting destruction, have used against a thoroughly efficient enemy the tactics that admirably suited the conditions in Aboukir Bay and off Cape Trafalgar. But these considerations do not diminish the credit of either admiral, though they help to explain the fullness of their success, and justify proceedings which under different circ.u.mstances would be unjustifiable. Rather, it may be said that, in the adaptation of their measures to the conditions opposed to them, what would otherwise invite condemnation as rashness, demands recognition as genius.
For Farragut had a natural genius for war, to which scarcely any opening had been offered before the unexpected calamity of the great civil strife burst upon the country. In estimating his military character and rightly apportioning the credit due to his great achievements, much stress must be laid upon the constant effort for professional improvement made by him from his early life. ”Without the opportunity and the environment which enabled him to develop himself,” writes one who knew him for over forty years, ”Farragut might have gone to his rest comparatively unknown; yet among his comrades and contemporaries in the navy he would have been recognized as no ordinary man, no merely routine naval officer, who kept his watch and pa.s.sed through life as easily as he could.” ”He told me,” writes another, who first met him after his flag was flying, ”that there are comparatively few men from whom one could not learn something, and that a naval officer should always be adding to his knowledge; it might enable him to be more useful some day; that it was hard to say what a naval officer might not have to do.” Even after the war, when his reputation was at its height, in visiting European ports he never for a moment lost sight of this duty of professional acquirement. Not a harbor was visited that he did not observe critically its chances for defense by sea or land. ”Who knows,”
said he, ”but that my services may be needed here some day?” ”Ah, Mr.
Tucker,” said Earl St. Vincent to his secretary when planning an attack upon Brest, ”had Captain Jervis[Z] surveyed Brest when he visited it in 1774, in 1800 Lord St. Vincent would not have been in want of his information.”
[Footnote Z: Captain Jervis and Earl St. Vincent were the same officer under different appellations.]