Volume Iv Part 12 (1/2)
General Lee Signing the Terms of Surrender at Appomattox Court-House.
While all loyal hearts were rejoicing over the news of Lee's surrender, recognized as virtually ending the war, a pall suddenly fell upon the land. On the evening of April 14th, while President Lincoln was sitting in a box at Ford's Theatre in Was.h.i.+ngton, an actor, John Wilkes Booth, crept up behind him, placed a pistol to his head, and fired. Brandis.h.i.+ng his weapon, and crying, ”Sic semper tyrannis,” the a.s.sa.s.sin leaped to the stage, sustaining a severe injury. Regaining his feet, he shouted, ”The South is avenged!” and made his escape.
The bullet had pierced the President's brain and rendered him insensible. He was removed to a house near by, where he died next morning. His body was taken to Springfield, Ill., for burial, and a nation mourned above his grave, as no American since Was.h.i.+ngton had ever been mourned for before. The South repudiated and deplored the foul deed. Well it might, for, had Lincoln lived, much of its sorrow during the next years would have been avoided.
Booth was only one of a band of conspirators who had intended also to take off General Grant and the whole Cabinet. By a strange good fortune Secretary Seward, sick in bed, was the only victim besides the President. He was stabbed three times with a bowie-knife, but not fatally. After a cunning flight and brave defence Booth was captured near Port Royal, and killed. Of the other conspirators some were hanged, some imprisoned.
The Confederacy collapsed. Johnston's army surrendered to Sherman on April 26th. President Davis fled south. On May 10th he was captured in Georgia, m.u.f.fled in a lady's cloak and shawl, and became a prisoner at Fortress Monroe. The war had called into military (land) service in the two armies together hardly fewer than 4,000,000 men; 2,750,000, in round numbers, on the Union side, and 1,250,000 on the other. The largest number of northern soldiers in actual service at anyone time was 1,000,516, on May 1, 1865, 650,000 of them being able for duty. The largest number of Confederate land forces in service at any time was 690,000, on January 1, 1863. The Union armies lost by death 304,369--44,238 of these being killed in battle, 49,205 dying of wounds.
Over 26,000 are known to have died in Confederate prisons.
CHAPTER IX.
THE WAR ON THE SEA
[1861]
Naval operations during the war fall into three great cla.s.ses: Those upon inland waters, the Mississippi especially; those along the coast; and those upon the high seas. The first cla.s.s has already been touched upon in connection with the Mississippi campaigns. The naval work along the coast and upon the high seas is the subject of the present chapter.
Only the more important features can be sketched. At the outbreak of the Rebellion our navy was totally unprepared for war. Forty-two vessels were in commission, but most of them were in distant seas or in southern ports. The service was weak with secession sentiment. Between March and July, 1861, 259 naval officers resigned or were dismissed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Gideon Welles.
Secretary Welles went energetically to work. Vessels in foreign waters were called home, the keels of new craft laid in northern dockyards, and stout merchant s.h.i.+ps bought and fitted up for the rough usage of war. By the end of 1861 the navy numbered 264 vessels. At the close of the war it had 671 s.h.i.+ps, carrying 4,610 guns and 50,000 sailors.
The first work--a gigantic one--was to blockade the southern ports. This involved the constant patrolling of more than 3,000 miles of dangerous coast, indented with innumerable inlets, sounds, and bays. But within a year a fairly effective blockade was in force from Virginia to Texas, drawn tighter and tighter as the navy increased in size. The effectiveness of the blockade is sufficiently proved by the dearth at the South. The South had cotton enough to sell--$300,000,000 worth in gold at the end of the war--and Europe was greedy to buy; but she could not get her wares to market. Fifteen hundred prizes, worth $30,000,000, were taken during the war.
The details of the blockade must be left to the reader's imagination.
Important as the work was, it was comparatively monotonous and dull--ceaseless watching day and night in all weather, week after week and month after month. Now and then the routine would be broken by the excitement of a chase. A suspicious-looking sail would be spied in the offing and pursued, perhaps, far out to sea. Again, the low hull of a blockade-runner would be seen creeping around a point and heading for the open sea. Or on a still night the throb of engines and the splash of paddle-wheels would give warning that some guilty vessel was trying to steal into port under cover of darkness. Then came the flare of rockets to notify the rest of the blockading fleet, the hot pursuit with boilers crowded to bursting, the boom of the big guns fired at random in the dark, and the exultation of a capture or the disappointment of failure.
Blockade-running became a regular business, enormously profitable.
Moonless and cloudy nights were of course the most favorable times for eluding the blockade; but the swift steamers, sitting low in the water and painted a light neutral tint, could not easily be detected by day at a little distance, especially as they burned smokeless coal. The bolder skippers would take all chances. Under cover of a fog they would steal into or out of harbor at risk of going aground, or set sail boldly on a bright moonlight night, when the blockaders would naturally relax their vigilance a little. Occasionally some dare-devil would crowd on all steam and dash openly through the sentinel fleet, trusting to speed to escape being hit or captured. When hard pressed, the blockade-runner would beach his craft, set it afire, and take to the woods. At the close of the war thirty wrecks of blockade-runners were rotting on the sands near Charleston Harbor.
In connection with the blockade a number of naval expeditions were sent against various points along the coast. In October, 1861, a fleet under Flag-Officer Dupont, consisting of a steam frigate, a dozen or more gunboats, with numerous transports and coaling-schooners, and carrying 12,000 troops under General T. W. Sherman, set sail from Hampton Roads for Port Royal, S. C. After a stormy pa.s.sage the fleet anch.o.r.ed off the harbor on November 4th. On opposite sides of the entrance, two and a half miles apart, stood Forts Walker and Beauregard--strong earthworks, mounting one 23 the other 20 guns, and garrisoned by 1,700 men. The 7th dawned bright and clear, the sea smooth as gla.s.s. About nine o'clock the bombardment began. The fleet steamed slowly round and round in an ellipse between the forts, each vessel as it came within range pouring in its fire, then pa.s.sing on and waiting its turn to fire again. The cannonade was concentrated upon Fort Walker. The moving s.h.i.+ps offered a poor mark to the fort, while the aim of the fleet was very accurate, covering the gunners with sand and dismounting the guns. After four hours' action Fort Walker was evacuated, and soon Fort Beauregard also in consequence.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Map.]
Map of Hampton Roads.
Port Royal was the finest harbor on the coast, and was of great value to the navy all through the war as a repair and supply station. Dupont sent out expeditions, and by the end of the year had possession of a large part of the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. In the following spring expeditions from Port Royal regained Fernandina and St. Augustine on the Florida coast. In April Fort Pulaski, a strong brick work at the mouth of the Savannah River, was reduced by eleven batteries planted on a neighboring island, its surrender completing the blockade of Savannah.
[1862]
Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, on the coast of North Carolina, swarmed with blockade-runners. Rivers, ca.n.a.ls, and railroads formed a network of communications with the interior, and vessels were constantly slipping to sea with cargoes of cotton, to return with munitions of war. Hatteras Inlet, seized in August, 1861, was not a sufficient basis for the blockade. In February, 1862, a fleet bearing 11,500 soldiers, under General Burnside, arrived at Roanoke Island, which lies between the two great sounds. The troops were landed, and on the 8th, charging over marshy ground, sometimes waist-deep in water, carried the batteries and gained possession of the island. Newbern, one of the most important ports of North Carolina, was captured a month later, and Fort Macon, commanding the entrance to Beaufort Harbor, surrendered in April.
Meanwhile what had the Confederates been doing in naval matters? When the Norfolk navy-yard was abandoned in April, 1861, the fine old frigate Merrimac was scuttled. She was raised by the Davis Government and converted into an ironclad ram--a novelty in those days. The hull was cut down to the water's edge, and a stout roof, 170 feet long, with sloping sides and a flat top, built amids.h.i.+ps and plated with four inches of iron. This roof was pierced for ten guns--four rifles and six nine-inch smooth-bores.
On March 8, 1862, the Union fleet, consisting of the c.u.mberland, Congress, Minnesota, and some smaller craft, rode lazily at anchor in Hampton Roads. About noon a curious looking structure was seen coming down Elizabeth River. It was the Merrimac. She steered straight for the c.u.mberland. The latter poured in a broadside from her heavy ten-inch guns, but the b.a.l.l.s glanced off the ram's sloping iron sides like peas.