After Vicksburg: The Civil War on Western Waters, 1863-1865 2021047561, 9781476672205, 9781476643700, 1476672202

Table of contents :
Cover
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation
2. Setting the Stage
3. Isaac Newton Brown and John Hunt Morgan
4. Harrisonburg, Little Rock, and Chattanooga, 1863
5. Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864
6. The Red River Campaign, 1864
7. Forrest Visits Paducah and Fort Pillow, 1864
8. War on Mississippi River Commerce, 1863–1865
9. The White River After Little Rock, 1863–1865
10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865
11. Nashville, 1864–1865
12. War’s End, Squadron’s End, 1865
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

After Vicksburg

Also by Myron J. Smith, Jr., and from McFarland Joseph Brown and His Civil War Ironclads: The USS Chillicothe, Indianola and Tuscumbia (2017) Civil War Biographies from the Western Waters: 956 Confederate and Union Naval and Military Personnel, Contractors, Politicians, Officials, Steamboat Pilots and Others (2015) The Fight for the Yazoo, August 1862–July 1864: Swamps, Forts and Fleets on Vicksburg’s Northern Flank (2012) The CSS Arkansas: A Confederate Ironclad on Western Waters (2011) Tinclads in the Civil War: Union ­­Light-Draught Gunboat Operations on Western Waters, 1862–1865 (2010) The USS Carondelet: A Civil War Ironclad on Western Waters (2010) The Timberclads in the Civil War: The Lexington, Conestoga and Tyler on the Western Waters (2008; paperback 2013) Le Roy Fitch: The Civil War Career of a Union River Gunboat Commander (2007; paperback 2014)

After Vicksburg The Civil War on Western Waters, 1863–1865 Myron J. Smith, Jr.

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Names: Smith, Myron J., Jr., 1944– author. Title: After Vicksburg : the Civil War on western waters, 1863-1865 / Myron J. Smith, Jr.. Other titles: Civil War on western waters, 1863-1865 Description: Jefferson, North Carolina : McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2021 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021047561 | ISBN 9781476672205 (paperback : acid free paper) ISBN 9781476643700 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Mississippi River Valley—History—Civil War, 1861-1865— Naval operations. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Naval operations. | United States. Navy. Mississippi Squadron. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Blockades. | United States. Navy—History—Civil War, 1861-1865. | BISAC: HISTORY / Military / Naval | HISTORY / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877) Classification: LCC E591 .S64 2021 | DDC 973.7/58—dc23/eng/20211006 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047561

♾

British Library cataloguing data are available

ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-7220-5 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-4370-0 © 2021 Myron J. Smith, Jr. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: USS Carondelet. Based on an 1864 drawing by L.W. Hastings, USN, this lithograph sold widely in 1865. One of the original seven “City Series” ironclads built in 1861, the Carondelet was the most famous Western waters warship (Naval History and Heritage Command). Printed in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

For Dennie, my dear wife

Table of Contents Abbreviations: Individual Rank or Status (Listed Alphabetically)viii Introduction1   1.  The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation

7

  2.  Setting the Stage: The U.S. Mississippi Squadron, Summer 1863

29

  3.  Isaac Newton Brown and John Hunt Morgan

51

  4.  Harrisonburg, Little Rock, and Chattanooga, 1863

61

  5.  Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864

73

  6.  The Red River Campaign, 1864

90

  7.  Forrest Visits Paducah and Fort Pillow, 1864

113

  8.  War on Mississippi River Commerce, 1863–1865

128

  9.  The White River After Little Rock, 1863–1865

152

10.  The Tennessee River, 1864–1865

171

11.  Nashville, 1864–1865

199

12.  War’s End, Squadron’s End, 1865

223

Chapter Notes253 Bibliography281 Index309

vii

Abbreviations Individual Rank or Status (Listed Alphabetically) Acting Rear Admiral—Acting RAdm. Brevet—Brev. Brigadier General—Brig. Gen. Captain (army or navy)—Capt. Colonel—Col. Commander—Cmdr. Commodore—Com. Corporal—Cpl. General—Gen. Governor—Gov. Lieutenant (army or navy)—Lt. Lieutenant Commander—Lt. Cmdr. Lieutenant Colonel—Lt. Col. Lieutenant General—Lt. Gen. Major—Mjr. Major General—Maj. Gen. Private—Pvt. Rear Admiral—RAdm.

viii

Introduction The storm broke in April 1861. At 2:30 p.m. on April 13, Maj. Robert Anderson surrendered his beleaguered Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, South Carolina, to the Confederacy. Two days later, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln declared a state of insurrection and called for 75,000 ­­three-month volunteers to quash the revolt. Years of talk, hope, and work spent in seeking a solution to the economic, political, and social differences that divided the North and the South had ended in failure. The most tragic conflict in American history was “on.” The Mississippi Valley west of the Allegheny Mountains lies partly in the North and partly in the South. When the Southern states enacted ordinances of secession, they claimed as their own that portion of the valley lying within their borders and prepared for its military defense. Such militarization was designed to cut the “Father of Waters” in half. Despite the coming of the railroad, the move was expected to effectively halt the heavy lift commerce so long important to the South down highways nature defined. It was hoped that such an approach would force Midwestern Union political leadership to pursue conflict resolution from Washington. Within a few weeks of the beginning of the war, Northern planners began to formulate big river recovery strategies. Among the military measures envisioned in these plans was the construction of a flotilla of naval vessels that would operate on the great inland rivers in support of an advancing U.S. Army. Even before they were fully consolidated into the overall strategy called “Anaconda,” tactical portions of the various suggested ideas were implemented, including the establishment of a base at Cairo, Illinois. Many Rebel politicians and generals quickly became aware of Federal plans to sweep down the Mississippi and appreciated the danger powerful ­­Cairo-based warships might pose. This new understanding forced the South, already aware of the danger from the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans, to respond. Fortifications were thrown up or enhanced at key locations. These included not only on the Mississippi between New Orleans at its mouth and Memphis, the upper Western river limit of the Confederacy, but on ­­Dixie-held tributaries or portions of tributaries stretching from the Ohio southward. With virtually no significant warships of their own available, faith was taken by leaders of the breakaway nation that riverbank fortifications, armed with big cannon and often situated in elevated locations, would be able to hold the Yankees at bay. This approach, anchored as it was on Western river strongpoints, was shortly proven faulty. Because geography largely dictated the flow of Civil War military activities, 1

2

Introduction

understanding of the fighting rapidly devolved into knowledge that there were really two major physical areas in which land campaigns were undertaken. Known simply as the Eastern and Western theaters, their border was the Allegheny Mountain range. The majority of the American population, to say nothing of their capitals, leaders, and media, was located in the East in the 1860s, and so, perhaps, it is not surprising that major attention was then focused on the conflict there experienced. Over a century would pass before it was recognized by many students of the conflict that the geographical area of the Mississippi played a key if not decisive role in quashing the Southern rebellion. As historian Steven Woodworth has acknowledged: “While … the Virginia front was by far the most prestigious theater…. Here in the West the truly decisive battles were fought.”1 The Federal government devoted major resources to achieving Western victory that rapidly bore fruit. In addition to the Northern field armies one might expect to become engaged in the Western theater, two squadrons of the U.S. Navy participated in support, their roles gradually bolstered beyond fighting enemy warships, communications and logistics, and commerce control/protection. Following his capture of New Orleans in April 1862, elements of Flag Officer (seconded USN captain) David G. Farragut’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron addressed the mission from below. Regular ­­ocean-going warships paid an unsuccessful visit up the Big Muddy to Vicksburg, Mississippi, in July. From that fall, they were regularly in the waters around and below Port Hudson, Louisiana. Meanwhile, Southern water citadels in the upper part of the theater were addressed by the Western Gunboat Flotilla, a nautical unit of the U.S. Army created in May 1861. This unique organization was subservient to generals but officered and manned by the navy, having the status of a division. Employing specially constructed or modified gunboats under the able and cooperative leadership of Cmdr. John Rodgers, II, and Flag Officers (also seconded USN captains) Andrew Hull Foote and Charles Henry Davis, it joined with the Federal military to remove Confederate hegemony over the areas of the Lower Cumberland, Lower Tennessee, and the Mississippi above Vicksburg. Fights at locations like Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Island No. 10, Pittsburg Landing, Fort Pillow, Memphis, all in Tennessee, and Helena, Arkansas, were won by coordinated combined arms action. The gunboat unit, also called the Mississippi Flotilla, having grown in size, function, and success, the need for a complete makeover of the organization was recognized by congressional action in July 1862. Consequently, the flotilla was transferred from the U.S. War Department to the Navy Department the following October, with RAdm. David Dixon Porter in command. Partnering with U.S. Army theater commanders, both Porter and Farragut were intensely engaged for the next nine months in the Herculean labor that eventually rendered victories at Vicksburg and Port Hudson.2 On July 4, 1863, Vicksburg fell to Northern arms just as other ­­blue-coated land and water warriors rebuffed a Southern assault on Union positions at Helena. Simultaneously, a thousand miles east in the most famous of all North American battles, Union soldiers turned back a Southern invasion at the little Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Five days later Port Hudson also surrendered. Although much hard fighting remained, it was possible to foresee an end to the rebellion. On July 15, exactly two years and two days after Fort Sumter, the steamer



Introduction3

Imperial, having departed St. Louis a day before Port Hudson’s capture, docked at New Orleans. Widely acclaimed as the first complete transit of the Mississippi River since the beginning of the conflict, the achievement led many to conclude that the War on Western Waters was essentially finished. It was widely believed at the time and has been reported ever since that Union control of the great Western rivers had been firmly established by the Vicksburg/Port Hudson achievements. The earlier partnership between the USN West Gulf Squadron and the Mississippi Squadron, as the Western Gunboat Flotilla became on October 1, 1863, was altered and the final geographical definition of “Western waters” as an operational area referred to here and elsewhere was officially defined by the latter’s commander: The limits of the West Gulf Squadron extend from the Mexican Line to just eastward of Pensacola, and up the Mississippi only to New Orleans, and of this squadron from New Orleans up the Mississippi, embracing its tributaries and connecting rivers and bayous.

Thereafter, as the Western theater was pushed east toward Atlanta and then the Carolinas and southern Virginia, the dramatic emphasis placed on the region’s brown water faded. As the belief that the water war was won took hold, detailed commentary upon events on the Western waters (with the exception of the 1864 Red River campaign) largely disappeared from the headlines of the day, both North and South. Was the conviction of total Union control accurate? My colleague and friend Mark Jenkins summed up the situation in 2013: Control of a river is a tenuous thing. For the moment, we can define it as a condition where there is a reasonable expectation of safety from attack. Under this definition, the Union unquestionably controlled a great deal of the river, but it might be too much to say that the entire length was under control.

For the remainder of the Civil War, the midcountry engagements along the great streams continued, but usually on a much reduced scale. In addition to several regional campaigns by large marching armies or giant attempted incursions of Northern territory, the Confederates in this theater came to believe they could best influence the war’s outcome and establish some measure of control with a sustained assault on Federal logistics, particularly bulk waterborne transportation. With no available sailors of their own this mission was left to Southern troops (regular and irregular) and guerrillas. So it was that ­­ship-to-shore combats and counterinsurgency strikes on the Mississippi and her tributaries continued. These largely unheralded but intense fights reveal courage and determination on both sides that is worthy of more detailed coverage. Many of the 1863–1865 actions which occurred were recorded as miscellaneous backwater events and escaped telling in the subsequent naval histories of the war (even those devoted to the river war). In the premier major recounting of the river war, Adm. Alfred T. Mahan labeled his first post–Vicksburg chapter as one concerned with “minor occurrences.” For the most part, accounts of brown water actions during the last nine months of the conflict languished not in works designed to foster common memory but in dusty archival records, old newspapers, or pages of the Official Records.3 From 1865 to the present, many who lived through it or wrote of it considered the Mississippi Valley campaign finished with the Vicksburg triumph. No less a figure

4

Introduction

than Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman recalled in his memoirs that the town’s capture “produced … a general relaxation of effort.” Although he meant the Union’s Western war effort, he could as well have meant its recording for posterity. Other than Admirals Porter Mahan, Dewey, and Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., few naval officers then active in the theater wrote memoirs and even fewer, if continuing their river assignment, recorded their post­–Vicksburg details. For example, in his recollections, famed campaign participant and onetime captain of the Carondelet, Adm. Henry Walke, chose to end his very detailed river war recollections just after the citadel’s fall and his transfer east (omitting all naval accounting thereafter save a final chapter on the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay).4 With the exception of some accounts of the 1864 Red River campaign, there have been no published Civil War surveys of Western waters action devoted exclusively to the years 1863–1865. As late as 2016, Barbara Brooks Tomblin’s excellent history The Civil War on the Mississippi closed with Vicksburg, and though my own detailed previous works granted space to Western waters events, none was totally devoted to the theater. This overall coverage deficit has occurred in the writing of numerous other authorities, who have recounted in their pages the momentous events on the Western streams prior to Vicksburg’s surrender—and Red River. Mark Jenkins sighs: “Action on the rivers in the latter half of the war has not attracted much attention from historians, although the documentation, in the form of the OR/ORN, letters, diaries, etc., is available.” Craig L. Symonds opines that “the fall of Vicksburg did not end the war in the West, but it did complexly change its character.” Spencer C. Tucker has concluded that the 1863–1865 conflict on Midwestern streams has been “largely forgotten today.” Noting that the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson “did not end Union riverine operations,” Earl J. Hess in two important studies reveals that, despite Federal success over Vicksburg and Port Hudson, “the war in the West was far from over.”5

Criteria and Arrangement Downplayed, forgotten or ignored events—and a few unknown incidents—of the brown water Civil War which occurred after the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson in July 1863 have a berth within these pages. To accomplish our aim, our study opens with a review of the Western rivers and the communities they supported. A look at the USN Mississippi Squadron in the summer of the two Union successes follows. It also sets the stage for the remainder of our tale with a review of that fleet’s bases, organization and administration, warships and personnel. Plans and ­­war-fighting concepts by the North and South to advantage area control or alleviate actual and perceived political, military or commercial challenges are noted as well. Operational events chronologically dominate the chapters that follow, several of which have overlapping time frames to permit fullness of story. Naval participation in various raids and larger campaigns is highlighted, as well as in the necessary, often mundane but sometime exciting counterinsurgency, economical, and logistical protection or assault efforts. Details are therein offered or enhanced on units or streams previously underreported or completely ignored. Examples include the birth and function of the Mississippi Squadron’s Eleventh District, the role of U.S. Army



Introduction5

gunboats, and the war on the Upper Cumberland and Upper Tennessee Rivers. Our account concludes with the coming of the peace in 1865 and the decommissioning of the U.S. river navy and the sale of its ships. Fifty years ago when hair still rode atop my head, I was first drawn to the story of the Western gunboats in connection with my postgraduate work. In all the time since, I have continued to find it a subject exciting to explore and enjoyable to record. It is hoped that this outing will help to demonstrate that no longer is the war on Western waters, particularly those events following the surrender of Vicksburg and Port Hudson to the Union, “the ignored war,” Virgil Carrington Jones once labeled it.6

Acknowledgments Personnel at a number of libraries and archives helpfully provided insight and access to resources directly or by loan or photocopy during the research and writing stages of this outing. Among them were the kind folks manning the libraries and collections of the U.S. Navy Department; U.S. Army Military History Institute; Library of Congress; National Archives; Mariners Museum; University of Tennessee; Tennessee State Library and Archives; Missouri Historical Society; University of Arkansas; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Duke University; East Tennessee State University; Kentucky Historical Society; University of Rochester (NY); U.S. Army Historical Center; Vicksburg National Military Park; Louisiana State University; Tennessee State Library and Archives; Illinois State Library; Illinois State Historical Society; Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (IL); Indiana Historical Society; Chicago Historical Society; Cairo (IL) Public Library; Ohio Historical Society; The Ohio State University; The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library (OH); The Battle of Nashville Preservation Society; ­­Greeneville-Greene County Public Library (TN) ; and Tusculum University. Over the years, a number of folks have kindly gone beyond to provide encouragement or aid as I launched my various Civil War writings. The list is long, though hopefully all were appropriately acknowledged in the books preceding this one. For this outing, I would particularly like to give a special tip of the hat to my longtime friend and Henry Walke aficionado Mark F. Jenkins for his insights and support. I would also like to send appreciation to my newest colleague, himself a scholar of the Western gunboat wars, Mark Zimmerman. Myron J. Smith, Jr. Chuckey, Tennessee

1

The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation Before launching into the post–Vicksburg history of the Civil War on midcontinent rivers, it would perhaps be of interest to readers to review the physical situation in which the contest took place. Below we examine, river by river beginning with the Mississippi, the topography of our story, along with attention to the navigational challenges faced by those engaged upon these streams. In addition, we notice many of the communities which lined the riverbanks, those thriving then and some now extinct. Amplification for all these particulars is also given, where appropriate, within the chapters following. When taken together with the Missouri River (slightly longer than the Mississippi, but outside of our story), the Mississippi is the largest water artery in the United States. From the headwaters of the former, the two streams flow a combined distance of 3,872 miles. Taken alone from its source in Lake Igasca in northwest Minnesota, the Mississippi flows 2,480 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico. Only the watersheds of the Amazon River and the Congo River exceed the size of her drainage basin, which covers over 1.2 million square miles, including all or parts of 31 states, some of which were not yet in the Union in 1861. The river’s name was taken originally from the Ojibwa (Chippewa) tribe word ­­Misi-ziibi or the Algonquin term Missi Sepe, which translated poetically as “father of waters.” In his 1842 American Notes, English novelist and visitor Charles Dickens was more blunt: “But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of rivers, who (praise be to heaven) has no children like him! An enormous ditch … running liquid mud.” Noted British journalist William H. Russell was far from impressed during a ­­mid-June 1861 steamboat passage from New Orleans to Cairo, calling it “assuredly the most uninteresting river in the world.” “Not a particle of romance,” he observed, “in spite of oratorical patriots and prophets, can ever shine from its depths, sacred to cat and buffalo fish, or vivify its turbid waters.” The Mississippi River, known as early as 1814 as the “Nile of North America,” is divided into three geographical parts: the Headwaters, the Upper Mississippi River, and the Lower Mississippi River. For purposes of this account, we are concerned primarily with the latter section, which begins at the 37th parallel of north latitude at the mouth of the Ohio, where it splashes the tip of Illinois and divides Kentucky on the east from Missouri on the west. From this point, the Lower Mississippi meanders 7

8

After Vicksburg

Mississippi River and upper tributaries. This Kentucky-Tennessee map encompasses the Mississippi and its tributaries from north of Cairo to south of Memphis and east beyond Nashville and Knoxville to the Appalachian Mountains (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, v. 1).

southward 1,097 miles to ­­Head-of-Passes in the Gulf of Mexico at the meridian of Cairo, Illinois. It was the great trunk route for steamboat traffic; the Upper Mississippi and all of the tributaries were secondary. The valley through which the river flows is known as the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, comprising floodplains and low terraces that are almost level to slightly sloping and which are joined by a number of southerly flowing tributaries. From Cairo, at the tip of Illinois, the Mississippi passed through a long alluvial stretch forming the eastern or western borders of six states. This great basin reaches out to an average width of some 75 miles with few natural barriers to impede the river flow. The banks on the western or right side of the stream are not high. There are, however, numerous heights, hills or bluffs, on the left or eastern edge, and these provided the most inhabitable sites. Relief along the Mississippi banks is generally slight, and floods remain common. Almost every settlement at lower points along the river was then protected by ­­built-up embankments or dikes, known as levees. Many are so guarded still today. Indeed, the lower river’s natural floodplain has been reduced about 90 percent in area by levee construction, which began in 1727. The Lower Mississippi River valley contains about 2,700 kilometers of levees along both sides of the river. Bottomland hardwood forests cover some areas (though not as many as in the early part of the 19th century) and swamps are not uncommon. A large amount of hardwood was burned for fuel and employed other purposes a century ago (including



1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation 9

Mississippi River and lower tributaries. This 1912 rendering depicts the “Big Muddy” from south of Memphis to New Orleans, noting such major tributaries as the White, Arkansas, Red, and Yazoo Rivers (Mary Johnston, Cease Firing, 1912).

10

After Vicksburg

the construction of steamboats). Cottonwoods and willows were among the most common of trees viewed from the water. Today much of the floodplain supports agriculture. Although the ­­Illinois-Louisiana portion of the Mississippi was not provided with locks and dams over the last century akin to the upper stretch, it has been extensively channeled to help regulate its width and depth, a serious ­­19th-century problem. At the time of the Civil War, however, the course of the twisting lower ­­silt-laden river was so devious few realized that, as the crow flew north to south in a straight line, the Ohio was only 480 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.1 Just after the outbreak of war in 1861, the Union Army’s chief engineer, Bvt. Brig. Gen. Joseph G. Totten, was ordered west to ascertain and inventory from local sources the region’s logistical challenges and possibilities, with particular attention to river transportation. Among those people interviewed was veteran steamboat outfitter and captain J. S. Neal of Madison, Indiana, who enumerated all of the important landing places for steamers from Cairo to New Orleans. In addition, the soldier also had access to a number of printed directories, the most famous being that of Uriah Pierson James. We have chosen the Neal list and James’ River Guide, with their mileage data and attendant remarks, as the basis for our review of the principal towns and points of the Lower Mississippi. Neal’s list and the James book are supplemented by the views of other ­­19th-century rivermen and visitors, including Mark Twain, navy paymaster Edward J. Huling, New York Herald correspondent Henry Thompson, and British journalist Russell.2 In addition to New Orleans, Louisiana, and Cairo, Illinois, the Mississippi River hosts a number of communities along her ­­tree-lined or marshy banks that are important in this account. Aside from the metropolis of St. Louis, its suburb of Carondelet further down was an important ­­boat-building site during the Civil War. Birthplace in 1861 for several of the famous City Series ironclads, the ­­Neosho-class monitor Osage was commissioned there in July 1863, while four ­­Milwaukee-class monitors remained under construction. The next point of importance below was Cairo, discussed at length in Chapter 2.3 In September 1863, New York Herald newsman Henry Thompson, in a piece entitled “The Old Route,” observed that the lighter or darker color of the Mississippi was often determined by the soil content in the rising of the various rivers flowing into it. For example, the Ohio gave a yellower or clear hue while the Red offered a reddish cast. The journalist told his readers that a great struggle appeared to occur at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi, as the “immense body of clear water of the former” rushed with great force into the turbid latter. Indeed, “for some two or three miles below Cairo, there appear to be two channels,” he wrote. “The clear water of the Ohio took the eastern side and the muddy Mississippi the western.” Later, the water in the eastern channel became progressively more yellow and dark as it became one with the “Father of Waters.” The usually brownish river current was very swift (three to five mph and sometimes faster during rises or flooding). Interestingly, little thought was given to using the turbid water for drinking and culinary purposes. One observer, a gunboat paymaster, later recalled that “though at first the appearance of it is rather forbidding, a person soon comes to like it, and it is drunk with a relish.” He forgot to add that, to



1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation 11

City Series gunboats building at Carondelet, Missouri. Four of the Union’s first seven Western rivers ironclads are shown under construction at the boatyard of James B. Eads in fall 1861. Built in pairs on two levels of the riverbank, their casemate side timbers are shown largely installed. Two will have been lost in action by late July 1863 (National Archives).

make it more palatable, the water was often held in jars overnight, allowing the sediment to settle. Journalist Thompson added: “I have seen a tumbler of Mississippi water, after standing a short time, become clear as crystal to within an inch of the bottom, but that inch is formed of fine particles we in the North call mud.” He went on to note: “Many prefer drinking this water to any other in the country; spring water not excepted.” Heading south on the Kentucky bank below Cairo, the initial town of major importance was Columbus, 18 miles, or about two hours steaming time distant. With approximately 2,000 residents, it lay directly along the waterway in wooded lowlands. “From the river, it has a very clean and beautiful appearance,” opined the Herald’s Thompson. Today, a large portion of the original village location is submerged. A great embankment, known as Iron and Chalk Bluffs, ran into the river behind Columbus. The names of these ridges were based on earth color and composition, and from atop these ­­2 50-foot high summits, which gradually declined inland for five or six miles, one could see some 20 miles upriver and down. The county seat of Fulton County, the town of Hickman, once known as Mills Point, is 12 miles beyond and was noted for its tobacco trade in prewar days. People landing here found a village with four churches, one bank, and a newspaper office. The islands in the Lower Mississippi below Cairo were recorded in order beginning with Island No. 1, five miles downstream close to the left shore. Island No. 10, which has since disappeared, was a ­­two-mile-long atoll located in a great horseshoe river bend just above New Madrid, Missouri, 70 miles below Cairo. Surrounded by

12

After Vicksburg

marshland, the ­­low-lying village remains famous for its December 1811 destruction by earthquakes along the New Madrid Fault. As the great Mississippi meandered southward with bluffs on one side and unremarkable scenery upon the other, its ­­p ea-soup-colored water threw up for the unwary the occasional tree trunk or sandbar. Travelers like journalist Russell also spied “masses of leaves, decaying vegetation, stumps of trees, forming small floating islands, or giant ­­cotton-tree, pines, and balks of timber whirling down the current.” Many a gunboatman would observe the same phenomenon in the years ahead. The first of four Chickasaw bluffs, also known as the Cane Hills, rose in the Volunteer State some 80 miles below Island No. 10 and an equal distance above Memphis. It was home to the ­­cotton-trading center of Fulton, in Lauderdale County, at its foot and Fort Pillow at its head atop a promontory between the Mississippi and the Hatchie River. The main shipping channel ran within musket shot of the riverbank. Twelve miles below Fort Pillow, just below the mouth of the Hatchie and opposite Island No. 40, was the town of Randolph, in Tipton County. The second Chickasaw bluff rises gradually from the Mississippi, forming a ridge behind the town, which was a large trading point. The third Chickasaw bluff, like the others named for the Native American tribe, rose at Old River, near Island No. 36.

Memphis. Following its capture in mid-1862, the Tennessee river town became the site of major Union military and naval facilities. The already-existing local naval base/shipyard was quickly put to work, while a supply depot and repair center were added, along with a hospital. This illustration from Every Saturday Magazine depicts the scene in September 1871 (Library of Congress).



1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation 13

Memphis, a Tennessee city of 25,000 inhabitants in Shelby County, was situated 30 feet up atop the fourth and lowest of the Chickasaw bluffs, 257 miles south of Cairo. It was the most significant trading community between the mouth of the Ohio and Vicksburg, Mississippi, a distance of 600 miles. Following the Union capture of Memphis in spring 1862, the Western Gunboat Flotilla, precursor of the Mississippi Squadron, took control of the already existing local naval base/shipyard and also established a major supply depot and repair center. The naval hospital at Mound City was transferred to a Memphis hotel in March 1863. The next important town below Memphis was Helena, Arkansas, 340 miles downstream from Cairo, built on one of the few high banks on the west (right) side of the stream at a point about halfway between Memphis and Vicksburg. “With its buildings and sawmills,” remarked one Northern observer, it “resembles Greenpoint, Brooklyn.” High hills rose immediately to the community’s rear; they could be “seen for miles and miles along the Mississippi.” Approximately 380 miles south of Cairo, also on the west bank, near the location of Island No. 72, lies the mouth of the White River, four miles below and opposite Victoria, Mississippi (now extinct), where the explorer de Soto first saw the magnificent artery in the 1500s. A Federal military post was established here in early 1863. About 10 miles downstream lay Napoleon, Arkansas, situated a few hundred yards south of the mouth of the Arkansas River and site of a U.S. government hospital. Rivermen supposedly informed New York Herald writer Finley Anderson in 1863 that they expected the Father of Waters to sweep away Napoleon. “To all lovers of decency and good morals,” the scribe suggested, “this is a consummation devoutly to be wished.” In fact, the town gradually died due to floods which began shortly after the USN cut a new channel through the peninsula used as a Confederate ambush point at Beulah Bend in the Mississippi, east of the community that April. Paymaster Huling recalled that both Helena and Napoleon had terrible reputations before and during the war as hellholes plagued with “gamblers, thieves, murderers, and people of those classes.” What proved a natural site for confrontation appeared next. Adjacent to Chicot County, Arkansas, and Washington County, Mississippi, lay a series of contiguous river curves (Rowdy, Miller’s, Spanish Moss, Batchelor’s) known collectively as the Greenville Bends. Site of hotly contested ­­ship-shore duels from 1862 almost to war’s end, these sharp arcs ran for about 40 miles from just above the village of Arkansas City to just below Greenville, Mississippi. They were separated by four narrow necks of land; several islands (Nos. 80, 81, and 82) dotted the center of the great river here, narrowing the main channel. Initially presumed less evil than other small Chicot County points was Gaines Landing, on Rowdy Bend, about nine miles beyond Arkansas City. Prior to the war, ­­Texas-bound settlers debarked at this point and formed a small community with two stores and several houses. Because Southern gunners came to frequently attack Union shipping from this locale, it was frequently bombarded by Mississippi Squadron gunboats. Eunice, nearby and also in the same county, likewise hosted Confederates. After attacking a Federal tinclad in June 1863, a number of them escaped only to watch from hiding as the community was torched by a landing party in retaliation. Eighteen miles further down on the Greenville Bends lay Columbia, Arkansas, seat of Chicot County, with an 1860 population of 400, and from here the banks of the Big Muddy were “almost one succession of plantations.” After Confederate

14

After Vicksburg

The Greenville Bends. The states of Arkansas and Mississippi bordered this series of Mississippi River curves through which steamboats, alone or escorted, passed and were often repeatedly attacked by Confederate forces. Today, nothing remains of the Arkansas riverfront communities of Gaines Landing and Columbia, Arkansas, or of Old Greenville, Mississippi (Library of Congress).

artillery attacked Union shipping from its riverfront, Union forces destroyed the community. Over on the east (left) side of the river in Mississippi is a string of noteworthy communities both large and small mostly built atop bluffs, which would be recorded in military reports. Included in the number was Skipwith’s Landing, 52 miles below Gaines, where the USN would station coal barges and, after Vicksburg’s surrender, establish a repair station with a carpenter’s shop. Greeneville, Mississippi, was eight miles below that, but was largely destroyed on May 18, 1863, by Federal troops landed from five troop transports after an attack by mobile Confederate field guns located at Argyle Landing three miles above. Those portions which remained served Federal purposes, including as a base for boats of the Mississippi Marine Brigade. The community would later be rebuilt. The Yazoo River enters the Mississippi below Island No. 103, approximately nine miles above the curve adjacent to the Walnut Hills and north of Vicksburg, the noted Yazoo delta community and celebrated Confederate “Gibraltar of the West.” Further up the Yazoo lay the ­­r iver-shipping town of Yazoo City. Having outfitted the famous CSS Arkansas at this location, the Confederate Navy subsequently



1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation 15

attempted to build additional ironclads before the town was briefly occupied in May 1863. The important prewar landing of Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana, about 15 miles west above Vicksburg, gained prominence as a logistics center and training base for United States Colored Troops. With gunboat aid, a Southern attack was driven off in June 1863. Paw Paw Island, at the foot of the curve, rose some 40–50 feet higher than the river and is currently home to a private hunting resort. Young’s Point, Louisiana, just above Vicksburg, was the principal encampment of the Union Army during the siege of Vicksburg, while Yankee warships and transports tied up in the willows along the shoreline. Vicksburg, across the Mississippi from Young’s Point, achieved everlasting fame as an elevated fortress city. It is 90 miles down from Memphis, while the heavily bombarded village of Warrenton, Mississippi, which had a prewar population of about 300, is 10 miles further. After the war, the Mississippi moved westward and today nothing is left of that original community. Hurricane and Brierfield plantations, located in a ­­close-by eastern river bend, were owned by the Davis brothers, Joseph E. and Jefferson Davis, the latter president of the Confederacy. Nine miles below lies the mouth of the Big Black River. Just below the mouth of the Big Black, 30 miles beyond Vicksburg, is Grand Gulf, Mississippi, the strongpoint on top of a high and rocky bluff attacked by the Mississippi Squadron on April 29, 1863. Abandoned thereafter, it became the site of a state

Pywell’s Vicksburg Levy. Steamboats at the Vicksburg levee in February 1864 as captured by Matthew Brady’s photographer William R. Pywell (Library of Congress).

16

After Vicksburg

park. Rodney, Mississippi, is 20 miles beyond Grand Gulf, but became a ghost town after the Mississippi changed course there as well. Waterproof, Louisiana, is an ­­agriculture-based village approximately eight miles south near Island No. 113. A small garrison was maintained during the conflict by United States Colored Troops. Some 18 miles downstream, Natchez, Mississippi, with 15,000–20,000 inhabitants, was built on the east bank’s highest ground. It surrendered to Union forces without a fight in September 1862. The mouth of the Red River appears on the west bank about 11 or so miles below Natchez in a great bend along the Louisiana shore about 175 miles south of Vicksburg and some 765 miles south of Cairo. Red River Landing, a steamboat stop for most going up the Red, was six miles further on. It was immediately followed by two big ­­right-side river bends, Raccourei and Tunica, four and six miles on, and Hog Point, Louisiana, a wooded site of a river crossing. The small agricultural and shipping communities of Bayou Sara and St. Francisville, Louisiana, are 24 miles further. While the former was regarded as “loyal” by Federal forces, the latter was seen as “a hotbed of secession.” Across the Mississippi from St. Francisville lay Point Coupee, a settlement of wealthy ­­French-speaking planters where a Grand Levee, or embankment, began running down to the Gulf. Built on the White Cliffs, Port Hudson, Louisiana, the other recently captured fortress town, was 11 miles downstream, with the state capital of Baton Rouge, seized by the U.S. in spring 1862, 30 miles further. Also occupied by the Union in early 1862, Donaldsonville, Louisiana, 24 miles down, was thereafter a site of several Confederate attacks. New Orleans appears another 80 miles downstream. From Baton Rouge to New Orleans, wrote Mark Twain in the 1870s, “the great ­­sugar-plantations border both sides of the river all the way.” Island No. 126, the final island of the Lower Mississippi, was approximately 45 miles south of Baton Rouge.4 A significant number of major and minor watersheds are tributary to the Mississippi and were involved in the gunboat war after Vicksburg’s 1863 surrender. Those rivers of the Lower Mississippi flowed south (often in a roundabout manner) and included such natural highways as the White, Arkansas, Yazoo, and Red. Likewise, the huge Ohio River also flows south, but its two major southern tributaries, the Tennessee and Cumberland, move north. That we might better understand the physical restraints under which certain operations were conducted, these seven rivers are here described, beginning with those exiting directly into the Lower Mississippi. The first major tributary to enter the Lower Mississippi south of the Ohio River is the White River, a ­­722-mile confluence that flows swiftly south from the Boston Mountains in northwest Arkansas. After looping north toward Branson, Missouri, the White then streams to the southeast through Arkansas, exiting into the Mississippi near the head of Island No. 72, about 380 miles south of Cairo, Illinois. Its mouth is opposite Montgomery Point, Mississippi. Steamboatmen of the day noted that, in the upper part of its course, the river flowed between hills and high bluffs, while its lower course wound through a huge alluvial bottom. The Civil War–era river was narrow and crooked but navigable about 400 miles up from its mouth, past St. Charles, Clarendon, Des Arc, and Augusta to Batesville, and, at times of low water, was often employed as a substitute for the Arkansas River.



1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation 17

Steamer at a Mississippi River landing. Whenever a steamboat put into shore to fuel or accommodate passengers or freight, it was said to be “landing.” The locations of these numerous large and small stops on the Western rivers were so labeled, being regular and often well-known with given names. Here (ca. 1904) the sternwheel boat America has delivered passengers to Ashwood Landing in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, during her regular New Orleans to Vicksburg service (Library of Congress).

The color of the river water was light gray, giving the stream its name. Compared to the dark hue of the Mississippi, the White looked almost clear to some observers. About 10 miles north of the White’s mouth was a stream known as “the ­­Cut-off ” that provided a connection with the Arkansas River. This passage was sufficiently wide and deep to accommodate most of the steamers plying the two streams, though it was prone to occasionally throw up a snag. The water levels, higher or lower, between the two rivers flowed back and forth between the two depending upon each other’s stage, and if the water level of the Mississippi were higher than either, it flowed first up the White then through the ­­Cut-off and into the Arkansas.5 The mouth of the Arkansas River was about 10 miles down the Mississippi River beyond that of the White River. The fifth longest river in the United States and the second largest tributary of the ­­Mississippi-Missouri system, this 1,­­4 50-mile-long waterway rises in Colorado. Flowing east through Kansas and Oklahoma, it enters Arkansas at Fort Smith and continues 600 miles southeast past Little Rock to exit into the Mississippi at Napoleon. Long since taken over by the forces of nature, the Post of Arkansas was located about 50 miles from the river’s mouth. Smaller steamboats were able, often with great

18

After Vicksburg

difficulty, to navigate much of the stream, though most prewar boats worked the Napoleon–Little Rock–Fort Smith route, connecting with larger steamers at Napoleon. As the lower channel of the Arkansas was at the time covered by our writing very winding and prone to snags and sandbars, steamboats often chose to avoid as much of it as possible. Instead, they would enter the Arkansas via the ­­Cut-off from the White River, returning to the Mississippi by the same route.6 After the Ohio, the Yazoo is the second longest tributary to flow into the Mississippi River from the east. Confined within the borders of the state of Mississippi, the ­­188-mile-long stream is formed by the confluence of the Tallahatchie River and the Yalobusha River at Greenwood. Lined with natural levees, the Yazoo parallels the Mississippi for miles before finally joining it at a point below Island No. 103, approximately nine miles above the curve adjacent to the Walnut Hills and north of Vicksburg. This waterway and the ones entering it were home to great swaths of underbrush and wildlife and could be very difficult to navigate. In July 1862 when the Confederate armorclad Arkansas dashed down the stream to Vicksburg, New York Herald reporter Henry Knox told his readers something about the Yazoo. Though narrow and sluggish, he said, it was very deep in places, often “showing no bottom to a line of 50 feet in length.” The water had a slightly brackish taste and was very dark, contrasting with the lighter yellow of the Mississippi. The point of junction between the two was visible for a considerable distance. Knox went on to say that the banks of the river were generally high “and the bluffs afford excellent positions for planting batteries and stopping navigation.” There were few settlements, “an occasional cotton plantation being all that can be seen.” We enhanced the travelogue in 2012 at the beginning of The Fight for the Yazoo.7 The most southerly Mississippi tributary to appear in our account is the Red, sometimes known as the Red River of Louisiana. It owes its inclusion in our list primarily to the great ­­B anks-Porter expedition of 1864. The 1,­­360-mile-long Red rises near Amarillo in northern Texas, in the northern part of the Staked Plains, or Llano Estacado, flows east by south in Texas, between Texas and Oklahoma, and to Fulton, in southwestern Arkansas, there turns southeast and continues in a general southeasterly direction through Louisiana past Shreveport. A cotton center, Shreveport’s prewar population was about 3,000. During the war, a Confederate shipyard was established on the south side of Cross Bayou at the Red River and here the CSS Missouri was built. Some 65 miles below lay the small city of Natchitoches, and Alexandria was 80 miles, being occupied by Union forces on May 7, 1863. A stretch of rapids above the latter town prevented steamboat navigation upstream save at times of very high water. The Red below, however, smoothly flowed 100 miles to the banks of the Mississippi, where it discharges partly into the Mississippi above Baton Rouge. The stream’s mouth was in a great bend along the Louisiana shore about 175 miles south of Vicksburg and some 765 miles south of Cairo. Reviewing the Red River expedition some years later, Admiral Mahan also commented upon the difficulties of the stream in the area between Alexandria and Shreveport: The river, which gets its name from the color of its water, flows through a fertile and populous country, the banks in many places being high, following in a very crooked channel a general southeasterly direction. In this portion of its course it has a width of seven



1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation 19 hundred to eight hundred feet, and at low water a depth of four feet. The slope from Shreveport to Alexandria at high water is a little over a hundred feet, but immediately above the latter place there are two small rapids, called the Falls of Alexandria, which interrupt navigation when the water is low. The annual rise begins in the early winter…. The river, however, can never be confidently trusted.8

The Ohio River begins at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers at the Point in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and flows 981 miles to join the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. It flows through or along the border of six states, and its watershed encompasses 14 states. The Ohio carries the largest volume of water of any upper tributary of the Mississippi. In fact, it typically carries a much greater volume of water than the Upper Mississippi itself. From Pittsburgh, the Ohio flows to the northwest through western Pennsylvania before making an abrupt, almost ­­180-degree, turn to the ­­south-southwest at the state line with West Virginia (Virginia until 1863), where it then forms the border between that state and Ohio. The stream then follows a roughly southwestern and then western course between Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky until it joins the Mississippi from the east at Cairo, Illinois. During the Civil War era, the medial width of the Ohio during ordinary stages of water was about half a mile, though at some points it contracted to far less and at others expanded to a mile or more. At its mouth, this great stream is wider than the Mississippi itself. The average range between high and low water reached 50 feet, but in flood could go much higher. At low water during the summer when rainfall was slight, the Ohio had an average depth of 30 inches over the bars, most of which were sandy and not dangerous. At Cincinnati, the pool stage was about 10 feet, two to five feet less than at other times of the year. In the 21st century, the pool stage through most of the year is around 28 feet. During the Civil War, historian David M. Smith has said, the Ohio was “significantly shallower and as importantly, not as wide as it is today.” Interestingly, the original Virginia charter went not to the middle of the Ohio River, but to its far shore so the entire river was included. Wherever the river serves as a boundary between states—Kentucky and Virginia, now West Virginia, on the south and Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky, also on the south, the river essentially belongs to the two states on the south that were later divided from Virginia. Due to its role as a natural geographic dividing line between North and South, the Ohio River was earlier seen as the watery stripe dividing free states and slave states. In addition to Pittsburgh and Cairo, the Ohio River has a number of historic communities along its banks. Those in Virginia (now West Virginia) include, in alphabetical order, Huntington, New Martinsville, Paden City, Parkersburg, Weirton, and Wheeling. Also to the south, in Kentucky, we have Ashland, Brandenburg, Caseyville, Concordia, Covington, Henderson, Lewisport, Louisville, Newport, Owensboro, Paducah at the mouth of the Tennessee River (with a population of 4,000 in 1863), Smithland at the mouth of the Cumberland River, Stephensport, and Union Town, exactly 400 miles west of Cincinnati. The key city of Louisville, 369 miles from the mouth of the Ohio and 150 miles west of Cincinnati, was founded at the river’s only major natural navigational barrier, the Falls of the Ohio. These falls were a series of rapids where the river flowed over hard, ­­fossil-rich limestone beds. The first Ohio River locks were built here before the Civil War to

20

After Vicksburg

circumnavigate the falls; the Louisville and Portland Canal was 2.5 miles long, ­­50-foot wide, and its lock could pass a boat through which was 180 feet long and 49.7 feet wide. In 1860, 1,520 steamboats and 1,299 other craft transited the canal. The Cumberland Bar, near Smithland, marked the mouth of the Cumberland River. To the north in Ohio, the riverbank towns include Belpre; the “Queen City,” Cincinnati, the largest city in the Midwest; Gallipolis; Ironton; Marietta; Pomeroy; and Steubenville. Cincinnati was the region’s chief river port, industrial and agricultural center, and home for many shipbuilders and outfitters. Most of the USN tinclads converted by builder Joseph Brown were transformed there. Continuing on with our list of leading Hoosier Ohio River communities, there was Aurora and Carrolton before Madison (100 miles west of Cincinnati and 50 miles east of Louisville), Amsterdam (now New Amsterdam), Clarksville, Derby Landing (now Derby), Enterprise, Grandview, Jeffersonville, New Albany, Mauckport, Leavenworth, Fredonia, Cannelton (with many coal mines), Rockport (a center of coal production), Tell City, Troy (the state’s second oldest city), Newburg, Evansville (350 miles west of Cincinnati with a direct rail line to Indianapolis) and Mount Vernon. Below the Ohio River in Kentucky were Louisville, Shippingsport, Brandenburg, positioned atop a tall bluff, Concordia, Rome, Stephensport, Cloverport, Hawesville, Lewisport, Owensboro, Henderson, Union Town, Caseyville, and Smithland. The state’s largest city, Louisville, is the second leading town on the great stream after Cincinnati and served as a major Federal logistical hub. Illinois river communities include Cairo, Elizabethtown, Brookport, Golconda, Metropolis (with a population of 400 in 1863), Shawneetown, and Mound City, the

A packet at Mound City. Mound City, IL, which outgrew Cairo, Illinois, as the principal base for the U.S. Navy’s Mississippi Squadron, was visited by military, naval, civilian, and government contract steamers. Fitted out early in the war with 310 berths, the Jacob Strader, originally based at Cincinnati, Ohio, transported wounded and sick soldiers to the city’s military hospital (Naval History and Heritage Command).



1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation 21

latter superseding Cairo as home to the USN Mississippi Squadron. The distance from Cincinnati to Cairo by steamer in 1861 was 550.7 miles.9 The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately 650 miles long, covers 41,000 square miles, and drains portions of 60 Tennessee counties and seven states. It is formed at the confluence of the Holston and French Broad Rivers on the east side of Knoxville, Tennessee. From Knoxville, it flows southwest toward Chattanooga before crossing into Alabama. The Flint and Elk Rivers enter at the great bend of the river as it loops through north Alabama, eventually forming a small part of the state’s border with Mississippi, before returning to the Volunteer State. Flowing north again through the Western Tennessee Valley, the Duck River (fed by the Buffalo River) enters the Tennessee south of New Johnsonville (the original Johnsonville was lost to the TVA dams of the 1930s), while the Big Sandy River joins not far from Paris Landing. The final part of the Tennessee’s run is in Kentucky, where it flows into the Ohio River at Paducah, some 12 miles west of the mouth of the Cumberland River. Of the three rivers above the Lower Mississippi discussed here, the Tennessee saw the least use by antebellum steamboat companies. Two huge natural obstructions gave those who employed the river considerable pause and halted others from considering the prospect. The first was a ­­30-mile-long gorge cut through Walden’s Ridge at Chattanooga. Second, in North Alabama, the Foot of Big Muscle, the Muscle Shoals, began a half mile beyond Florence and effectively divided the stream into the Upper Tennessee and the Lower Tennessee. This series of obstructions, almost 40 miles long, divided Lauderdale and Lawrence Counties. It was made up of shifting gravel bars, rapids, snags, rock reefs, and a narrow channel which often fatally wounded boats. Of the Foot, or head of navigation, it was noted in 1863 that “only four foot at the highest stages of water [was] ever known.” During the war, Union gunboats were forced to guard the Tennessee River above and below the Muscle Shoals because the great river could be readily crossed by Confederates in many spots. The Duck River Sucks, 134 miles from the mouth of the river, were considered very dangerous due to its extremely crooked channel and the strong current over its rocks. At low water, these shoals were considered by the USN to be “one of the most favorable places for locating a battery on the river.” This and the other named natural obstacles played such a significant role in Northern river naval strategy that, when RAdm. Porter divided the rivers under his command up into districts in 1863, he employed two to cover the Tennessee, one above the Muscle Shoals and one below. The Tennessee River as far as the Muscle Shoals at Florence, Alabama, has a number of historic communities along its banks, though not as many large towns as are found along the huge Ohio. Those in Kentucky, with 1863 populations as provided by Lt. Cmdr. Fitch include Paducah, located on the west bank near the Ohio confluence and 50 miles from Cairo (population 4,000), Birmingham (population 200), Aurora, and Callowaytown (disappeared by 1870). It was approximately 90 miles from Paducah to the state line. In the 1860s, the Tennessee River averaged about 1,420 feet in width. The

22

After Vicksburg

wooded banks were mostly flat and overflowed at high water. High hills were situated about one to two miles back of the banks. Crawford, a correspondent for the Wisconsin State Journal, has left a detailed travelogue of a trip he made up the Tennessee in May 1862 to visit the battlefield at Shiloh. His ­­information-laden account offered readers then and now a visual picture of the sights experienced daily by the gunboatmen steaming upon those waters. “The whole scenery along the Tennessee River is magnificent,” he wrote, “grand and lovely.” Heavy forests of timber skirted the banks, “sycamore, maple, hickory, and cypress.” From Paducah to the state line and beyond, “the trees on either shore hang full of the mistletoe, an evergreen parasite, which contrasted strangly enough, with the different hues of the various kinds of trees on which it fastens itself.” The land beyond the river was “generally high, sometimes, and for miles, it is rocky, the ledges rising out of the water and extending up some eight to 20 feet.” Inland, the land extended back, “not unfrequently rising higher [and] covered with timber.” In many places, it “seems as if the bank is but a high ridge, dividing the river from vast swamps, which are nevertheless covered with magnificent trees.” Perhaps the greatest surprise experienced by the Union sailors and soldiers passing up stream was “the almost entire want of the evidence of civilization along the broad and noble river.” In the whole distance from Paducah to Fort Henry, “there were not ten farms.” Occasionally, Crawford wrote home, a log hut or two would appear in small clearings, “but they are many miles apart.” Locations of interest in Tennessee include Pine Bluff, Buffalo Landing, Paris Landing, New Portland, Reynoldsburg, Fowler’s Landing, Perryville and East Perryville (population 30), Marvin’s Bluffs, Brownsport, Cedar Creek, Decatur, and Carrollville. Fort Henry, which first brought large numbers of Federals to the river, was located two miles over the Kentucky border on the eastern bank. Danville, site of a noted railroad bridge, was 115 miles from Paducah, while the east bank town of Clifton (population 300) was 75 miles further up. Clifton, according to Crawford, was a “­­neat-looking village” situated “on a high and uneven bank.” The defunct town of Carrollton was a mile below. Additional towns included Point Pleasant, Cerro Gordo, Coffee’s Landing, and Savannah (population 500), the latter 33 miles above Clifton. “A very old town,” it had “but one street and that runs east from the river.” Pittsburgh Landing (233 miles above Paducah and site of the famous 1862 battle) was the next important point, though hardly known before the fight. Big Bend Landing was above. Eastport, now a ghost town, was the major Mississippi state community on the Tennessee River in the 1860s. Located 261 miles above Paducah, it was the head of navigation and thrived as a port until the Memphis and Charleston Railroad arrived at Iuka. Alabama towns include Chickasaw, Waterloo, Tuscumbia (about a mile inland of the river), and Florence (population of 1,000). Today’s head of navigation is 280 miles from the river’s mouth; during the 19th century, it was noted for its fine ­­cross-stream bridge. Much further below, just about 30 miles from Chattanooga, lies Bridgeport, which became an important Union shipbuilding center late in the war.10 The Cumberland drains an 18,­­0 00-square-mile watershed and runs north



1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation 23

into the Ohio River at Smithland, Kentucky. The Lower Cumberland, which winds through highland valleys and ridges, runs 192 miles from Smithland to Nashville and has an average width of 600 to 700 feet. Steamers, usually ­­stern-wheelers, could navigate it for about half the year. Burnside, 358 river miles above Nashville, was the head of ­­low-water navigation on the Upper Cumberland, where the steaming season was confined to the higher water periods from December through May. The ­­6 87-mile-long Cumberland River, the second largest tributary of the Ohio River after the Tennessee River, begins in Letcher County in eastern Kentucky on the Cumberland Plateau and flows southeast before crossing into northern Tennessee; it then curves back up into western Kentucky, running parallel as it does with the Tennessee. At one point prior to the TVA era, the two streams came to within about a mile of one another at a narrow neck of land which was known on the Cumberland as Kelly’s Landing. Upriver from Dover, the Cumberland veered away from her sister and headed east toward Nashville. The Cumberland Valley between Burnside and Carthage, Tennessee, is about a mile to a mile and a half wide, with the river varying in width from 550 to 600 feet. At the time of the Civil War, the riverbanks were “generally very thickly wooded with heavy hills overlooking the banks.” When the Cumberland began to fall, “the water recedes so fast that there is great danger to being caught,” wrote Lt. Cmdr. Fitch in 1863. The stream frequently rose and fell “with such rapidity that a difference of from eight to twelve feet in 24 hours” was “of no uncommon occurrence.” At Carthage, the valley and the river widen south into the Central Basin, and the river eventually reenters the Highland Rim about 14 miles below Nashville. In the 1860s, the Upper Cumberland averaged about 600 feet in width “inside the trees” which lined its banks. At least 10 major shoals obstructed the Lower Cumberland, with the most challenging being the 4.­­3-mile-long obstacle formed of gravel bars and rocky ledges and collectively known as the Harpeth Shoals. In the early 1860s, boats had “great difficulty” getting above this point, located “about 160 miles from the mouth and 35 miles from Nashville.” At low water, the Cumberland River was not navigable for boats drawing over 15 inches, that being the average depth on Harpeth Shoals. Indeed, many ­­Nashville-bound craft from Louisville and the north never made it that far, being halted by shoals at Eddyville, just upstream from Smithland. The Upper Cumberland between Carthage and Burnside was impeded at low water by 16 shoals and bars. “At almost any time, the river became very narrow in making the turns and frequently boats got very much broken up,” Fitch reported in 1863. “In making the trip to Carthage,” he continued, “boats frequently are compelled to lower their smokestacks and then suffer much from having their upper works much broken up by the branches of trees.” The stream, Fitch observed, was “so low during the summer and the bars so frequent and close as to prevent an effectual patrol, even had we all the boats for it alone.” Among the towns and cities on the Cumberland River in Tennessee and Kentucky between Carthage and Smithland which may be mentioned in our narrative are the following: in Tennessee, Ashland City (near the head of Harpeth Shoals, some 33 miles below Nashville), Betseytown (at the foot of Harpeth Shoals), Carthage,

24

After Vicksburg

Clarksville (a major port due to Harpeth Shoals, which blocked access to Nashville below at low water), Cumberland City, Dover (near Fort Donelson), Gallatin, Gratton, Lebanon, Nashville, Palmyra, Rome, and Watkins. River communities in Kentucky included Canton, Rockcastle, Eddyville (site of a large Union supply depot), Eureka, Kuttawa, Pickneyville, Smithland, which was something of a boomtown during the conflict, and Woodville. Lt. Cmdr. Fitch gave Porter, his superior (and us), few notes as to his impressions of these towns, the most important of which were Nashville (“The Star of the Cumberland”), Clarksville (today, the state’s fifth largest town), and Smithland (“the first town on the bluff,” located a mile upstream from the mouth of the Cumberland). He did, however, note, in a March 17, 1863, review of the river itself that Palmyra, between Donelson and Clarksville, and Beatstown [Betsy Town] Landing, at Harpeth Shoals, are the most noted guerrilla haunts. I have burned and destroyed all the stores or houses near the shoals frequented by guerrillas.11

With this slight review of the Western waters completed, it might be best to digress—before proceeding further—and review the impact of the seasons and tests of navigation. If not already known, these would have been among the first and most important lessons absorbed by gunboatmen, army officers, and military logisticians upon their arrival in the Western theater. The many new officers and men who joined the brown water war after Vicksburg—particularly those from the east—found then, as now, that the August weather along the lower rivers was very hot and the challenges of water movement quite different from what they were a few weeks past. Getting physically up and down the river safely would be as critical to the Union war effort in 1863–1865 as it was before Vicksburg was taken. In his delightful ­­e arly-20th-century illustrated children’s work Paddle Wheels and Pistols, Irvin Anthony wrote of the great rivers during the conflict. The Mississippi, he remarked, “remained neutral in the Civil War.” While its steamboats became gunboats and engaged in deadly struggle, “the great river paid no heed.” In its various hazards, it was not partisan, a “respecter of causes.” Often the streams “seemed to mock the efforts of the warriors” by snag, current, or low water. “The malice of the river was like that, it was ever so impartial,” Anthony concluded, adding the wry thought, “Perhaps, after all, it smiled.” Hot, cold, wet, and dry weather, usually seasonal, fashioned the volume, speed, and depth of the Western rivers. These key factors determined nautical access for ­­steam-powered vessels at any given time. Some of the larger streams, such as the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee, were, except at certain blocking points like the Muscle Shoals, usually wide and blessed with ­­year-round deep channels scoured by fast water. These streams were home not only to the gunboats, but increasingly to large, side- or ­­stern-wheel merchantmen not unlike those associated with the famous Broadway musical Showboat. The hydrology of most of the tributaries for both the Mississippi and the Ohio, like the Cumberland and White, was less magnanimous. Narrow widths, curves and steep rock banks, slow water and buildups of silt and loose logs caused low water and navigational risk. From the beginning of the steamboat period in the 1820s to its end in the 20th century, all riverboat activities were governed first and foremost by the moisture or



1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation 25

lack thereof in the various seasons. These seasons were different in different parts of the Mississippi River system, depending upon geographical location. It was generally recognized that river depth increased as one moved from a stream’s headwaters to its mouth or from tributary to main river. Rains, snow, floods, and drought determined the river depths and thus the size of vessel which could operate in any given stream at any given time. In the words of famed steamboat historian Louis Hunter: “Each part of the river system rose and fell almost continuously according to a variety of controlling conditions, many of which were not shared by other parts at the same time.” In practice, the maxim became the smaller the river or the lower the stream, the lighter the boat draft required. The key to commercial—and later, military—success, particularly on the tributaries, was employment of very light boats requiring very little water on which to float. These were often powered by a single paddle wheel mounted in the stern. Usually beginning in the early spring, melting snow and ice plus rain swelled streams. These ran into the smaller rivers, like the Nolichuckey in Tennessee, which, in turn, ran into the intermediate tributaries like the Tennessee River, and then eventually raised the levels of the trunk rivers, Mississippi, Ohio, etc.

A sternwheeler. The key to Civil War Western rivers commercial and military success, particularly on the tributaries of the Mississippi, was the employment of very light boats requiring very little water in which to float. These were often powered by a single paddle wheel mounted in the stern, as shown here aboard the America, plying between Vicksburg and New Orleans (ca. 1904) (Library of Congress).

26

After Vicksburg

This annual “spring rise” marked the opening of the steamboat navigation season, the duration of which was different for every river depending upon its ecology and physical characteristics, particularly shoals. The steaming period on the larger rivers depended not only on this one rise, but on various rises or “freshs,” which were, in turn, determined by the weather. Generally, the hotter summer months saw a drop in the river stages, particularly in the upper half of the Mississippi Valley; water levels could fall so far as to greatly restrict navigation or prohibit it entirely. In the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee Rivers, and even the White River in Arkansas, the ­­low-water period usually began sometime in June and ended about the last of September. Even though, for example, the Lower Ohio could be “very high” at the end of April, it could be quite reduced by July. Severe summer thunderstorms could result in a “fresh,” which might, at least briefly, allow intensification of previously restricted gunboat activities. Skilled rivermen aboard both naval and civilian steamers could tell a river’s stage, rising or falling, by using a lead or even watching floating driftwood. Newspapers and publishers throughout the West had long provided readers, as they would into the future, with detailed information on the water stages of the rivers, both locally and regionally. The rivermen themselves, not only those working the boats but those in shore establishment, kept track as well. For example, the Neal brothers, owners of the Jefferson Foundry and Machine Works in Madison, Indiana, were among the first in 1861 to provide Federal officers with firsthand information regarding drafts of water in the Ohio: Four feet draft with some certainty after middle of October; five feet draft 1st of November; six feet draft with great certainty after 15th of November. This, in ordinary seasons, a very dry summer and dry early autumn, will give less water in October, but the middle of November will very surely give from five to six feet draft.

Edward D. Mansfield, a ­­well-known contemporary newspaperman, writer, and former college professor, has also given us data on the great rivers based upon his own travels up and down the Mississippi and Ohio. From him, we learn that Civil War gunboatmen could expect that “the lower Ohio will probably have as much as five feet of water ’till the middle of July, the lowest water being generally in September and October.” “In the Mississippi River,” he added, “there is more water so that from Cairo down there will be little or no difficulty.” The most dangerous places at low water from Mansfield’s own observations were between Cairo and Memphis. Other physical aspects of the Western rivers not appreciated by those unfamiliar with them included such concepts as crooked channels; those watery paths were not straight, but tended to weave across the different expanses, often revealing themselves by depth or color. Just before RAdm. Porter assumed command of the Mississippi Squadron in October 1862, a report was sent to Navy Assistant Secretary Gustavus V. Fox by his predecessor that conveyed some sense of this phenomenon: There are no fixed channels in these great rivers, as there are in the sounds, estuaries, and harbors of the Atlantic; quite otherwise; the channels are always changing, not only from year to year, but from season to season, during the period of rise and fall particularly.

Oftentimes, little hills, plateaus, bars, or even islands appeared in the rivers. At one point, it was noted that some 98 islands could be seen in the Ohio River. Rapids,



1. The Western Waters, Topography, Towns, and Navigation 27

particularly the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville and Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee, were the most dangerous navigational obstructions, though swift currents were always to be avoided. Additionally, boulders, unmarked sunken boats, and thick foliage could pose navigational dangers. Trees often grew right down to the banks, and, largely due to erosion, just as often fell in; as “snags,” they could hit and even sink steamboats. By November of 1863, snags had become a major problem in the Mississippi, so much so that it was suggested they were as dangerous or maybe more so than guerrillas lurking along the riverbanks. The underwater obstructions had become so numerous that seldom a week went by but what one or two steamers were not struck, “often becoming total losses.” Occasionally, through nature or military purpose, great collections of wood and other debris would form into ­­channel-blocking obstructions called rafts. The collapse of a large Confederate raft would help lead to their loss at Vicksburg while the Federals would spend considerable time and money removing these blockages postwar.

The snagboat Montgomery. Large trees which fell into the rivers often became “snags,” able to hit or even sink steamers. By November of 1863, they had become a major problem in the Mississippi, so much so that it was suggested they were as dangerous or maybe more so than “guerrillas” lurking along the riverbanks. Both before and after the Civil War, the Federal government deployed special boats in an effort to diminish the navigational danger. The Montgomery, now a museum, was active on this duty from 1925 to 1982 (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers).

28

After Vicksburg

The fall rise, which was more unpredictable as to its beginning or end than that in the spring, could often be counted upon to provide good steaming into December. Commonly, the main rivers in our Western of operations did not freeze in wintertime, allowing riverine warfare to continue. Conventional wharves were few; boats could and did tie up along or push into banks as required.12

2

Setting the Stage The U.S. Mississippi Squadron, Summer 1863 Sailors aboard the Federal warships participating in the siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana, became aware on July 7, 1863, that many of their bluejacket colleagues deployed 130 miles upstream were present at the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi, three days earlier. News of the victory, which was forwarded from the scene by steamer and telegraph, reached the U.S. capital at Washington, D.C., simultaneously and was hence passed to the populace. Almost simultaneously, the 6,000 Confederate soldiers penned into Port Hudson’s defenses—virtually without rations after 47 days of confinement—also learned of the Southern disaster. Realizing further resistance was futile, the post surrendered two days later. The 2,­­3 48-mile-long Mississippi River—the North’s most important internal trade route closed for the past two years—was opened. The Union had now retrieved full access to the Gulf and other commercial markets and points of engagement and ended a growing regional anxiety in the Northwestern states. At the same time, it was faced with the occupation, use (both political and economic), and protection of far more territory. Although slicing off Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana from the Southeast effectively cut the Confederacy in half, it did not end the war.1 During the last week of July 1863, RAdm. David Dixon Porter, commander of the U.S. Mississippi Squadron, steamed south from Vicksburg to New Orleans, Louisiana, aboard his flagboat, the Black Hawk. He had learned soon after the fall of Port Hudson that the West Gulf Blockading Squadron had been ordered back downstream and that its commander, his foster brother RAdm. David Glasgow Farragut, was ordered to concentrate its activities in the Gulf of Mexico. Responsibility for the inland naval campaign above the Crescent City now passed to his fleet, based at Cairo, Illinois. Upon his August 1 arrival, Porter met Farragut for most of the day aboard the latter’s flagship, USS Hartford, to coordinate the transfer of responsibilities. During the discussions, Porter proudly let it be known that “the Mississippi River was undisturbed by the enemy from Cairo to New Orleans.” Farragut departed the port the next morning for the Brooklyn Navy Yard while Porter remained for staff discussions and local inspections. The Black Hawk departed New Orleans on August 5 and returned to the main squadron base at Cairo eleven days later. Coming within sight of his units’ two-year-old main anchorage, Porter may have thought unconsciously of an observation written by 29

30

After Vicksburg

the Englishman William H. Russell, as he approached the place aboard a commercial steamer just after the outbreak of the war. “With the exception of the large hotel, which rises far above the levee of the river,” the famous war correspondent recorded, “the public edifices are represented by a church and spire, and the rest of the town by a line of shanties and small houses, the rooms and upper stories of which are just visible above the embankment.” After anchoring, the first person Porter welcomed aboard his steamer was Capt. Alexander M. Pennock, who, as fleet captain, was his top subordinate. A favorite, noticeably far less colorful than his chief, Pennock was regarded by the admiral and others as one of the smartest and best administrative officers in the entire USN. It was Pennock who had ensured the constant flow of men, ships, and material to the Mississippi RAdm. David Dixon Porter. Porter led the Squadron during the Vicksburg cam- Union’s Mississippi Squadron from Octopaign while also supervising naval oper- ber 1863 to October 1864, working closely ations on the rivers in the upper part of with top U.S. Army generals in the Westthe theater. As the two men reviewed ern theater. During this time, he occasioned important administrative and logistical recent events and exchanged thoughts improvements while supporting various on future operations and necessities, operations and campaigns, including the they appreciated that their nautical capture of Vicksburg and the Red River organization, despite some continuing Expedition (Library of Congress). problems and needs, had grown significantly since RAdm. Andrew H. Foote had officially launched it in September 1861. Union president Abraham Lincoln would offer a sincere appreciation of the navy on August 26 in a letter to James C. Conkling: “Nor must Uncle Sam’s web feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but … wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been, and made their tracks.” Although the two Illinois politicians did not know the Civil War had reached its halfway point in length of time, it is possible that they, like other Westerners, sensed the public attention paid to the opening of the Mississippi would now begin to fade. Still the commerce plying the great waterway, which again flowed “unvexed to the sea,” would need to be protected and the military work of ending the rebellion in this area supported to its completion. Before, however, progressing to the ­­after-Vicksburg river war, let’s begin with a brief midwar profile of the Mississippi Squadron, starting with, to borrow a modern and somewhat inappropriate term, its shore establishment.2 ­­B oot-shaped Cairo (locally pronounced Kay’ro or Care’o) lay 215 miles down the



2. Setting the Stage31

Mississippi by water at the junction with the Ohio River. The main headquarters for Western naval operations, the town, with an 1860 population of 2,000, was located at the southernmost tip of Illinois in an area called “Little Egypt.” An important railroad destination, it was named a “port of delivery” for steamboat traffic by an 1854 Act of Congress. The state’s politicians, realizing it was one of the most strategic locations in the entire Midwest, chose it for the military just after Fort Sumter and speedily provided a garrison. Cmdr. John Rodgers, USN, and his successor, RAdm. Andrew Hull Foote, who had charge of the U.S. Army’s Western Gunboat Flotillla, also saw the value of Cairo, making it the squadron’s primary upriver depot or base a few days after Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assumed command of the town in September 1861. As James B. Eads explained to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles while painting a visual picture of the town’s geography several months earlier, batteries established there could “control the passage of vessels bound up or down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.” The ­­cross-channel banks of the Ohio were within cannon shot of Cairo; however, those on the Missouri shore across the Mississippi were nearly two miles away on the other side of a large sandbar. A highly regarded riverman and father of the City Series ironclads, Eads had originally informed Washington leadership that the little community had “a broad ­­three-mile long levee front on the Ohio River that was raised about 14 feet above the natural level of the city.” Indeed, it was the only Illinois city surrounded by levees. A barrier of the same height and almost the same length as on the Ohio extended on the Mississippi River side of the town. This one was set back 100 to 1,000 yards from the river’s edge to keep it safe from the natural caving of the riverbank. From this levee, across from the Ohio River, a levee extends of the same height, “by which the town is protected from the backwater.” The city’s historian later revealed that the city essentially sat in a basin from which people ascended and descended the levee on foot via “long flights of wooden steps at the intersections of the unimproved and often very muddy streets.” If they had been privy to Eads’ originally boosterism, Porter and Pennock might have been intrigued by the famed salvage expert’s description of this place as a delta when in fact, as John M. Lansden noted, it sat in a long flat plain with the lowest elevation of any place in Illinois. So it was that Cairo, as noted by the blogger “Taylor,” “became extremely muddy during heavy rains or ­­s wollen-river stages, in spite of the levee, which made it a virtual mud pond.” While steam pumps constantly addressed the seepage, the streets seemed covered in some amount of muck at all times. Swamps also covered the land north of the city to such an extent that the only reliable ­­year-round land access to Cairo was provided by the Illinois Central Railroad, which began in 1856. Operating south from Galena in the northwest corner of the state, it was now the state’s longest rail company. Service into its southernmost terminus came via a causeway over the outlying morass. Inside town limits, the road split into a loop running down just inland of the Ohio River levee and then up the Mississippi levee to join once more. Upon reaching the station, passengers and freight requiring further lift transferred to steamers. During the Civil War, the Illinois Central proved a vital communication link, bringing in many of the required military and naval men and supplies. Specially designated construction trains also brought in carloads of sand to help address the river seepage. Cairo’s principal thoroughfare, Ohio Street, sat parallel to the eastern levee

32

After Vicksburg

The Cairo base. The Ohio River levee and wharf boats at Cairo, Illinois, ca. 1862–1863. As no land in the town could be spared for a naval facility, the USN presence existed aboard old steamers, wharf boats, flatboats, rafts, and tugboats. Also visible are Union Army horse stables and the Illinois Central Rail Road passenger depot and sheds (Library of Congress).

on that stream. It was home to the famous ­­five-storied St. Charles Hotel that correspondent Russell observed just before his 1861 arrival, as well as the railroad station, military headquarters in the Ohio Building, and offices and warehouses for the quartermasters. The next street over was Halliday Street while the furthest west was Commercial, with a huge parade ground a block south. In addition to churches and saloons, other community establishments available included the post office, several businesses, the Atheneum Theater, stables, a blacksmith and a harness shop, a druggist, a gun shop, a wheelwright shop, and a small hospital. The sidewalks, such as they were, were wooden planks, and citizens and all those coming in from outside to swell the population were unhappy with Cairo’s humid climate, disease, bugs and numerous rats. It seemed that the edges of the town bristled with artillery and, in early 1862, the military established the town’s two bastions, Fort Holt and Fort Defiance. The latter, today the site of a state park, was the largest, “a large ­­flat-topped mound on which cannon were placed,” three ­­24-pounders and an ­­8-inch mortar to be exact. Cairo’s steamboat landing was located at its foot of the Ohio Street levee, just up from the Ohio River confluence with the Mississippi. Here patrons and freight arrived from up and down the rivers, went ashore or departed. Given that the height of the water was so variable that fixed wharfs were impractical, a line of barges and floating wharf boats ran up and down the shoreline. The former held bulk items like coal while the latter provided storage and office space. Wharf boats were common to most larger landing sites on the Western rivers and were either ­­covered-over flatboat hulls upon which sheds were constructed or ­­cut-down steamers no longer fit for service. Many of Cairo’s wharf boats—and other businesses—were owned in partnership by two of the town’s foremost entrepreneurs, William P. Halliday and his partner,



2. Setting the Stage33

Wharf boats and gun boats. City Class ironclad gunboats (left to right) Baron de Kalb, Cincinnati, and Mound City off Cairo, Illinois, in 1863, with wharf boats moored in the foreground. The base was largely formed from wharf boats before its transfer upstream to Mound City (Naval History and Heritage Command).

George Washington (“Wash”) Graham. A former steamboat captain, newspaperman, and government surveyor, Halliday had relocated a giant wharf boat to the base of the levee in February 1861, where it was available to be rented by Gen. Grant that summer and later provided needed space for the offices of the Western Gunboat Flotilla and the Mississippi Squadron. RAdm. Foote and his two successors outfitted their vessels afloat at this Cairo location, providing them with men, supplies, ordnance, and ammunition and effecting some basic repairs. Since Cairo had no land available for base facilities, sundry specific functions (like the repair shop), as well as vital supplies and some fixed ammunition, were initially housed afloat aboard the principal wharf boat, near and to which some vessels moored as needed or when not anchored in designated river locations. Coal supplies were kept in nearby barges and, as the number or size of specialized tasks (like shell storage or disease isolation) increased other dedicated steamers, flatboats and rafts were acquired. From fall 1861, new hands forwarded from recruiting rendezvous (stations) near or far by boat or train or transferred from other vessels reported aboard a designated receiving ship. By the time Vicksburg fell, it was not uncommon to see numerous gunboats and auxiliaries anchored offshore or tied to one of the stationary support craft, with small boats or tugs ferrying men and materiel around. At one point in ­­mid-November 1863, a Philadelphia reporter counted in excess of two dozen Mississippi Squadron and Mississippi Marine Brigade boats, plus a number of ­­laid-up mortar boats, in port.3 While Cairo remained the inland Union Navy’s principal base in the weeks after

34

After Vicksburg

the fall of Vicksburg, it was, in fact, already being eclipsed in importance by the station at Mound City, Illinois. This village, which lay seven miles up the Ohio River at its confluence with the Cache River, was founded by Maj. Gen. Moses Marshal Rawlings in 1854 on the site of Trinity, an abandoned settlement. A series of Indian burial mounds were in the area, the largest of which was adjacent to the Ohio River. A hotel was built near this landmark, honored with the simple moniker “Big Mound,” and during the summer guests slept atop it to escape the heat. Most of the other mounds were lost to farming. When it merged with Emporium City in 1857, Mound City retained its corporate name. The subsumed location was begun as a real estate venture by Cincinnati businessmen who hoped to create a rival for Cairo. To do so, they established a business center along the riverbank, where construction of a large brick storehouse was begun at Commerce Avenue and Center Avenue. and a shipyard with a tracked marine ways running into the river was started. Also employed by James B. Eads at Carondelet, Missouri, this kind of equipment could raise or lower a steamboat from or to the water by cables attached to a small steam engine. Unfortunately for the capitalists, as Paymaster Edward Huling tells us, their “speculation was a failure.”

Cairo to Mound City river bend. In 1863, the functions of the Cairo naval base were transferred to a leased 10-acre riverbank location at Mound City, Illinois, six miles upstream and adjacent to the private shipyard where three of the “City Series” gunboats were built. Here a naval station was opened and it continued beyond the end of the war. Wharf boats, stationary contract steamers, flatboats, tugs, and barges were also employed, while various ironclads were, on occasion, anchored in the river bend downstream (Library of Congress).



2. Setting the Stage35

In an effort to salvage something of the project after their town closed, the Emporium Company sold the newly finished shipyard to Samuel and William Hambleton of the Queen City in 1859, with the latter serving as superintendent. The Hambletons operated the Cincinnati Marine Ways, which later partnered with Joseph Brown in the conversion of the Union Navy’s tinclads. In 1861 when Capt. Eads won a contract to construct seven ironclad gunboats for the U.S. Army, he sublet the work on three of them—subsequently named USS Cairo, Cincinnati, and Mound City—to Hambleton at Mound City. Meanwhile, private interests had constructed a Mound City Railroad, which connected with the Illinois Central Railroad at Mounds, Illinois, six miles inland, and ensured the delivery of supplies, construction materials, and workmen. Upon the capture of Fort Henry on the Tennessee River in February 1862, the three available Federal timberclads mounted a raid downstream during which they captured the incomplete Confederate ironclad Eastport. Arrangements were made to take her to Mound City for an expensive completion as a Union gunboat. Hambleton, who had signed an exclusive $40,000 a year construction and repair contract for the marine ways with the U.S. government “for the duration,” was retained in charge of the operation, subject to certain USN direction. The yard, with whatever improvements were made, would revert to the owners when peace returned. Henceforth, major ship repairs and some construction or conversion was handled at Mound City and the workforce grew to almost 1,800 men. On October 1, 1862, the War Department transferred the Western Gunboat Flotilla to the Navy Department, along with responsibility for Mound City’s nautical activities. In 1862 alone, in excess of 50 vessels were built, altered, repaired or docked at the shipyard and so important would the facility become that, at war’s end, it would be the site chosen for demobilization of the Mississippi Squadron and sale of most of its warships. On July 1, 1863, the U.S. government received a lease and took possession of a ­­ten-acre portion of the Mound City riverfront known as Rawlings’ Reservation in order to build a regular navy station. The land acquired included several warehouses and the town railroad station that was necessarily moved elsewhere. Porter and Pennock busily reviewed how they would develop their new base, transfer most of the Cairo operation to it, and grow the amount of work to be performed by the mechanics and laborers commanded by Chief Engineer William Faulkner and Naval Constructor Romeo Frigansa. Despite access to maintenance facilities at Memphis and New Orleans, Mound City would become the principal Mississippi Squadron repair, refitting, and outfitting location for the reminder of its existence. On May 13, 1864, the Eastern public was officially reminded of what area citizens already knew: “The Navy Department has been removed from this place [Cairo] to Mound City, six miles above.” In addition to her military duties, Cairo, herself, had “become a great cotton mart,” with “vast piles of cotton on every side,” growing larger every day. On May 7, for example, a barge containing over 1,000 bales arrived from the Ouachita River, with “much of it only tied, having no covering.” Over the next couple of years, the naval station and depot, which was situated right along the Ohio River shore, would grow further out on both sides of “Big Mound,” with new buildings added and older ones enhanced. Because Mound City, like Cairo, was frequently inundated by high water, plank walks were also abundant here as well and some of the buildings were built on piles.

36

After Vicksburg

Entrance to the station was through a gate (protected by a Marine) in front of “Big Mound.” For safety, a guard post was established on the landmark’s flat summit, complete with a shack, a cannon, and a flagpole. The squadron anchorage lay in the river directly to the east and, as at Cairo, the coal supply and certain repair and other functions would be maintained afloat aboard specialized barges. A wharf boat for certain supplies was also employed but, unhappily, it caught fire and was destroyed with its contents, valued at approximately $500,000, on June 2, 1864. As at all squadron anchorages, a guardship and picket boats were regularly on duty. Located along the bank on either side of “Big Mound” were the marine ways, the lumberyard, sawmill and other woodworking facilities, the foundry, machine shops, carpenters shops, the blacksmith shop, supply and stores shops, a large ordnance office, a gun carriage storage building, barracks for the marine guard, and offices. Homes for residents of the hamlet lay inland of the base, along with some contractor housing. Upstream from the naval station and slightly inland was the huge naval hospital, seized by the government in fall 1861 and converted from the Emporium Company’s large unfinished warehouse. Its medical staff included nurses from the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana. Even with over a thousand beds, it had proved necessary to relocate most of the hospital’s services to the more centrally located Memphis Naval Hospital in spring 1863. During the squadron liquidation in the summer of 1865, many patients were transferred back. At the same time, the U.S. Army Medical Department, in cooperation with the Western Sanitary Commission, was also served by the Mound City facility, as well as hospitals in other locations (principally

Mound City wharf boat. A view from the shore (right); stores were kept below deck while supply and administrative offices were above. The floating depot was destroyed by fire on June 2, 1864, and Paymaster Charles E. Boggs, USN, was badly injured trying to save the squadron’s funds and accounts. Notice the chimneys of two steamers moored nearby (Library of Congress).



2. Setting the Stage37

Memphis), and a small fleet of hospital boats: D. A. January and City of Nashville on the Mississippi River and City of Memphis and City of New Orleans, later R. C. Wood, on the Ohio. When Chicago Daily News reporter J. A. Austen visited Mound City in August 1865 to report on the sale of a part of the fleet, he would find the community of approximately 3,000 a “struggling collection of good, bad and indifferent buildings scattered along the Ohio shore for about two miles and extending a few hundred yards back to the timber.” As they had every spring, usually in June, her streets would show the effects of flooding that extended into nearly every house. Although the boom of wartime business at the naval station would generate a temporary town “animation,” its withdrawal would prove economically disastrous. Mound City, with the basis of her prosperity removed, would have a “dull sleepy look and cheerless aspect,” coming to appear “as near played out as well can be.”4 In addition to the Cairo and Mound City complexes, the Mississippi Squadron in summer 1863 maintained a widely spaced network of regular landings, anchorages, bases and stations running up the Big Muddy from New Orleans to the tip of Illinois and across the Ohio River east to Cincinnati. Among the more important facilities or functions were those found at New Orleans, Louisiana; Vicksburg, Mississippi; Helena, Arkansas; Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee; Carondelet, Missouri; Paducah, Smithland, and Louisville, Kentucky; New Albany, Indiana; and Cincinnati, Ohio. Given the great length of the Mississippi River below Vicksburg,

Mound City hospital and tugboat USS Daisy. Upstream from the Mound City Naval Station and slightly inland was a huge hospital, seized by the government in fall 1861 and converted from a large unfinished warehouse owned by the Emporium Company. Its medical staff included nurses from the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana. The steam tugboat Mulford was transferred to the USN on October 1, 1862, and renamed Daisy. She would be sold out of service at war’s end (Naval History and Heritage Command).

38

After Vicksburg

guarded coal barges were stationed not only at those locations, but at certain river mouths or communities where steamboats normally put in. Among these were the mouths of the White and Red Rivers, towns (not listed in order) such as Morganza, Donaldsonville, Natchez, Baton Rouge, and Bayou Sara, and steamer landings such as Gaines Landing, Arkansas, and Skipwith’s Landing, Mississippi. Fleet auxiliaries or contracted towboats and civilian transports regularly delivered coal barges and sometimes equipment/building supplies or even herds of cattle to these places. They were also visited by the hospital boat Red Rover and replenishment or dispatch vessels. In 1864, a dedicated floating machine shop, USS Samson, would be assigned to Skipwith’s, supplementing repair facilities at Memphis, and by war’s end that location, the mouth of the Red River, and the Memphis naval station, besides New Orleans and Cairo/Mound City, would be the principal sites of the squadron’s major coal depots. Lesser anchorages were maintained at certain forward locations on the tributaries as well, including but not limited to Bridgeport, Alabama; Johnsonville, Fort Donelson/Dover, and Carthage, Tennessee; Point Isabel, Kentucky; and Clarendon and DeValls Bluff, Arkansas. Amenities for the gunboatmen were few and shore leave nonexistent.5 The number of vessels in the Mississippi Squadron in ­­mid-1863 had grown considerably since Cmdr. John Rodgers arrived at Cairo with the timberclads two years earlier. Indeed, RAdm. Porter informed Navy Secretary Gideon Welles that the command, including the craft strung out downstream and on the tributaries, comprised almost 100 vessels. These mounted 462 guns divided between ironclads, timberclads, miscellaneous gunboats and rams, tinclads, auxiliary vessels and tugboats, and seven rams of the Marine Brigade, an amphibious outfit originally established by the U.S. Army. The ironclads included thirteen warships, including six of the seven original ­­purpose-built City Series boats (the Cairo was destroyed in December 1862) and the huge conversions Essex and Benton. These original armorclads (in service or under repair) included the Cincinnati (badly damaged in May 1863), Carondelet, Baron de Kalb (soon a loss), Mound City, Pittsburg, and Louisville. Later arrivals were the giant Choctaw, Lafayette, Tuscumbia, Chillicothe (damaged), Eastport, Osage (in commission only since July 10), Neosho, and Indianola (being salvaged). The hybrid monitor Ozark, constructed at Mound City, was being outfitted at St. Louis and was expected soon. Contracts for four ­­double-turreted monitors (Chickasaw, Kickapoo, Milwaukee, and Winnebago) had been awarded to James B. Eads, builder of the original City Series ironclads, and were laid down at his Carondelet, Missouri, yards in 1862. They would be commissioned between April and August 1864; however, two other river monitors, the Marietta and Sandusky, under construction at the Tomlinson and Hartupee yards in Pittsburgh, would not be ready before war’s end. The inaugural Mississippi Squadron gunboats, converted from civilian steamers under authority of the U.S. War Department for the Western Gunboat Flotilla, were the ­­so-called “timberclads,” Lexington, Tyler, and Conestoga. Converted at Cincinnati in late spring 1861, the three were protected by thick wood and were devoid of any metallic armor. Heavily armed with ­­32-pounders, they were in service by that September. Although the Conestoga would be accidentally sunk in March 1864, her sisters would continue to give yeoman service late into the conflict.



2. Setting the Stage39

Contemporaries of the timberclads, Benton, and City Series ironclads were a fleet of converted reinforced towboats authorized in March 1862 as the U.S. Army Ram Fleet, under the command of Charles Ellet, Jr. Without armor or armament, the Lancaster, Lioness, Mingo, Monarch, Queen of the West, Dick Fulton, and Switzerland had reinforced bows for ramming opposing vessels and played a leading role in the June Battle of Memphis. A few other craft were later acquired, and the entire organization was rebranded as the Mississippi Marine Brigade in early 1863, but would not be transferred to the navy with the rest of the Mississippi Squadron in October. The Queen was captured that February and the Lancaster sunk in March. The MMB would remain a ­­semi-independent command, much to the displeasure of RAdm. Porter, until August 1864, when it would be disestablished and its surviving steamers given other duties. Three Confederate gunboats (CSS General Bragg, CSS General Sumter, and CSS General Sterling Price—the last a ram) were captured at the Battle of Memphis in June 1862, repaired, rearmed, and returned to service under new names: USS General Bragg, USS Sumter, and USS General Price. The Sumter was lost to grounding that August. The ­­7 50-ton Vindicator, built at New Albany, Indiana, in 1862, was turned over to the War Department before documentation for its Marine Brigade and was subsequently transferred to the navy in October. The ­­wooden-hulled vessel was, under supervision of Joseph Brown, converted into a ram in 1863 and would be commissioned in 1864. Brown also converted the ram Avenger, built, acquired,

Mississippi Squadron flagboat Black Hawk. Originally purchased as the New Uncle Sam, this 900-ton sidewheeler was outfitted as the fleet flagship and renamed Black Hawk in December 1862. She carried eight cannon and participated in several major operations, though most of her time was spent on administrative service. She would be accidentally destroyed by fire in April 1865 (Naval History and Heritage Command).

40

After Vicksburg

and converted under the same circumstances. Both craft were unarmored but heavily armed. Conceived of as a separate warship class in late spring 1862, the lightly protected “tinclads” were converted, mostly ­­stern-wheel, steamers armed with boat howitzers in broadside and rifled cannon forward. A total of 55 of the 66 vessels altered were, after capture or USN acquisition, turned over for conversion by Joseph Brown, builder of the ironclads Chillicothe, Indianola, and Tuscumbia, at Cincinnati. When altered, they steamed with skeleton crews to Cairo or Mound City, where they were then armed, outfitted (complete with a number painted on the pilothouse), and crewed. A total of 38 had been placed in commission by August 1863 with only one (Glide) lost so far and that to accident. There was at this time one “large tinclad,” the ­­9 02-ton squadron flagboat Black Hawk, formerly the civilian New Uncle Sam, purchased into service in November 1862. These craft were the multitask units of the squadron and all served, at one time or another, as dispatch and light replenishment vessels, towboats, patrol boats, swift raiders or gunfire support vessels, and anchorage guardians or pickets. Auxiliary vessels of the Mississippi Squadron, often armed for defense, were not primarily combatants, but steamed in support of the warships or on various assigned tasks and services. They could, if necessary, offer convoy to transports steaming alone or help beat off guerrilla attacks. Duties included ordnance, powder and ammunition; dispatch and communication; general transportation and replenishment, including mail and supply distribution and personnel rotation; towing; repair; harbor support, including wharf boat inspection and storage; receiving and barracks; and medical. Two auxiliary transports were normally employed on the Mississippi as dispatch boats, leaving downstream from Cairo or Mound City on the first and fifteenth of each month with mail, certain personal supplies, and passengers. Stops would be made along the way during which an officially licensed sutler carried aboard each craft would, per naval regulations, oversee the sale of authorized items to officers and men. Crewmen on leave and discharge often returned to Cairo aboard while the sick were dropped off at the Memphis naval hospital. A Cincinnati Daily Commercial account reprinted in the December 1, 1863, issue of The Natchez Courier tells us what it was like to be an officer or visitor (e.g., correspondent, clergyman, etc.) taking passage or visiting the fleet aboard one of the dispatch vessels. Each person was charged one dollar per day for meals; no charge being made for the fare, or staterooms, and at the end of the trip, fifty cents extra is charged for the use of bedding. No liquors are allowed to be sold on board or brought on board by officers, and games of chance, cards and dice, are prohibited. Chess and draughts [checkers] may be played. Good hours are required to be kept and the strictest order is preserved.

Among the auxiliaries of RAdm. Porter’s command in service in ­­m id-1863 were, alphabetically, the Cairo storeship, inspection vessel, and wharf boat Abraham, renamed from Virginia, her name when captured at Memphis in June 1862; the transport Clara Dolson, taken on the White River a few weeks later; the ordnance, stores, and dispatch vessel General Lyon, originally named De Soto and captured at Island No. 10 in April 1862; the newly purchased ­­Cincinnati-based receiving ship Grampus; the ordnance and (and after 1864) Cairo and Mound City receiving



2. Setting the Stage41

ship Great Western; the mail, supply, and temporary receiving ship New National seized at Memphis in June 1862; the floating machine shop Samson, originally a unit of the Ellet Ram Fleet; the Cairo commissary and barracks ship Sovereign, also captured at Memphis in 1862; and the dispatch and transport vessel William H. Brown (also known as Brown), purchased into service by the War Department two years earlier and transferred to the navy in October 1862. Eleven ­­flora-named tugboats were also available: Dahlia, Daisy, Fern, Laurel, Lily, Mignonette, Mistletoe, Myrtle, Nettle, Pansy, and Thistle. The most famous of the Mississippi Squadron auxiliaries was the hospital boat Red Rover, long known as the first USN hospital ship, a captured Confederate steamer converted by the U.S. Army as an auxiliary for its Western Gunboat Flotilla. With financing and support from the Western Sanitary Commission, the ­­side-wheeler entered service in June 1862 with a crew of 47 and a ­­30-person medical department, including four white nurses from the Sisters of the Holy Cross and “a select, specially

Dispatch-transport William H. Brown. Transferred to the USN from the War Department in September 1862, this sternwheeler (also known as Brown or W. H. Brown) carried dispatches and supplies from Cairo and Mound City, Illinois, to Union naval vessels and facilities up and down the Mississippi River. Her two howitzers were fired in anger only once, during the 1864 Red River campaign. She would be sold out of service in August 1865 (Naval History and Heritage Command).

42

After Vicksburg

trained group of female contraband nurses.” In addition to an operating room, she was equipped with two water closets on each deck, a galley featuring separate kitchen facilities for patients and staff, an icebox of 300 tons ice capacity, a laundry room with a steam boiler, an elevator for transporting patients between decks, and sufficient supplies and medicines for 200 souls. Transferred to the U.S. Navy in October 1862 and officially commissioned on December 26, 1862, her medical activities were thereafter directed by Fleet Surgeon Ninian A. Pickney. For the next two years, she would cruise up and down the Mississippi caring for the squadron’s sick and wounded afloat and ashore, supplementing her mercy activities by also delivering fresh meat and ice to other naval vessels and providing burial details as requested.6 Much of the combat in the West, both from the earliest days of the Western Gunboat Flotilla and in the years we cover below, was conducted by men, both officers and enlisted, who were neither professional soldiers nor sailors. Just as the Mississippi Squadron had physically grown and its area of responsibility and influence had increased, so too did the number of its personnel. By the end of 1863, despite recruiting difficulties and innovations, the total crew aggregate would total some 5,500 men. Again, as in more recent 21st-century conflicts, the regular military and naval establishments involved were augmented by large numbers of volunteers or draftees.

U.S. Navy hospital boat Red Rover. Outfitted as a true floating hospital by the Western Sanitary Commission, this former Confederate vessel had full medical accommodations and staff, including female nurses from the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana. Under Surgeon in Charge Dr. George Bixby, who took this photograph, the Navy’s first hospital ship entered service in June 1862. She would accommodate over 2,400 patients before her November 1865 decommissioning (Naval History and Heritage Command).



2. Setting the Stage43

U.S. Army hospital boat D. A. January. Purchased into service in early 1862, this 450ton sidewheeler was converted into a hospital boat by the Western Sanitary Commission after first delivering medical supplies to Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, during the Battle of Shiloh. She was outfitted with 400 beds, and her medical staff included four surgeons, nurses (male), attendants, and cooks, under Surgeon in Charge Dr. A. H. Hoff and later Dr. Lewis C. Rice, whose administrative authorities were the same as those exercised by the Surgeon in Charge aboard USS Red Rover. During her service, 23,738 patients were accommodated (description of the Models of Hospital Steam Vessels from the Army Medical Museum, Washington, D.C., 1892).

The exodus of naval officers to the South at the start of the war together with the needs and prejudices of the ­­o cean-going Union fleet meant that the Western brown water navy received few regularly commissioned officers during the Civil War. A handful of former naval officers did join (like John McLeod Murphy of the famous river ironclad Carondelet), but most regulars posted to Cairo as Mississippi Squadron officers were either men of questionable character (like RAdm. Porter’s brother, Cmdr. William “Dirty Bill Porter” of the ironclad Essex) or quite junior in rank. A few had perhaps a little combat experience as lieutenants on vessels, say, in the Mexican War or on the East Indies and China Station. “Many of the younger [naval] officers, too junior to have important sea commands during the course of the war, performed outstanding jobs in individual commands,” wrote naval historian Bern Anderson in 1961. “Henry Walke and Leroy Fitch, on the Western rivers … to name a few, fall within this category.” Fortunately, the volunteer officer corps program, created by Congress in July 1861, allowed RAdm. Foote and his successors to draw upon a significant number of recruits. Many of these gunboatmen, fortunately, had some previous experience on civilian steamboats or sailing traders/whalers and became efficient officers. These men could advance through the ranks from Acting Master’s Mates to Acting Lieutenant Commanders, and in 1864 a Navy Department circular would set out the prerequisites for each. In practice from the beginning of the conflict, it was, for a variety of reasons, more difficult to recruit Mississippi Squadron rankers than officers. However they joined, officers and men from civilian life received much ­­on-the-job training—particularly the enlisted sailors. Those military men with actual naval service had

44

After Vicksburg

something of a leg up and received top postings and often received priority over merchantman veterans. Steamboatmen and merchant sailors were familiar with the basics of seamanship and could more easily transition to naval service than farmhands. Civilian mechanics often made excellent engineers; bookkeepers and teachers were turned into paymasters; and doctors (called surgeons) were frequently recruited right after graduating medical school and sent to the fleet after passing a basic qualifying test. Some who volunteered or transferred to the gunboats by choice did prove effective, yet others were failures, not well regarded by their officers or fellows, and not just because they were seen as “light built (mostly boys)” or physically unequal to their new responsibilities. Regardless of the quality of the men filling the Northern squadron’s hammocks, they were at least on duty. Their education was provided through mostly regular drill and admonition (particularly Sunday services) from officers, as well as newspapers and other materials obtained in ports visited. After Vicksburg was taken, furloughs and liberty were increased for men lucky enough to spend time at a major base town, though those serving off remote locations in the various districts were kept aboard except for sanctioned shore visits. Discipline was, with several notable lapses, maintained at all locations. In one respect, the men were more fortunate than blue water sailors in their GI rations. Their victuals could be supplemented through locally purchased or foraged foodstuffs ranging from blackberries to beef. Space does not permit us to look further at the daily lives of the men who manned the Mississippi Squadron, and so we now leave that to others. During the late spring of 1863 as the Vicksburg campaign reached a climax, RAdm. Porter worried over a recurring manpower deficiency which had plagued his organization since 1861. Relatively few regular officers (about 50) were available, and even worse, enlisted recruits to the engine rooms and lower decks were few despite active recruiting that extended to foreigners and Confederate POWs. At the time of the famous dash past the fortress guns in April, Porter was forced to take a mass transfer of 600 soldiers from the Army of the Tennessee, with 800 African American “contrabands” signed on just to replace discharged bluejackets. As 1863 wore on, both the Union Army and Navy found the contrabands a source of manpower that could be continuously tapped in large numbers and molded into useful soldiers and sailors. Many were recently unshackled slaves, while some were freedmen. Their contribution, though, was not immediately appreciated. A correspondent, writing in the November 30 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune, summed up a widespread belief that “although most every gunboat of the Mississippi River Squadron has more or less of them … they are more efficient as soldiers.” “I could get no men,” RAdm. Porter, not an initial supporter of the idea, later wrote to RAdm. Andrew H. Foote, “so I work in the darkies.” Perhaps remembering his ordeal aboard the tinclad Cricket in the Red River in April 1864, the commander of the Mississippi Squadron confessed his ­­change-of-heart to his predecessor concerning the use of contraband sailors: “They do ­­first-rate, and are far better behaved than their masters.” He became an effective advocate for their recruitment, believing that, by shipping African Americans, he helped to lessen Southern white resistance, politically and militarily. Bringing them into his fleet also partially addressed a



2. Setting the Stage45

continuing scarcity of Caucasian nautical manpower. By fall 1864, “contraband” bluejackets would fill 23 percent of all USN enlisted billets. Being an African American in the Mississippi Squadron was not easy. Segregated and stigmatized by their white fellows, they were paid lower wages as well and were unable to rise above the rank of petty officer. Though he never saw them as equals, Porter still found them healthier and sturdier than sailors recruited further north. Although many were integrated when necessary, say, into gun crews, they usually performed the most menial tasks, afloat and ashore, including all manner of busywork and manual labor, such as shifting stores and coaling ship. Yet and all, the Black contribution to the Western waters war effort was considerable and the participation proud.7 To keep their men informed and to supplement the rules and regulations issued by the Navy Department, most of the Union’s Civil War admirals made their expectations known to the men of their commands through a series of General Orders. One of the more literate of ­­19th-century naval commanders, Porter was among the most prolific, sending out a large number of these orders from the 1862 day he took over the Mississippi Squadron until the day in 1864 he went east. Topics ranged from campaign expectations to ordnance and hygiene instruction. All are reproduced in the Official Records.8 Among the matters of greatest concern to history’s admirals has been the administration and efficient operation of their fleets or squadrons, and Porter was certainly no different in this regard. During his voyage back up the Mississippi from New Orleans in early August, it is probable that he devoted some time to a consideration of what changes might be made in or added to an organizational directive he had first issued as General Order No. 80 three months earlier. In a meeting with Capt. Pennock following his Cairo return, he likely sought the captain’s advice on a revised and forthcoming administrative edict. While the final push against Vicksburg was underway back in May, it is probable that the squadron commander, when taking the time to consider his unit’s deployment in the months ahead, had recalled a preliminary and partial divisional reconfiguration in April. While Porter was below in the months after Christmas, he left Pennock largely in charge of the fleet’s upriver section, with particular responsibility for ensuring smooth logistical support for the U.S. Army campaigns in Kentucky and Tennessee. Although the fleet captain had appointed an efficient executive officer for this mission, it was soon found that there were too few gunboats and sailors to accomplish all that was expected over the huge area. In March, Pennock asked his superior, then off Vicksburg, to permit him to divide the upper river task force into two tasks groups, to be coordinated from Cairo. The scheme was ordered implemented by Porter on April 15. When General Order No. 84 was issued on August 20, it, together with continued portions of No. 80, would provide the Union’s brown water navy with a detailed operational guide. From time to time over the next year as the squadron grew in size, it would be amplified by later General Orders. As this blueprint would be followed for the remainder of the conflict (though strained considerably during the 1864 Red River and Nashville campaigns), it is worthwhile to review it here in some detail. RAdm. Porter issued the inaugural outline of his divisional administrative plan “with characteristic energy” on May 20, General Order No. 20, for the U.S. Mississippi Squadron. His directive divided the operational area of the Mississippi

46

After Vicksburg

Squadron into six geographical “sections,” each, as the admiral later wrote, “extending between specified points” that corresponded to certain river lengths. Given the July triumph at Vicksburg and the withdrawal of RAdm. Farragut’s fleet from the river, the district scheme was first modified in ­­mid-August, when the sections became “districts” and a new disposition was announced. District # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Location New Orleans to Donaldsonville, Louisiana Donaldsonville to Red River Red River to Natchez, Mississippi Natchez, Mississippi, to Vicksburg, Mississippi Vicksburg, Mississippi, to White River White River to Cairo, Illinois Cairo, Illinois, to head of Tennessee River Cumberland River to its source + Upper Ohio River

The waters within these boundaries were “filled up with ­­light-draft or ‘tinclad’ vessels, to cruise up and down the river and carry dispatches.” The light draughts in this chain were intended to be “strung along the river between ironclads.” Lookouts aboard were “to watch the shore very close and capture every strolling party they may come across.” Boats and skiffs encountered along the banks were to be captured and “every available method” taken to break up and disperse guerrillas, preventing troops and munitions from crossing. Ferries were regulated to prevent the passage to and fro of unauthorized persons. The new geographical units, initially called “sections,” were led by divisional officers, all trusted regular navy officers, who commanded a certain number of named vessels. For example, Division Four from Natchez to Vicksburg was led from the Benton by Lt. Cmdr. James A. Greer. It also included four tinclads, as well as two other ironclads, Carondelet and Pittsburg. It was seen as particularly important for these officers to cultivate “good feelings” with local inhabitants and prevent any improprieties ashore by their sailors. Porter’s leaders were also charged with the maintenance of “strict discipline,” for cooperation with various U.S. Army officers, and were to employ all of their spare time directly or by mandate to their subordinates “exercising the men with the great guns and small arms.” The district chiefs would approve all acquisitions (except money) and forward on all communications from subordinates to Cairo. It went without saying, as many of the tinclad captains and officers were new or untested, that considerable guidance for them was also required. Additionally, it was understood that vessels within a district could not leave station without the authority of the district leader and could not depart the district except in great emergency or with an order from RAdm. Porter. When a transport or convoy was to be escorted across several districts, gunboats from each district would rendezvous with it and provide escort through the assigned area. Confinement of these task groups to certain river sectors and familiar association between their personnel allowed those involved, including the district officer, gunboat commanders, pilots, and crews, to develop significant knowledge of local river conditions as well as intelligence concerning Confederate activities and practice.



2. Setting the Stage47

The vessels in these new districts would serve in all manner of capacities, with all but the heaviest support usually provided by the light draughts. At any given time, they would be, in single mission or combination, patrol and convoy escort boats, gunfire support vessels, swift raiders, minesweepers, troop ship guardians or anchorage pickets, dispatch and light replenishment vessels, towboats, and occasionally VIP transports. As additional light draughts became available to the districts in 1864, ironclads would largely remain all but stationary, some of them being quite battle weary after three years of war. For speed, district commanders would usually oversee activities within their commands from the deck of a tinclad. As the war intensified further east and down the Western rivers following the spring 1864 Red River campaign, RAdm. Porter found it necessary to revise his district plan in order to increased demand with the resources available. Two more ­­administrative-operational units were promulgated in new General Orders published on May 20 and 27. This chart represents the district breakdown which, with the fall addition of an Eleventh District to cover the Upper Tennessee, would remain largely the same for the rest of the war: District #

Location

 1

New Orleans to Donaldsonville, Louisiana

 2

Donaldsonville to Morganza, Louisiana

 3

Morganza, Louisiana, to Fort Adams, Mississippi/LA

 4

Fort Adams, MS/LA to Natchez, Mississippi

 5

Natchez, Mississippi, to Vicksburg, Mississippi

 6

Vicksburg, Mississippi, to Arkansas River

 7

Arkansas River to Memphis, Tennessee

 8

Memphis, Tennessee, to Columbus, Kentucky

 9

Cairo, Illinois, to head of Tennessee River

10

Cumberland River to its source + Upper Ohio River

This decentralized district plan worked well and, having provided these general rules, RAdm. Porter did not often interfere with the routine work of his area commanders. All of his officers—particularly ­­battle-tested leaders—were given the necessary authority to carry out their duties, were supported in their actions, and, for the most part, were not ­­second-guessed. “It is difficult to determine the importance of Porter’s district policy in Union naval control of the rivers,” wrote a group of distinguished scholars in 1986, “but the evidence strongly suggests that it was effective and efficient.” Writing in 2007, Gary D. Joiner stated that this “district system worked as planned.” He continued: “The rivers were never without a ­­well-armed patrol, and the gunboats appeared along the same stretch of river often, but at irregular intervals.” Mark Jenkins amplified this opinion in 2013 when he wrote that the approach permitted the warships to reach “trouble spots and deal with matters, and then [to] leave once the job was done, so that there was no stationary ‘occupying’ force that might have increased local resentment.” Ever since his assumption of squadron command, Porter had one organizational headache he could not cure—the Mississippi Marine Brigade (MMB), referenced above under our vessel discussion. This ­­350-or-so-man amphibious unit, comprising

48

After Vicksburg

infantry, cavalry, and artillery, was established earlier in 1863 as successor to the War Department’s U.S. Ram Fleet and was commanded by Brig. Gen. Alfred W. Ellet. The MMB was supposed to function under USN direction like a Marine force, but, because it was not officially subject to its orders, it became, due in part to a series of miscommunications, a source of great displeasure for the admiral after the Vicksburg campaign. At the end of August 1863, both the MMB and it boats were placed under authority of Maj. Gen. Grant, though Porter would not receive official notification of the changeover until October. Thereafter until the unit was disbanded in 1864, it more fully concentrated on land operations than amphibious.9 During his deliberations on squadron strengths and organization, RAdm. Porter also gave further thought to the way in which his mission was impacted by the new strategic situation in the West. While preparing his report on his New Orleans visit to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles on August 16, RAdm. Porter indicated that the river, during his entire trip up, was “unusually quiet.” How long would it remain so? Based on information gleaned from various sources during his return voyage to Cairo, a previous understanding gained from his own experience in 1862, and reports from civilian rivermen and his own subordinates, Porter had developed a detailed understanding of the geography and navigational peculiarities of the Western rivers. Likewise, he appreciated the “rumors of trouble” ahead as the enemy recovered from the Vicksburg/Port Hudson catastrophes. The squadron commander now set off to “visit the different stations on the river,” and as during his voyage he considered the challenges that lay ahead, let us look at the immediate strategic situation.10 As the news of the victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg spread across the North a few weeks earlier, it had caused a sense of joy and some relief in even wavering circles that the cause of the Union just might triumph. The twin achievement was, as Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman wrote his wife on July 5, “the first gleam of daylight in this war.” President Abraham Lincoln, who had long doubted the river campaign wisdom of his principal Western field commander, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, wrote to him on July 13 admitting “you were right and I was wrong.” In Richmond and across the Confederacy, the defeats brought, in the words of War Secretary James A. Seddon, a “shock of despondency and foreboding.” The capture of Vicksburg was devastating as the map of the seceded nation was cut in half along the line of the Mississippi. Fully blocked by river since 1861, commerce from the upper Midwest—site, because of its dependence on trade, of the greatest resistance to the Lincoln government—could now flow to the Gulf and world markets. Any Southern dream of a Northwestern breakaway died on July 4.11 Although the steamy summer months in the West were now golden with opportunity, the strategic situation for the Federals was cloudy at best. To be frank, as Donald Stoker opined in his 2010 review: “The Union left Grant to go to seed not long after his great victory at Vicksburg. For nearly three months he did not exercise a major command, particularly one in the field, and saw his army broken up and scattered from Chattanooga to Arkansas to Louisiana.” Numerous ideas for campaigns were advanced by generals and politicians in Northern military circles and possible goals like the capture of Mobile, Alabama, or occupation and pacification of Arkansas, Louisiana, or even Texas were discussed. After much talk, General in Chief Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck advised simply: “Wherever the enemy concentrates we must concentrate to oppose him.”12



2. Setting the Stage49

The Western setbacks of July were also—and naturally—a great concern to Confederate president Jefferson Davis, Secretary Seddon, and most of the South’s generals. General Josiah Gorgas, Chief of Ordnance, wrote in his diary on the 28th: “Yesterday, we rode on the pinnacle of success—today absolute ruin seems to be our portion. The Confederacy totters to its destruction.” Indeed, the setbacks proved a source of backbiting among certain of them as they lobbied for new incursions into ­­Union-held territory, both east and west, as well as a variety of schemes to once more block Northern river commerce and transport. Following the final destruction of the small naval station at Yazoo City, Mississippi, in ­­mid-July 1863, the Confederate Navy had only a tiny brown water naval presence on the Western waters, principally at Shreveport, Louisiana, where the ironclad CSS Missouri was being completed. The organization would have no operational impact in the area for the remainder of the conflict. Resistance to Northern transit of the Mississippi would rely, as it had for most of the past year, upon Confederate land troops (regular and irregular). If available, a few surviving military steamers could intervene. An example was the cottonclad Dr. Beatty, now hiding at Harrisonburg, Louisiana, on the Ouachita River, which had participated in the destruction of USS Indianola in February. After Vicksburg fell, Davis, Seddon and most Confederate generals came to believe that, even if it could no longer employ fixed river fortresses for defense, it remained imperative for the South to close down the Mississippi “at least for trade,” even if it could not prevent its use by the Northern army and navy. To that end, attacks on civilian transport would be as frequent and heavy as possible and any previous scruples over firing into passenger steamers would be abandoned. While the ultimate political target of this campaign would be the United States as a whole, in particular, it was aimed at the voters of the Northwestern states who relied upon the Big Muddy to get their goods to a world market. Every manner of military officer, politician, and newspaper editor in the South voiced opinions on exactly how the ­­anti-commercial campaign should be run. Some suggested raids on riverfront communities while others believed that large bands of irregulars or batteries of “flying” artillery could do the job. As late as March 21, 1864, Gen. Leonidas Polk would write President Davis suggesting a scheme to employ mounted troops to capture steamboats and create a new fleet of Rebel gunboats. The campaign which followed would be intense with all of those tactics employed. Unhappily for the Confederacy, however, it could not consistently pursue any approach because it did not have the manpower to operate sustained ­­anti-shipping missions. There were other ­­war-fighting concerns to be addressed, in the East, in the Southeast, and along the coasts, in addition to halting river commerce and remaining in communication with the ­­Trans-Mississippi area. After a period of ­­command-level consternation, conversation, and correspondence in which he participated, President Davis, in an effort to reclaim his infant nation’s Western position, would reorganize the staff list of his Confederate generals in that area. Lack of elan, real or perceived, would hopefully be replaced by a more aggressive approach. In ­­mid-July, Gen. Polk, whose river hopes we’ve noted, would write the chief executive suggesting a new Middle Tennessee campaign, for which planning was immediately begun.13 Meanwhile in the Department of the Tennessee, the commander, General Grant,

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After Vicksburg

unlike certain of his Civil War contemporaries, did not like to wait around hoping a superior would soon come up with an actionable plan for operations. As the hot and thirsty summer, with attendant sickness and uncertainty, walked by hand in hand with the paper shuffling of uncertain planners, the victorious Union champion, who wished to advance on Mobile, Alabama, was, instead, required to transfer numerous troops from the Vicksburg environs to Louisiana, Kentucky, and Missouri. Counterinsurgency and river protection now occupied Grant and his subordinates, who launched raids on the Southern war effort within their departmental region. Every item of possible use to Dixie’s independence supporters (and, unhappily, others besides) appeared on the list, including railroads, mills and small industrial plants or service facilities, ferries, storage facilities, and agricultural products, including cotton. These assaults, both large and small, actually foreshadowed a key ­­w ar-fighting appro ach employe d dur ing the remainder of the conflict. While alert to the possibilities of ­­larger-scale battle, these usually smaller operations, conducted in an amphibious mode with the Mississippi Squadron when advantageous or necessary, were coupled with the continuing difficulties of contraband interdiction and a growing counterinsurgency campaign. As earlier, military operations in the Department of the Tennessee were where possible coordinated with the Mississippi Squadron under RAdm. Porter. In addition to direct combat Ulysses S. Grant. Victorious captor of Vicks- and logistical support, the sailors conburg in July 1863, Maj. Gen. Grant would be tinued to conduct their own counterpromoted and transferred east in early 1864 insurgency and riverbank amphibious to face the Confederates under Gen. Robert actions, while protecting waterborne E. Lee. Before his departure and afterwards commerce, assisting refugees and as chief of all Federal armies, he would continue participation in or oversight of Western contrabands, and participating in campaigns and administrative matters both the enforcement of civilian trading regulations.14 large and small (Library of Congress).

3

Isaac Newton Brown and John Hunt Morgan The U.S. flag had hardly reached the top of surrendered Vicksburg’s flagpole on July 4 or the smoke from the saluting guns on all the warships dissipated when RAdm. Porter ordered the brown water ball to be reopened. The first event on the dance card was the elimination, once and for all, of the tiny, but pesky Confederate naval presence at Yazoo City, Mississippi, 52 miles above the great Southern fortress. Led by bearded veteran Cmdr. Isaac Newton Brown, CSN, it had plagued the Mississippi Squadron for a year, helping to block Federal northern access to Vicksburg more than once. An expert on the basics of underwater mines, then known as “torpedoes,” the dogged Brown, a native of nearby Granada, Mississippi, gained his greatest claim to fame in July 1862 when he commanded the ironclad Arkansas in her battles with the Union fleet above Vicksburg. 1 Taking his surviving crew to build vessels at Yazoo City, the former USN lieutenant was also active in the Rebel defense of the Yazoo River. After overseeing the work of the men who sank the USS Cairo with torpedoes at year’s end and in the spring of 1863 defense of both Fort PemberCmdr. Isaac Newton Brown, CSN. This for- ton and Steele’s Bayou, his spirits were mer USN lieutenant won Civil War immor- greatly lifted by newcomers in April. tality in 1862 as captain of the Confederate Two Mobile, Alabama–based agents ironclad Arkansas. An expert in underwater of the Singer Secret Service Corps, Dr. warfare, he helped to defend the Yazoo River using “torpedoes” to sink two of the Union’s John R. Fretwell and Horace L. Hun“City Series” gunboats, the Cairo and the ley (later, the famed submarine hero), Baron de Kalb (Naval History and Heritage had arrived to provide help with their Command). advanced torpedoes. Still, and despite 51

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every best effort, they could not prevent a Northern expedition from destroying the Yazoo City boatyard in May.2 For sure, Cmdr. Brown’s shipbuilding activities were ended at Yazoo City, but his defensive activities there were not. Upon his return from a temporary withdrawal, he found all the town buildings largely intact, save for his military areas, and, more importantly, Fretwell and Hunley were hard at work manufacturing “infernal devices” at a hidden location. All during June and into July, Maj. Gen. Grant and RAdm. Porter concentrated on the siege of Vicksburg, while Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, CSA, gathered a force to either relieve Vicksburg or make certain the enemy did not move north toward Tennessee. The Union preoccupation with Vicksburg allowed Brown, at Johnston’s direction, to upgrade defensives. Troops from the 29th North Carolina Infantry were detailed to the town to reinforce the sailors, building redoubts and rifle pits and placing four Napoleon field pieces. Meanwhile, six heavy guns obtained from Fort Pemberton were mounted by the commander’s men on the riverfront east of the charred shipyard. Conscripted African American laborers slaved over all these preparations. In response to heavy pressure from the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia, Gen. Johnston, on July 1, ordered his Army of Relief to quit Jackson, Mississippi, and advance toward Vicksburg. Two days later, sensing victory, Maj. Gen. Grant ordered Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman to “make your calculations to attack Johnston; destroy the railroad north of Jackson.” It was now too late for a Southern rescue. The big river fortress surrendered on July 4. The same day Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia retreated toward Virginia following its historic defeat at Gettysburg and soldiers from the Confederate Department of Arkansas were, with help from the USN timberclad Tyler, repulsed after an attack on Helena, Arkansas. Although probably ignorant of the Pennsylvania victory at the time, Maj. Gen Sherman echoed the sentiments of most Northerners when he exclaimed, “Glory hallelujah!” and proclaimed this “the best Fourth of July since 1776!” Learning of the local disaster, Johnston’s Army of Relief immediately headed back to the Magnolia State capital. Sherman began a pursuit with 50,000 men the next day, proceeding in three prongs over a broad front in the heat and dust, overrunning little towns like Bolton along the route.3 Port Hudson surrendered on July 9 just as Union troops reached Jackson, where Johnston’s returned and tired men were at work strengthening the town’s weak fortifications. To the north, Cmdr. Brown and his colleagues had nearly completed their revitalization of Yazoo City’s shield, and posted pickets in warning along the four incoming roads. When Grant learned on July 11 that Johnston had ordered the fortification of the Yazoo community in addition to Jackson, he wondered to RAdm. Porter in writing: “Will it not be well to send up a fleet of gunboats and some troops to nip in the bud any attempt to concentrate a force there?” The sea dog was indeed agreeable, suggesting that troops under Maj. Gen. Francis J. Herron that were assigned to visit ­­just-surrendered Port Hudson could instead be rerouted to Yazoo City. Grant cut orders to his subordinate changing his destination, informing him that Johnston was strengthening the town’s defenses and “this we must not permit.” Porter instructed Lt. Cmdr. John G. Walker, who had led the May raid, to provide support with his small task group.



3. Isaac Newton Brown and John Hunt Morgan 53

While the Federals prepared, Cmdr. Brown at Yazoo City took delivery of the new model torpedoes that Fretwell, Hunley, and their associates had been able to assemble. “The time had come,” notes Mark K. Ragan, “to prove the worth of their deadly invention.” Assisted by his gunners and possibly others, Brown and the torpedomen sewed a field with these advanced “infernal machines” at the bottom of the ­­mud-colored river just south of town. The area, not far from the ruined shipyard, became known in the years after postwar river improvements as Yazoo Lake. The key, as Brown and Fretwell knew, was location, location, location. According to the Chicago Daily Tribune of July 21, the men not only sewed the new type of mines, but some of the old ­­w ire-equipped ­­demi-john models as well. It was later suggested that other Maj. Gen. Francis Herron. A prewar Iowa local inventors placed at least one “con- banker, Herron led the Federal expedition to Yazoo City, Mississippi, in July 1863 during tact mine” in these waters as well.4 While Sherman’s force besieged which the ironclad Baron de Kalb was sunk Johnston in Jackson, Maj. Gen. Her- by a Confederate “torpedo.” In May–June 1865, soldiers and gunboats under his comron departed up the Yazoo from Vicks- mand would reoccupy important Red River burg on July 12 with 5,000 bluecoats in communities, securing surrender of the last seven transports. The force under Lt. Southern ironclad, the CSS Missouri (Library Cmdr. Walker was covered by the iron- of Congress). clad Baron de Kalb, sister of the sunken Cairo, and two tinclads, the Kenwood and Signal. By evening, the group reached a point 12 miles below Yazoo City, where it was spotted by pickets. Alerted, the town’s defenders made ready and, just after dawn on July 13, Cmdr. Brown, by his own testimony, personally placed the last two Fretwells in the Yazoo about half a mile below his battery. With the weather cloudy and threatening rain, the Northern transports eased into the eastern bank below Brown’s cannon at 11 a.m. to disembark their regiments. Around 12:30 p.m., the Kenwood moved up to anchor ahead of the Signal, herself moored below the flagboat Baron de Kalb. While the infantry formed into line of battle, the gunboats prepared to test the Rebels’ unmasked battery. Just before 2 p.m., the three Union gunboats cast off and, about 20 minutes later, the Baron de Kalb came up within range of Cmdr. Brown’s gunners, who opened fire. Walker promptly returned the compliment. Watching from his command transport, Maj. Gen. Herron observed that “owing to the river being so narrow and crooked, he [Walker] was able to bring but one or two of his guns to bear on their works.” The

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ironclad was supported by the Kenwood, which also opened upon Brown’s 40 available Arkansas veterans. The smoky loud duel continued until about 3:40 p.m. and could be heard for miles. We do not know how many rounds were expended by the two sides. Capt. Charles Barney of the 20th Iowa remembers the Baron de Kalb getting off 30 rounds, and there is a logbook entry showing that the Kenwood fired off eleven shells. There is also no information on whether the boats suffered any casualties; there were, according to the battery commander, none among the Southerners. “Having ascertained the force of the enemy,” Walker later reported, “I dropped out of fire.” Cmdr. Brown later indicated that the Northern boats “were driven back out of sight without loss on our side.” With Brown’s battery the only significant remaining point of opposition, the bluecoats bore down upon the Southern works A Fretwell torpedo. Singer Secret Service Corps by 5 p.m., forcing the leader of agents Dr. John R. Fretwell and Horace L. Hunthe 29th North Carolina to evac- ley (later, the famed submarine hero) arrived at uate his soldiers from the town. Yazoo City, Mississippi, in April 1863 to assist The naval commander now faced Cmdr. Isaac Newton Brown, CSN, defend the town employing their advanced torpedoes. Over the encirclement. “I had,” he later next three months, this group with their assistants confessed, “either to withdraw would lay a minefield which would cost the advancor suffer the capture or destruc- ing Federals an ironclad gunboat (Naval History tion of my men.” Curious about and Heritage Command). the potential effectiveness of the seventeen Fretwell torpedoes he had planted, the CSN commander expected the Federal warships to return shortly and so, perhaps with Fretwell and Hunley as company, briefly delayed withdrawing to watch for their next approach. Even though the river had risen in the past day or so, maybe the ironclad or one of the heavier transports could trigger the invisible underwater mines. If not, perhaps one of the older ­­demi-john units would claim a victim. By 7 p.m., most of the Southerners who were going to get away had escaped and Union troops occupied the battery, military works, and riverfront. With the commanding general embarked, the Baron de Kalb started in toward Yazoo City leading the Kenwood, Signal, and the transports. As on the initial approach earlier, lookouts



3. Isaac Newton Brown and John Hunt Morgan 55

were posted to watch for wires and buoys, the telltale signs of torpedoes. Deserters or African American refugees warned of mine fields, but, even though the Signal, according to a Chicago reporter, now spotted and picked up a ­­demi-john model, no groupings were reported. It was not suspected, as RAdm. Porter later put it, that they would encounter one of their enemy’s “new inventions.” Steaming in 15–20 feet of water, the Baron de Kalb approached the ruined Confederate Navy yard about 7:30 p.m., coming within a half mile of Brown’s battery. At that point, her unknowing helmsman ran the warship against an anchored and unseen Fretwell. In the explosion that followed, nearly two feet of the port bow was torn off and the vessel began to sink. As she was going down, a second Fretwell blew up under her stern. It proved impossible to beach the rapidly filling ironclad and the Kenwood went alongside to take off the crew, several of whom were injured. At 9 p.m., as she backed away, a Fretwell exploded close to her port bow, but caused no damage. Around 11:30 p.m., the Signal moved alongside the wreck and began, by torchlight, to remove her great guns, small arms, and stores.

USS Baron de Kalb. One of the original “City Series” ironclads, this vessel was first christened St. Louis, being rebranded Baron de Kalb in October 1862. Active in numerous Mississippi campaigns from Forts Henry/Donelson to Vicksburg, she became a victim of a Confederate torpedo at Yazoo City, Mississippi, on July 13, 1863, sinking in 15 minutes without death or major injury to any crew member (Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield).

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Unable to remain longer, Cmdr. Brown did not actually witness the river explosions or the sinking of Walker’s flagboat. Despite his son’s later assertion, a reading of the officer’s official reports and Battles and Leaders comments makes this clear. “We were the last to leave Yazoo City,” he noted a week later, “and the enemy entered it soon after we marched out.” After his contingent withdrew (to Mobile, Alabama), the tiny CSN presence remaining on the Western waters was centered at Shreveport, Louisiana, where the ironclad CSS Missouri neared completion. With the coming of daylight on July 14, an extremely successful ­­week-long salvage effort began on the Baron de Kalb. Everyone and nearly anything of value was recovered. Plans were later announced to raise the hull, but the wreckage remained in place. It could be seen at low water up into the 1950s. Gen. Johnston evacuated Jackson on July 16 and moved to middle Alabama while the ­­Walker-Herron group returned to Vicksburg on July 22. As the solons of Yazoo City had not warned the fleet of the torpedo field, a sufficient amount of cotton and horses were seized to cover the estimated $500,000 price of the gunboat “that was lost,” according to Porter, “through their treachery.”5 While Cmdr. Brown and the remaining Confederates sailors at Yazoo City made their last stand, another raid was unfolding many miles to the north. Confederate Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan, without official approval, had begun a diversion designed to stall an anticipated move to Chattanooga by Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans and another, aimed at Knoxville and East Tennessee, by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Leading 1,800 cavalry, he crossed the Ohio River at Brandenburg, Kentucky (38 miles below Louisville), on July 8, and with Union forces in dogged pursuit, was riding across the southern counties of Indiana and Ohio, toward a planned return to Dixie through Virginia. News of the daring Rebel strike quickly reached the Cincinnati headquarters of both Burnside and Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch. The commander of the Mississippi Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan, CSA. Perhaps the South’s most famous Western cav- Squadron’s Eighth District sprang into alryman when he began his 1,000-mile raid action, quickly putting together a blockinto Indiana and Ohio in July 1863, Mor- ade strategy that eventually led to the gan was hotly pursued by Union troops and successful containment of the Rebel was captured when Mississippi Squadron raiders. Morgan, meanwhile, had skirted light draught gunboats prevented his return Cincinnati, and was headed toward to Dixie. Having escaped captivity, he was Portland on the river in southeastkilled at Greeneville, Tennessee, on September 4, 1864, while in command of the ern Ohio. Years later in his The Naval Department of Southwest Virginia (Library History of the Civil War, Adm. Porter offered his thoughts on the Morgan of Congress).



3. Isaac Newton Brown and John Hunt Morgan 57

chase. “It was a novel sight,” he wrote, “a flotilla of gunboats (very ‘gallinippers’) in pursuit of a land force. It was in every respect a new feature of the war.”6 As they approached the Ohio River on July 15 and the planned reentry into Dixie somewhere closer to Pomeroy, the Confederate raiders were overconfident. Although they knew that Union troops were in hot pursuit, no new locational intelligence was obtained. Morgan continued to believe what he had been told when his gambit began: the Ohio would be too shallow for gunboats. Besides, if any showed up, they would be at a terrible disadvantage when matched against his Parrotts. Lt. Cmdr. Fitch had no firsthand information on the positions of either Morgan or his Federal pursuers. With five tinclads and an auxiliary ersatz gunboat, the Allegheny Belle, available, he pressed the chase. “This might have been considered an extravagant use of boats,” he later wrote, “but the river was so low and fords so numerous that a less number might not have met with such a favorable result.” Union defenders, mounted and afloat, correctly divined that Morgan’s goal was Buffington Island and began to draw closed a growing net being cast around the invading Southerners. Increasing their own pace, pursuing Yankee riders followed the Confederate horsemen relentlessly. About ­­o ne-quarter mile at its widest point by 1.2 miles long, ­­o val-shaped

Buffington Island in 2010. About 1/4 mile at its widest point by 1.2 miles long, oval-shaped Buffington Island has survived both nature and the Civil War and today is still located close to the Ohio shore between the communities of Sherman, West Virginia, and Portland, Ohio. Located 43 miles below Parkersburg and 35 below Marietta, the island is owned by the Mountaineer State (U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Fish & Wildlife Service).

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Buffington Island has survived both nature and the Civil War and today is still located close to the Ohio shore opposite the mouth of Little Sandy Creek, between the communities of Sherman, West Virginia, and Portland, Ohio. Located 43 miles below Parkersburg and 35 below Marietta, the island served as a station on the Underground Railroad prior to the conflict.7 Building largely upon his own information and planning, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch made his final strategic deployment, establishing a blockade some 40 miles in length around Pomeroy. Steaming north against the increasing current of a fortuitous rise, his six warships were “distributed” at those transit locations which might prove most inviting to the raiders. In all, four major and a number of minor fords were patrolled, with Fitch’s flagboat, the Moose, in company with the Allegheny Belle and the dispatch steamer Imperial, furthest upstream. On the evening of July 18, a few hours before the hotly pursued Confederates reached the crest of the nearby shore, the Moose, towed up by the Imperial, anchored off Little Sandy Creek Bar, below Buffington Island on the West Virginia shore. Here they were sighted by Rebel outriders sometime later. Unwilling to ford his command, including his wounded in ­­horse-drawn ambulances and wagons, in the dark, Brig. Gen. Morgan found himself entirely surrounded about six in the morning of the nineteenth and outnumbered nearly four to one. He had only two choices: fight or surrender. In addition to the Moose and Allegheny Belle, advance elements of the Federal land forces were closing in from Ohio’s interior. The Battle of Buffington Island ensued when Morgan, refusing to quit, fired on them. When battle noise was heard ahead off the port bow about 7 a.m., the Moose, having kept up steam all night, rapidly got underway into the chute between the island and the state of Ohio. Taking aboard a stranded Union officer, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch received his first indication of what was going on ashore, as well as the relative positions of the opposing forces. About the same time, his gunners opened fire on butternut soldiers Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch, USN. Chosen to comheaded across, turning them around. mand an Upper River “Mosquito Flotilla” Back from the river, fighting intensi- in August 1862, the Hoosier spent the war fied when bluecoat soldiers, mainly cav- thereafter shepherding convoys and engagalry, joined the attack, rushing onto the ing Confederates, including generals Morplateau between the river and the high gan, Joseph Wheeler, and Nathan Bedford ridges which rise a mile inland. By 9 Forrest, on the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee Rivers. He would father birth of the a.m., Northern units, with a big numerUpper Tennessee Eleventh naval district and ical advantage, were pummeling the command the Union gunboat contingent at Confederate defensive line. the Battle of Nashville in December 1864 The Southerners were not the only (Naval History and Heritage Command).



3. Isaac Newton Brown and John Hunt Morgan 59

Map of Morgan’s Raid. This famous Southern incursion into the North was an utter failure. It collapsed when Federal troops and Union gunboats cornered the retreating Confederates at Buffington Island, preventing their escape across the Ohio River to West Virginia (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, v. 3).

ones discomforted that morning. Without gunfire spotters and unable to see what was occurring so as to direct his green gunners, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch was never quite sure where his own ­­24-pounder shells were landing. Both Yankee and Rebel soldiers were affected, causing one newspaperman to record that “an extensive scattering took place.” Confederate Col. Basil W. Duke cursed what he believed was more than one tinclad and “heartily wished that their fierce ardor, the result of a feeling of perfect security, could have been subjected to the test of two or three shots through their hulls.”8 Overwhelmed by Union cavalry charges and subjected to bombardment by the Moose, the contest now went against Morgan’s troopers, many of whom attempted to flee across the river at a point about a mile and a half above the head of Buffington

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Island. Watching the exodus, Col. Duke despaired. “A shell struck the road throwing up a cloud of dust,” he remembered. His men panicked as the “gunboats raked the road with grapeshot.” Union Lt. Henry Weaver observed: “The thundering tones of those monsters, together with the terrifying shriek of the shells as they came over the heads of the enemy, completed the rout already begun.” A large number of Confederate soldiers tried to make it across the “swift waters rippling over the sand shallows of Buffington Bar and plunged into the angry and power currents of the flooded Ohio River.” All but about 30 escaped the wrath of the Moose in the confusion, the rest thrown into backwards rout. Many butternuts headed for the woods; “the hiss of the dreaded missiles,” Duke recalled, “increased the panic.” After what seemed like hours of fighting but really was not, he, together with Morgan’s brothers Richard and Charlton, and about 700 from the weary rearguard gang of “­­horse-thieves, ­­c ut-throats, and nondescripts,” were POWs by noon. A number of men were captured on the West Virginia side of the river. Another 57 Rebels were killed in the fighting, with 63 wounded; three Union officers and 18 enlisted men paid the ultimate price, with an unknown number hurt. During her part of the action, the Moose expended 29 HE shells, 10 shrapnel, one cannister, and 100 rounds of small arms cartridges. The Battle of Buffington Island, which some still wrongly regard as a “naval battle,” was, however, nothing less than a disaster for the outnumbered Confederate raiders. Still, a naval “­­mop-up” was required as Morgan and his remaining effectives retreated eastward, seeking to cross the Ohio River. Only about 300 graycoats made it, while the remainder rode or walked inland, dogged by Union cavalry. Morgan and his few followers surrendered near East Liverpool, Ohio, on July 26. The importance of this Confederate foray north was portrayed differently in various locales and in succeeding years. Following upon the disasters at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the “bold raid” was portrayed in the July 16 issue of the Richmond Enquirer as “the only actively aggressive operation in which our forces are engaged.” According to Morgan’s adjutant, S. P. Cunningham, the Southern riders wounded 600 Federal soldiers, paroled another 6,000, destroyed 34 vital bridges and 60 different stretches of railroad tracks, burned army depots and military and civilian warehouses, and tied down over 120,000 militia in Indiana and Ohio. The estimated value of the burned bridges, destroyed railroad equipment, telegraph wires, and military stores was placed at $10 million. On July 28, the Chicago Daily Tribune told its readers that the raid had cost the Confederacy over 4,000 men and horses, but had released for other duties over five times that many Federal troops, not counting Hoosier and Buckeye minutemen. Ohio historian Andrew R. L. Cayton dismisses the Morgan episode as doing “little serious damage beyond frightening people.” Famed naval historian Bern Anderson was more blunt: “Except for the alarm and consternation it caused, his raid was pointless.”9

4

Harrisonburg, Little Rock, and Chattanooga, 1863 Although the July Yazoo City raid ordered by RAdm. Porter was one of immediate army support, the next strike was more carefully planned. Others like it would follow. Specifically, these were designed, in the words of Lt. Cmdr. Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., “to make such captures of cotton and other stores as might prove practicable and to drive Confederate forces away from the vicinity of [river mouths].” Led by Selfridge in the old timberclad Conestoga, in company with the tinclads Forest Rose, Petrel, Manitou (later renamed Fort Hindman), and Rattler, this outing departed the mouth of the Red River on July 12 en route to Trinity, Louisiana. Interestingly, the task group flagboat towed a raft with a ­­100-pounder Parrott gun mounted. The path chosen for ascent was, in fact, a waterline that ran parallel with the Mississippi and featured at its furthest extent a large region of navigable waters, Tensas Lake and Bayou Macon. This head of navigation for the Tensas River was at a point but 30 miles from Vicksburg and only five miles from the Mississippi. The group’s specific mission was to capture cotton and fugitive steamers and to interrupt irregular Rebel attacks on Mississippi River transports by men firing from the shores of the intervening narrow strip of land.

Lt. Cmdr. Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., USN. The son of a rear admiral, Selfridge survived the sinking of the USS Cumberland by the CSS Virginia and two Western waters warships, Cairo and Conestoga, which he commanded. He was captain of the monitor Osage during the Red River Expedition of 1864 and, in 1898, retired with the same rank as his father (Naval History and Heritage Command).

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Moving from the Red into the Black, Selfridge’s gunboats steamed with some care up the narrow channels of that stream and the connecting Tensas. Navigating the difficulties of the water approaches without incident, the timberclad and tinclads suddenly emerged that afternoon on the lake and bayou. At dusk, lookouts aboard the gunboats spied a pair of transports in the distance, the Dr. Batey (which had participated in the February capture of USS Indianola) and Nelson, both of which escaped. Still, a large quantity of ammunition from Natchez was seized after its landing on the lake shore. Overnight, July 12/13, the gunboats were divided into task units, with two tinclads sent up the Tensas at first light and two up the Little Red River, a tributary of the Black River. The Manitou and Rattler, after groping their way carefully up the twisty Little Red River, returned at noon with a prize, the Louisville, one of the South’s largest remaining vessels. Indeed, the 227.­­6-foot-long ­­side-wheel Mississippi packet would be converted into the largest tinclad, the ­­4 0-gun Ouachita. About the same time, the Petrel and Forest Rose exited from the Tensas with the ­­stern-wheeler Elmira, caught with a cargo of Confederate sugar, rum, and military stores. A further but unsuccessful light draught scout was conducted up the Tensas that afternoon during which great quantities of burning cotton were observed. While the Petrel convoyed the prizes to the mouth of the Red River on July 14, the Conestoga led the remaining three tinclads on a reconnaissance toward a fort reportedly being built near Harrisonburg, a town of about 800. The four boats anchored slightly below the wooden Confederate bastion that night and, at 5 a.m. on Wednesday, the Conestoga and Manitou cruised up to within two miles of the fort. Lt. Cmdr. Selfridge elected to test its strength by firing three shells toward it from the

Steamer on the Little Red River. While participating in a Mississippi Squadron raid in July 1863, two light draught gunboats ascended the Little Red River (shown in the 1930s), where they captured one of the South’s last big steamboats, the Louisville. She would be converted into the largest “tinclad,” the 40-gun Ouachita (Library of Congress).



4. Harrisonburg, Little Rock, and Chattanooga, 1863 63

­­100-pounder Parrot mounted on the raft the timberclad was towing. There was no response. A thick fog came on about an hour later that required the gunboats to withdraw. The visit, Selfridge later wrote, did, however, reveal that the enclave “contained guns too heavy to be trifled with by wooden gunboats.” When Porter heard from Selfridge upon his return to Trinity that evening, he observed that the capture of the ammunition from Natchez left the Confederate river raiders without the bullets and powder needed and so they “moved [their] forces into the interior and troubled the Mississippi no more.”1 One of the larger concerns faced by the Mississippi Squadron in summer 1863 and thereafter had much more to do with economics than war fighting—trade, or specifically, cotton trade. “After the fall of Vicksburg,” wrote Philip Leich in 2014, the Confederates “depended almost entirely on cotton trade to obtain the necessities of war and many of the things required to merely avoid hunger and provide shelter for civilians.” Overseas export was one possibility, often via Mexico and the Gulf, to get the product out. “But as the conflict continued, an even greater market for Southerners who chose ‘self interest over nationalism’” was accessed with agreeable Northerners via interbelligerent trade along the Mississippi and her tributaries. New Orleans at one end of the great river, along with Helena and Memphis, became the new capitals for this enterprise, which was sometimes illicit and covertly sanctioned by military personnel for personal gain, but often licensed by government agencies as well for the benefit of “loyal” citizens in conquered areas. Interbelligerent commerce was bitterly opposed by Maj. Gen. Grant, Sherman, and, initially, RAdm. Porter as unhelpful to the war effort. The Department of the Mississippi commander complained that traders, even those licensed by the Treasury Department, provided news and intelligence to the enemy while also requiring physical protection as they conducted their business. Indeed, many of the items traded directly assisted the Confederate military’s prosecution of the conflict. Trading between the lines was also quite injurious to the morale of soldiers who were unpaid and endangered acting as guards for private gain, which, on occasion, included watching officers participate “in secret partnership with some operator of cotton.” Bluecoats would become quite incensed as the admiral more frequently applied naval prize law to cotton and other contraband goods seized by his vessels as opportunity arose. The commanders used their influence to stop this commerce, finding methods such as strict convoy requirements or limiting ­­gold-for-cotton payments. But because of political and economic pressures from Northern manufacturers and financiers, politicians from Lincoln downwards agreed to simplify the restrictions on this private practice and would overrule the military leaders. For example, on July 19, Grant wrote to Porter from Vicksburg suggesting “that the gunboats between here and Cairo be instructed to let all boats pass until further orders, without convoy.” The shippers had complained that the time needed to form several vessels into protectable groups ate time; the squadron commander complied with Grant’s note. The same complaints were heard in all the squadron districts, and were resisted by their local naval chiefs as possible, though rules for strict convoy, at least for the moment, disappeared.2 Despite the utmost vigilance on the part of the Federal navy, Confederate

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After Vicksburg

Illicit trade. Regulated or contraband trading in cotton and goods along the riverbanks proved difficult to control or eliminate. Federal customs regulations, permits, and other arrangements to handle, enforce, or protect goods changed frequently and ranged from outright prohibition to the requirement that Union gunboats guard trading vessels. When a landing by an independent steamer, like that depicted in this 1870 Currier and Ives print, was intercepted and judged illegal, gunboatmen were empowered to seize the suspect vessel and send it off to a prize court for adjudication (Library of Congress).

irregulars, occasionally supplemented by regular army flying artillery, continued as they had for the past two years to take every opportunity to attack Northern river traffic. Quoting from the “­­Memphis-Granada-Jackson-Atlanta” Appeal on August 8, the Cairo correspondent of the New York Herald reviewed the call by the Rebel paper’s editors for a “systematic plan of [guerrilla] operations on the banks,” one which would “see travelers on the Father of Waters bushwacked from every canebrake and bluff below Memphis.” Such action carried forward, below Memphis and elsewhere, including the upper tributaries, led to numerous sharp ­­ship-shore engagements, but did not significantly impact Federal bulk carriage. Unlike the Yazoo and Ouachita sweeps, the next sizeable Mississippi Squadron mission was more than a pinprick. The capture of Vicksburg freed thousands of Union troops for other duty and, some were now sent to Maj. Gen. John Scofield’s Department of the Missouri to assist in the subjugation of Confederate Arkansas. Before the end of July, Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele, a West Point classmate of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, had arrived at Helena to take command of all Federal troops in Arkansas and to mount an assault ordered by General in Chief Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck on its capital, Little Rock. RAdm. Porter was contacted for gunboat support on the White River and a task group was readied to provide assistance. At this time, Lt. George M. Bach, the ­­Helena-based leader of Lt. Cmdr. Seth Ledyard Phelps’ Fifth Division, was operating interdiction missions off the mouth of the White River. Alerted that elements of



4. Harrisonburg, Little Rock, and Chattanooga, 1863 65

the Federal army would soon be headed his way, it was his task group that was congregated in support near Montgomery Point, Mississippi, across from the White’s entrance. As the naval vessels gathered, plans were finished for a ground attack on Little Rock. The incursion was not secret as The New York Times reported in an August 12 headline, “Gunboats to ­­Co-Operate with Gen’l Steele’s Expedition.” The first Federal participant underway was Brig. Gen. John Davidson’s cavalry contingent from St. Louis. XVI Corps commander Maj. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut, upon orders from Grant, orchestrated the expedition from Memphis. Marching overland from Helena, the assigned VII Corps infantry would halt at Clarendon or Des Arc to join the cavalry from Missouri. Naval cooperation was desired at the final rendezvous point. While supply depots were established, Bache’s gunboats were to scout as far up the White as possible, hopefully to Jacksonport. After a ­­350-mile ride, Davidson’s 6,000 “sabers” with three batteries of artillery reached the L’Anguille River at Crowley’s Ridge, Arkansas, on August 1–3. Heading west to Clarendon, they sought five days later the protection of a pair of gunboats while a bridge was thrown across the White River. Appraised of the campaign’s support requirements by Maj. Gen. Steele, Bache weighed for Clarendon, 130 miles upstream from Helena, on August 8. Led by the temporary flagboat Cricket, four light draughts proceeded, meeting neither natural nor human obstruction. St. Charles was found deserted and “but little signs of life” were seen on the river.3 The next day, the Bache group came to at Clarendon, where the lieutenant met with Davidson, who was frustrated by the river level, which prevented bridge construction and, indeed, was “higher than it has been at this season of the year since ’44.” After the two reviewed possibilities, the sailor dispatched the Marmora and Linden back downstream before dusk with the general’s request for a pair of coal barges adaptable into troop ferries. On August 10, the tinclads convoyed Steele’s 6,­­0 00-man Army of Arkansas up, from Helena, with 39 cannon, the Marmora towing the barges. Simultaneously, the Cricket was on a Devalls Bluff reconnaissance while the ­­big-gun timberclad Lexington arrived at Clarendon the next day, allowing plans to be finalized for a reconnaissance sweep toward Jacksonport. With two companies of 82nd Iowa Infantry and a St. Louis newspaperman also embarked, Bache, aboard the Lexington, weighed with the Marmora and Cricket on August 13. The voyage required two days and paid large dividends, even though it only reached Augusta, 75 miles below Jacksonport. Despite spirited Southern opposition from the riverbanks along the way, the expedition succeeded in destroying the telegraph at Des Arc, captured the fugitive Rebel steamers Kaskaskia and Tom Sugg, the last two Rebel transports known to be on the river, and most importantly, learned the location of Confederate Brig. Gen. John S. Marmaduke’s Confederate command northeast of Little Rock. When the task group returned to Clarendon on the evening of August 15, the White was falling at the rate of 12 inches per day, which, under protection from the Linden, had allowed Brig. Gen. Davidson to start the transfer of his men. By August 19, all of Davidson’s cavalry division was across the river on the coal barge ferries. Writing to RAdm. Porter from Clarendon during the day, Lt. Bache predicted that Maj. Gen. Steele’s army would be over three days hence. Reporting on that

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After Vicksburg

USS Marmora. Joining the war in December 1862, this tinclad was a veteran of the naval war primarily in the Yazoo River area. Assigned to the Fifth District of the Mississippi Squadron, she was one of several tinclads that participated in the August 1863 Little Rock campaign. Following the city’s occupation, she returned to the Yazoo (Naval History and Heritage Command).

achievement on August 23, the ground commander noted establishment of his new depot at DeValls Bluff, suggesting that “with such a base as this, it will be a very easy matter to carry on operations against Little Rock, if proper means be supplied.” Little Rock was evacuated by the Confederacy on September 9 and occupied by the U.S. VII Corps within a day or so. Reporting from the newly liberated city on September 22, Maj. Gen. Steele praised his naval support, indicating to Maj. Gen. Grant that Phelps and Bache did “everything in their power to further the object of the expedition.” Their gunboats would now help protect his logistical chain, though Lt. Bache would be absent on sick leave for a short time. At the depot town of Devalls Bluff, where many others were also sick, there was considerable optimism that the port could be held against rumored Southern counterattacks. “The White River is navigable for gunboats up to that point,” boasted the Chicago Daily Tribune on September 20, “and the rebels have a holly horror of them!”4 Attacks on Union shipping continued throughout the late summer on the Mississippi and its tributaries. A tactic that sometimes brought Southern success with unescorted transient steamers was the hail from shore by people (including the occasional women) appearing to be in distress. Once an attracted boat put into the riverbank, guerrillas hidden further back could rush aboard, making an easy capture. Wherever steamers were forced to ease through a bend or otherwise approach the shore, regardless of the Southern river, the presence of Confederate riflemen, regular or irregular, was increasingly anticipated.5 In ­­mid-August as the Little Rock campaign was unfolding, further north in the Volunteer State Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside and William S. Rosecrans, also by order of Maj. Gen. Halleck, had launched campaigns of their own. Aiming for Knoxville, the major city in East Tennessee, the former moved out on August 14 while the latter began climbing the Cumberland Mountains the next day en route to Chattanooga. Located in the Cumberland Mountains on a great bend in the Tennessee River not far from the Georgia border, that community, with a population of about 2,500, was an



4. Harrisonburg, Little Rock, and Chattanooga, 1863 67

important railroad junction and communications center, the entry key to Atlanta, Georgia. About ­­t wo-thirds of the Army of the Ohio soldiers, including 1,500 cavalry under Col. William Sanders en route from the Buckeye State passed through the Big South Fork area of the Upper Cumberland between August 20 and September 3. Knoxville was occupied without opposition on September 2 as the Confederate Army of Tennessee further south was being reinforced by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s Army of Northern Virginia veterans from the east. Rosecrans arrived at Chattanooga on September 9, but after moving beyond the railroad hub into the northwest corner of Georgia, his troops were defeated at Chickamauga Creek on September 19–20. Retreating back to the south TenMaj. Gen. Frederick Steele, USA. Following nessee metropolis, the Union soldiers the surrender of Vicksburg, Union XV Army were besieged and their logistics all but Corps. commander Steele, a West Point failed. The countryside for miles around classmate of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, had been stripped of food and fodder by received orders to capture and hold Little Rock, Arkansas. His goal was accomplished troops from both sides. A way had to be on September 10, 1863, and he thereafter found to get provisions where they were fought to secure the remainder of the state needed. (Library of Congress). Although “Old Rosy” had mounds of supplies in Nashville, the terrain over which it had to be transshipped was awful and famished. The Muscle Shoals prevented steamboat access via the Tennessee River into Chattanooga. Once goods reached supply depots at Stephenson or Bridgeport by rail, they had to be sent across the Tennessee and then on to Chattanooga by wagon, over one of three roads cut through the northern end of Lookout Mountain, the largest of three ridges that slant southwest across the borders of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. These roads were steep and winding and often in disrepair. All Northern transport, ground and water, was subject to attack by Gen. Joseph Wheeler’s Confederate cavalry and irregulars.6 Low water in the upper rivers dramatically slowed the delivery of goods to the defenders of Chattanooga and Knoxville. This unhappy seasonal situation would continue until the water rose sometime in late fall. Quantities of supplies did, however, make it through; for example, on September 28, a shipment of goods that had originated in Louisville passed through Nashville en route to Chattanooga; it included 24,000 shirts, 5,000 blankets, 26,000 pairs of socks, and 5,000 axes. But other shipments were lost. Especially discouraging was the October 1 assault by General Wheeler’s cavalry on Union quartermaster columns in the Sequatchie Valley. Rebel troopers

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After Vicksburg

Chattanooga and the Tennessee River. The 652-mile Tennessee River is formed at the confluence of the Holston and French Broad Rivers east of Knoxville, then passes that city and flows 112-miles south past Chattanooga into Alabama and Mississippi before continuing north into Kentucky to empty into the Ohio River. During the Civil War, Chattanooga was a major Confederate railroad hub and thus became a goal of Union armies in September 1863 (Library of Congress).

destroyed 350 army wagons and 40 private sutlers’ wagons and captured over a thousand mules. The same riders sacked the town of McMinnville the next day. On October 5, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles wired RAdm. Porter asking if the water were deep enough in the Tennessee River to allow USN protection of supply transportation as far as Florence, Alabama, or Eastport, Mississippi. His telegraph would open a lengthy period of naval cooperation with the army in support of the Chattanooga and Knoxville objectives. Before replying, Porter had an officer assess conditions. Employing this data, Porter replied to Washington that, although the Tennessee was rising, he could not get a gunboat even 45 miles above its mouth. With the rail connection between Nashville and Bridgeport in poor shape due to Rebel raids and rain, the supply chain from the North to Chattanooga was closing. Confederate activities outside Chattanooga had, by October 8–10, reduced the number of operational and passable supply routes into the city to just one. Without a better logistical arrangement than that, the Army of the Cumberland was doomed.7 On October 10, Secretary Welles transmitted to RAdm. Porter at Mound City a War Department request for gunboat assistance for the operations of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman on the Tennessee River. Sherman was marching to the relief of



4. Harrisonburg, Little Rock, and Chattanooga, 1863 69

Chattanooga, and naval craft were required not only to help transfer troops across the river but to convoy the additional supplies required. The precedent set by the Mississippi Squadron on the Mississippi below Vicksburg in April when the fleet crossed Grant’s army was well remembered. The dry summer which had plagued his operations outside Jackson, Mississippi, back in July now frustrated both Sherman and the USN as it was cast into addressing the military challenge. The many bars and shoals in the Tennessee River between Fort Henry and Eastport were exposed, often under less than three feet of water, preventing waterborne movement. Replying to his Washington superior, Porter confessed that the shallowness of the water prevented his immediate action but promised: “The gunboats will be ready to go up the moment a rise takes place.” Ten days later, Maj. Gen. Grant urged: “The sooner a gunboat can be got to him [Sherman] the better.” The admiral answered that gunboats were on their way. “My intention,” he wrote, “is to send every gunboat I can spare up the Tennessee. I have also sent below for ­­light-drafts to come up. Am sorry to say the river is at a stand.” Sherman’s XV Corps reached the Tennessee and camps sprang up along the ­­30-mile railroad stretch from Iuka, Mississippi, to Tuscumbia, Alabama. There it waited for a Tennessee River freshet sufficiently high to permit steamers to take the men across. Acting Master Edward M. King dispatched daily reports on water depth in that stream from Paducah while Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch communicated the same for the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Maj. Gen. Grant was given supreme command in the West on October 16, and immediately, the new chief of the Department of the Mississippi moved to remedy the Chattanooga situation, changing commanders and arranging reinforcements and supply. As the month’s second week raced into the Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. By third, it also appeared as though there October 1863, the Union Army of the Cumberland, following its loss at Chickamauga, might soon be water enough upriver to Georgia, was besieged at Chattanooga with allow further ­­a rmy-navy cooperation. only one operational and passable sup- Taking that bet, Porter ordered as many ply route. Sherman at Vicksburg received gunboats as possible into the upper orders to relieve the trapped garrison, and streams and detailed Lt. Cmdr. Phelps the Mississippi Squadron was asked to help to make an effort to reach Sherman; the facilitate his movement across the Tennesgeneral, learning on October 19 that the see River. Later, after the campaign success that followed, he succeeded Grant as over- water level was finally rising, in turn, all Western theater commander (Library of ordered his Memphis quartermaster to send down a ferryboat. Congress).

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After Vicksburg

Grant reached Chattanooga on October 23. The next day, Porter promised Sherman to line the Tennessee “with gunboats” and keep his communications from being interrupted “if there is water in the river.” Phelps simultaneously arrived at Eastport, Mississippi, with the Hastings and Key West and was greeted by officers from a Federal cavalry regiment stationed near the wharf awaiting their arrival. Riders hastened the news over the eight miles to Sherman’s headquarters at Iuka. The XV Corps commanding general, sick on his cot, was roused by the arrival of the horsemen, waving their hats and yelling that the gunboats had arrived. He immediately dispatched an officer with an extra horse, an escort, and an invitation for Phelps to come to camp. Sherman was so pleased to receive the Hastings’ commander that he “almost shook his arm off.” The sailor was invited to spend the night and the two men spoke of many issues, most importantly the matter of getting the thousands of bluecoats across the Tennessee. Both understood that the two gunboats could easily transport the soldiers, but getting the horses, guns, and wagons over was another matter. Phelps suggested that his nearly empty coal barge be planked over and that it could serve to take the “grub and mules.” Seizing upon the idea, Sherman immediately dispatched carpenters with tools to Eastport to do the job. The modifications were made within hours and the ­­trans-river lift, beginning with the Fourth Division, was started late on October 26. Although two small steamers from Eastport were also chartered into service, the process was slow and it was the night of October 28 before the lead units were over.8 Over the next few days, a sizable naval force, assisted by a “fortunate rise of water,” arrived in the Eastport vicin- Lt. Cmdr. Seth Ledyard Phelps, USN. To ity to support army operations along assist in the military relief of Chattanooga, the Tennessee River. RAdm. Porter on RAdm. Porter ordered as many gunboats October 29 encouraged the officers of as possible into the Tennessee River, detailing Lt. Cmdr. Phelps, then in command off his Mississippi Squadron “to give all the White River, to reach Maj. Gen. Sherman as aid and assistance in their power” to the soon as possible. Arriving at Eastport, MisChattanooga relief force. The same day, sissippi, with two gunboats in late October Sherman was appointed commander of 1863, the naval officer met with the genthe Federal Department of the Tennes- eral, making arrangements for his craft to see as Grant, elevated to Lt. Gen., was immediately begin crossing soldiers. After transferred to the East. Porter advised a month, Phelps would continue his White River duties and, during the 1864 Red River Welles on October 30: “The Lexingcampaign, serve as captain of the ill-fated ton, Hastings, Key West, Cricket, Robb, ironclad Eastport. Dissatisfaction led to his Romeo, and Peosta are detached for duty resignation that fall (Naval History and Herin the Tennessee River; and the Paw Paw, itage Command).



4. Harrisonburg, Little Rock, and Chattanooga, 1863 71

Tawah, Tyler, and one or two others will soon join them, which will give a good force for that river.” The effort to support the army was not always easy. Sandbars and other navigation challenges continued to cause crossing problems while the growing number of troop steamers were often harassed by Confederate riflemen. Still, Sherman was able to cheerfully observe to Porter on Halloween, “I think our movement up the Tennessee has taken them by surprise and their cavalry is very much scattered.” The military ashore at Eastport put on a ­­f ull-scale review on the morning of November 23. It looked “nice from the boats,” remembered Seaman James Dickinson aboard the Tawah. All during the night, however, Confederate forces fired on the landing. Three times the tinclads were called to quarters. The Tawah “threw 20 shell back over the hills.” On the morning of November 25, a long line of wagons and 9,000 ­­Eastport-based soldiers departed for the war zone. They were accompanied by four artillery batteries. More Federal troops departed the next day and the remainder on November 27, “all for Chattanooga.” Sherman’s corps was across the Tennessee in time to make a difference in the final outcome of the campaign. The naval ferry and associated convoy work, though not strictly a combat operation, was a vital element in that success.

Lookout Mountain from the Tennessee River. Fought on November 24, the fog-shrouded Battle of Lookout Mountain helped assure Union control of the Tennessee River and the railroad into Chattanooga. Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, watching it from Orchard Knob, labeled it the “Battle Above the Clouds.” (Library of Congress)

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After Vicksburg

Meanwhile, the USN support effort was shifted over on the gradually rising Cumberland River as a growing number of unprotected transports were paddling to Nashville from Louisville in a logistical effort ratcheted up in response to the army’s increased need of supplies. Confederate riflemen, waiting along the banks, made the steamboatmen pay. Of the eight steamers that reached the landings of the Tennessee capital on November 1–2, three had been badly shot up while passing the village of Davis’ Ripple. Although bullet holes on the boats were everywhere, none of the crews were wounded. Even after convoys were introduced on November 7, some transport captains preferred to travel alone, presuming that their speed would offer protection. In reviewing the contribution of the Mississippi Squadron during the Chattanooga crisis, RAdm. Porter informed Secretary Welles on December 2, “In the operations lately carried on up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, the gunboats have been extremely active and have achieved with perfect success all that was desired or required of them.”9

5

Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864 On October 20, 1863, as Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman moved to cross the Tennessee River en route to the relief of besieged Chattanooga, his superior, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, then at Nashville, had, with Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, Knoxville’s Federal commander, focused their eyes on the supply possibilities of the Cumberland River. A major water artery into the Tennessee capital, the lower portion of the stream had been a significant Union transportation route from the north for almost two years. That day attention would move to a somewhat ­­less-plied section of the waterway, the Upper Cumberland beyond Nashville. In a lengthy telegram to Grant, Burnside set forth in writing the disposition of his Knoxville army, as well as the tightness of his supplies. An attached logistical review concluded with a sentence that would come to have a significant impact on the U.S. Navy’s local mission: “I have already taken steps to repair the road from Clinton to the mouth of the Big South Fork on the Cumberland to which point stores can be transported by water as soon as that river becomes navigable which may not be ’till January.” The Cumberland River was a major source of waterborne transportation from the earliest days of ­­Kentucky-Tennessee settlement, and this demand intensified during the Civil War. From Nashville to Point Isabel (now Burnside, Kentucky) at the mouth of Big South Fork was 358 miles, but trips along the narrow, winding Upper Cumberland, which was plagued by shoals and bars, were usually broken into segments. From the capital city to Carthage, a valuable supply point at the mouth of the Obey River, was 150 miles. From Carthage to Creelsboro, Kentucky (then the busiest midway ­­upper-river trading community and now a ghost town), was 185 miles and from Creelsboro to Point Isabel was 85 miles. Low water made steamboating difficult between June and November, though during the remainder of the year, brave pilots could penetrate into the tributary rivers. The broader Lower Cumberland flows 192 miles from Nashville to its mouth at Smithland, Kentucky, passing the growing community of Clarksville 50 miles away. Also on October 20 Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, then in Louisville, wired War Secretary Edwin Stanton with news that steamers had started from the Kentucky city for Nashville with forage and supplies. “The Navy Department should order gunboats at once into the Cumberland,” he added, “to convoy and 73

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After Vicksburg

Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, USA. Having lost the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, while leading the Army of the Potomac, Burnside was sent to Cincinnati in March 1863 to command the Department of the Ohio. After coordinating the Federal response to Morgan’s Raid in July, he moved against Knoxville, Tennessee, occupying it on September 3. During the fall, logistics became a significant problem for his force, even a Confederate corps under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet from Chattanooga briefly besieged his garrison. Burnside’s facial hair and high, bell-crowned felt hat were distinctive. He is shown here mounted near a Napoleon field piece (Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War, v. 2).

protect our steamboats.” These were in addition to those already on duty. Soon the army’s quartermasters were sending an ever increasing amount of goods, which were stockpiled both in Nashville’s warehouses and at Carthage. Some percentage was sent by rail to Chattanooga, and some would eventually be forwarded to the mouth of Big South Fork and then hauled overland to Burnside in Knoxville. As was the case at the time of the Stone’s River battle earlier in the year, significantly larger steamer convoys were now reintroduced on the Lower Cumberland to get the bulk of Federal supplies to Nashville. After departing Smithland, Kentucky, these were assembled or concentrated, often over the period of a week, at Fort



5. Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864 75

Donelson, Dover, and Clarksville. During times of crisis such as these, unescorted steaming was usually prohibited. With an average of 50 transports for every available gunboat, the USN challenge to get them through was daunting. Not only had the merchantmen to be kept in line, but numerous bands of local Confederate irregulars, shooting from ambush along the shoreline, were a constant problem. Special attention had to be paid to known hiding spots such as at wooding points (locations along the river where fuel supplies were available) like Jackson’s Woodyard just downstream from Fort Donelson or the choke point at Harpeth Shoals. In addition to “bushwhackers,” the route was filled with natural obstructions, including sandbars and shoals, such as Ingram Shoals, also near Fort Donelson. The most difficult part of the Lower Cumberland passage from Louisville occurred after steamers passed Clarksville. Harpeth Shoals, just 20 miles from Nashville, presented such a navigational challenge during the dry season that most steamers, deeply laden, could not pass over. Thus their cargoes had to be ­­off-loaded and transferred to smaller transports which came out from Nashville to cover the final leg. To assist in protecting the transfer point and the river upstream and down from Nashville, the U.S. Army Quartermaster Department at Nashville utilized several small military gunboats not under naval authority. Originally, there were at least four, though we can only identify three in any detail. Named for a Nashville assistant quartermaster, the W. H. Sidell was an old ­­shallow-draft ferryboat outfitted in late 1862 by order of Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans to provide cover for cargoes on the Cumberland stretch between Harpeth Shoals and Nashville. With minimal protection and mounting three or four field pieces, Army Lt. T. William Van Dorn’s “impromptu” craft—in the opinion of Rear Adm. David D. Porter—escorted a large convoy into Nashville from Clarksville on January 8, 1863. Approaching the head of Harpeth Shoals from Ashland City six days later, she found the steamers Hastings, Trio and Parthenia at a landing. Hailed from shore, the gunboat approached only to be fired upon by Confederate soldiers, to whom Van Dorn surrendered. He was held, but all others taken by the raiders— except African Americans—were paroled or freed while the vessel was torched. A local Tennessee lady, Lucy Virginia French, wrote in her journal several days afterwards: “The late raid of Wheeler and Forrest on the Cumberland below Nashville is the talk now—cavalry capturing transports and a gun boat is as good as Forrest’s men taking a battery at Murfreesboro last summer with shot guns!”1 Due to low water, two of the three remaining military craft were held in Nashville after September. We know nothing about the Hagen, which was grounded at Clarksville undergoing repairs. She apparently remained out of the picture for the remainder of the war. We would hear a good deal about the other two. Purchased by the U.S. Quartermaster Department in 1861 for $16,000, the new Wellsville, Ohio–built ­­1 29-ton ­­s tern-wheeler Silver Lake No. 2 was similar to the W. H. Sidell. Under the command of Lt. John S. Roberts of the 22nd Indiana Infantry with her veteran captain John S. Devenny as pilot and crewed by many men from the Steubenville, Ohio, region, she was now guarding the wharves and bridges at the capital city. Roberts was characterized as seemingly “a useless drunkard who missed two battles while too intoxicated to issue commands.” While his boat was at Gainesboro, Tennessee, later on in 1864, he would be accused of

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After Vicksburg

Attack on the Hastings, Trio and Parthenia. During bad weather in January 1863, Confederate raiders simultaneously captured three Union steamers on the Cumberland River. Coming upon the scene, the U.S. Army gunboat W. H. Sidell was also taken, leading some Northern leaders to initially believe her a USN loss (Annals of the Army of the Cumberland).

raping an African American woman; tried, he was acquitted and allowed an honorable discharge. Likewise a ­­stern-wheeler, the ­­53-ton Newsboy, was built at Brownsville, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1862. Chartered by the U.S. Quartermaster Department, she hauled military supplies from that August 15 to 25, and again on November 16, just before her purchase by the government for $14,000. Sent to Nashville, she too received plank armor and a single cannon. Like the Allegheny Belle and other improvised army gunboats, the Newsboy was also undoubtedly protected with hay and cotton bales. Capt. Simon Perkins, Jr., the city’s assistant head quartermaster, had charge of all three of these ersatz gunboats.2 A hundred miles south as Sherman’s men continued across the Tennessee River and the defenders of Chattanooga succeeded in opening a successful, if minuscule, “cracker line” to provide themselves supplies by water. Grant, Burnside, and, in Washington, D.C., U.S. Army overall commander Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck were all discussing by wire the possibilities of the Upper Cumberland as a logistical route to Knoxville. Previous thinking concerning the transfer of goods from Nashville to Chattanooga and then up the Tennessee to Knoxville was impractical. Arriving goods had to be ­­off-loaded from steamers at Kingston in western Knox County and then forwarded overland 30 miles via the Kingston Pike, even then a possible invasion route for Confederates under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet approaching from near Chattanooga.



5. Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864 77

On October 29, Halleck messaged Grant that the railroad from Nashville could not supply both Chattanooga and Knoxville. “Cannot supplies for Burnside be sent up the Cumberland to Burkesville [Kentucky] or above on flats towed by light steamers,” he wondered. After all, Burkesville was only a hundred miles northwest of Kingston, to which goods could be hauled overland “on a hard mountain road” and then forwarded.

Knoxville from the south side of the Tennessee River. As Sherman’s men continued across the Tennessee River and the defenders of Chattanooga succeeded in opening a successful, if minuscule, “cracker line” to provide themselves supplies by water, Federal generals discussed employing the Upper Cumberland River as a logistical route to Knoxville. Previous thinking concerning the transfer of goods from Nashville to Chattanooga and then up the Upper Tennessee River to Knoxville was impractical both before and even after Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s approach (Library of Congress).

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After Vicksburg

The next morning, Grant suggested to Halleck that Carthage was probably “the best point.” From there supplies could be sent across, via Sparta and Crossville, to Kingston and forwarded to Knoxville. Just to be sure, he wired Burnside asking him if he could “get supplies from Carthage if sent there by boat?” The Knoxville commander did not immediately reply, but his counterpart, Maj. Gen. George Thomas commanding at Chattanooga, now chimed in. His full and optimistic description provides an interesting review of geographic opportunities and challenges that failed to take into account the exigencies of weather, river stages, or Southern irregulars: The best wagon route for General Burnside to supply his army at Kingston will be from a depot at Carthage. The road from that place to Kingston runs along the eastern bank of Caney Fork through a fine forage region from Carthage to Sparta…. The road from Carthage to Kingston is graded and runs over a Barren region generally hard gravel and firm. The Caney Fork is also navigable as far as Sligo Ferry in the winter, which will decrease the land transportation to about sixty miles.

Otherwise occupied, Burnside was unable to inform Grant that he could not pick up goods at Carthage because most of his wagons had already been sent up to Camp Nelson in Kentucky for stores. The Knoxville commander suggested an alternative. “If the Cumberland is sufficiently high to allow boats to go to mouth of Big South Fork, it would be well for some of the light draft gunboats and steamboats to tow up to that point a million of rations on flats.” Once the supplies were in place, they could be tied to the shore, covered with tarpaulins, and guarded by troops he would send until a wagon train could be gotten together.3 From Chattanooga, Maj. Gen. Grant now wired Knoxville advising that he would quickly contact Lt. Col. Theodore S. Bowers, assistant adjutant general at Nashville, to ascertain the workability of Burnside’s suggestion. If it was doable, the capital city’s newly arrived chief quartermaster, Col. James L. Donaldson, would arrange for transportation upstream of 300,000 rations of salt meat and a million of other rations. Once the goods were aboard and well covered with tarpaulins, the boats would go up, leave their barges, and return. Late that afternoon, Bowers notified Grant that navigation was practicable to Big South Fork, four million rations were on hand, and six light draught steamboats were lying at the wharf. The resupply idea all along supposed that a South Fork convoy would be protected by army quartermaster gunboats and not USN tinclads, which were busily escorting convoys on the Ohio and Lower Cumberland. It was realized that, although Union cavalry patrols had occasionally penetrated the Upper Cumberland region during the year, the area was far from pacific. Undoubtedly, a conversation with Capt. Perkins revealed that only one was presently available. “Would it not be well,” Bowers inquired, “to send an officer by steamboat tomorrow … to ask the Navy for additional gunboats?” We have no record of how or whether that visit was made, but ­­inter-service communication concerning the idea would cause all kinds of difficulty.4 Maj. Gen. Grant telegraphed RAdm. Porter on November 6, wondering, “Can you not send one or two more ­­light-draft gunboats to Nashville?” “I want to send some steamboats with rations by south fork of the Cumberland … they cannot go without convoys … there is an absolute necessity that rations should be sent by this route.” Grant then informed his Nashville assistant adjutant of the message to the Cairo naval station and simultaneously ordered final preparations for the steamers’



5. Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864 79

departure. Bowers’ deputy, Capt. Sidney A. (“Sid”) Stockdale of the 103rd Illinois Volunteer Infantry, detailed to handle the details and arrange convoy departure times. When all was ready, Grant and Burnside were both to be notified; Burnside was alerted and told, “If the Cumberland does not fall before barges can be got ready and loaded, they will go.” The water level of the narrow Upper Cumberland, filled with sharp turns that frustrated even small steamers, was now so shallow that the barge lift had to be canceled. Stockdale had the stores redistributed aboard the previously tasked steamboats, and also arranged for their designated escort, the Newsboy, to be outfitted with a second ­­12-pounder gun. News was received by Bowers and Stockdale that three tinclads and a naval convoy were “at Clarksville on their way up.” All was in readiness by the afternoon of November 9; it was only required that the convoy show up, after which the steamers could leave for Big South Fork under navy protection. The convoy duly arrived at Nashville on November 10—but without its escort vessels. For whatever reason, Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch, the Eighth District commander who was leading this escort leg from Smithland, had not learned of the army’s ­­up-the-river plans. Mail and telegraphic communication with his headquarters was sporadic of late, so when his charges were safely within a few miles of the capital city the previous

Brig. Gen. John A. Rawlings, Lt. Gen. Grant, and Lt. Col. Theodore S. Bowers. From Chattanooga during the campaign, Maj. Gen. Grant ordered Lt. Col. Bowers, his Nashville-based assistant adjutant general, to handle the arrangements to get supplies for Maj. Gen. Burnside to Big South Fork on the Upper Cumberland River. Inter-service communications with the USN over the matter caused all sorts of difficulties and hard feelings. This photograph of adjutants Rawlings and Bowers with Grant was taken later at City Point, Virginia (Library of Congress).

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day, the unadvised officer sent them on in while he took the three accompanying tinclads back to base at the mouth of the Cumberland. As the merchantmen put into the levee, the concerned Bowers ordered Stockdale to take the Newsboy and ascend the river to find “the naval officer in charge of the gunboat flotilla.”5 Stockdale did not find Fitch until the Newsboy dropped anchor at Smithland, where he learned that, due to communication failures, the navy man was completely ignorant of the planned military convoy. What Grant, Bowers, and Stockdale were seeking was a special operation outside Fitch’s mandate or instructions, one which would, by diverting gunboats, make it very difficult to properly run the regular Louisville convoys up and down the river. Before accepting the dangerous extra job and thereby violating his superior’s ­­long-standing convoy escort rules, he sought clarification. Volunteering to obtain it, Stockdale went to Cairo aboard the Newsboy and, after personally interviewing Porter, returned to Fitch with specific orders on November 11. Following the return of the military gunboat to Nashville from Smithland, she was ordered to transverse the length of the Upper Cumberland, beginning on November 13, to ascertain the depth of water and navigational potential for the special convoy. Over the next two days, Capt. John W. Donn of the U.S. Coast Survey, who was along, surveyed the physical challenges and was forced to turn in a negative report. The disappointed Grant wired Knoxville advising that the waterborne supply expedition had to be placed on hold, even though USN tinclads were now available. The navy would take the convoy up by the first rise—but no one knew when that would occur. Efforts would meanwhile be made to send goods overland. On November 18, Brig. Gen. Meigs was notified that “rations for General Burnside could not be sent now even if there was water enough in the Cumberland until the result of present movements by Longstreet are known.” Given the Confederates’ activities, Grant decided it better to unload the boats rather than to keep them in a constant state of readiness. While Chattanooga occupied the headlines, the efforts to safely resupply Nashville and Knoxville continued apace. Upon her return to Nashville from the Upper Cumberland, the Newsboy was ordered west to help guard against an increasing number of partisan operations along the riverbanks on the main convoy route from Louisville. The Union crisis in position and supply for the fortress city of Chattanooga was favorably resolved by November 27 when Maj. Gen. Sherman happily wired Memphis commander Brig. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlburt: “We outwitted Bragg and drove him off Missionary Ridge.” Unsupported by Longstreet, who was still outside Knoxville, the Confederate leader took his men away from the Tennessee River and back to north Georgia. RAdm. Porter, on December 2, reported on the operations “lately carried on up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.” “The gunboats,” he wrote Secretary Welles, “have been extremely active and have achieved with perfect success all that was desired or required of them.” Maj. Gen. Grant, according to veteran soldier Ralsa Rice, expressing the sentiment of many, was now considered “invincible.” Confederate partisans mounting raids against Union shipping were particularly anxious to strike the steamers, especially those now allowed to again sail alone. When, at a windy Canton, Kentucky, on November 27, the stern of the halted transport May Duke was blown ashore, a large group of irregulars clamored aboard. After



5. Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864 81

rifling the boat’s safe and whiskey supply, the greycoats forced it to carry them across the stream. When word was received of this mischief at Clarksville, the Newsboy hurriedly journeyed toward Canton to intercede. Henry D. Osborne, one of her crewmen, would write to his brother when they returned on December 3 that she just missed an opportunity to halt “300 Rebs” from crossing the stream. Taking note of the increased number of guerrillas in the area, a Chicago correspondent advised that additional “trouble is expected from the wretches unless gunboats patrol the stream and keep them at a safe distance.” The Newsboy and Silver Lake No. 2 would, without publicity, continue to patrol the Cumberland on both sides of Nashville in the months ahead.6 Although Chattanooga was out of danger as the new month dawned, Knoxville was still invested by Lt. Gen. Longstreet. Cold, wet Tennessee nights and dreary days were back and the hours of daylight were shorter now than at any other time in the year. Still, from a nautical viewpoint, that climate was preferable for many to the hot, ­­disease-ridden summers and low water. The Ohio and Cumberland River convoys to Nashville from Cincinnati and Louisville, shepherded by the tinclads of the Eighth Division, Mississippi Squadron, continued without letup as the river stage increased. The siege of Knoxville was raised by December 7 and Longstreet’s Confederates retreated thereafter deep into Dixie. The problem of getting supplies to the Union troops in Knoxville continued, as did the army’s desire to push goods up the narrow but now deeper Upper Cumberland to Big South Fork. For the next few months, improvised steamers from Chattanooga would also be sent to Knoxville via the Upper Tennessee, but their capacity was insufficient to meet that garrison’s requirements. On December 21, Maj. Gen. Grant transferred his headquarters back to Nashville, leaving Maj. Gen. Thomas in charge at Chattanooga. The same day, Grant wired Maj. Gen. John Foster, who had succeeded Burnside at Knoxville, advising that he was “pushing forward everything possible for you with all rapidity.” The pledge was repeated the next day as he asked Lt. Cmdr. Fitch, via Nashville’s chief quartermaster Col. Donaldson, for a gunboat to conduct a reconnaissance up to Big South Fork. Acting with alacrity, the naval commander immediately detailed his chief deputy, Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Henry A. Glassford, to execute the request with his tinclad, Reindeer, which was prepared for the same role earlier in the month. Before his departure to Nashville to learn the mission parameters from Grant himself. Fitch’s subordinate was warned to be very cautious, not to venture where there was insufficient water depth, and above all, not to be caught above shoals. The ­­cigar-chomping Grant informed Glassford during a short meeting at army headquarters late on December 23 that his mission carried three objectives: the convoy of supply steamers to Carthage, determination of the existence of any supplies of coal in the area which might be barged down to Nashville, and a general reconnaissance as far upstream as possible, hopefully the whole 400 miles to Point Isabel. The theater commander notified Knoxville on Christmas Eve: “two steamers here with three more to arrive loaded with stores for you.” Early on Christmas Day, Maj. Gen. Foster telegraphed his superior that arrangements to receive supplies were complete at two army depots. It was really hoped that Point Isabel could be reached, but if not, the goods could be ­­off-loaded at Carthage and placed under

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After Vicksburg

guard. Grant replied informing the Knoxville chief that two steamers loaded with subsistence stores were prepared to leave that morning for Carthage under “charge of gunboats and guards.”7 The USS Reindeer, with Army Lt. Roberts’ Silver Lake No. 2 in company, departed Nashville for Carthage on Boxing Day to undertake the Upper Cumberland reconnaissance requested by Maj. Gen. Grant. In addition to the two warships, three transports, the Hazel Dell, Mariner, and Nettie Hartupee, the latter just returned from above, went along, with 140 sharpshooters and three officers from Lt. Col. Andrew J. Cropsey’s 129th Illinois Volunteer Infantry embarked. Also attached, though not mentioned in official reports, was Coast Survey Capt. Donn. Interestingly, Capt. Elza Z. Stringer’s Nettie Hartupee was a veteran of the wartime Upper Cumberland trade, having traveled the stream to Point Isabel escorted and unescorted on several earlier occasions. At the beginning of August 1863, his boat was the only one out of eight able to cross Goose Creek Shoals, above Burkesville, and discharge her cargo at Point Isabel. The Nettie Hartupee was the only steamboat in port when troops from Maj. Gen. Burnside’s command arrived en route to Knoxville and was tasked with transporting army components, including infantry, cavalry, artillery, horses, and cattle across the Cumberland. Over the next four and a half months, the vessel plied the waters down to Burkesville, bringing up cargoes

Capt. John W. Donn, U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Having arrived at Chattanooga from the east in October 1863, Donn was soon thereafter transferred to Nashville to participate in the Glassford reconnaissance to Big South Fork. He would remain in the West until March 1864. The engineer is here pictured second from left (seated with mustache) at the C&GS Topographical Conference of 1892 (U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).



5. Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864 83

from other boats unable to pass over the shoals. She, like all of the ­­stern-wheelers running on the river, had “the hourly experience” of taking guerrilla musket fire. Without incident, the ­­USN-led force paddled up to Carthage, arriving just after noon on December 28. Following conversation with local citizens and soldiers, the task group commander wired Grant before dark reporting that a large quantity of excellent and already mined coal, maybe half a million bushels, was supposed to be lying on the bank in the vicinity of Olympus, in Overton County, about 50 miles from the mouth of Obey River. His informants believed barges could take it out if the army first cleared the area of local irregulars. After conferring with Lt. Col. Cropsey, Glassford arranged for 100 soldiers to be left at Carthage to guard the transports while they were unloaded. During the night, the naval officer discerned the possibility of a considerable rise in the river’s depth, which boded well for their endeavor. Lt. Col. Cropsey and 40 of his best men transferred aboard the Reindeer and Silver Lake No. 2 at daylight on the morning of December 29. Just before their departure, Glassford and the soldiers were warned that a part of Jackson County, south of the Cumberland and Overton as far east as the Obey River, was a hotbed of guerrilla activity. The area’s ­­well-merited reputation would be fully appreciated as they passed through. The Cumberland above Carthage winds northeast with a shape something akin to a pair of W’s end to end. The progress of the noisy, smoky gunboats was easily observed and as easily communicated; as the craft approached the Jackson County line, irregulars turned out in significant numbers, perhaps as high as 200, to contest their intrusion. Their leaders were believed to include Oliver P. Hamilton, John M. Hughes, Champ Ferguson, and Robert V. Richardson. As Glassford later put it, the “whole region seemed roused.” Choosing the tops of precipitous bluffs or cliffs, bands numbering from 10 to 15 men up to 75 to 100 concealed themselves in the thick timber or behind rocks and boulders waiting to loose volleys of small arms fire on the steamers. The Reindeer and Silver Lake No. 2 were taken under fire five times on the 29th. At Ray’s Ferry, a party of 15 or 20 men shot into the gunboats; the ambushes were repeated by 15 or 20 men at Flynn’s Lick, 40 or 50 at Gainesboro, 15 or 20 at Ferris Woodyard, and at Bennett’s Ferry, two miles below Celina, by 80 to 100. The Confederates’ positions, the USN leader would report, “availed them nothing, however, against the guns of this vessel and those of the Silver Lake No. 2; they were completely shelled out of them whenever they let us see them after a few volleys.” Lt. Col. Cropsey allowed as how the Rebels “manifested much zeal and skill,” but proved no match for the gunboats which quickly dislodged them with shot and shell “in fine style under the supervision of Captain Glassford.” So well positioned was the enemy that his flight after each attack was easy; Cropsey did not land his sharpshooters or attempt any kind of foot pursuit. This is not to say that the Rebels’ assaults accomplished nothing. The stacks and upper works of the Reindeer, already damaged by the trees and ­­low-hanging brush through which she passed, were perforated with bullet holes. Additionally, the bulkheading on the boiler deck, always weak and defective, was almost destroyed by the firing of her Dahlgren howitzers. Considerable repair, if not replacement, would be required before the officers could again occupy their quarters. Damage to the Silver Lake No. 2 is not recorded, though it is probable that she was also riddled. Although

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the army sharpshooters apparently had no luck against the bushwhackers, no Yankee soldiers or bluejackets were killed, though two were wounded. While passing Gainesboro, Lt. Glassford toyed with the idea of stopping to destroy the place. The town was supposedly a notorious irregular rendezvous and Rear Adm. Porter was on record as having ordered it destroyed. Informed, possibly by Grant, that Gov. Andrew Johnson wanted to build a military post in the community and needed the town’s building, the sailor held off, ensuring Gainesboro’s survival. The residents of other small hamlets en route were intimidated by the gunboats, which threw shells at them, according to historian Byrd Douglas, “on the theory that ‘guerrillas’ [among them] were sniping at the boats.” Following what Capt. Donn called a ­­hundred-mile or more “running fight with guerrillas,” the two gunboats reached the mouth of Obey River. There a quantity of loose coal was found, partially burned by the Confederates. It was a small portion of a partially burned cache of 500,000 bushels that had been dumped in 1861 after having been partially transferred up the 50 miles from an interior coal mine near the town of Olympus. Lt. Roberts’ boat, now almost out of fuel, was ordered to stop and coal from the piles while the Reindeer provided cover and gave Captain Donn a chance to examine the navigational features of the stream. While this occurred, Glassford noticed a certain uneasiness among the people seen milling around on shore and so decided to back off into midstream to investigate. A half mile downstream, he came upon the head of a mounted guerrilla band headed toward the coal dump. Apparently the Rebels believed both boats were in Obey scooping up the precious fuel while jammed among the branches of the trees that overhung the banks. Any idea of an attack on the part of the horsemen was “dispersed with a few rounds of shrapnel and canister.” Moving into Union County, the gunboats found the populace well disposed toward the United States, with many on the bank cheering them instead of shooting. Crossing over the ­­Tennessee-Kentucky state line, the vessels reached Creelsboro, Kentucky, about 12:30 p.m. on December 30. There Lt. Glassford took stock of his magazine and recorded his ammunition expenditure; there yet remained plenty to continue fighting, ahead or on the way back. They were now just 65 miles from Point Isabel and the mouth of the Big South Fork. Then forward progress ceased as the weather changed significantly late in the day, becoming extremely cold. Overnight, the level in the Cumberland declined by four feet, thus giving unmistakable signs of a fall. Aware that there were would obviously be no coal barges sent up for towing to Nashville before the February rise, the mission commander elected to return downstream on New Year’s. Leaving the Silver Lake No. 2 as guard boat at Carthage, Glassford’s Reindeer, with Cropsey as passenger, returned to Nashville on January 3, 1864. There the latter reported that most of the countryside they visited was cleared, save for Jackson County, where “guerrillas” kept the land south of the river “in a perfect terror.” Governor Johnson was told that a small force of Union soldiers stationed near Carthage could “clear the navigation of the Cumberland” and pacify the entire area.8 At the same time as Glassford’s expedition was underway, Maj. Gen. Grant, beginning on December 26, undertook his own Cumberland inspection trip, checking the condition of his men, their garrisons and supplies. The Department of the Mississippi commander’s route, by steamboat, railroad, and horse, took him over a rough, ­­rectangle-shaped route from Nashville to Chattanooga to Knoxville to



5. Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864 85

USS Reindeer. One of three “super” light draught tinclads to join the Mississippi Squadron at the time of Morgan’s Raid, the Reindeer was captained by Lt. Henry Glassford for the remainder of the war. In addition to her participation in all of his Upper Cumberland River expeditions in 1863–1865, she conducted regular convoy duties and fought in the Battle of Nashville. She had the unhappy distinction of being the first of her class decommissioned at war’s end and turned into a transport. Purchased into private service in October 1865 as the Mariner, she was lost in the Missouri River in May 1867 (Naval History and Heritage Command).

Lexington, Kentucky, and back to Nashville by ­­mid-January. This personal reconnaissance clearly demonstrated the need for regular supply convoys to Big South Fork, supported by the USN and army gunboats, as the extreme cold made the usual land transport avenues impracticable. “I am satisfied,” Maj. Gen. Halleck was informed on January 15, “that no portion of our supplies can be hauled by teams from Camp Nelson.” The chief general in Washington was informed that “on the first rise of the Cumberland, 1,200,000 rations will be sent to the mouth of the Big South Fork.” The road from that point was better than that over the Cumberland Gap; until that goal could be accomplished, the troops in East Tennessee would have to live off the land and on what little could be sent by rail and up the Tennessee by improvised steamer from Chattanooga.9 If the transport requirement was obvious, so too was knowledge that any organized logistical effort would be resisted by Confederate forces, particularly the many local irregulars. On January 11, Brig. Gen. Eleazer Paine, headquartered at Gallatin and charged with guarding the Louisville and Nashville Railroad from Nashville to Kentucky, had made an aggressive proposal to Gov. Andrew Johnson. It was suggested that his infantry and Col. William B. Stokes’ 5th Tennessee Cavalry (USA) be allowed to accompany the Newsboy and the next USN convoy to clear out the guerrillas all the way up the Cumberland to Burkesville. The command would be far larger than any counterinsurgency force yet utilized in the area, far larger than the few soldiers available to land from the army gunboats or even the USN tinclads. The sortie

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would be sanctioned within days and would herald the opening phase of a new Union “effort to bring the Upper Cumberland under control.” While Paine worked out arrangements for his sweep, Nashville assistant quartermaster Ferdinand S. Winslow had one million and a quarter of rations loaded on eight steamers, which were then dispatched to Carthage. Under protection of the two available army gunboats, the first Point Isabel convoy of 1864 got underway during the third week of January. Fired upon while approaching Gainesboro by numerous Southern gunmen, the lightly defended boats were forced to return to Carthage. The accompanying Newsboy then returned to Nashville, where it was reported (incorrectly) that one of the supply transports was sunk by enemy fire. In Nashville at the time, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch quickly learned that the transports headed above Carthage were in danger from guerrillas and the “Army gunboats not sufficient to protect them.” The Silver Lake No. 2, serving as station boat at the Kentucky town and guarding the coal barges, could not assist, so a request for help was sent to Fitch on January 24. After conferring with Brig. Gen. Eleazer Paine, Lt. Col. Bowers and others, the USN commander confirmed to RAdm. Porter that “the exigency of the service at the present moment requires that we should take some little risk, as the army above need supplies very much.” From information coming into the Tennessee capital, it seemed “that the entire population of Jackson County” was rising to prevent the transports getting through. Fitch believed his old foe, John Hunt Morgan, was behind the resistance: “I believe it is thought that this will be Morgan’s first endeavor to cut off supplies.” Fitch secretly relished a rematch; “I trust that for our benefit,” he informed his superior, “the enemy may stick to his purpose.” As Fitch prepared to participate in Paine’s expedition, the Newsboy returned to Carthage carrying a few soldiers and, more importantly, information that a thousand others would follow. The Moose, Reindeer, and Victory, half of the tinclads assigned to the Eighth District, departed for Carthage on a slowly falling river dropping anchor off the port late on January 27. There they found eight steamers loaded for Port Isabel and the Big South Fork, along with the army gunboats Newsboy and Silver Lake 2. After a brief conference the next morning in which he stressed to all vessel captains how important it was to get provisions through to Big South Fork because Union troops needed them badly, Fitch again put Glassford in charge of the mission, giving him also the Victory to supplement the Reindeer and the two army boats. Before noon on January 31, Brig. Gen. Paine launched his sweep into Jackson County north and south of the river with infantry and cavalry. Meanwhile, Glassford agreed to participate in the expedition, accompanying the troop steamer Sullivan, escorted by the Silver Lake No.2, further upstream above Sand Shoals. Although the Reindeer was unable to cross the obstructions, the other two vessels could. That evening, the transport and the army vessel returned to Carthage, where Glassford was informed of the military’s success. “The boats were not fired upon at all,” he was told, and some 33 Rebels were killed and 63 captured. No one mentioned that most of the butternut irregulars in the area avoided fighting and hid in the hilly terrain. When Paine returned to Nashville, he left the two army gunboats at Carthage, with the Silver Lake No. 2 resuming her ­­station-keeping duties. The naval convoy, with difficulty, continued toward Big South Fork during the first week of February, encountering numerous navigational problems. Quartermaster Winslow recalled that it



5. Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864 87

An Army gunboat on Western waters. The U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Department operated a number of light gunboats on the Western Rivers during the Civil War. The most prominent were the Newsboy and Silver Lake, No. 2 based at Nashville and the Stone River at Bridgeport, Alabama. The vessel depicted could well represent the Newsboy, on the Harpeth Shoals side of Nashville (Harper’s Weekly, October 11, 1862). wound its way slowly up the river; sometimes attacked by guerrillas, sometimes waiting until the gunboats had cleared the way, then laying over for days at sandbars, with only 15 to 20 inches of water, and waiting for a rise; lightening and pulling each other over low places; then detained for want of fuel, and collecting all the fence rails they could find in the country.

The Reindeer and Victory hauled the steamers through their last major obstacle, the ­­3 0-inch shallows of Wolf Creek Shoals, on February 18 while Lt. Glassford undertook a scout aboard the Newsboy of the final ­­41-mile leg to Burnside Point at Point Isabel. When the tinclads and transports arrived the next day, “after six weeks hard work,” they found the army had insufficient storehouses for the amount of supplies delivered; however, working with quartermaster troops, the surplus was piled up ashore and covered with boards and tarpaulins. It was anticipated that the army would have rations for some time. Once the cargo was discharged and the boats were coaled, they were able to round to and make the long trip back to Nashville on the next rise, “without further damage than small repairs.”10 The conflict on the Upper Cumberland, always a brutal counterinsurgency affair for Federal regular and volunteer forces, and even nastier for area residents, continued apace into the spring, as did the river supply convoys to Point Isabel. The number of vessels involved were seldom above three or maybe four transports, usually

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After Vicksburg

but not always guarded by one or both of the U.S. Army gunboats. On every trip, the boats were subjected to volleys from shore, but the number of irregulars engaged was usually small and they lacked artillery. Before the dedicated waterborne Knoxville replenishment concluded in early summer, there was only one more incident of nautical interest recorded. With supplies from Nashville, three army transports, the Ella Faber, World, and Nettie Hartupee, steaming without escort, arrived unmolested at Point Isabel during the first week of March and were unloaded. Downriver at the Tennessee capital, intelligence was meanwhile received by the Federals that a large group of “marauders,” said to number 50 to 100 insurgents believed led by Charles “Champ” Ferguson, a guerrilla leader notorious in Union circles, was planning to hit the trio shortly after its return departure. The Newsboy, taking on ammunition and supplies at Carthage, was ordered by wire to steam upstream and lead them down. Proceeding as rapidly as the tricky stream would permit, she was slowed by thick fog and could not rendezvous before their departure. It was Saturday morning, March 12, 20 miles below Burkesville, when the three ­­s tern-wheelers were caught by Ferguson. There was a squad of convalescent soldiers aboard the Ella Faber, who returned fire and thus protected their boat, plus the World, as they passed. Despite the upper works of the steamers being riddled by bullets, there were no fatalities, though two bluecoats were wounded.

Rope Ferry, Cumberland River, Burnside, Kentucky, ca. 1900. Since the earliest days, ferries were employed to transport men and goods across the various Western rivers. They could be either self-propelled vessels or, on smaller streams such as that depicted here, basically flatboats that could be pulled across. Ferries were heavily employed by Confederates attempting to move troops and were thus a major target for Federal soldiers and gunboats (Library of Congress).



5. Gunboats in the Cumberland Mountains, 1863–1864 89

The Nettie Hartupee was unable to pass by the fire and so hugged the other side of the river. At this point, a troop of 11th Kentucky Cavalry (USA) appeared and hailed the steamer, asking her pilot to take them aboard and cross them over. Believing the horsemen to be Rebels, the transport master ordered his boat to pass on, but could not get by the Southern chokepoint. Unable to proceed, she simply hove to. At this point, the Kentucky horsemen came up with the boat and their officers were able to convince the steamboatmen of their true Union affiliation. As the soldiers and their horses were being taken aboard, the Newsboy arrived from below and shelled the surrounding woods and hills as the Rebels faded away. The Nettie Hartupee, together with the Ella Faber, World, and Newsboy, passed on without further incident.11

6

The Red River Campaign, 1864 Estimating the situation west of the Mississippi on January 4, 1864, Confederate Lt. Gen. E. Kirby Smith wrote to Maj. Gen. Richard (“Dick”) Taylor, CSA: “I still think the Red and Washita [Ouachita] Rivers, especially the former, are the true lines of operation for an invading column, and that we may expect an attempt to be made by the enemy in force before the rivers fall.” Little did he know at that time that, within eight weeks, RAdm. David Dixon Porter would arrive with just such a joint expedition. For some months now, Federal forces from Washington to the West had been involved in planning an incursion into the ­­Trans-Mississippi theater. By the beginning of the new year, generals as diverse as Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and Nathaniel Banks, the eventual leader, were on board with a plan to move up the Red River through Louisiana toward Texas. The for thcoming op eration Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, CSA Commander of the Confederate District of Western Lou- would, in actuality, be a “rather grand isiana and son of the 12th U.S. president, undertaking,” in the words of historian Zachary Taylor, this Kentuckian was the William Riley Brookshire. Although Southern general most directly responsi- championed by, among others, Presible for the spring 1864 defense of Red River dent Abraham Lincoln and Maj. Gen. from the combined Federal expedition. He would receive official thanks from the Con- Henry Halleck, the undertaking was federate Congress for his actions (Library of initially opposed by Grant and Banks. Although, in the end, it would Congress). 90



6. The Red River Campaign, 1864 91

really consist of a “loosely connected joint land and naval exercise,” it did have as its ultimate military objective “completion of the subjugation of Louisiana and Arkansas.” If this thrust was successful, it “would effectively remove the Confederate ­­Trans-Mississippi Department from an active role in the conflict.” In addition to the purely military benefits of such a gambit, a big Red River offensive could disrupt Confederate commerce and have some hope of dissuading a northward view by French forces then trying to subdue Mexico. Naturally, the Mississippi Squadron was invited along to provide support and guard the many necessary transports. While the political, military, and logistical difficulties of a Red River campaign were reviewed and resolved (details far outside the scope of our story), the work of the USN gunboats on the Mississippi and her tributaries was unceasing. Army support, including logistical operations continued as did participation in sundry, mostly smaller, military missions. Acting Lt. Henry Glassford’s January–February mission on the Upper Cumberland was a shining example of a logistical mission. Guerrilla and irregular force suppression, along with convoy protection, remained a constant concern, as was the maintenance of an effective blockade against contraband goods and produce.1 At the end of January, Army of the Tennessee commander Maj. Gen. Sherman elected to further safeguard the ­­h ard-won citadel at Vicksburg by destroying the rail system that supported Confederate forces remaining in central Mississippi. The junction town of Meridian was the principal target and the venture was conducted by main units operating out of Vicksburg and south from Tennessee, with a combined arms diversion up the Yazoo River designed to further confuse the inland Rebels. This Yazoo expedition, one in a series of Federal ascents of that stream, was tasked with the execution of miscellaneous amphibious landings and the liberation of cotton. Steamers transported a provisional brigade under Col. James H. Coates as part of a ­­five-vessel tinclad task group led by the Mississippi Squadron’s Fifth District commander, Lt. Cmdr. Elias K. Owen, arrived off Yazoo City, which was occupied on February 9, and then moved further upstream, capturing anything of value. When Mississippi cavalry, sent to help repel Sherman, returned, they attacked the Union occupation force at Yazoo City on March 5. The participation of the gunboats in the defense was so steadfast that, of the sailors sent ashore to man wheeled naval howitzers, four were later recommended for Medals of Honor. Although not altogether successful, the ­­large-scale Meridian raid, combining diversion with ability to live off the land, served as a model when Sherman moved east toward Atlanta.2 Meanwhile, another shining example of army support occurred further south, on February 13–15, when the light draught Forest Rose helped repulse a Confederate attack on the Federal garrison at Waterproof, Louisiana, 20 miles above Natchez, When the Southern assault was resumed a week later, it proved so strong that, at midnight, February 22/23, the gunboat evacuated the bluecoats and such of their supplies as could be transported. Out on the Mississippi, Lt. Cmdr. Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., captain of the Conestoga, reported to his superiors on February 19 that a large contraband trade was being maintained with the Confederate army through the agency of Federal cotton buyers. The perpetrators of this economic crime obtained their trade goods at Baton Rouge

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or New Orleans and then hauled them to Waterloo on civil steamers. There the items were unloaded and taken by wagon behind Rebel lines. The merchants then received cotton bales at 25 cents a pound, which they hauled back to the river and shipped back to New Orleans. During the preceding few weeks, the old timberclad had captured two men engaged in the trafficking and 55 bales of cotton. Selfridge estimated that he interrupted less than 20 percent of the traffic. Since the earliest days of the war, contraband trade had been a significant problem, one which would continue to manifest itself until the fighting stopped. Gary D. Joiner reports that a crucial piece of evidence received by RAdm. Porter on February 14 was a chart of Shreveport, Louisiana, and vicinity drawn on the back of the death certificate of a Federal seaman, James O’Leary. The detail on this map was “perhaps the greatest influence of Admiral Porter’s decision of which vessels should be included in the expedition.” A large group of warships, including ironclads, a ram, several support vessels, and tinclads, chosen on the basis of the O’Leary document, was ordered during the next two weeks to assemble for the upcoming ­­Trans-Mississippi campaign. Porter, aboard the flagboat Black Hawk, arrived at their rendezvous point off the mouth of the Red River during the last week of February. On February 21, Lt. Cmdr. Frank M. Ramsay, commander of the Third District, reported that the water level of the Red River was falling again. Three Confederate gunboats reportedly at Shreveport at the end of January could not get over the falls there due to the low river stage.3 While the USN made ready for the upcoming expedition, the squadron commander arranged for a naval reconnaissance, under Lt. Cmdr. Ramsay, to ascend Louisiana’s Black and Ouachita (pronounced “Washitaw”) Rivers. Consulting maps, the two officers noted that the Ouachita rose in Arkansas and emptied into the Red, about 45 miles from the mouth of the latter. The last 60 miles or so of the course of the Ouachita was sometimes called the Black River. Porter wished to test Confederate defenses in this river system, geographically located next in line above the Red. Bridges were to be destroyed, along with Confederate posts being formed along those rivers and any provisions found in the process. Anything items of value were to be “liberated.” Ramsay led the Ouachita scout in the river monitor Osage. Together with the Neosho, she was one of two ­­s tern-wheel light draught river monitors completed by James B. Eads the year before. Also going along were three tinclads, the giant Ouachita, the Fort Hindman, and the Cricket, as well as the timberclads Lexington and Conestoga. Departing the mouth of the Red River on February 29, the task group was away for about a week. While battling both regular and irregular troops, it recovered several cannon and gained information of less than immediate value. When the warships returned on March 5, few were surprised to also see that their decks were loaded with captured cotton.4 Confederate Maj. Gen. Taylor knew by March 1 that a large Federal force would soon be headed his way and to meet it he had just 25,000 men. Maj. Gen. Banks and RAdm. Porter, ­­co-equal commanders of the Union expedition, enjoyed a force superiority of 42,000 men, including 10,000 on loan from Maj. Gen. Sherman. Maj. Gen. A. J. “Whiskey” Smith and those men arrived at the mouth of the Red River on March 11 aboard 21 transports. VII Corps under Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele in Arkansas was



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USS Osage on the Red River. Built by contractor James B. Eads, this single-turreted and unique paddle-wheel river monitor was a major USN asset during the Red River expedition. In addition to service in the preliminary Ouachita River reconnaissance, she would figure prominently in the capture of Fort DeRussy and the action at Blair’s Landing. Transferred to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, she would be lost to a “torpedo” in March 1865. Note: the false gun ports painted on the side of her turret mask the actual straight ahead bearing of her two guns (Naval History and Heritage Command).

also supposed to assist Banks with 15,000 more, but in the end, they did not fully participate, their Camden expedition a failure, too. In addition to the civil steamers chartered by the U.S. Quartermaster Department to transport Smith’s bluecoats, RAdm. Porter, over the previous few days, had completed gathering what Lt. Cmdr. Selfridge later called “the most formidable force that had ever been collected in the western waters.” This armada drew from every flotilla in the squadron; the admiral was “determined there should be no want of floating batteries for the troops to fall back on in case of disaster.” Included in the task force as it assembled at the mouth of the Red River were 13 ironclads (Lafayette, Essex, Benton, Choctaw, Chillicothe, Ozark, Louisville, Carondelet, Eastport, Pittsburg, Mound City, Osage, and Neosho), six tinclads (Ouachita, Black Hawk, Juliet, Fort Hindman, Cricket, and Gazelle), and a number of auxiliaries. Also included was one timberclad, Lexington, added for her heavy guns and her speed. The naval and quartermaster transport force assigned to the operation was thus 104 vessels, mounting 300 guns (210 naval). Stripping so many gunboats away from their normal beats or anchorages to participate in the Red River expedition meant that numerous towns, crossings, and other points normally protected or regularly visited by one or more of the Mississippi Squadron units would be either defenseless or vulnerable. In the weeks ahead, there would be several effective Confederate attacks further north led by many Confederate

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The Red River campaign begins. A depiction of the entrance into Red River of units of the Mississippi Squadron under RAdm. David Dixon Porter. Thirteen ironclads were included in this huge campaign, the largest naval operation on the Western waters after the capture of Vicksburg (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, v. 4).

partisans and cavalrymen, including the indomitable Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. Years later in his naval history, Adm. Porter was frank that “all of these successes gained by the Confederates were owing to the unfortunate Red River expedition, which had withdrawn the gunboats from their posts.” In reviewing the growing Federal naval strength on the Red, the embedded Philadelphia Inquirer reporter was moved to observe that “a more formidable fleet was never under single command than that now on the Western rivers under Admiral Porter.” On the other hand, he continued, “it might be said, also, never to less purpose. At the time of departure, the strength of the Rebellion in the inland waters had been crushed.” Union success might yet be problematic as the river stage of the Red was not rising as anticipated. The ­­gung-ho Porter knew from recent surveys, including that conducted of the nearby Ouachita and Black by Lt. Cmdr. Ramsay, that this was “the most treacherous of all rivers; there is no counting on it, according to the rules which govern other streams.” Writing for Battles and Leaders after the war, Lt. Cmdr. Selfridge explained that the whole expedition hinged upon “the usual spring rise; but this year, the rise did not come.” Indeed in looking back, it was his opinion that “had the river been bank full, no force that the Confederates could have controlled could have stood for a moment against the fleet.” Just before Smith’s arrival, Porter received the news that heavy rains were delaying Banks. He could not possibly reach Alexandria, one of the principal targets, before March 21. Additionally, the sailor found that work on the completion of the unfinished Fort De Russy, 30 miles south of Alexandria, was being pushed hard by the Rebels.



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While the naval and military men bobbed on their vessels observing the overgrown marshlands ashore, the admiral and Maj. Gen. Smith held a meeting to decide what to do next in light of Banks’ delay. The two men decided to capture Alexandria, Louisiana, taking Fort De Russy while en route. Their invasion armada started up the Red River at 8:30 a.m. on March 12. Right away, several of Porter’s larger ironclads had difficulty making it over the sandbars that guarded the entrance to the Red River. Elsewhere as the Federals advanced toward Fort DeRussy, efforts were made not only to provide this task force with nautical reinforcements, but to spread out the vessels remaining in the squadron’s districts in order to cover as much of the unprotected Mississippi and her tributaries as possible.5 Once the Union armada was fully into the Red, the ­­Porter-Smith plan began to unfold. At the junction of the Old Red River and the Atchafalaya River, Lt. Cmdr. Seth Ledyard Phelps, captain of the giant ironclad Eastport, took a force up the former to remove a series of obstructions in the river eight miles below Fort De Russy. Porter took the remaining boats, including the transports, into the Atchafalaya. On the morning of March 11, the U.S. Army soldiers disembarked at Simmes­ port, where, according to an embedded reporter from the Chicago Daily Tribune, they “gathered all the hogs, sheep, chickens, etc. they could find and then set fire to the houses.” The next morning, they pursued the Confederates falling back on Fort De Russy. Phelps’ gunboats, continuing up the Red River, reached the impediments that the Southerners spent five months building and removed them within hours. Fort De Russy was captured before sundown on March 14 and, taking possession, the Federals learned that most of the defenders withdrew early, leaving but a gallant 300 to offer what turned out to be token resistance. On March 15, Lt. Cmdr. Phelps sent his two fastest vessels, which were joined en route by two tinclads, to secure Alexandria. Although all but one of a Confederate steamboat fleet eluded capture, the Union craft anchored off the town in early evening as Maj. Gen. Taylor’s troops withdrew to Natchitoches. Although Maj. Gen. Smith’s troops took over the occupation, RAdm. Porter was not at all pleased that Maj. Gen. Banks and his legions, plagued as they were by heavy rains, were absent. The Red River campaign seemed to be at a standstill. Shreveport, the principal objective, was still 350 miles upstream. So far the soldiers who had arrived, many from places like Wisconsin, New York, and Rhode Island, were not impressed with the river. “It is a dirty, sluggish stream, about an eighth of a mile wide,” wrote Harris Beecher of the 114th New York, “flowing in an extremely crooked channel.” Continuing, he added, “Its ends and curves are so exaggerated that they seem almost unnatural.” Until Banks arrived, Porter elected to use his men to make a little money. Because Federal prize law gave sailors a third of the value of captured items including cotton, Porter turned his men loose to “liberate” as much as they could. Even though, per policy, the Confederates attempted to burn the bailed produce to prevent its capture by the Northerners, there was just too much for all of it to be fired. For much of a week before the Union expedition’s military commander rode in, Federal sailors seized in excess of 3,000 bales (The New York Times reported 5,000). When the last of Maj. Gen. Banks’ troops trekked into Alexandria on March 26, the Federals finally were able to assemble what Ludwell Johnson called “an impressive

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Steamers at the Alexandria, Louisiana, levee. The transports of RAdm. Porter’s fleet were captured at Alexandria on March 16, 1864. Among those that have been identified are (left to right) the Southwestern, W. L. Ewing, Clara Belle, Emerald, Des Moines, Choutmars, Sioux City, Thomas E. Tutt, Starlight, Lioness, Red Chief, Belle Creole, Rob Roy, Belladonna, Diadem, Mattie Stephens, Arizona, Silver Wave, Adriatic, and Liberty. Also included, though difficult to make out, is the tinclad USS Grossbeak (Library of Congress).

display of military might—the greatest in the history of the Southwest.” But could it be effectively employed? The same day, Lt. Gen. Grant issued a call for the return of Maj. Gen. Smith’s command. By this time, the spring rise in water level that the Yankees were counting upon had simply failed to materialize—for the first time in nine years. Indeed, instead of rising, the Red was actually falling at the rate of an inch an hour. As the water stage dropped, channel bottom irregularities increased the number of dangerous rapids and exposed countless rocks, sandbars, snags, and other obstructions. At this point, Smith’s corps undertook a march to Bayou Rapides, 21 miles above Alexandria. Despite the slow rise in the water, elements of the Mississippi Squadron were needed to provide support.6 Determined to continue in the face of falling water, RAdm. Porter was faced with the problem of getting his fleet over the double set of rapids just north of Alexandria. At the time of the Civil War, these obstructions caused the same difficulties for river traffic as the Harpeth Shoals on the Cumberland River or Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee. “The rapids of Alexandria,” wrote Steven D. Smith and George J. Castille, 3rd in 1986, “were composed of rocky outcroppings of sandstone and siltstone forming shoals along a mile stretch of the Red River, even at times of high water.” They continued: “At low water, the upper and lower ends of the rapids were exposed.” The river stage looked passable for some of the lighter vessels, though



6. The Red River Campaign, 1864 97

questionable for others. Electing to keep a number of ­­deep-draught vessels below, Porter sent others ahead into the danger zone. Almost as soon as this effort began, the giant Eastport grounded. It would take days to get her free. On March 29, Porter sent a letter to Navy Secretary Welles announcing that he was about to depart for Shreveport “or as high up the river as I can get.” The low level of the Red River continued to hinder efforts to get his gunboats above the Alexandria rapids. The admiral continued: “I shall only be able to take up part of the force I brought with me, and leave the river guarded all the way through.” With the Eastport finally available, the ­­Porter-Smith expedition resumed its voyage up the Red River on April 2. In addition to Lt. Cmdr. Phelps’ pride, a number of other ironclads, tinclads, and a timberclad ascended. A total of 26 chartered steamer transports with Maj. Gen. Smith’s men and supplies also ascended as Banks, meanwhile, marched the men with him overland. By noon the next day, the combined force

Map of the Red River and Lower Mississippi region. This regional map depicts the Red River to the left of the Mississippi River, as well as many of its communities. It was this route which the Federal expedition expected to follow up to Shreveport, Louisiana (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, v. 3).

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arrived at Grand Ecore, a little west bank town four miles north of Natchitoches, “as old as Philadelphia.” There Whiskey Smith disembarked his men, save for the XVII Corps Provisional Division, under Brig. Gen. T. Kilby Smith, which remained on the transports. The Union generals at Grand Ecore now formulated a new plan for the rapid capture of Shreveport. The National expeditionary corps, comprising Banks’ corps and most of Maj. Gen. A. J. Smith’s, both of which thus far had moved mainly along the Red River, would strike inland away from water along the Shreveport road on April 6–7 headed toward Mansfield. Under escort of navy gunboats, Brig. Gen. Smith’s 2,000 Provisionals, aboard 20 transports also carrying “many hundred thousand rations,” would steam up to Springfield Landing, opposite Loggy Bayou, six miles northeast of Mansfield and about 30 miles south of Shreveport, but 110 miles from that town by water. As the waterborne portion of the Shreveport expedition was governed largely by the depth of water in the Red, Porter ordered that the heavier gunboats still with him remain where they were. He personally led the advance up the Red River toward Shreveport in those of the lightest draft, flying his blue flag aboard the tinclad Cricket. In addition to the admiral’s boat, the monitors Osage and Neosho were along, together with the ironclad Chillicothe, and because of their ­­8-inch guns, the tinclad Fort Hindman and the Lexington. If the water level would only begin to rise, the remaining gunboats could be brought up, but these five were deemed sufficient, for the moment, to protect the U.S. Army convoy. Led by the monitors and Lexington and guarded at the rear by the Chilicothe and Fort Hindman, the military’s steamers paddled for three days northwest through the ­­so-called “Narrows” toward their goal. The Cricket acted as the admiral’s sheepdog in prodding the task group forward. Meanwhile, on April 7, the dispatch steamer New National arrived at Cairo, Illinois, towing a pair of barges loaded with the first 1,600 bales of cotton seized at Alexandria. Received by the U.S. Marshal, the lot was all considered a naval prize said to be valued at $400,000. Even though the heavier ironclads were left behind, the Union warships, along with some of the larger transports, experienced very rough navigation. The muddy water often made it almost impossible to spot obstructions such as stumps or snags under the surface. Many bottoms scraped or struck hidden bars and rocks. Damage to paddle wheels and unshipped or broken rudders was common. Steaming around the numerous sharp bends against the current was laborious, to put it gently, and the maximum speed of the entire fleet was just one or two miles per hour. This slow parade was visible for miles and all along the way Rebel riflemen kept pace with the boats “like a pack of wolves,” targeting them from the bluffs along the shore. In addition to navigational problems and enemy harassment, Porter’s gunboats continued to suffer fuel shortages. The fleet supply of coal having long since been exhausted, the vessels depended upon wood for their motive power. There being few suitable trees, personnel from the boats spent their early evenings scouring the countryside for fence rails. Whole warship crews as well as soldiers from the transports hunted the convenient fuel. Lt. Cmdr. Selfridge later suggested that the ­­Banks-Porter campaign might have been more easily defeated by the Southerners if their soldiers had just “destroyed the fences and not the cotton.”



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Arriving at Springfield Landing on April 10, the Yankee force, 110 miles above Alexandria and just 40 miles from Shreveport, found the way blocked by a sunken steamer, the New Falls City, scuttled directly across the river a mile above Loggy Bayou. Before the wreck could be cleared, National horsemen arrived with news that Banks was defeated in battles at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill and was withdrawing to Grand Ecore. Though not fully realized by all at that moment, the Union’s Red River campaign had reached its zenith. Porter later told Maj. Gen. Smith that his disappointment was great upon learning “that all our perseverance and energy had been thrown away.” The admiral and brigadier now informed their officers of Banks’ defeat and retreat. They also informed them that the boats would have to go back to Grand Ecore in order to avoid entrapment above. A plan was worked out to provide a maximum of defense against the Confederate troops, regular and irregular, that were anticipated along the way. Soldiers from the various regiments constructed rude breastworks of hay and cracker boxes for sharpshooters on the hurricane decks of their steamboats. During the trip downstream, the gunboats were to be distributed among the transports, with the Osage at the rear. Because, however, there were only six gunboats to defend the long line of quartermaster steamers, three army transports were turned into ersatz gunboats by the addition of military cannon. A section of Battery M of the First Missouri Light Artillery was detailed aboard the Emerald and another went aboard the Thomas E. Tutt. The steamer Rob Roy, already loaded with cannon and ammunition, became the most formidable of these auxiliaries. Four ­­30-pounder Parrott guns from the First Indiana Heavy Artillery were placed in her bow. A number of other boats were protected by ­­12-pounder howitzers mounted atop their hurricane decks. Guerrillas and others were not the only obstacles to cause concern. The river going back down would be just as hazardous or worse than it was coming up. There was great worry that the larger craft, particularly the monitors, would be almost unmanageable. Within a couple of hours of encountering the New Falls City, the Federal convoy began its return. Once started, the rearmost boat “took the lead downstream and, though it took the whole night, they rounded to or otherwise came about as the bayous and pockets of the stream afforded facility.” By noon the following day, the gunboats and the military transports commenced a desperate battle against falling water and Confederate riflemen. The huge billowing clouds of wood smoke puffed out by the fleeing Northern vessels would be visible for miles, making the boats’ progress easy to monitor.7 The watery retreat was every bit as difficult as anticipated, worsened by falling water and Confederate sharpshooters who fired on anyone exposed on any Federal deck. At dawn, Southern Brig. Gen. Arthur P. Bagby was dispatched with a brigade of cavalry and a battery to cut off the boats at the docks of Bayou Pierre. Luckily for them, the Union vessels passed Grand Bayou Landing several hours before the Rebel horsemen arrived. Advised of the movements of the Federal fleet a little later, Brig. Gen. Thomas Green, leading 1,200 cavalrymen with two artillery batteries, also galloped off determined to catch up the next day at Blair’s Landing, about 45 miles north of Grand Ecore and due west of his location at Pleasant Hill. April 12 did not begin well for the men of the return convoy. Underway at 7 a.m.,

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Riflemen attack units of the Federal Red River fleet. While steaming up the Red River from Alexandria toward Grand Ecore, Louisiana, elements of the Mississippi Squadron were attacked by numerous Confederate soldiers; the Yankees were even more ferociously assaulted on their way back down. Meanwhile below, supply and communication steamers, even under escort, were frequently targeted. Retreating back to the Mississippi after escaping the low water of the Alexandria rapids via the Bailey Dam, the entire fleet was assailed all the way downstream (Harper’s Weekly, May 14, 1864).

the vessels encountered what Brig Gen. Smith called “exceedingly difficult” navigation. In an effort to avoid collisions while turning the narrow bends, the fleet was ordered to separate as much as possible. The army transports at the rear were covered by the Lexington and the almost unsteerable Osage. For help in the current, the nearby XIX Corps flagboat Black Hawk, in a motive practice not uncommon on the Western rivers, was lashed to the monitor’s starboard quarter, greatly aiding her descent.



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During the morning, the Lexington collided with the Rob Roy, in an accident severe enough to require she lay to for five hours making repairs. While the boats were engaged out on the river, Brig. Gen. Green’s cavalry struggled across Bayou Pierre, attempting to catch Porter’s fleet before it got away. At about the same time the Lexington returned to duty, Green arrived in the crest of the promontories that followed the Red River. Moving down through woods and into the fields of Blair’s Plantation, his Rebels sought the cover of the brush and sycamores that lined the bluffs overlooking the banks of the considerably fallen stream. From here they noted that many of Porter’s various boats were bunched together and that the Osage and Black Hawk were just coming into view, bringing up the rear of the convoy. Suddenly, the monitor ran hard aground, bows downstream with her turret guns pointed toward the right bank. About an hour later as she made the limited speed possible in the dangerous waters about three miles down from Blair’s Plantation, the Lexington was engaged by Rebel riflemen. At 3:15 p.m., whistles could be heard sounding from the boats further back upstream. Upstream several miles, the transport William H. Brown, the Fort Hindman, and the grounded monitor Neosho were also attacked by Green’s troopers. The warships responded, smashing the woods along the shore. Eventually, the Neosho freed herself and the three moved to safety. Brig. Gen. Smith in his official report later laid out the situation now leading to the day’s climactic encounter. At approximately 4 p.m., his command steamer, the Hastings, went under the riverbank on the south side of the stream near Blair’s or Pleasant Hill Landing, in order to repair one of her unserviceable paddle wheels. This action was taken not far from the stranded Alice Vivian, which had gone hard aground in midstream earlier with 400 cavalry mounts on board and was not yet afloat, though she was receiving aid from two other steamers. The Lexington, meanwhile, overhauled the transports tied up at the bank and moved to offer assistance toward the grounded Alice Vivian plus the Osage and Black Hawk lying below her on the opposite bank half a mile up. At the same time, the dismounted Rebel horsemen, unsuccessfully hoping not to be seen, moved forward “in columns of regiments” and assembled atop a high mud at the riverbank. Spotted by an alert pilot aboard the Black Hawk, the deploying Confederate force was reported to the captain of the Osage, who signaled the Lexington to pour enfilading fire on the gathering threat. Brig. Gen. Smith also organized his defense, warning the cannoneers and sharpshooters of the Emerald and Rob Roy. The Lexington consequently charged past the transports, firing her ­­8-inch bow guns. Coming within 600 yards of the Confederates, she was subjected to heavy musket fire and slowed, gliding by at a distance from shore of about 20 feet. “The enemy came boldly up to the edge of the bank,” the boat’s captain later testified, “yelling and waving their side arms, so close that as a portion of the bank caved in from our fire [a number] of the rebels tumbled down within a few feet of the vessel.” As historian Brooksher later opined, honors for the first round were won “by the … ambushee rather than the … ambusher.” As the Lexington proceeded to rake her enemy, the Texas riders along the bank opened “a very heavy fire of musketry” on the Osage and the transports from a range of about 100 yards. This fusillade was supposed to cause damage and to pin down the sharpshooters on the decks of the Federal transports. Despite the ferocity of this

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shooting, it was not very effective. Indeed, Brig. Gen. Smith later dryly observed of Green’s marksmen that “their practice was defective.” Blair’s Landing was now the hottest place in Louisiana. The noise level was so high that it could be heard miles away at Pleasant Hill, where Confederate soldier H. C. Wetmore recorded in his diary: “Heavy cannonading in the direction of Red River, which is eighteen miles distant. All of our division of cavalry is there.” While the Confederate troopers ashore blazed away at the boats afloat, Union gunners on the ersatz gunboats fired back as did soldiers aboard all the engaged transports. The latter lay behind makeshift emplacements; bulwarks of cotton and hay bales, plus cracker boxes and even sacks of oats, provided excellent protection for the shooters as they sent a cloud of mini balls ashore. Given their proximity to one another, the Black Hawk and Osage were especially hard hit. “The rebels fought with unusual pertinacity for over an hour,” the latter’s skipper later observed, “delivering the heaviest and most concentrated fire of musketry that I have ever witnessed.” On the other hand, Rear Adm. Porter, known for sweeping, sometimes embarrassing, statements, believed that Green and his men only fought so hard because they must have been drunk. Still, when the admiral met Brig. Gen. Smith aboard his command steamer several days later, the bearded seaman observed that “there was not a place six inches square not perforated by a bullet.” As smoke, spray and dirt combined with flying wood chips and the sound of clanking and pinging as bullets hit iron, the Osage wiggled off her sandbar sometime around 6 p.m. After dropping the hawsers holding her to the Black Hawk, the monitor puffed over toward the western bank, her giant ­­11-inch cannon now firing virtually at ­­point-blank range. It was during this engagement that a unique mirrored instrument, developed by the monitor’s chief engineer, Thomas Doughty, and mounted behind the turret, was employed in combat for the first time. In his Memoirs, Lt. Cmdr. Selfridge described it as “a method of sighting the turret from the outside, by means of what would now be called a periscope.” Knowing that he was not going to sink any boats with rifle shot, Brig. Gen. Green

The Battle of Blair’s Landing. While retreating toward Alexandria on April 12, 1864, several U.S. military transports, plus the monitor Osage and timberclad Lexington, were attacked by Confederate troops under Brig. Gen. Tom Green. The assault was futile, with many Southerners killed, including Green. Still, the engagement was among the stiffest of the entire Red River campaign (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, v. 4).



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now boldly—some would say impetuously—chose to attempt to capture one or more of the Yankee steamers. If captured, one could be sunk in the ­­horse-shoulder-high river channel, thereby blocking the escape of the others. Atop his white horse rallying his men at the riverbank for a charge, the animation of the gallant horseman was seen aboard the Osage. Slowly the great turret was rotated until one of the huge cannon was pointed in his direction. Upon command, it belched out an ­­11-inch shell and, according to Lt. Cmdr. Selfridge, when the smoke cleared, he “saw him no more.” It was getting dark when the monitor decapitated the Confederate leader. The confusion in Rebel ranks brought an end to the hard fighting, with the last shots fired about 7 p.m. No one is certain exactly how many were killed in what the Federal admiral called a “curious affair of a fight between infantry and gunboats.” Porter estimated that, in addition to Green, 20 officers and 400–500 Confederate soldiers died. His figures were severely inflated; including the brigadier, seven Confederates died. Brig. Gen. Smith, in a list provided with but not printed as part of his OR report, indicates that two Northern soldiers were killed and 17 wounded aboard the quartermaster steamers. Brig. Gen. Smith and RAdm. Porter were uncertain whether or not the Confederates would resume their attack that evening. Taking no chances, either with his crews or the supplies aboard his transports, the fleet was ordered to make the best speed away from Blair’s Landing as river conditions permitted. Actually, that was not very fast, considering the many sandbars encountered. About 1 a.m. on April 13 the fleet finally tied up for the night. Starting out again early the next morning, the ­­army-navy boats reached Grand Ecore on April 15, as Porter continued to Alexandria to confer with Banks on the expedition’s next moves. Although many of the vessels that escaped from Loggy Bayou bore the marks of Rebel sharpshooters, those reassembling at Grand Ecore were, in fact, little the worse for their ordeal. Still, the St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat newsman embedded aboard one of the transports called the fleet’s escape to Grand Ecore “one of the most daring, as well as one of the most successful … feats of the whole war.”8 The reader will recall that while away, Porter left his largest vessels behind under Lt. Cmdr. Phelps, skipper of the Eastport. Determined that these units should now retire from the river regardless of whether or not the Army of the Gulf returned to the offensive, the squadron commander passed orders for him to take the heaviest units back to Alexandria. Following the Ozark, the Eastport was about eight miles below Grand Ecore on April 15 when her bow struck one of six torpedoes prepositioned by the Confederates in ­­mid-March. Trembling as if she had hit a sandbar, the seriously damaged giant steered toward the riverbank as ­­damage-control parties manned her pumps. While her whistle sounded a prearranged distress whistle, a tug took word to Porter seeking the two pump boats anchored with the other fleet auxiliaries. Even after the Lexington quickly arrived from Grand Ecore to help and the Carondelet moved down a bit later, the Eastport faltered. Before midnight, her bow struck bottom and the forward end of her gundeck was water covered. Working through the night, men from the ironclad and Porter’s newly arrived Cricket were unable to find and isolate the damage. The next morning, sailors from the gathered rescue group began removing ammunition to the Ozark, and Eastport’s battery was placed aboard a raft towed by the tinclad, which also acted as rear guard.

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The tinclad Juliet arrived as the sun rose on April 16 and pumps from three vessels were hard at work. Her service over the next few days would be chronicled in June for his hometown newspaper by Cleveland, Ohio, lawyer Edwin P. Slade, then an enlisted sailor serving aboard. The specialized steam pump boat Champion No. 5 arrived on April 17 and, once tied up alongside the sunken ironclad, quickly put her larger steam pumps into action, allowing the earlier responders to disengage. She would be joined by another civilian charter, the Champion No. 3 (also known as the New Champion), which, in addition to her crew, was packed with about 175 African American contraband refugees. As the river level continued to fall, RAdm. Porter, who had no desire to continue the campaign, ordered his transports and the other gunboats to initiate their withdrawal from Grand Ecore two days later. All would successfully bounce and scrape their way back to Alexandria. Having thrown in the towel on any further Red River exploits, Banks would begin his own final overland withdrawal two days later.9 Late in the afternoon of April 25, the timberclad Lexington landed about a mile below Rocky Point, in the shadow of Deloach’s Bluff on the opposite shore, at the mouth of the Cane River. There her sailors sounded and buoyed the channel in anticipation of the arrival of the Eastport. None of them knew that the hill across the river was actually named for the Deloges family, whose cemetery lay just inland from the top of the hill. The family name for the spot would be recognized by geographers on maps in the next century and so we use it here. Somewhat lightened, the Eastport, under tow of the Champion No. 5, had been able to resume her retreat, but after some miles, again ran aground. Freed after a day of hard labor, she went only two more miles before running fast upon a large underwater snare. Bluejackets from the tinclad Fort Hindman, summoned to assist, took up the task of hauling her off while the Cricket and Juliet kept guard. During this time, the other retreating Union gunboats and transports, especially those working to save the Eastport, were about to be subjected to merciless Confederate attacks. To intercept the Federals as they worked their way downstream as well as to blockade the river against further Northern passage, Maj. Gen. Taylor, early that morning, deployed at least 200 additional soldiers and, as historian Chuck Viet suggests in his internet article, anywhere between four and 11 cannon. When Capt. Thomas O. Benton arrived at Deloges Bluff with his Val Verde Battery, he could clearly see the Lexington lying in the Red River about 450 yards away. The Osage lay even closer to him, but was shielded by her position under the bank. After the butternut artillerymen struggled their six guns into a protected position by hand, the pieces opened fire. They would continue to engage the two Federal warships until early afternoon, scoring numerous hits, especially on the timberclad, but failing to put either out of action. About 20 miles above Deloges Bluff, it was proving to be impossible to save the stricken Eastport, despite the best efforts of the Cricket, Juliet, Fort Hindman, and the two civilian pump boats. During the morning, after her remaining stores were removed, the decision was taken to destroy the giant. Remaining under intense enemy fire as they had for hours, Lt. Cmdr. Phelps and picked helpers packed the ironclad with 40 barrels of powder, her officers transferred to the Fort Hindman and her crew to the Juliet. In midafternoon, the Eastport was successfully—and very noisily—blown up as her captain escaped to the Cricket, already under fire from shore.



6. The Red River Campaign, 1864 105

USS Eastport. An incomplete Confederate ironclad captured during a timberclad raid led by Lt. Cmdr. Seth Ledyard Phelps, the Eastport was completely rebuilt and available for service under Phelps in the Red River campaign. She advanced to Grand Ecore, Louisiana, with other Mississippi Squadron units which were all forced to retreat in April 1864. En route downstream, the ironclad became a “torpedo” victim and had to be destroyed to prevent her capture by the Confederates. This depiction is part of a group of squadron watercolors completed by Ensign D. M. N. Stouffer (Library of Congress).

With the Champion No. 3 just astern and the Champion No. 5 lashed to the Juliet, the Cricket started down the Red. The plan was to run past the bothersome Rebel batteries and reach the Lexington and Osage, known to be below. Phelps brought up the column rear with the Fort Hindman. Confederate scouts saw the little task group pull away from the wreck of the ironclad and rushed to inform their officers. Orders soon came down for a big gun ambush at the confluence of the Red and Cane Rivers at Deloges Bluff. With lookouts posted everywhere, the five Union craft were able to make good speed down the river. Porter, so the story goes, found a comfortable chair on the Cricket’s upper deck and read a book, though probably with some interruptions. Not far beyond the mouth of the Cane River sometime after 6 p.m., the admiral saw a number of men shadowing his command in the brush over on the right bank and ordered the gunners manning the upper deck boat howitzer to disperse them with a ­­t wo-second shell. After firing, the gunboat drifted toward shore, coming within about 20 feet as she prepared to send away another round of shrapnel. The men in the bushes ashore were actually part of a much larger group. Before the Cricket could get away another shot, a wall of flame burst out of the woods as massed cannon and musket fire was poured into her. Within seconds, the tinclad was hit 19 times by cannon fire and countless musket balls. The “pelting shower” went

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“through and through” the Cricket. Her decks were cleared “in a moment” and she was shattered “in all her parts.” RAdm. Porter was stunned and slightly injured when an incoming shell hit just as he was opening the pilothouse door. Climbing inside, he found the pilot wounded, but able to perform his duty. Also hurt, Acting Master Henry H. Gorringe shouted that he was trying to bring Cricket around to starboard to engage, but there was no response as he rang the engine room bell. Ominously, neither officer could hear her exhaust or return gunfire. Porter believed that most of the gun crews below had to have been killed by incoming shells and told the boat’s commander to belay his fighting instinct and instead to run by the batteries. While Gorringe and his pilot worked the boat downstream in a ­­four-knot current, Porter started below to question the lull in firing and why her engines were stopped. He could not know that his flagboat was saved by panic and tragedy aboard the Champion No. 3. The civilian captain was so unnerved by the heavy Rebel attack that he suddenly and without warning backed his boat as rapidly as possible to get out of range. In so doing, he ran her right into the bow of the oncoming Juliet, which because she was lashed to the Champion No. 5 could not get out of the way. Seeing the confusion in the river below, Confederate gunners opened on the big fat target of the two Champions and the gunboat. As the sailors aboard the Champion No. 3 and the Juliet rushed to separate themselves, shells smashed into them both. A ­­1 2-pounder shell punctured the boiler of the Champion No. 3, which was enveloped in a cloud of steam. Over a hundred crew and contrabands were instantly scalded to death. Another 87 were so badly burned that they died within a short time. Survivors jumped into the Red and swam for shore or clung to the wreckage as it drifted away. Only three aboard were actually believed to have lived another day. The cloud of escaping steam hid the stricken pump boat and badly damaged Cricket, which floated under the bluff and was momentarily safe from the Confederate gunners above. Musket fire was another matter and small arms bullets continuously plinked into her. As the tinclad rounded the point and reentered the artillery killing zone, she was immediately hit by another 19 rounds, most of these into her stern and into the boat’s interior. Exhibiting considerable personal courage, Porter ran down the exposed starboard side of the Cricket toward the engine room spaces. En route, he passed through the gun deck and saw the carnage. Guns were overturned and at least 24 dead and wounded lay about with “everything torn to pieces.” Among the dead was Ann Stewart, a laundress and wife of the ship’s steward. Only one gun remained and the admiral rallied sufficient ­­able-bodied men— mostly ­­contrabands-now-sailors—to service it. He told them to load their “bulldog” and fire it and not to worry about aiming. The fact that it fired at all would tell the Rebels the boat was still fighting and would also encourage those craft coming behind. When the squadron commander reached the engine room, he found it devastated as well. All but one of the firemen was wounded and the engineer was killed. Collapsing while trying to answer Gorringe’s bell, he turned the steam off rather than on. Porter reversed the throttle, allowing the Cricket’s engines to sputter back to life. The Cricket was under fire for a total of about 5 minutes. In that time, she was



6. The Red River Campaign, 1864 107

USS Cricket. Following the April 1864 loss of the Federal ironclad Eastport, this tinclad, Mississippi Squadron flagboat for much of the Red River campaign, was forced to run a gauntlet of Confederate artillery in order to reach safety. When her captain was wounded, RAdm. Porter himself assumed command. Under intense fire, she was hit 38 times, with nearly half of her crew—a third of whom were African Americans—incapacitated. Her repairs at Mound City, Illinois, would take three months to complete (Naval History and Heritage Command).

hit 38 times and lost nearly half her crew (12 men killed and 19 wounded, almost all of the latter badly). Coming under power, the ­­stern-wheeler, shielded from Confederate view, limped ahead—and ran aground, where she would remain for another hour. Although the Cricket was safe, the four vessels following were not. Across the way, the smoking wreck of the Champion No. 3 could be clearly seen lodged sideways into the right bank not far from the Rebel battery. Its shells now also slammed into the Juliet and Champion No. 5. The former’s tiller ropes were cut, the steam line that provided engine power was sliced, and the wheel was shot out of the pilot’s hands. ­­Non-lethal vapors enveloped the ship, making vision difficult. The rudder of the second pump boat was destroyed and her civilian crew was completely unnerved. When her captain and panicked deckhands attempted to separate the only line still binding the two vessels, leaving the tinclad to float into enemy hands, they were only prevented by Juliet’s captain and pilot threatening to shoot them. The Confederates also aimed their guns on the ­­t ail-end Fort Hindman. Shots holed her “between wind and water” and wounded several men and killed one sailor and the former executive officer of the Eastport. Since everyone could see the terrible

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toll taken on the boats ahead, panic began to spread among the big tinclad’s gun crew. Phelps was able to settle his petrified sailors, though not without reference to possibly shooting “the first man who should flinch from his gun.” Further down, terrified civilian sailors and several others on board the Champion No. 5 attempted to desert. As the Fort Hindman drew closer, Phelps warned through his speaking trumpet that anyone moving to abandon the pump boat would be shot. His decisiveness was backed by warning shots from his U.S. Marine contingent, and allowed his pilot to jump aboard the civilian boat and take control. The ­­lashed-together pump boat and tinclad were able to turn about and make steam, with their withdrawal covered by the Fort Hindman. The three battered survivors proceeded about a mile above the Deloges Bluff battery and ran into the bank, tying up for the night to make repairs which would allow the Juliet and Champion No. 5 to separate. Unable to offer help to Phelps’ isolated unit, Porter elected to steam the newly freed Cricket downstream toward the Lexington and Osage, making rendezvous well after dark. There he found the monitor lying opposite Benton’s battery and also observed that the Lexington, which “had been hard at work on them,” was badly splintered. Early on April 27, the Lexington and Cricket steamed toward Alexandria, where their most serious damages could be repaired, while the Osage steamed back upstream. With the Champion No. 5 following behind, the Juliet and Fort Hindman, lashed together, proceeded downstream with great difficulty. They approached Deloges Bluff about 9:40 a.m. and, at a range of 500 yards, were greeted by Confederate cannon. Despite shell splashes in the water, the boats moved slowly ahead. Suddenly, Rebel rounds whirled into the trio, further hurting the tinclads and battering the pump boat so badly that she was forced to beach. The two survivors of the Eastport rescue group drifted out of range (“waltzing as I may say,” Phelps later wrote). They were pursued along the banks by Confederate riflemen who continued to annoy both boats with musket fire. Twelve miles below, the Juliet and Fort Hindman finally reached the safety of the anchored Osage shortly after 1 p.m. In two days of heavy fighting, the Cricket, Juliet, and Fort Hindman lost 42 men dead and wounded, with all three boats physically shattered, though repairable. The two lost civilian pump boats suffered horribly with over 200 killed. Other survivors from them were all captured. RAdm. Porter survived “the heaviest fire I ever witnessed,” but had to admit that “the passage from Grand Ecore down could not be called a success.” The Deloges Bluff encounter was one of the stiffest naval fights of the Civil War, with only one or two other engagements rivaling it in ferocity. Still, by 7:45 a.m. the next morning, the two heavily damaged ­­l ate-arriving tinclads joined the Cricket anchored above Alexandria’s upper falls. The river city, despite fortification efforts by Maj. Gen. Banks, was now surrounded by General Taylor’s forces. Hopefully, the Southerners reasoned, this encirclement would prevent the Federals from communicating with their fellows on the Mississippi River. On April 28, RAdm. Porter, stranded above the Alexandria rapids, advised Navy Secretary Welles of his precarious position, due to the falling water level of



6. The Red River Campaign, 1864 109

the Red River as well as Banks’ withdrawal. “I find myself blockaded,” he wrote, “by a fall of 3 feet of water, 3 feet 4 inches being the amount now on the falls; 7 feet being required to get over.” Facing the distinct possibility that he would need to destroy his entire $3 million squadron to keep it out of Confederate hands, he lamented to his superior: “you may judge of my feelings at having to perform so painful a duty.” Porter enjoyed some initial success in getting at least a portion of the transports and his flotilla through the available little ­­20-foot-wide channel. Led by the admiral’s Cricket, a number of quartermaster boats and tinclads, including the Juliet, thumped their bottoms along to safety in the deeper waters south of Alexandria caused by a growing back swell from the Mississippi. Still, the heaviest vessels, including the ironclads and the Fort Hindman, remained stranded above and behind the falls. Working with Maj. Gen. Banks and his officers, the Mississippi Squadron chief fortunately came up with the correct solution and the right man to carry it out, XIX Corps staff engineer Lt. Col. Joseph Bailey, whom Nicholas Smith years later called “the Moses of Porter’s fleet.” For years, the story of Bailey’s dam was the most celebrated single event of the entire Federal Red River fiasco.

USS Forest Rose assisting at Bailey’s Dam. RAdm. Porter’s Red River fleet was trapped by extremely low water at the rapids above Alexandria, Louisiana, when engineer Lt Col. Joseph Bailey, in what became the most celebrated single event of the entire Federal Red River expedition, began construction of a river-level raising dam at the end of April 1864. With assistance from several tinclads, including the Forest Rose, 3,000 men undertook the construction that eventually allowing a fabled nautical escape (Naval History and Heritage Command).

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The presence of the onetime 4th Wisconsin Cavalry officer with Banks’ expedition was, wrote Smith and Castille in 1986, “one of those coincidences of history that sometimes result in turning the course of events.” So it was that, on April 29, Bailey was tasked by Banks and Porter with constructing a dam that would raise the water sufficiently to allow the fleet to escape. Straight away, Maj. Gen. Banks set over 3,000 men to work chopping down trees or dismantling whole buildings, finding stone and rock, and hauling the materials to the sites on either bank where the dam would be constructed. Interestingly, Black troops worked the Alexandria side, while soldiers from Wisconsin, Maine, and New York labored on the Pineville shore. Several tinclads, including the Forrest Rose, assisted as required.10 Lt. Col. Bailey’s construction teams strained around the clock for eight days without cessation, beginning the initial Alexandria dam not far above the lower, downstream rapids where the river was about 758 feet wide. It was hoped that, when the project was finished, the water behind the structure would have risen enough to float the big gunboats over the upper rapids. Then when the time was just right, the dam could be broken and the gunboats could rush free over the lower rapids, carried by the force of the released water. While the Union military effort strained to finish the dam, cotton shipments continued to pour out of the Red River headed north. On May 1, the steamer White Cloud arrived at Memphis with 600 bales of the first private shipment, which belonged to one William Butler, formerly State Treasurer of Illinois. Despite a nine mph current, the water level of Bailey’s structure slowly began to rise. On May 8, the stage on the upper falls was up sufficiently to allow the Lexington and Fort Hindman and the light draught monitors Osage and Neosho to move down and make ready to pass the main dam. Early the next morning before they were ready, great crashing sounds were heard in the vicinity of the dam. The tremendous water pressure forced two of the barges employed in its construction to burst loose, swinging in below it on one side. The admiral quickly saw the situation and, skilled equestrian that he was, jumped on a steed and galloped up to the upper falls where his craft were anchored. Screaming from horseback at 6 a.m., Porter ordered Lt. George Bache, the only one of the captains with steam up fully ready to go, to immediately pass the upper falls, run down over the rocky stretch before the level fell, and exit to safety through the dam. It only took 20 minutes for the Lexington to speed from the upper falls through the dam to the safety of the waters below the town. There she anchored and observed the monitors and Fort Hindman come down a short time later. This emergency exodus proved Lt. Col. Bailey’s dam would work and he resumed its construction with spirit. By May 13, all of the gunboats were safely below the Alexandria rapids and Union forces were now able to exit that town, which was partially left in flames. A large convoy, which interspersed transports and gunboats, reached the mouth of the river eight days later. The trip was perilous as Confederate sharpshooters fired upon the evacuating boats all of their way out. “And thus ended the ­­69-day Red River expedition,” Lt. Commander Selfridge wrote in his Battles and Leaders contribution, “one of the most humiliating and disastrous that had been recorded during the war.”



6. The Red River Campaign, 1864 111

The Federal Red River expedition of 1864 has been the subject of debate from the day it first entered that stream. It is far outside the scope of this work to enter into such a detailed review. We can report that, during the adventure, the U.S. Navy lost about 320 men, two tinclads, one ironclad, two pump boats, and four transports. Others were damaged, though some were pleased that it prized many thousands of dollars’ worth of cotton. “After the Red River campaign,” wrote Lt. Col. Richard Irwin, “no important operation was undertaken by either side in Louisiana.” The scene of action for the Mississippi Squadron now reverted to the familiar territory along the banks of the Mississippi, Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, White, and Arkansas Rivers. The interior lands up the Yazoo River were largely abandoned while the Red River itself was blockaded, with Porter’s gunboats seldom traveling above David’s Ferry. We might note that the Lower Red River was also visited infrequently. For example, on June 8, the ironclad Chillicothe, the monitor Neosho, and the tinclad Fort Hindman from Lt. Cmdr. Frank Ramsay’s Third District, while patrolling up the Atchafalaya River, were fired upon by two Confederate ­­30-pounder Parrott rifles near Simmesport, Louisiana. After the ensuing engagement, Federal bluejackets went ashore and captured both guns (one burst) plus several muskets. The prized cannon had earlier been taken from Maj. Gen. Banks. Late in June, information reached RAdm. Porter regarding submarine or torpedo boat construction at Shreveport, not far from the location of the ironclad CSS Missouri. The details were spotty, but the Mississippi Squadron commander elected not

USS Lexington tied to a Louisiana bank. When a portion of the Bailey Dam threatened failure on May 9, 1864, the old timberclad was the only vessel with steam up and so managed to make it through to safety below. Long simply labeled as a damaged timberclad tied to a Louisiana riverbank, the subject of this photograph, from a comparison with other vessel pictures, can be identified as Lexington, most likely after returning from her Red River sojourn (Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War, v. 6).

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to take chances and ordered Lt. Cmdr. Ramsay to extend a chain on floats (fitted with openings and guarded by a manned launch) across the mouth of the Red. The officer was to make every effort to learn more about the threat, which remained murky. Later historians and journalists confirmed that Southern engineers constructed upwards of five submersibles, perhaps not unlike the Hunley, at the Louisiana town.11

7

Forrest Visits Paducah and Fort Pillow, 1864 As certain as is the spring blooming of dogwood along the rivers of the Upper South, so too was the renewal of Confederate assaults upon Union outposts and logistical communications. As the weather improved during the second quarter of 1864 and RAdm. David Dixon Porter transferred a significant percentage of the Mississippi Squadron to duty in the Red River, this insurgent activity became less a matter of ad hoc partisans ­­pot-shooting at passing steamers. Rather, it assumed the caliber of a ­­full-fledged and organized interdiction mission more often implemented by regular military units as part of the South’s ­­after-Vicksburg Western strategy. While Porter and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks moved into the Red River, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman traveled to Nashville on March 18 to relieve his fellow Buckeye, U. S. Grant, as commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi. With suggestions from his colleague, now appointed lieutenant general and ordered east, Sherman began to plan the spring campaign that would begin on May 1 and hopefully take him to Atlanta. A friend of the Mississippi Squadron, Sherman always had a key eye for the logistical necessities of war. His new Georgia advance would be no different in that regard. Years later, he wrote in his Memoirs: “The great question of the campaign was one of supplies. Nashville, our chief depot, was itself partially in a hostile country, and even the routes of supply from Louisville to Nashville, by rail and by way of the Cumberland River, had to be guarded.” Since he first participated in the February 1862 Fort Donelson battle, Nathan Bedford Forrest, CSA, had developed a reputation as the greatest human threat to Sherman’s supply apparatus. He was deadly in attacks against Northern soldiers, infantry and cavalry, as well as their supply trains, depots, and, as demonstrated at Dover, Tennessee, in February 1863, did not fear the Union gunboats. Only a month before, on February 22, Forrest defeated a Federal force at Okolona, Mississippi, during Sherman’s Meridian campaign and was now “on the loose” in West Tennessee. Ominously, and also on March 18, Memphis District commander Maj. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut passed word, “It is reported that Forrest, with about 7,000 men, was at Tupelo last night, bound for West Tennessee. I think he means Columbus and Paducah.” Union concern over the whereabouts of the elusive Confederate raider, who reached Jackson on the 20th, now intensified. On March 23, Brig. Gen. Mason Brayman, the Federal army commander of the District of Cairo, sent a note over to USN 113

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Capt. Alexander Pennock announcing that he, too, had fresh intelligence. The Rebel was en route toward Union City, a crossroads town in northwestern Tennessee. If the news was accurate, the navy would be advised that gunboats might have to be sent to guard the Kentucky towns of Columbus, Hickman, and Paducah. Early the next day, Pennock received army advice that Forrest was, indeed, marching in force upon Columbus and that communication with Union City had ceased. The fleet captain, asked to send a gunboat to Columbus post haste, promised to have one underway by evening. Brayman, already at Columbus with 2,000 men, requested that the vessel report to him at that point as he was readying an expedition toward Union City, even though he suspected the enemy was off toward Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, CSA. A Paducah. The ­­Cairo-based general came thorn in the side of Federal generals since within six miles of Union City on the early 1862, Forrest and his cavalrymen 26th before he learned of its surrender to understood the importance of Northern logistical centers and transportation both one of Forrest’s colonels the day before. Also on March 25, as Maj. Gen. afloat and ashore. They assaulted both regularly thereafter, seeming easily to outwit Banks and RAdm. Porter moved from Yankee commanders and countermeasures. Alexandria, Louisiana, up the Red River In March–April 1864, with the Mississippi toward Shreveport, Forrest himself did Squadron stretched thin on the Western indeed lead an attack on Paducah, a town rivers due to its participation in the Red of about 6,000 with a reportedly large River campaign, the self-taught military percentage of Southern sympathizers. Its genius nicknamed “The Wizard of the Sadunformed Federal defenders (numbering dle” struck both Paducah, Kentucky, and Fort Pillow, Tennessee. Later, he would about 650) were rapidly driven into Fort destroy the large supply depot at JohnsonAnderson on the Ohio River on the west ville, Tennessee, and greatly aid Gen. John end of the city. Grayclad soldiers then Bell Hood during the Nashville campaign occupied the nearby houses and fired (Library of Congress). into the post. With the Rebels having cornered the town’s Federal soldiers, pro–Union civilians were left to escape on their own or hide. Some fled across the Ohio to Illinois aboard a wharf boat untied from the riverbank. Others, it was later charged, were used as human shields to protect some of the raiders as they shot into the fort. During this time, several women and children were reportedly killed. Largely unmolested in the streets of Paducah, Forrest’s men plundered the town, capturing horses and supplies. A flag of truce was raised and fighting stopped for a half hour during which the post commander, Col. Stephen G. Hicks, refused a Southern surrender request. He did not know that this was a familiar Forrest tactic designed to elicit victory without bloodshed.



7. Forrest Visits Paducah and Fort Pillow, 1864 115

Fort Anderson, Paducah, Kentucky. Located on the west side of the city, this rebuilt supply depot was armed with seven cannon and garrisoned by 665 men, including many African American troops, Able, though wounded at Shiloh, Col. Stephen D. Hicks was in command. On March 25, Forrest’s cavalry rode in, attacked the fort, and took or destroyed such supplies, animals, and other items as desired in what has been called the Battle of Paducah (Library of Congress).

In the hours following, two Confederate Kentucky regiments under native Paducian Col. Albert P. “Sam” Thompson repeatedly charged Fort Anderson. Sharpshooters and local insurgents sniped at targets of opportunity from the upper stories of residences and from the windows and roofs of the warehouses lining the riverbank. Low as they might have been on ammunition (27,000 of 30,000 available rounds expended), the mostly African American defenders of the little bastion “fought bully,” winning the admiration of the Federal sailor and many others. In addition to Federal soldiers, Forrest’s riflemen also made targets of the light draught gunboats Peosta and Paw Paw lying in the river near the stronghold. The latter was town stationship while the former had arrived from up the Tennessee just after dawn. Mississippi Squadron Seventh District boss Lt. Cmdr. James W. Shirk, a veteran of USN action at the 1862 Battle of Shiloh, had departed the Peosta for Cairo later in the morning for consultations with Capt. Pennock and missed the fight. Ever afterwards he cursed his bad timing. The gunboatmen remaining later believed that the Confederates might have captured Fort Anderson, “if it had not been for us.” About 3 p.m., both Acting Volunteer Lieutenants Thomas E. Smith and A. F. O’Neill, commanders of the Peosta and Paw Paw, respectively, learned that Federal pickets had been driven in by approaching Confederate skirmishers. Both of the tinclads weighed anchor and beat to quarters. When the enemy appeared, the former steamed to the upper end of the town and opened fire with her bow guns. The latter dropped down to defend Fort Anderson and also commenced firing.

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The starboard battery aboard the Peosta was served as rapidly as possible. After some minutes, the gunboat dropped down to the foot of Broadway and fired directly up that street at targets of opportunity. When Col. Thompson’s men executed their first charge, she steamed down to a point opposite Fort Anderson and joined the Paw Paw in resisting the attack. Two fruitless charges later Thompson was dead. The Peosta’s carpenter mate, Herbert Saunders, later told his mother in a letter: “He was shot with a rifle ball in the head and had a shell in him from the gunboat.” While Forrest and Hicks negotiated over a possible surrender and fighting was briefly suspended, the Peosta returned to her previous position off Broadway. From that point, her lookouts witnessed Confederate soldiers Lt. Cmdr. James W. Shirk, USN. Destined plundering the stores on that street. to become the longest-serving officer of the Soon thereafter the boat headed back Mississippi Squadron, Shirk, like Fort Andertoward Fort Anderson. Once more, son’s Col. Hicks, also fought at Shiloh, servthe starboard battery opened. Mean- ing as a timberclad captain. After captaining while, the Paw Paw remained near the the ironclad Tuscumbia at Vicksburg, he Federal citadel. Low on ammunition, became commander of the fleet’s Seventh District, which covered the Tennessee River. Lt. O’Neill ordered that his gunners Though he was ill much of the time, his vesfire slowly, taking care to aim as best sels would also participate in the upcoming they could. fights at Fort Pillow and Johnsonville (Naval Whenever they had the opportu- History and Heritage Command). nity, Confederate troops peppered the two gunboats with musket fire. O’Neill for one thought that this action was a deliberate objective to “divert the attention of the gunboats from the fort by harassing them with sharpshooters.” The Peosta’s tall chimneys and wide wheelboxes were a particular favorite of riflemen firing from the buildings on Front Street. Carpenter’s mate Saunders admitted that “while it lasted, their balls came pretty thick as some of them came in our portholes and some clean through the casemates.” Lt. Smith later reported that he “reluctantly opened upon them, demolishing the Continental (or City) Hotel and brewery and setting several other buildings on fire.” “One building in particular,” a Confederate soldier remembered, “seemed to have attracted a well directed and concentrated fire.” Officers from the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry (CSA) later told a correspondent from the Charleston Mercury that the tinclad’s bombardment sent “shingles, brick chimneys and window glass in wild profusion upon our heads.” The Peosta continued to assail the riverbank warehouse hideout of the



7. Forrest Visits Paducah and Fort Pillow, 1864 117

USS Peosta. When Confederate forces attacked Fort Anderson directly on March 25, 1864, they were met by a stout fuselage both from the Paducah bastion and two nearby gunboats. Both the Paw Paw and the Peosta (shown) were heavily armed and delivered a second devastating barrage when the Southerners, having fallen back, charged again. The two light-draughts would continue their patrols of the Lower Tennessee River for the remainder of the conflict (Naval History and Heritage Command).

dismounted Volunteer horse soldiers. “We directed our whole fire on them at short range with shell, grape, and canister,” Mate Saunders noted. The large Front Street brewery was a particular annoyance to the Peosta. Confederates shot down into the gunboat from the windows of its upper story, “riddling it considerably.” Lt. Smith ordered his gunners to halt this insult. One Peosta shell collapsed the brewery’s roof while another hit an adjoining shed from which a rifleman was seen firing. Several more smashed into the building itself, tearing it “asunder.” Several men were wounded, a captain was killed, and a “blue wreath of smoke” quickly hung over the scene. Out of a gunport, Carpenter’s Mate Saunders took satisfaction in seeing that the tinclad’s cannon “soon fetched the bricks around their eyes.” The gunboats continued to fire into the town in support of the Union troops in Fort Anderson, who were, themselves, actively maintaining their position. A Rebel trooper in the warehouse district near the river and on the receiving end of the bombardment recalled the “bursting shells and the crashing of the solid shot from the gunboats thunder[ed] through the buildings above and around us.” Observers in nearby Metropolis could now see Paducah in flames and reported women and children escaping across the river to Illinois. A number of families and other survivors reaching the town reported street fighting and several later reported that all of Front Street was in ashes. When firing from the fort ceased about 8:30 p.m., the Peosta arrived and came to anchor abreast of it. A half hour later, the Paw Paw “fired half a dozen rifle shell, but neither saw nor heard anything more of the enemy.” Lt. Smith received word about 10:30 p.m. that the Rebels were destroying

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property and torching the quartermaster warehouses and commissaries’ buildings as they prepared to fall back. The Peosta once again got underway, steamed up to the town, and opened fire, her shells landing, hopefully, in the general vicinity of the raiders. Her deliberate shoot was completed just before midnight. During the Paducah engagement, the Peosta fired 530 rounds and was hit 200 times by rifle shot. Despite many perforations, she was not seriously damaged, though two men were wounded. The Paw Paw loosed 177 rounds. She was not hit and no one was wounded. Lt. O’Neill did, however, receive a scratch from a mini ball on his right cheek and “a ball went through his pantaloons.” Neither boat fired again during the remainder of the night. At dawn, Lt. Cmdr. Shirk arrived from Cairo and, as he approached the levee, he saw that the “shells from the gunboats and the fort did a great deal of damage to the town. Several buildings were burned, and a number have holes in them.” Northern newspapers later reported that some 50–125 buildings, mostly privately owned, were destroyed or badly damaged, including “the hospital, gas works, some of the French residences of the city, the custom house, and post office” plus the railroad depot, freight forwarding facilities, and tobacco warehouses. Although anticipated by the Federals, the battle was not renewed the next morning. Unfortunately, Col. Hicks could not know this and, as a precaution, just after sunup, ordered all of the houses within musket range of Fort Anderson burnt. Still, neither Shirk nor Brig. Gen. Brayman were very disturbed over the damage done. Paducah was long considered a town made up of Rebel sympathizers profiting from Federal largess and, in the words of the naval officer, these had now “received a lesson which they will not forget in a hurry.” In its report of the raid, the Indianapolis Journal made a blunt assessment: “Paducah is naturally destroyed.” When he learned of the raid, Maj. Gen. Hurlbut bluntly admitted, “I consider the damage done to Paducah as a proper lesson to that place and its vicinity.” Having held Paducah for 10 hours, Maj. Gen. Forrest, despite the spirited shelling of the gunboats, helped himself to Yankee horses and quartermaster stores while burning 60 bales of cotton, a steamboat, and a ­­dry-dock. Some merchants, the newspapers reported, “lost $25,000 to $50,000 worth of property.” The Confederate leader and his men then retired to plan their next adventure. As they left, Forrest supposedly observed, according to an April 3 letter from Carpenter’s Mate Saunders to his mother, that “he did not care for that brown paper thing [the gunboat Paw Paw] but did like the looks of the Peosta.” Puffed up by this, the young repairman boasted: “We are the strongest gunboat in the upper fleet.” On Sunday morning, the refugees who had crossed the river were allowed to return. Also during the day, seamen from the gunboats, by watches, were permitted liberty ashore to see “some of our work.” One part of the city was “riddled with our shot for a mile back and about a fourth of the city is burnt down,” Saunders and the men of the Peosta marveled.1 On the Tennessee River, word spread concerning the attack on Paducah, Kentucky, executed by Maj. Gen. Forrest. The tinclad Alfred Robb arrived at Clifton, Tennessee, on April 2 with a report and, by then, the defensive role of the Paw Paw and Peosta was magnified. Seaman James A. Dickinson of the station boat Tawah wrote what he heard in his diary: “Forrest with 10,000 men attacked Paducah, but was driven off by the Peosta and the Paw Paw after losing 2,000 men.”



7. Forrest Visits Paducah and Fort Pillow, 1864 119

On April 4, Forrest, writing from Richmond, Tennessee, advised his superiors, among other things: “There is a Federal force of five or six hundred at Fort Pillow, which I shall attend to in a day or two, as they have horses and supplies which we need.” Before the month’s first week was over, Forrest launched diversionary feints toward Memphis, Columbus, and, again, Paducah. It was hoped that these moves would not only cover his descent upon Pillow, but might also net additional stores and horses. Fleet Capt. Pennock heard from Lt. Cmdr. Shirk on April 11 that Paducah was again under Rebel threat. It was hoped that Col. Stephen G. Hicks might be reinforced. While District of Cairo commander Brig. Gen. Mason Brayman sent two regiments, Pennock sent Eighth District flotilla leader Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch. Several Cumberland River gunboats crossed district boundaries and began to reinforce Paducah on the morning of April 12. An attack was expected all day. Although the Rebels had not shown by evening, most of the Eighth District flotilla did. Forrest’s ruse was working. Much further down the Mississippi that morning, Fort Pillow, located some 35 miles north of Memphis and a target for the U.S. Western Flotilla in 1862, had lately resumed its previously abandoned function as a guardpost protecting Federal river navigation. The former Confederate outpost was located atop a high bluff and nearly surrounded by two ravines extending back from the river. The one below it was home to several stores and homes, while right along the riverbank were quartermaster and commissary facilities. Coal Creek ravine was above the fort, which was now encircled by the main body of Forrest’s command. The Yankee garrison, made up of approximately 262 African American and 295 Caucasian soldiers or a few more from the 11th U.S. Colored Troop and a battalion of the 14th Tennessee Cavalry (USA), had a number of cannon, and was reinforced by the tinclad New Era under Acting Master James Marshall. Neither the defenders afloat nor those ashore knew that the feared Rebel commander was about to pounce. Still, these Union Army and Navy elements had made some rudimentary preparations for mutual defense in the event of any attack, including plans for evacuation. It was agreed that should the fort commander signal that he was under attack and about to be overwhelmed, his last men would “drop down under the bank” and the gunboat would “give the rebels canister.” First contact between Forrest’s Confederates and Union pickets at Fort Pillow occurred at 6 a.m., quickly sending a few survivors among the latter scurrying back inside to sound the alarm. Within minutes, the Rebel charge was sounded and grayclad soldiers swarmed up to the ravines outside the enclosure and then over the walls while sharpshooters made certain Federal defenders kept their heads—and muskets—below the parapets. When the first alarms went off, the New Era backed out into the Mississippi and cleared for action. As the sound of musketry increased and fires were seen, Fort Pillow’s commander signaled Marshall, asking that the gunboat fire into the two nearby ravines where Confederates were assembling to assault. These requests were conveyed by an officer standing at the rear of the fort and waving a flag. The gunboat immediately dropped shells onto the ravine at the lower junction of Ripley and Fulton Roads and before long, she was a big target for Forrest’s enfilading riflemen. She then shifted to the Coal Creek ravine to the north of the outpost.

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Fort Pillow, Tennessee. Located 40 miles north of Memphis on a tall river bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, these defensive works were named for Brig. Gen. Gideon Pillow, CSA, who ordered them constructed early in 1862. Evacuated by Southerners in April, they were occupied by the Union in June. In spring 1864, the fort was armed with six cannon and had a garrison of around 600 men, nearly half of whom were African Americans. The tinclad USS New Era was an added protection, stationed in the waters below. Forrest’s Cavalry Corps, seeking additional supplies, attacked on April 12, killing many Federal soldiers in what became known as the “Fort Pillow Massacre.” (Library of Congress)

Maj. Gen. Forrest later reported that the tinclad’s continuous cannonade “was without effect.” Historian Fuchs later amplified that opinion of her efforts. “For the most part,” he wrote in 2002, she was “ineffectual in causing either dislodgment of the enemy or casualties.” At best, he added, the New Era did cause a few Rebel soldiers to move from one ravine to another. A veteran tincladman later wrote his own assessment of the New Era’s bombardment, laying its ineffectiveness to her howitzers and their ammunition. Recording his memoirs at Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1881, E. J. Huling opined that she “had very little ammunition, except for her howitzers, and most of her shells fell short or did little execution.” The onetime assistant paymaster continued: “Had she been armed with the same kind of guns that the boat I served upon carried (30 pound rifled Parrotts, sending shells three miles), she could have aided materially in defending that fort, and perhaps have prevented the capture.” In this time, numerous civilian women and children, both white and African Americans, made their way to the riverbank and hid behind the largest of three moored coal barges. Alerted to this development, Marshall eased his tinclad back toward shore. Gaining the attention of the refugees with a speaking trumpet, the New Era’s commander told them to climb into the barge. A line was passed and the barge was towed, under fire, to a position above the bar at Coal Creek.



7. Forrest Visits Paducah and Fort Pillow, 1864 121

The gunboat cut the barge loose and turned to reenter the fray. As she churned away, the frantic passengers were advised to go ashore and hide in the woods. All this time, the dependents were under fire from Confederate sharpshooters, who managed to hit and kill one woman. Marshall saw the refugees crouching down and afraid to move and slowed the New Era in order to point out to them, by trumpet, a nearby house to which they might flee. The ­­side-wheel gunboat churned back to Coal Creek ravine around 8 a.m., and resumed firing on the enemy per requests from the fort’s defenders. N. D. Wetmore, a reporter for the Memphis Argus who was among the first to tour the field after the battle, wrote that the gunboat “shelled the rebels and drove them from a position which they had gained on the south side of the fort.” The swift current and ­­rain-swollen river made navigation difficult, and required that the New Era fire from her starboard battery only. This necessity soon caused the guns to overheat and foul. The thick timber made it difficult to dislodge the advancing enemy. U.S. congressmen later took testimony that the affected butternuts shifted position when targeted: “as they were shelled out of one ravine, they would make their appearance in the other.” According to the gunboat’s log, Capt. John Booth’s Liberty No. 2 came down the river about 9:30 a.m. She landed at the refugee coal barge, where Booth offered to take aboard all who wished to pass with him to Memphis. After the vessel pulled out into the stream, she passed the fort and the New Era, receiving a musket volley from shore in passing. The fighting ashore grew fiercer all morning. Sharpshooters poured a rain of fire onto the New Era from every direction. Shortly after noon, Acting Master Marshall later recalled, a ­­two-gun masked battery opened on his boat under cover of Wolf ’s Hill, but did no damage. A lull occurred about 1:45 p.m. when Maj. Gen. Forrest sent a surrender demand to the Union commanders under a flag of truce. The tinclad retired to midstream, a short distance from the fort, and maintained a “slow wheel” against the current. No effort was made to drift downstream or otherwise seek better firing positions. The discussions progressed for an hour and a half, during which smoke was seen down the river from approaching boats. About two and a half miles below Fort Pillow, Capt. B. Rushmore Pegram’s giant Olive Branch, en route to Cairo from New Orleans via Memphis, was hailed from shore by several women. Easing in, the captain of the ­­697-ton steamer was told that Forrest had attacked the garrison. He had supposedly already captured two steamboats and would take Pegram’s craft too if she continued on. About 150 passengers were aboard the Olive Branch plus the reassigned Brig. Gen. George F. Shepley and two whole field batteries complete with 120 men, caissons, and horses. Pegram decided to run past the fort, but was countermanded when he informed Shepley. The general, recently sacked as military governor of Louisiana, saw a chance to rush to victory and redeem his reputation. About this time, the Hope, usually engaged in the Ohio River trade but on special charter, approached without passengers and towing coal barges. She was hailed by Shepley, who ordered her to discard her tow and take him and a section of battery aboard so they could steam to the rescue of Fort Pillow.

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Before this could be accomplished, yet another boat hove in sight from upstream. This was the M. R. Cheek and she, too, was hailed by Shepley. Coming alongside the Olive Branch, this latest visitor received Shepley and two subordinate officers. Work began on transferring part of a battery. As this business was progressing, the Liberty No. 2 came in sight up the river, her decks lined with soldiers and a few rescued civilians from the fort earlier towed to safety in a coal barge. There was initial suspicion aboard the Olive Branch that this might be a Confederate capture preparing to attack. That notion was quickly disabused when, drawing into voice range, Capt. Booth shouted that he had rapidly passed Fort Pillow and that all was quiet. A gunboat lay off the outpost, a flag of truce was flying, and it was safe to pass. The civilian captain, though possibly aware of a battle from refugee tales, had not experienced much shooting beyond what he probably took for a guerrilla volley as he sped by the fort on a strong current and passed down. Shepley was not convinced of Pillow’s pacificity and elected to mount a reconnaissance. Thus the Olive Branch, followed by the Hope and Cheek, steamed up toward the reported battle site. As they approached, Maj. Gen. Forrest ordered defensive preparations. When the Federal boats came within range, Confederate sharpshooters, stationed on a bluff overlooking the ­­close-in channel of the river, took them under fire. Several shots hit close to the Olive Branch’s pilothouse, and Capt. Pegram ordered his boat to steam across the Mississippi to a bar near the opposite bank. The Hope and Cheek followed. Straining against the rapid current, the New Era came up with the Olive Branch group in midstream. A boat was lowered away and rowed over to the civilian steamer. A naval officer informed Shepley of the reason for the flag of truce and urged the general to proceed to Cairo at once for reinforcements. As the great wheels of Pegram’s boat thrashed ahead, the Hope and Cheek were ordered tied up in the chute on the right side of the foot of Island No. 30. Communications being what they were during this time, Union naval officers north of Fort Pillow simply did not know that the desperate fight was going on and believed Forrest was after them. For example, during the afternoon, Lt. Cmdr. Shirk wired Capt. Pennock informing him that Confederates had surrounded Paducah. By 2 p.m., men from three Rebel Kentucky regiments appeared on line “on the borders of a timber,” but made no assault. Fort Anderson opened ­­long-range fire, while “the gunboats, cruising up and down in front of the town, threw shells over the town in the direction of the enemy’s position.” Seaman Dickinson aboard the Tawah confided to his diary: “Rebels entered Paducah this afternoon but were driven out by the gunboats.” When nothing further happened, it was speculated that the Southern horsemen might also have their sights set on either Columbus or Cairo and maybe even to crossing the Ohio River a la Morgan. As the afternoon waned peacefully at Paducah, the opposite was true at Fort Pillow. Choosing to interpret the Olive Branch nautical maneuverings as a major reason to end the parlay, the Confederates resumed the battle at about 3:15 p.m. and charged the fort. Although the two howitzers on Wolf ’s Hill did not damage the New Era, the



7. Forrest Visits Paducah and Fort Pillow, 1864 123

gunboat could not silence them or otherwise help the Union defenders. The river channel ran directly under the bluff some 80 feet below and there was a broad bar causing shallow water opposite the fort. Neither permitted the tinclad to gain the space necessary to elevate her guns high enough to hit the masked battery. With the fort about to be overrun, the last Union defenders ran below the bluff, hoping to take up new ­­last-ditch positions while the New Era covered them with her guns. The tinclad did not “give the rebels canister.” Nearly out of ammunition and acting out of prudence if not confusion, Acting Master Marshall ordered his gunports closed and his craft to steam out of range. The fleeing bluecoat soldiers panicked when they found no naval support awaiting their flight through the bushes. Some tried to resist; most were killed by Southern troops closing in from every angle. The tinclad captain later testified to visiting U.S. congressmen of the real concern that, if he moved downstream closer in toward shore, his fire might hit the ­­last-ditch defenders. Furthermore, he believed that the advancing Rebels might also find a way to board or sink the New Era. “Suffice it to say, at a critical moment,” wrote historian Fuchs years later, “the gunboat was out of position and the captain exhibited a reluctance that some would describe as ‘criminal prudence.’” Fort Pillow fell to Forrest late in the afternoon with U.S. losses of approximately 231–261 killed and 87–100 badly wounded. A total of approximately 168 Caucasian and just 58 African American soldiers were POW. The large proportion of African American deaths led to charges of a Southern massacre and a debate which rages to this day. After Pillow’s capture, according to Forrest’s biographer Dr. Wyeth, the New Era, churning slowly offshore, was signaled by a Rebel officer on the bank waving a white flag. The Confederates wanted to discuss arrangements that could be made for the removal of Federal wounded. The flag was either missed or ignored as the gunboat moved upstream around a bend. When the boat was above, Acting Master Marshall ordered her to take aboard women and children refugees. Just after midnight the tinclad dropped anchor off Barfield’s Point. During the engagement, the New Era’s great guns had expended 191 rounds of shell, 85 of shrapnel, 6 of canister; her sailors and marines also used up 375 rounds of rifle cartridges. About 5 p.m. as the battle climaxed, two messengers dispatched to Memphis by Marshall earlier in the day were received in the office of naval station commander Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Pattison. After hearing the facts of the fight as then known and taking a request for ammunition, the city’s top naval officer summoned Acting Master William Ferguson, previously executive officer of the tinclad Rattler, and ordered him to take his gunboat, the Silver Cloud, to Fort Pillow post haste. There he was to offer the defenders whatever assistance might be required. The Silver Cloud lay off the Tennessee city without steam up as workmen completed repairing her furnace fire walls. Unable to move on her own, the tinclad was tied to Capt. Robert K. Riley’s mail steamer Platte Valley. As Ferguson’s boat pushed north against the stiff current lashed to the ­­220-foot long much larger ­­side-wheeler, it was hoped that Fort Pillow was safe. About 20 miles above Memphis, the gunboatman learned that such was not the case. A passing transport “spoken” about 10 p.m. confirmed that the little bastion had been taken. The fire

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wall repairs were completed shortly after this midstream rendezvous and the light draught’s engineers were able to raise steam. Even though she had enough power “to make 6 knots against the current,” the Silver Cloud did not immediately cast off from her tow. Two sets of paddle wheels thrashing north would provide more speed than one stern wheel alone. Agreeing to stop at Fort Pillow with supplies, the steamer Golden Gate, also with private freight aboard, also departed Memphis, but was captured by irregulars overnight when she halted at Bradley’s Landing, Arkansas. Readers of The New York Times, like other journal subscribers in the East, learned that “the boat, passengers, and crew were rifled of everything” before it was burned. The Silver Cloud and Platte Valley reached Fulton, Missouri, about three miles below Fort Pillow, at 6 a.m. on April 13. There Ferguson learned that Rebel pickets were on the riverbanks about a half mile further on. The two craft separated and continued cautiously upstream, the civilian craft carefully following in the wake of the gunboat.

USS Silver Cloud. Although the USS New Era fired in defense of Union troops during the April 12, 1864, Battle of Fort Pillow, Confederate attackers forced her off. She remained in the area afterwards, picking up survivors and assisting with burials. When word of the fighting reached Memphis, the light draught Silver Cloud was dispatched upstream to provide assistance, but did not arrive until two days after the engagement. After further assisting in relief and burial duties, she returned to base (Library of Congress).



7. Forrest Visits Paducah and Fort Pillow, 1864 125

Upriver at this time, the New Era was just getting underway, having transferred her refugees to the newly arrived ­­stern-wheeler Lady Pike. With the civilian boat following behind, Acting Master Marshall’s gunboat headed back toward Fort Pillow, intent upon seeking a truce under which to rescue wounded and bury the Northern dead. Meanwhile, as warned, the Silver Cloud came upon the Southern vidette outpost. Small groups of cavalry were seen in the area, including the nearby hills, but they did not resist. Ferguson ordered his gunners to bombard the nearby woods and all ­­suspicious-looking landmarks as the gunboat and transport slowly made their way to a point opposite the fort. About 8 a.m., the gunboat crept on a short distance further, rounded to, and stood down the river near the bank. As the embedded Argus reporter Wetmore wrote, everywhere in the fort public and private buildings were afire. Small Confederate groups were seen moving about applying the torch to barracks, huts, and stables. From their hiding spots, Union survivors and wounded came out and waved to the black savior. The Silver Cloud landed and began taking them aboard; as she did so, she was fired upon, without effect, by Rebel sharpshooters. The gunboat stood out into the river and began shelling the hills and bluffs adjacent to the fort. Within a few minutes, riders appeared waving a flag of truce. Firing ceased on both sides and a cutter was sent ashore to inquire. Maj. Gen. Forrest offered, via his ­­aide-de-camp, to allow the Federal boats to send landing parties ashore until 5 p.m. to bury dead Union soldiers and take aboard, under parole, the wounded. This gesture was quickly accepted. As the gunboat moved to shore, the Platte Valley was signaled to move up and come alongside. Burial parties were active from both sides, with the Confederates interring far more than the Union sailors. As the bluejackets continued their grisly work and the injured were taken aboard the Platte Valley, smoke from the New Era and Lady Pike was seen upstream. The pair signaled and came in, with the former sending a party ashore under an officer to assist with the burials. Having taken aboard some 57 wounded soldiers (including seven African Americans), the Platte Valley departed for the naval hospital at Cairo, where she arrived on April 14, five men, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune, having died while en route. Just after her departure, something on the order of 20 additional wounded soldiers appeared from beyond the Confederate lines. As fortune would have it, the Red Rover, the first USN hospital ship, was en route downriver at this time and put into shore to provide assistance. The total number of injured rescued totaled 89; sailors from the New Era and Silver Cloud buried 205 Federal comrades. When the truce flag was withdrawn, the Silver Cloud immediately stood down the river to report to Lt. Cmdr. Pattison at Memphis. The New Era took station about three miles below the fort, reclaiming a grounded coal barge that was cut loose during the battle. Brig. Gen. Brayman learned from evacuated dependents on the afternoon of April 12 that the Rebels were at Columbus, demanding its surrender. The officer wired Capt. Pennock, and, about 3 p.m., the fleet captain sent Lt. Cmdr. Fitch with two tinclads to the rescue. Covering the 19 miles down from Cairo to Columbus, Fitch went ashore on the 13th and found that the investing Confederates had already retired. Neither he nor

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any of the Union officers involved ever knew that the threatening enemy force consisted of only 150 men sent to create a distraction. About this time, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles received a telegram from Pennock reporting that Fort Pillow had, indeed, been attacked. This atop Confederate demands for the surrenders of both Columbus and Paducah. With Columbus safe, the fleet captain reported, Fitch would steam on to Fort Pillow with orders to shell the Rebels out and to keep the river open.2 Alerted by Pennock, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch sped to Fort Pillow’s relief with Moose and Hastings at flank speed. He knew that a prompt arrival was necessary to prevent Forrest from throwing up batteries and cutting off communication with the squadron below. The two tinclads reached Fort Pillow on the afternoon of April 14, and their crews were undoubtedly pleased to find that the main Southern force was gone. Still, the pair promptly joined the New Era in shelling away a few remaining Confederate horsemen torching coal barges at a point just above Coal Creek. The grayclads “displayed considerable bravery” admitted Fitch after the encounter. The three tinclads, in line ahead formation, pursued the Rebel riders down the wooded shore for some distance, steaming through a chute next to Island No. 30 while sending random shots after them. The chase lasted until dark when the cavalry faded away. Having determined that the enemy had not crossed Hatchee River, the USN task group commander knew that Fort Pillow was safe—if still smoking. At dawn on April 15, burial parties from the three tinclads went ashore at Fort Pillow to complete the interment of the remaining dead. The New Era’s magazine

Gunboats at Fort Pillow after the battle. In command at Cairo while RAdm. Porter was on the Red River, Fleet Captain Alexander Pennock, upon learning of the Fort Pillow assault, ordered a pair of tinclads then at Columbus, Kentucky, to steam to Fort Pillow’s relief. Upon their April 14 arrival, they joined the New Era in shelling away a few remaining Confederate horsemen. At dawn next morning, burial parties from the three vessels went ashore to complete the interment of the remaining dead (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, v. 1).



7. Forrest Visits Paducah and Fort Pillow, 1864 127

was replenished and she resumed her position as local guardship as Fitch returned upriver. While the belated succor of Fort Pillow was underway, a Confederate diversionary force made another move on Paducah, driving in the Union pickets and once more offering the city a flag of truce to remove women and children before attacking. When the hour was up, no assault materialized. Lt. Cmdr. Shirk covered the scene of this return visit with the Peosta, Paw Paw, Key West, and Fairplay. When Confederate riders were reported in the upper part of the town and nearby Jersey, the four tinclads pounded the areas, reportedly driving the enemy back to the local fairgrounds out of range. Still, during the noise and confusion, butternut cavalrymen managed to steal into the city and wrangle all of the U.S. government horses remaining in town—their major goal—and some belonging to civilians as well. Upstream at Cairo that evening, Capt. Pennock wrote out a brief message to RAdm. Porter, then facing his own immediate challenges at Grand Ecore, Louisiana, providing the latest available information on events at Columbus, Paducah, and Fort Pillow. He concluded with the optimistic assessment, “With the able assistance of Shirk and Fitch, I have no doubt of being able to take care of the river and keep it open.” When the squadron commander learned of the loss, he passed orders for the Essex, Benton, Choctaw, and Lafayette, the four heavy gunboats not actively participating in his Red River expedition, to steam north and secure Pillow against further assault. Back in Illinois waters late on April 16, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch reported it safe for river traffic to pass Fort Pillow. Pennock immediately informed Porter and Welles, in writing and by telegraph. The news allowed cancellation of the big ironclad movement. Forrest, as he himself acknowledged, could not long stop the movement of river commerce, though the very next night, 30 Confederate soldiers near Fort Pillow, supposedly part of Forrest’s rear guard reportedly dressed in Northern uniforms, fired upon the steamer Minoa as she passed, doing no significant damage.3

8

War on Mississippi River Commerce, 1863–1865 By the summer of 1863, United States National forces had made significant inroads in the Civil War West. Several major victories were won, including the captures of Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and with them came access to large swaths of land, many miles of river, and numerous towns and villages. Attempts were made to enhance the logistical chain established earlier in the conflict to reinforce and supply military gains, while enhancing commerce. The heaviest lift was provided by steamboats on the rivers, then natural communication arteries. The Confederate effort to shut down Federal river transport, begun in earnest on the Mississippi in August 1862 and intensified the following year, was not originally launched by the Richmond government, but grew in response to a need for a viable plan to stop Federal logistical support for its military campaigns. After Vicksburg fell, the harassment of Northern river traffic, particularly on the Mississippi, was seen as critical to the achievement of Southern war aims in the West. To a slightly lesser extent, this concern also applied to the major tributaries of the Big Muddy, particularly those flowing in yet contested regions such as the Tennessee, Cumberland, White, and Red. Union convoy and counterinsurgency efforts on several of these streams were beginning to pay dividends, allowing the USN to give additional attention to the Mississippi. As earlier, Dixie’s challenge to the watery links in the Yankee supply cord continued through the use of very mobile cavalry forces (regular and partisan), supported by regular infantry and irregular, often mounted partisan units (created by Confederate law to operate independently under army sanction behind Union lines). Fighters from both of those groups were deemed worthy of POW status if captured. Civilian volunteers (variously uniformed—if at all) drawn from the indigenous population and draft dodgers or outlaws were not. All save the latter were considered patriots in the South, but Northerners collectively labeled them as guerrillas, bushwhackers, brigands, or bandits. Not only did they harass Union patrols, communications, and political functions, they also served as a “presence” in local areas. There they assisted in Confederate army recruitment, offered minor government functions in some jurisdictions, scouted for the South around local communities, and harassed ­­Union-oriented neighbors. Federal frustration with this pesky, continuing Rebel resistance and harassment led to numerous and successively different counterinsurgency policies and initiatives 128



8. War on Mississippi River Commerce, 1863–1865 129

(political, military, and economic), some harsher than others, with none totally effective in ending the interference. Despite official rules as to the treatment of civilians and their property, the Union’s Western gunboatmen, usually unable to pursue attackers inland, almost always responded vigorously to all riverbank attacks. Their inability to identify the residents from the “guerrillas” shooting at them led to the belief that all Caucasians living along an offending shoreline were Rebel sympathizers worthy of revenge. The opening of the Mississippi in July 1863 was celebrated throughout the North, to great consternation in the South. Knowing that the Confederacy could not close the great stream to the Union, Richmond’s military establishment, led by Secretary of War James Seddon and his colleagues, hoped to come up with an ­­anti-shipping strategy to stifle waterborne trade. Not all Southern military leaders were immediately concerned with the potential access to the Gulf granted Northern shippers by the Vicksburg/Port Hudson surrender. “The benefits they expect,” thundered Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder, commander of the District of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, in a message to the people of Texas, “will not be reaped by them.” “Sharpshooters,” he bragged, “will line the banks of the Mississippi River, and their deadly volleys will be the only salute to the adventurous foe who may come to force trade over Southern waters.” Southern newspapers put on a brave face, proclaiming that even with Vicksburg’s loss, their men at arms would “prevent navigation by means of guerrillas and pieces of light artillery, located or moveable, on the river banks.” This “system of guerrillaism,” as The New York Times labeled it in an August 10 editorial, was said to be “in the process of organization” and would make it “impossible to guard both banks of the river for the thousand miles” it passed through Rebel territory. Unhappily, there were too few regulars, mounted or foot, who could be spared for a ­­long-term and sustained assault on the riverboats while partisan bands, destructive at times, provided only ­­hit-and-miss attacks, while guerrilla endeavors were too small or uncontrollable to achieve useful results. The achievements of the few secret agents– saboteurs, while often spectacular, were insufficient in number to have a lasting impact. Although the prospect of some success for the overall mission was good, chances of shutting down the Mississippi ­­long-term with piecemeal deployments were not.1 The Confederate onslaught against Western river commerce before the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, undertaken with regular and irregular soldiers, was viewed with anger and annoyance by Federal leadership. Attacks by irregulars were viewed as dishonorable and even criminal, even more so when the steamers targeted transported civilians. Maj. Gen. William S. Sherman, Union commander at Memphis for a period after July 1862, had his hands full attempting to dissuade the “guerrillas” in his vicinity. As was demonstrated on sundry occasions, individual insurgents sniped away at Mississippi River steamers, while, at the same time, larger bands and military units also conducted ­­various-sized raids in the interior. Regular Federal counterinsurgency operations seemed to yield no positive results. Infantry regiments on foot were no match for speedy horsemen or locals who could quickly fade into the wooded shadows. Attempts to run down those directly responsible for partisan attacks was a fruitless task, but perhaps reprisals against the populace near ambush sites might prove more beneficial.

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When shots were fired at the packet Eugene from Randolph, Tennessee, in September 1862, Ohio infantry were ferried to the town and burned it. Still the attacks continued, with some boats targeted by cannon. The introduction of artillery into the ­­anti-shipping war forcefully signified to Union commanders that Confederate field forces were also now targeting the ­­river-based system. As the war continued without any letup in the South’s watery muggings, so too did the North’s retaliatory policy. At Memphis, whole families of Confederate sympathizers were expelled from their homes. Elsewhere, not only on the Big Muddy but on her tributaries, bluecoats burned river properties and small communities in retaliation for continued assaults. Intelligence, amphibious raids, including those of the Mississippi Marine Brigade after its formation, contraband trading suppression, and interdiction patrols grew in number as major elements in the Union reaction to the enemy shipping menace. Although largely unnoticed and thus unsung, the waterborne counterinsurgency efforts of the U.S. Army were maintained long past the fall of Vicksburg. At Memphis, for example, it was fairly regular for a steamboat or two to be loaded with troops and dispatched to locations known or thought to harbor “guerrillas.” No actual military gunboats on the order of those employed on the Cumberland or Tennessee Rivers are known to have sortied out of the Tennessee port, as they did from Nashville and also Bridgeport, Alabama. Occasionally, however, a small contract steamer would have a howitzer and gun crew placed aboard to patrol the harbor area. With soldiers assigned, it could be sent on a specific mission. The Chicago Daily Tribune tells us of one such boat, the Maquoketa City, at the end of August 1863. With help from Frederick Way, we can piece together one of her outings. On August 22, Capt. E. P. Lane’s ­­5 5-ton ­­s tern-wheeler, with several squads embarked, steamed from Memphis over to the village of Union, Arkansas, to locate a band of Southern fighters believed sheltering there before making attacks on river traffic. When the Maquoketa City arrived, no irregulars were found. However, a captain from the staff of Gen. Braxton Bragg, who had just recruited 43 butternut soldiers for the Army of Tennessee, was taken along with his new men, plus a “number of fine horses,” many stolen earlier from U.S. stock. The lot were returned to Fort Pickering or its adjacent corrals. By 1863–1864, the Union’s Mississippi River counterinsurgency effort was largely in the hands of the USN and the Mississippi Marine Brigade. RAdm. David Dixon Porter, as we will see, considered commerce protection worthy of the utmost attention. In May 1864, while the Atlanta campaign was unfolding, the U.S. Army further refined its own role. Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby was now appointed commander of the Military District of West Mississippi and given orders to protect both banks of the Mississippi through armed patrols, by the maintenance of efficient garrisons at river towns, and the encouragement of packets for travel as they did not need to halt at numerous landings. He was particularly to cooperate with the Mississippi Squadron in attacking guerrilla congregations and shoreline positions of Confederate “flying artillery” and employ its assistance in transporting troops from local outposts in raids on Southern assembly points.2 The Mississippi Squadron, initially the army’s Western Gunboat Flotilla, also



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actively resisted Southern attacks on the river boats, with the intensity of its tactics increasing after the summer of 1862 when new leadership and the first light draught gunboats (“tinclads”) were introduced. Almost as soon as he started his new duties on October 1, the colorful bearded seadog Porter found the guerrilla menace to be one of his command’s most troublesome problems. These irregulars were “firing on unarmed vessels from the river banks and at places not occupied by United States troops, when the steamers stopped.” It was also widely believed that “large quantities of goods were intentionally landed [along the riverbanks] for the rebels and shipped from St. Louis” by unscrupulous businessmen and agents. The continuing Confederate assault on ­­river-borne shipping was a concern to the maintenance of communications between certain towns and various landings as well as the delivery of men and goods both before and after Vicksburg’s fall. By this point in the conflict, veteran Federal gunboat commanders on all of the rivers knew fairly well the usual locations from which they might be attacked. Many were obvious from the topography of the streams, though there were surprise hotspots. A correspondent from the Chicago Daily Tribune writing on November 23, 1863, pointed out that the prominent points for the “rascally hordes” of irregulars, that fall at least, were Island No. 16, about 20 miles below New Madrid; Island 63 and the country between Helena and White River, on both the Arkansas and Mississippi shores; Lake Providence; Grand Gulf; Mouth of the Red River; and the West side of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and Donaldsonville. A few have been found between Fort Pillow and Memphis.

RAdm. Porter dealt harshly with irregular warfare, authorizing or condoning blockades, port closures, aggressive convoys and patrols, and counterinsurgency incursions and retaliatory shoreline landings. Key among specific countermeasures was the stationing of picket gunboats off repeat ambush points (such as the USS Rattler off Rodney, Mississippi, where she was nearly captured) and patrols close to the shore, with orders to destroy skiffs and small boats and to disrupt by cannon fire men seen to be “lurking.” Also, in many locations, the levees were breached, disrupting the protection given Southern men and their artillery—to say nothing of nearby agricultural fields. The mission of the Mississippi Marine Brigade was further enhanced when it was specifically assigned to undertake counterinsurgency work in the area near Greenville, Mississippi, and, briefly in spring 1863, on the Tennessee River. Later that fall, it joined in efforts to boost Federal economic warfare strategy by helping to legitimize and promote officially approved elements of the cotton trade along the river. When several of its units were sent to participate in the Red River campaign early in 1864, they were quickly returned to assist in the suppression of “guerrilla” activities on the Mississippi in the Vicksburg area. As the noose of Federal might strangled both Vicksburg and Port Hudson in 1863, Southern efforts were made—and would be continued for many months— to maintain ­­trans-Mississippi communications. Weapons and foodstuffs, including cattle physically herded over the Big Muddy, were sent west to east while scouts braved the currents in small craft. Mail and other communications continued in both directions. All of these activities were relentlessly choked off by Federal soldiers and sailors, who aggressively harassed all of these operations on the water and

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USS Rattler. This tinclad, shown off Vicksburg, Mississippi, suffered the embarrassment of losing her captain and many crewmen to Confederate cavalrymen during services in a Rodney, Mississippi, church in September 1863. Continuing on USN patrols off that town thereafter, she conducted numerous patrols and frequently escorted merchantmen. On December 10, she was able to directly intercede to rescue the steamer Brazil from Southern attack. Twenty days later, she was lost when struck by a gale near Grand Gulf, Mississippi (Naval History and Heritage Command).

in the numerous locations where flat- and rowboats were beached. The interdiction was so successful that Maj. Gen. John A. Wharton, CSA, cried in frustration, “A bird, if dressed in Confederate gray, would find it difficult to fly across the river.” Most importantly from the Northern perspective, a convoy system for transport, introduced early by the USN, was enhanced and continued. Their sailings were announced days earlier in handbills posted at large and small landings and were conducted between given points thrice weekly. Steamboat captains, military and civilian, desiring naval protection were instructed to make application of the squadron commanders at Cairo, Memphis, or other ports. Three hours before setting out, the escort commander for each group would hoist a white flag with a blue cross and fire a gun as assembly notice. The initial escort duties had been handled by the timberclads Lexington, Conestoga, and Tyler, a few light draughts, and by other auxiliaries. As time went on, additional tinclads and other gunboats entered the picture, allowing the efficient working of the naval district system established for the fleet in the summer of 1863. As they moved from the limits of one district to another, particularly on the Mississippi, steamers were handed off to escorts assigned to those regions, the captains of which knew that heavy ironclad units were available as backup upon demand. The rigidity of the requirement for this organized naval escort of merchantmen could be loosened and was, but in general, it remained an essential and successful element of the



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Mississippi Squadron’s counterinsurgency effort. It was practiced with regularity throughout the remainder of the conflict. There were drawbacks to the convoy system. In order for the boats to complete their ­­up-and-down turnarounds, it was necessary, whenever convoy requirements were in effect, for shipping to idle—often for as long as a week—at river towns waiting for the escorts to return and scheduled convoys to assemble. There were exceptions, as a July 1863 newspaper notice made clear. “Armed vessels, however, going between times will also give convoy, but no regularity must be expected from them, or dispatch, as they may have to stop along the way.” At main ports, the arrival of large quantities of goods at one time made ­­off-loading dispersal to terminals and other land locations confusing and difficult. In addition, packets often steamed independently, but, if possible, were protected when attacked. Protection was also to be made available, assuming there was advance notice, for Northern cotton speculators and trading vessels wishing to gather or pick up cotton under Treasury Department permit. Its export prohibited by the Confederacy and its import banned under the Federal blockade, cotton, the “white gold” of the Civil War, was in great demand for New England textile mills. Officers detested the detail, though the civilian boats were subject to inspection. Despite some deficiencies in vessels and crew sizes, the effectiveness of this inland river convoy and protection system steadily grew and the number of ­­stacked-up requests for convoy from army quartermasters gradually moderated. Later after Vicksburg was secured, great emphasis was placed upon a strategy of economic restoration in certain Federally occupied areas. Legal acquisition of cotton

River convoy. For hundreds of years in time of war, merchantmen on oceans and streams always stood a better chance of survival against the enemy if they were escorted by warships. Convoys were employed during the Civil War, particularly on rivers, and were introduced early. Though captured on a Florida stream, this photograph of an actual wartime convoy gives the reader some impression of the regularly organized and escorted parades shepherded by vessels of the U.S. Mississippi Squadron (Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War, v. 6).

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After Vicksburg

was seen as a way of buying the pocketbooks of inhabitants, thereby gaining their political support and also satisfying a need of Northern textile interests. Great quantities of the crop were available for shipment. For example, the Memphis Bulletin on October 20, 1863, reported that the steamer Crescent City was loading 2,700 bales aboard at the mouth of the White River. Upon sailing, she proceeded to Memphis. Then, before completing her voyage at Cairo, she was unsuccessfully attacked by guerrillas while “­­wooding-up” at the head of Island No. 21. She was not alone. On November 17, 1863, the New York Daily Tribune reported that cotton was now ascending the river in quantities unseen since the beginning of the war. It was common for boats to arrive at Cairo with anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 bales of cotton. Because the railroads were unable to handle this amount of private cargo, other steamers then took it up the Ohio to Cincinnati, from whence it passed to the East. Union maritime forces also participated in the trade, though sometimes on a shady basis. Cotton was a legal prize for gunboatmen and using the stuff for armor, though usually justified, was also a ­­well-understood trick for obtaining extra cash. Assigned to the Memphis–White River area, a reporter from the Chicago Daily Tribune noted that, during the late summer of 1863, numerous gunboats were seen attempting to pad themselves with as much white protection as possible to guard against enemy shot. When covered as completely as practical, a need was suddenly found for repairs and the vessels were posted upstream to the main Mississippi

Cotton steamboat headed north. After Vicksburg was captured, great emphasis was placed upon a strategy of economic restoration in certain Federally occupied areas along the Western rivers. Legal acquisition of cotton was seen as a way of buying the pocketbooks of inhabitants, thereby gaining their political support and also satisfying a need of Yankee textile interests. Great quantities of the crop were available for shipment. For example, the steamer Crescent City (represented here by a later vessel) cleared the mouth of the White River for Memphis and Cairo on October 30, 1863, with her decks stacked with 2,700 bales of cotton (Harper’s Weekly, May 7, 1887).



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Squadron base at Cairo (also site of a prize court). Upon their return to duty, “no cotton would be visible.” The practice was believed ended that fall, or if not, “the operations are more guarded.” In addition to its counterinsurgency duty, Mississippi Marine Brigade officers in Mississippi more or less served as agents between white citizens and cotton merchants/speculators at this time. The sanctioned and assisted delivery of cotton to market by Mr. Lincoln’s soldiers convinced many plantation locals, including a number in Arkansas, that more could be achieved through cooperation with the North than support of the Confederate cause or its soldiers, regular or irregular. In spurring economic activity depressed by conflict, this policy, prior to its dissolution at the end of August 1864, actually, as Daniel R. Doyle put it, “gave the locals a reason to rejoin the Union.”3 Attacks on Federal vessels by small units of Confederate regulars or irregular forces and guerrillas of whatever number employing just rifles or muskets could not stop steamers (packets) underway in the main channels or in wider streams if they had not already been lured by ruse to or close to the riverbank. They could, however, in their often daily strikes, particularly on narrow streams where trees and brush came down to the water, do considerable damage to the boats. More importantly, many exposed Union officers and crewmen and some civilians were killed or wounded through brief group fusillades or individuals’ sniping. Several examples will illustrate. Transports passing offshore of islands or a little further out in straight stretches of the Mississippi were perhaps more likely to actually be surprised by musket attack than those passing through the tight stretches of some of her tributaries. These assaults seemed more to annoy than cause damage. An illustration of this occurred on September 5, 1863, near Cow Island, 20 miles below Memphis. While passing down, the officers and crew of the Sunny South were “startled by the report of discharge of a number of small arms discharged from the Arkansas shore.” The firing continued until she had gone by and a number of mini balls penetrated her upper works, though no one was hurt. Not long after, the Memphis Argus reported the next day, the northbound Tecumseh passed the same location and received the same greeting with the same result. On the other hand, wherever steamers were forced to ease through a bend or otherwise approach the shore, regardless of the Southern river, the presence of Confederate riflemen, regular or irregular, could be anticipated. One such encounter involved the ­­side-wheeler Gladiator, en route from Helena to Memphis on the afternoon of Sunday, September 21. With his passenger cabins bulging, Capt. John Simpson Klinefelter, ­­part-owner and master since 1858 and a legend on the St. Louis to New Orleans run, approached Harrison’s Landing. As his craft neared Burdeau’s chute on the Mississippi shore, a volley of musketry crashed out from unseen Southerners hidden in deep brush along the bank. As the Gladiator steamed out of range, a review found over 20 balls lodged in different parts of the boat. One had passed entirely through the clerk’s office just as that worthy was stepping on deck. Putting in at major stops, particularly Memphis, steamboat captains often reported that they had personally spotted irregulars lurking along the riverbanks intent on mischief or they had learned of same. For example, on September 19, the packet J. R. Pringle, en route to the Tennessee port from New Orleans, was warned by

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After Vicksburg

Guerrillas attack a steamer. Dixie’s challenge to the watery links in the Yankee supply cord was executed through the use of very mobile cavalry forces (regular and partisan), supported by regular infantry and irregular, often mounted partisan units (created by Confederate law to operate independently under army sanction behind Union lines). Fighters from both of those groups were deemed worthy of POW status if captured. Civilian volunteers (variously uniformed—if at all) drawn from the indigenous population and draft dodgers or outlaws were not. All save the latter were considered patriots in the South, but Northerners collectively labeled them as guerrillas, bushwhackers, brigands, or bandits. As depicted, true “guerrillas” usually employed muskets to harass Northern steamers (Illustrated London News, June 14, 1862).

citizens while stopped to wood at Hagen’s Landing, five miles below. A large band of mounted guerrillas had been seen in the neighborhood and “hints” from their leaders suggested they were planning to soon hit the river to attack steamers. We do not know if that particular sighting was accurate, but we do know that the Confederates intent upon accomplishing this mission were determined. The removal of several gunboats from districts further down the Mississippi to assist Sherman at the time of the Chattanooga reinforcement in October created opportunities—at least so the Southerners believed—for mischief and enhanced—if not coordinated— movement against ­­far-flung Federal targets of opportunity on all of the rivers. Sometimes their plans were disrupted. It was learned at the end of September that Confederates who had recently attacked Morganza, Louisiana, from locations in the Atchafalaya were readying a steamer, the Argus, on the Red River back of the Mississippi to ferry troops across the bayou for another raid. On October 7, Acting Chief Engineer Thomas Doughty of the Osage volunteered to take 20 men and seize the boat. Cutting their way through



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bushes and undergrowth, the team successfully made the capture and that of a second vessel, the Robert Fulton, which came up minutes later. Unable to get the prizes out of the river, Doughty destroyed them. Writing from the mouth of the White River on November 4, 1863, “Pontiac,” a correspondent for the Chicago Daily Tribune, informed his readers that the “guerrillas” were launching an ­­anti-shipping campaign designed “to put a stop to the navigation of the Mississippi, if such a thing is in the range of possibility.” According to the newsman, captured Southerners were quite forthcoming in revealing their goal of river denial to all Federal steamers “except armed convoys.” Their tactics of accomplishment were simple: “open fire from the points where the boats pass nearest the shore, on occasions when they are least expected.” Chances of causing damage were believed to be high, though it was problematic as to whether they could actually establish an effective blockade. Still, riverbank foliage offered the assailants “perfect concealment and nothing but grapeshot and shells can drive them out.” During the week between October 27 and November 3, eight to ten Northern steamers were attacked steaming independently on the Mississippi, mostly without casualties. Aboard Capt. James H. Maratta’s new ­­stern-wheeler Emma No. 2, a man had two bullets pass through the sleeve of his coat without grazing his skin. A lady had her comb shattered by a mini ball as she stood with her side toward the bank from which the Rebels opened fire. Eight people were wounded aboard the world’s largest ­­stern-wheeler, the Adriatic, but no one was killed. As we saw in Chapter 4, a large irregular force without cannon was unable to halt the visit of Lt. Henry Glassford’s naval and transport task group to the Upper Cumberland in December 1863. One local man did, however, make a big impact. Working out of a cave hideout near his Stewart County, Tennessee, “­­B etween-the-Rivers” home above the Tennessee River, the determined Rebel partisan, John “Old Jack” Hinson, was very effective. It was said the man killed nearly 100 soldiers and crewmen aboard steamers on the waters below before the conflict ended. These sorts of attacks by usually small groups of irregular Confederates with small arms continued throughout the remainder of the war. Our final example of attempted musket interdiction occurred on October 5, 1864. While en route from St. Louis for the White River with a cargo of goods and horses, Capt. William G. Vohris’ Eclipse moved past Thweet’s Landing on the Mississippi River bend at the foot of Island No. 17. At this point, a volley of musketry from 10–12 partisans rang out from the Tennessee shore, followed by quick but irregular firing. Four balls passed through the ­­stern-wheeler’s pilothouse, narrowly missing the pilot. Three others hit the texas deck and saloon while an indefinite number smacked into points below. As they fired, the Confederates shouted out for the boat to surrender and come into the western bank. Two men were wounded and two horses were killed. Vohris remained on course and called for more steam, moving out of range of the enemy muskets. A number of enemy soldiers chased the Eclipse along the bank, but she soon moved beyond their pursuit. By December, these kinds of attacks were largely viewed as normal by those in the steamboat business or those taking passage. New York Daily Tribune columnist

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After Vicksburg

John L. McKenna, traveling down the entire length of the Mississippi just before Christmas to review whether or not river cruising had changed in ­­three-plus years, summed up. “With some bloody exceptions,” he recorded, “guerrilla firing is much like lightning—if you live long enough to see it or hear it, you may be sure you are not killed!”4 Artillery on the other hand did have ­­ship-busting capability, something regular Southern troops had demonstrated on numerous occasions before the fall of Vicksburg. Its use was a devastating practice continued thereafter. The ­­anti-shipping availability of field and heavier cannon remained, however, subject to the needs of the major units to which they were attached and had no regular sector assignments, being deployed along the rivers from other commitments as immediate demand or opportunity determined. Several attacks may serve as examples. On July 7, 1863, just after the fall of Vicksburg and before the surrender of Port Hudson, a ­­two-gun section of Capt. Thomas A. Faries’ 5th Battery (“The Pelican Battery”), Louisiana Artillery, arrived at Gaudet’s Plantation, on the east bank of the Mississippi 12 miles below Donaldsonville, Louisiana. There it unlimbered and, from behind embrasures cut in the tall river levee, fired with impunity on nearly a dozen vessels, including gunboats, over the next two days. The dikes, which Faries later called “the best of earthworks,” proved a useful Southern barrier in certain locations on the Lower Mississippi. In late November, Maj. Gen. John G. Walker’s Texas Cavalry Division (“Walker’s

USS Choctaw off Vicksburg. Assigned to the Mississippi Squadron’s Third District off the mouth of Red River on November 1863, this powerful ironclad came to the assistance of the badly damaged tinclad Signal attempting to fight masked Confederate batteries. Sending the smaller craft for repairs, the giant offered protection three days later to the steamer Black Hawk as she tried to pass the same Rebel guns (Naval History and Heritage Command).



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Greyhounds”), then assigned to northeastern Louisiana, was ordered to harass Union shipping from locations near the junction of the Mississippi, Red, and Atchafalaya Rivers, concentrating on the larger independent packets. Among the cannoneers with him was those from Capt. William Edgar’s 1st Texas Field Battery, then attached to Brig. Gen. Henry E. McCulloch’s 1st Brigade. As in the earlier manner of Capt. Faries, Edgar chose high levees for observation and protection, spacing his guns in separated pairs in an ­­anti-shipping pattern that would become almost standardized in months ahead. On November 18, the light draught Signal was towing a ­­9-inch gun on a flatboat to the Third District anchorage at the mouth of the Red River; there it would be turned over to the unit flagboat Choctaw. As she paddled into a bend abreast of the woods on the Red River side of Hog Point, Louisiana (a mile from the mouth of that stream), she was taken under fire by Edgar’s masked battery. The tinclad was badly cut up and five bluejackets were wounded before she could escape to make her delivery. On the afternoon of November 21, the civilian steamer Black Hawk, en route from Memphis to New Orleans, stopped abreast the Choctaw for a warning of the danger ahead. Refusing an offer of convoy the next morning and believing her speed ensured her safety, the transport left the ironclad’s protection, but only made it half a mile before Edgar struck. Approximately 20 Rebel shells hit the boat, starting a texas deck fire and disabling her steering gear. Choctaw steamed to the rescue firing her great guns, only to find her grounded opposite Hog Point (with one dead and four wounded) in need of a tow. At a point three to five miles below the river bend at Morganza, Louisiana, while en route from New Orleans to St. Louis on the morning of December 8, Capt. Patrick Gorman’s packet Henry Von Phul was assaulted. Gorman was killed by a cannonball when a third of the pilothouse was smashed, while the barkeeper and a deck hand also present were fatally wounded. The Von Phul pushed on a few miles to the Federal anchorage off Morganza, where the assault particulars were reported to the commander of the Neosho. In late afternoon, the ­­cut-up transport, led by the monitor, steamed up the river. The two had ascended about three miles when some four pieces of Confederate horse artillery, having let the escort pass, opened fire on the Von Phul from the levee. The Rebel gunners hit the U.S. transport at least 20 times. Three of their shot passed through the steamer’s hull below the waterline, one cut off her supply pipe, and another penetrated one of her portside boilers. Taking passage, the famous New York Herald correspondent Thomas W. Knox was in his cabin when it was pierced by a cannonball. The impact, he later recalled, was like throwing a paving stone through wet paper. The packet was soon disabled and lost way with only one of her side wheels still working. Two deckhands and seven passengers were wounded. While the Neosho engaged the battery, driving it off, Capt. Harry McDougal’s Atlantic, steaming to New Orleans from St. Louis, came down the river and moved alongside the Von Phul. The larger craft then made fast and, at considerable risk, towed the late Capt. Gorman’s vessel to the mouth of the Red River. During the evening, the light draught Signal arrived off Morganza convoying three steamers. The following morning she, together with the Neosho, escorted the merchantmen down the river. When off the points where the Confederate batteries had appeared, the two Union warships shelled the shores until all were past.

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After Vicksburg

USS Signal. Back in service two weeks after being damaged off Red River, this tinclad undertook numerous convoys guarding steamboats against mobile Confederate batteries. During the evening of December 8, 1863, the Signal arrived off Morganza, Louisiana, convoying three steamers. There she encountered the monitor Neosho, which had engaged nearby Rebel shore guns earlier in the day. Next morning, the two escorted the merchantmen down the river and, when off the points where the Confederate batteries had appeared, shelled the shores until all were past. A participant in the spring 1864 Red River campaign, the Signal was disabled by Southern gunners on May 4, run ashore, and burned (Naval History and Heritage Command).

On the Mississippi side of the Rodney bend two days later, horsemen from Col. Wirt Adams’ 1st Mississippi Cavalry Regiment attacked the ­­stern-wheeler Brazil with four field cannon and muskets. The transport was badly cut up, two women passengers were killed and four men were wounded. The tinclad Rattler responded rapidly, arriving in time to fire upon the cavalrymen as they limbered their guns and made away into the woods. Neither troopers nor sailors were hurt and the steamer continued upriver. Confederate assaults on Union river shipping continued throughout the fall of 1863 and into the spring of 1864. For a while after New Year’s, there seemed to be a decline on the Lower Mississippi, one which was noticed by the press. In a laudatory editorial in the April 4 edition of The New York Times, it would be suggested that, although the South had claimed control over a thousand miles of the great stream “not a great while ago,” the distance was now “not only navigable, but is navigated by large numbers of commercial steamers.” With less than two dozen steamboat



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attacks widely reported since January 1, it appeared that the Rebel “interruptions and eruptions” feared and anticipated since the fall of Vicksburg “had hardly amounted to anything.” Lack of spare Southern soldiers to make the attacks and swift gunboat response to those few perpetrated had, it was incorrectly believed, caused “guerrilla operations on the river to have all but ceased.” One of the most common events in the ­­c at-and-mouse game between Union gunboats and the Confederate military after Vicksburg’s fall was a constant effort by the latter to get men, arms and foodstuffs east across the Mississippi. We review several events in January 1864 as examples. During the first week of the year, Brig. Gen. Lawrence “Sul” Ross, CSA, commander of the Texas Cavalry brigade, appeared above Greenville, Mississippi, for the purpose of ferrying goods across the Mississippi and harassing Union shipping. While the crossings were made, horse artillery was unlimbered not far from Island No. 82. About this time, two steamers, the Delta and Belle Creole, appeared and were fired upon. Although they were damaged to one degree or another, neither was taken. By the time news of the assault reached the tinclad Petrel on patrol near Sunnyside, Alabama, and she was able to come down, the enemy had disappeared. Abandoned ferry flatboats were, however, captured and destroyed before their logistical mission could be accomplished. As she passed the foot of Rodney Bend with a tow of coal for the army on January 25, the steamer Champion No. 3, sometimes known as the “New Champion,” was volleyed from the west bank of the Mississippi by riflemen who did little damage. When appraised of the incident, the tinclad Forest Rose steamed in fruitless search of the perpetrators. Near the town of Rodney, an “armed Rebel” was seen fleeing from the ruins of an abandoned sawmill, which was promptly burnt by a landing party from the gunboat. During the same week, according to a Philadelphia newspaper, the steamer Gilburn was seized by irregulars near Island No. 75 and employed to transport their horses, mules, and wagons from the Louisiana to the Mississippi side of the river. They also carried away cargo from Bolivar Landing and set fire to several houses in the town. For some unknown reason, “no harm was done to the boat or cargo.” These sorts of activities continued for several additional months, but by late summer, the weight of Federal arms would all but end any Dixie hopes of ­­large-scale relief flowing across the Big Muddy. On September 30, the Montgomery Mail confessed that the Mississippi was “patrolled by the Yankees with sleepless watchfulness, rendering it impossible to cross anywhere.” Despite occasional lulls in assaults on Northern steamers on the Lower and Middle Mississippi, they continued there in 1864, as well as upon most of her tributaries, including the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, White and Arkansas Rivers. Almost from the year’s beginning, the ­­ship-to-shore conflict was sharp between escorted Northern steamers and Confederate raiders intent upon disrupting river traffic. The ball always seemed to open with shooting from Southern ambushers after which Federal protectors hurled shells toward the perceived locations of the perpetrators. These skirmishes, which could last from five minutes to several hours, were extremely loud and intense, and occasionally featured sailors or shock troops sent ashore in pursuit from the gunboats or Mississippi Marine Brigade boats. Afterwards,

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the leaders of both sides usually reported different success levels for the outcomes of the little engagements. There were few casualties or little damage to the combatants, particular to the elusive Confederates, and far more to civilians and their property, some of which was abandoned or burned. The latter was particularly true after Union generals, on occasion, sent large forces to sweep riverfront areas in specifically targeted counterinsurgency strikes.5 Of potentially greater impact on Northern shipping than the riverbank attacks was a secretive scheme, carried out over about a year after August 1863 with Confederate government approval, to burn boats docked in port. The exact number and names of all the participants in the operation is unknown as are the particulars for a number of the losses. Men with names like Edward Frazer or Frazor, Robert Loudon, William Murphy, and J. W. Tucker, believed emissaries of Richmond leaders like Secretary Seddon, were supposedly involved and were listed in an April 25, 1865, report by Department of Missouri Provost Marshal Col. James H. Baker. Of the 350 boats lost on the Western waters during the conflict, upwards of 29 fell victim to this shadowy conspiracy or, as Lewis B. Parsons later tabulated, 8.8 percent, a figure dwarfed by the 155 vessels (47.4 percent) destroyed in accidents. The colonel’s charting details the losses. The operation began with the destruction of the steamer Ruth, carrying a $2.5 million military payroll, near Columbus, Kentucky, on August 4. ­­Thirty-eight lives were lost. Saboteur Murphy took out the Champion at Memphis on August 21 for a $3,500 payment, while the mysterious Frazier and associates burned the Imperial, Hiawatha, Post Boy, and Jesse K. Bell at the St. Louis levee on September 14. While passing Milliken’s Bend on September 28, the transport Robert Cambell, Jr., was set afire allegedly by an unknown Confederate incendiary dressed as an African American. The vessel was completely consumed, with the blaze spreading so quickly that nearly all of the passengers and crew had to jump overboard with upwards of 20 killed. On October 4, Frazier struck the same port again, torching the Chancellor, Forest Queen, and Catahouls. The scene shifted to Louisville, Kentucky, on February 5, 1864, when incendiaries claimed the towboat Robert Lee and the ­­side-wheeler D. G. Taylor. Other vessels were also eliminated; the largest number burned occurred during two 1864 incidents. At New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 28, incendiaries destroyed the steamers Laurel Hill, Empire Parish, Black Hawk, Meteor, Fawn, Time and Tide, Belle Creole, and Louisiana Belle. Saboteurs at St. Louis on July 15 accounted for the Northerner, Welcome, Sunshine, Ed. F. Dix, and Cherokee.6 Union Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele’s VII Corps participation in the Red River campaign is often called the Camden expedition because that is as far as his Federal army was able to get from Little Rock before turning about and returning to the state capital on May 3, 1864. The failure, coming before RAdm. Porter was able to extricate himself from the Red, emboldened Confederates within Arkansas and elsewhere in the ­­Trans-Mississippi and encouraged grayclad troops to ride roughshod over Arkansas, “plundering and overawing the Unionists,” as Benson J. Lossing put it right after the war. In ­­mid-May, Confederate Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith ordered preparations begun for a late summer invasion of Missouri. As the month closed, its designated leader, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, ordered a ­­short-term sweep of Arkansas by Brig.



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Gen. John S. Marmaduke’s cavalry division. Specifically, his District of Arkansas unit was to end the depredations of guerrillas turned terrorists and halt contraband trading with the enemy, recruit new troops, eliminate the small riverbank Federal outposts manned by African American soldiers, disrupt Federal logistics, and, in general, rekindle the flames of the rebellion where they had died down. The Union gunboatmen on the Mississippi, Arkansas, and White Rivers would now increasingly face the same kind of enemy challenge as their colleagues on the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers: a concentrated Southern strategy of irregular blockade initiated by regular troops, partisans and guerrillas. In a letter home on June 6, Paymaster’s Steward John Swift of the tinclad Silver Cloud observed that, during this time, Rebels were “as thick as peas everywhere.” Inland of the Mississippi, one of the two Confederate brigades undertaking the District of Arkansas task was nicknamed the “Iron Brigade,” under the legendary cavalryman Brig. Gen. Joseph O. (“Jo”) Shelby, the most famous butternut horse soldier in the ­­Trans-Mississippi theater. His mounted force of between 2,000 and 3,000 men, with the Missouri battery of Capt. Richard Collins, moved across the Arkansas River east of Little Rock and headed toward the Federal logistical hub at DeValls Bluff on the White River. In addition to the recruiting/pacification mission, Shelby would specifically seek to block Steele’s logistical flow by attacking his supply lines between Little Rock and the Bluff. More importantly to this chapter Marmaduke ordered the ­­l ess-famous but equally determined and colorful colonel, Colton Greene, to take the division’s second brigade to the banks of the Mississippi and shut down Union shipping, while also putting “an immediate quietus” on local cotton trading with Col. Colton Greene, CSA. On of the most effective Confederate Western theater the Federals. These horsemen would anti-shipping commanders, Greene block- engage Northern gunboats and amphibaded the Mississippi River in the Greenville ious forces in a spirited, but largely Bends area for several weeks in late May and unremembered, campaign from the early June 1864. Employing Missouri cav- flat, featureless bottomlands along the alry and the guns of Capt. Joseph Pratt’s west bank of the Mississippi in Chicot Texas Battery, he punished commercial vesCounty, the southeasternmost county in sels, as well as USN tinclads and amphibious boats of the Mississippi Marine Brigade, Arkansas. Accompanying the 800–900 men halting river traffic (U.S. Army Military Hisof his 3rd Missouri Cavalry, temporarily tory Institute).

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led by Capt. Benjamin Crabtree, Greene was joined by four other Missouri cavalry regiments, plus six fieldpieces of Capt. Joseph H. Pratt’s Texas Battery. These artillerymen were the most experienced “­­ship-busters” along on the expedition, having attacked Federal shipping from the same location in summer 1862 while serving with the Texas Cavalry Brigade of Col. William Henry Parsons. A few other artillery sections would also join as the fortnight continued.7 While Southern ­­Trans-Mississippi area soldiers confronted the Red River campaign from January into May, the Union military and naval forces assigned to the Chicot County sector enjoyed relatively peaceful duty. In addition to the Mississippi Marine Brigade vessels stationed at Greenville, Mississippi, Lt. Cmdr. Elias K. Owen commanded the Sixth District of the Mississippi Squadron from the old ironclad Louisville at Vicksburg. On May 17, as RAdm. Porter’s fleet was escaping Alexandria, Louisiana, via the Bailey Dam, Owen recorded the stations of his four tinclads, as they undertook patrols and protected merchantmen: “The Prairie Bird was in the Yazoo, the Exchange was at Skipwith’s Landing, and the Romeo was stationed off Gaines Landing [five miles above Island No. 82] ‘as a center,’ while the Marmora patrolled ‘from Island [No.] 76 to Napoleon.’” Over the next few days, intelligence concerning possible Confederate movements inland of the Mississippi began filtering into Union outposts. Acting Master Thomas Baldwin, captain of the Romeo, was apprised by a “reliable woman” that the Rebels would “have 30 pieces of artillery on the river in a few days.” On May 22, Acting Master’s Mate De Witt C. Morse, an officer aboard the tinclad Curlew, then passing through Vicksburg, learned “that Marmaduke, with 6,000 men and a battery of ten or fifteen guns, was at Island No. 82 preparing to blockade the river.” Simultaneously, Baldwin heard that butternut scouts had several times foraged to the edge of the river in these Greenville Bends (named for the town on the eastern bank in the state of Mississippi) and had fired into transports at the foot of that island. On the evening of May 23, Col. Greene’s command, with Pratt’s attached artillery, arrived at Campbell’s Landing, on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River near Gaines Landing, where he could employ to his advantage the navigational dangers of the winding river stretch between Chicot Lake and Gaines Landing. Here the more heavily loaded steamboats, with a top speed of about 9–10 mph, were, depending upon their north or south direction, always forced to come closer to shore on one side of the stream than the other (closer to Arkansas going down) as they navigated through long river curves separated by narrow peninsulas of land. Given this topography, Pratt placed his batteries in two or more locations, allowing vessels to sail past one into the teeth of another without the possibility of backward escape. Or, these horse artillery units could be quickly limbered and speed across a neck of land from one bend to another, catching surviving steamers more than once. One of the bends, Cypress Bend, with Columbia, Arkansas, was at the upper side and Leland Landing on the lower, was a particular favorite of the Confederate leader. A steamer negotiating this bend traveled 18 miles around by water, but horse artillery and cavalry, operating at the base of the neck, had only to race 3.5 miles over a good road to get from one side to another. The most effective Southern attempt to completely block the Mississippi River to Federal traffic during the entire war began before dawn on May 24. The trading



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steamer Lebanon was fired upon 10 miles below Greenville and her steam pipe was hit and burst, allowing the boat to be captured. Moving to the bank, she was boarded and looted. After $70,000 worth of dry goods and $30,000 in greenbacks were removed, the vessel was burned and her freed crewmen told to pass the word that if any additional merchants or cotton speculators were captured they would be executed. Simultaneously, Capt. Pratt’s battery was placed on top of the riverbank levee at Gaines Landing, with their support stationed under cover 50 yards in the rear. Action was not long in coming. It was just past 4 a.m. when the Curlew paddled upstream past Island No. 82, following the timberclad Tyler by about two miles. When the light draught reached a point about ­­three-quarters of a mile away from the enemy, the disposition of the Confederate mobile battery, which Greene would repeat in the days ahead, could be clearly distinguished by her lookouts. Three or four guns were mounted on the edge of the bank in clear sight while the remainder were hidden behind the levee. The Rebel gunners, perhaps familiar with the big guns of the timberclad, chose to let the Tyler pass before opening fire. The little gunboat responded promptly (“every officer was at his station as soon as the ball opened,” wrote Mate Morse later) allowing the four portside howitzers to “give them one broadside before the thieves had given us their second round.” Perhaps expecting an easy sinking, Greene’s gunners, like the men of the Curlew, found themselves engaged in a very spirited 20–35 minute (depending upon your source) gunfight. The Curlew was hit multiple times by the Confederate cannon in what many would remember as the “hottest engagement” in which the boat was ever engaged. In response to the Rebel gift, the tinclad’s howitzers sent 28 rounds toward shore, some of which were believed to have struck “in their midst.” Throughout the fight, her whistle sounded to warn the Tyler of the attack, but before the ancient warship could round to and arrive with assistance, Col. Greene’s horse artillery limbered up and moved down the riverbank.8 Col. Greene, though low on ammunition, maintained his blockade. With 10–14 guns now available, he was able to split and rest his forces, alternating one battery and a covering regiment to the river each day. Additional exchanges occurred between the butternut cannoneers and the Mississippi Marine Brigade/USN, but by June 3, river traffic through the Greenville Bends had ceased. During this time, one trooper was lost and five injured, but none of Pratt’s guns were damaged or horses hit. ­­North-South cotton trading did cease in the Chicot County area as the MMB effort was transferred to Greenville. Both Greene and Marmaduke were pleased with the interdiction strike, the latter reporting that “the navigation of the Mississippi River has been seriously obstructed, and both by land and water the enemy has received no little damage.” Out on the river, many of the ­­ship-shore combats of the ­­two-week interdiction were spirited. None of the tinclads engaged or any transports were sunk, though two of the latter were captured. Three of Lt. Col. Currie’s Mississippi Marine Brigade vessels participated in the protection of passing steamers and all were damaged, but it was the stiff defense and rough handling of the tinclads Curlew, Romeo, and Exchange which gained attention. RAdm. Porter and Lt. Cmdr. Owen praised their captains, while the success of Pratt’s gunners in combating them was remarked upon

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by Shelby’s adjutant, John Edwards, in his postwar history. There he claimed that the attacks on the trio utterly destroyed the prestige and name of terror of these boats with the soldiery; indeed, so little did they come to care for them, that while the batteries were engaged, the soldiers not on duty did not interrupt their games of cards, or other amusement of the moment, though sharply exposed to their fire.

It is quite probable that news of the ­­L ouisiana-Arkansas triumphs enjoyed by the Confederates against USN vessels or ships and locations under their protection in May and June was picked up by other Southern military leaders in the West, most especially Nathan Bedford Forrest. Because of these admittedly few successes, Northern newspapers lamented that Southerners of the region “have become emboldened and have less fear of the navy than formerly.”9 As might be expected, those on the receiving end of Col. Greene’s largess greatly overestimated the forces they faced. MMB, U.S. Army, and Mississippi Squadron officers all believed themselves engaged against 5,000– 10,000 men with upwards of 40 guns. It would take a large force, they reasoned, to break the stranglehold. So it was that two divisions of Red River veterans from Maj. Gen. A. J. Smith’s XVI Corps, then at Vicksburg preparing to voyage to Memphis for reintegration into the Army of the Tennessee, were ordered to make a detour. Working with the MMB, it became their job to “clean out the rebels” in Chicot County or otherwise halt their ­­anti-shipping war by giving them “such a lesson as will deter them from a renewal of similar attempts.” Smith’s people and the MMB arrived at Sunnyside Landing on the evening of June 5. When the men were ashore, they marched in the rain the next day in overwhelming numbers against Col. Greene’s few, but prepared men. The engagement at Old River Lake (Battle of Ditch Bayou) resulted in a Confederate withdrawal.

Brig. Gen. A . J. Smith. To counter the anti-shipping mission of Confederate Col. Colton Greene, the Union dispatched two divisions of Red River campaign veterans of the U.S. Army’s XVI Corps under Brig. Gen. A. J. Smith. His reinforcements arrived at Sunnyside Landing, Chicot County, AR, landing on June 6 to engage the few, but prepared, Southerners. The resulting engagement at Old River Lake (Battle of Ditch Bayou) resulted in a Rebel withdrawal (Library of Congress).



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As soon as the little campaign was completed, Smith’s bluecoats reboarded their transports and departed up the river. The Southerners also rode out of Chicot County, headed for the Arkansas and White River regions. As the emphasis of our story shifts elsewhere, we note that the commerce of the Mississippi was resumed, both transport and agricultural. Although Southern attacks on steamboats continued, they were of the sudden ­­hit-and-run variety and not sustained Confederate regular army ­­anti-shipping campaigns like Greene’s. The same could not be said for some of the Big Muddy’s other tributaries, notably the White, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers.10 Although the Greene campaign was unique in its coordinated intensity, single encounters could be quite dramatic, like that of the Madison and the Clarabel. While nearly opposite Napoleon, Arkansas, on the morning of July 21, the troop transport Madison with the 19th Pennsylvania Volunteers embarked, was volleyed by some 30 Southerners from shore a short distance above the levee. Three Federal soldiers were wounded, one mortally, while two Confederates were seen to fall. The steamer was undamaged. On July 23, the Clarabel departed Vicksburg for the White River transporting four companies of the Sixth Michigan Infantry. As she passed Ashton Landing, in Louisiana Bend, the next morning, she was surprised by a masked Confederate battery. When the vessel blew her whistle in surrender, it appeared that another Northern steamer was captured, but, as the butternuts prepared to board, she started ahead again with great clouds of smoke escaped from her chimneys. Angered, the angry gunners and sharpshooters targeted her once more, slamming roundshot and musketballs into her sides. Escaping out of range with seven wounded and the enemy in pursuit, the Federal boat came to on the bar off Caroline Landing to make repairs and a messenger set off across the six miles to the USN Skipwith’s Landing anchorage for help. When the Confederates arrived and resumed firing, the tinclad Prairie Bird came over and tried but failed to drive them off. She then paddled back to base for an ironclad. While naval relief was sought and after several failed surrender parlays, the Confederates resumed firing. It was said the steamer was hit 30 times before she was enveloped in flames. Although none of the crew was injured, thirteen Michigan soldiers were wounded, two fatally, and all of the regiment’s military equipment was destroyed. The Confederates having removed toward Columbia, together the crew and the largely unarmed soldiers marched overland to Skipwith’s while the wounded, left behind to await rescue, were taken aboard when the Louisville arrived.11 The Arkansas shore in the Greeneville Bends sector remained a favorite location for Confederate ­­anti-shipping batteries throughout August. Although the perpetrators’ exact identifies are unknown, several groups assaulted Union steamers and their escorts, with the riverbanks around Gaines Landing being a particular favorite. Every Southern soldier involved dreamed that they would sink or better yet capture a fat Yankee prize. Capt. John Molloy’s ­­854-ton Empress, the largest packet plying the Mississippi, with a manifest of 455 passengers and 45 crew, was the most impressive possibility encountered. Passing about 450 yards offshore of a point two miles below Gaines on August 10, she was attacked by a ­­six-gun masked battery. Before she could be rescued by the light draught Romeo, the giant was struck by artillery rounds 63 times; Molloy and four passengers were killed while 15 aboard were wounded. Going into the beach

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USS Louisville. The veteran Union ironclad was photographed during the Red River campaign by McPherson & Oliver of New Orleans. Following that operation, she served as flagboat of the Mississippi Squadron’s Sixth District and provided support for the U.S. Army during the June 1864 engagement at Old River Lake (Battle of Ditch Bayou). Later, in July, she recovered survivors of the steamer Clarabel, destroyed in a Confederate attack near Skipwith’s Landing. She would remain on station until withdrawn from service a year hence (Library of Congress).

on the Mississippi shore below, the badly damaged vessel was repaired and continued on the next day. In Rowdy Bend nearby the next day, the patrolling tinclad Prairie Bird was also struck by 34 rounds from a Southern battery, possibly the same one which hit Empress. Although five men were wounded (one fatally), she too was rescued by the Romeo, which was returning to base after the Empress encounter. Another favorite and ­­long-standing location for Confederate horse artillery was far down the Big Muddy at Ellis’ Cliffs, about 15 miles below Natchez. While passing that point early on August 18, the steamer Lancaster No. 4 suddenly became a target for a ­­four-gun battery. Countless musket rounds and at least 20 cannonballs sought her, with three of the latter striking the boat, one of which “passed through the ladies’ cabin.” Fortunately, no one was hurt as the craft moved out of range. These ­­p op-up encounters continued on a damaging, but irregular basis. By August 20, the Memphis Daily Bulletin was reporting that all transports from below were obliged to exhibit extreme caution, passing Gaines Landing by night with all lights out.12 Attacks on Mississippi River shipping continued during the summer and fall. While often newsworthy, they could not halt commercial traffic. For example, while en route north from New Orleans on the morning of August 28, the ­­side-wheeler White Cloud was attacked from the left (Louisiana) side of the Mississippi near one of



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the islands below Bayou Sara. Confederate cannoneers were said to have gotten off 13 shots, of which five took effect in the hull and cabin. One hit her steam pipe, causing her to be disabled. Her upper works were peppered by volleys of musketry, but no one was injured. As the White Cloud drifted toward her enemy, the tinclad Kenwood came to her rescue. After firing her guns at the grayclad attackers, the light draught passed a line and towed the transport out of danger, remaining with her until her engineers could make repairs. Further up the river, a battery said to contain eight cannon, including two ­­12-pounder howitzers, fired into the packet Henry Chouteau as she, too, was making her way north from the Crescent City to St. Louis. In addition to mini balls, five artillery shells ploughed into the craft, but she was not damaged and none of her passengers or crew were hurt. The patrolling light draught Nymph heard the gunfire and went to the giant steamer’s assistance, arriving in time to provide escort out of the danger area. As late as fall 1864 it was still not unusual for Rebel irregulars to attempt the

USS Nymph. Commissioned in April 1864, Nymph was among the latter tinclads acquired by the USN Mississippi Squadron. Often called upon to deliver dispatches, she was attached to the Second District, patrolling the waters between Donaldsonville and Morganza, Louisiana. On August 28, she steamed to the rescue of the packet Henry Chouteau, under attack from Confederate batteries near Bayou Sara (Naval History and Heritage Command).

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capture of steamers either wooding or loading cotton. On October 27, the Belle of St. Louis put into a landing near Randolph, Tennessee, to take on the white gold, at which point upwards of 40 hiding Confederates tried to rush aboard and take control. Two “guerrillas” who jumped on attempted to seize control of the pilothouse, but were killed by a pair of U.S. Army paymasters aboard protecting a secret $40,000 payroll. Although mortally wounded, their action allowed the pilot to back out and the vessel to escape. Union arms received a break during the colder months as Confederate attacks were concentrated inland in Alabama and Tennessee and were muted further south and west. While the number was down, assaults still occurred and it remained dangerous for sailors and passengers to be aboard or from either a Northern transport or a gunboat. Another example of these sporadic and uncoordinated assaults occurred on Saturday, November 19. Approximately 40 butternut irregulars hiding on the bank below Randolph, Tennessee, fired into the steamer Golden Eagle, paddling to Memphis from Cincinnati. Passengers later reported that only three balls entered the boat, including one each through the pilothouse and sky light and a third that struck the leg of a porter but fell “at his feet without otherwise injuring him.” Supposedly, the chief of the “bandits” hailed the craft before his men opened fire. A half hour later, the ­­418-ton packet Southwestern passed the same spot below Island No. 35, but was not molested. Arriving at Memphis, passengers told the always ready newspaper correspondents that three guerrillas were seen lurking on the bank as the boat passed. While ashore at Raccourci, near Williamsport, Louisiana, in the Tunica Bend area, on November 25, a party led by Acting Volunteer Lt. Charles Thatcher, captain of the tinclad Gazelle, was surprised by Rebel insurgents. In the firefight between the four navy men and an unknown number of the enemy, Thatcher was killed. The New Orleans Daily True Delta reported the Federals were “duck hunting.” As reported above, New York reporter John L. McKenna, en route down the Mississippi from Cairo to New Orleans just before the 1864–65 holidays, was taking stock of river conditions after so many months of ­­a nti-shipping and counterinsurgency warfare. One did not get far below Cairo, Illinois, when it became obvious that the prewar “pen and ink panorama” of the Mississippi would “have to be written again.” Although the “cloud of war” had cast but a light shadow over the Big Muddy between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, it was safe to say that further upstream in “guerrilla country” the shoreline was devastated. “From Memphis to Baton Rouge, a distance of some 600 miles” he observed, “there is not now standing in sight of the river more than one dozen houses … which in some instances were not destroyed.” On December 31, the ­­stern-wheeler Venango was taken by insurgents at Pilcher’s Point, Louisiana, five miles above Skipwith’s Landing. Although there were no casualties, the perpetrators took $60,000 and quickly forced the captain, crew and passengers ashore, suspecting that another boat following a mile behind was a gunboat. When the trailing Mollie Able arrived, it found the Venango burned to the water’s edge, a $15,000 loss for her Vicksburg owners. While landing to wood at Tiptonville, Tennessee, on the Mississippi the same day, the steamer Silver Moon was fired into by 15 “guerrillas” lurking behind the fuel



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near a warehouse. She escaped capture by immediately backing out into the stream and heading away. Apprised, the tinclad New Era steamed down on the first day of January 1865 to investigate. Her captain met ashore with the town’s solons, repeating the facts as he knew them, and announcing that Tiptonville would be burned in retaliation. The community, he noted, was disloyal and a guerrilla hangout. Finally, after much discussion—some heated—the skipper relented and ordered only two small houses and the offending woodpile be torched. In addition to wartime attacks, gunboats and steamboats continuously faced natural and navigational challenges. Not only was the river itself with its bars, shoals, rapids, bends and eddys difficult, but so was the weather, including ice, fog, and flooding. And then there was human error. Near Palmyra Island, some 30 miles below Vicksburg, on January 7, the northbound steamer John Raine ran into the port side of the troop transport John H. Dickey, which was taking elements of the 161st New York Volunteer Infantry to New Orleans from the White River. The Dickey’s guards were torn off as far back as the ­­cook-house, her chimneys collapsed, and other miscellaneous damage was inflicted on both craft. Although it was possible for the Raine to continue and the Dickey to be towed to Vicksburg, tragically, upwards of 80 Empire State soldiers were knocked overboard during the accident and drowned. Southern insurgents continued to operate in or near towns and communities up and down the Western streams as the new year started. Outrages, such as robberies and shootings, followed. Although a number of boats were shot up, only one more was actually destroyed by Rebel enterprise before the end of the month. En route past Memphis on January 11, the Grampus No. 2 was captured by irregulars at Little Chicken Island and burned. She was insured for $6,500.13

9

The White River After Little Rock, 1863–1865 The capture of Little Rock, Arkansas, by Federal forces in fall 1863 naturally necessitated its supply, and at that time and to that end the only practical way to handle the required logistics was by water. This was not as simple as it may have looked on a map because one of the two major rivers in the state, the Arkansas, was generally avoided as a shipping route. Though wide toward its mouth, its hydrology fostered so many narrow channels, snags, and treacherous sandbars that it was ­­non-navigational for much of the year for most vessels. Using a ­­c ut-off to it from the Arkansas, the White, with wider channels, then served as the principal shipping route up to towns such as St. Charles, DeValls Bluff, Des Arc, Augusta, and Jacksonport. As elsewhere, steaming hazards on both streams were exacerbated by other natural hazards, annually low water, and, during the conflict, hordes of Confederate irregulars. So it was that most of the men and supplies for Maj. Gen. Frederic Steele’s Little Rock garrison were sent up the White River to the garrisoned village of DeValls Bluff—the closest river community to Little Rock—and warehoused. As required, they were then forwarded 45 miles on to the state capital by the Little Rock and DeValls Bluff Railroad, Arkansas’ only working railway. Concentrating on the White, Lt. Cmdr. S. Ledyard Phelps, USN, commanding the Mississippi Squadron’s Seventh District from the lumbering old timberclad Lexington, but who often used as flagboat the ­­far-speedier tinclad Hastings, had a small task group based at the mouth of the White to protect river shipping and local bases or communities. Given operational and maintenance requirements, he, like other district captains, had no extra vessels, though reinforcement could be requested. Beginning about the time of Little Rock’s capture, one tinclad, the Linden, was stationed to protect the key depot port of DeValls Bluff and was held back from escorting most shipping. Meanwhile, the light draughts Queen City, Naumkeag, Covington (before her loss during the Red River campaign), and Fawn were spaced out (usually between Clarendon, 20 miles below, and St. Charles, further down) while the timberclad Tyler provided ­­big-gun backup. These four tinclads alternated on convoy duty. From late summer 1863, convoys were operated up the White River to DeValls Bluff thrice weekly. No steamers proceeded unescorted and the presence of gunboats near the merchantmen was believed the major reason irregulars, at this point, did not 152



9. The White River After Little Rock, 1863–1865 153

DeValls Bluff, Arkansas. Most of the men and supplies for the Union garrison of Little Rock, Arkansas (captured in September 1863), were sent up the White River from its mouth to the levee of the garrisoned village of DeValls Bluff—the closest river community to Little Rock—and warehoused. As required, they were then forwarded 45 miles on to the state capital by the Little Rock and DeValls Bluff Railroad, Arkansas’ only working railway. The supply center, under constant threat of attack through much of 1864, also based USN vessels, which not only escorted steamers but were considered part of the town’s defensive assets (Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield).

often attack. True or not, it was ­­low-water season and the vessels proceeded slowly up the torturous waterway for only eight to ten hours per day, taking three days for a trip. If a steamer missed the convoy sailing date, it was required to lay over and wait for the next, leaving all aboard the usually cramped boats completely bored during the layover. Providing escort on the Arkansas and White was especially difficult during the ­­low-water period in late winter of 1863–1864, causing RAdm. Porter to oppose any shipments up the former. However, army quartermasters and the commanders of the various river ports repeatedly petitioned Phelps to relax his superior’s rules and allow provisions through on that stream. The USN district commander eventually relented and agreed. The Linden arrived at Pine Bluff on the Arkansas from DeValls Bluff on February 19, 1864, to take a group of contract and private steamers up to to DeValls Bluff, but found them unready because of the falling river. The gunboat’s captain learned that, while en route further downstream, one of the ­­supply-filled civilian craft, the Ad. Hines, was snagged and immobile. Departing to her rescue, the Linden snagged on approach 15 miles above the mouth of the Arkansas River and also sank, 400 yards from the transport, a total loss. There was no movement on the river for weeks thereafter as convoys halted and private sailing was prohibited. When merchantmen were again permitted to steam alone, they once more became targets. One of them, the Lloyd, was fired into by irregulars on April 11 and her pilot badly wounded. The activities of the various Confederate cavalrymen riding through Arkansas after the Red River campaign in May 1864 reached Federal ears through rumors or

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USS Linden. A veteran of the Vicksburg campaign, this Third District tinclad was assigned to guard the Union post at Devalls Bluff, AR. From time to time, she would also escort vessels arriving independently at or departing that location via the difficult Arkansas River. On February 19, 1864, she steamed to the rescue of a vessel stranded below Pine Bluff, but coming within 400 yards of the stricken vessel, was snagged and sank, a total loss (Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield).

intelligence. As with Col. Colton Greene in Chicot County, news circulated concerning the whereabouts of the ­­well-known Brig. Gen. Joseph O. (“Jo”) Shelby. For example, while ascending the White River to DeValls Bluff covering a convoy, Lt. Cmdr. Phelps’ boats learned that the horseman was nearby, but so far was busily engaged in eliminating outlaws and recruiting soldiers. Union leaders and newsmen were confident that the Southerners would not attack Steele upon his return to Little Rock, but as a New York Times correspondent put it on May 14, even with vessels like the Naumkeag on the White, they could destroy or “capture the boats in the river.” Still, a lull seemed to exist on that stream at the beginning of June. A writer for the Chicago Daily Tribune reported on June 2, “Boats from White River were not molested, but the Rebels were thick as blackberries in the region.”



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The U.S. Quartermaster Department was always quite insistent and persistent in pushing supplies up the ­­chalk-colored White or, less often, its sister stream, the Arkansas. However, as was the case on the Mississippi and elsewhere, when Union steamers proceeded alone or nearly so, they were often peppered by Rebel small arms. Consequently, in the face of regular Southern opposition, gunboat protection was normally sought and it was provided in organized and scheduled convoys. Sometimes security was not arranged. For example, on June 12, Jo Shelby’s soldiers captured the ­­stern-wheeler New Iago, “loaded with cotton,” on the Arkansas River between Pine Bluff and Napoleon. Alarms immediately sounded in Union circles that the boat might be employed to ferry marauding Confederates under Fagan across the river. Occasionally local area Federal military commanders suddenly demanded escort of waterborne troop movements. When naval leaders protested, they were met by a gnashing of teeth and barrages of complaint from the logisticians or thoughtless generals. Added to the political difficulty or the lack of extra warships was the fact that the local Mississippi Squadron district commanders, whether on the White, or Arkansas, or Tennessee, or Cumberland, were not always informed of steamer movements. Just such an occurrence took place at the mouth of the White on the evening of June 18. Both Lt. Cmdr. Phelps and his White River deputy, Lt. George Bache, were dumbfounded when, toward dusk, a convoy of nine troop transports emerged from the White River to go up the rising Arkansas. Maj. Gen. Steele wished to move some of his men around to Little Rock from DeValls Bluff and believed the trips would not be overly difficult to make. Welcomed aboard Phelps’ flagboat Hastings, Col. William P. Fenn informed the two naval officers that he was charged with getting his men and Lt. George Mifflin Bache, USN. Nephew of supplies upstream to Little Rock and RAdm. David Dixon Porter, Bache assumed beyond to Fort Smith while the river command of the timberclad Lexington in late spring 1863. Assigned to the Third District was in good stage and rising. He then of the Mississippi Squadron, he participated handed over dispatches from Steele in the Federal campaign that resulted in the and Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans, the occupation of Little Rock, Arkansas, that St. Louis commander, indicating that September, organizing a convoy system for large risks should be taken to get the the White River. Following his service in the personnel through. On top of these, he Red River expedition in March–May 1864, he produced an order from RAdm. Porter took command of the timberclad Tyler and a task group that attempted to rescue the tinauthorizing the desired protection if clad Queen City and battled the forces of the water stage made it prudent. Confederate Brig. Gen. Joseph O. “Jo” Shelby Lt. Cmdr. Phelps found himself at Clarendon in June (Porter, The Naval Hisin a box. Wanting to make certain that tory of the Civil War).

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the rivers were covered against Confederate brigadiers Shelby and John S. Marmaduke, plus Col. Colton Greene, he had nevertheless to provide escort. After conferring with Bache, Fenn was told that Bache would provide escort from the mouth of the Arkansas up the most dangerous 25 miles to South Bend, but only one small gunboat would ascend beyond that point. And, of course, if the naval guardian learned that the enemy was blockading the river, he was authorized to turn the combined fleet back immediately. The Tyler, in company with the tinclads Fawn and Naumkeag, started up the Arkansas the next morning with Col. Fenn’s transports, leaving the Lexington to protect the little fort at White River Station. The Queen City was shifted up to guard Clarendon, but before she departed, her 2nd Assistant Engineer, George W. Shallenburger, noted that seven, not nine, steamers ascended the Arkansas with Bache.1 After ferrying the Cache River and wading the mires of Bayou de Vue, Brig. Gen. Shelby paused on June 20 to review his options. DeValls Bluff, he knew, was the closest ­­Northern-held point to Little Rock on the White River and its railroad to the capital was vulnerable. Consequently, that logistical hub was fortified, contained a ­­g ood-sized garrison, and was constantly watched by gunboats. Attacking it directly would be difficult. On the other hand, this heart in the Union supply chain could be killed if the vital watery artery to it could be cut below. It was obvious from the map that the point d’appui should be the town of Clarendon, 14 miles downstream from the Bluff. Easy to reach or escape from, the largely deserted community offered a good position at which to plant cannon and blockade movement up or down the river. Shelby led his regiments toward Clarendon the next day. The trek was hard. It rained incessantly, resulting in swift streams without bridges, roads without bottoms, and endless swamps and muck. Also on the afternoon of June 21, Col. Robert R. Lawther’s 10th Missouri Brig. Gen. Joseph Shelby, CSA. While Col. Cavalry (CSA) launched a visit to White Colton Greene entertained Federal shipping River Station, where the just com- on the Mississippi during May–June 1864, pleted stockade was manned by a small Brig. Gen. Shelby attempted to block the ­­5 0-man garrison from the 12th Iowa White River at Clarendon, preventing vital Infantry. Leaving their horses on the convoys from reaching Devalls Bluff. In late June, he personally led a force to that town opposite side of the Arkansas River, 300 and sank the guardship Queen City. Within Rebels crossed the stream in small boats hours, he fought and withdrew from a USN or skiffs and marched all night to the counterattack led by Lt. George M. Bache outskirts of the National camp, which (U.S. Army Military History Institute).



9. The White River After Little Rock, 1863–1865 157

they charged just after sunup. Musket volleys from the bluecoats and shrapnel from the Lexington caused Lawther to retire. A few days later, the Memphis newspapers, in a report republished by The New York Times, briefly noted that 600 of Marmaduke’s marauders attacked the two Iowa companies and were repulsed after severe fighting. Not knowing that the assault was part of a larger Confederate ­­anti-logistics operation, the newspapers opined that “the removal of the gunboat Tyler from that station probably emboldened the rebels.” Continuing, they noted “but for the fortunate arrival of the gunboat Lexington, the result might have been unfavorable to us.”2 While Brig. Gen. Shelby was en route toward Clarendon and the Lexington was safeguarding White River Station, Lt. Bache was ascending the Arkansas with his convoy. Reaching Red Fork Landing some 25 miles upstream, he found Gen. Marmaduke in possession of the spot, preparing to cross over and threaten St. Charles. The steamers were consequently turned back and redirected up the White River under escort to DeValls Bluff, where their passengers were ­­o ff-loaded and sent to Little Rock by train. Maj. Gen. Steele happened to be at the Bluff when Bache’s vessels arrived on June 23 and angrily confronted the sailor as to why they had not gone up the Arkansas River as he wanted. When the Tyler’s commander explained that it was blocked by Rebel cannon, Steele refused to believe him and indicated his desire that the 12 empty boats then in port be turned around the next day and sent back down the White and up the Arkansas to Little Rock with the next draft of men. Of course, Steele added the matter at that point was left to Bache’s judgment. In reporting this interview, Lt. Bache, perhaps having heard of similar charges of ­­non-support leveled by the army against other USN officers earlier, noted he would fulfill the general’s wish and return as suggested. “Not wishing that the army should think us backward in cooperation,” he indicated, “I determined to shove them there as far as the gunboats could go and let them trust to luck afterwards!” While Shelby’s cavalry and horse artillery rested near Clarendon on that sultry Thursday afternoon, an advance party of scouts went forward to reconnoiter. Carefully, the men examined the town and the nearby woods, finding them nearly devoid of activity. The river was a different matter; about 170 feet (10 rods) from the wharf lay the wooden ­­side-wheel gunboat Queen City, “dark sentinel of the place.” Advised of the situation ahead, Brig. Gen. Shelby ordered his advance riders to throw a cordon around the town. To maintain secrecy, anyone entering or attempting to leave was to be arrested. By dark, the remainder of the command was quietly stationed within the community and in the trees along the riverbank within 100 yards of the gunboat. Just before his craft buttoned up for the night, the gunboat’s captain, Acting Volunteer Lt. Michael Hickey, sent a reconnaissance through the streets of Clarendon. The check was thorough and just missed Shelby’s advanced skirmishers, who were able to duck out of the way while maintaining their vigil. Shelby’s plans made earlier to surprise the Queen City at dawn and capture or destroy her progressed to the next stage. Just after midnight, while the unmounted horsemen rested beneath the gigantic cottonwoods, the ­­four-gun Missouri Battery of Capt. Dick Collins drew up to Clarendon’s outskirts on its main road. At a point out of earshot of the water, the guns were unlimbered and their horses led away. Then,

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aided by the sweat of a hundred soldiers, the cannon were stealthily and noiselessly dragged by hand to within 50 feet of the river’s edge. Once the guns were in position, “crouching and clinging to the shadows of the houses,” the troopers also advanced to the shore of the White. “Silence, like a tired queen, brooded in the whisperings of the leaves.” The “­­thug-like” warriors watched ahead, some with “suppressed breathings.” Personally curious, Shelby himself went up close to the tinclad to check its state of preparedness. It seemed ready, with steam up and its guns loaded. Right after the war, Shelby’s friend and adjutant John Edwards painted the picture: A low, large moon, lifting a real of romance out of the waves, lit up the scene with a weird light, and crested the “stars and stripes” that flapped in melancholy motion against the painted gaff…. The drowsy sentinel paced his narrow beat…. Somber as an iron island, with all her red lights in gloom, and the deep peal of her ­­time-bell sounding solumn and chill, the doomed craft sat upon the water unconscious of the coming daylight.

The nights were shorter now as the earth approached its summer equinox, but still the hours after midnight passed slowly for the ­­sleep-deprived Southerners. There were no clouds and the only sounds that could be heard were the waves in the river as they “sobbed on the beach, and curled and sparkled in sheer wantonness around the iron beak of the river falcon.” At approximately 4 a.m., “little shreds of daylight” poking up in the east, Brig. Gen. Shelby ordered his men to open fire on the Queen City, while, at the same time in his words, he “notified her commander of my approach and intentions.” Caught in as complete a surprise as any in U.S. naval history, the tinclad was immediately

USS Queen City. A converted ferryboat, the Queen City was a victim of a June 24/25, 1864, attack at Clarendon, Arkansas, by Confederate cavalrymen under Brig. Gen. Joseph O. (“Jo”) Shelby. Captured, she would be destroyed before a USN task group could reach and save her. This excellent photograph gives the reader an excellent perspective of size. Note the crewmen on deck and the cannon protruding from the casemate (Naval History and Heritage Command).



9. The White River After Little Rock, 1863–1865 159

subjected to a heavy barrage of musketry from two regiments and shells from ­­10-pounder Parrott rifles and ­­12-pounder smoothbores. The first or second round from Collin’s guns smashed into the Queen City’s starboard engine. A piece of it flew on into the steam pipe of the starboard power plant, which fortunately did not burst. The ­­one-sided contest continued for about 15 minutes during which, a Memphis newspaper later stated, the gunboat was struck 45 times by artillery shots “and her pilot house was completely torn away.” The St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat July 2 coverage indicates that the Queen City attempted to drop down with the current to get a range for her cannon. This was a goal she was unable to accomplish. It was not long into the fight before Acting Volunteer Lt. Hickey knew that he would have to surrender. Writing about the white flag years later, RAdm. Porter was contemptuous of Hickey for “not having the bravery to fight it out as many of his contemporaries would have done.” As the ship was riddled with cannon shell and rifle bullets, the able men in the crew (Shelby’s count was 65, but it was far less) were advised by their captain to give up or dive overboard and swim to the freedom of the opposite bank. The ethnic makeup of the crew is not certain, but it was not the band of “­­devil-may-care Irishmen” John Edwards later reported. There were many African Americans and the fate of any of those tars who gave up was very uncertain. Rumor had it that Shelby routinely ordered such prisoners shot. With one seaman dead in the fight and nine wounded, Hickey signaled his surrender and Shelby’s men stopped shooting. The wreck of the heavily perforated tinclad was pulled to shore, where Hickey was taken prisoner, along with four officers, 20 seamen (four wounded), and eight African American contrabands. The latter, reported the Chicago Daily Tribune on Independence Day, “were immediately put to death.” The remainder of the crew had escaped to the opposite shore, though one white crewman and one African American were drowned. As late as July 12, the Memphis Argus would report that 23 men got away and 11 were killed or remained missing. While the crewmen were interrogated and the officers paroled preparatory to their release to Helena authorities, Confederate horsemen ran aboard the ransacked the gunboat. Immediate prizes included in excess of $10,000 just drawn by the paymaster a few days earlier, the paymaster’s stores, wearing apparel, small arms, most of the ammunition, and a brass ­­12-pounder wheeled boat howitzer. Fearing that there were other gunboats in the vicinity that could arrive before he was finished, Shelby cancelled plans to unship the ­­24-pounders and a ­­32-pounder and use them in a formidable blockading battery ashore. Within a half an hour of the time Shelby’s gunners opened fire on the Queen City, Lt. Bache’s troop convoy departed DeValls Bluff for Clarendon. Puffing slowly ahead in standard escort formation with the Fawn in the lead, the Naumkeag in the center, and the Tyler at the rear, the fleet paddled along peacefully for almost 30 miles. As daylight intensified, the leading steamer was hailed from the western shore by two officers, a powder monkey, and five African American “contrabands” who had escaped the Queen City. Putting in, the transport picked up the men and took them out to the Fawn, where they told their story to her captain. Signaling the following vessels to pause, Fawn came to and awaited the arrival of

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Naumkeag and Tyler, which sped ahead to learn what was holding up the procession. Following the 9 a.m. rendezvous of the three guardians, now less than 10 miles from Clarendon, the news was passed that the Queen City was captured and that Shelby occupied the town with 2,700 men. Decisive ever since his days aboard the Cincinnati during the Vicksburg campaign, the intrepid Bache immediately ordered the merchantmen back to DeValls Bluff to escape possible entrapment and to let the U.S. Army know what was happening. Realizing that it was only five hours since the Queen City was seized, the officer knew that Shelby could not have already gotten much out of her, particularly her cannon. On the other hand, it was possible that she could be manned by butternut artillerymen and employed, in conjunction with the Rebel guns on the bank, against him or any force Lt. Cmdr. Phelps might send from the mouth of the river. Fresh from combat against ­­shore-based cannon on the Red River just over a month earlier, Bache was determined that Shelby and his cavalrymen would face the wrath of his big guns and so ordered his warships into line of battle, Tyler, Naumkeag, and Fawn. There would be action this day as Confederate horsemen, like those at Blair’s Landing on the Red, were engaged by the aggressive gunboatman. While the Federals assessed the situation upstream, Brig. Gen. Shelby made his own preparations for the fight all in his command knew to be coming. To make his pieces less vulnerable to massed naval gunfire, Capt. Collins dispersed and concealed his battery while the remainder of the brigade deployed as skirmishers, lining the bank in front of the town and down around a bend and on both sides of its wharf. It was understood, from their whistles, that the Union boats were being kept close up and in good order. How many there were was unknown. Was there a transport fleet or just warships? In addition, Shelby did not know if his enemy would attempt to run by or whether they would actually engage. John Edwards in his colorful account of the Clarendon skirmish makes it perfectly clear that the Confederates knew that Bache was coming long before he arrived. For over an hour, they could hear the whistles of the leading vessel. As the morning grew warmer, “louder and louder sounded the dull puffing of the advancing boats.” Knowing that he could get no more out of the captured tinclad before the Yankee rivercraft arrived, Shelby ordered her destroyed. When within a few miles of Clarendon, Lt. Bache and his crews heard two successive reports, which they later learned were the sounds of the Queen City blowing up. Great clouds of smoke, heavy and dark in the light blue of the morning sky, could be seen up the river by the Confederates just before and certainly after their enemy advanced to a spot a little over a mile away. Soon, the first ­­pitch-black object, not quite distinguishable to those without field glasses, loomed into sight followed by several more. Banners streamed out in the wind from their tall vertical staffs that looked for all the world like flagpoles. “The leading boat, gigantic and desperate, forged slowly ahead,” wrote Edwards, “every port closed, and a stern defiance on her iron crest.” This was the Tyler, “scarred and rent in previous fights, but wary and defiant still.” As the gunboats (“a noble trio” according to the Daily Missouri Democrat) came abreast of the Cache River at 9:45 a.m., Brig. Gen. Shelby gave the order to his artillery chief to open fire on the leading timberclad. Collins’ men were good; Bache later reported that one of their “first shots went through the pilot house.”



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“A white puff of smoke burst suddenly from the bow of the Tyler,” Edwards relates, “and curled gracefully in thin wreaths far astern.” A large shell then “passed overhead with a noise like an express train and burst in the river half a mile away.” Even though the approaching timberclad could initially reply to Shelby’s overtures only with a bow Parrott, the ball was truly opened as the Fawn and Naumkeag also joined in with their forward guns. The three Federal gunboats paddled defiantly toward the Confederate guns, coming within an easier range. “With a bravery worthy of a better cause,” said a St. Louis scribe, “the rebel general with his men worked their batteries.” Early in the engagement, shrapnel from a ­­1 2-pounder flew through the port shutter of the Fawn’s pilothouse, mortally wounding her pilot and carrying away the bell system. This rang the bells and the engineers thought they were to stop the boat, which they did—directly under the Rebel guns. At least 10 shells or heavy pieces of shrapnel found the little tinclad, to say nothing of musket balls. She was fortunate to escape, but could offer little more immediate aid to her consorts. In the meantime, the Tyler, followed by the Naumkeag, steamed slowly past the batteries, pumping out broadside after broadside of ­­one-half second shrapnel and canister. When she came abreast of the town wharf, Shelby, who was riding between pieces encouraging his gunners, was heard to shout: “Concentrate fire of every gun on the Tyler.” To some it appeared that the big dark craft now, indeed, “staggered over the water like a drunken man.” The defiant old timberclad and the Naumkeag continued through the fiery gauntlet, and after they passed by it, a number of Confederates thought that the two would continue on down the river toward its mouth. Thus it was they were amazed when both craft rounded to and steamed up at them again. Bache was later told that “the rebels now exclaimed in despair, ‘There comes that black devil again!’” The ship vs. shore contest had now eaten a half hour, with, according to Brig. Gen. Shelby, his men on open ground “and not 60 yards from the boats.” The masked batteries ashore dished out considerable punishment, but the gunboats scored as well. The Queen City’s captured howitzer, for example, manned by Rebel crew near the bank, was only able to get off a couple of shots before gunboat shooting drove everyone from it. Moving ahead, the Naumkeag and Tyler were joined by the Fawn, now restored and steaming above the wharf. Together, the three boats captured Shelby in a crossfire. The Tyler, of course, being the larger vessel with the biggest guns, remained the center of butternut concern, even as the tinclads poured in their own enfilading fire of grape and canister. “Full broadside to the wharf she [Tyler] stood sullenly at bay, giving shot for shot and taking her punishment like a glutton.” Edwards suggests that one ­­two-gun battery was destroyed in a cloud of dust and smoke by one of her broadsides that sounded “like the rush of 500 steeds in motion.” As 10:30 a.m. approached, Lt. Bache, from his position aboard the Tyler, her head pointed upstream and her guns continuing to blaze, thought he discerned some of the briskness pass out of the Rebel fire. “The result was the usual one between field batteries and gunboats,” opined Duane Huddleston and his colleagues over a century later.

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USS Tyler. During the Queen City relief campaign of June 1864, the portside paddle wheel of the timberclad Tyler picked up a huge log that badly damaged the wheel. The tree trunk also tore off the wheelhouse outside and quarter gallery. Lt. Bache, who could not swim, was thrown into White River, but was able to grasp wreckage until saved. The vessel was repaired at the riverbank using planking from a barge and was able to resume her mission (Naval History and Heritage Command).

Bache was probably not surprised at this. The Red River veteran found that the pace of shooting by his own command had thus far been “terrific; the trees on shore for the space of a mile” were marked by its projectiles “and that low down.” Caught in a gunboat trap, Jo Shelby threw in the towel and ordered his men to withdraw to their “former camp, some two miles from town.” Watching from his pilothouse, Lt. Bache “had the pleasure of seeing them skedaddling from the field.” Clarendon was back in Union hands. Under protection of the Tyler’s big guns, a landing party from the Naumkeag went ashore to assess. During their exit from the scene, the butternut troopers abandoned nearly everything they took within 300 yards of the riverbank. The Queen City’s wheeled boat howitzer, somewhat the worse for battle, was recovered, along with a significant quantity of ammunition, her cutter and four oars, and an anchor. Five crewmen (two badly wounded) from the sunken tinclad, all reportedly stripped naked, were rescued while several wounded Confederates, left behind, were also saved. Parts of the wreck of the Queen City herself could be seen in the water about a mile below the town, completely burned out and with her casemates tumbled in. Soon, men from the Union vessels began attempting to salvage some of her guns. During the afternoon, the Fawn and the Naumkeag patrolled up and down the river for a mile or two, occasionally being subjected to musketry. Every time they were shot at, they replied “with ­­one-half second shrapnel.” The Confederates liked to believe that the Tyler was hard hit and “bled fearfully with half her crew dead.” In fact, even though she was hit 11 times, the old gunboat stood up fairly well. It was later pointed out that an extra 24 inches of



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protective iron recently installed around her boilers was instrumental in her protection. The tinclads, on the other hand, lived up to their own reputations as death traps, an unenviable status earned by units of their class fighting in the Red River and with Col. Greene over the past few weeks. Not meant to stand against land batteries, they were hurt. It was fortunate for them, as well as the Tyler, that Brig. Gen. Shelby located his guns on nearly level banks. The three vessels were not faced with the effects of plunging shot, as, for example, the Cricket was on the Red River. Still, the Naumkeag was hit at least twice with one man killed. She suffered serious damage from the concussion of her guns, which caused her to leak and the eyebolts of the casemates to break. Fortunately, the engine room was defended by 24 inches of extra iron, a move later praised. The Fawn suffered 10 hits during the battle, with the pilot dead and ten other crewmen casualties, including her acting surgeon. Bivouacked on the other side of the community, Brig. Gen. Shelby, anticipating that the gunboats would be gone, plotted his Clarendon return the next day. If he could throw up somewhat better temporary earthworks and hold the spot for 10 days, he would duplicate Greene’s achievement out on the Mississippi and seriously disrupt the Union’s White River navigation. Even as it was, communications, according to the Northeastern newspapers, had been cut off between Little Rock and Memphis. Unfortunately for the Rebel brigadier, the gunboats did not all leave. The Naumkeag and Fawn remained off the town to prevent any further mischief while the Tyler, with the wounded and shipless aboard, steamed back up to DeValls Bluff. Bache hoped to personally persuade Maj. Gen. Steele to send a force to “capture the guerrillas.”3 It did not take much effort for the Tyler’s commander to convince Steele that an expedition should return to Clarendon right away. Brig. Gen. Eugene A. Carr, commander of the District of Little Rock, was ordered to take men from within and near the DeValls Bluff garrison and push the Rebels away from the river. The next morning, June 25, approximately 2,000 infantry and 750 cavalry, with an artillery battery, boarded two transports and prepared to depart downstream under escort of the timberclad. While the Federals embarked at the Bluff, Brig. Gen. Shelby went ahead and made his effort to return to Clarendon and throw up some earthworks, or rifle pits. Patrolling the river, the Naumkeag and Fawn rounded a point and discovered the Confederates at work digging. Puffing into easy range, they fired over 50 shells at the butternuts, who retired into some woods. During the ­­ship-shore fights between Shelby and the gunboats, Lt. Cmdr. Phelps finished an unproductive reconnaissance some 40 miles up the Arkansas and, upon his return, began hearing news of events upstream on the White. Early on Sunday morning, June 26, Bache proceeded up that river with the Hastings and Lexington, coming within 15 miles of Clarendon before learning of the duels. Seeing no sign of Bache and fearing that Shelby had trapped the sailor above, Phelps returned to Helena and sought aid from RAdm. Porter, then at Mound City. His petition brought Memphis its first news that the White was now blockaded. Meanwhile, the little ­­B ache-Carr cavalry armada had started off from DeValls Bluff at 2 p.m. on Saturday, but was unable to proceed more than 10–15 miles before an accident halted progress. The three boats lay to as repairs were made and finally

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reached Clarendon on the Sabbath. Landing unopposed, Carr’s force pushed on to the town of Pikeville and engaged Shelby, driving him back several miles and capturing two guns, including one formerly aboard the Queen City. The Confederates retreated further and over the next two days the opposing troops maneuvered without fighting deeper into the Arkansas Delta. Having accomplished at least a part of his goal, Carr turned his men back to Clarendon. With the Southern cavalryman gone from the river for the moment, the bluecoats, after torching the all but deserted community, reboarded their steamers and, under escort, returned to DeValls Bluff on the evening of June 29.4 The situation on the White River remained explosive and no traffic was able to operate on it for a week. In his appeal for aid on June 27, Lt. Cmdr. Phelps gave his assessment of Marmaduke’s force and intentions and asked RAdm. Porter for the White River loan of the famous old ironclad Carondelet and the monitor Neosho. With the river falling, neither would be needed long. Advantaging himself of a fast packet, Phelps rushed to Memphis in person two days later. There he made arrangements for the Essex to cover for the Carondelet and for the latter to return with him. He also messaged his superior assuming responsibility, against standing orders, of moving a vessel from one district to another (Eighth to Seventh) without authorization. Even as the former Eastport captain was rearranging the heavy pieces of two districts, Porter confirmed Phelps’ action on June 30. Simultaneously, he ordered Phelps to not only halt shipping on the Arkansas River, but to remove his gunboats; otherwise, “we will lose them all.” Efforts would, for now, be concentrated on the White, where the Naumkeag and Fawn patrolled off Clarenden. While naval relief was arranged, press members of the ­­so-called “Bohemian Brigade” scrambled aboard willing steamers headed for the mouth of the White River. Among them was the noted New York Daily Tribune scribe John L. McKenna, whose boat arrived below on June 30 in company with the ironclad Carondelet. The veteran gunboat, led by the tinclad Silver Cloud and three transports, departed up for DeValls Bluff on July 1. They were followed later in the day by Phelps and Hastings. The boats ascended without incident and anchored at dark in midstream off Clarendon. Here the Carondelet was stationed as guardship, from which point it was suspected the declining river stage would soon force her to leave. Observers aboard the Carondelet remarked that only one building was now standing on shore, though hundreds of chimneys gave evidence of a nice larger city days earlier. She was located in “a good position to work our guns advantageously,” wrote Executive Officer Ensign Scott D. Jordan, “if it becomes necessary.” The big cannon were loaded with ­­one-half second shell and shrapnel; it was expected that any fight would be at very short range (about 200 yards) and this shotgun approach would ensure the enemy was not “overreached.” Upon his arrival at the Bluff, Phelps assured Maj. Gen. Steele that the river was safe for transports under convoy and that his heavyweight gunboat would remain off Clarendon as long as possible. “I fancy Shelby will have a good time,” he added, “if he runs against her.” On July 3–5, the Hastings and Fawn returned downstream, convoying eight steamers from the Bluff. A little above St. Charles on Independence Day, irregulars hiding in trees 25 yards distant opened brisk rifle fire upon the tinclads. No one was hurt on the naval or charter vessels. Lt. Cmdr. Phelps later reported that he had been



9. The White River After Little Rock, 1863–1865 165

seeking a way to salute the holiday and that the attack gave him “an opportunity of at once punishing the enemy and celebrating the day by firing cannon.” The Tribune man McKenna made the trip to and from DeValls Bluff in one of the transports guarded by Phelps’ gunboats. Once back to White River Station, he wrote up his observations and took early passage back to Memphis, from which he filed his account with “the satisfaction of being able to report the final raising of the blockade of White River.” Simultaneously, the Fawn immediately turned around and began back up, helping to guard the old timberclad Tyler, which was transporting to the Bluff a $2 million payroll in charge of 19 paymasters who would distribute it to Steele’s soldiers. After safely delivering the cash, Tyler was ordered back to the river’s mouth because of low water. Before she arrived on the eighth, she hit a snag which tore away the outside of a wheelhouse, forcing her out of action for makeshift repair. Lt. Bache, who could not swim, was thrown overboard during the incident, but was quickly rescued. The Carondelet remained at Clarendon four days, her crew performing the ancient chore of painting the boat’s exterior; no Rebels tested her mettle. On July 6, the ironclad, accompanied by the two tinclads, guarded the three transports up the river about 42 miles to DeValls Bluff. The next day, the trio convoyed them back down to Clarendon, from where they would continue downstream. Surprisingly, no

USS Fawn. Commissioned in May 1863, the Fawn spent most of her career on the White and Arkansas Rivers, conducting convoy escort, patrols, and special missions. She was a participant in the June 1864 effort to save the tinclad Queen City from Confederate Brig. Gen. Joseph O. (“Jo”) Shelby at Clarendon, and a month later, in a notable escort, helped convoy a $2 million payroll with 19 paymasters to Devalls Bluff. It would be forwarded to Little Rock to pay Union soldiers (Naval History and Heritage Command).

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opposition was encountered during either leg of the trip, not even snipers, though one of the Carondelet’s rudders was carried away. After falling for a week, the river level reached a depth on July 7 at which by prearrangement the Carondelet was required to withdraw to the river’s mouth. Five hours down, around 9 a.m., just after the crew was beat to quarters for gunnery drill, 25 Confederate riflemen hiding in a canebrake on the side of the river 30 yards distant opened up as the ironclad passed. Aiming at the spot where smoke from the Rebel rifles rose, the gunners cut swathes with ­­one-half second shrapnel. There was no second Southern volley.5 Rebel attacks on transport steamers passing up and down the White and Arkansas continued through the month and into August as Marmaduke and his lieutenants joined local irregulars in haunting their banks, as well as the counties to their north and south. Not only river transport and garrisons, such as those at DeValls Bluff and Little Rock, were threatened but plantations and perceived Federal sympathizers near Helena as well. Sickness was widespread among soldiers and sailors alike, adding to the Union’s military and naval challenge. This situation continued as the summer heat bore down on the entire state, with temperatures only a few degrees lower on the waters than the 100 degrees registered at DeValls Bluff on July 10. The same day, there was but four and a half feet over the bars of the White, making it navigable for only the smallest steamers. Getting supply boats up and down was difficult. Fawn and Naumkeag were able to get a convoy though from the river’s mouth to the Bluff that afternoon, but the Tyler, along as heavy escort, could only ascend some 20 miles. In order to help facilitate aggressive Union Army reconnaissance expeditions from DeValls Bluff and continue support for river shipping, Lt. Cmdr. Phelps nevertheless requested additional ironclad support. In early July, the Carondelet’s sister ship, Mound City, dropped anchor off White River Station. Unhappily, the low water also prevented her from ascending the White. Indeed, as the New York Daily Tribune reported on July 14, the White was “very low and so difficult to navigate that gunboats and transports frequently ran aground and were disabled.” The light draught monitor Neosho, together with the tinclad Peri, were likewise temporarily transferred from another district just north and arrived early on July 15, by which time an extra large supply convoy was assembled for travel upriver. With Phelps’ Hastings leading, the vessels immediately departed up the White, although the Mound City was able to proceed only a few miles. Upon reaching Clarendon, the flagboat turned back, allowing the Neosho and Peri to lead the eight charters to the Bluff. On her way back down, the Peri guarded the transport Dickey, loaded with 160 refugees, many of whom were sick; several of those fleeing died during the trip. The continuing river fall forced the monitor to transfer down to Clarendon two days later, where she became station guardian. From that point on, until the river rose again, the White River task force guarded the stream in segments, with the heavy units as anchors at the mouth and Clarendon and heavily patrolling with tasked light draughts. Although Northern newspapers like the Chicago Daily Tribune reported the river quiet, with guerrillas only occasionally showing themselves “along the bank to take a shot at passing boats,” take shots they regularly did. During the third week of the month, about six miles above St. Charles, the ferryboat America and the steamer St. Cloud were both unsuccessfully attacked; no damage was done “with the loss of



9. The White River After Little Rock, 1863–1865 167

USS Mound City. In order to help facilitate aggressive Union army reconnaissance expeditions from Devalls Bluff and continue support for river shipping, Mississippi Squadron reinforcements were requested in late June 1864. In early July, Mound City, one of the original seven “City Series” ironclads, dropped anchor off White River Station near the river’s mouth. Unhappily, low water prevented her from ascending the White in support of an important upriver convoy. Eventually able to reach Prairie Landing, where the water was deep enough for her to remain as guardship, the veteran was withdrawn from the White in early August (Naval History and Heritage Command).

only a horse shot on the latter.” Meanwhile, brigades from Shelby’s command swept across areas inland of the White all the way up from Helena to near Little Rock, aiding irregulars in demolishing Federal stocks and the plantations of sympathetic Southerners. About this time, it was decided that the railroad from DeValls Bluff would be targeted by one large raiding group while on July 26 the cavalry general himself set out to resume his river blockade with another. Two days later, Lt. Cmdr. Phelps reported the White River quiet, though considerable Confederate activity was believed possible at Helena, where the Tyler was the lone guardship. It was expected that the Mound City could continue protecting Prairie Landing, where the water remained high enough for the ironclad, but responsibility for St. Charles now belonged to the Federal army. On July 31, Shelby, with 800 men, many of whom were new, and several cannon arrived on the banks of the White some seven miles below Clarendon. The Fawn and Naumkeag, patrolling the stream, narrowly missed his deployment. Perhaps unaware Northern transports were not steaming independently, the Confederates, not finding passing targets, were forced to wait for their next opportunity. Shelby’s plan for a steamboat blockade was foiled by the strikes made by his other force a few days before upon the DeValls Bluff–Little Rock rail link, which was by now protected by five small forts. The move elicited an uncharacteristically large Union response, bringing hundreds of soldiers pouring out in pursuit and causing the

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butternut units to rapidly retreat. Learning of this and fearing he would be caught, Shelby later admitted that he: “raised [the] blockade of the White River, for I could not wait there for a heavy force in my rear.” Lt. Cmdr. Phelps, having resigned his commission at the beginning of August, was temporarily succeeded by Lt. Bache. Neither man had known for certain that Shelby attempted to resume a blockade of the White, where only three feet 10 inches remained in the main channel. The Fawn, Naumkeag, Silver Cloud, and newly repaired Exchange were able to patrol the ­­3 0-mile St. Charles–Clarendon segment, while Neosho remained above. As it did with the military at DeValls Bluff and Little Rock, the weather caused much suffering and sickness aboard the gunboats, with Bache hard pressed to find more than half a healthy crew for any of them. In what would turn out to be his final attack of this Arkansas summer, Brig. Gen. Shelby led 2,500 men from Searcy, Arkansas, on August 20 to hit the DeValls Bluff– Little Rock railroad while preparing a linkup with Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, then preparing to invade Missouri. Four days later, the Confederates captured three of the Federal protective forts, and besieged a fourth, Ashley’s Station. Relief forces were dispatched by Brig. Gen. C. C. Andrews, DeValls Bluff garrison commander, and after pitched fighting, Shelby withdrew. Learning that some of the fighting had approached within eight miles of the depot town, Lt. Bache, who believed it a diversion in favor of Price, dispatched the Fawn and Exchange to the port as a precaution. At the same time, St. Charles was evacuated by order of Maj. Gen. Steele, bringing a temporary halt to tinclad patrols above that point.6 As August turned into September, Union forces in Arkansas remained puzzled over the mission of Generals Marmaduke and Shelby. Many believed they were continuing to lurk near the rivers while others believed them departing for a larger raid into Missouri. Whatever their plans, Maj. Gen. Steele wanted the Southern regulars found and destroyed even if local irregular forces then continued to resist, particularly along the White River. Several expeditions were sent out by the Second Division of the U.S. VII Army Corps. from Devalls Bluff in an effort to come up with the elusive Shelby or to assist other Union forces known to be after him. Immediately on the heels of an unsuccessful September 2 advance up the river from DeValls, orders were received for a second. At daybreak on September 3, the transports Commercial, Celeste, and Nevada, carrying 1,000 officers and men from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois regiments and escorted by the Fawn, shoved off. Progress was steady and, as the convoy passed Peach Orchard Bluffs the next morning, the first Confederate pickets began shadowing it along the left bank. Finally, while passing Gregory’s Landing about 4 p.m., the leading steamer Commercial was blasted by an estimated 300–400 men concealed in bushes. Hundreds of balls hit the steamer, killing one man and wounding eight others, including the Union commander, Col. William H. Graves. From 40–50 butternut soldiers opened fire from the right bank immediately afterwards. As was often common in these ­­ship-shore incidents, the number of attackers was greatly overstated. The Confederate attack drew a quick response from the Fawn, which, with black smoke pouring out of her chimneys, ran up and began pouring howitzer fire into the woods and shrubbery on both sides of the White. Aboard the Commercial and the other two steamers, troops, after the initial shock, barricaded themselves behind



9. The White River After Little Rock, 1863–1865 169

boxes and other fixtures and briskly returned fire. During the exchange, one man was wounded aboard the Nevada. News of the encounter quickly spread. Within a day or so, word of the fight, “confirmed through rebel sources in Helena,” reached Union circles in Memphis and was sent out for publication in the Eastern press. As was often the case, the brief summary was an instance of Civil War “fake news.” On September 9, The New York Times told its readers “that the gunboats Hastings and Naumkeag had been captured by the rebels below Clarendon, on the White River.” Soldiers from the three Union transports went ashore on September 5 and captured the town of Augusta, about a mile and a half from the landing beach. There it was learned that the Confederates that had fired into the task group had gone toward Jacksonport. As the water continued low and with the enemy elusive, no one aboard the Federal boats was disappointed when orders arrived for a curtailment of the adventure. The three troop boats and the Fawn returned to DeValls Bluff on September 6. By this time, the Confederate force of Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, accompanied by Shelby’s cavalry, was well on its way toward Missouri. Federal concern over the real and supposed sightings of Confederate forces under generals Price and Shelby in the DeValls Bluff area continued throughout September, even as the number of actual Rebel attacks on river transport fell off. On September 30 in a bend of the White River near Clarendon, a lurking irregular band attacked Capt. James Maratta’s ­­stern-wheeler Emma No. 2 as she made her way to the mouth of the river. Navigational requirements forced the boat to approach the shore, where she made an easy target. An estimated 200 musket shots rang out, with more than 60 balls striking the cabin. Many passengers and crewmen had narrow escapes from them, but the vessel safely emerged from her ordeal. After the September beginning of Price’s Great Missouri Raid, the intensity and scale of fighting between gunboats of the Mississippi Squadron and Confederate military units on the White and to a far lesser extent the Arkansas greatly declined. This is not to say that there were not the occasional newsworthy incidents. While ascending the White toward Little Rock aboard the tinclad Cricket to confer on campaign matters, Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby was wounded in the thigh by a sniper on November 6. Immediately returned downstream and hence to New Orleans, there was great concern for his ­­well-being in the press; however, he would mend in time to lead a new Federal campaign against Mobile, Alabama, in early 1865. The few naval boats available in the area now concentrated exclusively on the White, leaving it to the military to cover, after its opening to independent operations, civilian traffic on the Arkansas, particularly late in the conflict. Rebel assaults from the shore of that stream remained ferocious. In November, the steamer Alamo, en route alone to Fort Smith, was pursued by numerous graycoat horsemen along a ­­six-mile stretch of relatively open riverbank. Hundreds of rounds of pistol and musket fire were sent at the vessel, but only 87 hit it, doing no damage. The South would make one last push to blockade that stream in the new year. On January 17, 1865, the last major attack on Arkansas River traffic occurred in the narrow channel at Ivey’s Ford, about two miles below Roseville and 18 miles above Clarksville. Four USQM charter steamers, each with a small armed guard aboard and which had just dropped off Federal troops at Dardanelle, were continuing up to Fort

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Smith when they were assaulted by elements of a Confederate brigade (1,500 men and one cannon) under Col. William H. Brooks. The lead boat, New Chippawa, was captured after a shot across her bow with all aboard taken prisoner. She was pillaged, and quickly burned. The following vessel, Annie Jacobs, attempted to run by, but was so badly damaged by cannon and musket fire that she grounded on the north bank. A similar fate found the Lotus, next in line. The soldiers and other survivors from the Jacobs and Lotus were consolidated by Col. Thomas Bowen, who immediately sent a warning messenger to the fourth steamer, the Ad. Hines, and another for Union reinforcements. Fortunately for the bluecoats, the axle of Col. Brooks’ cannon now broke and he could not otherwise attack Bowen’s people. When Northern cavalry shortly thereafter arrived, Brooks retreated, leaving the Ad. Hines and repaired Lotus to return Bowen’s group to Dardanelle. A few days later, Chaplain A. B. Randall of the 54th U.S. Colored Troops, present aboard the Annie Jacobs, wrote a detailed letter describing the incident to the Chicago Daily Tribune. Although the USN continued to provide riverboat protection and army cooperation on the White, attacks on Federal nautical assets declined as effective Union economic and military and counterinsurgency policies, including the substantial use of loyalist Arkansas soldiers, took root. What remained of the fighting minus regular Southern battalions was viciously small scale and often very personal.7

10

The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 Following Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s triumph at Atlanta at the beginning of September 1864, the Union high command had next to decide in which direction to send the scrappy redhead. Sherman himself favored a “­­scorched-earth” ride east destroying Confederate logistics between the Georgia capital and the Carolina seacoast. It would be his intention to emulate his greatest communications foe, Maj. Gen. Nathan Beford Forrest, by encouraging his Army of the Tennessee, made lean, to live off the countryside. “I can make this march and make Georgia howl!,” he promised Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Maj. Gen. George Thomas and 60,000 men could be sent north to guard the Tennessee rear.1 Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood, who had taken over the Army of Tennessee in July only to lose the Georgia capital, now contemplated a visit north in a move historian Bruce Catton called a “strategy of despair, verging on the wholly fantastic, based on the belief that the way to counter Sherman’s thrust into the deepest South was to march off in the opposite direction.” The Confederate field commander believed that, if lucky, he could move “smartly” enough in western and middle Tennessee to capture Nashville. Taking the state capital would not only destroy a major Northern supply depot, but might force Sherman to return to the Volunteer State. During September and early October, Sherman and Hood took advantage of fine weather to reorganize their commands for what Benson J. Lossing later called the “vigorous work” ahead. As a precaution against any Southern gambit, Sherman sent Maj. Gen. Thomas to Nashville on October 3. Over the next two weeks, Hood marched to the west of the Chattahoochee, trying to lure his opponent out of Georgia while avoiding a decisive battle. Hood, on October 7, called upon his cavalry to aid in the grand endeavor of removing Sherman by smashing up the Union supply line from the north. In particular, he needed Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the man whom Sherman himself had named “the very devil.” President Jefferson Davis, Confederate Department of the West commander Lt. Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard, Gen. Hood, and everyone else on the Southern side hoped that the famous cavalry leader could divert the Yankees while the Confederate Army of Tennessee strode into the Volunteer State. Sherman was contemptuous of Hood’s wild-goose-chase ­­ northern goal and remained supremely confident in his own mission and men. Consequently, he determined to quit the Hood waltz, go the other way, and march toward the sea. Lt. Gen. 171

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The Tennessee rivershed. The largest tributary of the Ohio River, the Tennessee begins at Knoxville and winds its way down past Chattanooga. It continues south and during the Civil War reached something of a navigational dividing point between the Upper and Lower at Muscle Shoals, located between Decatur and Eastport, Alabama. Thereafter, it flows on in Alabama, nipping the corner of Mississippi before returning to Tennessee and proceeding north into Kentucky, where it arrives at the Ohio River at Paducah (Karl Musser, Wikipedia).

Grant approved his subordinate’s Savannah strategy on October 13. Seven days later, Sherman gave Thomas full authority to deal with any northern Confederate incursion and started reinforcements to Nashville. Unable to gain any advantage in northwest Georgia, Hood turned to cross the Upper Tennessee River, first at Guntersville and then at Decatur, Alabama, where a key railroad terminus could deliver supplies from northern Mississippi. So it was that the Army of Tennessee headed for Decatur.2 During these late summer and early fall months of Western theater military maneuvering, the Union’s Mississippi Squadron continued to protect Federal river shipping and fulfill its army support mission. Although certain ­­ship-shore fights with



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 173

Confederate regular and irregular units occasionally garnered press attention, the fleet’s size, both afloat and ashore, grew and matured largely unnoticed by the public as a whole, then or since. Nowhere was this more true than in the development of a tiny new squadron administrative district, the Eleventh, which officially came into being on October 1, 1864, though its boundaries were not published until November 18. Completely landlocked from its parent organization, it was born of an army plan to develop secure and more plentiful transportation for the Upper Tennessee River region on the ­­Tennessee-Alabama border. When readied, it had only four vessels—all leased from the military with navy crews and guns—and was commanded by a lieutenant. Like the original Western Gunboat Flotilla of 1861–62, it started as an unfulfilled army idea for a fleet of light draught gunboats advanced months earlier. This gestation and development is intriguing, leading us to briefly divert our story from Hood’s northward march to recount it here for the first time in any detail. The idea for a group of light military gunboats originated with Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans in January 1863. Wanting to supplement the navy’s ­­hard-pressed Cumberland and Tennessee River escort flotillas, the Army of the Tennessee commander proposed the building of several light draught military gunboats or the armoring and arming of transport steamboats. The scheme was unceremoniously opposed by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, who both deferred ­­purpose-building of river escort vessels to the USN. The army did modify several civilian steamers, like the Silver Lake No. 2 and Newsboy, into gunboats, but Rosecrans’ idea of ­­gun-decked craft was shelved, or so it appeared at the time. “Old Rosy” Rosecrans was gone from the Department of the CumberGen. John Bell Hood, CSA. A veteran of both ­­ 1863 when Maj. the battles of Gettysburg and Chickamauga, land by mid-October Hood, twice severely wounded, thereaf- Gen. Grant arrived to raise the siege of ter commanded the Southern Army of Ten- Chattanooga and to provide victuals nessee, being forced to evacuate the city of and other stores to his soldiers both in Atlanta to troops under Maj. Gen. William that town and in Knoxville. ExpandT. Sherman. Determined to draw his enemy ing somewhat on the groundwork back out of Georgia, the war’s youngest army laid by Rosecrans, the Union Army commander led his soldiers through Alabama into Tennessee, where he was defeated at opened the “cracker line” into ChatNashville in December 1864 (Miller’s Photo- tanooga, employing a crudely built ­­flat-bottomed steamer named for the graphic History of the Civil War, v. 3).

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town. Constructed 35 miles downstream at Bridgeport, Alabama, by army assistant quartermaster and Detroit native Capt. Arthur Edwards, the Lake Erie shipbuilder and a number of carpenters, mechanics, and other army personnel, including Maj. Perrin V. Fox of the 1st Michigan Engineers and Mechanics, the Chattanooga inaugurated a hazardous Upper Tennessee River supply run on October 29 through the winding channel of the Narrows, with its swift currents, to Rankin’s Ferry, where her cargo was off-loaded ­­ into wagons for the final trip to the besieged city. Her trip opened a new chapter in Upper Tennessee River military transport and launched the chain of nautical events which resulted in the birth of the Mississippi Squadron’s Eleventh District.3 As the Chattanooga engaged in her early logistical feat, Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, a Rosecrans critic, remained in Chattanooga continuing to send, as he had for weeks, a series of updating telegrams to Secretary Stanton in Washington. Dana, together with U. S. Grant, was convinced of the value of the Upper Tennessee River in the logistical chain to Knoxville. Quartermaster General Meigs already had plans to increase the number of armed steamers on the stream and ordered Capt. Edwards’ Bridgeport boatyard to construct additional boats. As we saw in Chapter 5 above, the idea to logistically succor Knoxville via the Upper Tennessee during the siege of winter ’63–’64 could not be realized, forcing reliance on the Upper Cumberland River instead. Although goods could be sent to Chattanooga and her environs down into Alabama by rail or a winding road network, the delivery of goods in bulk or quantity by all but the smallest steamers was made impossible by the geographical barrier known as the Muscle Shoals, named for the mussels abundantly found in the stream. These rapids, which divided the Tennessee River of that day into its upper and lower portions, originated about two hundred miles from its mouth and ran about 30 miles—falling about 100 feet in that distance—and divided the Alabama counties of Lauderdale and Lawrence. According to the 1860 edition of James’ River Guide, Muscle Shoals was “an impossible obstruction to navigation, except during the highest stages of water.”4 Capt. Edwards was charged with building transport steamers to ply the waters between Muscle Shoals and Knoxville and it was simultaneously recognized that, in operation, they would need to be protected. Although some rightly credited “Old Rosy” for his original gunboat notion, it was Dana who, in the absence of the controversial commander, was able to dust off the concept, localize and bring it back to life. Many times in Civil War reporting, it is difficult to find the exact document in which an idea was launched (or in this case, relaunched). This time, we have it—a November 4, 1863, report from Dana to Stanton. While reviewing the transportation situation for his chief, the onetime managing editor of the New York Tribune put the whole matter into one sentence: “I suggest that gunboats of very light draught should be provided for this part of the Tennessee.” By the beginning of 1864, two different plans were afoot to provide transport and gunboat services on the Upper Tennessee. The first was revealed to RAdm. Porter by Col. Lewis B. Parsons in a January 5 letter. The army would soon attempt, he wrote, to get two newly purchased small steamers, the Alone and Convoy #2, over Muscle Shoals. Other steamers then being constructed at Bridgeport might also be able to make such a passage. On January 10, Porter, no fan of stern-wheelers, ­­ advised Parsons to build



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 175

Montgomery C. Meigs, Charles A. Dana, and Lewis B. Parsons. Above: In overall charge of Union Army logistics, Maj. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs was in Chattanooga in the fall of 1863 when it was cut off and organized the capture of Brown’s Ferry, ensuring a logistical supply route to Federal soldiers. Top right: Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, a journalist by trade, was also in the town, reporting on military developments to the War Department. Bottom right: Far to the north, Col. Lewis B. Parsons oversaw Army of the Tennessee rail and water transportation, working diligently to provide goods to the besieged garrison. All three men played a role in making the arrangements leading to the 1864 provision of supply steamers and gunboats on the Upper Tennessee River (National Archives [Meigs] and Library of Congress [Dana and Parsons]).

­­ side-wheel vessels and not to employ tubular boilers. Indeed, it was recommended that the ­­purpose-built Bridgeport craft be equipped with very large boilers and large cylinders. Work on this fleet required that Capt. Edwards, who initially had neither mechanics nor local material with which to work, obtain all of his machinery and most of his other material from manufacturers on the Ohio or in St. Louis. The filled orders were then to be transported 600–800 miles overland by already overtaxed railroad trains. The following week, Maj. Gen. Grant weighed in on the matter, strongly endorsing the Meigs plan for the construction of armed steamers. By this time, the Quartermaster General, with a thousand other logistical matters on his mind for armies fighting in both the East and West, had also consulted with Norman Wiard, a

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Canadian inventor working and consulting with both the military and naval ordnance departments. Beginning back in October, the latter was planning four ­­shallow-draft gunboats for use on the bays, rivers, and sounds on the East Coast. He had drawn plans for the vessels and made them available, along with a descriptive leaflet, to Meigs, whose department would oversee acquisition of any additional War Department gunboats. On January 15, Meigs showed a copy of the Grant letter to Assistant Navy Secretary Gustavus V. Fox and the two talked over the army’s latest gunboat idea. Fox advised his colleague to send over a copy of the Grant memo, along with a note asking that it be forwarded to RAdm. Porter “with such instructions as may be proper.” The chief quartermaster was nothing if not a whirlwind and, going back to his office, immediately complied. To further push the gunboat concept, Meigs also sent a copy of the Wiard plans and leaflet to Bridgeport, where Capt. Edwards was already building steamers. While in Louisville about this time, Meigs contracted for engines for two ­­side-wheelers and four stern-wheelers ­­ and also wrote to Lt. Col. Langdon C. Easton, Chief Quartermaster of the Army of the Cumberland and Edward’s superior, at Chattanooga on the whole matter. The Easton letter spelled out Meigs’ thinking on the two plans then under consideration. It would not be possible, he believed, to float steamers over Muscle Shoals. Regarding Parsons’ plan, the Quartermaster General was not optimistic that the river would rise to the height necessary to let his small boats pass. Knowing that Grant was “very desirous of having some gunboats on the Upper Tennessee”—and by that he meant proper ­­gun-decked craft, not ­­Newsboy-type improvisations—Meigs was quite specific as to the layout he wanted. He knew from his talks with Fox that the USN would obligingly furnish armament and officers. Meigs ordered Easton to instruct Edwards to finish at least two of his steamers—one each side-wheeler ­­ and stern-wheeler—on ­­ the general plan outlined in the Wiard blueprints. The hulls would be built after the style of the already finished Lookout and a ­­side-wheeler currently on Edwards’ stocks, but their cabins, yawls, derricks, and other accessories plus armament would be prepared and arranged for a crew per Wiard’s plan. On January 18, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles forwarded a copy of the Grant letter which Meigs had given Fox out to RAdm. Porter at Cairo. The commander of the Mississippi Squadron was authorized to extend whatever aid was within his power “toward arming and manning the boats to which Quartermaster Meigs refers.” Porter, who was making extensive preparations for his own expedition to the Red River area of Louisiana, ordered the ­­shipbuilding-wise Eighth District boss Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch to go to Alabama and review Capt. Edward’s ­­gunboat-building enterprise and to render whatever assistance was required. On February 5, the veteran gunboatman rushed to the Nashville telegraph office to wire his superior that, valise in hand, he was boarding the next Bridgeport train. The trip would be the first of several made beyond his district boundaries as squadron inspector or fireman.5 Fitch was one of the highest ranking, if not the senior, regular naval officer to visit Bridgeport thus far in the war. Who met the young sailor at the Alabama community, whether Col. Easton or Capt. Edwards, both or neither, is unknown. What he found was a very small enclave on the river that had, according to the Quartermaster history, begun operations as a tent community built around a sawmill. Here the



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 177

boatyard was set up and houses for a growing number of military and civilian workers were raised up, along with an expanded machine shop. It is clear that while the gunboatman consulted with his U.S. Army engineer and quartermaster colleagues, he was undoubtedly shown around as their efforts to construct a total of thirteen steamers, including four gunboats, were described. They had all the lumber required, it was surely pointed out, but, as the Quartermaster historian continued, “all the machinery, nails, paints, and every other material” had to be delivered “from the Ohio Valley over military roads already greatly overtaxed.” At Edwards’ growing Tennessee River facility, Fitch saw a pair of stern-wheelers ­­ being finished for transport service. Both were 140 feet in length with 23-foot ­­ beams and depths of hold of 3.5 feet. One of the craft, the one furthest from being finished, was christened Missionary. The other had no name. Another large boat, a ­­side-wheeler, was also ready to be launched as soon as river level rose. She was, with a ­­175-foot length and ­­27-foot beam, just right for use as a transport, but was too large for a gunboat. Engines from the notorious ­­ex-Confederate steamer Dunbar, sunk in Cypress Creek in spring 1862, would outfit the new craft, which could be ready for service within four to six weeks. This reborn Dunbar was one of five transport steamers assembled by Edwards from ­­Chattanooga-salvaged wrecks, also including the Holston, James Glover, Paint Rock, and Tennessee.

Bridgeport boat construction. To help meet its logistical requirements on the Upper Tennessee River, the U.S. Army, with consultation from a few USN officers, constructed a fleet of steamboats at Bridgeport, Alabama, between late fall 1863 and spring 1864. Four of them would be built as gundeck tinclads and leased to the Navy, which provided crews and ordnance, and established the Eleventh District, Mississippi Squadron, to operate them in support of military objectives. At war’s end, the quartet were returned to the Army, with proper receipts received (National Archives).

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The army officers told their USN visitor of the dire need for transports on the Upper Tennessee, boats far more sophisticated than the little Chattanooga of the “cracker line.” They explained that the military would remain in southern Tennessee for some time and that goods would flow by river from that point, as well as Nashville and Carthage, into east Tennessee. Rail and road supply would, of course, continue as possible or appropriate. Fitch reviewed the Wiard plans, which Capt. Edwards had received from Quartermaster General Meigs, with his hosts. It was readily apparent that the draft, for a ­­double-ender gunboat, would be totally inefficient on the Tennessee or Cumberland. Among other faults quickly ascertained, the guns were all unprotected and their crews totally exposed. As the sailor later wrote Porter, Yankee tars aboard such craft “could be picked off to a man by guerrillas from either side of the river.” The ordnance man’s concept was rejected in favor of the Western tinclad idea already in service. Having dismissed the Wiard plans, Fitch offered several suggestions to the military builders. First, two boats, known as “Gunboat A” and “Gunboat B” and for which frames would soon be set up, should be finished as side-wheel ­­ gundeck tinclads. It was expected that they would both have dimensions of 160-foot ­­ length, 250-foot ­­ beam, and ­­four-foot holds. The pair should carry as light an armament as possible, in order that they could also take on freight if necessary. For security and moral effect, the squadron officer strongly suggested that one of the first two ­­stern-wheelers now finishing be completed as a hybrid ­­gunboat-transport. To accomplish that end, he suggested that she be outfitted with a pair of ­­12-pounder howitzers on boat carriages, which could be manned by gun crews that, in the navy, would equal 12 men and two boys, with a master’s mate as detail commander. This would not, he argued, detract from her qualities as a transport, but would demonstrate the precedence of a gunboat. When the two ­­purpose-built gunboats were completed, it was feasible that, if necessary, the hybrid’s guns could be removed and sent to one of them, being replaced or even augmented with another type. It was anticipated that the vessel could be ready for temporary service, with her guns in, within a fortnight or a little longer. With a reputation as something of a howitzer aficionado, the naval officer had considerable experience in arming and manning tinclads. RAdm. Porter wanted his insights on both construction and ordnance placement as they impacted the Bridgeport gunboats and the army’s request that the navy handle matters of armament and crewing. Fitch was not bashful in supplying his superior with detailed recommendations, which, based on his discussions with Edwards, he may have worked out during his train ride back to Nashville, where he arrived on February 7. First, he suggested that the ­­side-wheeler gunboats carry four guns each, two ­­24-pounder howitzers (one each in the bow and the stern) and a pair of rifled ­­12-pounders. The bow and stern guns could work abaft either beam, ahead and right astern. The two broadside guns could work from two points abaft the beam to within one point of right ahead. Additionally each boat should be crewed by 40 officers and ratings, led by an ensign. It would be simple to transport the men, guns, and ammunition, he opined. If they could be sent to Smithland, his flagboat, the Moose, could take them to Nashville for loading aboard a train to Bridgeport. During the first week of March, Fitch visited Cincinnati to check on local USN recruiting as well as the latest material possibilities for the boats under construction



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 179

in Alabama. In his absence, the Cumberland convoys and steamboat sailings continued unabated. Back at Nashville by the 14th, he returned to Bridgeport, where he immediately learned that much of the labor at the shipyard had been stopped for several days because requisitioned spikes and nails had not arrived. Still, work seemed to be “progressing as well as could be expected under the circumstances.” RAdm. Porter’s designated consultant was at the Alabama boatyard for the launch of the hybrid steamer, “a beautiful model,” which Fitch believed would “compare favorably with any ­­side-wheel boat.” It was hoped that when the builders were ready to put up her casemates Acting Naval Constructor Charles F. Kendall might visit from Cairo for a day or two to provide direction in the minutiae of fitting chocks, etc. This boat may have been the reconfigured ­­transport-gunboat known as “Gunboat A,” the first of the four ­­navy-chartered gunboats completed. Taking his leave of the army shipwrights, the naval officer returned to the Cumberland River, from which he reported to Porter on March 18 on his Bridgeport visit, even suggesting one of the new gunboats, which were all to honor army generals, be named for the admiral. Given that the Quartermaster Department was paying for the boats, which it would own and only charter to the navy, such a designation for any of them was unlikely. By this time, news of the gunboat construction downstream at Bridgeport had circulated in bluecoat circles in Chattanooga. There, Capt. William A. Naylor, commander of the 10th Battery, Indiana Light Artillery Regiment, veterans of the fall battles then on garrison duty, looked for a return to action. Perhaps having heard rumors that army men, as was the case earlier in the war, could be transferred afloat, he made inquiry of Maj. Fox at Bridgeport on April 14 regarding personnel requirements for the new boats. He did not know that men from a number of military units were even then being considered for reassignment to different military units for the upcoming Georgia campaign. Within a week or so of his inquiry, Naylor’s inquiry had its desired impact. The engineer in charge of the growing Bridgeport depot and facility since late 1863, Col. Włodzimierz Bonawentura Krzyżanowski, CO of the Polish Brigade, VI Corps, Army of the Cumberland—and first cousin of composer Frederic Chopin— was looking for a crew for the first nearly finished ­­transport-gunboat. It was likely he who acted upon the Naylor inquiry and arranged for the Hoosier and 40 of his men to be seconded to Edwards’ “Gunboat A.” They would be joined aboard the craft, destined to become better known as the General Thomas, by men from several companies of Ohio Independent Sharpshooters (one of ten such units then with the Army of the Cumberland) and a hired civilian crew.6 The dual advance by Grant and Sherman against the Confederacy, east and west, was launched on May 5. Keeping in mind the logistical and convoy necessities of the latter’s Atlanta campaign, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch, then at Cincinnati, crossed over the Ohio to Louisville and took the train south to resume his support and supervision of the army’s gunboat project. Fleet Captain Alexander Pennock at Cairo had authorized accelerated boat assembly per his admiral’s instructions and promised any assistance required. Upon his arrival at Bridgeport, Fitch found that, while he was away, the army engineers and mechanics had shoved three new gundeck boats into the water, one of which had been on ­­machinery-testing trial trips. A fourth vessel, also designed to accommodate cannon, would be launched about midmonth. All would soon have their working engines and would have completed their ­­joiner-work.

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U.S. Army gunboat Stone River or USS General Grant? One of the steamers constructed for the U.S. Quartermaster Department at Bridgeport, Alabama, became a hybrid army gunboat, the Stone River. A photograph (top) at the Library of Congress may, in fact, be that sternwheel vessel, mislabeled as the General Grant when employed in Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War. On the other hand, the U.S. Navy’s General Grant (bottom) was a sidewheeler. There were other differences between the craft as a review of these photographs demonstrates (Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War, v. 6 [Stone River] and National Archives [General Grant]).



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With “Gunboat A” nearly finished, it is probable that the three vessels were “Gunboat B” and two others slated for the navy. But what was the fourth we do not know for certain, though there is a possibility that it would become the Stone River. Within these pages, we have written of several U.S. Army Western waters gunboats, but unfortunately, it has long been believed that photographs did not exist for any of them. There is, however, one picture at the Library of Congress which may, in fact, be of the Stone River. It is strongly suspected that the vessel’s identity was mislabeled as the General Grant when the photograph was employed in Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War. The verso of this donated LC photo identifies this ­­stern-wheel vessel as the USS General Grant, which it clearly is not. If this is a warship, it is most likely the Upper Tennessee River U.S. Army hybrid transport-gunboat ­­ Stone River. There is but circumstantial proof to make this claim, but it is compelling. First, the Grant was a ­­side-wheel gunboat which, like all USN tinclads of her period, wore an identification number (in her case, 62) on the side of her pilothouse. Second, together with her three sisters, the navy warship wore a similar paint scheme very different from this craft. Third, the boat depicted on the LC print is cut for six guns, the number typically employed by Union artillery companies, including the one which would serve as the vessel’s principal crew. The Stone River originally shipped field guns, probably two ­­12-lb. howitzers and several ­­10-pounder Parrott rifles, later exchanging the latter on November 16 for two ­­20-lb. Parrott rifles. The four Edwards ­­side-wheelers taken by the navy began with heavier armament (two each 20- or 30-lb. ­­ Parrotts and three ­­24-lb. howitzers). A review of photos which we fortunately have for the two vessels shows the various differences fairly ­­close-up.7 A significant difficulty arose, however, due to a difference in opinion over who should handle the conversion work. Capt. Edwards believed that his job was only to fit the boats up as transports and then turn them over to the USN for completion as gunboats. Rather than engage in a lengthy debate over which of them was responsible, Fitch, on his own hook, immediately took total charge of the four boats, subject to an agreement with the army officer that the cost of material and workmen to finish construction would be charged to USQM accounts. With that understanding in hand, he then contracted for the plating, outfits, and other essentials. While Fitch ploughed ahead handling the administrative details of USN gunboat assembly, Army Capt. Naylor’s “Gunboat A,” at the behest of Col. Krzyżanowski, began to patrol the Upper Tennessee as far down as Larkin’s Landing, Guntersville, and Whitesburg, Alabama. Much of her mission was aimed at ascertaining Confederate irregular activities along the riverbank and halting unauthorized transriver crossing. During the vessel’s second cruise on May 14, a party of 1st Ohio Sharpshooters were landed to scout near Jackson’s Ferry (Hallowell’s Landing), where they were vigorously attacked by Confederate irregulars. Falling back under Naylor’s howitzer cover, the men reboarded and the gunboat temporarily withdrew. After wooding, the steamer returned and her men burned 17 buildings, but were again forced to withdraw under fire, returning to Bridgeport on May 24. While Capt. Naylor introduced gunboat service to the Upper Tennessee, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch, having all but taken over full supervision of the navy gunboat project, was now riding the rails back and forth between Bridgeport and points in the north attempting to speed acquisition of labor and materials. Thin iron for plating, of the

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type employed to protect naval tinclads, was not furnished by the army, and acquiring it was stalled until RAdm. Porter’s consultant called upon Brig. Gen. Robert Allen in Louisville. Understanding the sailor’s difficulties, the supply boss immediately cut orders covering everything needed. Indeed, the Western theater’s chief quartermaster told the commander to go to Cincinnati, buy whatever he needed there or elsewhere, and send the bills to his Louisville office. The army had already placed a large order with a Chicago firm for specialized cuts of lumber. Upon his arrival back at the Queen City, Fitch immediately repaired to the offices of Swift’s Iron & Steel Co., a leading navy contractor, and ordered the plate needed for the gunboat casemates. Deliveries were to begin before month’s end. Another major difficulty was a paucity of ironworkers in Bridgeport—there were none. Arrangements were made to take down to Alabama a number of these Swift men and their tools as soon as possible. Going with them would be USN Acting Chief Engineer William D. McFarland, who was detailed to review the condition of the boats and determine the number of engineers needed to help crew them. At the same time, a telegram was received from Maj. Gen. Sherman specifically authorizing transportation via Nashville Quartermaster James L. Donaldson. Despite the fact that the railroad was very extended, trains from Louisville and Tennessee’s capital would provide speedy transport. Once the outfits were shipped, Fitch could look to delivering the boats’ cannon from Nashville via his Kentucky base. Several days later, with 53 1st Ohio Sharpshooters aboard, “Gunboat A” steamed down to Whitesburg and Decatur, from which latter she was dispatched on May 29 back to Gunter’s Landing to halt a body of Confederates reportedly crossing horses across the Tennessee. Upon her arrival, Capt. Naylor met a body of local Union home guard that had reportedly engaged enemy cavalry from Guntersville and captured several prisoners and horses. The latter were released on the opposite bank and the men taken to Whitesburg, where three companies from the 18th Wisconsin were boarded and taken to Gunter’s Landing to destroy a saltpeter works inland of the riverbank. After the bluecoats were retrieved, Naylor’s command returned to Bridgeport on June 1. During the following hot ­­low-water period, “Gunboat A” was taken in hand for conversion into one of the USN steamers and Capt. Naylor and his men returned to their Hoosier battery.8 RAdm. Porter took time at Mound City shortly after his May 26 arrival to reflect briefly upon the Bridgeport b ­­ oat-building enterprise. In a report to Secretary Welles, he noted that the four steamers were almost ready for service and that he was pushing forward their guns and detailing their officers. Porter recommended that the vessels constructed under his direction with Quartermaster General Meigs paying the bills be named for military leaders in compliment to “those gallant officers.” The Washington navy chief readily agreed. The two reconfigured ­­transport-gunboats, “Gunboat A” and “Gunboat B,” were christened General Thomas and General Burnside, while the two purpose-built ­­ vessels became the General Grant and General Sherman. Writing from Smithland the next day, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch informed his superior that the Cumberland was falling rapidly, with only three feet of water over Harpeth Shoals. It would not be safe to ship the guns up the river to Nashville, so the Tenth District commander determined to pick them up at Mound City and to run them up to Louisville, from where he would ship them by ­­non-stop rail express to Bridgeport.



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 183

Arrangements were made for U.S. Army ordnance officers to accompany the howitzers from Louisville south. On June 6, Acting Chief Engineer McFarland reported the completion of his inspections at Bridgeport and that he had returned to Cincinnati, where he shipped two of the six engineers the army boats required. Three days later, Fitch wired his superior from Evansville indicating that the “guerrilla” situation was worsening and that he was personally moving to the Henderson area to “look after them.” Lt. Henry Glassford, who had proved his worth as a resourceful leader on the Upper Cumberland, was deputized to take over the Bridgeport mission, serving as its interim flotilla commander. With the navy gunboats at Bridgeport approaching completion, Col. Donaldson ordered Capt. Edwards on June 11 to turn them over to Glassford and then telegraphed Maj. Gen. Sherman: “Is this right?” Sherman wired back from Big Shanty, Georgia, in no uncertain terms that the transfer (actually, it was a charter) was approved and furthermore asked that all military officers grant every facility and encouragement to the boat captains. The same day he wrote up his arrangement with the USN in Special Field Order 23 and sent a copy to Porter. The document clearly indicated that the boats had been turned over to the navy “for better service and discipline,” but that they would be supplied by army quartermasters and commissaries of all posts and stations as if they still belonged to the army—which, technically, they did. Further, should any of the gunboat captains require any kind of aid whatsoever, it was to be provided if at all possible. On June 20, a copy of the field order was sent on to Fitch from the Black Hawk.9 RAdm. Porter received an update on the Bridgeport gunboats from Fitch on June 26. One of the boats had its plating on and was nearly finished, but the others were delayed because certain required lumber, ordered by the U.S. Army earlier, was temporarily delayed. When it was on hand, Fitch promised that he and Glassford would push the others on as rapidly as possible. In the intervening period, he was busily gathering up the different bills he had contracted so that Allen could invoice the boats in proper form. Receipts for the boats would be forwarded as soon as the quartermaster invoices were made out. Meanwhile, in U.S. Army circles, Brig. Gen. Robert S. Granger had arrived at Decatur from Nashville on June 2 and assumed command of the District of North Alabama, Department of the Cumberland, which included authority over the almost finished Stone River. Within a short time of his arrival, the new local commander found himself engaged in a number of nearby contests with Confederate Brig. Gen. Phillip Roddey, capturing much of his camp near Courtland in July. After a quick visit up to Evansville at the beginning of July, the USN Tenth District commander returned to Bridgeport to consult with his subordinate on the final outfitting of the ­­army-built gunboats. Although not commissioned, one of these, the General Thomas, the first completed and armed temporarily as “Gunboat A,” had already begun patrolling the Upper Tennessee as far back as May. Back in Cincinnati by July 14, Fitch wired Porter informing him that most of the boats were fully officered and that two, the General Grant and General Sherman, would be officially commissioned at the Alabama town the next day. All four of the boats would not only have USN officers, but petty officers as well; the remainder of the crews were provided by the U.S. Army. The pair would immediately relieve the Thomas, which would then receive its permanent guns and be regularly commissioned along with the

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The four Eleventh District USN gunboats at Bridgeport, Alabama. From a small, leased administrative/supply base at Bridgeport, AL, the four chartered USN tinclads of the 11th District patrolled the Upper Tennessee River ranging as high as Chattanooga and as low as Muscle Shoals and conducting the same services as vessels of their type in the Mississippi Squadron’s ten other districts. The quartet was seldom simultaneously in port, but on one occasion in March 1865 when they were, they were photographed, left to right: General Sherman, General Thomas (with smoke rising from her chimneys), General Grant, and General Burnside (Naval History and Heritage Command).

converted “Gunboat B,” the General Burnside. The quartet would then function as a patrol and escort task group within Fitch’s district, not unlike the boats of Lt. Bache on the White River or Lt. Edward M. King at Johnsonville on the Lower Tennessee, When the bills were paid, the four side-wheelers ­­ each cost the government $19,000. The dimensions of all four were approximately the same. The 201.­­5-ton General Burnside was 171 feet long, with a beam of 26 feet and a 4.­­9-foot depth of hold. The ­­204-ton General Grant possessed identical specifications. With the same beam, a length of 168 feet, and a depth of hold of 4.6 feet, the ­­187-ton General Sherman was slightly smaller, while the General Thomas, with the same hold depth and beam, was three feet shorter and three tons lighter than the Sherman. The General Grant was commissioned on July 20 under the command of Acting Ensign Joseph Watson, transferred over from the Cumberland River tinclad Springfield. She was armed with two 30-pounder ­­ Parrott rifles and three 24-pounder ­­ howitzers. It would be a week before the General Sherman was commissioned. When she entered service under the command of Acting Master Joseph W. Morehead, her five cannon included three ­­24-pounder howitzers and two ­­20-pounder Parrott rifles. The General Burnside and General Thomas were armed identically to the General Sherman. Acting Master Gilbert Morton was put in charge of the Thomas while Lt. Glassford, temporarily detached from the Reindeer, was named captain of the Burnside, and continued as Fitch’s deputy commander of the Upper Tennessee flotilla. On August 10, the 10th Battery, Indiana Light Artillery was officially relieved. Capt. Naylor, who had rejoined it when “Gunboat A” became a navy project, was ordered to turn in the battery and all of its equipment and then travel to Chattanooga with his gun crew. There they drew substance stores and joined the recently finished Stone River, which was crewed by contract civilians as the General Thomas (as “Gunboat A”) was earlier. The vessel’s shakedown cruise followed as she steamed down to Decatur and reported to Brig. Gen. Granger. Fitch and Glassford, who may have known Naylor when he captained “Gunboat A,” enjoyed the pleasure of knowing that they had midwifed the birth of a fleet. They would also soon learn their responsibilities for it were over. Both the bluejacket officers would be officially relieved of responsibility for any part of the unit on September



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 185

29 when RAdm. Porter named regular USN Lt. Moreau Forrest commander of the General Burnside and of the new Eleventh District effective October 1. Glassford returned to his captaincy of the Reindeer the same day. While the Hood advance—the story of which we have interrupted—continued, Lt. Forrest established his headquarters at Bridgeport. Arrangements were made with the army for the lease (for an unknown sum) and occupation of two riverfront buildings, principally “for use of the paymaster in storing provisions, clothing, etc.”10 As noted earlier, Hood, as he moved toward Tennessee, desired a major diversion. To that end, the “Wizard of the Saddle,” Nathan B. Forrest was sent ahead to interrupt Federal logistics. By October 6, he had completed a ­­sixteen-day circuit from Cherokee station in Alabama as high as Spring Hill outside Nashville assaulting Sherman’s supply lines. Hood’s hope that Forrest would, according to Maj. Gen. Jacob D. Cox, occupy Union forces “so as to create a diversion in his favor” were met. It was during this sojourn that, according to Jordan and Pryor, Forrest first became aware of the Yankee treasure trove at Johnsonville, on the Humphreys County, Tennessee, side of the Lower Tennessee River, and put it on his target list. The logistical hub, a key point on the long supply line running back to the Ohio River, “had become ‘essential for the Federal forces at Chattanooga and Atlanta’” and “would warrant him in undertaking” its destruction. During his Middle Tennessee raid, Forrest was pursued by numerous Federal units—most of which were drawn off by his subordinates—while he endeavored to return his command back to safety over the swollen Upper Tennessee River into northern Alabama. From our viewpoint, the most intriguing and prophetic of these interceptions was made against a 1,­­300-man Federal task force near Chickasaw Landing, on the west bank of the Tennessee a few miles from Florence, Alabama. On October 10, Col. George B. Hoge’s unit (two Illinois and one U.S. Colored Infantry regiments, plus 30 Missouri cavalrymen and a company of Missouri artillery), aboard three transports guarded by two USN Ninth District tinclads, was en route up to Eastport, Mississippi, to link up with a larger Union force which would confront the wily Southern raider. Alerted to this scheme down to the exact disembarkation spot, Forrest dispatched his “Fighting Parson,” Lt. Col. David C. Kelley, with 300 men and four ­­10-pounder cannon, to attack. Arriving before the Yankees, Kelley’s greeting party hid a ­­two-gun masked battery at the base of a hill about 600 yards from the river and another of equal size at Chickasaw Landing. He would successfully employ this deployment, the same as that employed by Col. Colton Greene in Arkansas, on two more occasions. Reaching the ­­jumping-off point without incident, the Union transports lay at the bank, opposite a pair of warehouses (between the gunboats and the shore) and began to disembark their passengers (and a ­­four-gun battery). Not having made a reconnaissance or posted pickets beforehand, Hoge did not suspect the presence of the enemy. As the bluecoats moved down a road from the riverbank inland, Kelley’s gunners and riflemen opened up, causing the Federals to desert their cannon and make a mad scramble back to their boats. Kelley’s ambush was complete as shells fell all around his foe—and their vessels as well. Although hit several times with a crewman killed, the steamer Kenton was able to get away. The Aurora was not as lucky. Confederate bolts killed her captain and 20

186

After Vicksburg

embarked soldiers. Many men fell into the stream and drowned as the boat cut her cable and fled. Unhurt, the City of Peking tried to pick up survivors. While the civilian steamers struggled to exit what Col. Hoge called a “scene of confusion,” the light draughts Key West and Undine fired on what they thought were Rebel positions back of the landing. The correspondent “Old Kentuck” of the Chicago Daily Tribune later interviewed a number of expedition survivors for an October 21 report and concluded “the worst feature of the whole inglorious defeat” was that the gunboat pair “killed more of our own troops and did more damage to our men than to the enemy.” Eventually, the little task force was reunited and all fires were extinguished. It then retreated downstream to its starting point at Clifton, Tennessee, assessing its losses while en route. Both the Undine and Key West would face Forrest’s cannoneers again and next time they would not escape as the Confederates had, as Forrest biographer Brian Steel Wells put it, “the confidence to engage them again.” From the field near Centerville, Georgia, during the day, Maj. Gen. Sherman wrote to Lt. Henry Glassford, still believed to be in charge of the Eleventh District, regarding the threat posed from the Army of Tennessee, now west of Rome, headed toward the Volunteer State. Hood’s exact and immediate intentions were not quite certain, however, so Glassford was asked to keep his new boats “watching and patrolling the Tennessee.” Perhaps White was en route to the Tuscumbia vicinity. Whitesburg or Gunter’s Landing were also possibilities, but in any event, Hood had to be “prevented from crossing the Tennessee River anywhere above Mussel Shoals.” Safely back in Southern territory, Forrest was “anxious to renew the effort” against Sherman’s logistical apparatus. After considerable study bolstered by decent intelligence, he elected to attack the Yankees’ newest and most vulnerable route, humming along with virtually no interference: the Lower Tennessee River stretch from Paducah, Kentucky, down to the ­­six-month-old transfer point at Johnsonville, Tennessee, in Humphreys County, from whence goods sped east along the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad to the state capital for transshipment “direct to Knoxville, Chattanooga, or Atlanta as desired.” Not subject to the annual ­­low-water navigational difficulties of the Cumberland River, the port was located at a wide point on a cleared area of the east bank, across from high woods on the western shoreline. Named like the town for the Union’s Tennessee governor, Andrew Johnson, the overlooking hilltop Fort Johnson, an earthen redoubt and blockhouse, overlooked the railroad. From here the area was guarded by Col. Charles R. Thompson’s 700 untested troops, who also manned the nearby entrenchments plus 14 cannon. Commanded by Lt. Edward M. King in two-boat ­­ task groups, four Ninth Division tinclads Undine, Key West, Elfin, and Tawah, made frequent stops at the levy when not on convoy escort or patrol.11 “The movement of the Confederate army through northern Alabama to Decatur and Florence, and thence across the Tennessee River towards Franklin and Nashville was now in full swing,” wrote Maj. Gen. Forrest’s biographer, Dr. Wyeth, years later. Over the next several weeks and as the leaves turned, the “Wizard” assembled his strike force at Jackson, Tennessee, making ready for his mission against the Johnsonville supply depot, his last great raid of the war. By October 21, Hood’s main force occupied Gadsden, Alabama. There, in conference with his nominal superior Lt. Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard, the veteran laid



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 187

out his plans to cross the Tennessee River at Guntersville, Alabama, and then destroy the railroad bridges and depot at Bridgeport, before sweeping into central Tennessee. This approved trek began the next day, but learning that his proposed crossing site was well guarded, Hood switched to Decatur further downstream. There placement of heavy shore batteries, submarine mines in passable channels, and a portable pontoon train would allow him to cross unimpeded by Federal gunboats. Just as scouts and other intelligence sources revealed Hood’s advance, Forrest’s move toward Tennessee was noticed by other Federal authorities, who began making their own preparations. The Southern cavalryman himself briefly wondered if Union troops would, as during his recent sojourn, respond against him from several directions. Yankee cavalry patrols in western Tennessee had, however, recently decreased as more riders were sent to North Alabama to watch for Hood along the Upper Tennessee. Still, as in the past, the sheer number of Forrest sighting reports coming into army posts and naval bases throughout the area actually helped mask the Confederate’s mission. As early as October 12, Acting Master Gilbert Morton’s General Thomas, having been assigned by Lt. Moreau Forrest to the area between Whitesburg and Decatur, was requested to steam up and beyond Whitesburg, gaining intelligence. She was joined by Capt. Naylor’s army gunboat Stone River. Three days later, Morton informed Brig. Gen. Granger at Decatur that Hood’s army was marching toward a projected crossing point at Caperton’s Ferry. Army riders confirmed the gunboat report. The volunteer officer promised to depart his anchorage at Larkinsville and proceed up toward the danger spot, hoping to arrive before midnight. Orders were left for the General Grant to follow as soon as she arrived. Morton’s message was passed from Granger to Maj. Gen. Thomas at Nashville, who asked several of his subordinates to scout the mentioned areas with cavalry. He also asked that, while his horsemen rode toward Rogersville and Florence, that Ninth District gunboats patrol the river as far as Waterloo and Eastport. Having ordered his own scout, Brig. Gen. Granger did not initially believe Morton, who sent additional reports that the Confederates were on the move. If Hood had as large a force as was being reported, in the general’s opinion, “the gunboats will do little toward stopping the crossing of the river.” The general was not impressed with the four craft leased to the USN. “They have no protection for their boilers,” he complained, “none indeed for any part of the boat.” He added that “any of them could be totally disabled by three batteries in 15 minutes.” Nevertheless, as he assured Thomas two days later, the gunboats were patrolling between Bridgeport and Decatur and the Eleventh District was cooperating with him “very cordially.” Sighting reports continued to pour in and, on October 19, Granger made his own reconnaissance, going all the way up the Tennessee to Bridgeport aboard the Stone River. Meanwhile, Morton was forced to report to Lt. Forrest that low water was holding up his arrival at Claysville Landing. As this fall Western campaign unfolded, the top leadership of the USN Mississippi Squadron changed, beginning with a move this day by Navy Secretary Gideon Welles. The unit was turned over to Acting RAdm. Samuel Phillips Lee, who had recently been relieved from command of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which was given to Porter.

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After Vicksburg

Hood’s main force departed Gadsden for Decatur on October 22. Granger, who by now appreciated that it was approaching, strengthened the town defenses as the General Thomas and Stone River stepped up their patrols. Two days later, the commander of the Whitesburg post reported 15,000 Rebels 20 miles inland and closing on the river. Aboard the General Thomas Acting Master Morton found the waters of the Upper Tennessee so low on October 25 that he was unable to patrol beyond Beard’s Bluff and could not go with safety below Whitesburg. The Stone River was below that community, where it was hoped Brig. Gen. Granger would use her to scout the Tennessee as far as Decatur. The navy craft, after stopping to “rail,” or pick up fence rails for fuel, continued toward Hobson’s Island, three miles below Whitesburg. During her reconnaissance Rebel cavalry were increasingly seen along the riverbank. Hood’s riders were disposed between Guntersville and Eastport along the river’s south bank. Water depth kept Lt. Forrest from sending other craft to the scene to participate in the reconnaissance. Demonstrating the time lag of Civil War communication, Maj. Gen. Thomas sent two telegrams to Lt. Forrest at Bridgeport on October 26 strongly requesting that the gunboats under his command be moved to Claysville and Fort Deposit. Once there, they were to assist Brig. Gen. Granger in defending the river fords and crossings at those points. In response to these wires, Forrest replied that both the General Grant and General Thomas were on the Tennessee at or near the points Thomas mentioned. The Grant was trying to sheer her way over the bars to rendezvous with the Thomas, but the river level was frustrating the effort. Attempts to get a third craft, probably the General Burnside, away from Bridgeport were stymied by the bar in the low river off that town. Hood arrived near the outskirts of Decatur that Wednesday and elements of his force attacked toward the Alabama town, but were beaten back. Brig. Gen. Granger wired Maj. Gen. Thomas asking that he once more petition Lt. Forrest to send help from Bridgeport. Unwilling to concede that the river level was down, Decatur’s defender argued that “a gunboat at Bridgeport [with] 500 men could be sent to Claysville in a few hours.” Although the navy could not help, Maj. Gen. Thomas did order two regiments down from Chattanooga. It “was a feeble reinforcement” wrote chaplain and Thomas biographer Thomas B. Van Horne in 1875. Later that night Granger’s defense was boosted to about 3,000 men when the Stone River tied up at the Decatur wharf and disgorged 200 more Ohio and Michigan reinforcements. The General Thomas slowly steaming up the Tennessee toward the scene of action was able to hear “heavy trains moving along the mountain roads all night.”12 Calling upon Maj. Gen. Thomas for additional reinforcements and concluding that Decatur was Hood’s target, Granger, himself short of men, nevertheless sent 250 soldiers to Whitesburg on the Stone River to conduct another, more precise reconnaissance. Fortification of Decatur intensified and 1,600 yards of rifle pits and defensive parapets were manned along with two forts, to say nothing of the gunboats. Hood spent October 27 encircling Decatur. That morning, Acting Master Morton informed Lt. Forrest at Bridgeport that the General Thomas was finally up the river near Fort Deposit and Beard’s Bluff. Off Hobson’s Island, a pair of Granger’s



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 189

scouts from Warrenton and Guntersville were taken aboard. The tired men confirmed that all of Hood’s main force was moving on Decatur. It rained heavily all during the preceding night. The downpour had some effect on the river level, allowing the Upper Tennessee to rise almost an inch. Taking advantage of this welcome development, Morton handed a courier his message to Lt. Forrest and cast off, expecting to make it to Whitesburg by nightfall. During the night of October 27, Army of Tennessee units moved to the south edge of the river to the right of Decatur and began to encircle the town while others established two batteries at different locations on the riverbank about 1,500 yards from the principal Federal defenses. The Rebel emplacements, of four and six guns, were linked to each other and their main line by a chain of rifle pits. Although fog made the darkness more ghostly, Brig. Gen. Granger, having learned of the enemy cannon, ordered a small earthwork set up on the north side of the river opposite the Confederates where he emplaced a section of his own. When the fog lifted, the battle was joined as Granger boldly attacked Southern rifle pits near the river. Combat swayed back and forth on the right of Decatur all morning. Over on the left, the Union battery set up in the dark, joined by the Stone River, engaged the Confederate guns, soon catching defending Rebel riflemen in a crossfire. About noon, the Stone River was ordered to run by the enemy’s battery, in much the same fashion Rear Adm. Porter’s fleet had passed Vicksburg in April 1863. The converted transport made it by without damage and took a position above to fire against the rear of the enemy emplacements. The General Thomas arrived in midafternoon and rendezvoused with the Stone River. Brig. Gen. Granger now directed both boats to bombard the Southern battery, in conjunction with the ­­shore-based field pieces. The crossfire chased many Rebel gunners from their cannon, two of which were dismantled. During that shoot, the two gunboats dropped down the river until they were immediately opposite the Confederate emplacements, no more than 500 yards away. Both then opened with their broadside guns. “Their guns were most admirably served,” Granger later reported, so that it was “impossible for men to withstand this attack.” One shell from the Stone River reportedly exploded a caisson, killing 17 graycoats. Over the next half hour, the two Federal vessels poured shot, shell, and canister onto the Confederate position. The range was gradually decreased to 300 yards. Abreast the battery, the General Thomas was hit four times, with one bolt passing through the hull, one through the wheelhouse, and two entering the cabin. As the naval fire intensified, Rebel cannoneers and crews deserted their pieces, with many fleeing to the riverbank to seek the protection of large trees at the water’s edge. “Many bodies,” the District of Northern Alabama commander later wrote, “were afterward found in the river.” Though hit a number of times, the two gunboats suffered few casualties, losing two killed (one each) and 11 wounded. Capt. Morton and Naylor were praised in official dispatches for the skillful manner in which they handled their craft and even for “continuing to shell the crowd of fugitives as they fled back from the river.” The fighting at Decatur died down in late afternoon on October 28, by which time the Confederate commander decided to call the fight a demonstration and turn

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After Vicksburg

the Army of Tennessee west toward Tuscumbia, on the south side of the Tennessee, where a safe crossing could be made below the Muscle Shoals beyond the reach of naval craft. Passing the location of the recently engaged but quiet Rebel battery, the General Thomas and the Stone River landed at Decatur. The former, however, was quickly dispatched to shadow the movement of enemy cavalry along the riverbank. As Acting Master Morton noted in a message to Maj. Gen. Thomas, he “fired canister [6 shots] at them, and could see them running through the cornfield.” In the dense fog present at 3 a.m. on October 29, long after the gunboat had tied up for the night, the Army of Tennessee removed the offending battery from the riverbank near Decatur. As it became increasingly evident that the Rebels were gone, the General Thomas and Stone River returned to their patrols as the sun rose. The mission was only five minutes old when Southern cavalry attacked the General Thomas as she slowly cruised upstream. Howitzer fire was returned with unknown effect and, by 7:30 a.m., the tinclad reached Whitesburg, where she ran aground on the bar. Halloween on the Upper Tennessee started auspiciously for the General Thomas when the Stone River arrived off the Whitestown bar. Making fast to the stern of the tinclad, the U.S. Army gunboat hauled her naval colleague off into deeper water. Rounding to, the Thomas started back to Decatur and, while passing above Triana, fired eight rounds of canister at a number of Confederate cavalry seen along the shore. The Eleventh District gunboats, joined by the Stone River, remained alert, continuing to monitor the Upper Tennessee during November as the storm clouds drifted north toward Nashville. During this time, several of the ­­purpose-built Bridgeport transports maintained Upper Tennessee communications with Chattanooga and further upstream to Knoxville. The question of reinforcements for Hood crossing the river remained constant while the possibility of local insurgents providing him aid and comfort remained. One of the most notorious Confederate sympathizers on Hood’s invasion path was Cauis G. Fennel, who lived with his sons on the south side of the Tennessee near Guntersville, Alabama. On the night of November 14, a landing party from the General Sherman was sent ashore, surrounded Fennel’s house, and moved in, capturing two Southern soldiers given shelter plus 33 bales of cotton. Also confiscated were all the cattle and hogs on the property. A few days later at dusk, a lookout aboard one of the tinclads spied what appeared to be suspicious activity again taking place at the Fennel homestead. A telescope revealed what appeared to be a Confederate officer; perhaps, he was leading a raiding party. The young man was, in fact, a wounded soldier attempting to reach his local residence, and being aided across the yard by the owner. As Fennel later reported, the “gunboat sneaked up without attracting our attention.” Given the noises made by approaching steamboats such seems rather ­­far-fetched, but, in any event, as Fennel continued, the boat “immediately opened fire with two ­­32-pounders.” The first shot was long, but the second landed between the men, making “a ditch that would hold a wagon and team.” Neither was, fortunately for them, killed. Hood continued to press into Tennessee. On November 25, Brig. Gen. Granger ordered the pontoon bridge at Decatur taken up. Protection for the engineers



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 191

Light draught steamers Missionary, Resaca, and Kingston. When USN Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch first visited Bridgeport, Alabama, in February 1864 to consult with army quartermaster engineers building river transports, he found two vessels under construction, one of which (here depicted) had already been named Missionary. This pair would be joined by eight others, including the Atlanta, Bridgeport, Lookout, Wauhatchee, Gunboat A and Gunboat B (which were reconfigured into the chartered USN craft General Thomas and General Burnside), and Resaca and Kingston, also shown here, as captured by the Hartford, Connecticut–based, photographers Taylor & Huntington in early 1865 (Library of Congress).

from Confederate sharpshooters while taking up the 15 pontoon boats was provided by army shore batteries and the tinclad General Grant. Shortly thereafter, the river crossing equipment was among the items found when Confederate Brig. Gen. Philip D. Roddy occupied the town. While the Southerners, like other soldiers in the region, sought to protect themselves against an intense cold spell, the General Grant

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After Vicksburg

frequently watched them from offshore. On December 12, she hurled 52 shells against Dixie positions around the town.13 While General Hood’s “demonstration” on Decatur was unfolding, Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his command had returned to Tennessee to assault Union logistics. Ignorant of “The Devil’s” movements, the gunboats of the Ninth and Tenth Districts, U.S. Mississippi Squadron, continued to patrol and convoy steamers on the Lower Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Forrest began his river interdiction by establishing an artillery trap reminiscent of that employed against Col. Hoge near Eastport in early October. Guns were unlimbered on the Lower Tennessee at Fort Heiman, near Fort Henry about 40 miles north of Johnsonville, and also a short distance away at Paris Landing. By October 30, they had compelled the surrender of the transports Mazeppa, Anna, and Venus and their biggest prize, the tinclad Undine, one of the gunboats involved in the Hoge episode. Reacting to reports of the captures even as Forrest had the Undine and Venus repaired, the USN halted river shipping from Paducah south and Acting RearAdm. Lee called up Lt. Cmdr. Fitch to lead a relief force toward Johnsonville.14 With his “Tennessee Navy” now operational, “The Devil” and his men began their trek up toward Johnsonville on November 1. Initially, the water route proved easier as heavy rains slowed ground progress. The next afternoon, Forrest’s flotilla ran into trouble. The Venus, faster than her consort, had, contrary to orders, pulled ahead of the Undine and moved out of range of the supporting horse artillery. Moving into a sharp bend in the stream off Green Bottom Bar, some six miles below Johnsonville, her luck ran out. Almost like a train running head-on ­­ toward a broken trestle, the steamer came into gun range of the Key West and Tawah. The Yankee tinclads had started a river reconnaissance from Johnsonville a half hour before this encounter, and it is quite probable that the tars on the opposing craft, professional and amateur, were equally surprised to see one another. Recovering quickly from any astonishment, Lt. Edward King’s two boats “made short work of Forrest’s sailors,” wrote Dr. Wyeth years later. In a ­­20-minute engagement, the Venus was badly damaged and, in an effort to avoid her capture or destruction, she was run ashore. There her officers and crew abandoned her, “without setting it on fire.” The Undine rounded to “and sought safety in flight,” moving, “with shot through her,” according to Lt. King, under the protection of the Rebel mobile field batteries. Heavy fog and mist and the unknown placement of the Southern guns prevented her pursuit. King, whose Key West had worked in tandem with the Undine earlier, sarcastically noted that “she went down river faster than ever before!” The prize Venus was significant and helped to raise Union morale. Not only was the transport taken intact, she had aboard Forrest’s two largest cannon (­­20-pounder Parrots), plus 200 rounds of ammunition and the freight from the Mazeppa. After running a gauntlet of musket fire at the head of Reynoldsburg Island, King’s two boats returned to Johnsonville with the Venus about 6:30 p.m. Running to the telegraph office, the task group boss wired Ninth District commander Lt. Cmdr. James Shirk to report the capture of the steamer and the escape of the gunboat. With the Confederates known to be just over five miles away, a more ominous note was also sounded: “All anxious about this place. Please send up more gunboats at once…. We won’t allow this place to fall into enemy’s hands, if our forces can prevent, but please send up more gunboats.”



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 193

By noon on November 3, as the Federal relief force made its way to the scene, Forrest’s cavalry and the Undine reached the vicinity of Reynoldsburg Island, three miles below Johnsonville. This atoll split the stream, forcing upward-bound ­­ steamer traffic into a narrow chute. Taking advantage of this navigational challenge, the Confederate general ordered artillery placed at the head and foot of the island, setting a new trap.15 In an effort to draw Lt. King’s tinclads from Johnsonville into an ambush, Undine, still loaded with grayclad troops, twice boldly sortied toward the Yankee depot. On each occasion, the Union officer was tempted to go after her, moving the Key West down a mile to a point where she came under intense volleys of musketry from the head of Reynoldsburg Island. Sensing great peril, the gunboat retired to the Johnsonville levee. In the end, it was the Tawah that was anchored as guardship, with her head downstream so as to command the channel with her ­­30-pounder Parrotts. Believing the outpost surrounded and that his boats might be subjected to a “commando” raid after dark, Lt. King once again wired his Paducah superior: “Send large fleet of gunboats at once, if possible.” He also advised the local assistant quartermaster in charge of the port’s logistical machinery of his fear and advised him what action should be taken with regards to the tied-up ­­ steamers in such an event. It was particularly recommended that the military officer make plans to fire all of the transports to keep them out of Forrest’s hands should the Rebels attempt to their seizure. The message was passed to all of the steamboat masters at the levee along with a warning not to destroy any of the boats until their takeover was imminent. While King was cautioning the supply masters, Gen. Forrest and his artillery

Railroad station and warehouse area at Johnsonville, Tennessee. Having sought a logistical center not subject to the annual low-water navigational difficulties of the Cumberland River, the Federals placed a port named for the Tennessee governor on the east bank of the Lower Tennessee River in Humphreys County below Paducah in early 1864. From there goods unloaded from steamers could speed east along the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad to Nashville for transshipment “direct to Knoxville, Chattanooga, or Atlanta as desired” (Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War, v. 4).

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After Vicksburg

chiefs reconnoitered the Benton County area 800 yards across the Tennessee from Johnsonville and started the preparations for placement of their cannon. The western shore was found to be quite boggy, with only a few bad roads, much underbrush, and a surprisingly wide variety of wildlife. Mountains of materiel could be seen on the docks and barges, and the Federals, who had no pickets across the river, did not know they were under close surveillance. When Capt. John Morton arrived on the scene early on the morning of November 4, he found attack preparations well advanced. While making a final check, he found the scene that unfolded below him animated with an “air of complete security.” Two gunboats with steam up were moored at the landing, while another plied directly beneath the bluff on which the Confederate Chief of Artillery stood. He could, he remembered, “almost have dropped a stone upon it.” Two freight trains were being made up, and a number of barges were being loaded by African Americans. Once the bombardment force was ready, Forrest had twelve cannon in five locations, interspersed by riflemen, within close proximity to the huge base and no enemy the wiser. None of the gunboats or transports at Johnsonville or downriver from them would be able to pass Reynoldsburg Island either to escape or to help.16 During the morning as Forrest finished preparations, the Federal gunboats attempting relief engaged in fiery but unproductive artillery battles with the Confederate batteries on the ends of Reynoldsburg Island. Perhaps as cover for batteries being finished across from Johnsonville, the former steamboat captains “Tennessee Navy” Commodore Col. William A. Dawson and the Undine’s captain, Julius F. Gracey, elected to run their tinclad up toward Reynoldsburg Island in another attempt to lure Lt. King’s gunboats under the shore batteries of their ­­land-based comrades. Located as she was on the river below Pilot Knob, the highest point on the west bank of the Tennessee, the former Union gunboat, after shooting a few shells toward Johnsonville, succeeded in provoking the Key West, Tawah, and Elfin to cast off after her. As the three Union craft chugged toward him, Gracey ordered his vessel backed downstream under the protection of the Southern land cannon. As the ­­soldier-captain later recalled in a statement quoted in John Latham’s book, his attention was drawn astern by wild gestures to the noise made by Ohio River pilot William Weaver in the pilothouse. Walking to the other side of the pilothouse, Gracey “saw a sight to make him gesticulate. There were seven of the latest Ohio River gunboats within easy gunshot range.” The Undine was caught between the guns of Fitch’s command and King’s task group, with the former blocking her escape downriver. Gracey and his crew now fully realized that they were expendable, but, just maybe before her loss, a price might first be extracted from the enemy. The Key West and Tawah came up with their former consort and, in a brief engagement, the amateur Confederate sailors were easily outmaneuvered. Still, Undine gave as good as she got—for a little while. Then, out of coal, Dawson and Gracey decided the game was over. As they ran the tinclad ashore under the Rebel batteries two and a half miles below Johnsonville, they knew they had accomplished something—the three Yankee boats were drawn within range of Southern gunners. When the Key West approached in pursuit of the Undine, she was taken under



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 195

The Reynoldsville trap. When Maj. Gen. Forrest prepared to attack Johnsonville in November 1864, he took the precaution of placing defensive batteries at either end of Reynoldsville Island, in the Tennessee River, above the town. Six gunboats sent down from Paducah to aid the Northern defenders were forced to battle these guns and were unable to intercede while Confederate cannon destroyed the base. This map was detailed by the relief task group leader, Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch, USN, after the engagement (ORN Series I, Vol. 26).

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After Vicksburg

USS Key West at Mound City with other Mississippi Squadron vessels. An excellent photograph of the fleet anchorage at Mound City taken in late 1863 gives us our only view of the Johnsonville light draught USS Key West (far left), seen with her fleet number “32” clearly painted on the side of her pilothouse. A “City Series” ironclad rests behind her, followed by the timberclad Tyler. Upwards of ten other tinclads are also in the shot (Naval History and Heritage Command).

fire by the ­­shore-based artillerists who pumped ­­30-odd shots at her in a space of 20 minutes, two-thirds ­­ for effect. The gunboat suffered ten hits through her upper works, seven through her berth deck, and two through the hull, with several guns disabled. Additionally, the Tawah’s hull began to open along her stem as the result of the concussion of her bow guns. Elfin was also damaged and the Tawah was largely ineffectual because her newly received ammunition, obtained from Nashville a day earlier, proved too large. The shelling forced King to back up and return above, with the Key West assisted by the Tawah. During that fight, Capt. Gracey and several men aboard the Undine spread ­­torn-up straw mattresses around the deck and engineering spaces, and sprinkled oil over them. The boat was headed hard for shore and struck a sandbar in three feet of water, about 75 yards from the head of the island. Gracey and several others applied the torches and jumped into the water. The gunboat burned down to the waterline, her magazine exploded spectacularly, and what was left of her lodged in the false bend above Reynoldsburg Island. The saga of the Tennessee River Navy was over. All of its surviving volunteer sailors were now soldiers once more. Aware of the gunfire clash between King and the Undine, the tinclads above Reynoldsburg Island pondered whether to attempt a rescue by pushing single file through the chute 50 yards away from Confederate guns. Aware of the danger, the decision was made to provide ­­long-range gunfire support. Hoping to save ammunition and suspecting that he could not “do much execution” due to the intervening heavy timber, Fitch, nevertheless, ordered his vessels to open a deliberate fire on the offending gunners. This heavy shoot continued without result “until about 11 o’clock, when it ceased.”17 Following the Undine engagement, Lt. King’s three gunboats retired to



10. The Tennessee River, 1864–1865 197

Johnsonville to protect the transports and supplies. Shortly before 2 p.m., the damaged Key West and Tawah, lashed together, moved to investigate a report that the enemy was “planting batteries directly opposite, also above and below, our warehouses and levee.” As they did so, ten hidden Confederate cannon, all carefully trained on them, “were discharged with such harmony that it could not be discerned there was more than one report—one heavy gun.” The cannonade that followed against the river craft and depot facilities was the “most terrific” the port quartermaster, Capt. Henry Howland, had ever witnessed and was accompanied by volleys of rifle fire. The Louisville Daily Journal later reported that the “great fury” with which the Rebels shelled the town “created a panic among the citizens and government employees.” Maj. Gen. Forrest observed that King’s gunboats (28 guns) and Fort Johnson (14 guns) returned fire and that about 50 guns were “thus engaged at the same time.” Like Howland, the “Wizard” found that “the firing was terrific.” When it was nearly dark, observers reported Johnsonville ablaze and that all of the boats along the levee were on fire. Via a dispatch boat to Paducah, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch reported to RAdm. Lee that Forrest’s shells “or our forces have undoubtedly destroyed everything.”18 When Forrest opened fire, the Key West and Tawah were headed toward a Tennessee River bend above Johnsonville. The peaceful scene changed, as Capt. Morton later put it, “as if a magician’s wand had been suddenly waved over it.” The cannonade “continued with one unceasing roar” and, according to Forrest, quickly disabled King’s two boats. “In fifteen minutes after the engagement commenced,” he remembered, they “were set on fire and made rapidly for the shore, where they were consumed.” While she was tied to several flatboats and attempted to return fire, the Elfin’s paddle wheel was disabled, making her a stationary target. Hit repeatedly, the “abandon ship” order was voiced and her crew sought safety. Then, a young man from Chicago, Spencer A. Wright, to quote the correspondent from his hometown newspaper, “walked on board with the greatest coolness, set it afire, threw a shovelful of coal into the magazine, and then left.” Abandoned and ablaze, the tinclad burned to the water’s edge. Forrest’s batteries, having disposed of the USN guard, “next opened upon the eight transports, and in a short time, they were in flames.” Among those thus destroyed were the Anna and the prize Venus. The Confederates did not know in real time that most of the transports and barges were purposefully put to the torch under the earlier contingency plan designed to prevent their capture. The 10-foot-high ­­ stacks of provisions stored in the open and on the levee, warehouses, and other facilities were shot up and, by nightfall, “the wharf for nearly one mile up and down the river presented one solid sheet of flame.”19 Less than 10 men all together on both sides were killed in action at Johnsonville. The Federal loss in material was estimated at $2.2 million, though one modern historian has estimated that, in terms of the ­­early-21st-century value of the dollar, the goods destroyed could not be duplicated for less than $20 million. Not counting the value of the Mazeppa, Forrest was proud of the fact that, during the course of this unique raid, he had destroyed four gunboats, numerous steamers and barges, the 33 artillery pieces on the navy warships, and quartermaster’s

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stores estimated at between 75,000 and 120,000 tons while capturing 9,000 pairs of shoes, a thousand blankets, and 150 prisoners. Because most of the depot’s goods plus the gunboats and transports were destroyed, “the work designed by the expedition” was substantially completed. Consequently, Maj. Gen. Forrest did not cross the river in force and capture Johnsonville. Pleased with their success, the Confederates marched away during the night “by the light of the enemy’s burning property,” continuing off to the southwest to join Gen. John Bell Hood, who had halted his invasion of Tennessee until a linkup could be effected. At Mound City before lunch, Acting RAdm. Lee sent the first of many wires to Maj. Gen. Thomas, announcing his assumption of squadron command and recapping what was known of the ­­Johnsonville-area activities. Most histories of Forrest’s bombardment suggest that the Union boats and supplies were destroyed too quickly. Admiral Mahan observed later that the gunboats were well handled, but could not stand up to the heavy guns firing upon them in the uncertain channel. Admiral Porter agreed on the bravery exhibited, but admitted the port would have been better defended had the boats been ironclads. Forrest, a master of placing the “skeert” into his enemy, outfoxed his opponents. “It was fear,” Thomas Van Horne, biographer of Maj. Gen. George Thomas, later admitted, “rather than necessity that caused this waste.” The attacking Southern troops hoped to sever Sherman’s supply lines, forcing him to abandon the forthcoming march across Georgia. The Yankee commander had, however, already assembled all of the supplies required for his sortie from Atlanta to Savannah. Indeed, in less than a week, he would cut himself off entirely from the north and “live off the land” of the Georgia countryside. He was not overly distressed when, in a message to Lt. Gen. Grant, he noted “that devil Forrest was down about Johnsonville making havoc among the gunboats and transports.” The real story of the Johnsonville operation was, for the South, one of an opportunity seized too late and, for the North, the loss of a facility that, in the end, didn’t matter all that much. Forrest’s audacity did not change the Northern logistical situation one iota, though it did further enhance the cavalryman’s legend. Johnsonville depot was not rebuilt; in fact, it would be abandoned on November 30, though its wreckage would not be cleaned up for months. As Hood approached, Maj. Gen. Thomas at Nashville could depend upon both the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and the Cumberland River. The episode was, however, a learning experience for Mississippi Squadron leadership, marking as it did the largest loss of light draughts in any single campaign of the Western war. In his response to Lee, Maj. Gen. Thomas requested that his watery defenses be bolstered with heavier units. Even after almost four years of war, the word “ironclad” still had magic. The next time the navy was placed into the arena with Forrest’s gunners, it would deploy several.20

11

Nashville, 1864–1865 While Nathan Bedford Forrest was away bustin’ Johnsonville, Gen. John Bell Hood’s advance into middle Tennessee was delayed by three weeks. After leaving the environs of unfriendly Decatur, Alabama, the Army of Tennessee moved west along the Upper Tennessee River to occupy Florence and Tuscumbia. There it paused to gather and insure its supplies and effect a linkup with Forrest’s returning cavalry. Simultaneously, Union Maj. Gen. George (“Old Pap”) Thomas was reinforced with several corps and cavalry. Among these would be the two divisions of XVI Corps assigned to the pursuit of Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, CSA, in Missouri. On November 12, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman cut himself off from the north and marched off toward the Atlantic. Two days later, 25,000 men from the Federal IV and XXIII Corps were at Pulaski to oppose Hood. Seven days later, Hood’s command started toward Columbia, Tennessee, planning to turn the Yankees out of Pulaski, which the Northern field commander, Maj. Gen. John Schofield, evacuated on November 22. The Yankees moved back toward Columbia, entrenching south of the Duck River, the indigenous Volunteer State stream which flowed west to a confluence with the Lower Tennessee near Johnsonville. Hood’s soldiers came upon Columbia five days later, at which point Schofield moved across the river, destroying its bridges. The gallant Southern campaigner, with help from Forrest and Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Lee among others, managed to turn the Federals over the next four days so that, by November 29, Schofield was nearly cut off, reaching Franklin only through good luck on November 30.1 The convergence of the blue- and ­­gray-uniformed soldiers in middle Tennessee, though occurring in late fall and early winter, was not unlike the coming of a summer thunderstorm to areas of the Volunteer State. Even today, the threatening clouds of such a local tempest can be seen well ahead of time by any attentive person, and most folks, after some residence, can almost tell how long it will be from first sightings of various thunderheads until the wind and rain arrives. Unlike the rapid thrust of a raider or guerrilla squall, the movement of the armies of Hood and Thomas was as ominous as such a gathering storm. Telegraph wires, scouts, patrols, shippers, journalists and civilians, like ­­modern-day electronic and communications media, all contributed to the pool of threat intelligence and assessment available for review. As Hood, Thomas, their lieutenants, and others near and far made and remade their observations and preparations for the military deluge on land, the sailors of the 199

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After Vicksburg

Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, USA. Having become commander of the Union Army of the Cumberland just before the Battle of Chattanooga, Thomas was also commander at Nashville during the campaign that ended in complete victory in December 1864. A modest man who worked well with the USN, he had at least five nicknames: “Pap,” “Rock of Chickamauga,” “Old Slow Trot,” “Slow Trot Thomas,” and “Sledge of Nashville.” ( Library of Congress)

Ninth and Tenth Districts, Mississippi Squadron, led by Acting RAdm. Samuel P. Lee, made every effort to control the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. The seamen knew a gale of Confederate iron was blowing and that it was their duty to help protect against it. Through close coordination with the army, the navy could best accomplish its duty by blockading the use of the twin rivers to Union purpose. Specifically, district vessels were tasked to prohibit their crossing or other use by Southern forces, to detect and, whenever possible, defeat Rebel movements, to guard and facilitate the continuing transfer of men and supplies, and above all to protect against Southern river counter-blockades. ­­ These goals included the protection of key ports and rendezvous as well as coordination with military quartermasters and railroad chiefs.



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 201

As November advanced, the riverine navy’s mission intensified. As historian Byrd Douglas later commented, the arrival of Maj. Gen. A. J. Smith’s army from Missouri remained “of utmost importance.” Nearly every steamer coming up the Cumberland brought a few advance units of Smith’s force. It now became obvious at both army and navy headquarters that a blocking assault on the Cumberland could be disastrous. If Maj. Gen. Forrest or one of his lieutenants could obstruct transportation there as he had on the Lower Tennessee, “it might result in the loss of the impending battle with Hood before it was fought.” The ­­on-scene Mississippi Squadron operational commanders and their army counterparts continued to lobby, directly and indirectly, for the buildup of local naval capacity; “above all,” this growth “indicates the respect that Thomas, Sherman and Lee had for Forrest.” In order to cope with powerful ­­Johnsonville-like rifled batteries the Confederates could be expected to erect along the Cumberland River, Acting RAdm. Lee wisely strengthened the Tenth District flotilla of Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch with ironclads, ordering the Carondelet and Neosho readied for service at Nashville.2 None of the local Union leadership could, however, know that the “devil’s role would be confined to support of Hood’s main force inland of the rivers. Only a small portion of Forrest’s command would threaten Cumberland transportation during the upcoming battle.”3 Through the month of November the Union divisions of Maj. Gen. Smith, fresh from their victory over Maj. Gen. Price at Westport on October 23, marched across Missouri to St. Louis. Early on November 24, Smith wired Paducah advising that lead elements of his corps were embarking for departure the next day. Hood was now threatening Columbia and according to Col. Henry Stone of Thomas’ staff, it had become “an open question whether he would not reach Nashville before the reinforcements from Missouri.” The watch for waterborne reinforcements got underway in earnest on both the Ohio and Cumberland. In addition to convoys guarded by the USN, numerous steamers operated independently on the Cumberland, a few with protection from the army gunboats Newsboy or Silver Lake No. 2. Near Cumberland City during the day, one of these lone sailors, the Nannie, was fired into by “guerrillas” hidden along the riverbank. About thirty rounds struck the boat, but no one was hurt and there was no damage. As preparations for impending battle intensified, 738 penniless evacuees from Nashville arrived at Louisville aboard the transports J. K. Baldwin and Irene. By the last week of November, the troop boats from St. Louis and Acting Rear Adm. Lee’s escorts were converging upon Smithland, Kentucky, at the head of the Cumberland River. Ninth District commander Lt. Cmdr. James Shirk, being too ill to participate in the upcoming campaign, was temporarily superseded by the Tenth District chief. So it was that Le Roy Fitch now assumed tactical command of the USN ironclads Carondelet and Neosho, as well as the heavy gunboat Peosta, the tinclads Moose (flagboat), Fairplay, Silver Lake, Brilliant, Springfield, Reindeer, and Victory, plus at least one auxiliary. As the river’s historian Douglas confirmed, “these constituted the greatest fleet of gunboats ever to appear on the Cumberland during the War.” Although it is not generally recognized, Fitch could, if desired, also call upon the two local army gunboats. Although he did not hold elevated rank, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch now had more

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After Vicksburg

operational authority over more heavy vessels than any Mississippi Squadron junior officer since Capt. Henry Walke commanded the fleet’s lower division at Vicksburg in the fall of 1862. The Carondelet and Neosho, together with the last of Smith’s transports, arrived at Smithland early on November 29. Lt. Cmdr. Fitch and his subordinate captains, in accordance with orders from Acting RAdm. Lee, quickly organized a water advance to the Tennessee capital and communicated the sailing order to the participating transport captains and affected military personnel. Responsibility for the welfare of the military individuals aboard the ­­soldier-laden steamers would, as it had during the trip over from St. Louis, lay with the senior officers aboard the transports Albert Pearce and Wananita, who, in turn, sent general orders for the Cumberland journey to their subordinates. All were to proceed carefully in strict observance of fleet steaming orders as well as those for the convoy received from the USN. No one wanted a repeat of the loss of the transport W. L. Ewing, which had struck a snag south of St. Louis and sunk, though fortunately not before all of the troops aboard were successfully transferred to nearby boats. Nashville army headquarters was notified that the transports would steam from Smithland as soon as they had coaled. Maj. Gen. Thomas was also pleased to inform Lt. Gen. Grant at City Point, Virginia, that the usual “skert” of Maj. Gen. Forrest, was evaporating. Although there was no positive news that the Confederate “devil” had departed Tennessee, he was “closely watched,” and a campaign against Hood would be launched as soon as possible “whether Forrest leaves Tennessee or not.” At 10 a.m., just over two hours following the arrival of the ironclads, the Moose

USS Silver Lake. In primarily convoy-escort and patrol service since January 1863, the veteran Cumberland River tinclad Silver Lake participated in a number of actions prior to the 1864 Nashville campaign, including fights at Second Fort Donelson (Feb. ’63), Florence, Alabama (March ’63), and Palmyra, Tennessee (April ’63). Sold out of service at war’s end, she would be lost on the Red River of Louisiana a year later (Library of Congress).



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 203

started up the Cumberland, leading the grand parade. Among the nearly 60 troop steamers joining the procession were the Albert Pearce, Havana, James Raymond, Julia, Lilly Martin, Maggie Hayes, Victory, Marmora, Camelia, Silver Cloud, Arizona, J. F. McComb, Mercury, Financier, Lilly, New York, Lady Franklin, Pioneer, Magnet, Prima Donna, Wananita, America, Thomas E. Tutt, Mars, Omaha, Olive, Silver Lake, Kate Kearney, Spray, Mollie McPike, Prairie State, and another Victory. Among these were a significant number of craft impressed “from numerous small steamboat runners who lacked the means or influence to rescue their boats.” Interspersed among the transports were the tinclad gunboats, acting as both shepherds and, on occasion, as towboats. Every available light draught of the Ninth and Tenth District was assigned to this expedition, except the Paw Paw and Peosta. The leading Neosho and the Carondelet, which brought up the rear, made their best speed; the sureness of their size and armament, if not their immediate proximity to the steamers, made them a viable “distant cover,” a term later used for Allied battleship protection of convoys in the Atlantic during World War II. As during the previous two years of Cumberland convoys, group running was governed by an elaborate system of ­­long-and-short boat whistles based on Morse code, the various loud blasts of which denoted such things as stations and distances to be maintained, fueling opportunities, or enemy sightings. Trailing huge clouds of smoke from over 100 chimneys, the steamboat procession, stretched out over miles of river length, proceeded without incident throughout the day and into the evening. This was the largest troop convoy escorted to Nashville since that of Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger at the beginning of 1863. Numerous steamers were passed moving downstream and for the most part the weather was pleasant.4 On November 30, Gen. Hood’s army, numbering something less than 16,000 effectives, attacked the 22,000 entrenched Union defenders of Franklin, north of Columbia, losing 6,252 men, including six general officers killed. The ­­five-hour battle cost the Northerners approximately 2,300 soldiers. Writing on “the five tragic hours” years later, historian Fisher opined that “Hood had virtually destroyed his army.” Before midnight, Maj. Gen. Schofield started yet another forced march, leaving his dead and wounded on the battlefield. All in the XXIII Corps who were able set off for Nashville, 18 miles away, arriving by noon the next day. There behind fortified lines they were joined by Maj. Gen. Frank Stanley’s IV Army Corps, led by Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Wood. As the day wore on, more men arrived from various Tennessee locations, including Maj. Gen. James B. Steedman’s Provisional Detachment of the District of the Etowah from Chattanooga. As the Franklin bloodbath continued, the ­­stretched-out Smith convoy puffed up the Cumberland. The heavier craft steamed more slowly and were often overtaken by lighter units; all were regularly passed by vessels traveling in the other direction. Among the boats making the swiftest upriver passage was the U.S. Army’s ­­400-bed hospital boat D. A. January, en route to Louisville with injured soldiers. In Nashville while en route to a reception, Col. James F. Rusling, Acting Chief Quartermaster of the Department of the Cumberland, stopped by to see Maj. Gen. Thomas. The latter happily showed his supply officer a telegram from Schofield claiming to have defeated Hood at Franklin and reporting his withdrawal. Was there news of Smith, Thomas wondered. No, Rusling replied, though he had dispatched a steamer (probably the army gunboat Newsboy) earlier in the afternoon to hurry the

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fleet. “Well,” the commanding general replied, “if Smith does not get up here tonight, he will not get here at all; for tomorrow, Hood will strike the Cumberland and close it against all transports.” It was around midnight when the first couple of troop transports, encouraged ahead by Rusling’s steamer and speeding in advance, came to off the city levee. Maj. Gen. Thomas was in a meeting with Maj. Gen. Schofield, who had himself just arrived, and Brig. Gen. Wood at Department of the Cumberland headquarters in the St. Cloud Hotel when the news arrived. The quartermaster colonel had hurried back from his engagement and burst into the room to announce that Smith had at long last come. Rusling, like many other Nashvillians, had heard the joyful whistle calls of the advance steamers. Not long thereafter, the veteran infantryman Smith walked in and was immediately given a bear hug of welcome by the usually undemonstrative Thomas. Following brief handshakes, Rusling departed about 1 a.m., leaving his four superiors on their knees reviewing maps spread over the floor. With whistles and horns sounding in a continuous din to alert all that the ­­long-awaited reinforcement was at hand, the remaining elements of the nautical procession slowly paddled the final few miles to the Nashville wharves. The Moose escorted in the final boats with 5,000 men just before late-afternoon ­­ darkness. The ironclads Neosho and Carondelet tied up to the bank below Fitch’s tinclad about 8 p.m. With the exception of Lt. Cmdr. Fitch and a few senior army officers, all of the soldiers and sailors remained aboard their boats overnight. An hour later, the Nashville chief telegraphed Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck at Washington, D.C.: “I have two ironclads here, with several gunboats, and Commander Fitch assures me that Hood can neither cross the Cumberland or blockade it. I therefore think it best to wait here until Wilson can equip all his cavalry.” In one of the more famous quotes of the campaign, Thomas went on to size up his enemy’s chances: “If Hood attacks me here, he will be more seriously damaged than he was yesterday; if he remains…, I can whip him and will move against him at once.”5 The Cumberland River leading into Nashville, “being of fine stage of water,” remained busy over the next two days as steamers brought in additional goods, men and horses. When not themselves being replenished in supplies or coal, Fitch’s light draughts were constantly in motion. The Neosho and Carondelet remained tied to the bank, their watch officers duly noting every witnessed activity in their logbooks. Meanwhile, newspapermen reported the obvious regarding the USN mission: “The Tennessee River has been abandoned for the present and the attention of the navy is directed to keeping open the communication with Nashville via the Cumberland.” Meanwhile, Gen. Hood’s 25,000 men were almost at Nashville. Hoping to draw Thomas out of heavily fortified Nashville and into open battle, Hood ordered a demonstration 35 miles away against the Union garrison at Murfreesboro. This Rebel gambit would remove one infantry division and all but a few of the men Thomas feared most—those from Forrest’s Cavalry Corps. The rest of the Southern army soon began establishing its line. Unhappily for the Rebels, Hood’s ­­four-mile line when in place was three miles shorter than the outer defenses built by the Nationals around the Tennessee capital. Specifically, the line halted two miles from the Cumberland River in the east and four in the west, leaving four of the eight roads into the city wide open.



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 205

To help alleviate this deficiency, the 1,500 men of Brig. Gen. James Chalmer’s division were ordered by Forrest to operate in the unclaimed spaces that ran about four miles south between the Cumberland River below Nashville and Hood’s anchor on the Hillsboro Pike. Specifically, the men were to patrol the Charlotte, Harding, and Hillsboro pikes on the left flank of the army. As part of this deployment, Chalmers now made one of the most important dispositions of any Rebel commander in the Nashville campaign. Late in the afternoon, Col. David C. Kelley was sent to blockade the Cumberland. Kelley positioned 300 men of Col. Edmund W. Rucker’s brigade and two ­­10-lb. Parrott rifles of Lt. H. H. Briggs’ section of Capt. T. W. Rice’s artillery near Davidson’s house on a ridge beyond a little creek that emptied at Davidson’s Landing into the Cumberland opposite Bell’s Mills. The Mills and Bell’s Landing lay four miles below the town by land. By river, they were, depending upon who is providing directions, anywhere from 12 to 18 below. The spots were (and are) located at the nearest point to the city in the large bend in the Cumberland that comes nearly back of Nashville. Soon reinforced by two 12-lb. ­­ howitzers from Capt. E. S. Walton’s battery of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans, Kelley had a pair in a lower battery and two in an upper emplacement, which by this point in the river war was the common Confederate ­­anti-shipping artillery deployment. Marksmen were detailed in support from points in the hills above and below the artillery. This arrangement would allow the “fighting parson” to be largely successful in his mission, even though he had just missed the biggest target of all—A. J. Smith’s troop convoy. Still, as historian Byrd Douglas noted, Kelley in the days Lt. Col. David C. (“Parson”) Kelley, CSA. ahead proved “what even a small force “The Parson,” a confidant of Maj. Gen. in gifted hands could do to supply lines Nathan B. Forrest, was a physician, ordained Methodist minister, and an accomplished and all the fine gunboats sent up the foe of Federal river traffic. Kelly not only Cumberland.” In a 10 p.m. wire to Maj. Gen. Halplayed havoc with Col. Hodge’s transports and the logistics base at Johnsonville, Ten- leck, “Old Pap” Thomas outlined his nessee, in October–November 1864, but defensive plans for Nashville. As part blockaded the Cumberland River for two of that arrangement, the ironclads and weeks against a pair of ironclads in Decemgunboats were so disposed as to preber. One of the 1873 founders of Vanderbilt University, he ran unsuccessfully for Ten- vent Hood from crossing the Cumbernessee governor in 1890 (Wyeth, Life of Gen. land. “Captain Fitch,” he added, “assures me that he can safely convoy steamers Nathan Bedford Forrest, p. 498a).

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up and down the river.” According to Durham, Thomas had two major concerns about the river: that Confederates be neither able to cross it further above and get behind him nor to cut off his waterborne supplies from Louisville with mobile artillery. Neither the general nor his top local navy man knew for certain that Kelley was even then endeavoring to ensure the latter, though rumors were beginning to come in that the Confederates were putting up cannon along the river in preparation for a night attack. In addition, all of the rivermen in town knew conditions down toward Clarksville. Although the river at Nashville was five feet deep, “water in the [Harpeth] shoals is scant and falling.”6 While the tinclads plied the Cumberland guarding steamers, Nashville army headquarters remained nervous concerning Hood’s intentions and grew concerned about the possibility that the Rebels might attempt to cross the Cumberland above Nashville. Feeling it unsafe to trust the courier line between Gallatin and Carthage for information, Maj. Gen. Thomas requested Fitch, if the river level permitted, to institute a patrol to Carthage “with at least one ironclad and two gunboats.” Only the tinclad Springfield was available to undertake the spy mission, along with the military’s gunboat Newsboy. That afternoon, the USQMD-chartered ­­ towboat N. J. Bigley was convoyed upstream by the two to Young’s Point, 100 miles above Nashville near Hartsville. The Bigley was to retrieve a number of workers from the area, while the warships noted Rebel activities. While those craft paddled back and forth on the river, Col. Kelley’s battery, further down, made its inaugural attacks. Responding to warning shots from the bluffs above the Cumberland, the contract steamers Prairie State and Prima Donna put into the bank, tied up and surrendered themselves into Confederate hands. Immediately after, the two boats, loaded with grain and cavalry animals, were taken and 56 aboard the two were made prisoner. Grayclad soldiers scrambled aboard and led off almost 200 horses and mules; they also pressed “into service the colored women on board who were employed as cooks and chambermaids” to help “liberate” items of value and to scatter and destroy the grain. The naval supply steamer Magnet was fired into as she passed the first battery and was hit several times. Unable to escape the second one below, she was run into shore and tied up at a point about eight miles below Hyde’s Ferry. In darkness, her captain was able to make his way back to Nashville and warn Lt. Cmdr. Fitch that the Confederates had struck the river and planted multiple batteries on its south side across from the Mills. Even though it was very cloudy, threatening more rain, Fitch immediately determined to launch a night strike to wrest the two captured boats back from the enemy and notified Maj. Gen. Thomas of developments. At 9:30 p.m. the Neosho, Brilliant, Fairplay, Reindeer, and Silver Lake got up steam and followed the Moose to the attack. Coming upon the Carondelet, which veteran now replaced the monitor and Brilliant, the boats steamed on in this order: Carondelet, Fairplay, Moose, Reindeer, and Silver Lake. The light draught quartet was about to engage in the most significant action by units of their class during the entire Nashville campaign. At 12:30 a.m. December 4, as the ironclad and four mosquito boats approached Bell’s Mills “perfectly quiet, with no lights visible” their hands were called to quarters. Aboard the tinclads, captains and pilots made close observation from their pilothouses. Down on the gundecks, the eight-men ­­ of each 24-pounder ­­ crew looked to



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 207

their executive officer for orders and for the young boys, or “powder monkeys,” that brought them ammunition from the magazine. They did not have long to wait. Continuing darkened and lugubrious, the Carondelet, closely followed by the Fairplay, steamed toward Kelley’s batteries. The night was cool, cloudy and devoid of natural light and hence the Confederates did not spot the Yankee craft, even though one was as big as a house. About 12:45 a.m., the Carondelet opened with a hail of grape and canister as she passed the main Rebel camp in a hollow on the south side of the river opposite Bell’s Mills. As her guns came to bear, a number of the men aboard could clearly see the Prairie State and Prima Donna tied up at the bank at Hillsboro Landing, two miles below. As soon as the Carondelet started the fight, Kelley’s musketmen and cannoneers directed heavy fire into all of the boats. Rebel reception was, in the words of Lt. Henry Glassford, “rapid and warm.” When the ironclad initiated the battle, the Fairplay was a little below the upper battery, with the Moose abreast of it, the Reindeer about 50 yards above, and the Silver Lake behind. Carondelet steamed slowly by the lower battery. After passing, she rounded to and came up within about 300 yards of the Confederates, fired a few shots, then passed up abreast, before dropping back again. The Southerners returned the ironclad’s fire for about 20 minutes before falling back; Carondelet pumped occasional

First battle of Bell’s Mills, December 4, 1864. On December 3, 1864, Lt. Col. David Kelley’s men attacked three steamers headed towards Clarksville, capturing two and damaging the third off Bell’s Mills in the Cumberland River at Nashville. A USN relief force soon thereafter steamed to the scene. In fighting after midnight led by the veteran “City Series” ironclad Carondelet supported by four tinclads, all three transports were recovered and refreshed (courtesy Mark Zimmerman).

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shells toward the last known Rebel locations until 2:30 a.m. When her gunners took stock of the magazine later in the morning, it would be found that 26 rounds had been expended. The thinly protected Fairplay could not possibly stand up to Kelley’s field guns and made no offensive effort to do so. Acting in concert with the ironclad, her job was to get quickly past the Rebels and recapture the transports at Hillsboro Landing. She fired rapidly in passing and turned the bend below out of range. The veteran tinclad did not get by entirely unscathed, being hit twice, though neither shell exploded. The smoke from the guns and chimneys, combined with steam and the darkness of a starless night, quickly cut visibility for the mosquito boats. In this most literal “fog of war,” the flagboat, in the narrow river bend, was hidden from the craft above and below her. The smoke was so thick that, occasionally, the river surface could not be seen from their upper decks. The pilots and officers could see virtually nothing and the fear of collision became palpable, particularly aboard the Moose and Reindeer. Fortunately, those two were able to maneuver away from catastrophe, working their guns “with marked rapidity and precision.” A tempting target, the Moose at one time lay at a spot in the river not over 75 to 80 yards wide and directly under the Southern guns. Although the musketry along the bank and on the hillside, was rather “annoying,” the enemy artillery fire, though rapid, was not very telling because it was not well aimed. Still, Fitch later admitted it was a miracle “that amid so many shots and volleys of musketry, we should escape without the loss of a single man and no injury [i.e., damage—MJS] to the boats.” In fact, the three 12-lb. ­­ shells that hit the flagboat were all duds, though one, had it not lodged while passing downward, would have exited out through her bottom. The other two tinclads, Reindeer and Silver Lake, were also engaged, but were not as heavily handled as the Moose. The Confederates overshot the former while the latter did not get close enough to actually fight the batteries. Still, the latter was able to fire six rounds of canister and that helped keep the musketry “silent along the bank above.” Perhaps this explains how Landsman Rowland S. True confused the actions of December 4 and 6 in his later account. Still, the Pennsylvanian witnessed what he later called “a grand display of fireworks.” He would always remember the “thundering of the mighty guns, the shells screeching through the air back and forth, from one side to the other; sometimes bursting in the air, sometimes in the water throwing the water high in the air.” This Bell’s Mills engagement, the first of several, was not a great victory for either side. It is true that Fitch’s task group was able to recapture the two steamers before they were destroyed. The gunboatman claimed his boats drove the Rebel guns back from the river and that it was his intervention which forced Kelley to destroy most of the prized grain before it could be transported and to free some of their crews. RAdm. Porter afterwards attributed the success to the “great judgement and coolness” of the vessels’ management. Most Southern participants attribute the silence to the fact that “Kelley’s artillery ammunition was, unhappily, exhausted.” In any event, the thunder of the guns had ceased by 2:30 a.m. and the Union craft returned to Nashville via Hyde’s Ferry, arriving in late afternoon. The night fight at Bell’s Mills was something of a tradeoff, but, in the end, the Rebels stayed away for less than a day before returning to tightly close the Cumberland



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 209

west of the city. News of this development quickly spread as far as Paducah and Smithland and, by the time Fitch’s gunboats docked, river traffic toward Nashville had been halted. Not to be forgotten in the excitement of the Bell’s Mills rescue, however, was the joint ­­army-navy expedition above Nashville begun the previous day. The N. J. Bigley, the Springfield, and the U.S. Army gunboat Newsboy reached Young’s Point, near Hartsville, about 11 a.m. Sunday morning. There the Bigley took aboard a party of timbercutters and joined the other two boats in returning to the Tennessee capital. 1st Lt. S. H. Stevens of the Chicago Board of Trade Battery, Illinois Volunteers, aboard the Newsboy, reported that the enemy had not been seen and there was no evidence that “he had been upon the river.” These largely unreported waterborne reconnaissance missions would continue. While Forrest moved toward Murfreesboro and the defenses of both sides were improved around Nashville, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch conferred on a new plan to test the strength of the Rebel positions near Bell’s Mills. He, together with chief pilot John Ferrell, would embark the heavily protected Neosho to lead the assault, backed up by Carondelet. If their attack was successful, Lt. Glassford would then convoy a number of waiting transports on toward Clarksville. While this large group was below, the Springfield and Brilliant would steam into the Upper Cumberland to rendezvous with troops under Brig. Gen. J .H. Hammond, the Louisville and Nashville RR guardian, to check out a report on Rebel cavalry said to be crossing that stream at Carthage.7 The first heavy daylight ship-shore ­­ slugfest of the Nashville campaign began at the banker’s hour of 9 a.m. on December 6 when the Federal boats started down, with the merchantmen interspersed between the gunboats. The monitor Neosho led the column, followed by the stern-wheel ­­ transport Metamora; the tinclads Moose and Reindeer, lashed together; the ­­stern-wheelers Prima Donna and Arizona; the ­­side-wheelers J. F. McComb and Mercury; the tinclad Fairplay; the ­­stern-wheelers Financier and Lilly; the ­­side-wheelers New York and Lady Franklin; the tinclad Silver Lake; the ­­side-wheelers Pioneer and Magnet; and the ironclad Carondelet. The parade continued peacefully past Hyde’s Ferry and Robertson’s Island until 11:15 a.m., when the Neosho’s lookouts spied a large Confederate force nearly opposite Bell’s Mills apparently waiting for them. The Southern gunners and riflemen, replenished and ready for a fight, had been reinforced with two ­­12-lb. howitzers from Col. Jacob B. Biffle’s 19th Tennessee Cavalry Regiment. All six fieldpieces wasted no time in opening upon the monitor from their protected emplacements behind the spurs of hills. At this point, the Reindeer untied and moved back upstream with the nine transports while the slow-running ­­ Neosho returned fire. The monitor paddled abreast of the lower battery, stopped, rounded to, and steamed back until abreast of the middle battery, which was nearly midway between the upper and lower emplacements. Having come to about 20 to 30 yards offshore in a good position to employ her ­­anti-personnel shells, the dark ironclad spat grape and canister at Lt. Col. Kelley’s gunners from her two giant ­­11-inch cannon. As he reported later, Fitch, who had never been in action aboard an ironclad before,8 had “great faith in the endurance of the Neosho,” and believed this duel would certainly “test her strength.” The battle between the rifled cannon ashore and the giant Dahlgren smoothbores afloat raged on for the next two and a half hours. Neosho’s turret fired slowly

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Brookmeade Greenway, Nashville. In 1864, the Cumberland River was narrower than it is today. Here one looks north toward the former location of the Bell’s Mills grist mills from an overlook located at the approximate location of the Lt. Col. David C. Kelley’s middle Confederate anti-shipping battery during the December Battle of Nashville (courtesy Mark Zimmerman).

and deliberately and was able to scatter the grayclad infantry and sharpshooters with little difficulty. The elevated Confederate cannon were another matter and could not be hit from the angle of the river. The graycoat gunners poured a “terrific fire” at the Union gunboat, demolishing all perishable items on her deck, including the flag and signal staffs, leaving the National flag drooped over the wheelhouse. Eventually the monitor’s summer pilothouse was hit and fell over the fighting pilothouse, obstructing the view of Fitch, Lt. Howard, and the pilots. Unable to see much, the battle stopped and she had to withdraw. As Stanley Horn put it 90 years later, Kelley was “doing good work and thoroughly enjoying himself with his guns on the river bank.” As the Union ironclad steamed past the upper battery and while yet under cannon and musket fire, two men scrambled out of the fighting pilothouse and tied the colors to the stump of the main signal staff, the highest mast remaining. Both won the Congressional Medal of Honor for their bravery. Moving out of range in the bend, the warship joined the remainder of her task group, most tied at the bank near Robertson’s Island. While tars “cleared all the rubbish off of the Neosho’s deck,” including the shambles of the summer pilothouse, the top officers debated whether or not to reengage. Realizing that the ironclads could not break the blockade in the daylight remaining, the civilian steamers were ordered



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 211

Second battle of Bell’s Mills, December 6, 1864. Two days after the steamer rescue, the monitor Neosho, accompanied by the Carondelet and two tinclads, led the three vessels back upriver only to find the Bell’s Mills batteries considerably strengthened. Despite heavy firing by both ironclads, Kelley could not be dislodged and succeeded in forcing the naval force to return to port (Harper’s Weekly, December 31, 1864).

back to Nashville. As the light draughts and their charges steamed off, the USN attack plan was completed. The third round of Fitch’s match vs. Kelley opened at 4:30 p.m. when the Neosho steamed below the Confederate emplacements, rounded to, came back, and stopped in midstream as before, about 30 yards off the beach. Having drawn Rebel fire on her way down, the monitor easily succeeded in getting Kelley’s men to show their locations to the Carondelet, which now joined in a spirited shelling. Unfortunately, the Union warships together had no great advantage as the high enemy position allowed only one boat to engage the batteries at a time with any effect. That effect was minimal as the ironclads were forced to elevate their guns over the banks to clear them, thus missing the grayclads. Still, the Southern response was less than furious. Years later, Landsman True of the Silver Lake related a story he had heard of how, at one point, a canister shell from the Neosho wiped out an entire Rebel gun crew save for one man. That fellow “pluckily loaded his gun and returned the fire alone.” After about an hour as dusk launched another cold and this time cloudy night, the Neosho steamed up again, but was only saluted by two Confederate cannon as she passed and none as she continued. The Carondelet followed her upriver to the city, making fast at the end of the tinclad line. From what they could see, all hands and nearby witnesses marveled that the Neosho had been struck over a hundred times in the day’s two battles, “but received no injury whatever.” In the most intense big gun duel of the campaign, “some six or eight men in the turret of the Neosho were

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somewhat bruised and scratched in the face by a shell striking the muzzle of one of the guns and exploding.” All other casualties were “too trivial to mention.” It was not publically admitted that an unexploded Parrott shell was found in Neosho’s powder magazine. A century later, the city’s respected historian, Walter Durham, opined that “the halt to navigation added to the siege mentality that recurrently threatened soldiers and civilians alike in Nashville.” Later, another, Mark Zimmerman, pointed out the irony. The water level in the Cumberland near and over Harpeth Shoals was dropping rapidly. Even had the steamers gotten through—or had Kelley not been near Bell’s Mills—it is probable that they would have been forced back before reaching Clarksville.9 The Brilliant, sent above Nashville to assist Brig. Gen. Hammond, returned to the city on December 7, while the Springfield remained near Carthage. Crews of the two boats had won that officer’s praise for their efficiency in facilitating the army “scout through the country as far as Lebanon.” No enemy had been sighted on the riverbank from 40 miles above Carthage. After three engagements with Lt. Col. Kelley’s gunners, the gunboatmen, as the weather turned colder, conceded him control of Cumberland navigation—at least for the moment. Until Thomas was ready for a major attack, efforts would be made to induce the wily Confederate into remaining just where he was, rather than perhaps chasing him off to a potentially worse spot, say anywhere closer to the Nashville levees. So it was, for example, that the two ironclads, plus Moose and Reindeer, engaged Kelly once more, this time at Davidson’s Landing on December 8. Simultaneously, the Brilliant was sent back to join the Springfield in another sweep of the river around Carthage, again finding no sign of ­­cross-river Southern penetration. “Commodore Fitch,” as Benjamin Truman told readers of The New York Times, “commands upon the Cumberland and assists in protecting our banks to a considerable extent.” Noting the presence of two ironclads, the journalist also reported there were “also several other gunboats, of various shapes and sizes, patrolling the river.” Another writer also praised the gunboats, asserting that “those who man them are celebrated in this section for their skill, bravery, and promptness in executing the part assigned them.” Soldiers near Nashville continued to waltz toward combat over the coming fortnight as Acting RAdm. Lee was able to reach Clarksville with the ironclad Cincinnati, but the falling river level held him there. During this time, Confederate Brig. Gen. Hylan B. Lyon, under November orders from Gen. Hood to recruit soldiers and create a diversion, prepared to cross the Cumberland and attack Clarksburg, hoping to destroy the Yankee rail lifeline between Louisville and Nashville. It was his activities that the USN tinclads had ascended the river to reconnoiter. On the evening of December 9, Lyon with 800 followers reached the Cumberland near Cumberland City, about 20 miles below Clarksville, where they set up a pair of ­­12-pounder howitzers. These quickly took the grain steamer Thomas E. Tutt and, in the dark, fired upon other steamers en route up from Fort Donelson. The next day, three more transports were captured, used to ferry troops to the eastern bank, and then, with four barges, burned. Two other vessels escaped, allowing the alerted Federals to stop further traffic from ascending the Cumberland. Also



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 213

a correspondent from The Times of London, relatively new to Nashville, sent off a report on local military matters, which his readers in the UK and New York would see 12 days later. The dispatch began, “The situation in Tennessee begins to inspire alarm in Washington. Confederate batteries, 14 miles west of Nashville, effectually blocked the Cumberland, and repulsed all efforts by gunboats to dislodge them.” Also that Saturday, the Peosta began a Lower Tennessee River reconnaissance toward Johnsonville. While approaching White Oak Island, about a mile from Danville Bridge, two barges were discovered and taken in tow, having been left by the Federals at Johnsonville after Forrest’s raid and employed by Lyon days earlier to get across. The old gunboat continued down as far as Paris Landing, burning all craft of any description found en route. Although Lyon drove in scouts sent out from Clarksville, it became increasingly clear that the Confederate raiders would head into Kentucky rather than attack the river post. Reacting to information that Lyon planned to burn the railroad bridge at Bowling Green, Maj. Gen. Thomas ordered all troops railroading to Nashville from Louisville diverted to protect the key crossing point. At the same time, several Missouri regiments, en route to Nashville aboard the steamer Masonic, turned back at Clarksville and returned to Fort Donelson. Several other troop boats, including the Kentucky, would do the same. Far up the Cumberland at this time, a heavily guarded steamer from Mound City was en route to Louisville with urgently requested ammunition. Under the command of squadron flag lieutenant Lt. Frederick J. Naile, the steamer Benefit was protected by the tinclads Hastings, Victory, and St. Clair. Upon her arrival, the transport would transship her cargo and send it on to Nashville via the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Naile would then shepherd two supply steamers with barges on to Clarksville. Acting RAdm. Lee at Clarksville was advised by “Old Pap” Thomas on a bitterly cold December 11 (minus 10 degrees F) regarding Lyon’s activities. As was usually the case with Confederate mounted raider activity, rumors were rife as to where the feared horsemen might strike next. In fact, that Sunday, Lyon and his men diverted into Kentucky, arriving at Eddyville, via Hopkinsville and Cadiz, three days later. His Blue Grass raid, continued through January 3, resulted in the burning of courthouses in seven counties. Although they generated considerable concern in Union military circles, the Confederate’s activities, frustrated by the weather and manpower difficulties, impacted neither Thomas’ logistics nor Cumberland river operations. Also on December 11, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch dispatched the light draught Springfield to Stone’s River, near Murfreesboro, where several contract steamers and barges were gathering in a supply of wood for Nashville’s campfires and fireplaces. Fearing their capture by Hood’s advancing riders, the military wished them quickly returned. Despite the cold and the strong northwest wind that blew across the frozen landscape, the tinclad successfully convoyed the boats to safety by evening, leaving a large wood stockpile that was burned by the Confederates the next morning. The opening of what all suspected to be the climatic ball was now postponed by a spike in one of the most severe winters in memory. The suffering from the cold, snow, and rain was intense among troops and civilians alike, though many sailors were warm aboard their boats. Often wearing icicles, the light craft of the Nashville flotilla remained active in the cold. The mighty Neosho and Carondelet, undoubtedly covered in some places topside with frozen snow, remained tied to the bank largely unable to

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move due to the low river stage. The Naile convoy arrived at Clarksville on December 12, providing news of Lyon’s ride. Finally, the weather broke, with much fog and mist. Under cover of poor visibility, the Federal army of Maj. Gen. Thomas launched a counterattack out of Nashville on December 15 against the lines of Gen. Hood. From 6 a.m., the men aboard the vessels of the Nashville naval flotilla could hear, though not see, the apparent movement of the U.S. Army. At 7:20, the Neosho headed down the river followed by the Carondelet, Moose, Reindeer, Fairplay, Brilliant and Silver Lake. Due to the delays and bafflement caused by the fog ashore, the honor of firing the first shots in the actual Battle of Nashville went to the U.S. Navy. This engagement was not only the last big clash of arms in the Civil War Western theater, but the climactic large-scale ­­ action for the Mississippi Squadron. So it is somewhat ironic to note that, as at Buffington Island in July 1863, the warships did not know for certain the location of the Union cavalrymen who were to move in behind the Confederate artillery emplacements opposite Bell’s Mills. Expecting that they would soon be along, it was decided that while waiting the ironclads would gain the attention of Lt. Col. Kelley’s gunners. The morning was occupied in a leisurely duel with several graycoat cannon prior to the arrival and engagement of Union cavalry after lunch. The day’s fighting around the city resulted in a Confederate disaster, despite the late Union start and the coming of darkness. Hood’s left wing was collapsed and Thomas was able to order a general advance along his entire line. As the fog lifted from the river on December 16, the Neosho, Moose, Carondelet, Reindeer, and Fairplay steamed downriver to Bell’s Mills. Not knowing exactly what to expect, the boats were cleared for action in case any Confederates remained. Upon

USS Carondelet. Based on an 1864 drawing by L. W. Hastings, USN, this lithograph, sold widely in 1865, was published by the Cincinnati firm of Middleton, Strobridge & Co. and included a listing of the vessel’s most famous engagements. Even before the Civil War concluded, this veteran, one of the original seven “City Series” ironclads built in 1861, was the most famous Western waters warship (Naval History and Heritage Command).



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 215

arrival at the old battle site, the gunboatmen found that Federal land forces were in entire control of the area. The shooting part of the navy’s war at Nashville was over, though waterborne vigilance was maintained. During the day, the tinclads Springfield, Reindeer, Silver Lake, and Fairplay were dispatched on reconnaissance toward Stone’s River. The Army of Tennessee situation deteriorated throughout the 16th to a point where its shattered formations rushed pell-mell ­­ in sleet and rain, not stopping until they were south of Brentwood after dark. Only then, in terrible weather that spared them instant Union pursuit, were scattered units able to commence regrouping. “The night that followed was strangely silent,” wrote Walter Durham in 1987, “the last cannonading having stopped at dark with the flight of the rebels.” As occasional lightning flashes rent the darkness, stragglers could be seen exiting the battlefield, either south or toward Nashville. The four Federal light draughts returned from their Stone’s River patrols on December 17 to report the river quiet. Their men may also have been warmed by a headline in the latest edition of the Nashville Daily Union, which shouted: “The Rebels Completely Routed. They Flee in a Perfect Panic.” Maj. Gen. Thomas now messaged his quartermaster department expressing his belief that the “Cumberland River is perfectly safe” and conveying his wish that arrangements be made to “resume shipments on the river to Nashville from below.”10 Witnessed by a good crowd of dockworkers and others watching from the bank, the first ­­post-battle return convoy from Nashville to Smithland departed in two groups beginning at 11:30 a.m. on December 18. The parade was led by the Neosho, under tow of the supply boat Magnet, and was followed ten minutes later by the Moose and Reindeer, which led eight transports and the Springfield and ­­tail-end Silver Lake. At noon, two steamers and a hospital boat departed, guarded by the Fairplay. “We open the Cumberland today,” chief quartermaster James L. Donaldson cheerfully wrote to Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs after witnessing the departure. “Transports here have left under convoy of the gunboats.” Perhaps saluted by the Newsboy as it passed, the convoy made its way slowly down the Cumberland. Beyond Robertson’s Island, Davidson’s Landing, and Bell’s Landing and Mills it steamed, trailing a great cloud of chimney smoke. The sites of recent bombardment could now be safely passed, with damaged homes, busted trees, and shell craters clearly visible. Gen. Hood, now covered by Forrest, simultaneously continued to flee toward Alabama and escape near or in the Muscle Shoals area. Later in the day, Maj. Gen. Thomas wrote to Acting RAdm. Lee, with whom he was in regular contact, seeking additional support. Given that the Southerners were believed to have pontoon escape bridges functional near the mouth of the Duck River and 147 miles further on at Florence, could not, Thomas inquired, one or two ironclads and several gunboats go down the Tennessee and destroy them? If they hurried, they might intercept the arriving Confederates and prevent their escape. Additionally, the seaman was asked to provide convoy escorts for army troop boats dispatched up the river “either from Johnsonville or Clifton.” Lee wired Thomas agreeing to push a suitable naval force up the Tennessee River as soon as the boats arrived. If there was water enough in the river, it was anticipated that the gunboats could help cut off Hood’s retreat. At the same time, Lt. Moreau

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USS Fairplay. The earliest tinclad for which an image exists, the Fairplay joined the Cumberland River flotilla in September 1862, providing convoy protection and engaging in riverbank combat on that stream through the end of the war. An escort in the first convoy north after the Nashville campaign, she is shown as captured by Bell & Sheridan of Franklin Street, Clarksville, Tennessee (Naval History and Heritage Command).

Forrest, commander of the Eleventh District, was instructed to support the reoccupation of Decatur by troops under Brig. Gen. Granger. After battling rain, wind, and the shifting currents of the Cumberland for 18 hours, the Smithland-bound ­­ convoy reached Clarksville at dark on December 19. It would continue north from there the next morning minus Reindeer, Fairy, and Silver Lake. Those escorts joined Lee’s departure with the troop convoy in pursuit of the Army of Tennessee. Also on December 19, Confederate Brig. Gen. Philip D. Roddy, commanding at Decatur, was ordered to uniquely participate in Hood’s rescue. The 15 pontoon bridges he had found when occupying the town of Decatur at the end of November were to be floated down the Tennessee to Bainbridge, a village on the river at the foot of Muscle Shoals, six miles above Florence. Bainbridge was not a regular ferry location, but it was hoped that the gunboats could or would not chance steaming over the shoals to interfere with any crossing. Thus the floating bridge would be thrown across with a reasonable expectation of being able to accommodate the retreating butternuts.11 Thomas and Lee, urged on by Washington, D.C., generals and other leaders, pursued the retreating Confederates as they sped back toward Florence. A spirited defense was made by Hood’s rear guard, vigorously led by Maj. Gen. Forrest. According to Stanley Horn, the butternut soldiers sang a parody of “The Yellow Rose of Texas”: But now I’m going to leave you; My heart is full of woe. I’m going back to Georgia to see my Uncle Joe.



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 217 You may talk about your Beauregards and sing of General Lee But the gallant Hood of Texas played hell in Tennessee.

Acting RAdm. Lee’s departed up the Tennessee from Paducah on December 20, a day after Roddy began shifting his pontoons to Bainbridge. Drawing from all squadron boats available, Lee’s task force was far larger and more formidable, gun for gun, than that which Lt. Cmdr. Fitch had at Nashville. Still, many of the units were the same: Neosho, and Pittsburg, the timberclad Lexington, as well as the tinclads Naumkeag, St. Clair, Reindeer, Silver Lake, Fairy, and the slower Peosta. Over the next week, the leading five light draughts proceeded with speed, destroying flatboats and ferrys en route. The Peosta and ironclads followed, convoying the troop boats. Additionally, the dreadful wet weather had increased the water depth somewhat, making operations further up the river at least feasible. The possibility of the craft reaching the butternuts “was thought not improbable” even by the Confederates themselves. Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. Roddy’s pontoons arrived at Bainbridge in the cold and drizzle, having been easily floated over the shoals due to somewhat deeper water levels. Here, engineer units were assembled to get a bridge across the ­­swift-flowing Tennessee. Additionally, as other Southerners crossed Shoal Creek, about two miles from the river, they threw up primitive earthworks “to protect the bridge in case the enemy should move on us from below.” Other Confederate cannon were mounted at Florence, also prepared to contest Lee’s passage. Inland of the Tennessee, Forrest’s valiant command delayed the Federal pursuit as long as possible, allowing grayclad soldiers (many barefoot) a chance to retreat. As Lee’s craft dropped anchor off Chickasaw, above Eastport, but below Florence, on Christmas Eve, a message was dispatched from Maj. Gen. Thomas recommending that the follow-on ­­ boats, which he expected to convoy troop transports to Eastport, remain at that point until Hood’s intentions were clearly known. The weather, warmer for a week, now turned colder. On Christmas Day, the survivors of Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham’s corps reached the Tennessee River. Work was intensified that Sunday on refurbishing, assembling, and deploying Roddy’s pontoon or floating bridge across the Tennessee. For protection, light gun emplacements and field entrenchments were dug at the north end of the bridge. As the Rebels labored, the Neosho (with Lee embarked), Reindeer, and Fairy advanced upon Florence, intent upon destroying gun emplacements reported at that town. The ironclads Carondelet and Pittsburg drew too much water to accompany and were left at Eastport. From the bluff opposite Florence, Rebel infantry opened upon the Federal boats with musketry while from the city side they were targeted by two four-gun ­­ batteries. After a half-hour ­­ cannonade from both parties, the Southerners ceased shooting and the Union craft returned downstream. They were unable to interfere with Cheatham’s work even though the butternuts “heard the gunboats all day in the direction of Florence.” Work continued on the Bainbridge bridge all night and at sunrise supply wagons and artillery began to cross.

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Tennessee River cliffs near Florence, Alabama. On Christmas Day 1864 as Confederates retreating from Nashville worked to bridge the Tennessee River, the Union monitor Neosho, accompanied by the tinclads Reindeer and Fairy, advanced upon Florence, intent upon destroying Dixie gun emplacements reported at that town. From the bluff opposite Florence, Rebel infantry opened upon the Federal boats with musketry, while from the city side they were targeted by two four-gun batteries. After a half-hour cannonade from both parties, the Southerners ceased shooting and the Northern craft returned downstream (Library of Congress).

On Boxing Day morning, Maj. Gen. Forrest and his men were able to briefly halt the Union ground pursuit at Sugar Creek in Giles County (some two miles north of the state line) during a five-hour ­­ fight often recorded as the last of the campaign. At the same time, the Neosho and her light consorts steamed slowly up the Tennessee, once more intent upon attacking their enemy’s batteries. As they advanced, it was found that only the tinclads could proceed, forcing the admiral to shift his flag. When within two to three miles of their goal, the two light draughts were assaulted by three Confederate batteries which forced Lee to head back downriver and rejoin the monitor. After transferring back aboard the Neosho, Lee ordered his trio to move up again. The gunboats proceeded only a few more miles when they were again pounded, this time by two masked batteries. As in her earlier December duel with Col. Kelley at Bell’s Mills, the ironclad received much attention, being hit 27 times, before all withdrew. Three Federal sailors were killed aboard the gunboats during this contest with five others wounded. There were no Rebel casualties in this fight and the vessels did not return upriver that day. This respite, plus the addition of more pontoons that arrived by wagon, allowed the bulk of Hood’s saved wagons and artillery to get across. Having held off the gunboats, Cheatham next moved his troops across the floating



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 219

bridge, beginning at 3 a.m. Toward morning on December 27, Maj. Gen. Forrest and his rear guard began marching across, unmolested. As daylight approached, Acting RAdm. Lee again wanted to attack the Confederate evacuation, this time by taking the monitor over the shoals. When consulted, his chief pilot pointed out that navigation in the Bainbridge stretch remained every bit as dangerous as it was the previous day. The Neosho, he cautioned his blue-water ­­ superior, drew but five feet of water and could not make it through. The swift and shallow waters were too rocky, too uneven, and too dangerous and she should remain downstream. Brushing off the recommendation, Lee ordered the warship ahead. Within a short distance, a thickening fog and a “sudden and rapid fall of the river” conspired to convince his pilot to refuse going on the shoals, a decision that was within his right to make. The squadron commander later suggested that, but for these misfortunes, he could “have succeeded in reaching Bainbridge with an effective force, capable of destroying Hood’s pontoons.” As it was, by evening, all of the Confederates would be safely over the Tennessee. The frustrated Union generals were, with the exception of Thomas, not particularly happy with the role played by the Mississippi Squadron in this part of the pursuit campaign. Cavalry chief Maj. Gen. James Wilson, who led the charge against Forrest, was told by local people that “the gunboats were within a mile of the Rebel bridge at Bainbridge and … could have reached it without trouble.” Federal horse soldiers, he decried, “reached the north bank of the river just as the bridge had been swung to the south side and the last of the Rebels were disappearing in the distance.” In his memoirs, Wilson pinned the failure of the Neosho and her consorts to reach and destroy the pontoon bridge on “the independence of the navy and the natural timidity of a deep-water ­­ sailor in a shoal-water ­­ river.” In his contribution to the Battles and Leaders series, he was far blunter. “The failure of the light draught gunboats on the Tennessee River to reach and destroy the pontoon bridge which Hood had kept in position,” he wrote, “insured his safe retreat.” In approximately the same ­­mid-December timeframe during which he had requested assistance from Acting RAdm. Lee, Maj. Gen. Thomas put another plan into action designed to cut off Hood’s retreat or force its redirection. The Provisional Corps, under Brig. Gen. James B. Steedman, was ordered to Decatur, via Murfreesboro and Stevenson. Once on the Upper Tennessee River, it was to capture the town that Union forces had evacuated a month earlier. While Lee was engaged at Florence-Bainbridge, ­­ the Eleventh District tinclads General Sherman, General Burnside, and General Thomas assisted Steedman. Having arrived two miles above the town on the north side of the river that morning, the 2nd brigade of the Provisional Corps awaited the arrival of additional soldiers coming by water from Bridgeport under escort of the General Grant and Stone River. When the troop boats arrived with the 2nd brigade, their men, primarily African Americans, “landed in fine style” on the south side of the river opposite the 1st brigade. The latter was soon thereafter ferried across. As soon as these men began to go ashore, they were taken under fire by a section of Confederate artillery. While the Rebel shells fell near or burst over the Union landing beaches, Lt. Forrest ordered his gunboats to move up and provide close gunfire support. As the Federals advanced upon Decatur, the Confederate shore batteries engaged the Eleventh

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District gunboats in a noisy duel. The General Burnside and the General Thomas were each hulled at least twice, with three sailors killed and several wounded between them. Taking Decatur was a tougher nut, it turned out, than many had expected. In the end, however, Confederate forces evacuated the town. Acting Master Morton now attempted to take the General Thomas over the Elk River Shoals to further interfere with any Rebel crossing plans. Unhappily, the Tennessee had by now fallen and become too low to allow Tinclad No. 61 across. The tinclads of the Eleventh District retired from the scene on December 30, coming to anchor as a group off Bridgeport, Alabama. Between December 25 and 28, the remnants of the Confederate Army of Tennessee managed to cross the big river to Alabama and make for its final rendezvous at Tupelo, Mississippi. The Federal army, in warm if not hot pursuit, could not catch up, though it did manage to pick up many prisoners and much Confederate supply. The two-week ­­ siege and two-day ­­ Battle of Nashville, followed by the retreat of the overwhelmed Confederates, was both a worrisome and ultimately pleasing climax to years of large-scale ­­ military operations in central Tennessee. Even as somewhat

USS General Sherman off Decatur, Alabama. While gunboats from the Lower Tennessee River engaged Confederate batteries protecting the Army of Tennessee bridgehead near Florence in the days after Christmas 1864, those on the Upper Tennessee were tasked with supporting the U.S Army push to recapture Decatur abandoned the month before. During the ensuing fight, two of the four 11th District tinclads were hulled, with three men killed and several wounded between them (Naval History and Heritage Command).



11. Nashville, 1864–1865 221

subdued holiday festivities were enjoyed, news came that an end to the war might be coming sooner than later. Cannon fire disturbed the cold on December 28, but instead of conflict, were revealed to be salvos of celebration. News had arrived that Maj. Gen. Sherman had captured Savannah, Georgia, on December 21. Writing to Maj. Gen. Thomas from Eastport on January 2, 1865, Acting RAdm. Lee confirmed that Hood was across the Tennessee. The Confederates, he suggested, were nearing Corinth, 30 miles west of his anchorage. What did the theater commander require of the USN at this point, he wondered. Writing back from Pulaski, Tennessee, Thomas prioritized a need for convoys and for “keeping the river open if possible.”12 Hood’s escape across the Upper Tennessee River all but ended the Nashville campaign for Lee’s Mississippi Squadron, except for one engagement. On January 11, Maj. Gen. Thomas wrote to Lt. Forrest at Bridgeport asking that his tinclads mount a new and vigorous patrol of the Upper Tennessee River to catch remnants of the escaping 6th Kentucky Cavalry (CSA), under Brig. Gen. Hylan B. Lyon, that had been raiding in the Cumberland River region and Kentucky during the Nashville campaign. The General Grant and General Thomas were sent to assist. Over the next several days, Lyon and his men reached Deposit Ferry, Alabama, where they took shelter on the property of Confederate sympathizer Cauis G. Gennel, recently of Guntersville, Alabama. On the night of January 14/15, 150 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry troopers surrounded the Rebel camp at Red Hill and charged in at dawn. Lyon was among the first of a hundred men captured and was placed in charge of Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Arthur Lyon (no relation). As the fighting raged, the Union hero reached for a warm coat requested by his captive, who grabbed a gun, shot the young man, and escaped into the darkness. The news of the sergeant’s death, the only Federal casualty of the operation, brought Northern sadness and anger both afloat and ashore. Union troops pursued Lyon and his stragglers through Brown’s Valley toward the Tennessee, burning several plantations. Learning of events from riders, the patrolling gunboats raised steam and joined in vengeful chase. Late in the morning, the pair of tinclads approached the town of Guntersville, which Union cavalry soon surrounded. What was reported as a spirited engagement followed, during which the tinclads pounded the town with over 50 explosive shells. The General Grant was hit once, but suffered no damage. At noon, 40 bluejackets were landed and, despite pleas from two Northern sympathizers, the “hotbed of rebellion” was torched. Only seven buildings remained standing, all damaged, including the Marshall County Courthouse, the city jail, the Guntersville Hotel, a schoolhouse, the Masonic Hall, and the residences of the two pro–Federal men, which still stand today. Simultaneous to the Guntersville incident, Maj. Gen. Thomas, with his staff, was en route up the Tennessee to Eastport aboard one of 20 troop transports guarded by the ironclad Carondelet and four tinclads. The group arrived at its destination within several days, finding Lee and his earlier-arrived ­­ gunboats, about 50 other steamers, and “the hills in the vicinity white with camp tents.” As Thomas’ Eastport strength grew, regular troop rotations were maintained via Nashville convoys, via Johnsonville. Toward evening on January 27, the old Lexington shepherded seven transports from Eastport to a Johnsonville anchorage, including

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the ­­stern-wheeler Eclipse, which had aboard part of the 9th Indiana Volunteer Artillery with four guns and ammunition. Before dawn the next morning, a fire somehow started aboard that caught the shells and caused a large explosion and fire. ­­Damage-control parties and medical personnel from the timberclad as well as the tinclad Silver Lake and two nearby transports were unable to save the vessel, which sank with 140 dead and 78 wounded. Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee completed its retreat back into Mississippi by the end of January. Pursuing Union forces, knowing that it was spent, allowed it to melt away, content in the knowledge that their actions since ­­mid-December had all but finished the campaign in the West. Indeed, as historian Richard Gildrie has put it, the massive Union victory “effectively ended the war between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains.” While Hood was in Tennessee, Maj. Gen. Sherman’s march to the sea virtually destroyed Rebel ability to send food and fuel to Virginia from the lower South via Georgia. The focus for Civil War military action now turned east, where Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had besieged the Army of Northern Virginia at Petersburg while Sherman and RAdm. David Dixon Porter set about shutting down Confederate succor from the sea by capturing Fort Fisher and Wilmington.13

12

War’s End, Squadron’s End, 1865 Military action along the Western waters subsided almost daily from the end of January 1865 when the Army of Tennessee crossed the river back into Alabama until the conclusion of the war in April. Just as it was reported that Confederate soldiers were deserting from the lines in the East, so too did many disappear from duty in the West—but not all. “The guerrilla war continued,” observed historian Richard Gildrie, “having a logic of its own, even though the military purposes were negligible.” As the new year started, the army cooperation role played in the districts of the U.S. Mississippi Squadron was maintained. Military leaders occasionally called upon the bluejackets for assistance in countering the movements of large Southern units while local ground commanders often requested USN reconnaissance, gunfire, or amphibious assistance in sweeps of suspected Confederate (usually irregular) locations. While maintaining often minimal patrols, the Mississippi Squadron was gradually altered from a ­­war-fighting command to a coast guard force which handled various police duties, some counterinsurgency activities, and customs inspections. When 1865 began, the U.S. Navy Department, believing that the Rebellion would soon be over, began seeking significant economy in its operations. After Appomattox, a few ­­USN-supported surrender and pacification activities continued in the Mississippi Valley and in the ­­Trans-Mississippi area. However, the Mississippi Squadron, under Acting RAdm. Samuel P. Lee, would be the first USN fleet decommissioned, with most of its volunteers discharged, its regulars transferred, and its assets sold off or reallocated elsewhere before the end of the year. Though they were not as ferocious as in previous years, the need to interrupt or counter partisan and guerrilla activities remained a major concern for the Federal gunboatmen through April. Thereafter for a short time, they remained alert even while carrying out such duties as surveying and base closures. War-mission ­­ Rebel ­­hit-and-run or incendiary attacks continued to be made on shipping plying the Mississippi, White, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers even as did many other raids, such as those originating out of western Kentucky. Although a number of boats were shot up, only six more were actually destroyed by their enterprise before the end of the war, including three actually or allegedly burned. As they had for some time, guerrillas, as well as deserters and just plain outlaws, 223

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continued to operate in or near towns and communities up and down the Western streams and in rural areas beyond major cities. Outrages, such as robberies and shootings, became more frequent even as genuine ­­war-mission activities, like those against rail connections, declined.1 Since the earliest Vicksburg operations in ­­mid-1862, the Mississippi Squadron and its ocean neighbor, the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, had shared a cordial working relationship. RAdm. David Dixon Porter was a relative of RAdm. David G. Farragut, famed commander of the latter unit. After the opening of the Mississippi in July 1863, the geographical responsibilities of the two organizations were redrawn to more closely reflect their names, though both shared basing at New Orleans. Bad weather and a shallow Ten- Acting RAdm. Samuel P. Lee, USN. Formerly nessee River ended Maj. Gen. George in command of the North Atlantic BlockadH. Thomas’ pursuit of his defeated foe. ing Squadron, Lee swapped positions with RAdm. David Dixon Porter in October 1864. During that expedition, Federal planning Arriving at the time of the Johnsonville was intensified for a campaign against disaster and prevented by low water from Mobile, Alabama, a push long favored commanding at Nashville in December, he by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. The Union’s coordinated with the army in the pursuit top commander now ordered capture of of Confederate Gen. Hood, but was unable the Alabama city and assistance from his to prevent him from crossing to safety over Western captains, land and water, in the the Tennessee River. Appreciated by Washington for his business skills, it fell to Lee to enterprise. We note here only Western disband the Mississippi Squadron in April– waters support of the campaign. August 1865, an unhappy task he performed To boost the growing number of with great efficiency (Naval History and Federal troops to some 45,000 men, the Heritage Command). XVI Corps of Maj. Gen. A. J. Smith was detached from Thomas and sent to New Orleans. Smith’s 18,000 soldiers arrived at New Orleans aboard 43 ­­tinclad-escorted transports on February 21 in a convoy reminiscent of that which delivered them to the Tennessee capital in early December. Once ashore, they would join the forces of the healed Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby, who would lead the mission east to attack the crumbling defenses of the Confederacy’s last remaining seaport. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles now wired Acting RAdm. Lee requiring his assistance in growing the naval component of the assembling Gulf expedition by forwarding two of his best light draught ironclads to the Crescent City. The admiral cut the orders on February 1, sending the monitor Osage and the casemate Cincinnati, along with



12. War’s End, Squadron’s End, 1865 225

four tinclads. The heavy units were, as Lee pointed out to his Gulf colleagues, “the very best I had, all of the few others are in such very bad condition as to be wholly useless in your operations.” After the six vessels arrived, on or about February 24, they were inspected by the West Gulf Blockading Squadron’s fleet engineer, who found fault with all of them. The four light draughts were returned to their previous upriver posts, it being noted by the recipients that it would “require a great deal of time and expense to repair them.” Looking north following the departure two weeks later of the Union invasion fleet to its forward base on Dauphin Island, Mobile Bay, we find the rivers of the Mississippi Valley largely quiet. One example was the Upper Tennessee, which was now largely clear of organized Confederate resistance, though several large Southern groups were known to be in Maj. G en. Edward R . S . Canby, USA . the area, including the brigade of Brig. Regarded like Acting RAdm. Lee for his Gen. Philip Roddy, the onetime com- administrative acumen, Canby became mander at Decatur, Alabama. Commander of the Federal Military DisTaking advantage of unusu- trict of Western Mississippi in late spring ally high water, the General Burnside 1864. Wounded by a sniper while on a White (flag) and General Thomas crossed the River inspection trip aboard USS Cricket Elk River Shoals on February 26 pro- in November, he recovered to organize and lead the Union campaign against capture of ceeding to Muscle Shoals. News was Mobile, Alabama, in March–April 1865. He received by Eleventh District com- accepted the surrenders of the Confederate mander Lt. Moreau Forrest that one leaders of the Southern Trans-Mississippi of Roddy’s smaller camps was located Department in May (Library of Congress). near the giant natural river obstruction. Moving against the bivouac, the gunboatmen found it plush with horses, wagons, and even baled cotton. Landing parties from the light draughts were able to drive away the butternut defenders and captured several of their animals, along with seven cotton bales. As part of this late winter expedition, the General Burnside and General Thomas also penetrated Elk River. During a brief cruise through the end of the month, the sailors believed themselves “meeting with a great deal of success in endeavoring to encourage loyal feelings on the south side of the river.” When winter turned into spring, the Mississippi and its tributaries appeared more pacified. Acting RAdm. Lee informed Secretary Welles on February 16 that “quiet prevails on the river,” while “trading under Treasury permits is largely

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increasing.” Only scattered incidents excited the gunboat sailors of the Western rivers from this point on. Arriving from New Orleans, the ­­side-wheeler Mittie Stephens put into the east bank of the Mississippi, near Cole’s Creek, Mississippi, on February 18, to pick up a load of legally permitted cotton. As the stages dropped away and the deckhands prepared to take aboard the first of 100 bales, a group of partisan scouts under Confederate Capt. Buckley B. Paddock of the 1st Mississippi Cavalry sprang up and began shooting. As they volleyed, several men split off to fire the produce. As soon as the steamer backed out, the escorting tinclad, Prairie Bird, opened upon the graycoated riflemen. Unable to withstand her 10 rounds of shrapnel, the “scoundrels” scampered off and an armed party went ashore to save the bales. Although irregular attacks continued, the logistical lifelines of the Mississippi and its tributaries were held open for the remainder of the war. Even though the ­­Trans-Mississippi area west of the great river was still held largely intact by the Confederates, the Federal navy blockaded it tightly.2 Fresh from a Mound City overhaul following her participation in the January chase of Gen. Hood up the Tennessee, Lt. Henry Glassford’s super light draught

USS Prairie Bird. Assigned to the White River–Arkansas shore area from 1863 into 1864, this tinclad (shown off Vicksburg) was on mission up the Yazoo River in April of the latter year when her consort, USS Petrel, was taken. Escaping, she returned to her Mississippi beat only to come under fire by Confederate Col. Colton Greene during his successful, if short blockade, a month later. She would spend the remainder of the war between Vicksburg and the Arkansas River, making two notable rescues of merchantmen: the sunken B. M. Runyan off Skipwith’s Landing (July 23, 1864) and the Mittie Stephens, under attack at Cole’s Creek, Mississippi (February 18, 1865) (Naval History and Heritage Command).



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Reindeer was permitted, during the last week of February, to return from temporary duty with the Ninth District to the Tenth under Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch. Hardly back in familiar waters, Glassford learned at the beginning of March that he had been chosen to once more visit the wilds of the Upper Cumberland River. The refurbished tinclad arrived off the Nashville levee on March 7, the day news arrived that the steamer Stephen Bayard was burnt out at Memphis, the supposed victim of a Confederate firebomb. On March 8, Glassford met with Maj. Gen. Thomas at Nashville, who requested that the experienced USN captain undertake a special reconnaissance as far upstream as possible, one which would check the river depth and on the peace of the shoreline population. Guerrilla activity in the areas above and below Tennessee’s capital remained a topic of Yankee concern, though details on actual attacks or gatherings remained scarce. The commanding general wanted the navy to take a look, and Glassford, who seemingly owned a patent on such Upper Cumberland investigations, officially received the job. The next day, the Reindeer along with the Victory departed upriver. At Louisville during an upriver visit at this time, Acting RAdm. Lee met with Maj. Gen. John M. Palmer. The Department of Kentucky commander asked if it would be possible for a USN gunboat to escort a supply convoy up the Cumberland to Burkesville. Lee agreed to request the cover and sent an order to Lt. Cmdr. Fitch at Smithland ordering him to handle the matter. Fitch was to wire Palmer at Louisville in cipher and inform him whether the depth of the Upper Cumberland would permit such a trip and whether or not any gunboats were available to provide cover. He was also to inform the admiral as to what action, if any, was taken. While Palmer, Lee, and Fitch were exchanging wires, the Reindeer and Victory steamed to Wolf Creek Shoals, a point about 40 miles below Camp Burnside, the name given the army camp at Big South Fork. When the two tinclads arrived, they found only five feet of water on the obstructions. With the river rapidly falling, Glassford determined it would be imprudent to proceed further and his little task unit began to descend. All the way back downstream, the Reindeer and Victory, as they had on the way up, stopped at the important towns and landings, as well as many farmhouses, to convey the benevolent intentions of the United States government so long as attacks were avoided. It was expected—hoped might be a better word—that word of this good intent would be carried inland. At one point, Lt. Glassford was informed that a force of 200 irregulars had crossed the river near Celina, at the mouth of Obey’s River, on Sunday March 12 for unknown reasons. That intelligence was passed to the army commander at Carthage and to a camp of woodcutters at Dixon’s Springs, 30 miles lower. Fitch received Lee’s orders regarding the Palmer convoy while on a convoy stop of his own at Fort Donelson on March 13. He immediately telegraphed his superior that Thomas had already sent Glassford upstream. On March 15, Lee informed Fitch that the decision to send Glassford up the Cumberland was sound. Neither man knew then that their subordinate had found the Upper Cumberland so shallow and was on his way back. The squadron commander also sent along a copy of his General Order No. 48, which enclosed a copy of the March 9 issue of the Louisville Daily Journal, which reprinted a fantastic story of local Confederate naval activity as told in that day’s issue of the Chattanooga Daily Gazette.

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The newspaper stories revealed that a Confederate torpedo boat, accessory equipment, and a ­­nine-man party under Lt. Arthur D. Wharton, CSN, a former captain of the CSS Webb, was captured by armed citizens near Kingston, Tennessee, on March 5. According to intelligence, the Southern expedition was organized in Richmond in early January and went by rail to Bristol, Tennessee, where a boat was obtained and launched in the Holston River. The boat made it undetected past Federal guards at Kingsport and under the bridge at Knoxville and was not sighted before it was four miles below Kingston. Wharton’s mission, the last offensive effort by the Confederate Navy on Western waters, was to destroy Union commerce and key bridges on the Tennessee River, but he failed before achieving any of his goals. During his subsequent interrogation, it was learned that he was also part of a plan to clear obstructions which would allow Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army “to leave Richmond about the 1st of March and retreat in the direction of East Tennessee.” Acting RAdm. Lee also said that “the highest military sources” had informed him “that the rebel navy is reported to have been relieved from duty on the Atlantic coast and sent to operate on the Western rivers.” Fitch, like the other district commanders who received copies, were to make the report widely available to their officers and men. Additionally, he and they were to “keep an active patrol of the river, and a constant and bright lookout.” Upon his return to Nashville on March 17, Lt. Glassford reported to Thomas that there was a good deal of suspicion on the north side of the Cumberland that the guerrillas that crossed at Celina, if that they were, had plans to attack the woodmen. The Reindeer’s skipper also reported his findings on civilian sentiment, the lack of irregular activity, and the stages of the upper stream to Lee and Fitch. The squadron commander, in turn, sent a letter with the dispatch boat mail from Mound City to Louisville telling Maj. Gen. Palmer that his Burkesville supply petition could not be honored.3 Begun in earnest on March 17, the Federal campaign to capture Mobile proceeded while final military operations in the East also progressed. As the collapse of the Confederacy and an end of the war appeared increasingly imminent Navy Secretary Welles and a host of government and political leaders looked ahead to peace and intensified plans to reduce the huge military and naval force. Soon after the Nashville and Fort Fisher victories in January, orders went out beginning the retrenchment of the U.S. naval establishment. Similar requirements would soon affect the Union Army. Welles, a fiscal conservative, “determined to dismantle the Navy as efficiently as it had been built up.” This would, however, be no haphazard enterprise. Care had to be taken to scale back in such a fashion as to not harm material and human requirements. Eventually, however, the number of vessels would be reduced from several thousand to no more than 100. The directives from the Navy Department were sent out in stages with an overall goal of cutting costs wherever possible. For example, on March 30, Acting RAdm. Lee received a Department communication ordering that all vessels chartered by the Mississippi Squadron be immediately discharged. In the future, their duties would be carried out by the squadron boats “least serviceable as gunboats.” The final push by the Army of the Potomac against Gen. Lee’s lines began southwest of Petersburg, Virginia, on April 1 as the Western army of Maj. Gen. Canby, with



12. War’s End, Squadron’s End, 1865 229

naval support, continued to invest Mobile. Richmond fell early on April 4, but word of the Union victory was not received in the West until late in the day. At noon the next day, a 36-gun ­­ salute was fired in honor of the triumph. Two days later, Acting RAdm. Lee began to execute Welles’ order regarding chartered vessels. With the necessity of convoys gone, the Cumberland River gunboats Reindeer and Victory were ordered to report to Mound City, along with the newer Sibyl, “a former towboat,” from the Seventh District. These light draughts would be among the first tinclads demilatarized and turned into transports or employed on other duties. The Tenth District, perhaps the most famous squadron unit in the ­­war-long convoy campaign, was now reduced to just the Moose and Abeona. On April 6, Fourth District supervisor Lt. Cmdr. Robert L. May, who had just assumed command of the new tinclad Ibex, was tasked by Lee with overseeing the withdrawal of the squadron’s chartered steamers. On April 15, the Reindeer and Victory, with their guns and casemates removed, would begin their temporary careers as naval auxiliaries, replacing several withdrawn chartered transports. Gen. Lee surrendered to Lt. Gen. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, a fact soon communicated to friend and foe alike. Union celebrations of the welcome event began as appropriate all over the North. At precisely 12 p.m. on April 10, a ­­100-gun salute was fired in honor of the Appomattox ceremony. It was repeated at sunset. Mobile was captured two days later. At this point, no one knew precisely where Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his followers were, least of all the men of the Mississippi Squadron. A belief would soon take hold that they were trying to escape west to continue the war from Texas.4 After the fall of Richmond and Mobile, it was only a matter of time before impact of the Northern achievement announced at Appomattox spread across the land. In these heady early days of Union victory, unregulated navigation on the Western rivers was resumed and military responsibility to police them was significantly reduced. Resources devoted to war were now reduced by the Federals accordingly. On April 14, General Order No. 60 was received by district commanders of the Mississippi Squadron. Henceforth, the remaining gunboats were not required to cover the landings by steamboats engaged in lawful trade unless desired by military authorities or the parties making the landings. The big ironclads were—as some had been for some time—idled and convoy escort was ended, with any conflicting squadron orders on this point revoked. In general, the tinclads were to concentrate specifically on coast guard duties or special activities such as survey or salvage work. To save fuel costs, all of the boats were to be kept underway “under easy steam to preserve a vigilant police of the rivers and protect public and private interests as required.” President Lincoln was shot shortly after 10 p.m. that Good Friday while watching Our American Cousin at DC’s Ford’s Theatre. He died at 7:22 a.m. the next morning and, by late that Saturday evening or early on Sunday the 16th, everyone in the Mississippi Squadron, as in every other naval squadron or shore base and among the citizenry, had heard the awful news. While the nation came to grips with the enormity of the assassination and Vice President Andrew Johnson became president, plans were put in place to honor the late chief executive. On Sunday, Navy Secretary Welles wired all of his squadron commanders requiring them to observe the funeral with appropriate respect. More complete

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special orders were sent by mail. From Mound City, Acting RAdm. Lee passed official word of Lincoln’s death by telegram and dispatch boats to all of his district commanders, who in turn notified their vessel captains. On most ships and boats, crews were assembled and Lee’s announcement was read, along with an order for mourning. The same was true at naval shore locations. All officers started wearing crape, something which would adorn their uniforms for the next six months, and, beginning on April 17, all squadron flags were lowered to half staff until after the funeral. At bases, one gun was fired every half hour from sunrise to sunset. Sporadic “outrages” against civilian shipping infrequently continued as the seasons changed. These crimes were usually perpetrated by lawless guerrilla bands or just plain outlaws, though a few groups of regular Confederate military and naval personnel, such as those up the Red River, had yet to surrender. One such example was brought to the attention of Acting RAdm. Lee, who passed on what he knew on to Secretary Welles. Three steamers, the St. Paul, Sylph, and Anna Everton, were, he wrote, captured up Tennessee’s Hatchie River between April 15 and 17 and all were, according to the master of the former, probably burned. The raiders were reportedly led by the younger half brother of Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Sgt. James Madison Luxton (aka “Matt” Luxton), 7th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA). After receiving this information, the captain of the Eighth District tinclad Siren, then lying off Randolph, Tennessee, on the south side of the Hatchie’s mouth, immediately forwarded it to Mound City. A few days later, Lee offered his superior clarification when another Siren report arrived indicating that only two of the three boats captured were destroyed. Initial indication regarding Luxton as strike leader was also changed; the organizer was, in fact, a Memphis man named Wilcox who had supposedly posed as one of Brig. Gen. Jo Shelby’s staff officers. When news reached the Federals, an army expedition, under the command of Brig. Gen. E. D. Osband, was loaded aboard two transports and sent down to Fulton (on the north side of the mouth of the Hatchie River) and Randolph. Under cover of the Siren, troops disembarked and went inland, with the column from Randolph shortly thereafter engaging the Rebel perpetrators near Brownsville, Tennessee. Among the prisoners taken was the Shelby imposter. When the bluecoats returned to Randolph, Brig. Gen. Osband immediately assembled a ­­court-martial in the cabin of his transport and within an hour the instigator was convicted and condemned. As the Siren’s captain wrote: “General Osband hung him from a cotton wood tree at this place this evening; his body is still hanging from the tree.” As spring greeted the lands touched by the Western waters, danger to vessels of the Mississippi Squadron from action or accident continued unabated. In midmorning on April 22, the fleet flagboat Black Hawk, anchored on the Ohio River just below the Mound City naval station, caught fire (from coal oil or a magazine fire). Before she sank, several tugs and the newly arrived tinclad Tempest were able to get alongside and save all but four of the crew. Most of the official records and accounts, the payroll, and all personal effects aboard were lost. The surviving crew were transferred to the local receiving ship, and the Tempest, the last light draught Western rivers gunboat to enter service, became the new flagboat on April 26.5 In response to an April 23 telegram from Secretary Welles to his squadron commanders urging the utmost vigilance to prevent the escape of Jefferson Davis and



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USS Black Hawk fire. In mid-morning on April 22, 1865, the Mississippi Squadron flagboat Black Hawk, anchored on the Ohio River just below the Mound City naval station, caught fire (from coal oil or a magazine fire). Before she sank, several tugs and the newly arrived tinclad Tempest were able to get alongside and save all but four of the crew. Most of the official records and accounts, the payroll, and all personal effects aboard were lost (Naval History and Heritage Command).

his cabinet across the Mississippi, Acting RAdm. Lee alerted his subordinates: “The immediate engrossing and important duty is to capture Jeff. Davis and his Cabinet and plunder. To accomplish this, all available means and every effort must be made to the exclusion of all interfering calls.” This was, in fact, the second such fugitive alert within two weeks, coming upon the heels of a short-lived ­­ watch for Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Each divisional officer was ordered to “live aboard of a gunboat in which he can quickly and readily move about within the limits of his command, to see that orders are properly attended to, and that the duties required of the different vessels of his district are well performed.” In the event that any of them picked up Davis or any of his followers, they were not to be turned over to military, but were to be immediately sent to Mound City aboard a gunboat. Gen. Joseph Johnston surrendered in North Carolina to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman on April 26, thereby effectively ending the war in the East. That night America’s most horrific maritime tragedy occurred in the West. As after every war through the Iraq conflict over a hundred years later, the U.S. accelerated the downsizing of its large military establishment. The army and the USN rapidly consolidated the divisions of their organization and made plans to sell

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weapons and equipment stockpiles or sell ships and surplus goods. Primary emphasis, however, was given to manpower demobilization as the triumphant Union almost immediately began releasing most of its active duty soldiers and sailors from service and rapidly returned them to their states of residence. Many breveted regular army officers and those with acting rank in the navy were soon to hold lesser titles (Acting RAdm. Lee, for example, would revert to his permanent rank of captain) while the majority of volunteer officers were discharged. Rescue, relief, and repatriation of POWs from both sides received early attention, with immediate succor to those from the North. Vicksburg was chosen as a center for the return home of Western POWs and men released from such Southern camps as Andersonville and Cahawba. As the result of USQMD contracts with ship owners and shipping combines, numerous steamboats landed at the town levee to board former prisoners for trips upriver and home. Among the vessels participating in this repatriation program was the large Sultana, often chartered by the military as a troop transport. Interestingly, on her last downriver trip that April, she stopped at various isolated locations en route delivering the news of President Lincoln’s murder.6 Carrying somewhere between 75 and 100 passengers, plus her regular 85-man ­­ crew, the Sultana cleared New Orleans for up the river on April 21. She put into Vicksburg to make repairs to one of her leaky boilers7 and to board additional people. During her stay, new lift papers were signed with the local quartermaster and over 2,000 ­­ex-POWs, mostly from Ohio, many of whom were sick or weak from exposure, crowded aboard, taking up every berth or other space. To accommodate this gross overload (her legal capacity was 376 souls), the decks were strengthened with supporting stanchions, but still they sagged. During this layover that, because it was so common, was unnoticed elsewhere, a stirring escape attempt occupied naval officers some miles below. A few coal barges and several Union gunboats were now stationed at the mouth of the Red River, which, for most of the past year had, like the Yazoo, been largely ignored as a site of active Federal naval attention. According to intelligence reports received in New Orleans, the Confederate ironclad Missouri and the ram Webb, previously at Shreveport, Louisiana, had arrived at Alexandria several weeks earlier. Northern spies concentrating on the former also saw that the latter, previously neglected, was being physically refreshed by the energetic and newly arrived Lt. Charles W. “Savez” Read. A veteran of Mississippi River service aboard the famous CSS McRae and CSS Arkansas, as well as the ­­ocean-going warships Florida and Tacony, he had gained Richmond’s permission to run the paddle-wheeler ­­ out of hiding and down to the Gulf of Mexico to become a commerce raider. While Read finished his preparations and started downstream, the Union Navy, having been alerted, reinforced the tinclads in the waters off the mouth of the Red, adding the ironclads Choctaw and Lafayette, as well as the monitor Manhattan. On the night of April 23/24, the Webb stealthily broke out into the Mississippi, where two years earlier she had helped overwhelm and capture the Federal ironclad Indianola. Discovered, she speedily outran the big Federal pickets and enjoyed smooth steaming. Not far above New Orleans, Read sent a landing party ashore to cut telegraph wires and thereby stop news of his run reaching the city. The effort failed as the Yankees, wiring out alerts, had sent a dispatch down from Donaldsonville, Louisiana,



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giving military and naval leaders in the town three hours’ advance warning that the Webb was en route. At the same time, newspapermen all over the North published extras on the exodus, recapping with various degrees of credulity the Rebel’s departure and repeating speculation, including the idea that Jefferson Davis was aboard escaping to Havana. Masquerading as Northern bluejackets and, while passing other boats even dipping the ship’s colors in honor of Lincoln’s death, the Southern crew, looking for all the world like another commercial cotton trader, moved down to Algiers fooling numerous gunboat lookouts. The pilot of the USS Lackawanna, a veteran steamboatman familiar with river shipping, recognized the passing steamer and raised the alarm. Raising her Dixie ensign, the interloper rushed away under fire, moving, according to Sharf, at a remarkable 25 mph. As alarm bells sounded in New Orleans, the Webb eluded at least four Union warships and by Monday afternoon was past the city, headed toward the Gulf, Yankee ships tailing behind. About 23 miles downstream, the masts of the s­­ loop-of-war Richmond were sighted behind a shoal blocking the river channel. Knowing the power of her broadside and electing not to test it, Read ordered his ­­would-be raider run up on the left bank. Hitting the beach, the ship was set ablaze after her men abandoned. All were soon rounded up to become POWs.8 Two days later, severely overloaded, the Sultana paddled up the Mississippi, making intermediate stops at Helena, Arkansas, and reached Memphis about 7 p.m. on April 26. With a thunderstorm gathering, she coaled and departed, working her way north against a stiff spring current. At Redman Point, on the Arkansas shore between Harrison’s and Bradley’s Landings, approximately seven to nine miles above the city at Paddy’s Hen and Chickens, the Sultana exploded at about 2 a.m., April 27.9 Numerous passengers were thrown into the churning waters as hot coals turned the boat into a blazing torch. It was recorded that the disaster “torched a ruddy glare

CSS Webb destruction. Notorious in Union eyes for her participation in the February 1863 sinking of the U.S. ironclad Indianola, this cottonclad ram, which was not actually transferred from the Confederate Army to the navy until early 1865, hid out far up the Red River of Louisiana. Under command of Lt. Charles S. Read, she broke out into the Mississippi on April 23–24 headed toward the Gulf of Mexico, but was forced to scuttle when confronted by a powerful Federal warship near New Orleans (Harper’s Weekly, May 20, 1865).

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among the cottonwoods of Tennessee and Arkansas and a dull rumble shook the countryside.” The thunderstorm broke at the same time.10 The glare from the burning Sultana could be seen at Memphis and numerous boats and vessels put out to the scene to learn what had occurred and to rescue survivors. In the hour before the first rescue boat arrived (the steamer Bostona II), many not already dead died from burns or hypothermia or could no longer remain afloat in the icy water and drowned. Among the craft lying at the U.S. Navy yard just north of Memphis that morning were the repairing timberclad Tyler and the idle tinclad Grosbeak. Aboard the latter, an Acting Master’s Mate, William B. Floyd, had witnessed the Sultana depart the coal yard and then, not long after, “noticed a red glow in the sky, which very soon showed plainly as a fire.” This development was pointed out to the senior master’s mate of the boat, in command in the temporary absence ashore of Acting Master Thomas Burns. Unwilling to assume responsibility for firing up the boiler, he ordered that the tinclad not speed to the rescue. When “faint cries for help” were heard echoing over the water sometime after 3 a.m., Pilot Karnes, awakened by Floyd, overrode the master’s mate and sent the

Sultana destruction. This sidewheeler was one of several Northern steamers given contracts to return Union POWs at the end of the war. With a capacity of 376 passengers, she was transporting 2,137 on the Mississippi seven miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, when she exploded and burnt out on April 27, 1865, killing well over a thousand souls. A number of vessels, civilian and military, participated in rescue operations, including the USS Essex, Tyler, and the tinclad Grosbeak, which latter alone saved 90 men. This remains the greatest maritime disaster in American history (Harper’s Weekly, May 20, 1865).



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crew of the Grosbeak into action. Quickly, the tinclad’s cutters were launched and began rowing toward the sound of the cries. Over a dozen survivors were quickly rescued. About this same time, small boats also set out from the Tyler and the ironclad Essex. Within a short time, both the Grosbeck and the Essex were, themselves, underway, picking up people as they proceeded, including men (sometimes naked) along the shore. The Essex halted her effort at Fort Pickering; however, the Grosbeck continued, going as far as the other side of President’s Island. When she returned to Memphis about 11 a.m., the tinclad had approximately 90 survivors on board. The hulk of the devastated steamboat drifted to the west bank of the Mississippi at Hen Island, off the tiny settlement of Mound City, Arkansas, where it sank about dawn. Bodies would be recovered for months, but, altogether, some 700–800 people survived the Sultana disaster. Of the 1,700–1,800 who perished (no one knew how many were aboard, so accurate estimates remain impossible), many were buried in the Memphis National Cemetery. Also on April 27, Maj. Gen. Thomas at Nashville wrote to Acting RAdm. Lee to say that he had received information that Davis and his followers were planning to make their escape across the Mississippi. The squadron commander laid the highest priority on effecting a capture and ordered all of his ­­in-theater commanders “to make a minute report of the dispositions made” to accomplish the “great object.” The following afternoon Secretary Welles and Lt. Gen. Grant forwarded hearsay information on the Confederate president’s escape route. Welles advised Lee to continue to watch the Mississippi and its tributaries while Grant thought Davis was headed to South Carolina and eventual escape out of the United States, maybe via the great river. Lee now began sending reinforcements from the upper flotillas to Memphis and lower points where it was realistically expected that the Davis party might make a run. Among the boats transferred to the pursuit were the Silver Lake, Brilliant, Ozark, Naumkeag, Tyler, Victory, Neosho, Ibex, Kate (on her first duty), Juliet, Marmora, Colossus, Louisville, Romeo, and Abeona. The acting rear admiral took personal charge from the Tempest (Tinclad No. 1), off the mouth of the White River. Over the next few days, the target search area shifted gradually south to the regions near Grand Gulf, Rodney, or Bruinsburg, Mississippi. Much of the land through which it was thought the Confederate president might flee (given that he had a home just below Vicksburg) was seen to be “overflowed and swampy.” Still, all skiffs, flats, and other manner of small boats crossing any of the adjacent rivers were frequently investigated and often impounded or destroyed. Several lengthy gunboat penetrations inland were attempted. For example, on May 4–6, the old Fifth District veteran Mound City undertook a scout up the Big Black River, finding the fast stream “quite narrow and the bends short.” A thick 150-foot ­­ thick driftwood obstruction or “raft” blocked passage to the river’s great bridge, forcing the ironclad to back stern first all the way back to the Mississippi. The trip was similar to that she had made out of Steele’s Bayou back in early 1863. No Mississippi Squadron boat ever came close to intercepting the Confederate president, who never actually made it very far west at all. With members of his Cabinet, he had reached and departed Abbeville, South Carolina, on May 2. After several more days of fruitless running, Davis, his family and part of his Cabinet were arrested

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at Irwinville, some 15 miles from Macon, Georgia, on May 10. Acting Rear Adm. Lee received a telegram from Maj. Gen Thomas on May 15 announcing the capture.11 As might be expected after such a gigantic disaster, the literature concerning the Sultana explosion is of significant size. We have noted here those publications directly bearing upon the USN involvement in the rescue effort. Numerous newspapers recalled the event, particularly during its sesquicentennial. As the death throes of the Confederacy continued, so too did the Mississippi Squadron’s police work on the Western waters. Taking into account occasional dustups such as the Davis chase, the rivers were now mostly pacific and fully open to commercial steamboat traffic. As the season grew warmer, it brought the certainty that the water stage was in decline. On the upper rivers guarded by the Tenth District, planning started to transfer naval operations for the annual ­­low-water period from the Cumberland and Tennessee to the Ohio and a temporary base at Evansville, Indiana. With both Lt. Cmdr. Fitch and Lt. Glassford on other duties, Acting Master Washington C. Coulson, the executive officer of the Moose, was, as of April 29, acting commander of the district and its flagboat Moose. Then off Tennessee Rolling Mills, which was actually a Lyon County, Kentucky, village where the iron works lay deeply immersed by late-winter ­­ flooding, the Moose was alerted by the passing Abeona that a large party, reportedly of 150–200 ­­un-surrendered Rebels, was two miles inland at Center Furnace and headed toward the Cumberland intent upon crossing it and sacking nearby Eddyville, Kentucky. The Confederates were supposedly led by a Maj. Hopkins of Brig. Gen. Abraham Buford’s Second Division, a part of the Cavalry Corps of Lt. Gen. Forrest. This report was not correct; a review of the officer roster for Forrest’s entire command published as the appendix to Jordan and Pryor shows no leader down to company level named Hopkins. This may have been another case of outlaws masquerading as military officers and intent on doing mischief for their own personal gain. Even though the river was falling, Coulson got his warship underway for an interception. Upon rounding the point at the head of Big Eddy, lookouts aboard sighted a large body of armed butternuts on shore, with two troop-laden ­­ boats shoving off for the opposite bank. Seeing the tinclad, the men in the small craft began jumping overboard. Coming to, the Moose began backing while simultaneously the forward gun on the upper deck was fired and sailors volleyed with rifles. Few of the men caught in the boats reached shore; most were wounded, killed, or drowned. The tinclad quickly landed a party of “­­small-arms men” to engage the visible ­­revolver-armed and disorganized survivors. No match for the bluejackets, most were dispersed, with 20 or so men killed or wounded and six captured. Additionally, 19 horses and three mules plus small arms and equestrian accouterments were also taken. About 60 Southerners and their leader managed to escape into the woods on the river’s north side. Deciding it was not prudent for his men ashore to venture far inland, the sailors were recalled and the gunboat returned to Eddyville with her prisoners and plunder aboard, including the animals. After, the men and livestock were turned over to the local post military commander with a recap on the action. Having recently returned to Smithland from Mound City duty, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch was present when Coulson returned. Taking his subordinate’s report, the veteran



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officer had the satisfaction of knowing that his flagboat had emerged triumphant in what turned out to be the last significant naval counterinsurgency engagement on the Western rivers during the Civil War. A report on the skirmish was forwarded to Mound City and, on May 15, Lee sent a paraphrased copy to Secretary Welles.12 Implementation of plans to reduce the overall size of the U.S. Navy were in full swing by the start of May. On the third day of the month, Secretary Welles ordered the expenses of the Mississippi Squadron, the major organization we consider here, reduced as far as possible. To start with, only 25 vessels of all types were to be kept in commission. Any units that belonged to the army or USQMD were to be dismantled of naval property and returned. These specifically included the four chartered Upper Tennessee gunboats and the leased facilities at Bridgeport, Alabama. The resignations of any officers who wished to leave the service were to be approved. Requests for leave or transfer would also be considered, as long as a sufficient number of officers were retained to man the dwindling number of boats. Almost two weeks later on May 18, after returning to Mound City from New Orleans, Acting RAdm. Lee sent Washington two vessel lists. One identified those to be retained in the Mississippi Squadron ­­long-term and the second showing those only needed for the present. Those on the first register included the ironclads Benton, Tennessee, Neosho, and Pittsburg, the timberclads Lexington and Tyler, the tinclads Ouachita, Fort Hindman, Tempest, Hastings, Grossbeak, Gazelle, Ibex, St. Clair, Abeona, Gamage, Collier, Oriole, Moose, and Sibyl, and the auxiliaries William H. Brown, General Lyon, and Samson. The second register included the ironclads Louisville and Mound City, the tinclads Argosy, Colossus, Exchange, Forest Rose, Fairplay, Fairy, Kate, Kenwood, Little Rebel, Mist, Naumkeag, Prairie Bird, Alfred Robb, Reindeer, Siren, Silver Lake, and Silver Cloud, and the auxiliaries General Price and Volunteer, plus eight tugs. While the squadron commander’s attention increasingly turned to downsizing his operation, he was still required to provide army cooperation whenever possible. In response to a May 18 request from Maj. Gen. Thomas, Lee immediately ordered the tinclads Fairplay and Abeona to Nashville to provide escort for three transports scheduled to return POWs from Brig. Gen. Daniel C. Goven’s brigade to their homes along the Mississippi River shoreline. When the two vessels arrived at the Tennessee capital on May 23, the Fairplay was diverted to escort a different POW steamer on a “milk run” to Memphis. Along the way, she oversaw the delivery of hundreds of former Confederate soldiers at numerous intermediate landings, returning to Cairo, Illinois, on May 29. After coaling, she continued on to Nashville, where, together with the Abeona, she undertook the Goven mission. Lee took the opportunity on May 19 to pen a long report that provided his recommendations “regarding the reduction of the squadron.” Once the last Confederate ­­Trans-Mississippi holdouts surrendered, all of the ironclads could be laid up in ordinary and withdrawn. Only a handful of service craft were needed and all of the others, plus the tinclads and auxiliaries, could be brought to Mound City. Blessed with valuable workmen and facilities, the Illinois complex was centrally located and would be a convenient site for later public sales. Given an anticipated civilian demand, it was recommended that the withdrawn vessels be readied for disposal as soon as possible. Armor from casemates could be

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quickly and easily removed for separate sale or storage by crews of the various gunboats. Cannon could similarly be withdrawn, along with the heavy anchors, cables, and other surplus and salable items. Ammunition could be relocated to other military magazines. After the vessels were stripped, a grand public sale (terms cash) should be held to gain as much return as possible on their original purchase prices. Given the expected early opening of trade on the tributaries of regions lately in secession, it was suggested that the light draughts would be the first sold and could be converted within a short time, perhaps by June 20. Acting RAdm. Lee also recommended that, for 15 days in advance of whatever auction date was chosen, newspaper advertisements be placed in the daily newspapers of the principal river cities, including Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Cairo, St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans. For a week or so prior to the sale, prospective buyers would be allowed to inspect the boats. Although Lee was not a favorite of Welles, the latter did recognize that his Western man had the requisite business skills to organize the squadron’s liquidation. Agreeing with the commander’s proposals, Welles approved the downsizing proposals, indicating that the vessels would be disposed of under the direction of the Department’s Bureau of Construction. His rush to conclude Western activities was reinforced by an important supporter. “Lt Gen. Grant,” the Secretary confided, “does not consider it necessary to have ­­men-of-war upon any river but the Mississippi.” Upon receipt of Washington’s authority, Lee began selecting vessels to demobilize. A series of dispatches on the subject were then ordered delivered by the Sibyl to “every gunboat on the river.”13 Although it was anticipated that the sale of some of the boats could occur as early as the end of June, removal of the guns from the heavy and light units of the fleet took more time, as did the dismantlement of their military bulwarks, casemates and other protections. Additionally, there remained a few police and surrender tasks yet to finish. The first of these was the last large-scale ­­ naval escort operation associated with the Civil War on Western waters. Throughout the Civil War years in a development far outside the scope of our story until now, French forces under instructions from Napoleon III occupied and attempted to fully subject Mexico. During the final days of the Confederacy, a number of Southern commands, officers, or parts of Rebel outfits, notably that of Brig. Gen. Joseph O. (“Jo”) Shelby, refused to quit and either did or threatened to remove south of the Rio Grande. These actions, plus the general threat posed by the puppet Emperor Maximilian to the U.S. southwestern border, caused President Andrew Johnson to order Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, newly appointed commander of the Military District of the Southwest, to undertake an expedition into Texas. Although most of the soldiers sent would go by sea, a number would be dispatched up the Red River from Louisiana. On May 24, Acting RAdm. Lee revealed to his Third District commander, Lt. Cmdr. James P. Foster, that, in the process of moving into Texas, Maj. Gen. Sheridan intended to garrison Shreveport and Alexandria with those troops and also wanted at least two light draughts to patrol the river between those communities. Foster was expected to cooperate with Sheridan and his deputies in whatever manner was desired, and to do so, Lee beefed up his local force with the tinclads St. Clair, Fort Hindman, Collier, Gamage, and Little Rebel.



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Having learned the tricks of the Red a year earlier, the leaders of the Mississippi Squadron knew that the water in that stream could be too low for ironclads. As a result, the number of tinclads, including the big gun Fort Hindman, was large. In addition, a last Confederate ironclad caused concern. Though not high now, the water level upstream at Shreveport was up sufficiently by the end of March to allow the Missouri to move down to Alexandria. Arriving on April 4, she anchored opposite Fort Randolph above the falls that had blocked RAdm. David D. Porter’s fleet a year earlier. There she was seen by Federal informants who reported that she appeared to have been built on the plan of the CSS Tennessee, captured by RAdm. David G. Farragut at Mobile Bay the previous August. Mounting only three guns, she was “very slow, not being able to stem the current alone.”14 Also on May 24, Lt. Cmdr. Foster sent, by army request, the tinclad Gazelle to Baton Rouge to embark the Confederate generals Simon Bolivar Buckner and Sterling Price, who, on behalf of ­­Trans-Mississippi Department commander Gen. Edmond Kirby Smith, were en route to New Orleans to negotiate surrender terms with Federal Military District of West Mississippi commander Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby. On May 26, the two sides entered into a “military convention” which extended to Kirby Smith’s command (army and navy) the same generous terms as given by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. The next day, Canby’s headquarters informed Foster of the surrender and asked, as Lee had indicated, that two or three gunboats be made available to convoy Federal occupation troops from the mouth of the Red River to garrison the various former Confederate posts on that stream. The expedition would depart early the following week. The news of the Buckner-Price ­­ accord was officially wired to the Mississippi Squadron commander on May 27, the same day he met with Maj. Gen. Sheridan at Cairo to receive a firsthand briefing on requirements for the forthcoming Texas operation. In the absence of Foster, who had traveled up to Mound City, Lee now delegated the new Third District commander Lt. Cmdr. William E. Fitzhugh to temporarily act as Mississippi Squadron liaison with Maj. Gen. Canby’s command. At the same time, Fitzhugh’s force was enhanced by assignment of the ironclads Lafayette and Benton plus two more tinclads. Largely unremembered, Fitzhugh, who joined the squadron late in 1864 as captain of the Ouachita, led the last large Union naval force assembled for operations on the Western waters. On May 28, Fitzhugh informed Canby that he had three gunboats at the mouth of the Red River ready to accompany his force. Consequently and before the day was over, the Benton, Ouachita, and Fort Hindman were sent up the river leading the steamer Ida May, transporting Maj. Gen. Francis J. Herron and his staff. They were followed by eight troop transports loaded with 8,000 soldiers, with their rear protected by the Lafayette, Gamage, and Little Rebel. For several days, Fitzhugh and Herron retraced the route taken by RAdm. Porter and Department of the Gulf troops in early 1864, arriving below Alexandria on the evening of June 2. “There was no public demonstration on the arrival of the troops,” Northern journalists recorded, “yet the feeling of relief manifested by the citizens was unmistakable.” Early the next morning, Lt. James H. Carter, CSN, presented himself and surrendered the Missouri, its 42 officers and crew. In conversation, the intrepid

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USS Benton. Built as a catamaran snagboat for James B. Eads, this vessel was converted by its owner into a powerful Federal gunboat. Serving as flagboat until the arrival of the USS Black Hawk, she actively participated in most of the Western waters campaigns until the conclusion of the Red River operation in May 1864. A guardship for the remainder of the conflict, she was given the honor of joining the Mississippi Squadron task force sent up the Red River in June 1865 to occupy Shreveport, Louisiana, and take possession of the last Confederate ironclad, CSS Missouri (Naval History and Heritage Command).

­­ builder-skipper reported that his was the only Southern naval vessel left on the Red River or its tributaries. The last Rebel ironclad to capitulate in home waters was moved below the falls, cleaned up, and sent down the river to Memphis on June 4 under escort of the Benton. Also on June 4, the Gamage with both Fitzhugh and Carter embarked, escorted Maj. Gen. Herron and his steamers to Shreveport, arriving, via Grand Ecore, three days later, where Arkansas and Missouri soldiers were found to be keeping order. Aside from some artillery parked in the city, little other public property was found. On the way up, the Federals noticed that the country through which they passed showed “many signs of the Red River campaign, ruins being seen on every hand.” The city, like the countryside, was destitute of supplies, but large quantities of cotton were found along the riverbanks. It was hoped that it could be pushed out while the river was still high. No Rebel navy yards, ordnance, or supplies of consequence were found at Shreveport, just as none were discovered earlier at Alexandria. Carter did turn over a pair of small supply steamers to Herron. As the Herron mission began, Fitzhugh was also requested to have a tinclad ascend the Ouachita. Exhibiting complete cooperation, the Third District commander let it be known that he had “seven wooden and two ironclad vessels in readiness” for whatever the commanding general desired. So it was that while he was at Shreveport, the Kenwood and Collier went up the Ouachita River as far as Monroe. A flag of truce was met at one point and those holding it represented “the lawless condition of the soldiers and others” on and inland of the riverbanks. Having resumed command of the Third District, Lt. Cmdr. Foster traveled up the



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Red River aboard a USQMD steamer, ordering back downstream the ironclads and most of the tinclads encountered at various points en route. About 70 miles below Shreveport, he met and conferred with Lt. Cmdr. Fitzhugh, whom he ordered to Mound City to report on his mission to Acting RAdm. Lee. Returning down the river, Foster left the Gamage and Fort Hindman to patrol and act in support of the army.15 As the last Red River expedition unfolded, commanders of Union Navy squadrons continued to downsize. Secretary Welles was determined to reduce his several fleets both efficiently and rapidly. To expedite the Department’s goal from an administrative viewpoint, Acting RAdm. Lee consolidated his squadron’s districts of his command on May 29. Where there were previously eleven, now there were but three: First, “from White River, inclusive, as far up the Mississippi and its tributaries as naval operations extend”; second, “from White River to Grand Gulf ”; and third, “from Grand Gulf to New Orleans.” Five tinclads were assigned to the first, four to the second, and five to the third. Lt. Cmdr. Foster retained the third with Lt. Cmdr. Robert L. May in charge of the first and Lt. Cmdr. John J. Cornwell the second. At the same time, he wrote to the Navy Department asking to retain thirteen light draughts. “Gunboat protection for our trading vessels against guerrillas will be required up the tributaries—the Yazoo, Red, and Arkansas rivers—for some little time to come,” Lee opined. He would, however, “reduce the batteries and crews of the vessels retained.” If his recommendation were accepted, three dozen light draughts would be withdrawn, demobilized, and made ready for sale. Such retention did not fit into Washington’s cost-cutting ­­ plan and, on June 2, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Vasa Fox wrote giving Lee the opportunity to choose and retain 15 vessels overall plus storeships. Additionally, he was to economize wherever possible, especially in the use of coal. All vessels were “to keep steam down, except in an emergency.” These restrictions were noted by the admiral in a June 12 general order to district and vessel commanders. Those tinclads remaining were reshuffled, with three assigned to the First Division; three to the Second Division; and four to the Third Division. The Tempest continued as flagboat, with the General Lyon, William H. Brown, Samson, and Thistle attached to her. The gunboats Little Rebel, General Price, and General Bragg were retained to blockade the Red River’s mouth. As the withdrawn tinclads reported to Mound City, they were taken in hand by laborers contracted for by base commander Com. John W. Livingston under order of the Bureau of Construction. In an orderly manner, the casemates were removed, along with all other protections, and the guns taken out. Small arms and powder were dispatched to magazines and basic engine repairs completed. Most of the light draughts remained fully functional as steamboats and could soon again serve as transports. Occasionally, the smaller warcraft undertook special duties. For example, one of the services provided by the tinclads during the war often received little notice: the towing of ironclads. Most of the heavy gunboats had great difficulty making way against the currents of the rivers and often required assistance, which was usually provided by civilian craft or, when available, the light draughts. In keeping with Navy Department orders that a large number of the ironclads of the Mississippi Squadron be laid up at Mound City (several were sent to New Orleans), it became necessary for several of the tinclads to assist the fleet auxiliaries and wooden gunboats in helping the larger boats reach their destination from locations along the Mississippi at Memphis and below.

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It was particularly important that, in the process of relocating the ironclads, they were not grounded on sandbars or other obstructions, escape from which could prove difficult. As it appeared that three of the veterans already at Mound City might be caught by receding waters above the bar as the river continued to recede, they were taken downstream on June 10 and anchored in the deeper water opposite Cairo. For example, on June 19, the tinclads Argosy and Forest Rose were dispatched to Memphis to tow up the veteran ironclad Essex. Although all practical dispatch was to be employed in accomplishing the mission, the pilots of the light draughts were specifically ordered to “pass no doubtful place until you have thoroughly sounded and buoyed them in [small] boats.” While conducting this service from Vicksburg for another armorclad, an officer aboard the light draught Huntress observed that “returning against the current with an i­­ ron-clad in tow was rather slow work.” Opportunities to study life along the riverbank were many. Another difficulty facing Lee as he dismantled the Mississippi Squadron was finding a place to stow the guns, carriages, stores, and gunpowder taken off the boats. Also on June 19, a telegram arrived from Washington, D.C., that seemed to solve this

Stone powder magazine at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. While the Mississippi Squadron was being dismantled, a place was required to stow the powder and loaded shells taken off the gunboats. In an arrangement with the War Department, RAdm. Lee was authorized to occupy the grounds of the Jefferson Barracks Reserve near St. Louis and erect such temporary sheds, magazines, etc., as many be required. Not all of the space offered was needed; however, to ensure sufficient storage, two stone magazines, each 150' by 50', were constructed by the end of June along with a huge storage shed (Library of Congress).



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problem. The admiral was authorized to occupy the grounds of the Jefferson Barracks Reserve near St. Louis. The War Department, to whom Secretary Welles had turned for assistance in the matter, had even agreed to permit the USN to erect temporary sheds, storehouses, and a magazine. As it turned out, the Mississippi Squadron did not require all of the Jefferson Barracks storage that Welles obtained. Indeed, all. Lee really needed was a place to send his powder and loaded shell. There was plenty of covered room at Mound City, he wrote his civilian superior, to accommodate everything else. To make certain that there was sufficient storage, however, two stone magazines, each 150' by 50', were constructed along with a huge storage shed. These were in place at Jefferson Barracks by the end of June. Lt. Cmdr. Fitzhugh was now detailed to Missouri to take charge of the unloading and storage operation, making certain that vessels were turned around to Mound City as quickly as possible. On July 2, the Moose, her casemate gone and her guns removed, steamed to Jefferson Barracks with the first load of ordnance and naval material to be stored under the War Department arrangement. Within days, the famed veteran of Morgan’s Raid and the Battle of Nashville was joined in this duty by numerous other demilitarized light draughts all moving ammunition to Jefferson Barracks, “which we did,” one participant remembered, “trip after trip, working day and night ’till the task was done.” Not only did crewmen have to oversee delivery of shot and shell, they had to participate in its loading, and often its unloading, though much of the latter work was done with local contract labor. A large percentage of the ammunition, the so-called ­­ “fixed ammunition,” was stowed in wooden boxes with rope handles, each of which weighed between 100 and 300 pounds. It required two men to carry one of the boxes and they did so as gingerly as possible so as to avoid explosions. Solid shot was somewhat easier. The loading process was so arranged that it could be rolled right to the gangplank down a trench shoveled out of the riverbank. Men were stationed along this ditch and if a ball stopped, it could be started again with a kick.16 Another requirement of squadron demobilization was recovery, where possible, of lost ordnance. On June 20, the tinclad Kate was ordered to the Lower Tennessee River to “raise or wreck, as the case may require, the gunboats Undine, Key West, Elfin, and Tawah at or near Johnsonville.” A sunken coal barge there and two at Smithland were also to be raised. It took over two weeks for completion of the Johnsonville mission with nine howitzers recovered. The wrecks themselves would gradually be consumed by the river. Johnsonville, Reynoldsburg, and the surrounding area were covered by the TVA’s Kentucky Lake in 1944. What little remained of the gunboats and transports was sought early in the 21st century in a concerted effort by the state, USN, and private firms, who found a few relics and the burnt-out ­­ hull of the Undine. On June 27, Lt. Moreau Forrest, late commander of the Eleventh District, was given final instructions by Maj. Gen. Thomas in a Nashville interview concerning the procedure for turning back to the War Department the four chartered Upper Tennessee gunboats General Thomas, General Grant, General Burnside, and General Sherman. Returning to Bridgeport, Alabama, where the boats were homeported, he turned them over to the local army quartermaster and was given a $76,000 receipt for each. Forrest also returned and received receipts for all leased property, which

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consisted primarily of a few buildings and sheds where his paymaster stored provisions and clothing. Even as the tinclads and other squadron vessels were being retired, the Navy Department, appreciating the fact that it needed to unload a large number of surplus river naval vessels, settled upon a traditional American plan for liquidation. The boats would, as Acting RAdm. Lee had earlier suggested, be auctioned. Beginning in late June, advertisements were placed by Department officials in all of the leading newspapers from the East Coast through the Midwest and down to New Orleans for a “Large Sale of Gunboats.” Noting that over 50 craft were available, officials submitting the notices anticipated that all of them would be sold in a giant ­­one-day sale overseen by Com. Livingston at Mound City on August 17. On July 3, Lee sent the Navy Department a report concerning his progress with squadron demobilization. So far as the tinclads were concerned, the work had gone smoothly. One was transporting paymasters’ stores to New Orleans; one was temporarily stationed at Jefferson Barracks; eight were transporting ordnance stores to Jefferson Barracks; seven were on the Mississippi River proceeding under orders to Mound City; thirteen were at Mound City being dismantled; and sixteen were at Mound City, dismantled and about to be put out of commission. Several other warships continued in service, including the wooden gunboats. One of these, the General Price, together with the transport William H. Brown, completed towing the surrendered Confederate ironclad Missouri from Memphis to Mound City on July 5. Manned by two paroled officers and seventeen seamen, the last Rebel armorclad made the trip upstream in such a “sinking condition” that half of the Brown’s steam power was devoted to keeping her pumped out. The next day, Secretary Welles, flogging his squadron commanders hard under “the stern injunction of economy,” bluntly informed Lee that the “Department intends to break up the Mississippi Squadron.” Consequently, all bases and stations other than the one at Mound City were to be closed and their functions transferred to Illinois. Additionally, only five active vessels could be retained, in addition to those temporarily moving stores, especially to Jefferson Barracks. Acting RAdm. Lee meanwhile had borne down heavily upon his task of downsizing the Mississippi Squadron. As the flow to Jefferson Barracks slowed, bluejackets from the unneeded boats were transferred to the receiving ship Great Western. The growing number of men awaiting detachment required that barge after barge, with tents, be lashed side by side to each other and to the Great Western with strong lines. Each morning, a boatswain sounded his whistle and men listened to learn if their boat was being called in what had become a program of mass discharges by vessel. Upon notification, the bluejackets from a given craft assembled, signed and received the necessary papers, and were provided funds in payment or for passage home. The newspapers reported that Lee gave the former bluejackets his thanks and bid “them farewell in handsome terms.” He did not mention that he and his personnel officers had then to turn over multiple and very specific manpower lists to the Bureau of Navigation and to the Office of Detail. By July 27, Lee was able to report that most of the men on the receiving ship or the barges were discharged and 25 vessels were “anchored, generally in pairs, in the bend above Cairo.” Many had been decommissioned, stripped of their protections, and turned over to Com. Livingston for sale. Five tinclads were yet on duty, and most



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of the others were employed as transports on the Jefferson Barracks run. It was hoped that all could be “thoroughly stripped and out of commission” within ten days. The last two tinclads, and what little remained of the organization, were surrendered to Commodore Livingston on August 12. Two days later, Acting RAdm. Lee hauled down his flag and the Mississippi Squadron ceased to exist.17 From its practice of covering large absolute sales, the editors of the Chicago Daily Tribune appreciated the impact that Com. Livingston’s forthcoming large auction of tinclads, tugs, and support craft could have. Consequently, they sent one of their better known war correspondents, J. A. Austen, to Mound City about a fortnight ahead of the sale. Austen was asked to review the atmosphere of the community, examine the mechanics of the sale, and take the pulse of potential buyers. By the time he packed his suitcase for the train ride down, the military (both army and navy) had begun selling off surplus items. For example, a large sale of coal and coal barges was held at Natchez on August 7. As it turned out, according to Austen, the navy’s sale was probably one of the largest meetings of steamboat men in a generation. It was even possible, he suggested, that “so great a meeting of boatmen was never before held in the West.” Every part of the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast were represented and there was talk of taking some of the new acquisitions to rivers in Texas or Alabama. Austen found a total of 63 boats (timberclads, tinclads, auxiliaries, and tugs) anchored in the Ohio River between Mound City and Cairo “nearly filing the bend between the two places.” Many were, as Lee had reported earlier, tied up in pairs, both for maintenance and security purposes. At night, lights and lanterns were hung aboard. Sparkling on the water, all who saw this illuminated parade perceived it a most beautiful and striking sight, reminiscent of the myriad lights of a large town or city. In the week before the August 17 sale, earnest buyers and the idly curious who had come for the event took passage aboard every small craft available to examine the offerings, both from the water and by inspections aboard. Potential purchasers were encouraged to seek every nugget of information available on those boats of interest and to ply their sometimes immense knowledge in calculating their value. So thorough was this process, Austen believed, that “if any buyer paid more than his boat was worth, he did so with full knowledge of what he was doing.” Ashore little remained of the once bustling base, its machinery having been largely removed to St. Louis. Some ordnance stores remained, including a number of ­­15-inch shells not removed to Jefferson Barracks and “guns of every size and pattern.” The grounds appeared to be “covered in old iron—the plating stripped from several vessels—most of it being but half inch in thickness,” though some of it from the City Series boats was two and a half inches thick. Unusable salvaged cannon, boilers, and engines in “every stage of uselessness” were “strewn in utter confusion,” awaiting auction, the enterprising winning “Western ­­iron-monger” certain to thereafter make a fortune. The arrangements for the sale were familiar to all then and to anyone today who has ever attended the auction of a house, automobile, or farm animals. A large stand was placed in the center of the naval station ordnance building, “handsomely decorated with national ensigns.” Here space and every convenience was afforded to clerks, reporters, and purchasers.

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At exactly noon on that sweltering Thursday, ­­Cairo-based auctioneer Solomon A. Silver took the stand and, in a booming voice, began the alphabetical disposal with the tinclad Argosy. She was quickly “knocked down” to U. P. Schenck for $10,000. The sale proceeded rapidly and the light draughts, because of their future trading value, brought the highest bids. Other sale examples included James Kenison’s pickup of the Fairy for $9,600; John Gilbert’s acquisition of the Gazelle for $10,850; and Thomas Scott’s buy of the Oriole for $17,000. The sale price of some of the more historic included W. Thatcher’s purchase of the Cricket for $6,050; David White’s buy of the Moose for $10,100; the $7,100 pickup of the Romeo by Edward Williams; and the $8,650 sale of the Marmora to D. D. Barry.

Three views of the Mound City Naval Station, ca. 1865. Above: With thanks to Mark F. Jenkins for his ID of some features in the first two shots, we note that the top photograph was taken from a vessel ahead of a tinclad (either Tensas #39 or Fawn #30) looking southwest down the Ohio River. The crosswise-to-view building in the distance was a sawmill, beyond which (not visible) were the marine ways. The closest building was a machine shop with a blacksmith shop just to the right. Opposite top: Looking north upstream, the far left building (with a tower in front) appears to have housed gun carriages (note the cannonballs stacked near the tower) and perhaps an office. The Great Mound is visible to the left. Ascending it by a stairway, one finds a USMC guard standing atop left of the tree. Continuing further back is a smaller roofed structure that accommodated sundry items associated with the numerous cannon parked before it. The large two-story building beyond (with cannon in front) was more than likely the main ordnance building. Opposite bottom: A view of the main ordnance building, where the actual auctions of the vessels and items from the Mississippi Squadron were held. The photograph was incorrectly identified in Miller’s, vol. 6, as being located at the Cairo base (Library of Congress [above and top]; Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War, vol. 6 [bottom]).



12. War’s End, Squadron’s End, 1865 247

After three hours of “good and spirited” bidding, the sale was over and $625,000 was earned for the Federal coffers, most of it ($491,018) of it from the demilitarized tinclads. “Thus ended the great Government sale,” reporter Austen wrote as the auction concluded around dusk, “and with it vanished the Mississippi Squadron.” Only the monitors and other ironclads, a few wooden gunboats, and a couple of auxiliaries

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remained to be sold, plus three tinclads retained to complete a variety of final tasks required by the Mound City naval station.18 Within a few weeks, several additional Mound City sales were authorized by the Bureau of Construction for the end of November. Work continued apace at the naval base to ready all of the remaining craft for disposal. Among these was the hospital boat Red Rover, which had dropped anchor offshore in December 1864 at the time of the Nashville campaign. She was retained in active operation until November 17, when her last eleven (of 2,947) patients were transferred ashore. As they did all fall, laborers continued to strip, sort, and stack the iron plate previously employed as vessel armor while the former ironclads and other vessels were readied for disposal. Touted as fine potential towboats, the rams Avenger and Vindicator were added late to the list. As part of the process, the vessel engines, tackle, and “furniture” were removed and similarly inventoried. A variety of miscellaneous things were also organized for liquidation including a large number of small and ships’ boats, coal and coal barges, 2,500 fathoms (a fathom is 6 feet) of quarter- and ­­half-inch chain, and even two ships bells. By ­­mid-November, it was obvious that too much had still to be accomplished for

A late addition, USS Vindicator. Transferred to the Mississippi Squadron by the War Department in spring 1864 and modified at Mound City, this ram served off Natchez before her participation in a joint November assault on Confederate communications in western Mississippi. In April 1865 she was one of several vessels to unsuccessfully pursue the CSS Webb from the mouth of the Red River to her destruction at New Orleans. Dismantled at Mound City in July, she was added late to the November sale list, being touted in advertisements as a potentially fine towboat. In this shot, note the small boats tied up alongside below the chimneys (Library of Congress).



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the earlier plan of multiple sales to proceed. Thus the decision was taken to merge two large sales slated for November 29 and 23 and a smaller one on November 25 (for small craft only) into one giant auction on the order of that held in August. If everything could not be sold in one day, the remainder would be sold the next. On the morning of November 21, the St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat and St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican both advised the public that most of the former Mississippi Squadron’s remaining vessels were about to go under the gavel. The selling would begin promptly at noon on Wednesday, November 29. All would be sold to the highest bidder, “together with their engines, tackle, and furniture.” The newspapers also advertised the auction of 5,000 tons of the ex-fleet’s ­­ coal and a number of coal barges for November 28 and the sale of 250–300 tons of “T” railroad iron—this being the armor of the dismantled ironclads—on November 30. These were several of many surplus auctions held around the country in 1865– 1867 by the navy and the Army Quartermaster Department. During this period, the latter not only sold off the numerous transports it had acquired for service on the Western waters, but what remained of any vessels employed as gunboats. The most famous of those on the Cumberland River, the Newsboy, was rated “serviceable” at Nashville on June 30, 1865, and would be back in private service by March 20, 1866. The Silver Lake No. 2 had the same rating and was also at the Tennessee state capital that June. She was sold out of service on October 7 and redocumented Marion. The Stone River, rated “good,” was at Chattanooga on June 30, 1865, but her fate is unknown. The noteworthy military hospital boat D. A. January was sold privately on March 14, 1865; redocumented Ned Tracy, she was snagged and lost at Chester, Illinois, on December 18, 1867.19 The morning of the appointed day dawned cold in Mound City; it was now less than a month until Christmas. Upriver at Cincinnati, ice was reported in the Ohio River as well as other tributaries. Although they may have again had the opportunity over the past week to inspect the boats and other surplus items, the press reported that “the attendance was slim.” Still, the potential buyers undoubtedly arrived at the naval station fairly early, where it was soon apparent that some portion of the largess, perhaps the armor plate, would have to be sold the next day. The futures for the demilitarized ironclads may have been surmised by their prospective buyers, many of whom saw them either during the war or at the time of the great August auction. Some such as the Carondelet would serve as wharf boats while others, like the Tuscumbia, would be burned for the iron in their hulls. The fates of some, like the Red Rover, might be guessed, but remain unknown. As the government was regularly taking rather large losses to be rid of surplus, the reconfigured merchandise would not (like the former tinclads turned into plying steamers) quickly prove highly lucrative, and the small number of potential purchasers did not anticipate making large bids. One thing is certain, all of the competing watermen already had their financial arrangements completed. The advertisements specifically required that each bidder be able to place a 5 percent down payment on each vessel successfully won, the balance to be paid within six days, though several ­­non-vessel transactions would be allowed a month. We do not know for certain exactly how this particular ship auction progressed. There are no accounts of it in known diaries or correspondence and it was not covered in detail by the public press. We do know that one boat, the General Pillow, was

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USS Carondelet died a wharf boat. Arriving at Mound City on May 31, 1865, the most famous gunboat in the Mississippi Squadron (seen here earlier tied bows-on to a riverbank) was decommissioned on June 28, by which date she had been converted into an ordnance boat to help accommodate excess guns of all sizes. Over the next few months, her engines, furniture, tackle, and all remaining armor were removed. She was sold on November 29 for $3,600 and in her basic and powerless state became a Gallipolis, Ohio, wharf boat. Cast adrift by an 1873 storm, she was swept 130 miles downstream before grounding near Manchester, Ohio. Her hulk was believed sunk, but was destroyed by dredging before that could be definitively determined (Naval History and Heritage Command).

sold privately a few days earlier for just $2,000. The ­­no-nonsense chief auctioneer, Solomon A. Silver, who had presided over the earlier sale in the summer heat, gaveled the sale into session at noon this cold Wednesday. With 21 vessels and tons of equipment to be sold, the afternoon was long and darkness fell by the time the proceedings closed. The boats were not sold alphabetically this time, but in the following order: Essex, Louisville, Pittsburg, Carondelet, Mound City, Chillicothe, Ozark, CSS Missouri, Indianola, Tuscumbia, Benton, Avenger, Vindicator, Champion, Great Western, Little Rebel, Tempest, Red Rover, Sovereign, Volunteer, and the tug Mistletoe. After a short period of ­­back-and-forth for each craft or lot of furnishings, a high bidder was chosen. Wishing to bid on other possibilities, lot victors moved rapidly to the closing tables, made their full or partial payments in cash, and were awarded bills of sale signed by the base commandant for the Navy Department. When all was totaled up, the press observed, “the boats sold cheap.” The craft, exclusive of armor, furnishings, etc., sold for a total of $78,654. The average price was in the mid-$3,000s, with two boats alone that could quickly enter commercial service alone bringing in $22,050 (Tempest, $12,900 and Volunteer, $9,100). While the fleet that began as the Western Flotilla was no more by day’s end, the



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naval station at Mound City continued to function into the 1870s. Her most famous commander after Capt. Alexander Pennock was the Carondelet’s first captain, RAdm. Henry Walke, who served in 1868–1869.20 Regardless of their individual fates, collectively the sailors and warships of the USN Mississippi Squadron, along with a handful of U.S. Army boats, were among the most important, if undersung, participants in the Civil War. Their activities reinforced the claims of the North to an undivided Union through incessant probing into the heartland via the Western rivers, helping to keep open the great Midwestern communication lines by convoy, patrol, and direct support of National military action. After control of the Mississippi was secured in July 1863, the Confederacy was unable, for more than a few months at any time thereafter, to maintain a continued grip on much of its previously held territory in the war’s Western theater, particularly east of the great river. Her struggle during the remainder of that year and in 1864 was, in the end, unsuccessful, despite momentary successes at Chattanooga or on the Red River. Though not for want of Southern resistance, crushing Federal might either militarily subjected or economically subrogated Dixie’s land and her earlier belief in the exclusivity of “its streams.” When it was found too difficult or simply too unimportant by Northerners to actively contest or continue to contest several streams, such as the Yazoo or the Red and White after mid-1864, ­­ they were militarily neutralized by blockade. At the same time a way was found to pursue upon them a growing commercial trade, covert or even open, in cotton—long the South’s primary source of revenue. From a Union perspective, the great Western portion of the Anaconda Plan first announced by Gen. Winfield Scott in 1861 was largely accomplished on the Western rivers long before the end of the Civil War. At no time during the final almost two years of the conflict did the South cease to engage on the Western waters. Without a navy, her military still fought Yankee ironclads, though not frequently, and often gave them “what fer.” It was not, however, the big loud shootouts like those at Blair’s Landing or Bell’s Mills that dominated the Confederacy’s waterborne resistance but her ­­anti-shipping campaign against Federal steamers. Though inconsistent in manner and duration of application, these “unrestricted” assaults were relentlessly made against targets plying all the rivers from the Ohio south. Employing muskets, cannon, or a combination of both, organized regular and irregular forces, as well as unorganized partisans usually called “guerrillas,” “kept at it” even past the South’s surrender. As one writer noted, these “tactics caused the Union some concern, but did little more than increase the barbarity of an already vicious war.” Despite hundreds of attacks by Southerners on river transport during the war, the overall number of U.S. civilian and commercial steamboats sunk by military action was surprisingly few. Bvt. Brig. Gen. Lewis B. Parsons, USQMD river transport czar, later reported that direct “guerrilla” action against river transports on all of the Western streams from 1861 to1865 resulted in 28 vessels of 7,065 tons sunk for a loss of $355,000. Regular Confederate forces sank another 19 craft of 7,925 tons valued at $518,500. Confederate secret agents using incendiaries sank double the tonnage (18,500) of either Rebel cavalry or irregulars, 29 boats worth $891,000. Many more boats were lost to accidents or river obstructions than to Confederate action.21 Perhaps not as strategically vital as that mounted in 1862–1863, the Union’s

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Western naval war in 1863–1865 is worthy of a more complete review than it has previously received. Life was more mundane aboard the ironclads than the light draughts in those latter years, but with occasional spirited actions confronting both, the support rendered was varied, largely unreported, and effective. The USN Mississippi Squadron in ’63–’65 matured slightly in physical size while the sophistication of its operation was enhanced and its history was recalled with pride. Army cooperation, civilian commercial protection, and miscellaneous functions were, in addition, now maintained over a length of rivers nearly twice what it was before Vicksburg fell. With victory, the need for her existence ended. As Admiral Mahan, her best known early chronicler put it, “The vessels whose careers we have followed, and whose names have become familiar, were gradually sold, and, like most of her officers, returned to peaceful life.” A Philadelphia newspaperman, lacking the humility of squadron knowledge, simply concluded: “If hereafter we shall ever again want a navy in the west, it will be as easily created as this one has been and as successful.”22

Chapter Notes Introduction

from Authentic Sources (New York: F. R. Reed and Company, 1877), 428. Sources for the other seamen referenced here include David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Co, 1885; reprint, Harrisburg PA: The Archive Society, 1997); Porter, Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Sherman Publishing Company, 1886; reprint, Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1984); Alfred T. Mahan, From Sail to Steam: Recollections of Naval Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1907); George Dewey, Autobiography of George Dewey (New York: Scribner’s, 1913; reprint, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1987); Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., Memoirs of Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., Rear Admiral, U.S.N. (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1924; reprint, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987). 5.  Barbara Brooks Tomblin, The Civil War on the Mississippi: Union Sailors, Gunboat Captains, and Their Campaign to Control the River (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016), 280; Mark F. Jenkins, “War on the Mississippi, Post Vicksburg,” Civil War Talk, July 15, 2013, https://civilwartalk.com/threads/­­w ar-on-themississippi-post-vicksburg.86763/#­­p ost-677882 (accessed November 1, 2019); Craig L. Symonds, The Civil War at Sea (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/­­ ABC-Clio, 2009), 118; Spencer C. Tucker, The Blue and Gray Navies (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2006), 235; Myron J. Smith, Jr., The Tinclads in the Civil War: Union ­­Light-Draught Gunboat Operations on Western Waters, 1862– 1865 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2010); Earl J. Hess, The Civil War in the West (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 162; Hess, Civil War Logistics: A Study in Military Transportation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017). 6.  Virgil Carrington Jones, “The Navy War: Introduction,” Civil War History, IX (June 1963), 117.

1.  Steven Woodworth, Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), xi–xii. The West and Western rivers in Civil War literature refers generally to the Western theater of operations, which encompassed the area beyond the Allegheny Mountains. See Bruce Catton, "Glory Road Began in the West," Civil War History, VI (June 1960), 229–237. 2.  That portion of the navy’s mission regarding support of shore control or acquisition grew into what came to be known as amphibious warfare and is now codified in the document Supporting Arms Coordination in Amphibious Operations (NTTP ­­3 –​0 2.2; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2004). The rank of USN rear admiral did not exist until authorized by Congress to honor Farragut later in 1862. Given the need for fleet commanding naval officers’ equality in status with U.S. Army officers, this temporary title was assigned. Dave Cipra, “A History of Sea Service Ranks and Titles,” Commandant’s Bulletin, V (March–June 1985), 1. 3.  U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 27: 227; Mark F. Jenkins, “War on the Mississippi, Post Vicksburg,” Civil War Talk, July 15, 2013, https://civilwartalk. com/threads/­­w ar-on- the-mississippi- p ostvicksburg.86763/#­­post-677882 (accessed November 1, 2019); Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New York: Scribner's, 1883), 175. For a helpful summary view of the war on Western waters through July 1863 with the Red River as the subsequent major action, see Spencer C.Tucker’s “Capturing the Confederacy’s Western Waters,” Naval History, XX (June 2006), 16–21. 4.  William T. Sherman, Memoirs; edited with an Introduction and Notes by Michael Fellman (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 308; Henry Walke, Naval Scenes and Reminiscences of the Civil War in the United States on the Southern and Western Waters During the Years 1861, 1862 and 1863 with the History of That Period Compared and Corrected

Chapter 1 1.  James G. Wiener et al., “Mississippi River,” U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resources

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Division homepage, http://biology.usgs.gov/s+t/ SNT/noframe/ms137.htm (accessed August 26, 2006); U.S. National Park Service. “Mississippi River Facts.” Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, http://www.nps.gov (accessed November 12, 2019); Adam I. Kane, The Western River Steamboat (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 22–26; The Navigator, Containing Directions for Navigating the Monongahela, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (8th ed., Pittsburgh, PA: Cramer, Speark and Eichbau, 1814; reprint, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), 149–152, 174; Webster’s Geographical Dictionary, rev. ed. (Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., Publishers, 1966), 712; Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New York: Scribner's, 1883), 9; Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1913), 186– 188; William H. Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. Burnham, 1863), 295. 2.  Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 2: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861–1866 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 56; U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 52, 165 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]; e.g., OR, I, 52: 165); J. S. Neal and his brother R. S. Neal, together with William Johnson, owned the Jefferson Foundry and Machine Works behind Vine Street in Madison. Totten described their operation as “a large building establishment.” “Madison City Directory, 1859–1860,” Madison and Jefferson County Directories, http://myindianahome. net/gen/jeff/records/direct/maddir.html (September 30, 2006). Little is available concerning U. Jones (1811–1889), the transplanted New Yorker who published numerous reference works at Cincinnati, Ohio, from ca. 1850 to his death and was a noted regional paleontologist. Joseph F. James, “Uriah Pierson James,” American Geologist, III (May 1889), 281–285; Walter Sutton, The Western Book Trade (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1961), 88–107. 3.  Paul H. Silverstone, Warships of the Civil War Navies (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), 149. 4. The Navigator, 150, 195–197, 206, 222; Russell, My Diary North and South, 306–308. 330; James G. Wiener et al., “Mississippi River,” U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division, http://biology.usgs.gov/s+t/SNT/noframe/ ms137.htm (accessed August 26, 2006); Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, 10–11; OR, I, 52: 165; Goodspeed’s General History of Tennessee (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishers, 1887; reprint, Nashville, TN: C. and R. Elder, 1973), 797; Harold Fisk, Geological Investigations of the Alluvial

Valley of the Lower Mississippi River (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1944), 27; Uriah Pierson James, James’ River Guide (Cincinnati, OH: U. James, 1860; reprint, Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2010), 29–58; Marion Bragg, Historic Names and Places on the Lower Mississippi River (Vicksburg: Mississippi River Commission, 1977), 1–267; Donald L. Canney, Lincoln’s Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1861–65 (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1998); 53–55, 180; James M. Merrill, "Cairo, Illinois: Strategic Civil War River Port," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, LXXVI (Winter 1983), 242–257; S. Chamberlain, “Opening of the Upper Mississippi and the Siege of Vicksburg,” Magazine of Western History, V (March 1887), 619; Robert D. Whitesell, “Military and Naval Activities Between Cairo and Columbus,” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, LXI (April 1963), 111; David E. Roth, “The Civil War at the Confluence: Where the Ohio Meets the Mississippi,” Blue & Gray Magazine, II (July 1985), 6–8, 13–14, 16; United States, Mississippi River Commission, Report (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1892), 3286; Francis Vinton Greene, The Mississippi, Vol. 8 of Campaigns of the Civil War (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1885), 7; Henry Walke, Naval Scenes and Reminiscences of the Civil War in the United States on the Southern and Western Waters During the Years 1861, 1862 and 1863 with the History of That Period Compared and Corrected from Authentic Sources (New York: F. R. Reed and Company, 1877), 27; Edward J. Huling, Reminiscences of Gunboat Life in the Mississippi Squadron (Saratoga Springs, NY: Sentinel Print, 1881), 11–27, 29; “Napoleon Cutoff in Desha County,” Programs of the Desha County Historical Society 12 (Spring 1986), 23–26; New York Herald, October 2, 1863; Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (Modern Classics; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 215, 335–336; Steven E Woodworth, Nothing But Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861– 1865 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 30, 35. 5. The Navigator, 195–197; James Henry, Resources of the State of Arkansas; with Description of Counties, Railroads, Mines, and the City of Little Rock (Little Rock, AR: Price & McClure, 1872), 54; Turner Browne, The Last River: Life along Arkansas’s Lower White (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993); Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 2, 617; Jerry M. Hay, White River Guidebook (Floyds Knobs, IN: Inland Waterways Books, 2008); Chicago Daily Tribune, January 20, 1863; New York Herald, January 21, 1863. 6. Henry, Resources of the State of Arkansas, 54; The Navigator, 197; Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 51; Grant Foreman, “River Navigation in the Early Southwest,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XV (June 1928), 39+; Edward N. Andrus, “The River Gave and the



Notes—Chapter 2255

River Hath Taken Away: How the Arkansas River Shaped the Course of Arkansas History” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Arkansas, 2019); Chicago Daily Tribune, January 20, 1863. 7. The Navigator, 206; New York Herald, July 25, 1862. 8. The Navigator, 222; Carl Newton Tyson, The Red River in Southwestern History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981); Spencer C. Tucker, Blue & Gray Navies: The Civil War Afloat (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 2006), 300; Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, 194–195. 9.  Jerry M. Hay, Ohio River Guidebook (Floyds Knobs, IN: Inland Waterways Books, 2007); David M. Smith, “The Defense of Cincinnati—The Battle That Never Was: Past Presentations of the Cincinnati Civil War Roundtable, January 15, 1998,” Cincinnati Civil War Roundtable homepage, http:// www.cincinnaticwrt.org/data/ccwrt_history/ talks_text/smith_defense_cin.html (accessed September 4, 2006); U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series, I, Vol. 25, 610–611 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); ORN, I, 52: 166. In an 1863 Ohio River survey undertaken for RAdm. David Dixon Porter, Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch offered some thoughts on certain Ohio River communities. In this manner, his wartime observations, albeit from a Yankee perspective, will serve to enlighten us much as those of Paymaster Huling did for the Lower Mississippi. Cairo, IL, Fitch observed, had a "population floating"; Caledonia, IL, was a "small town"; Paducah, KY, had "very few loyal citizens"; Caseyville, KY, suffered from "guerrillas liv[ing] in [the] vicinity"; Uniontown, KY, was "very disloyal"; Evansville, IN, "requires watching"; and Owensboro, KY, was "very disloyal and smuggles goods." 1 0.  Jerry M. Hay, Tennessee River Guidebook (Floyds Knobs, IN: Inland Waterways Books, 2010); Ann Toplovich, "Tennessee River System," in Carroll Van West, ed., The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture (Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press for the Tennessee Historical Society, 1998), 943–945; Stanley J. Folmsbee, Robert E. Corlew, and Enoch L. Mitchell, Tennessee: A Short History (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969), 12–13; Donald Davidson, The Tennessee, Vol. 2: The New River, Civil War to TVA (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1948), 1–118; ORN, I, 24: 59–60; Wisconsin State Journal, May 12, 1862; Memphis Commercial Appeal, March 1, 1931, December 19, 1976. In his 1863 Ohio River survey, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch offered some thoughts on certain communities: Paducah, KY, "very few loyal citizens"; Callowaytown, KY, "two houses"; Paris Landing, TN, "one house and mill"; New Portland, TN, "three houses, Union"; Reynoldsburg, TN, "three families, rebel"; Fowler's Landing, TN, "very bad rebels"; Perryville and East Perryville, TN, "rebels"; Marvin's Bluffs, TN, "two

houses, Union"; Brownsport, TN, "iron foundry, Union"; Cedar Creek, TN, "iron furnace"; Decatur, TN, "iron furnace, Union, yet rebel"; Carrollville, TN, "four houses, Union"; Clifton, TN, "rebels town burned February 1863"; Point Pleasant, TN, "three houses"; Cerro Gordo, TN, "deserted"; Coffee's Landing, TN, "hot secesh"; Savannah, TN, "mixed, Union and rebels"; Pittsburgh Landing, TN, "deserted"; Big Bend Landing, TN, "deserted and destroyed"; Chickasaw, AL, " eight families, four Union, rest doubtful; Waterloo, AL, "all rebels"; Tuscumbia, AL, "all rebels back"; Florence, AL, "rebels." 1 1.  Jerry M. Hay, Cumberland River Guidebook (Floyds Knobs, IN: Inland Waterways Books, 2010); Ann Toplovich, "Cumberland River," in Carroll Van West, ed., The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture (Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press for the Tennessee Historical Society, 1998), 227–228; Folmsbee, Tennessee: A Short History, 13–14; "Towns of the Cumberland," Save the Cumberland homepage, http://www. savethecumberland.org/towns.htm (accessed July 21, 2005); Byrd Douglas, Steamboatin’ on the Cumberland (Nashville: Tennessee Book Company, 1961), 28–31; ORN, I, 24: 58–59; ORN, I, 25: 160. 1 2.  Irwin Anthony, Paddle Wheels and Pistols (New York: The Children’s Book Club, 1930), 282; Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Waters: An Economic and Technological History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1993), 219–222, 225, 231, 233–236; ORN, I, 52, 1: 158, 164; ORN, I, 23: 360; Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 83; The New York Times, May 2, 1861; New York Daily Tribune, November 17, 1863; Grant Foreman, “River Navigation in the Early Southwest,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XV (June 1928), 39+; Bobby Roberts, “Rivers of No Return,” in Mark K. Christ, ed., “The Earth Reeled and Trees Trembled”: Civil War Arkansas, 1863–1864 (Little Rock, AR: The Old State House Museum, 2007), 74–76. Mansfield (1801–1880) was editor of the Cincinnati Chronicle for 13 years and once employed Harriet Beecher Stowe. Dallas Bogan, “Edward Deering Mansfield Was a True ­­Jack-of-All-Trades,” Warren County Ohio GenWeb Project, August 30, 2004, http://www. rootsweb.com/~ohwarren/Bogan/bogan235.htm (accessed October 1, 2006).

Chapter 2 1.  U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 20, 253, 272, 393, 801– 803 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); ORN, I, 25: 332; Richard B. Irwin, ”The Capture of Port Hudson,” in Battles and Leaders

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of the Civil War, edited by Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), III, 597–598 (whole 586–598); Chester G. Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter: The Civil War Years (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), 235–237; Donald M. Browning, Jr., Lincoln’s Trident: The West Gulf Blockading Squadron During the Civil War (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2015), 322; Richard E. Beringer et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 263; Spencer C. Tucker, “Capturing the Confederacy’s Western Waters,” Naval History, XX (June 2006), 21 (whole 16–23). 2.  ORN, I, 20: 392–394, 433, 442–443; ORN, I, 25: 335; Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter, 237; Browning, Lincoln’s Trident, 325; George S. Burkhardt, ed., Sailing with Farragut: The Civil War Recollections of Bartholomew Diggins (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2016), 94, 108– 109; Roy Baslr, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (6 vols.; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), VI, 409–410. Pennock would serve as acting squadron commander from July to November 1864, when he transferred east and Acting RAdm. Samuel Lee took over. Cmdr. Andrew Bryson, a district commander and veteran ironclad captain, would serve as fleet captain from January 1865. 3.  William H. Roberts, Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 121; Chicago Daily Tribune, May 19, 24, 1861; Philadelphia Inquirer, November 26, 1863; William H. Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P Burnham, 1863), 331; Taylor, pseud., “American Civil War News & Events, October 3, 2012: The Importance of Cairo,” American Civil War Forum, https://www. americancivilwarforum.com/­­t he-importanceof-cairo-1902715.html (accessed September 3, 2019); James M. Merrill, "Cairo, Illinois: Strategic Civil War River Port," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, LXXVI (Winter 1983), 242–257; T. K. Kionka, Key Command: Ulysses S. Grant’s District of Cairo (Shades of Blue and Gray Series; Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 117–118; Edward J. Huling, Reminiscences of Gunboat Life in the Mississippi Squadron (Saratoga Springs, NY: Sentinel Print, 1881), 3–4; Donald L. Canney, The Old Steam Navy, Vol. 2: The Ironclads, 1842–1885 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993), 41; James B. Eads to Gideon Welles, May 8, 1861, Gideon Welles Papers, Library of Congress; Francis Trevelyan Miller, The Photographic History of The Civil War, Vol. 6: The Navies (New York: Castle Books, 1957), 213–215; John McMurray Lansden, A History of the City of Cairo, Illinois (Chicago: R. R. Donnelly & Son, 1910), 130–137; “The Illinois Central and the Civil War—Railroading Under Two Flags,” Illinois Central Magazine, LII (April 1961), 1–30. As noted, it

was not uncommon at this time for several vessels to be moored near and/or to the principal wharf boat, particularly those under repair or being outfitted or provisioned. This could be dangerous, as a near disaster of February 7, 1863 revealed. While being outfitted, the tinclad Glide was moored astern of and to the wharf boat outboard of the provision/inspection boat Abraham and the gunboat General Price. That night, the new warship caught fire and would have consumed all four units except that Capt. Pennock and rapidly responding sailors quickly had her towed out into the river by a tug, where she drifted downstream and burnt out on the Kentucky shore. ORN, I, 24: 305–308. 4. Huling, Reminiscences of Gunboat Life, 2–3; William Henry Perrin, History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois (2 vols.; Chicago: G. L. Baskin & Co., 1883), II, 543–550; New York Daily Tribune, May 13, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, June 2, 1864, August 21, 1865; Louisville Daily Democrat, June 3, 1864; Mark Jenkins, “The Naval War: Mound City Naval Station,” Civil War Talk, https://civilwartalk.com/threads/­­m oundcity-naval-station.88968/ (accessed October 20, 2019); Mark J. Wegner and Go Matsumoto, “The Mound City Naval Base: Illinois’ Forgotten Civil War Site,” Illinois Antiquity, XLIX (September 2014), 3–6; Spencer C. Tucker, “Mound City Naval Station,” in Tucker, ed., American Civil War: A State by State Encyclopedia (2 vols.; Santa Barbara, CA: ­­ABC-Clio, 2015), I, 186–187; Ellen Ryan Jolly, Nuns of the Battlefield (Providence, RI: The Providence Visitor Press, 1927), 124–157; Louis A. La Garde, Description of the Models of Hospital Steam Vessels from the Army Medical Museum, Washington, D.C. (War Department Exhibit, No. 2; Chicago: World’s Columbian Exhibition, 1892), 3–10; William E. Parrish, "The Western Sanitary Commission," Civil War History, XXXVI (March 1990), 17–35. 5.  After Vicksburg fell, the Mississippi Squadron continued to forward monthly vessel location reports to the Navy Department and these are cited in the Navy Official Records. 6.  ORN, I, 27: 264–265, 282; Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter, 150–151; U.S. Navy Department, Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1863 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1863), ix; The Natchez Courier, December 1, 1863; Paul H. Silverstone, Warships of the Civil War Navies (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1989), 147–186; Donald L. Caney, The Old Steam Navy, Vol. 2: The Ironclads, 1842–1885 (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1993), 35–118; Hearn, Ellet’s Brigade: The Strangest Outfit of All (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000); Frederick Way, Jr., Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994: Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System Since the Advent of Photography in ­­Mid-Continent America (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983; rev. ed., 1994), 31, 470; Steven Louis Roca, “Presence and Precedents: The USS Red Rover Suring the



Notes—Chapter 2257

American Civil War, 1861–1865,” Civil War History, XLIV (June 1998), 91–110; William L. Dike, U.S.S. Red Rover: Civil War Hospital Ship (Baltimore, MD: Publish America, 2004), 5,14, 22, 56, 60; Peggy Brase Seigel, “She Went to War: Indiana Nurses in the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History, LXXXVI (March 1990), 11–12; Judith E. Harper, Women During the Civil War: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2004), 199. Some controversy has developed over whether or not the Sisters of the Holy Cross were, as has been claimed, the forerunners of the Navy Nurse Corps or whether the Red Rover was the premier USN hospital ship. Raising this very question while undertaking a review of the Sisters of the Holy Cross Civil War roadside marker, the Indiana Historical Bureau noted that, henceforth, it would avoid “the use of subjective and superlative terms such as ‘first,’ ‘best,’ and ‘most.’ Such claims are often not verifiable and/or require extensive qualification to be truly accurate.” Indiana Historical Bureau, IHB Marker Review 71.1965.1, Sisters of the Holy Cross, Civil War Nurses, 1861–1865 St. Joseph County Marker Text Review Report, June 17, 2013, https://www.in.gov/histor y/ files/71.1965.1review.pdf (accessed October 31, 2019). 7. Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1863, ix; Bern Anderson, By Sea and by River: The Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 1962), 196; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 30, 1863; Michael J. Bennett, Union Jacks: Yankee Sailors in the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 155–181; Michael J. Bennett, “Dissenters from the American Mood: Why Men Became Yankee Sailors During the Civil War,” North & South, VIII (February 2005), 12–21; Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter, 239; Steven J. Ramold, Slaves, Sailors, Citizens: African Americans in the Union Navy (DeKalb: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), 120–122; Charles C. Brewer, “­­African-American Sailors and the Unvexing of the Mississippi River,” Prologue, XXX (Winter 1996), 279–28; ORN, I, 23: 535, 603, 638; Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 195– 196; ORN, I, 23: 603; ORN, 1, 25: 325; ORN, I, 24: 545; Charles O. Paullin, Paullin’s History of Naval Administration, 1775–1911 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1968), 299; Donald L. Canney, Lincoln’s Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1861–65 (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1998), 141, 144; U.S. Navy Department, General Orders and Circulars, 1863–1887 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887), 56. Porter’s advocacy of Black sailor recruitment was most clearly shown by his famous General Order No. 76 penned in July 1863. It is often seen as a de facto summarization of the contemporary USN attitude toward African American enlistees. Canney, Lincoln’s Navy, 138–139. 8.  Christopher H. Sterling, Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century

(Santa Barbara, CA: ­­A BC-Clio, 2008), 19, 483; Timothy S. Wolters, Information at Sea: Shipboard Command and Control in the U.S. Navy, from Mobile Bay to Okinawa (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), chap. 1; Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter, 153. 9.  ORN, I, 24:50–54, 463–464, 472, 672; ORN, I, 25:124–125, 295, 319, 377–379; 11 ORN, I, 26: 329–330; Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 216–217; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, October 2, 1863; Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still, Jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1986), 191–192; Gary D. Joiner, Mr. Lincoln’s Brown Water Navy: The Mississippi Squadron (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 173; David Dixon Porter, Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Sherman Publishing Company, 1886; reprint, Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1984), 339; Mark F. Jenkins, “War on the Mississippi, Post Vicksburg,” Civil War Talk, July 15, 2013, https://civilwartalk.com/threads/­­w ar-on-themississippi-post-vicksburg.86763/#­­p ost-677882 (accessed November 1, 2019); Warren D. Crandall and Isaac D. Newell, History of the Ram Fleet and Mississippi Marine Brigade (St. Louis, MO: Buschart Brothers, 1907), 304; Hearn, Ellet’s Brigade, 179–186; Thomas E. Walker, “The Origins of the Mississippi Marine Brigade: The First Use of Brown Water Tactics by the United States in the Civil War” (unpublished MA thesis, Texas Christian University, 2006), 18–52. Creation and administration of the district arrangement of the Mississippi Squadron is worthy of further study, perhaps a lengthy article or PhD dissertation. 10.  ORN, I, 25: 370–371; Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New York: Scribner's, 1883), 174. Porter commanded Farragut’s mortar flotilla in the New Orleans and Vicksburg campaigns the previous summer, participating not only in the bombardment of those towns, but the effort to halt the South’s only successful Western waters ironclad, the CSS Arkansas. 1 1.  Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin, eds., Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 499; U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series IV, Vol. 2, 991 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); OR, I, 52, 1:406; Earl J. Hess, The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), pp 157–159. 12.  Donald Stoker, The Grand Design: Strategy

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and the U.S. Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 307; OR, I, 24, 3:497–498, 552– 553); Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: A Modern Abridgment (New York: Premier Books, 1962), 388–389. 13.  OR, I, 22, 2: 946, 952–953, 971, 988; OR, I, 26, 2: 114; OR, I, 30, 4: 508–509; OR, I, 34, 2: 1065–1067; OR, I, 52, 2: 599–601, 638–39; Frank E. Vandiver, ed., The Civil War Diary of General Josiah Gorgas (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1947), 55; Hess, The Civil War in the West, 162–163; Stoker, The Grand Design, 316– 322; Michael Cassamasse, “Re: CSS Missouri Ram,” Civil War Message Board, July 30, 2005, http://www.­­h istory-sites.net/­­c gi-bin/bbs62x/ cwnavy/webbbs_config.pl?md=read;id=1077 (accessed November 1, 2019). 1 4.  OR, I, 24, 3: 528, 546–547; Stoker, The Grand Design, 308; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: A Modern Abridgment (New York: Premier Books, 1962), 342, 389; Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 159–163; Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won the Civil War (Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 489–490; Archer Jones, “Military Means, Political Ends: Strategy,” in Gabor S. Boritt, ed., Why the Confederacy Lost (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 70–71.

Chapter 3 1.  The combat career of the Arkansas was just 28 days. Brown was able to locate the survivors of his crew and lead them back to the small naval station at Jackson, MS, before most of them traveled to Yazoo City, where their ironclad had been completed at a local shipyard. Promoted to the rank of commander for his leadership, Brown was subsequently honored by the Confederate Congress. The commander’s only ­­f ull-length biography remains Charles M. Getchell, Jr.’s, “Defender of Inland Waters: The Military Career of Isaac Newton Brown, Commander, Confederate States Navy, 1861–1865” (master’s thesis, University of Mississippi, 1978). 2.  The literature documenting this section is large. Most of the operational details were, of course, taken from the nautical reporting in the first nine chapters of my The Fight for the Yazoo, August 1862–July 1864 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., Inc., 2012). Other works of importance or use include the several parts of Vol. 24 of U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901; cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); Vol. 24 of U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of

the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part title, if any, and page[s]); Michael B. Ballard, Vicksburg: The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 207–208; William N. Still, “Confederate Shipbuilding in Mississippi.” The Journal of Mississippi History, XXX (Fall 1968), 302–303; Edwin C. Bearss, Hardluck Ironclad: The Sinking and Salvage of the Cairo (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966); Isaac Newton Brown, “Confederate Torpedoes in the Yazoo,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, ed. Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), III, 580; John C. Wideman, The Sinking of the USS Cairo (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993); Harry Owens, Steamboats and the Cotton Economy: River Trade in the ­­Yazoo-Mississippi Delta (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990); and Yazoo Herald, “The Civil War Comes to Yazoo: Civil War History in Yazoo County, Mississippi, 1862–1864,” Visit Yazoo, http:// http://visityazoo. org/­­w p-content/uploads/2017/02/­­Civil-War-inYazoo-2015-Update-with-Extras-2.pdf (accessed February 15, 2019); Mark K. Ragan, Submarine Warfare in the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002), 111; Ragan, Confederate Saboteurs: Building the Hunley and Other Secret Weapons of the Civil War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2015), 31, 40–42; Ragan, “Singer’s Secret Service Corps,” Civil War Times Illustrated, XLVI (November–December 2007), 30–33; Gabriel J. Rains and Peter S. Michie, Confederate Torpedoes: Two Illustrated 19th Century Works with New Appendices and Photographs, edited by Herbert M. Schiller (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2011), 140, 146; Rodney Carlisle, Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Infobase Publishing/Facts on File, 2008), 179. Cmdr. Brown did not, as asserted by his son, personally build or witness the success of the torpedoes that sank Cairo and Baron de Kalb. H. D. Brown, “The First Torpedo and What It Did,” Confederate Veteran, XVIII (January 1910), 169. It should also be noted that Prof. Wideman’s volume stands as the most extensive work on Confederate torpedoes employed in the Yazoo and offers far more detail on the mechanisms and the men who deployed them than we can offer here. 3.  OR, I, 24, 1: 94, 194, 224–228, 244; OR, I, 24, 2: 155, 214, 436–442, 668; OR, I, 24, 3: 368–369, 373–375, 379, 384, 386–387, 390–392, 396, 405– 406, 946–948, 951, 953, 955–956, 978; OR, I, 52, 2: 492,494; ORN, I, 25: 57–58, 117; Philadelphia Press, June 17, 1863; The New York Times, July 9, 1863; Gene Edward Smith, Grant (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 231–232; William T. Sherman, Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865,



Notes—Chapter 3259

edited by Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 479; Owens, Steamboats and the Cotton Economy, 64–65; Louis H. Manarin and Weymouth T. Jordan, “29th North Carolina Infantry Regiment,” in Vol. 8 of North Carolina Troops, 1861–1865: A Roster (Raleigh: Office of Archives and History, 1981), 232–235; Ballard, Vicksburg, 388, 390–392; Stephen Chicoine, The Confederates of Chappell Hill, Texas: Prosperity, Civil War, and Decline (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2005), 90; Brown, “Confederate Torpedoes in the Yazoo,” 580. 4.  It was local historians who provided the credits for those who invented or placed a “homemade torpedo.” Included among the acknowledgments of Judge Robert Bowman plus Harriett Decell and Jo Anne Prichard were Col. J. J. B. White, owner of the “Tokeba” plantation a short distance above town, another plantation owner, Dr. A. W. Washburn, better known as inventor and distributor of a mechanical seed planter, both cited by Bowman in 1903 along with Peter Goosey, a soldier in Company E (“Yazoo Greys”) of the 30th Mississippi, and his son, Capron Goosey, then too young to enlist, who were mentioned in the 1970s. The Goosey family operated a mill named for them back of Goosey’s Landing, about four miles below town. It was later asserted that White and the Gooseys secreted themselves along the shoreline to employ their “­­home-made torpedo, the first of its kind used in any warfare and believed to be the first “contact mine” to be used anywhere.” They later claimed it to be “a thoroughly destructive machine, and simple in construction.” Much of the discussion regarding these additional inventors appears in Robert Bowman, “Yazoo County in the Civil War,” in Franklin L. Riley, ed., Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, Vol. 7 (Oxford: Printed for the Society, 1903), 65–66; Harriet DeCell and JoAnne Prichard, Yazoo: Its Legends and Legacies (Yazoo City, MS: Yazoo Delta Press, 1868; reprint, Yazoo City, MS: Yazoo Delta Press, 1976), 308–309 and “Yazoo County in the Civil War,” http://boards.ancestry.netscape. com/thread.aspx?mv=flat&m=574&p=localities. northam.usa.states.mississippi.counties.yazoo (accessed May 18, 2011); “Peter Goosey (1800– 1875,” http://www.findagrave.com/­­c gi-bin/ fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=69960568 (accessed May 14, 2011). Dr. Washburn’s planter is described and praised by its inventor in A. W. Washburn, “Dr. Washburn’s Patent Agricultural Implements,” Southern Cultivator, XV (1857), 292–293. 5.  OR, I, 24, 1: 227; OR, I, 24, 2: 522, 524, 525, 528–529, 537, 604, 667; OR, I, 24, 2: 667–673; OR, I, 24, 3: 405–406, 435, 460–461, 499, 500– 503, 509, 957, 965–967, 974, 979–980, 994–995, 1000–1003, 1009, 1013–1014; OR, I, 52, 2: 506; ORN, I, 25: 198–199, 280–282, 285–286, 290– 292; Yazoo Daily Yankee, July 20, 1863; Chicago

Daily Tribune, July 21, 1863; The New York Times, July 22 and August 9, 1863; Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 22, 27, and August 6, 1863; Yazoo City Herald, April 22, 1887; Louis S. Schaefer, Confederate Underwater Warfare: An Illustrated History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1996), 60–62; Owens, Steamboats and the Cotton Economy, 64–65, 67; Ragan, “Singer’s Secret Service Corps,” 31–33; Brown, “Confederate Torpedoes in the Yazoo,” 580; Brown, “The First Torpedo and What It Did,” 169; John Sanford Barnes, Submarine Warfare, Offensive and Defensive, Including a Discussion on the Offensive Torpedo System (New York: Van Nostrand, 1869), 70–71; Chicoine, The Confederates of Chappell Hill, Texas, 90–93; Charles Barney, Recollections of Field Service with the 20th Iowa Infantry Volunteers; or, What I Saw in the Army (Davenport, IA: Gazette Jobs Room, 1866), 210–219; Getchell, “Defender of Inland Waters,” 116–123; U.S. War Department, Chief of Engineers, Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers, 1874, 366; Kim Allen Scott, Yellowstone Denied: The Life of Gustavus Cheyney Doane (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 43; Chris E. Evans, “Return to Jackson: Finishing Stroke to the Vicksburg Campaign, July 5–25, 1863,” Blue & Gray Magazine, XII (August 1995), 8–22, 50–63. I recently updated the Yazoo City raid story in greater detail in my “Sinking an Ironclad,” North & South, Series II, I (September– October 2019), 55–64. 6.  ORN, I, 25: 240–246; Baltimore Sun, July 14, 1863; Lester V. Horwitz, The Longest Raid of the War: Little Known and Untold Stories of Morgan’s Raid into Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio (Cincinnati, OH: Farmcourt Publishing, 1999), 2; Basil W. Duke, A History of Morgan’s Cavalry (Civil War Centennial Series; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), 410–411, 432–434; Duke, "The Raid," The Century Magazine, XLI (January 1891), 404; Cecil Fletcher Holland, Morgan and His Raiders: A Biography of the Confederate General (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1942), 217, 232–233; Arville L. Funk, The Morgan Raid in Indiana and Ohio (1863) (Corydon, IN: ALFCO Publications, 1971), 5; David L. Taylor, With Bowie Knives and Pistols: Morgan’s Raid in Indiana (Lexington, IN: TaylorMade Write, 1993), 36–43. A brief summary of "Morgan's Ohio Raid," appears in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884– 1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), III, 634–635. 7.  ORN, I, 25: 246–253, 277; David Dixon Porter, Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Sherman Publishing Company, 1886; reprint, Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1984), 338; Horwitz, The Longest Raid of the War, 40, 55–57, 114–166, 193, 204–205, 208, 210; James A. Ramage, Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1986), 173–176; Cincinnati Daily Commercial,

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July 13–20, 1863; OR, I, 23, 1: 747, 760, 766; New York Herald, July 23, 1863; Smith, Le Roy Fitch, 184–196. Because of state boundaries, Buffington Island is officially part of West Virginia; thus both jurisdictions are able to claim "ownership" of the Battle of Buffington Island, as I learned when I penned my article for West Virginia History years ago. The best photographic review of the area and the island remains B. Kevin Bennet and Dave Roth, "The General's Tour: The Battle of Buffington Island," Blue & Gray Magazine, XV (April 1998), 60–65. 8.  ORN, I, 25: 256, 656; OR, I, 23, 1: 641; 677; OR, I, 51, 1: 207; Boyd B. Stutler, West Virginia in the Civil War (Charleston, WV: Education Foundation, Inc., 1963), 232–233; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, July 20, 1863; New York Herald, July 23, 1863; Duke, A History of Morgan’s Cavalry, 445– 446; Horwitz, The Longest Raid of the War, 40, 55–57, 114–166, 193, 204–205, 208, 210; Smith, Le Roy Fitch, 196–200. A Union general's aide, Lt. Weaver later reported that the Union field commanders were as ignorant of the naval officer's location as Fitch was of theirs. They "supposed he was jealously patrolling the river." Henry C. Weaver, "Morgan's Raid in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio, July 1863," in William H. Chamberlain, ed., Sketches of War History, 1861–1865: Papers Prepared for the Ohio Commandry of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (6 vols.; Cincinnati, OH: R. Clarke & Co., 1890– 1908), V, 304. 9.  ORN, I, 25: 256–257, 315, 318; OR, I, 23, 1: 14, 640–645, 656–657, 660–662, 667–668, 774, 776–777, 781, 788; OR, I, 30, 2: 547–552; OR, I, 51, 1: 207; Duke, A History of Morgan’s Cavalry, 450–454; 464; Weaver, "Morgan's Raid in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio, July 1863, V, 304; Horwitz, The Longest Raid of the War, 195–248, 420; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, July 20, 1863; Chicago Daily Tribune, July 20, 23, 1863; New York Herald, July 23, 1863; Indianapolis Journal, July 15, 1863; Louisville Daily Journal, July 21, 27, 1863; Nashville Daily Union, July 30, 1863; Ramage, Rebel Raider, 178–179; Smith, Le Roy Fitch, 200–205; Andrew R. L. Cayton, Ohio: The History of a People (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2002), 130; Bern Anderson, By Sea and by River: The Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 1962), 155. Captain Oakes of the Imperial later wrote of the battle to a colleague; his July 21 letter was reprinted in Vol. 4 of Frank Moore, ed. The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events. (11 vols.; New York: G. Putnam and D. Van Nostrand, 1861–1868), pp 391–392. A concise review of the entire episode is Mark F. Jenkins' "Operations of the Mississippi Squadron During Morgan's Raid," Ironclads and Blockade Runners of the American Civil War homepage, www. wideopenwest.com/~jenkins/ironclads/buffingt. htm (accessed November 11, 2005), which has appeared at several URLs since it was first published in 1999.

Chapter 4 1.  U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 25, 264–271 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); Chicago Daily Tribune, November 22, 1863; Thomas O. Selfridge, Memoirs of Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., Rear Admiral, U.S.N. (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1924; reprint, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), 84–86; David Dixon Porter, Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Sherman Publishing Company, 1886; reprint, Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1984), 332–333; Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New York: Scribner's, 1883), 177–178. 2.  Philip Leich, Trading with the Enemy: The Covert Economy during the American Civil War (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2014), 58, 60–67; Andrew F. Smith, Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 115–128; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: A Modern Abridgment (New York: Premier Books, 1962), 207–208; David G. Surdam, Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the Civil War (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), p., 184; Merton E. Coulter, “Commercial Intercourse with the Confederacy in the Mississippi Valley, 1861–1865,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, V (March 1919), 392 (whole 377–395); Charles A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton, 2013), 18; David Cohn, The Life and Times of King Cotton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 129; Grant to Porter, July 19, 1863, David Dixon Porter Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. 3.  U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 22, Pt. 1, 472–476, 511 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); OR, I, 24:3: 497–499, 513; The New York Times, August 12, 1863; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, quoted in the Chicago Daily Tribune, August 27, 1863; Thomas A. DeBlack, With Fire and Sword: Arkansas, 1861–1874 (Histories of Arkansas; Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003), 93; Donald Stoker, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 308; Albert G. Castel, General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968), 152–155. The entire Little Rock campaign, including USN participation is nicely covered in Mark K. Christ, “‘As Much as Humanity Can Stand’: The Little Rock Campaign of 1863,” in Mark K. Christ, ed., “The Earth Reeled and Trees Trembled”: Civil



Notes—Chapter 5261

War Arkansas, 1863–1864 (Little Rock, AR: Old State House Museum, 2007), 22–47 and Leo E. Huff, “The Union Expedition Against Little Rock, August–September 1863,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XXII (Fall 1963), 224–227. 4.  OR, I, 22, 1: 511–512;OR, I, 23, 1: 472; ORN, I, 25: 352–363, 367; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, quoted in the Chicago Daily Tribune, August 27, 1863; New York Daily Tribune, August 29, 1863; Hartford Daily Courant, August 29, 1863; Chicago Daily Tribune, September 19, 1863; Chicago Daily Tribune, quoted in the National Intelligencer, October 6, 1863; Castel, General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West, 154, 158; DeBlack, With Fire and Sword: Arkansas, 1861–1874, 92–98; Bobby Roberts, “ Rivers of No Return,” in Mark K. Christ, ed., “The Earth Reeled and Trees Trembled”: Civil War Arkansas, 1863– 1864 (Little Rock: Old State House Museum, 2007), 83–84. 5. Memphis Daily Bulletin, September 22, 1863. As Federal forces moved further up the White and Arkansas, attacks on steamers from shore intensified, though brazen attempts to storm boats were actually less frequent here than in other locations such as near Memphis. 6.  Mark M. Boatner, III, The Civil War Dictionary (New York: David McKay Company, 1959), 149–150; Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 292–293; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 2: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861–1866 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 369–371; William Glenn Robertson et al., Staff Ride Handbook for the Battle of Chickamauga, 18–20 September 1863 (Fort Leavenworth, KA: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Combat Studies Institute, 1992), 27–28. Studies of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga campaigns are plentiful. For details, we have chosen to rely upon the work of fellow Tennessean John Bowers, Chickamauga and Chattanooga: The Battles That Doomed the Confederacy (New York: HarperPerennial, 1995) and the volume by Steven E. Woodward, Six Armies in Tennessee: The Chickamauga and Chattanooga Campaigns (Great Campaigns of the Civil War Series; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999); the ­­15-page pamphlet by Harold S. Fink, The Battle of Knoxville (1863), published by The Knoxville–Knox County Civil War Centennial Committee in 1965, was a helpful introduction as was the ­­37-page document The Civil War in the Upper Cumberland Plateau and its Effects on the Local Population: A Guide of the Major Events and Themes, for Teachers and Interested Citizens of the Upper Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee and Kentucky, by W. Stephen McBride (Kentucky Archaeological Survey Report 236, University of Kentucky, 2012). It should be noted that construction now finally began on a prewar plan to build the Nashville and Northwestern

Railroad from Kingston Springs, west of Nashville, to the Tennessee River. Upon its completion in 1864, under the direction since October 22, 1863 of Gov. Andrew Johnson, it would link the capital with a huge military supply depot on the Tennessee River named for the Greeneville politician, thereby significantly increasing the Union Army's western logistical apparatus. Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 295; Richard P. Gildrie, "Guerrilla Warfare in the Lower Cumberland River Valley, 1862–1865," Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XLIX (Fall 1990), 169; Clifton R. Hall, Andrew Johnson: Military Governor of Tennessee (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1916), 196–199. 7.  ORN, I, 25: 438; 464–465; Lenette S. Taylor, “The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail”: The Civil War of Captain Simon Perkins, Jr., a Union Quartermaster (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2004), 150–151, 256–260. Perkins was the army's head quartermaster in Nashville at this time. It was he who now took charge of the army's three makeshift Cumberland River gunboats, the Hagan, Newsboy, and Silver Lake No. 2. OR, I, 31, 3: 93. 8.  ORN, I, 25: 466–475; OR, I, 23:2: 592–594, 598, 600; Jay Slagle, Ironclad Captain: Seth Ledyard Phelps and the U.S. Navy (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996), 338–341; Stoker, The Grand Design, 309–328; David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Co, 1885; reprint, Harrisburg PA: The Archive Society, 1997), 210– 211; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 2: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861–1866 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 380–381; Grant, Personal Memoirs, pp.n403–462; James Lee McDonough, Chattanooga: A Death Grip on the Confederacy (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 45–49, 54–58, 76–85; Peter Cozzens, The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 48–65; Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 324. 9.  ORN, I, 25: 469–498, 614–615; Nashville Daily Press, November 3, 7, 1863; Slagle, Ironclad Captain, 338–341; Walter T. Durham, Reluctant Partners: Nashville and the Union—July 1, 1863, to June 30, 1865 (Nashville: The Tennessee Historical Society, 1987), 16; Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 324–325.

Chapter 5 1.  U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 20, Pt. 1, 979–984 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); OR, I, 20, 2: 322–323, 326, 328; U.S. Navy Department, Official Records

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of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 24, 15–19, 650 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, and page[s]); Nashville Daily Dispatch, January 14, 17, 1863; Nashville Daily Union, January 14, 1863; The New York Times, January 10, 1863; Chicago Daily Tribune, January 22, 1863; New York Herald, January 15, 18, 1863; New Haven Daily Palladium, January 17, 1863; Boston Herald, January 23, 1863; Earl J. Hess, The Knoxville Campaign: Burnside and Longstreet in East Tennessee ( Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012), 109–110; Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 326–327; Frederick Way, Jr., comp., Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994 (2nd ed., Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994), 82, 208, 363, 459; Kenneth W. Noe, ed., A Southern Boy in Blue: The Memoir of Marcus Woodcock, 9th Kentucky Infantry (USA) (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996), 143; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 2: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861–1866 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 228–230. The Lucy French quote can be found in Greg Poole’s “The Affair at Harpeth Shoals,” Cheatham County Historical and Genealogical Association CCHGA Bytes (February 2006), 6. On January 14, one of the Sidell’s gunners made it back to Nashville, where he reported that the disaster to his craft had been caused by the pilot leaving his wheel. 2.  William C. Lytle, Merchant Steam Vessels of the United States, 1807–1868: “The Lytle List” (Mystic, CT: The Steamship Historical Society of America, 1952), 138; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 1: Dictionary of Transports and Combatant Vessels Steam and Sail Employed by the Union Army, 1861–1868 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 239; Way, Way’s Packet Directory, 347, 426; Lenette S. Taylor, “The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail”: The Civil War of Captain Simon Perkins, Jr., a Union Quartermaster (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2004), 150–151, 256–260; OR, I, 31, 3: 93; John H. Ross, “Silver Lake No. 2: Her Men and History,” http://www.acw70indiana. com/silverlake.htm (accessed September 27, 2019); John Alexander Caldwell, History of Belmont and Jefferson Counties, Ohio (Wheeling, WV: Historical Publishing Company, 1880), 458; Thomas Lowry, Sexual Misconduct in the Civil War: A Compendium (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation, 2006), 155. A dedicated history of the Quartermaster Department gunboats on Western waters has never appeared in print, not even in a newspaper or journal article. It is doubtful if this aging author will get to it as considerable research of the basic spade work variety would be required. Still, some enterprising PhD student or other curious writer seeking to capture

a niche might find this “virgin” topic a worthy challenge. 3.  OR, I, 30, 1: 214–220; OR, I, 30, 4: 475–476; OR, I, 31, 1: 39, 678, 680, 712, 729, 774, 784, 788; OR, I, 31, 3: 10, 16, 26, 34, 38; ORN, I, 25: 466– 472, 476, 482, 504, 509, 524–525, 592, 614; ORN, I, 23: 322; David W. White, Second Only to Grant: Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Books, 2000), 214–220; Walter T. Durham, Reluctant Partners: Nashville and the Union—July 1, 1863, to June 30, 1865 (Nashville: The Tennessee Historical Society, 1987), 16; Wiley Sword, Mountains Touched with Fire: Chattanooga Besieged, 1863 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 116–118; Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 9: July 7–December 31, 1863, edited by John Y. Simon (32 vols.; Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967–2012), 34; Robert McKenzie, Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Town [Knoxville] in the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp.159–171; Hess, The Knoxville Campaign, 53–76; Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Fort Donelson's Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 325; Nashville Daily Press, November 3, 1863. Our comments on the Cumberland River come from Byrd Douglas’ Steamboatin’ on the Cumberland (Nashville: Tennessee Book Company, 1961). 4.  ORN, I, 25: 534–535, 546–547, 592–594; OR, I, 31, 3: 48–49, 60; Taylor, “The Supply for Tomorrow Must Not Fail,” 151. 5.  ORN, I, 25: 434–435, 541, 546–547, 549, 592–593; Durham, Reluctant Partners, 17; Nashville Daily Press, November 7, 1863; OR, I, 31, 1: 74, 84–85; OR, I, 31, 3: 64, 66, 75, 84–85, 94; Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 326. 6.  OR, I, 31, 3: 93, 107–108, 115, 123, 134– 136, 156, 174, 177, 182; ORN, I, 25: 553–557, 564, 570, 579–582, 586, 592–595, 608, 612–614, 631; Durham, Reluctant Partners, 17–18; Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 327; John W. Donn, "War Record of J. W. Donn, Including Reminiscences of Frederick W. Dorr, July 1861 to June 1865," NOAA History homepage, http:// www.history.noaa.gov/stories_tales/donn.html (accessed April 4, 2005); Ralsa C. Rice, Yankee Tigers: Through the Civil War with the One Hundred and ­­Twenty-Fifth Ohio, edited by Richard A. Baumgartner and Larry M. Strayer (Huntington, WV: Blue Acorn Press, 1992), 75–77; “Letter from Henry D. Osborn on board the Gunboat Newsboy, December 3, 1863,” Worthopedia, https://www. worthpoint.com/worthopedia/­­d ec-1863-civilwar-letter-henry-456192002 (accessed September 27, 2019). Sioux City, IA, resident Osborne (1841–1917) was a private in Company E, 18th Michigan Infantry. Sioux City Journal, May 7, 1917; Chicago Daily Tribune, December 5, 1863. 7.  OR, I, 31, 3: 463; ORN, I, 25: 657–659; William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 350–353, 357; James B.



Notes—Chapter 6263

Jones, “‘Fevers Ran High’: The Civil War on the Cumberland,” in Michael R. Birdwell and Calvin W. Dickinson, eds., Rural Life and Culture in the Upper Cumberland (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 94. 8.  ORN, I, 25: 647–651; OR, I, 31, 1: 644–645; Douglas, Steamboatin' on the Cumberland, 149; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 549; James Alex Baggett, Homegrown Yankees: Tennessee’s Union Cavalry in the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009), 140; John W. Donn, "War Record of J. W. Donn, Including Reminiscences of Frederick W. Dorr, July 1861 to June 1865," NOAA History homepage, http:// www.history.noaa.gov/stories_tales/donn.html (accessed April 4, 2005); “Elza Z. Stringer,” in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Adams, Clay, Hall and Hamilton Counties , Nebraska (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1890), 649; Durham, Reluctant Partners, 18–19; Jones, “Fevers Ran High,” 94–95; Leroy Graf, Ralph W. Haskins, and Paul Bergeron, eds., The Papers of Andrew Johnson (16 vols.; Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1967–2000), VI, 538–539. 9.  OR, I, 32, 2: 99–101; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: A Modern Abridgment (New York: Premier Books, 1962), 264–265. A helpful review of the Civil War in the Cumberland region is Michael R. O’Neal, “The Civil War on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee,” Scott County, Tennessee, FNB Chronicles, VII (Spring 1996), 1, 4–10. Both the Upper Mississippi and the Ohio were ice clogged from right after the holidays, preventing supplies from reaching the Tennessee capital via those arteries. Fortunately, “it broke up,” newly appointed Nashville Assistant Quartermaster Ferdinand S. Winslow, the local chief Officer of River Transportation, later recalled, “in time for the first steamers to arrive on the last day of January.” Ferdinand S. Winslow, “Report of Captain F. S. Winslow,” in Lewis B. Parsons, ed., Reports to the War Department (St. Louis, MO: George Knapp & Co., 1867), 46. 1 0.  ORN, I, 25: 714, 716–717, 720–721, 730, 733, 741–746, 752–753, 756; OR, III, 4: 881; Nashville Daily Dispatch, January 28, 1864; Larry Whiteaker, “Cumberland Tales: Battle of Dug Hill—A Bloody Mystery,” Cookeville (TN) ­­Herald-Citizen, March 7, 2010; Richard Gildrie, "Guerrilla Warfare in the Lower Cumberland River Valley, 1862–1865," Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XLIX (Fall 1990), 170; Baggett, Homegrown Yankees, 143, 151; Winslow, “Report of Captain F. S. Winslow,” in Lewis B. Parsons, ed., Reports to the War Department, 47; Jones, “Fevers Ran High,” 96; Durham, Reluctant Partners, 83–84; Jones, “‘Fevers Ran High,’” 94–96. 11.  Chicago Daily Tribune, March 13, 19, 1864; Detroit Free Press, March 25, 1864; New York Tribune, March 28, 1864; St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, March 28, 1864; Ron Soodalter, “The Scourge of the South,” The New York Times, September 13, 2013; Way’s Packet Directory,

1848–1994, 342. Way, undoubtedly quoting local newspapers, tells an entirely different story of the plight of the Nettie Hartupee. In this version, the craft was hijacked near Nashville by “pirates,” who took off with her to the upper Cumberland. The Newsboy was sent in pursuit and as she began to overhaul the thieves, they landed their prize ashore and “leaped in the woods and vamoosed.” Upon her arrival, the gunboat “shelled the vicinity to no effect.”

Chapter 6 1.  U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 25, 734–736, 770– 773 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); U.S., Congress, Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Report: Red River (38th Cong., 2nd sess.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1864; reprint, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1971), 5 (cited hereafter as Joint Committee); Gary D. Joiner, Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 52; Thomas O. Selfridge, Memoirs of Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., Rear Admiral, U.S.N. (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1924; reprint, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), 87–88; William Riley Brooksher, War Along the Bayous: The 1864 Red River Campaign in Louisiana (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1998), xi–xii, 1–24. 2.  For further detail, see Margie Bearss, Sherman’s Forgotten Campaign: The Meridian Expedition (Baltimore, MD: Gateway Press, Inc., 1987), Buck Foster, Sherman’s Mississippi Campaign (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), and Kevin Dougherty, “Sherman’s Meridian Campaign: A Practice run for the March to the Sea,” Mississippi History Now, http:// www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/2/­­ shermans-meridian-campaign-a-practice-runfor-the-march-to-the-sea (accessed January 1, 2020); Philip L. Bolte, “Up the Yazoo River: A Riverine Diversion,” Periodical: Journal of America’s Military Past, XXII (1995), 18, 20–28. 3.  ORN, I, 25: 715, 722, 725–726, 734–736, 748–751, 755–756, 763–764, 770–773; U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 26, Pt. 1, 384, 559, 653, 673 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); ORN, I, 26: 14–17; OR, I, 32, 1: 157–159, 320–330, 349, 387–389; OR, I, 32, 2: 583; Joint Committee, 5; North American and United States Gazette, February 12, 1864;.Chicago Daily Tribune, March 2, 1864; Memphis Daily

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Bulletin, March 12, 1864; The New York Times, March 17, 1864; Jim Huffstodt, Hard Dying Men (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1991), 196–202, 206–212; James Huffstandt, “River of Death,” Lincoln Herald, LXXXIV (1982), 70–78; Henry R. and Symmes E. Browne, From the Fresh Water Navy, 1861–1864: Letters of Acting Master’s Mate Henry R. Browne and Acting Ensign Symmes E. Browne, edited by John D. Milligan (Naval Letters Series, Vol. 3; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1970), 244–248; Selfridge, Memoirs, 87–88. 4.  ORN, I, 25: 787–788; ORN, I, 26: 783, 788; OR, I, 34, 1: 155–160; The New York Times, March 15, 1864; Philadelphia Inquirer, March 15, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, March 15, 1864; Paul H. Silverstone, Warships of the Civil War Navies (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), 149; “Surgeon Mixer’s Account, March 2, 1864,” in Frank Moore, ed. The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events (12 vols.; New York: G. Putnam, 1861–1863; D. Van Nostrand, 1864–1868; reprint, New York: Arno, 1977), VIII, 445–446; Hiram H. Martin, "Service Afield and Afloat: A Reminiscence of the Civil War, Edited by Guy R. Everson," Indiana Magazine of History, LXXXIX (March 1993), 52–53; Selfridge, Memoirs, 92; David Dixon Porter, Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Sherman Publishing Company, 1886; reprint, Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1984), 556. His having forgotten about leap year, Surgeon Mixer’s account is off by one day. 5.  OR, I, 34, 1: 168, 304, 476; OR, I, 34, 2: 448– 449, 494–496, 554, 616; ORN, I, 26: 23–26, 789; Chicago Daily Tribune, March 13, 19, 1864; New York Tribune, March 28, 1864; St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, March 28, 1864; Philadelphia Inquirer, March 30, 1864; Joint Committee 21; Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New York: Scribner's, 1883), 189–190; Porter, Naval History, 494–496, 559–560; Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Co, 1885; reprint, Harrisburg PA: The Archive Society, 1997), 213; Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1879), 180–181; Richard B. Irwin, “The Red River Campaign,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), IV, 349–351 (hereafter B & L); Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., “The Navy in the Red River,” B & L, IV, 362; David Dixon Porter, “The Mississippi Flotilla in the Red River Expedition,” B & L, IV, 367; Walter G. Smith, ed., Life and Letters of Thomas Kilby Smith (New York: G. Putnam, 1898), 356; Gary D. Joiner, Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 54–57; Joiner and Charles E. Vetter, “The Union Naval Expedition on the Red River, March ­­1 2-May 22, 1864,” Civil War Regiments:

A Journal of the American Civil War, IV (1994), 26–41; Curtis Milbourn and Gary D. Joiner, “The Battle of Blair’s Landing,” North and South, IX (February 2007), 12; Chester G. Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter: The Civil War Years (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), 245–246. 6.  OR, 34, 1: 305, 313, 338–339, 500, 506, 561; OR, I, 34, 2: 494, 610–611; ORN, I, 26: 29–31, 35, 41, 50, 781, 784–785, 789; Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, 190–191, 193–194; Chicago Daily Tribune, March 29– April 1, 1864; New York Daily Tribune, April 4, 1864; St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, March 26, 1864; Columbus (WI) Democrat, May 29, 1895; Porter, Naval History, 499–500; Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, 156, 181–183; Joint Committee, 8–9, 18, 71, 74, 224–225; The New York Times, March 31, 1864; Joiner and Vetter, “The Union Naval Expedition on the Red River,” 41–49; Selfridge, “The Navy in the Red River,” B & L, IV, 362; Selfridge, Memoirs, 96–98; Harris H. Beecher, Record of the 114th Regiment, New York State Volunteer Infantry (Norwich, NY: J. F. Hubbard, Jr., 1866), 299–300; John D. Winters, The Civil War in Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963), 330–331; Ludwell H. Johnson, Red River Campaign: Politics & Cotton in the Civil War (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1993), 99–105; Ivan Musicant, Divided Waters: The Naval History of the Civil War (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 295–296; Irwin, “The Red River Campaign,” B & L, IV, 349–350; Robert L. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The ­­Trans-Mississippi South, 1863– 1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 297; Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter, 246–248. 7.  OR, I, 34, 1: 179–180; 282, 308–309, 322, 324, 331, 341, 380–381, 384, 388–393, 407, 428, 445, 452, 468, 471–472, 633–634; OR, I, 34, 2: 610–611; OR, I, 34, 3: 98–99; Chicago Daily Tribune, April 8, 1864; New York World, April 16, 1864; Columbus (WI) Democrat, May 29, 1895; Joint Committee, 35, 210, 275–276, 282, 286– 287, 323; ORN, I, 26: 38–39, 42–43, 46, 50–51, 54, 60–61, 777–778, 781, 785, 789; Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., “The Navy in the Red River,” B & L, IV, 363; Selfridge, Memoirs, 99–101; Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, 193–196; Brooksher, War Along the Bayous, 69–78; Irwin, “The Red River Campaign,” B & L, IV, 351–356; Porter Naval History, 502, 511–512; Joiner and Vetter, “The Union Naval Expedition on the Red River,” 49–51; Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter, 248–250; Steven D. Smith and George J. Castille, 3rd, “Bailey’s Dam,” Louisiana, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism Anthropological Study No. 8, March 1986, http://www.crt.state.la.us/archaeology/ BAILEYS/baileys.htm (accessed August 7, 2006). 8.  ORN, I, 26: 49–52, 55, 777–778, 781, 789; OR, I, 34, 1: 172–204, 381–383, 384–385, 388, 570–571, 633; OR, I, 34, 3: 174; Columbus (WI) Democrat, May 29, 1895; Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy, 309; Selfridge, “The Navy in the Red



Notes—Chapter 6265

River,” B & L, IV, 363–364; Selfridge, Memoirs, 102–106; Porter, Naval History, 512–513; Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, 177–178, 212; Curtis Milbourn and Gary D. Joiner, “The Battle of Blair’s Landing,” North and South, IX (February 2007), 12–21; Joiner and Vetter, “The Union Naval Expedition on the Red River,” 55–59; Brooksher, War Along the Bayous, 153–157; Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, 197–198; Irwin, “The Red River Campaign,” B & L, IV, 357–358; Bruce S. Allardice, “Curious Clash at Blair’s Landing,” America’s Civil War, IX (July 1997), 60–64; Alwyn Barr, “The Battle of Blair’s Landing.” Louisiana Studies, II (Winter 1963), 204–212; Anne J. Bailey, “Chasing Banks Out of Louisiana: Parsons’ Texas Cavalry in the Red River Campaign,” Civil War Regiments: A Journal of the American Civil War, II (1992), 219–221; Rebecca W. Smith and Marion Mullins, eds., "The Diary of H. C. Medford, Confederate Soldier, 1864," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXXIV, no. 2 (July 22, 2007), http:// www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/ online/v034/n2/contrib_DIVL1540.html; H. Gallaway, Ragged Rebel: A Common Soldier in W. H. Parsons’ Texas Cavalry, 1861–1865 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), 97–100; Odie Faulk, General Tom Green, Fightin’ Texan (Waco: Texian Press, 1963), 62; Carl L. Duaine, The Dead Men Wore Boots: An Account of the 32nd Texas Volunteer Cavalry, CSA, 1862–1865 (Austin, TX: San Felipe Press, 1966), 63. The gunfire contribution of the quartermaster transports, and Rob Roy in particular, was significantly downplayed in later years. In a letter written to Admiral Porter on June 2, 1880, and republished in his Memoirs, Lt. Cmdr. Selfridge testified regarding the siege guns on the exposed forecastle of the ordnance boat. “If fired,” he concluded, they were “at too long range to have been of any service.” 9.  OR, I, 34, 1: 310, 382–383; ORN, I, 26: 66, 69, 72–78; 790; Philadelphia Press, April 29, 1864; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, May 10, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, June 8, 1864; Columbus (WI) Democrat, May 29, 1895; Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, 198; Brooksher, War Along the Bayous, 158–159; Joiner and Vetter, “The Union Naval Expedition on the Red River,” 58–59; Selfridge, Jr., “The Navy in the Red River,” B & L, IV, 364; Jay Slagle, Ironclad Captain: Seth Ledyard Phelps and the U.S. Navy (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996), 365–367; Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter, pp.253–254; Porter, Naval History, 515–519; Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes, 235–239; Elias Pellet, History of the 114th Regiment, New York State Volunteers (Norwich, NY: Telegraph & Chronicle Power Press Print., 1866), 222; Joint Committee, 247–248. 10.  ORN, I, 26: 61, 68–87, 166–169, 176–177, 781–782 787–787, 790–791; OR, I, 34,1, 583– 584, 632, 634. 782, 790–791; Chicago Daily Tribune, May 7, 8, 1864; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, May 9, 1864; Columbus (WI) Democrat, May 29, 1895; Cleveland Daily Herald, June 8, 1864; Chuck

Veit, ”Engagement at Deloges Bluff.” Navy and Marine homepage, http://www.navyandmarine. org/ondeck/1862delogesbluff.htm (accessed July 24, 2007); Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, 183–185, 218; Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter, 255–257; Slagle, Ironclad Captain, 367–378; Joiner, Through the Howling Wilderness, 138– 140; Joiner and Vetter, “The Union Naval Expedition on the Red River,” 60–62; Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, 198–203; Selfridge, Jr., “The Navy in the Red River,” B & L, IV, 364–365; Selfridge, Memoirs, 99­–101; Brooksher, War Along the Bayous, 190–193; Joint Committee, 245–248; Porter, Naval History, 520–524; Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes, 239–243; Frank L. Church, Civil War Marine: A Diary of the Red River Expedition, 1864, edited and annotated by James Jones and Edward F. Keuchel (Washington, D.C.: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1975), 20, 53; Herbert Saunders, “The Civil War Letters of Herbert Saunders,” edited by Ronald K. Huch, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, LXIX (January 1971), 26. Confederate artillery units represented in the Deloges Bluff fray included Capt. Florian O. Cornay’s St. Mary’s Cannoneers (1st Louisiana Battery) with two ­­1 2-pounders and two ­­2 4-pounder howitzers, the 3rd Louisiana Light Artillery (“Bell’s Battery”), with two rifled cannon, and the Val Verde Battery under Capt. Thomas O. Benton, armed with three ­­6-pounder Napoleons and two recently prized ­­12-pound rifled cannon. Like Viet, Brooksher also disputes the number of cannon involved, suggesting the 18 Porter claimed was a stretch. Brooksher, War Along the Bayous, 253n. Surprisingly, Osage captain Selfridge does not mention steaming to meet the Eastport rescue group in his Deloges Bluff report, his B & L article, or his Memoirs. The best and most accurate contemporary newspaper account of the escape of the Cricket, Juliet, and Fort Hindman appeared in the ­­Philadelphia-based North American and United States Gazette of May 12, 1864. 11.  ORN, I, 26: 92–95, 102,123, 130–132. 369– 373, 438–439; OR, I, 34, 1: 209, 310, 402–406, 491, 585–586, 621; Chicago Daily Tribune, May 7, 24, 1864; The New York Times, May 13, 26, 29, 1864; New York Daily Tribune, May 27, 1864; New Orleans Era, May 17, 1864; New Orleans Times, May 18, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, June 8, 1864; Columbus (WI) Democrat, May 29, 1895; Ironton (OH) Register, January 19, 1888; Harper’s Weekly, June 18, 1864; Shreveport Times, January 23, 2015; Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, 203–207; Steven D. Smith and George J. Castille, 3rd, “Bailey’s Dam,” Louisiana, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism Anthropological Study No. 8, March 1986, http://www.crt.state.la.us/ archaeology/BAILEYS/baileys.htm (accessed August 7, 2006); Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes, 248–249; Porter, Naval History, 525–534; Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy. 318; Church, Civil War Marine. 54; Taylor, Destruction and

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Reconstruction, 186–189; Irwin, “The Red River Campaign,” B & L, IV, 358–362; Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter. pp.258–265; Slagle, Ironclad Captain, 378–381; Joiner, One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 161–162; Joiner and Vetter, “The Union Naval Expedition on the Red River,” 63–67; Selfridge, Jr., “The Navy in the Red River,” B & L, IV, 365–366; Selfridge, Memoirs, 109–111; Brooksher, War Along the Bayous, 209–215. Lt. Col. Bailey received the thanks of Congress for saving the fleet. OR, I, 34: 586.

Chapter 7 1.  U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 32, Pt. 1, 504–505, 547–552, 607–608, 611– 612 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); OR, I, 32, 3: 217; U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 26, 183, 195–207 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); Charleston Mercury, May 2, 1864; The New York Times, April 1, 1864, April 8, 1865; New York Tribune, April 2, 1864; Chicago Times, March 29, 1864; Memphis Daily Bulletin, March 31, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, March 28–29 and April 6, 1864; Indianapolis Daily Journal, April 2, 1864; Wisconsin State Register, April 2, 1864; Ripley Bee, March 31, 1864; Polk County Press, April 2, 1864; The Paducah Sun, March 24, 2014; Ronald K. Huch, “Fort Pillow Massacre: The Aftermath of Paducah,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, LXVI (1973), 62–70; Nashville Times, March 9, 1864; William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs (Penguin Classics; New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 365, 379, 382; John Allan Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: Harper & Bros., 1904; reprint, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 315–319, 326–330; Mark Zimmerman, Iron Maidens and the Devil’s Daughters: U.S. Navy Gunboats versus Confederate Gunners and Cavalry on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, 1861–65 (Nashville, TN: Zimco Publications, 2019), 123–128; Herbert Saunders, “The Civil War Letters of Herbert Saunders,” edited by Ronald K. Huch, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, LXIX (January 1971), 22–24; William R. Morris, “The Tennessee River Voyages of the U.S.S. Peosta,” Morris homepage, http://www.centuryinter.net/nacent/ bs/peosta.htm (accessed March 3, 1997); Robert S. Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest (Indianapolis, IN: ­­B obbs-Merrill, 1944; reprint, New York: Mallard Press, 1991), 251; Thomas Jordan and J.

Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. N. B. Forrest and of Forrest’s Cavalry (New Orleans and New York: Blelock & Co., 1868; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 412–414; Lonnie E. Maness, An Untutored Genius: The Military Career of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (Oxford, MS: The Guild Bindery Press, 1990), 224–227; Andrew Ward, River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War (New York: Viking Press, 2005), 102–125; Byrd Douglas, Steamboatin’ on the Cumberland (Nashville: The Tennessee Book Company, 1961), 159. 2.  James A. Dickinson, Diary (photocopy), April 2, 16, 1864, James A. Dickinson Papers, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, Fremont; ORN, I, 26: 214–216, 219–226; OR, I, 32, 1: 553, 556, 558–563, 568, 571–574, 595–597, 609, 612– 614, 621; OR, I, 32, 3: 520; U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Fort Pillow Massacre (38th Cong., 1st sess., House Report 65; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1864), pp.3–4, 85–89; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, April 16, 1864; St. Louis Daily Union, April 16, 1864; Hartford Daily Courant, April 18, 1864; Cincinnati Daily Commercial, April 20, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, April 15, 17, 1864; Memphis Argus, April 14, 1864; The New York Times, April 16, 18, 20, 24, and May 3, 1864; New York Evening Post, April 15, 21, 1864; Brian Steel Wills, The River Was Dyed with Blood: Nathan Bedford Forrest and Fort Pillow (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), 102–109; Ward, River Run Red, 157–158, 176–182; Richard L. Fuchs, An Unerring Fire: The Massacre at Fort Pillow (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002), 46–49, 51–53,81–83; Logbook of the U.S.S. New Era, April 12, 1864,” quoted in John Cimprich and Robert C. Mamfort, Jr., “Fort Pillow Revisited: New Evidence about an Old Controversy,” Civil War History, XXVIII (December 1982), 294– 295; Cimprich and Mamfort, “Dr. Fitch’s Report on the Fort Pillow Massacre,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XLIV (Spring 1985), 30–31; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 319–349, 373, 380, 589; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 254–260; Charles W. Anderson, “The True Story of Fort Pillow,” Confederate Veteran, III (November 1895), 323; E. J. Huling, Reminiscences of Gunboat Life in the Mississippi Squadron (Saratoga Springs, NY: Sentinel Print, 1881), 7; James Dinkins, “The Capture of Fort Pillow,” Confederate Veteran, XXXIII (December 1925), 461; Thomas Jordan and J. Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. N. B. Forrest and of Forrest’s Cavalry, 424–446; James Alex Baggett, Homegrown Yankees: Tennessee’s Union Cavalry in the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009), 215– 224; Brian S. Wills, A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 174–177; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 229–260; George S. Burkhardt, “Fort Pillow,” in his Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter in the Civil War (Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois Press, 2013), 105–117.



Notes—Chapter 8267

3.  OR, I, 30, 4: 508–509; OR, I, 32, 1: 556–614; ORN, I, 215–218, 226–233; The New York Times, April 18, 1864; Hartford Daily Courant, April 18, 1864; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 333–361; Thomas Jordan and J. Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. N. B. Forrest and of Forrest’s Cavalry, 424–454; David Dixon Porter, Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Sherman Publishing Company, 1886; reprint, Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1984), 518–519; Ward, River Run Red, 280–282. It is not our purpose to review the charges of a Fort Pillow massacre, a matter which has been hashed and rehashed in the nearly 150 years since. We have noted several titles in our bibliography and call the reader's attention to Robert C. Mainfort, Jr., "Fort Pillow Massacre: A Statistical Note," Journal of American History, LXXVI (December 1989), 836–837, and John Cimprich, “The Fort Pillow Massacre: Assessing the Evidence,” in John David Smith, ed. Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 150–168. Recriminations regarding the USN responsibility in the fiasco began to appear in the newspapers almost immediately. One particularly galling story suggested that the reason only one gunboat was at Fort Pillow during the attack was because at least five, including Lafayette and Avenger, were up the Big Black River seeking to prize 4,000 available cotton bales. The New York Times, April 18,1864.

Chapter 8 1.  U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 22, Pt. 2, 114, 867–869, 946, 952–953, 971, 988, 1063 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); OR, I, 24, 2: 290, 507, 516; OR, I, 26, 2: 114; OR, I, 52, 2: 599–601, 638–639; OR, I, 34, 2: 1065–1067; U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 23, 209 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]);The New York Times, August 10, 1863; Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861– 1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 98, 112; Daniel Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 18–19. 2.  OR, I, XIII, 742–743; OR, XVII, 1, 144– 145; OR, I,XVII, 2: 184, 235–236, 261, 280–281, 860; OR, I, 22, 2: 792; OR, I, 34, 4: 59–60; OR, I, 39, 2: 77, 363; Evansville Daily Journal, September 30, 1862; Memphis Daily Bulletin, September

27, 1862; Nashville Daily Dispatch, October 10, 1862; Chicago Daily Tribune, August 29, 1863; William T. Sherman, Memoirs (2 vols.; New York: D. Appleton, 1875), I, 388; Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin, eds., Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860– 1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 240, 262, 282, 305–310, 347; Noel C. Fisher, “‘Prepare Them for My Coming’: General William T. Sherman, Total War, and the Pacification of West Tennessee,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, LI (1992), 78–79; Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War, 114–119; Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 72, 321. Canby retained his command for the remainder of the war, though another officer filled in temporarily after he was wounded on the White River in November. For a biography of the general, see Max L. Heyman, Jr., Prudent Soldier: A Biography of Major General E. R. S. Canby (Glendale, CA: Clark, 1959); Frederick Way, Jr., Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994: Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System Since the Advent of Photography in ­­Mid-Continent America (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983; rev. ed., Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994), 306. 3.  OR, I, 34, 2: 735, 746, 768; OR, I, 45, 2: 765; ORN, I, 23: 379–380, 390, 394, 451–452, 348–352, 388,395–396, 449. 472, 630; ORN, I, 24: 197–202, 224; ORN, I, 25, 372; ORN, I, 26: 503–506; Detroit Free Press, July 23, 1863; Baltimore Sun, July 27, 1863; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, October 2, 1863; Memphis Bulletin, October 20, 1863; The New York Times, November 2, 1863; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 14, 23, 1863; New York Daily Tribune, November 17, 1863; Chester G. Hearn, Admiral David Dixon Porter: The Civil War Years (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), 145, 151–152; Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Legacy, 115, 163; Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War, 117; Warren Crandall, History of the Ram Fleet and the Mississippi Marine Brigade in the War for the Union on the Mississippi and Its Tributaries (St. Louis, MO: Buschart Brothers, 1907), 97–129, 255–263, 316–323. 378; Chester G. Hearn, Ellet’s Brigade: The Strangest Outfit of All (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 73, 145– 146, 181–186, 260; Gary D. Joiner, Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 71; Daniel R. Doyle, “The Civil War in the Greenville Bends,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, LXX (Summer 2011), 155 (whole 131–161) . In August 1862, Western Gunboat Flotilla commander Flag Officer Charles Henry Davis created the Upper River Mosquito Flotilla (later Eighth District, Mississippi Squadron) under Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch as a nautical counterinsurgency and ­­convoy-army support force, equipping it with several of the first tinclads. ORN, I, 23: 207–309; Charles H. Davis,

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Charles H. Davis: Life of Charles Henry Davis, Rear Admiral, 1807–1877 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), 274. Fitch is profiled in my Le Roy Fitch: The Civil War Career of a Union Gunboat Commander (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2007). 4.  ORN, I, 25: 450–459; ORN, I, 26: 705; Memphis Argus, September 6, 1863 Memphis Daily Bulletin, September 22, 1863; Chicago Daily Tribune, October 21, 23, November 4, 1863, October 14, 17, 1864; New York Daily Tribune, December 26, 1864; Leo E. Huff, “Guerrillas, Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers in Northern Arkansas During the Civil War,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XXIV (Summer 1965), 133–135; Marion Bragg, Historic Names and Places on the Lower Mississippi River (Vicksburg: Mississippi River Commission, 1977), 110; Tom McKenney, Jack Hinson’s One Man War: A Civil War Sniper (New Orleans, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2009); Murfreesboro Post, April 3, 2011. 5.  ORN, I, 25: 570–575, 614–615, 624–627, 636; 678, 737; OR, I, 26, 1: 220–222, 525; New York Herald, December 19,1863; Evansville Daily Journal, December 19, 1863; New York Daily Tribune, January 11, 1864; Nashville Daily Union, December 15, 1863; Hartford Daily Courant, January 28, 1864; The New York Times, April 4, October 4, 1864; North American and United States Gazette, February 10, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, January 21, 29, March 2, 1864; Montgomery Mail, September 30, 1864; Crandall, History of the Ram Fleet, 95–97, 119–131; Norman Clarke, Warfare Along the Mississippi: The Letters of Lt. Col. George E. Currie (Mount Pleasant, MI: Clarke Historical Collection, 1961), 79–80; Joseph P. Blessington, The Campaigns of Walker’s Texas Division (Austin, TX: The Pemberton Press, 1968), 132–163. 6. New York Observer and Chronicle, August 13, 1863; Philadelphia Inquirer, August 14, 1863; Detroit Free Press, October 3, 1863; OR, 22, 2, 973, 1072; OR, I, 24, 3: 1066; OR, I, 48: 194–198; D. H. Rule, “The ­­B oat-Burners,” Civil War St. Louis, http://civilwarstlouis.com/boatburners/index. htm (accessed February 29, 2020); Lewis B. Parsons, Reports to the War Department (St. Louis, MO: George Knapp & Co., 1867), 29–42; Bruce Nichols, Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri (4 vols.; Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2014), IV, 291–293; Laura June Davis, Vexed Waters: Naval Guerrillas Masculinity, and Mayhem Along the Lower Mississippi River in the Civil War (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Georgia, 2016), 84–131. The major newspapers all covered the boat burnings as they occurred and during the hunt for the saboteurs into 1865; many of the articles are noted by Ms. Davis in her work beyond the first two I’ve noted here. 7.  OR, I, 34, 1: 486–487; OR, I, 34, 3: 828–829; OR, I, 41, 1: 191–192; OR, I, 41, 4: 1068–1069; John Swift, “Letters from a Sailor on a Tinclad,” edited by Lester L. Swift, Civil War History, X (March 1961), 55–56; Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial

Field Book of the Civil War: Journeys Through the Battlefields in the Wake of Conflict (3 vols.; Hartford, CT: T. Belknap, 1874; reprint, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), III, 274; Thomas A. DeBlack, With Fire and Sword: Arkansas, 1861–1874 (Histories of Arkansas; Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003), 119; Albert G. Castel, General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968), 196–197; Charles Steven Palmer, “Our Most Noble Stranger”: The Mystery, Gallantry, and Civicism of Colton Greene” (unpublished MA thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1995); John W. Coltern, Confederates of Elmwood (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2001), 183; William L. Shea, “Battle at Ditch Bayou,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XXXIX (Autumn 1980), 195–196; John N. Edwards, Shelby and His Men; or, The War in the West (Cincinnati, OH: Miami Printing and Publishing Co., 1867; reprint, Waverly, MO: General J. O. Shelby Memorial, 1993), 251, 363–366; Robert L. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The ­­Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 323; John Anderson, Campaigning with Parson’s Texas Cavalry Brigade, CSA: The War Journals and Letters of the Four Orr Brothers, 12th Texas Cavalry Regiment (Waco, TX: Hill Junior College Press, 1967), 53–54. The most useful overview of the war in Chicot County is Daniel R. Doyle, “The Civil War in the Greenville Bends,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, LXX (Summer 2011), 131–161. 8.  ORN, I, 26: 305, 317, 323–324, 803, 805; Chicago Daily Tribune, June 2, 5, 1864; Hearn, Ellet’s Brigade, 232–233; Shea, “Battle at Ditch Bayou,” 195–196; Jeffrey L. Patrick, “A Fighting Sailor on the Western Rivers: The Civil War Letters of ‘Gunboat,’” The Journal of Mississippi History, LVIII (Fall 1996), 269–271; Don R. Simon, “Engagement at Old River Lake,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, http://www. encycopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/­­entrydetail.aspx?entryID=1120 (accessed November 10, 2008). Parsons, Reports to the War Department, 36; Edwards, Shelby and His Men, 364–366; Stephen B. Oates, Confederate Cavalry West of the River (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961; reprint, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), 182–183. For an expanded version of this story, please see my “Interdicting the Mississippi: Colonel Colton Greene, CSA, vs. the U.S. Navy,” North and South, XII (March 2011), 30–39. 9.  OR, I, 34, 1: 946–947, 950–953; ORN, I, 26: 326–327, 331, 335, 339, 354–355, 803, 805–806; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, May 30, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, June 2, 5, 7, 1864; The New York Times, June 4, 1864; Memphis Evening Times, July 28, 1864; Patrick, “A Fighting Sailor on the Western Rivers,” 271–272; Hearn, Ellet’s Brigade, 233–235; Shea, “Battle at Ditch Bayou,” 196–197; Edwards, Shelby and His Men, 366–370; David Dixon Porter, Naval History of the Civil



Notes—Chapter 9269

War (New York: Sherman Publishing Company, 1886; reprint, Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1984), 560–561. 1 0.  OR, I, 34, 1: 947–953, 971–985; OR, I, 34, 4: 137–138, 230–231 368; ORN, I, 26: 355– 356, 364,383–384, 407–408; Chicago Daily Tribune, June 7, 1864; Edwards, Shelby and His Men, 368–377; Shea, “Battle at Ditch Bayou,” 197–207; Clarke, Warfare Along the Mississippi, 107; Hearn, Ellet’s Brigade, 234–243; Crandall, History of the Ram Fleet, 415; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 2: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861–1866 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 78–79. 11.  Chicago Daily Tribune, July 25, 1864; Memphis Evening Times, July 28, 1864; The New York Times, August 1, 5, 9, 1864; Baltimore Sun, August 2, 1864; Wisconsin Daily Patriot, July 30, 1864; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, July 30, 1864; Parsons, Reports to the War Department, 38. 1 2.  ORN, I, 26: 503–505; Chicago Daily Tribune, August 16, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, August 19, 1864; Memphis Daily Bulletin, August 20, 1864; The New York Times, August 21, September 12, 1864; New Orleans Era, August 24, 1864. 1 3.  ORN, I, 26: 525, 745–746, 762; ORN, I, 27: 7–9, 21; OR, I, 39, 1: 880–881; The New York Times, September 11, 1864; New Orleans Daily True Delta, November 27, 1864; New Orleans Daily Picayune, January 12, 1865; Chicago Daily Tribune, September 8, 1864, January 23, 1865; New York Daily Tribune, December 26, 1864; St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, November 7, 1885; Bragg, Historic Names and Places on the Lower Mississippi River, 37; Parsons, Reports to the War Department, 38–39. Accompanied by three tinclads and two U.S. Army transports with a thousand troops, the Gazelle returned to Williamsport on December 16. There, in retaliation for Thatcher’s death, a number of plantation buildings were burned and large quantities of sugar, corn, and molasses destroyed. ORN, I, 26: 762.

Chapter 9 1.  U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 25: 652, 774–785; (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and the page[s]); ORN, I, 26: 392–393, 414, 464, 562, 791; U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 34, Pt. 1, 783, 946–953 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); OR, I, 41, 1: 191–192; The New York Times, April 14, May 14, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 14, 1863; June 2, 28,

1864; W. Craig Gaines, Encyclopedia of Civil War Shipwrecks (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 10; “Where We’ve Been: U.S.S. Queen City Sinking,” Clarendon, Arkansas, homepage, http://www.­­c larendon-ar.com/been/uss_ queen_city/index.html (accessed July 6, 2007); Thomas A. DeBlack, With Fire and Sword: Arkansas, 1861–1874 (Histories of Arkansas; Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003), 66–67, 118; Bobby Roberts, “ Rivers of No Return,” in Mark K. Christ, ed., “The Earth Reeled and Trees Trembled”: Civil War Arkansas, 1863–1864 (Little Rock, AR: Old State House Museum, 2007), 74–76, 84; Mark K. Christ, “‘The Queen City was a Helpless Wreck’: J. O. Shelby’s Summer of ’64,” in Mark K. Christ, ed., “The Earth Reeled and Trees Trembled”: Civil War Arkansas, 1863–1864 (Little Rock, AR: Old State House Museum, 2007), p.137; David Dixon Porter, Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Sherman Publishing Company, 1886; reprint, Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 1984), 562; Jay Slagle, Ironclad Captain: Seth Ledyard Phelps and the U.S. Navy (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996), 383–384; John N. Edwards, Shelby and His Men; or, The War in the West (Cincinnati, OH: Miami Printing and Publishing Co., 1867; reprint, Waverly, MO: General J. O. Shelby Memorial, 1993), pp 317–320; George W. Shallenburger, Diary, June 18, 1864, Gilder Lehman Collection, Gilder Lehman Institute of American History (cited hereafter as Shallenburger Diary). Despite Christ’s fine volume, the most helpfully detailed and illustrated overall review of events relative to the war on this river is the chapter “Steamboats, 1861–1865,” in Duane Huddleston’s Steamboats and Ferries on the White River: A Heritage Revisted (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 41–65. 2.  OR, I, 34, 1: 1044–1045; ORN, I, 26: 402– 403, 415–417, 791; Slagle, Ironclad Captain, 385; Chicago Daily Tribune, June 28, 1864; The New York Times, June 29, 1864; New Haven Daily Palladium, June 29, 1864; Hartford Daily Courant, July 2, 1864. 3.  ORN, I, 26: 417–433, 447, 451–454, 461, 464; OR, I, 34, 1: 1050–1052; Shallenburger Diary, June 24–27, 1864; Edwards, Shelby and His Men, 321–326; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, July 2, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, July 3–4, 6, 22, 1864; Baltimore Sun, July 4, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, July 5, 1864; Hartford Daily Courant, July 4–6, 1864; Chattanooga Daily Gazette, July 12, 1864; Memphis Argus, July 12, 1864; “Where We’ve Been: U.S.S. Queen City Sinking,” Clarendon, Arkansas, homepage, http://www.­­ clarendon-ar.com/been/uss_queen_city/index. html (accessed July 6, 2007); Coleman Smith, “Capture and Sinking of the Gunboat Queen City,” Confederate Veteran, XXII (March 1914), 120–121; Christ, “‘The Queen City was a Helpless Wreck,’” 137–139; DeBlack, With Fire and Sword, 118; Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New

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York: Scribner's, 1883), 212–213; Porter, Naval History of the Civil War , 562–563; Duane Huddleston, Sammie Cantrell Rose, and Pat Taylor Wood, Steamboats and Ferries on the White River: A Heritage Revisited (Conway: University of Central Arkansas Press, 1995; reprint, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 63; Daniel O’Flaherty, General Jo Shelby: Undefeated Rebel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954; reprint, 2000), 212–214. There is a difference in the estimated length of the ­­s hip-shore Clarendon battle. Bache claimed 45 minutes, Shelby in his OR report said an hour and a half, and Edwards reported that it took two hours. ORN, I, 26: 424; OR, I, 34, 1: 1050; Edwards, Shelby and His Men, 325. For the latest review of the encounter, see Don Roth’s ­­62-page account, General J. O. Shelby at Clarendon, Arkansas: The Capture and Destruction of the U.S.S. Queen City (Iowa City, IA: Camp Pope Publishing, 2017). 4.  ORN, I, 26: 425–428; OR, I, 34, 1: 1047– 1052; Hartford Daily Courant, July 6, 1864; Chattanooga Daily Gazette, July 12, 1864; New York Daily Tribune, July 13, 1864; Mark K. Christ, “‘Sun Stroke & Tired Out’: Chasing J. O. Shelby, June 1864,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, LXVIII (Summer 2009), 201–212; Christ, “‘The Queen City was a Helpless Wreck,’” 139–140. 5.  OR, I, 34, 1: 1044–1045, 1051–1052; ORN, I, 26: 330, 375, 402–403, 415–434, 437–438, 447– 448, 451–454, 453–454, 461, 463–464, 467, 469– 470, 478, 480, 791; Scott D. Jordan, Civil War Letters of Scott D. Jordan, Produced for Eleanor Jordan West, ­­C D-ROM (Glendale, AZ: doug@ bellnotes.com, 2007), June 10, 25, 28, July 3–4, 1864; Slagle, Ironclad Captain, 385; The New York Times, June 29, 1864; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, July 2, 1864; Hartford Daily Courant, July 2, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, July 3–5, 1864; Baltimore Sun, July 4, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, July 5, 1864; Chattanooga Daily Gazette, July 12, 1864; Memphis Argus, July 12, 1864; New York Daily Tribune, July 13, 1864; “Where We’ve Been: U.S.S. Queen City Sinking,” Clarendon, Arkansas, homepage, http://www.­­clarendon-ar. com/been/uss_queen_city/index.html (accessed July 6, 2007); Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, 212–213; John N. Edwards, Shelby and His Men, 321–326. 6.  ORN,I, 26: 471, 477–478, 482, 484, 494–496, 502, 518, 520, 528; OR, I, 41, 1: 28, 191–192; OR, I, 41, 2: 191–192; New York Daily Tribune, July 14, 1864; Unconditional Union, July 23, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, July 22, 25, 27–29, 1864; Slagle, Ironclad Captain, 386; Christ, “‘The Queen City was a Helpless Wreck,’” pp.142–146; Scott A. Porter, “Thunder Across the Arkansas Prairie: Shelby’s Opening Salvo in the 1864 Invasion of Missouri,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, LXVI (Spring 2007) 43–56; The Mound City was withdrawn from the White on August 9. ORN, I, 26: 502. 7.  ORN, I, 26: 529–532; OR, I, XLI, 504, 947;

Chicago Daily Tribune, September 16, October 3, 1864 and February 1, 1865; The New York Times, September 9, October 4, November 15, 1864; Robert R. Mackey, The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861–1865 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 63–71; Jayme Milsap Stone, “Brother Against Brother: The Winter Skirmishes Along the Arkansas River, 1864–1865,” in Anne J. Bailey and Daniel E. Sutherland, Civil War Arkansas: Beyond Battles and Leaders (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000), 195–212; Carl Moneyhon, “1865: A State of Perfect Anarchy,” in Mark Christ, ed., Rugged and Sublime: The Civil War in Arkansas (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994), 150–151. The overviews used here for Price’s role in the ­­Trans-Mississippi were Albert Castel, General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968) and Michael J. Forsyth, The Great Missouri Raid: Sterling Price and the Last Major Confederate Campaign in Northern Territory (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., Inc., 2015).

Chapter 10 1.  William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs (Penguin Classics; New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 519; U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 39, Pt. 3, 162 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1960), 430. 2.  Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat (New York: Pocket Books, 1973), 388; John Bell Hood, Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies (New Orleans, LA: Pub. For the Hood Orphan Memorial Fund, 1880), 263–269; Hood, "The Invasion of Tennessee," in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), IV, 425; Steven E. Woodward, “To Atlanta and Beyond,” in his Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 284–301; OR, I, 39, 2: 121; Lonnie E. Maness, An Untutored Genius: The Military Career of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (Oxford, MS: The Guild Bindery Press, 1990), 317–322; Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War: Journeys Through the Battlefields in the Wake of Conflict (3 vols.; Hartford, CT: T. Belknap, 1874; reprint, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), III, 398–399; “Decatur and the Civil War,” Nostalgiaville, http:// travel.nostalgiaville.com/Alabama/Decatur/



Notes—Chapter 10271

decatur%20civil%20war.htm (accessed December 1, 2008). 3.  U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 26, 732 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); OR, I, 20, 2: 332, 338–339; the ­­Meigs-Rosecrans exchange on armed transports is reviewed in David W. Miller's Second Only to Grant: Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Books, 2000), 182–183; the story of "The Little Steamboat That Opened the Cracker Line" was well told by eyewitness Brig. Gen. William G. Le Duc in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), III, 676–678; Donald Davidson, The Tennessee, Vol. 2: The New River, Civil War to TVA (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1948), 64–67. Your attention is also called to Donald H. Steenburn’s “Gunboats of the Upper Tennessee,” Civil War Times Illustrated, XXXII (February 1993), 38–43. 4.  Uriah James, James’ River Guide (Cincinnati, OH: U. James, 1860), 228. 5.  OR, I, 31, 2: 56; OR, I, 32, 2: 104–105; OR, I, 52, 1: 713; ORN, I, 25: 681, 698–700, 733, 741; Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 10: January 1–May 31, 1864, edited by John Y. Simon (31 vols.; Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967), 104; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 2: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861–1866 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 411; The Alone and Convoy #2 would never steam over Muscle Shoals and the attempt, which all concerned hoped might occur in early March, was abandoned by April 4, when General Sherman wrote to Fleet Captain Pennock: "I think we can build gunboats above the shoals and I agree with you that it is too late to pass the shoals now." OR, I, 32, 3, 14–18, 30; ORN, I, 26: 211; Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Vol. 10, 194. 6.  OR, I, 32, 1: 607; OR, III, 4: 881; ORN, I, 25: 733, 741–746, 752–753, 756. ORN, I, 26: 183, 195–196, 203–204, 206–207; Erna Risch, Quartermaster Support of the Army: A History of the Corps, 1775–1939 (Washington, D.C.: Quartermaster Historian’s Office, Office of the Quartermaster General, 1962), p.414; Ida Brown, Michigan Men in the Civil War (Ann Arbor: Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 1977), 45; “The Sharpshooters,” Cuyahoga County Ohio History, https://sites.google.com/site/ cuyahogacountyohio/history/­­sharpshooters-the (accessed April 23, 2020); Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), 274; Frederick H. Dyler, “10th Battery, Indiana Light Artillery,” in Regimental Histories, Vol. 3 of

A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (New York: Thomas Y. Yosloff, 1959), 1114; Gibson, The Army’s Navy Series, Vol. 2, 376, 386. 7.  Paul Silverstone, Warships of the Civil War Navies (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1999), 166–167; Frank Miller, The Photographic History of the Civil War (10 vols.; New York: The Review of Reviews Company, 1911), VI, 233; Charles Dana Gibson and E. Kay Gibson, comps., The Army’s Navy Series, Vol. 1: Dictionary of Transports and Combat Vessels, Steam and Sail, Employed by the Union Army, 1861– 1868 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 305; Gibson, The Army’s Navy Series, Vol. 2, 380, 386. According to the Gibsons, the Stone River was one of the ten ­­purpose-built steamers constructed by Edwards at Bridgeport. The other nine included the Atlanta, Bridgeport, Kingston, Lookout, Missionary, Resaca, Wauhatchee, Gunboat A and Gunboat B, which latter two were reconfigured into the chartered USN craft General Thomas and General Burnside. Gibson, comp., The Army’s Navy Series, Vol. 2, 401n–402n. 8.  ORN, I, 26: 279, 286, 295, 366; OR, I, 32, 1: 21; OR I 38, 4: 384–385; OR, I, 39, 1: 15–16. On April 15, the battered main body of the Mississippi Squadron returned to the mouth of the Red River from its unsuccessful sojourn into Louisiana. On April 19, the squadron was reorganized with Fitch's Eighth District becoming the Tenth. ORN, I, 26: 311–312, 317–318, 445. 9.  ORN, I, 26: 326, 328, 338–339; 358, 366– 367; 375, 381–383, 401, 405; OR, I, 38, 4: 460; OR, I, 52, 1:620, 706; Gibson, comp., The Army’s Navy Series, Vol. 2, ­­401n-402n. 10.  ORN, I, 26: 384–385, 387, 408, 412, 439– 441, 476, 488, 566, 573, 577; ORN, I, 27: 283; ORN, II, 92–93; OR, I, 52,1: 572; Nashville Daily Dispatch, June 22, 1864; George W. Cullum, “Robert S. Granger,” in his Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891), 729; "General Burnside," "General Grant," "General Sherman," and "General Thomas," in Vol. 3 of Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1968), 38, 43, 58, 61; Previously commander of the tinclad Hastings, Acting Master Morehead was honorably discharged on September 12, 1865. Acting Master Morton, who had begun as an acting gunner in 1862, rising to become the pro tempore captain of the timberclad Conestoga, would would remain in the navy until he retired in 1874. Lt. Forrest would be promoted to the rank of lieutenant commander on July 25, 1866, but died that Christmas eve. Edward W. Callahan, List of Officers of the Navy of the United States and of the Marine Corps, from 1775 to 1900, Comprising a Complete Register of All Present and Former Commissioned, Warranted, and Appointed Officers of the United States Navy, and of the Marine Corps, Regular and Volunteer. Compiled from the Official Records of the Navy Department (New York: L. R.

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Hamersly & Co., 1901; reprint, New York: Haskell House, 1969), 390, 394, 200. 11.  OR, I, 39,1, 539–541, 546–549; OR, I, 39, 3: 238–239, 815–817; Frederick Way, Jr., Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994: Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System Since the Advent of Photography in ­­Mid-Continent America (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983; rev. ed., 1994), 33, 269; ORN, I, 26: 582–583, 587; Chicago Daily Tribune, October 15, 21, 1864; Charleston Mercury, November 1, 1864; Macon Weekly Telegraph, November 11, 1864; Brian Steel Wills, A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 260– 261; “Battle of Eastport,” Confederate Veteran, V (January 1897), 13; Maness, Untutored Genius, 304; Jacob D. Cox, March to the Sea: Franklin and Nashville (Campaigns of the Civil War, no. 10; New York: Scribner's, 1882), 12; Thomas Jordan and J. Pryor. The Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. N. B. Forrest and of Forrest’s Cavalry (New Orleans: Blelock & Co., 1868; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 575, 584–586; Donald H. Steenburn, "The United States Ship Undine," Civil War Times Illustrated, XXXV (August 1996), 27; John Allan Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: Harper & Bros., 1904), 47, 50; Robert Selph Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest (Indianapolis, IN: ­­B obbs-Merrill, 1944), 364–365, 368–369; Benjamin F. Cooling, To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond (Knoxville: University to Tennessee Press, 2011), 188–189; Ben Earl Kitchens, Gunboats and Cavalry: A History of Eastport, Mississippi (Florence, AL: Thornwood Book Publishers, 1985), 119–124; Herschel K. Smith, Jr., Some Encounters with General Forrest (McKenzie, TN: Priv. Print., [1959?]), 3; John Watson Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry (Nashville, TN: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1909), 252; Edward F. Williams, 3rd, and H. K. Humphreys, eds., Gunboats and Cavalry: The Story of Forrest’s 1864 Johnsonville Campaign, as Told to J. Pryor and Thomas Jordan, by Nathan Bedford Forrest (Memphis, TN: Nathan Bedford Forrest Trail Committee, 1965), 6; Edward F. Williams, 3rd, "The Johnsonville Raid and Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park," Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XXVIII (Fall 1969), 227; Campbell H. Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," Civil War Times Illustrated, IV (June 1965), 53; John E. Fisher, They Rode with Forrest and Wheeler: A Chronicle of Five Tennessee Brothers’ Service in the Confederate Western Cavalry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1995), 244–245, 250; Myron J. Smith, Jr., “Le Roy Fitch Meets the Devil’s Parson: The Battle of Bell’s Mills, December 4–6, 1864,” North & South, X (January 2008), 43; Norman R. Denny, "The Devil's Navy," Civil War Times Illustrated, XXXV (August 1996), 28; Mark Zimmerman, Guide to Civil War Nashville (Nashville: Battle of Nashville Preservation Society, 2004), 14; Zimmerman, Iron Maidens and

the Devil’s Daughters: U.S. Navy Gunboats versus Confederate Gunners and Cavalry on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, 1861–65 (Nashville, TN: Zimco Publications, 2019), 129–132. The literature on Forrest vs. the gunboats in October–November 1864 is huge, largely because the ­­cavalry-naval aspect of the adventure is so unique. Donald H. Steenburn’s work is very helpful (Silent Echoes of Johnsonville: Rebel Cavalry and Yankee Gunboats [Rogersville, AL: Elk River Press, 1994]), as is Michael R. Bradley’s paperback Forrest’s Fighting Preacher: David Campbell of Tennessee (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2011). 12.  OR, I, 39, 1: 694–695; OR, I, 39, 3: 810, 815– 816, 841; OR, I, 45, 1: 647; ORN, I, 26: 589–592, 693, 699–700; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 269; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 453, 456, 516; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 305, 322; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 589–590; Campbell H. Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," Civil War Times Illustrated, IV (June 1965), 49; Robert Selph Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest (Indianapolis, IN: ­­Bobbs-Merrill, 1944), 371; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 263; Thomas B. Van Horne, Army of the Cumberland (Cincinnati, OH: R. Clarke & Co., 1875; reprint, New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1996), 455–456; "Nashville," Major General George Thomas (blog), http://home. earthline.net/~oneplez/majorgeneral georgehthomasblogsite/id20.html (accessed February 28, 2006); “Decatur and the Civil War,” Nostalgiaville, http://travel.nostalgiaville.com/Alabama/Decatur/ decatur%20civil%20war.htm (accessed December 1, 2008); Cooling, To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond, 272; Wiley Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah: Spring Hill, Franklin and Nashville (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 56–58, 63–65; Eric A. Jacobson and Richard A. Rupp, For Cause and for Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin (Franklin, TN: O'More Publishing, 2007), 38–44; Dudley Taylor Cornish and Virginia Jeans Laas, Lincoln’s Lee: The Life of Samuel Phillips Lee, United States Navy, 1812–1897 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986), 140; Johnny H. Whisenant, "Samuel Phillips Lee, U.S.N.: Commander, Mississippi Squadron (October 19, 1864–August 14, 1865)" (unpublished MS thesis, Kansas State College of Pittsburg, 1968), 12–20; "Samuel Phillips Lee," in William B. Cogar, Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy (2 vols.; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), I, 96–97. On October 26, Gen. Thomas received a warning from Memphis: "It is reported that Forrest has sent to Mobile for a battery of heavy guns to plant on the Tennessee River." OR, I, 39, 3: 459. 13.  OR, I, 34, 2: 729. OR, I, 39, 1: 695–701, 870; OR, I, 39, 3: 282, 302–303, 343, 345, 357, 524; OR, I, 41, 4: 427–428, 431, 452, 469; OR, I, 45, 1: 648, 673; ORN, I, 26: 590–598; Nashville Daily Dispatch, November 26, 1864; “Decatur and the Civil War,” Nostalgiaville, http://travel.nostalgiaville. com/Alabama/Decatur/decatur%20civil%20war.



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htm (accessed December 1, 2008); Hood, Advance and Retreat, 259, 270–271; Van Horne, Army of the Cumberland, 456; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 30, 64–65; Jacobson, For Cause and for Country, 43; Cooling, To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond, 276; Stephen M. Hood, John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2013), 92–94; Anne J. Bailey, The Chessboard of War: Sherman and Hood in the Autumn Campaigns of 1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 21–22; Steenburn, “Gunboats of the Upper Tennessee,” 42. The most helpful overview of the Decatur encounter is Noel Carpenter’s ­­197-page study A Slight Demonstration: Decatur, October 1864, Clumsy Beginning of Gen. John B. Hood’s Tennessee Campaign (Austin, TX: Legacy Books & Letters, 2007); indeed, the author included an appendix detailing the Upper Tennessee fords and ferries between Florence, AL, and Chattanooga that alone is worth the price of the book. 14.  OR, I, 39, 1: 860, 863, 867–869; OR, I, 39, 3: 548,590, 602, 611; OR, I, 52, I: 120–122; ORN, I, 26: 594–595, 598–607, 611–612, 706–707; ORN, II, 220; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 3, 6, 10, 1864; Paducah Federal Union, November 3, 1864; St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, November 6, 1864; Baltimore Sun, November 7, 1864; Louisville Democrat, November 8, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, November 11, 1864; National Intelligencer, November 11, 1864; Stanley F. Horn, The Decisive Battle of Nashville (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956), 30; Williams, "The Johnsonville Raid and Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park," 237; Campbell H. Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," Civil War Times Illustrated, IV (June 1965), 51–54; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 522–526; James Dinkins, 1861 to 1865, by an Old Johnnie: Personal Recollections and Experiences in the Confederate Army (Cincinnati, OH: The Robert Clarke, Co., 1897), 205; R. R Hancock, Hancock’s Diary; or, a History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry (Dayton, OH: Press of Morningstar Bookshop, 1981), 495; John W. Morton, "Raid of Forrest's Cavalry on the Tennessee River in 1864," Southern Historical Society Papers, X (1882), 261– 268; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 309–310; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 263–267; John Watson Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry (Nashville, TN: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1909), 245–249; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 592– 593, 597–598; Julius F. Gracey, “Capture of the Mazappa,” Confederate Veteran, XIII (December 1905), 566–570; J. F. Orr, “Capture of the Undine and Mazappa,” Confederate Veteran, XVIII (July 1910), 323–324; Steenburn, "The United States Ship Undine," 27; John A. Eisterhold, "Fort Heiman, Forgotten Fortress," West Tennessee Historical Society Papers, XXXVIII (1974), 53; Byrd Douglas, Steamboatin’ on the Cumberland

(Nashville: The Tennessee Book Company, 1961), 158. Certain aspects of the Undine and the 1968 Pueblo captures are eerily similar as testimony at the respective inquiries demonstrates. I looked at the literature of the Pueblo incident in my The United States Navy and Coast Guard, 1946–1983 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1984), 294–296. The literature on Forrest’s Johnsonville operation has grown steadily over the past three decades, with numerous small books (less than 200 pages) coming from minor publishers. Among the best of these is Donald H. Steenburn’s Silent Echoes of Johnsonville: Rebel Cavalry and Yankee Gunboats (Rogersville, AL: Elk River Press, 1994). The most recent study is Jerry T. Wooten, Johnsonville: Union Supply Operations on the Tennessee River and the Battle of Johnsonville, November 4–5, 1864 (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2019), which was essentially abstracted in his “Supply Trains and Naval Charades: Tennessee’s 1864 Johnsonville Campaign,” North & South, NS II, no. 5 (May 2020), 32–40, 84. 15.  ORN, I, 26: 611, 615, 630; OR, I, 52, 1: 122; OR, I, 39, 1: 861, 869, 874; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 7, 1864; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 525; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 598; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 312– 313; Jeffrey L. Patrick, "A Fighting Sailor on the Western Rivers: The Civil War Letters of 'Gunboat,'" The Journal of Mississippi History, LVIII (Fall 1996), 279; Robert W. Kaeuper, "The Forgotten Triumph of the Paw Paw." American Heritage, XLVI (October 1995), 88; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 527; Willis, A Battle from the Start, 267–269; Stephen E. Ambrose, Halleck: Lincoln’s Chief of Staff (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1962), 190–191; Williams, “The Johnsonville Raid and Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park,” 239; Wooten, ““Supply Trains and Naval Charades,” 35–37; Zimmerman, Iron Maidens and the Devil’s Daughters, 132–140; J. B. Irion and D. V. Beard, Underwater Archaeological Assessment of Civil War Shipwrecks in Kentucky Lake, Benton and Humphreys Counties, Tennessee (New Orleans, LA: R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, Inc., for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, Department of Environment and Conservation, State of Tennessee, 1993), 3. The island, Johnsonville, Reynoldsburg, and the surrounding area were covered by the TVA's Kentucky Lake in 1944. "The Archaeological Investigations of the Battle of Johnsonville." http://www.panamconsultants.com/PAGE (accessed June 8, 2004). 16.  OR, I, 39, 1: 861,869, 871, 874–875; ORN, I, 26: 612–616; OR, I, 39, 1: 122, 124, 869; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 7, 11, 1864; The New York Times, November 7, 1864; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 268–269; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 249–253; Wooten, ““Supply Trains and Naval Charades,” 37–38. The Johnsonville bombardment, and specifically the location of the Confederate cannon,

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was the topic of much debate in Tennessee newspapers 30 years later; see the Dyer County Herald (March 19, 1896) and Memphis Commercial Appeal (March 23 and April 12, 1896). 17.  ORN, I, 26: 612–613; OR, I, 39, 1: 861, 869; OR, I, 52, 1: 123; The New York Times, November 7–8, 1864; Louisville Democrat, November 8, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, November 11, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 10–11, 1864; Henry, op cit., 376–377; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 600–601; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 269–273; Williams, “The Johnsonville Raid and Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park,” 239–240; John M. Latham, Raising the Civil War Gunboats and Building the Magic Valley History Tower (Camden, TN: J. M. Latham/Press Pro, 1997), 161–162; Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," 55–56; Wooten, ““Supply Trains and Naval Charades,” 38; Denny, "The Devil's Navy," 29; Patrick, "A Fighting Sailor on the Western Rivers, “280– 281; Kaeuper, "The Forgotten Triumph of the Paw Paw," 92. Maness, An Untutored Genius, 313–314; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 251; Zimmerman, Iron Maidens and the Devil’s Daughters, 144. The loss of the Undine was reported in The New York Times on November 7. As things turned out, given the masterful manner in which Forrest planned and executed his attack and the Federal need for gunboats during the upcoming Nashville campaign, the choice not to run the gauntlet proved correct in hindsight. 1 8.  OR, I, 39, 1: 861–862, 866–867, 871; OR, I, 52, 1: 123; ORN, I, 26: 614; The New York Times, November 7–8, 13, 1864; Charleston Mercury, November 8, 1864; Louisville Daily Journal, November 8–9, 1864; Louisville Democrat, November 8, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, November 11, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 11, 13, 1864; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 270–272; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 314–315; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 602; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 253–254; Zimmerman, Iron Maidens and the Devil’s Daughters, 145–146. 1 9.  OR, I, 39, 1: 871; OR, I, 52, 1: 123–124; ORN, I, 26: 610–611, 620; The New York Times, November 7–8, 13, 1864; Louisville Democrat, November 8, 1864; Louisville Daily Journal, November 8–9, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, November 11, 1864; Charleston Mercury, November 8, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 10–11, 1864; Wills, A Battle from the Start, 270–272; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 314– 315; Wooten, ““Supply Trains and Naval Charades,” 39–40; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 255; Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," 57; E. G. Cowen, “Battle of Johnsonville,” Confederate Veteran, XXII (April 1914), 174–175; "The Archaeological Investigations of the Battle of Johnsonville," http://www. panamconsultants.com/PAGE (accessed June 8, 2004). The hulls of the sunken gunboats were, according to John W. Morton, still visible at the

beginning of the 20th Century when, “on a subsequent visit,” he inspected them and “discovered a shell from one of his guns” in one of the hulls. Morton withdrew “this shell which had failed to explode” and turned it into a curio “together with a fragment of the hull of the vessel where it was found.” Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Cavalry, 266. 2 0.  OR, I, 39, 1: 853, 856, 858,862; 870–872; OR, I, 45, 1, 751–752; OR, I, 52, 1: 682–683, 777; OR, I, 52, 2: 774; ORN, I, 26: 614, 616, 622–626, 629, 717–718; Nashville Daily Press, November 7–8, 1864; Nashville Daily Dispatch, November 8–10, 1864; Charleston Mercury, November 8, 1864; Louisville Democrat, November 8, 1864; The New York Times, November 10, 1864; Cleveland Daily Herald, November 11, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 12, 1864; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 528; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest, 377–378; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns, 604–606; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 67–68; Denny, "The Devil's Navy," 30; Wooten, ““Supply Trains and Naval Charades,” 84; Brown, "Forrest's Johnsonville Raid," 57; Maness, An Untutored Genius, 315–316; Williams, “The Johnsonville Raid and Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park,” 243–244; Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New York: Scribner's, 1883), 214–215; Cox, March to the Sea, 18; Cornish and Laas, Lincoln’s Lee, 142–145; Cooling, To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond, 194–197; Williams and Humphreys, Gunboats and Cavalry, 24; “A Fighting Sailor on the Western Rivers,” 280– 281; Morton, The Artillery of Nathan Bedord Forrest’s Cavalry, 255–265; Willis, A Battle from the Start, 272–273; Van Horne, Army of the Cumberland, 458; Porter, Naval History of the Civil War, 563. Lt. King was ­­court-martialed on May 8, 1865 for ordering the burning of the Johnsonville gunboats, but was found not guilty. Witness after witness pointed out that, had the naval craft been scuttled rather than destroyed, the water, only five feet deep, would not have covered their gun decks, and had Forrest occupied the depot, as many feared possible, veterans of his Tennessee River Navy could have raised them in six hours’ time. Latham, Raising the Civil War Gunboats, 166–167. The King ­­c ourt-martial proceedings are one of the great but largely untapped sources on the entire campaign. U.S. Navy Department, Records of General ­­C ourts-Martial and Courts of Inquiry of the Navy Department, "Case of Acting Vol. Lieut E. M. King, Lately of the U.S.S. Key West," RG 11–86, Microfilm Publications, M273, National Archives, Washington, DC.

Chapter 11 1.  Mark M. Boatner, 3rd, The Civil War Dictionary (New York: David McKay, 1959), 308–309;



Notes—Chapter 11275

U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 45, Pt. 1, pp. 32–34 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); Wiley Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah: Spring Hill, Franklin & Nashville (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 84–120; Eric A. Jacobson and Richard A. Rupp, For Cause and for Country: A Study of the Affair at Spring Hill and the Battle of Franklin (Franklin, TN: O'More Publishing, 2007), 41–75; James M. McPherson, ed., Battle Chronicles of the Civil War: 1864 (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 179–182. 2. The Carondelet was at Memphis undergoing repairs following her recent White River sojourn. Capt. Henry Walke, her first captain, later called her the "most famous of all the river gunboats of the Civil War" and claimed she "was in more battles and encounters with the enemy (about fourteen or fifteen times; and under fire, it is believed, longer and oftener) than any other vessel in the Navy," including those which went to sea. She was the only one of her class to directly engage a Confederate armorclad, the C.S.S. Arkansas in July 1862. U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 26, 627, 717, 719 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); ORN, II, 1: 52; OR, I, 52, 1: 712; John Hagerty, "Letter, November 15, 1864," in "Dear Maggie… The Letters of John Hagerty, 1st Class Fireman, U.S.S. Carondelet to Margaret “Maggie” O'Neil, September 8, 1864–May 28, 1865," Letters of John Hagerty homepage, http:// www.webnation.com/~spectrum/­­usn-cw/diaries/ HagertyJohnHome.htm (accessed April 10, 2000); Lucius F. Hubbard, "Minnesota in the Battles of Nashville, December 15 and 16, 1864: Read Before the Minnesota Commandery of the Loyal Legion of the United States, March 14, 1905," Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, Vol. 12, http://memory.loc.gov/­­cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/ l h b u m : @ f i el d % 2 8 D O C I D + @ l i t % 2 8 l h b u m 0 (accessed January 9, 2006); Henry Walke, Naval Scenes and Reminiscences of the Civil War in the United States on the Southern and Western Waters During the Years 1861, 1862 and 1863 with the History of That Period Compared and Corrected from Authentic Sources (New York: F. R. Reed and Company, 1877), 53. 3.  Byrd Douglas, Steamboatin’ on the Cumberland (Nashville: Tennessee Book Company, 1961), 162–163; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 24, 1864. Luckily for the Union, Gen. Hood elected to keep Forrest with him, allowing only a few mounted units to be split off and sent against logistical targets along the Cumberland. "No longer would this ingenious leader be left," wrote

Douglas, "to harass Thomas." On the other hand, Maj. Gen. Thomas would continue to overestimate Forrest's strength and threat, with his concern for "the devil" a major reason Nashville was placed into a defensive position. Douglas, Steamboatin’ on the Cumberland, 164; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 278. 4.  ORN, I, 26: 632–635, 647, 746; OR, I, 45, 1, 1131–1133, 1135; OR, I. 41, 4, 693, 707; Nashville Daily Union, November 25, 1864; Nashville Daily Dispatch, November 26, 1864; Walter T. Durham, Reluctant Partners: Nashville and the Union—July 1, 1863, to June 30, 1865 (Nashville: The Tennessee Historical Society, 1987), pp.205– 206; Earl J. Hess, Civil War Logistics: A Study in Military Transportation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017), 198–199; Henry Stone, "Repelling Hood's Invasion of Tennessee," in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), 443; Minnesota, Board of Commissioners on Publication of History of Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, 1861–1865 (2 vols.; St. Paul: Printed for the State of Minnesota by the Pioneer Press Company, 1889), I, 274. The manner by which Col. Lewis B. Parsons and the USQMD obtained its charters for this trip became a matter of considerable controversy portrayed as “the strong, but not entirely impartial hand of the Government.” National Intelligencer, December 5, 1864. 5.  ORN, I, 26: 636–637, 647–648; OR, I, 45, 1: 34; OR, I, 45, 2: 3, 17; Hubbard, "Minnesota in the Battles of Nashville, December 15 and 16, 1864…”; Edwin G. Huddleston, The Civil War in Middle Tennessee (Nashville: Nashville Banner, 1965), 118–119; Nashville Daily Press, November 30– December 2, 1864; John E. Fisher, They Rode with Forrest and Wheeler: A Chronicle of Five Tennessee Brothers’ Service in the Confederate Western Cavalry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1995), 161; Robert Selph Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest (Indianapolis, IN: ­­B obbs-Merrill, 1944), 399–400; Stanley F. Horn, The Army of Tennessee: A Military History (Indianapolis, IN: ­­B obbs-Merrill, 1941; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 404; Horn, The Decisive Battle of Nashville (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956), 30–31; James F. Rusling, Men and Things I Saw in Civil War Days, rev. ed. (New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1914), 87–88; Stanley F. Horn, comp., Tennessee’s War, 1861–1865: Described by Participants (Nashville: Tennessee Civil War Centennial Commission, 1965), 321–322; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 272–274; Durham, Reluctant Partners, 211–214; Louis A. La Garde, Description of the Models of Hospital Steam Vessels from the Army Medical Museum, Washington, D.C. (War Department Exhibit, No.

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2; Chicago: World’s Columbian Exhibition, 1892), 4, 8. Smith's units, now collectively named with several other provisional groups as the Army of the Tennessee Detachment, were debarked from their boats on December 1–2 and were moved into line of battle on a range of hills two miles southwest of town. There they threw up earthworks and settled down to wait, guarding the right of the Union defense. The center was held by the IV Corps under Wood, while Schofield's XXIII Corps was on the left. 6.  OR, I, 45, 1: 79–83, 764; OR, I, 45, 2: 18, 27, 191; ORN, I, 26: 636–639, 646; Chicago Daily Tribune, December 9, 1864; New York Daily Tribune, December 9, 1864; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind, 281; Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest , 401; Mark Zimmerman, Battle of Nashville Preservation Society Guide to Civil War Nashville (Nashville, TN: Lithographics, Inc., 2004), 49; Stanley F. Horn, "Nashville During the Civil War," Tennessee Historical Quarterly, IV (March 1945), 19; Thomas L. Connelly, Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 508; James Lee McDonough, Nashville: The Western Confederacy’s Final Gamble (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2004), 141–142; Steven E Woodward, Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 301; Byrd Douglas, Steamboatin’ on the Cumberland (Nashville: The Tennessee Book Company, 1961), 165; Durham, Reluctant Partners, 214–215; Fisher, They Rode with Forrest and Wheeler, 162; John Allan Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (New York: Harper & Bros., 1904), 547;; Thomas Jordan and J. Pryor. The Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. N. B. Forrest and of Forrest’s Cavalry (New Orleans and New York: Blelock & Co., 1868; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 636, Smith, “Le Roy Fitch Meets the Devil’s Parson,” 44. One reporter characterized Kelley as “a bold, desperate, and notorious partisan.” He was a man who “threatened to blow every gunboat out of the river, whenever the opportunity presented itself ” (Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December 8, 1864). 7.  ORN, I, 26: 639–648, 758; OR, I, 45, 1: 631– 632, 652, 654, 658, 660, 744, 754–755; OR, I, 45, 2: 30–31, 36–37, 43, 48–49, 51–52, 54, 651, 657; Nashville Daily Dispatch, December 6, 1864; Nashville Daily Times and True Union, December 8, 1864; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December 8, 1864; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, December 14, 1864; The New York Times, December 8, 1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, December 8, 1864; The Daily South Carolinian, December 18, 1864; McDonough, Nashville: The Western Confederacy’s Final Gamble, 144; David Dixon Porter, Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Sherman, 1886; reprint, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1998), 803–804; Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New York: Scribner's, 1883), 215–216;

Rowland Stafford True, "Life Aboard a Gunboat," Civil War Times Illustrated, IX (February 1971), 39–40; Durham, Reluctant Partners, 226; Jordan and Pryor, The Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. N. B. Forrest, 630–631, 636; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 547–548; Walke, Naval Scenes and Reminiscences of the Civil War in the United States, 124; Mike Fitzpatrick, "Miasma Fogs and River Mists," Military Images, XXV (January–February 2004), 29; Smith, “Le Roy Fitch Meets the Devil’s Parson,” 45–48. In a correspondent’s report on the first Bell’s Mills fight, it was related that the Confederates had “established a battery on a bluff 14 miles down the river.” It continued: “seven gunboats went down and engaged this battery without dislodging the rebels from their position. The gunboats returned…, one of them considerably damaged.” The New York Times, December 9, 1864. 8.  The young commodore’s reliance may have been bolstered by accounts from the Neosho’s captain, Lt. Samuel Howard, who had served as pilot of the original Monitor during her battle with the CSS Virginia in March 1862. 9.  ORN, I, 26: 650–652; Bern Anderson, By Sea and by River: The Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 1962), 266; Durham, Reluctant Partners, 218; True, "Life Aboard a Gunboat," 40; James McCague, The Cumberland (Rivers of America; New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), 180; Horn, The Decisive Battle of Nashville, 80; Zimmerman, Battle of Nashville Preservation Society Guide to Civil War Nashville, 9; Zimmerman, Iron Maidens and the Devil’s Daughters (Nashville, TN: Zimco Publications, 2019), 153. Strangely enough, when on December 29 Acting RAdm. Lee sent in the reports relating to the second Bell’s Mills action, he only recommended that Neosho quartermaster John Ditzenback be given the award. Still somewhat new to Western waters, he may have been under the impression that Moose pilot Ferrell, as a riverboat pilot, was carried on the rolls as a volunteer officer, and thus did not qualify for the award. The Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, no fan of Lee's, reviewed the case in greater detail and, as a result, also placed Ferrell on the qualifying list. Both medals were authorized under General Order No. 59, June 22, 1865. Terry Foenander, "Fact File No. 1," Union Navy Medal of Honor Fact File, http://home.ozconnect.net/tfoen/ mohfactfile1.htm. (accessed March 12, 2006). 10.  ORN, I, 26: 184, 650–651, 653–659, 661– 662, 668, 688, 758; ORN, I, 27: 153; OR, I,45, 1: 37–39, 45, 128, 599–601, 606,765, 803–804; OR, I, 45, 2: 55, 70, 97–101, 105–106, 117, 145, 152– 154, 160, 180–185, 191–192, 194, 196–197, 205–206, 210, 213, 231, 245; Nashville Daily Union, December 17, 20, 22, 1864; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December 8, 1864; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, December 14, 24, 1864. Nashville Daily Press, December 12, 14, 1864; The New York Times, December 12, 18–19, 24–25,



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1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, December 12, 16, 18–19, 1864; National Intelligencer, December 20 1864; The London Times, December 24, 1864; New York Daily Tribune, December 27, 1864; Stephen Starr, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, Vol. 3: The War in the West, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 284–285; James H. Wilson, Under the Old Flag (2 vols.; New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1912), II, 109–112; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, 555–559; Isaac R. Sherwood, Memories of the War (Toledo, OH: The H. J. Crittenden Co., 1923), 149; Durham, Reluctant Partners, 237, 245, 261, 266, 268; McDonough, Nashville: The Western Confederacy’s Final Gamble, 149–151, 157,176–177; Horn, The Decisive Battle of Nashville, 39, 84, 150–152; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 319–350; McCague, The Cumberland, 180; Zimmerman, Battle of Nashville Preservation Society Guide to Civil War Nashville, 69; Brian Steel Wills, “Brig. Gen. Hylan Benton Lyon,” in Bruce S. Allardice and Lawrence Lee Hewitt, eds., Kentuckians in Gray: Generals and Field Officers of the Bluegrass State (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 180–185 (whole 180–186); Sandi Gorin, “Courthouses Burned During the Civil War,” Ohio County, Kentucky, History, August 13, 2012,” http://ohiocountykentuckyhistor y.blogspot. com/2012/08/­­courthouses-burned-during-civilwar.html (accessed May 23, 2020); B. L. Roberson, “The Courthouse Burnin’est General,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly XXIII (December 1964), 372–378; Edward M. Coffman, ed., “Memoirs of Hylan B. Lyon, Brigadier General,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XVIII (March 1959), 35–53; Benjamin F. Cooling, To the Battles of Franklin and Nashville and Beyond (Knoxville: University to Tennessee Press, 2011), 311–317. Lyon commanded the Kentucky Brigade under Forrest and was present at the November Johnsonville assault before assuming duties as Confederate commander of the Department of Western Kentucky. His most compete biography is Dan Lee, General Hylan B. Lyon: A Kentucky Confederate and the War in the West (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019). 11.  OR, I, 45, 1: 618–619, 632, 755; OR, I, 45, 2: 231, 251, 263; ORN, I, 26: 670–673; Nashville Daily Union, December 17, 1864; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 401, 416; Dudley Taylor Cornish and Virginia Jeans Laas, Lincoln’s Lee: The Life of Samuel Phillips Lee, United States Navy, 1812–1897 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986), 148; O. C. Hood, The Army of Tennessee in Retreat (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, Inc., 2018), 96; Mark Zimmerman, Mud, Blood & Cold Steel: The Retreat from Nashville, December 1864 (Nashville, TN: Zimco Publications, 2020), 106–107, 117. 12.  OR, I, 45, 1: 674, 732; OR, I, 45, 2: 357,371, 507, 731; ORN, I, 26: 672–679. 690; ORN, I, 27: 9–28; Nashville Daily Dispatch, December 28,

1864; Chicago Daily Tribune, January 10, 1865; Starr, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, Vol. 3: The War in the West, 1861–1865, 421, 423; Robert Selph Henry, “First with the Most” Forrest (Indianapolis, IN: ­­B obbs-Merrill, 1944), p.416; Stanley F. Horn, The Army of Tennessee (Indianapolis, IN: ­­B obbs-Merrill, 1941), 420–421; Horn, Nashville During the Civil War, 19; McDonough, Nashville: The Western Confederacy’s Final Gamble, 273–274; Wyeth, Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest , 564–575; Hood, The Army of Tennessee in Retreat, 144, 150–152, 156–158; I. W. Fowler, “Crossing the Tennessee River,” Confederate Veteran, XXVIII (October 1920), 379; James H. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, II, 142; Wilson, “The Union Cavalry in the Hood Campaign,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, ed. Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), IV, 471; Donald Davidson, The Tennessee, Vol. 2: The New River, Civil War to TVA (Rivers of America; New York: Rinehart & Co., 1948), 106; Cornish and Laas, Lincoln’s Lee, 149–150; Zimmerman, Mud, Blood & Cold Steel, 118–142; Sword, Embrace an Angry Wind—The Confederacy’s Last Hurrah, 401, 417– 419, 421, 423; Durham, Reluctant Partners, 267; “Last Battle of the Civil War in Tennessee,” Hendrix Family Genealogy Appleton History, https:// sites.rootsweb.com/~rogerhendrix/Appleton%20 -%20Last%20Battle%20of%20Civil%20War%20 in%20Tennessee.shtml (accessed May 24, 2020). With the Army of Tennessee no longer an effective fighting force, Gen. Hood resigned in January 1865. Lee remained on the Tennessee in support of "Old Pap" Thomas through ­­mid-January 1865, but Craig Symonds reminds us that the Mississippi Squadron commander “never won his great victory or obtained the formal thanks of Congress, and remained an acting ­­rear-admiral until the end of the war.” Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 331. 13.  ORN, I, 27: 15–16, 36, 41, 47–53, 85; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, January 30, 1865; The New York Times, January 30, 1865; Chicago Daily Tribune, January 31, 1865; Memphis Bulletin, February 2,1865; Allardice and Hewitt, eds., Kentuckians in Gray, 185–186; Thomas Connelly, Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862– 1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 513; Allen C. Guelzo, The Crisis of the American Republic: A History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 368–369; Richard Gildrie, "Guerrilla Warfare in the Lower Cumberland River Valley, 1862–1865." Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XLIX (Fall 1990), 173; State of Alabama, “Federal Troops Burn Guntersville During Civil War” (historical marker), https://www.waymarking.com/ waymarks/WMDN4F_Federal_Troops_Burn_ Guntersville_During_Civil_War_Guntersville_AL

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(accessed May 25, 2020); Donald H. Steenburn, “Gunboats of the Upper Tennessee,” Civil War Times Illustrated, XXXII (May 1993), 43, Arab (AL) Tribune, January 21, 2015; Guntersville ­­Advertiser-Gleam, March 2, 2019. A full account of the Guntersville burning appears in Pete Sparks’ A River Town’s Fight for Life: The History of Guntersville, Alabama in the Civil War (Homewood, AL: Banner Digital Printing and Publishing, 2011); W. Craig Gaines, Encyclopedia of Civil War Shipwrecks (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 160.

Chapter 12 1.  Lewis B. Parsons, Reports to the War Department (St. Louis, MO: George Knapp & Co., 1867), 39; Dudley Taylor Cornish and Virginia Jeans Laas, Lincoln’s Lee: The Life of Samuel Phillips Lee, United States Navy, 1812–1897 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986), 149– 150; Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 331; Richard Gildrie, "Guerrilla Warfare in the Lower Cumberland River Valley, 1862–1865." Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XLIX (Fall 1990), 173; Between ­­mid-February and ­­mid-March, Gen. Robert E. Lee, for example, lost 8 percent of his army "either into the Union lines or into North Carolina." 2.  U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 27, 12–14, 27–28, 89, 96–97, 116–118 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); Burton B. Paddock, “Memoir,” in Vol. 1 of his History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), 217–219; ”The Sad Fate of the Mittie Stephens Steamboat and the Kellogg Who Caused It,” http://freepages.rootsweb. com/~jkellogg51/genealogy/ATT/MITTIE.html (accessed May 31, 2020). The most helpful histories of the Mobile campaign for this writer were Chester G. Hearn, Mobile Bay and the Mobile Campaign: The Last Great Battles of the Civil War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1993), and Sean Michael O’Brien, Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1991). We briefly covered the naval aspects of the Mobile operation in our Tinclads in the Civil War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2009), 313–320. The Mittie Stephens was tragically lost with 61 deaths on February 5, 1869. 3.  ORN, I, 27: 78, 86–87, 92–93, 102, 104– 105; Parsons, Reports, 39; Cornish and Laas, Lincoln’s Lee, 151; Louisville Daily Journal, March 9, 1864. 4.  ORN, I, 11: 164; ORN, I, 22: 70, 72–75, 87–89; ORN, I, 27: 4, 40, 125, 131, 135–137; U.S.

War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 49, Pt. 1, 320–321 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and the page[s]); Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, April 14, 1865; Harper’s Weekly, May 27, 1865; James Russell Soley, “Closing Operations in the Gulf and Western Waters,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), IV, 412; Hearn, Mobile Bay and the Mobile Campaign, 169–170; O’Brien, Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy, 169–170; Christopher C. Andrews, History of the Campaign of Mobile, Including the Cooperative Operations of Gen. Wilson’s Cavalry in Alabama (New York: Van Nostrand, 1867), 94, 132–133; Ida M. Tarbell, "How the Union Army Was Disbanded," McClure’s Magazine (March 1901), reprinted in Civil War Times Illustrated, VI (December 1967), 4–9; William B. Holberton, “Demobilization of the Union Army 1865–1866” (unpublished MA thesis, Lehigh University, 1993); Charles Oscar Paullin, Paullin’s History of Naval Administration, 1775–1911 (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1968), 312; John Niven, Gideon Welles: Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 506–507. 5.  ORN, I, 27: 141, 148–149, 154, 159, 171, 711; ORN, II, 1: 46, 221; Allen C. Guetzo, The Crisis of the American Republic: A History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 377–379; Parsons, Reports, 39; Edmund J. Huling, Reminiscences of Gunboat Life in the Mississippi Squadron (Saratoga Springs, NY: Sentinel Print, 1881), pp.57–58; Mary Beth Newland Ross, “Sgt. James Madison ‘Matt’ Luxton,” https:// www.findagrave.com/memorial/41531271/­­jamesmadison-luxton (accessed March 12, 2020). The literature surrounding Lincoln's assassination is enormous. The details may be found in any recent biography of the 16th president. 6.  ORN, I, 27: 176–177; Lonnie R. Speer, Portals to Hell: Military Prisoners in the Civil War (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997), 287–289; William O. Bryant, Cahaba Prison and the Sultana Disaster (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), pp.127–128; Gene Eric Salecker, Disaster on the Mississippi: the Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), pp. 1–7; Margie Riddle Bearss, "Messenger of Lincoln Death Herself Doomed," The Lincoln Herald (Spring 1978), 49–51; Jerry Potter, "The Sultana Disaster: Conspiracy of Greed," Blue & Gray Magazine, VII (August 1990), 8–10. 7.  Time was money in the 1860s river shipping business just as it is today with modern transport. Rather than take three days to replace his troubling boiler, Capt. Mason ordered that



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workmen perform a hasty patch. As a result, a section of bulged boiler plate was removed and another, of less thickness than the parent plate, was welded into its place. Robert Frank Bennett, "A Case of Calculated Mischief," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (March 1976), 77–83; Salecker, Disaster on the Mississippi, 40. 8.  ORN, I, 27: 142, 155–158; Vicksburg Herald, April 25, 1865; New Orleans ­­Times-Democrat, April 25, 1865; New Orleans Picayune, November 14, 1889; Philadelphia Inquirer, May 1, 1865; Hartford Daily Courant, May 1, 1865; The New York Times, January 26, 1890; Chicago Daily Tribune, January 26, 1890; J. Thomas Scharf, History of the Confederate Navy from Its Organization to the Surrender of Its Last Vessel (New York: Rodgers and Sherwood, 1887; reprint, New York: Fairfax Press, 1977), 364–367; R. Thomas Campbell, Confederate Naval Forces on Western Waters (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2005), 208–217; Michael L. Gillespie, “The Great Gunboat Chase,” Civil War Times Illustrated, XXXIII (July–August 1994), 32–37. Other titles of value include the Read biographies: Robert A. Jones, Confederate Corsair: The Life of Lt. Charles W. “Savez” Read (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006); David W. Shaw, Sea Wolf of the Confederacy: The Daring Civil War Raids of Naval Lt. Lt. Charles W. Read (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); R. Thomas Campbell, Sea Hawk of the Confederacy: Lt. Charles W. Read and the Confederate Navy (Shippensburg, PA: Burd Street Press, 2000); Tony Brown, Charles Read homepage, http://revfrankhughesjr.org/images/The_ CHARLES_READ_HOME_PAGE.pdf (accessed April 12, 2020). 9.  Marion Bragg, Historic Names and Places on the Lower Mississippi River (Vicksburg: Mississippi River Commission, 1977), 74. The official cause of the explosion was the combined effects of low water, careening due to overloading, and the faulty boiler repair. A conspiracy theory was advanced during the 1880s concerning incendiary sabotage by a former Confederate agent, and discussion of the often discredited notion appears regularly. Bennett, "A Case of Calculated Mischief," 77–83; D. H. Rule, Sultana: A Case for Sabotage (Ramsey, MN: Variations on a Theme, LLC, 2013); David A. Kelly, Jr., “Sultana: Victim of Courtenay’s Coal Torpedo?” Civil War Navy, VI (Fall 2018), 34–44; William A. Tidwell, April ‘65 (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1995), 52. 10.  Bennett, "A Case of Calculated Mischief," 77–83; Bearss, "Messenger of Lincoln Death Herself Doomed," 49–51; Salecker, Disaster on the Mississippi, 75–119; Bragg, Historic Names and Places on the Lower Mississippi, 75. Hunter tells us that the Sultana blast was the most tragic episode in the worst year for steamboat disasters, during which total casualties reached 2,050, or 13 times the average for the previous four years. Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An

Economic and Technological History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 543. 11.  ORN, I, 27:154, 160–184, 188–178; 202– 203; Memphis Daily Argus, April 28–29, 1865; Memphis Daily Bulletin, April 28, 1865; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, April 29, 1865; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, April ­­2 8-May 1, 1865; St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, April 28–May 1, 1865; Nashville Daily Union, April 29, 1865; Salecker, Disaster on the Mississippi , 121, 140–142, 171–172; The New York Times, April 29, May 1–4, 1865; New Orleans Daily Picayune, May 5, 1865; Chicago Daily Tribune, May 13, 1865; Bennett, "A Case of Calculated Mischief," 77–83; William B. Floyd, “The Burning of the Sultana,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, XI (September 1927), 70–71; Joseph Taylor Elliott, “The Sultana Disaster,” Indiana Historical Society Publication, V, no. 3 (1913), 177–178; Speer, Portals to Hell, 289; Jerry Potter, "The Sultana Disaster: Conspiracy of Greed," Blue & Gray Magazine, VII (August 1990), 8–24; Charles River Editors, The Capture of Jefferson Davis: The History of the Confederate President’s Attempt to Escape the Union Army (Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016). 1 2.  ORN, I, 27: 185–187, 200; The New York Times, April 8, 1865; Thomas Jordan and J. Pryor. The Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. N. B. Forrest and of Forrest’s Cavalry (New Orleans: Blelock & Co., 1868; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), pp 685–703; Cornish and Laas, Lincoln’s Lee, 153. 13.  ORN, I, 27:185, 208–213, 217; Detroit Free Press, May 8, 1865; Niven, Gideon Welles, 506– 507; Paullin, Paullin’s History of Naval Administration, 312; Daniel E Sutherland, “No Better Officer in the Confederacy: The Wartime Career of Daniel C. Govan,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, LIV (Autumn 1995), 269–303. 14.  ORN, I, 27: 142. 216–217; OR I, 48, 1: 215, 297–303; OR, I, 48, 2: 908, 1141; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 2: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861–1866 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 510–513; Robert L. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The ­­Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 415; Alfred Jackson and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph Over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 238–239; Irving W. Levinson, “Separate Wars and Shared Destiny: Mexico and the United States, 1861–1877,” in Roseann ­­B acha-Garza, Christopher L. Miller, and Russell K. Skowronek, eds., The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846–1876 (The South and Southwest Series, no. 46; College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019), 119–120; Philip H. Sheridan, Personal Memoirs (2 vols.; New York: C. L. Webster & Co., 1888), II, 210–215, 223–226; Richard O’Connor, Sheridan the Inevitable (Indianapolis, IN: ­­B obbs-Merrill, 1953), 278–281; After her surrender, a survey was ordered on the Missouri, and

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its results are printed in the Navy Official Records. ORN, I, 27: 241–242; OR, I, 48, 2: 93; William N. Still, Armor Afloat: The Story of the Confederate Armorclads (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985), 148–149, 226. 15.  ORN, I, 27: 219–237, 248–249; OR, I, 48, 2: 600–602; Washington Evening Union, June 10, 1865; The New York Times, June 11, 1865; New York Daily Tribune, June 12, 1865; Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy, 426; Albert Castel, General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968), 271; Joseph H. Parks, General Edmund Kirby Smith, C.S.A. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954), 476–477; 1 6.  ORN, I, 27:252–255, 257, 263, 272–274, 287–288; Chicago Daily Tribune, June 11,1865; National Intelligencer, July 10, 1865; St. Louis Daily Republican, July 11, 1865; The New York Times, July 12, 1865; Rowland Stafford True, “Life Aboard a Gunboat [U.S.S. Silver Lake, No. 23]: A ­­First-Person Account," Civil War Times Illustrated, IX (February 1971), 42–43; Edward J. Huling, Reminiscences of Gunboat Life in the Mississippi Squadron (Saratoga Springs, NY: Sentinel Print, 1881), 22. 17.  ORN, I, 17:861; ORN, I, 22: 10, 217–218, 237, 253; ORN, I, 27: 275–276, 283, 285–288, 310,342–344; Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 1865; The New York Times, July 9, 26, 1865; Detroit Free Press, July 26, 1865; True, “Life Aboard a Gunboat,” 42–43; Niven, Gideon Welles, 507; Cornish and Laas, Lincoln’s Lee, 155. Among the Johnsonville studies available at the Tennessee State Library and Archives are Panamerican Consultants, The Battle of Johnsonville: The Forgotten Legacy of the Civil War on the Tennessee River (Memphis, TN: n.d.); J. B. Irion and D. V. Beard, Underwater Archaeological Assessment of Civil War Shipwrecks in Kentucky Lake, Benton and Humphreys Counties, Tennessee (New Orleans, LA: R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, Inc., for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, Department of Environment and Conservation, State of Tennessee, 1993); Michael C. Tuttle, 1999 Field Season Underwater Archaeological Investigation of the Battle of Johnsonville Site, Kentucky Lake, Tennessee (Memphis, TN: Panamerican Consultants, 2000); Tuttle, Remote Sensing and Diver Investigation of the Battle of Johnsonville (Memphis, TN: Panamerican Consultants, 1999); Steve James, Submerged Cultural Resources Associated with the Battle of Johnsonville (Memphis,

TN: Panamerican Consultants, 2001); James and Michael C. Krivor, Education by Howitzer Fire: Federal Naval Losses at the Battle of Johnsonville (Memphis, TN: Panamerican Consultants, 2003). 1 8.  Chicago Daily Tribune, August 18, 21, 1865; Detroit Free Press, August 23, 1865. The General Pillow and also the former flagboat Tempest were sold in November. On March 25, 1866, the Kate was the last of her type withdrawn from service; she was auctioned off four days later. The sale of the three final tinclads netted the U.S. Treasury Department a total of $24 650. ORN, II,1: 92, 221, 118. 19.  Cairo Evening Times, November 17, 1865; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, November 21, 1865; St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, November 21, 1865; William T. Adams, “The Red Rover: First Hospital Ship of the United States Navy,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, XCIV (November 1968), 151 (whole 149– 151); U.S. Congress, House, Vessels Bought, Sold and Chartered by the United States, 1861–1868: House Executive Document 337 (40th Cong., 2nd sess., 4 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1868), IV, 160 (cited hereafter as Vessels, followed by volume number and pages in); Vessels, 3: 116–119; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 1: Dictionary of Transports and Combat Vessels Steam and Sail Employed by the Union Army, 1861–1868 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 239, 295, 303; Frederick Way, Jr., Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994: Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System Since the Advent of Photography in ­­Mid-Continent America (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983; rev. ed., 1994), 117, 341, 347, 426. 2 0. St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, November 21, 30, 1865; Cincinnati Daily Commercial, December 19, 1865; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 30, 1865; “Rear Admiral Henry Walke, U.S.N.,” United Service, VII (March 1892), 320. 21.  Bobby Roberts, “Rivers of No Return,” in Mark K. Christ, ed., “The Earth Reeled and Trees Trembled”: Civil War Arkansas, 1863–1864 (Little Rock, AR: Old State House Museum, 2007), 87; Parsons, Reports, 40. 2 2.  Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New York: Scribner's, 1883), 217; North American and United States Gazette, May 8, 1865.

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Unpublished Sources Andrus, Edward N. “The River Gave and the River Hath Taken Away: How the Arkansas River Shaped the Course of Arkansas History.” PhD dissertation, University of Arkansas, 2019. Barksdale, Ethelbert. “­­Semi-Regular and Irregular Warfare in the Civil War.” PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1941. Barr, Alwyn. “Confederate Artillery in the ­­Trans-Mississippi.” MA thesis, University of Texas, 1961. Bogle, Victor M. “A 19th Century River Town: A ­­S ocial-Economic Study of New Albany, Indiana.” PhD dissertation, Boston University, 1951. Brown, Mattie. “A History of River Transportation in Arkansas from 1819–1880.” MA thesis, University of Arkansas, 1933. Daniel, John S., Jr. “Special Warfare in Middle Tennessee and Surrounding Areas, 1861–1862.” MA thesis, University of Tennessee, 1971. Davis, Laura June. “Vexed Waters: Naval Guerrillas, Masculinity, and Mayhem Along the Lower Mississippi River in the Civil War Era.” PhD dissertation, University of Georgia, 2016. Dunnavent, R. Blake. ‘Muddy Waters: A History of the United States Navy in Riverine Warfare and the Emergence of a Tactical Doctrine, 1775–1989.” PhD dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1998. Getchll, Charles M., Jr. “Defender of Inland Waters: The Military Career of Isaac Newton Brown, Commander, Confederate States Navy, 1861–1865.” MA thesis, University of Mississippi, 1978. Goodman, Michael Harris. “The Black Tar: Negro Seamen in the Union Navy.” PhD dissertation, University of Nottingham, 1975. Grimsley, Mark. “A Directed Severity: The Evolution of Federal Policy Toward Southern Civilians and Property, 1861–1865.” PhD dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1992. Holberton, William B. “Demobilization of the Union Army 1865–1866.” MA thesis, Lehigh University, 1993. Modica, Michael Antonio. “The Civil War in Louisiana: General Banks’ Failed Red River Campaign of 1864.” MA thesis, University of Houston–Clear Lake, 1999. Palmer, Charles Steven. “Our Most Noble Stranger”: The Mystery, Gallantry, and Civicism of Colton Greene.” MA thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1995. Polser, Aubrey Henry. “The Administration of the United States Navy, 1861–1865.” PhD dissertation, University of Nebraska, 1975. Schottenhamel, George Carl. “Lewis Baldwin Parsons and Civil War Transportation.” PhD dissertation, University of Illinois, 1954. Sharpe, Hal F. “A Door Left Open: The Failure of the Confederate Government to Adequately Defend the Inland Rivers of Tennessee.” MA thesis, Austin Peay State University, 1981. Smith, Myron J., Jr. “A Construction and Recruiting History of the U.S. Steam Gunboat Carondelet, 1861– 1862.” MA thesis, Shippensburg State University, 1969. Walker, Thomas E. “The Origins of the Mississippi Marine Brigade: The First Use of Brown Water Tactics by the United States in the Civil War.” MA thesis, Texas Christian University, 2006. Whisenant, Johnny H. “Samuel Phillips Lee, U.S.N.: Commander, Mississippi Squadron (October 19, 1864–August 14, 1865).” MS thesis. Pittsburg: Kansas State College of Pittsburg, 1968. Wright, Homer. “Naval Career of Charles W. Read, 1856–1890.” MA thesis, Auburn University, 1965.

Index Numbers in bold italics indicate pages with illustrations Abeona (Tinclad No. 32) ​229, 235, 237 Abraham (US storeship) ​40 Ad Hines (SS) ​153, 170 Adams, Wirt (CS Col.) ​140; see also Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Adriatic (SS), attack on (1863) ​ 137 African-American “Contrabands,” ​44–​4 5, 106 Albert Pearce (SS) ​202–​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Alfred Robb (Tinclad No. 21) ​ 70, 118, 237 Alice Vivian (SS) ​101; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Allegheny Belle (SS) ​57–​60; see also Buffington Island, WV, battle of (1863) Allen, Robert (US Quartermaster Brig. Gen.) ​182; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Alone (SS) ​174; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) America (SS) ​17, 25, 166, 203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Andrews, C.C. (US Brig.Gen.) ​ 168; see also Ashley’s Station, AR, Siege of (1864) Anna (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 192, 197; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Anna Everton (SS), attack on (1865) ​230 Annie Jacobs (SS), attack on (1865) ​170; see also Ivey’s Ford, AR, skirmish (1865) Anti-Shipping Campaign ​see ​ Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865)

Argosy (Tinclad No. 27) ​242, 246 Argus (SS), attack on (1863) ​136 Arizona (SS) ​203, 209; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Arkansas (CS ironclad) ​51 Arkansas River ​see ​ White River Campaign (1863–1865) Army (US) gunboats ​see ​ Gunboat A; Gunboat B; Hagen; Newsboy; Silver Lake, No. 2; Stone River; W.H. Sidell Army (US) hospital boats ​see ​ City of Memphis; City of Nashville; City of New Orleans; D.A. January; Jacob Strader Ashley’s Station, AR, siege of (1864) ​168; see also White River Campaign (1863–1865) Atchafalaya River skirmish (1864) ​111 Atlanta (US transport) ​191; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Atlantic (SS) ​139; see also Henry Von Phul, attack on (1864) Augusta, AR, battle of (1864) ​ 169; see also White River Campaign (1863–1865) Aurora (SS) ​185; see also Chickasaw Landing, Tennessee River, battle of (1864) Avenger (US ram) ​39, 248, 250 Bache, George M. (US Lt.) ​64–​ 66, 110, 155, 157, 159–​162, 165, 168, 184; see also Little Rock Campaign (US, 1863); White River Campaign (1863–1865)

309

Bagby, Arthur P. (CS Brig.Gen.) ​ 99; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Bailey, Joseph (US Lt. Col.) ​see ​ Bailey’s Dam Bailey’s Dam (1864) ​109–​110; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Baldwin, Thomas (US Master) ​ 144; see also Romeo (Tinclad No.3) Banks, Nathaniel (US Maj. Gen.) ​90, 92 , 94, 97–​98, 108–​111, 113–​114; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Baron de Kalb (US ironclad) ​ 33, 38, 51–​5 4, 55–​56 Beauregard, Pierre G.T. (CS Gen.) ​171, 186; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Belle Creole (SS), attack on/ burning of (1864) ​141–​142 Belle of St. Louis (SS), attack on (1864) ​150 Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864) ​205–​207, 209–​210, 214, 218; see also Brilliant (Tinclad No.18); Carondelet (US ironclad); Fairplay (Tinclad No. 17; Fitch, Le Roy (US Lt. Cmdr.); Kelley, David C. “Fighting Parson” (CS Lt. Col.); Lake (Tinclad No. 23); Moose (Tinclad No. 34); Nashville Campaign (1864); Reindeer (Tinclad No. 35); Silver Neosho (US monitor); Walton, E.S. (CS Capt.) Benefit (SS) ​213; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864) Benton (US ironclad) ​38, 46, 93, 127, 237, 239–​240, 250;

310 see also Red River Campaign (1864); Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Benton, Thomas O. (CS Capt.) ​ 104–​105; see also Deloges Bluff, battle of (1864) Biffle, Jacob B. (CS Col.) ​209; see also Bell’s Mills, battles of (1864) Big South Fork logistics ​see ​ Knoxville Campaign (1863) Bixby, George (US surgeon) ​ 42; see also Red Rover (US hospital boat) Black Hawk (SS) ​100–​102, 139, 142; see also boat burning by Confederate agents (1864); Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865); Red River Campaign (1864) Black Hawk (US flagboat) ​29, 39, 40, 92–​93, 183, 230–​231 Black River Raid of 1863 ​see ​ Red River Raid (US, 1863) Blair’s Landing, battle of (1864) ​ 99, 101–​102, 103; see also Red River Campaign (1864) boat burning by Confederate agents (1864) ​142 Boggs, Charles E. (US paymaster) ​36 Booth, John (SS Capt.) ​see ​ Liberty No. 2 (SS) Bowers, Theodore S. (US Lt. Col.) ​78–​80, 86; see also Knoxville Campaign (1863) Brayman, Mason (US Brig. Gen.) ​113–​114, 118–​119, 125; see also Cairo, IL (US naval station) Brazil (SS), attack on(1863) ​140 Bridgeport, AL (US supply/ boat-building depot) ​172–​ 177, 178–​185; see also Chattanooga Campaign (1863); Cracker Line (US); Edwards, Edward (US Quartermaster Capt.); Eleventh District (USN) see Mississippi Squadron (USN), District Organization, 11th District, creation and administration; Forrest, Moreau (US Lt.); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Bridgeport (US transport) ​191; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Brilliant (US Tinclad No. 18) ​ 201, 209, 212 , 214, 235; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864)

Index Brooks, William H. (CS Col.) ​ 170; see also Ivey’s Ford, AR, skirmish (1865) Brown, Isaac Newton (CS Cmdr.) ​51–​56 Brown, Joseph (US contractor) ​35, 39 Brown’s Ferry, TN ​see ​Cracker Line (US) Buckner, Simon Bolivar (CS Maj. Gen.) ​239; see also Canby, Edward R.S. (US Maj. Gen.) Buffington Island, WV, battle of (1863) ​57–​60; see also Fitch, Le Roy (US Lt. Cmdr.); Morgan, John Hunt (CS Brig. Gen.) Burnside, Ambrose (US Maj. Gen.) ​56, 66, 73–​74, 76, 78, 82; see also Knoxville Campaign (1863) Cairo (US ironclad) ​35, 38, 51 Cairo, IL (US naval station) ​ 29–​31, 32–​34 Camelia (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Canby, Edward R.S. (US Maj. Gen.) ​130, 169, 224, 228, 239; see also Buckner, Simon Bolivar (CS Maj. Gen.); Mobile Campaign (1865) ​ 224–​225; Price, Sterling (CS Maj. Gen.) Carondelet (US ironclad) ​38, 43, 46, 93, 164–​165, 201–​ 202, 204–​207, 209, 211, 213–​214, 217, 221, 249–​ 250; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Nashville Campaign (1864); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864); Red River Campaign (1864); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Carr, Eugene A. (US Brig. Gen.) ​ 163–​164; see also Pikeville, AR, skirmish (1864); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Carter, Jonathan H. (CS Lt.); see also Missouri (CS ironclad); Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Catahouls (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Chalmers, James (CS Brig. Gen.) ​205; see also Nashville Campaign(1864–1865) Champion (SS), burning of (1864) ​142

Champion (Tinclad No. 24) ​ 250 Champion No. 3 (SS) ​104–​107, 141; see also Eastport (US ironclad); Red River Campaign (1864) Champion No. 5 (SS, pumpboat) ​104–​108; see also Eastport (US ironclad); Red River Campaign (1864) Chancellor (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Chattanooga (US Cracker Line transport) ​174, 178; see also Chattanooga Campaign (1863); Cracker Line (US); Edwards, Arthur (US Quartermaster Captain) Chattanooga Campaign (1863) ​ 66–​72, 173; naval relief (1863) 68–​72 Cheatham, Benjamin F. (CS Maj. Gen.) ​217–​218; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Cherokee (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Chickamauga Creek, battle of (1863) ​67; see also Chattanooga Campaign (1863) Chickasaw (US monitor) ​38 Chickasaw Landing, Tennessee River, battle of (1864) ​185–​ 186; see also Hoge, George B. (US Col.); Kelley, David C. “Fighting Parson” (CS Lt. Col.) Chicot County, AR Campaign (1864) ​143–​147; see also Greene, Colton (CS Col.); Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Chillicothe (US ironclad) ​38, 40, 93, 98, 111, 250; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Choctaw (US ironclad) ​38, 93, 127, 138–​139, ​232; see also Webb (CS ram) Cincinnati (US ironclad) ​33, 35, 38, 212, 224; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865); Mobile Campaign (1865 City of Memphis (US Army hospital boat) ​37 City of Nashville (US Army hospital boat) ​37 City of New Orleans (US Army hospital boat) ​37 City of Peking (SS) ​185; see also Chickasaw Landing,

Tennessee River, battle of (1864) Clara Dolson (US transport) ​ 40 Clarabel (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 147 Clarendon, AR, skirmish (1864) ​see ​ Q ueen City (Tinclad No. 26) Coates, James H. (US Col.) ​91 Collier (Tinclad No. 29) ​237–​ 238, 240; see also Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Colossus (Tinclad No. 25) ​237 Commercial (SS), attack on (1864) ​168; see also Gregory’s Landing, AR, skirmish (1864) Conestoga (US timberclad) ​38, 61, 91–​92, 132 contraband trade ​see ​Illicit trade “Contrabands” ​see ​ African-Americans Convoy No. 2 (SS) ​174; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Convoy Policy (USN) ​132–​133 Cornwell, John J. (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​241; see also Mississippi Squadron, demobilization (1865) cotton trade or seizures ​see ​ illicit or contraband trade Coulson, Washington C. (US Master) ​236–​2 37; see also Moose (Tinclad No. 34) Covington (Tinclad No. 25) ​ 152; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Crabtree, Benjamin (CS Capt.) ​143–​147; see also Chicot County, AR Campaign (1864); Greene, Colton (CS Col.); Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Cracker Line (US) ​173–​174, 178; see also Chattanooga Campaign (1863); Cricket (Tinclad No. 6) ​44, 70, 92–​93, 98, 103–​107, 108–​ 109, 169, 246; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Cropsey, Andrew J. (US Col.) ​ 82–​83; see also Knoxville Campaign (1863) Cumberland River ​see ​Fitch, Le Roy (U.S. Lt. Cmdr.); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865); Upper Cumberland River Campaign (1863–1864)

Index311 Curlew (Tinclad No. 12) ​144–​ 145; see also Chicot County, AR Campaign (1864); Greene, Colton (CS Col.) Currie, George E. (US Lt. Col.) ​ 144–​147; see also Chicot County, AR Campaign (1864); Mississippi Marine Brigade (MMB) (US Army); Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) D.A. January (US Army hospital boat) ​37, 43, 203, 249; see also Nashville Campaign(1864–1865) Dahlia (US tugboat) ​41 Daisy (US tugboat) ​37, 41 Dana, Charles A. (US Asst. War Secretary) ​174–​175; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Davidson, John (US Brig. Gen.) ​ 65–​66; see also Little Rock Campaign (US, 1863) Davis, Jefferson (CS President) ​ 49, 230–​2 31, 235 Dawson, William A. (CS Col.) ​ 194; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864); Undine (Tinclad No. 55) Decatur, AL, battle of (1864) ​ 187–​190, 219–​220; see also Granger, Robert S. (US Brig. Gen.); Steadman, James B. (US Brig. Gen.) Deloges Bluff, battle of (1864) ​ 104–​108; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Delta (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 141 demobilization, Mississippi Squadron (1865) ​see ​Mississippi Squadron, demobilization (1865) DeValls Bluff, AR (US supply depot) ​66, 143, 152–​ 153, 155, 157, 163–​169; see also White River Campaign (1863–1865) Devaney, John S. (US pilot) ​75; see also Silver Lake No. 2 (US Army gunboat) D.G. Taylor (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Dick Fulton (US ram) ​39 District (USN squadron organization) policy ​see ​Mississippi Squadron (USN) Ditch Bayou, AR, battle of (1864) ​146–​147; see also Chicot County, AR Campaign (1864); Greene, Colton

(CS Col.); Smith, A.J. “Whiskey” (US Maj. Gen.) Dr. Beatty (CS cottonclad) ​49, 62 Donaldson, James L. (US Quartermaster Col.) ​78, 81, 182–​ 183, 215; see also Knoxville Campaign (1863); Nashville Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Donn, John W. (US Coast Survey Capt) ​80, 82, 84 Doughty, Thomas (US Engr.) ​ 136; see also Argus (SS), attack on (1863); Osage (US ironclad); Robert Fulton (SS), attack on (1863) Duke, Basil W. (CS Col.) ​59; see also Buffington Island, WV, battle of (1863) Dunbar (US transport) ​177; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Eads, James B. (US contractor) ​ 31, 34, 38, 92 Easton, Langdon C. (US Quartermaster Lt. Col.) ​176; see also Edwards, Edward (US Quartermaster Capt.) Eastport (US ironclad) ​35, 38, 70, 93. 97, 103–​105, 107; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Eclipse (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 137 Eclipse (SS), destruction of (1865) ​222 Ed. F. Dix (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Edgar,William (CS Capt.) ​139; see also Choctaw (US ironclad); Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Edwards, Edward (US Quartermaster Capt.) ​174-; see also Chattanooga Campaign (1863); Cracker Line (US) Eleventh District (USN) ​ see ​Mississippi Squadron (USN), District Organization 11th District, creation and administration Elfin (Tinclad No. 52) ​186, 194, 196–​197, 243; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Ella Faber (SS) ​88–​89 Ellet, Alfred W. (US Brig. Gen.) ​ 47–​4 8; see also Mississippi Marine Brigade (U.S. Army) Ellet, Charles, Jr. (US lt. col.) ​ 39

312 Elmira (SS) ​62 Emerald (SS) ​99, 101; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Emma No. 2 (SS), attack on (1863) ​137 Emma No. 2 (SS), attack on (1864) ​169 Empire Parish (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Empress (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 147 Essex (US ironclad) ​38, 43, 127, 164, 235, 242, 250; see also Sultana (SS), destruction of (1865) Eugene (SS), attack on (1863) ​ 130 Exchange (Tinclad No. 38) ​ 144–​145, 168, 237 Fairplay (Tinclad No. 17). 127, 201, 207–​209, 214–​216, 237; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Nashville Campaign (1864) Fairy (Tinclad No. 51) ​216–​ 218, 237, 246; see also Florence, AL, battle of (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Faries, Thomas A. (CS Capt.) ​ 138; see also Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Farragut, David Glasgow (US RAdm) ​29, 46, 239 Faulkner, William (US chief engineer) ​35 Fawn (SS), burning of (1864) ​ 142 Fawn (Tinclad No. 30) ​152, 156, 159–​161, 163–​165, 166–​ 168, 246; see also Gregory’s Landing, AR, skirmish (1864); Shelby, Joseph O. “Jo” (CS Brig. Gen.); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Fennel, Cauis G. (CS sympathizer) ​190; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Ferguson, Charles “Champ” (CS irregular) ​83, 88 Ferguson, William (US Master) ​ 123–​125; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864); Silver Cloud (Tinclad No. ​28) Fern (US tugboat) ​41 Ferrell, John (US pilot) ​209; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Carondelet (US ironclad) Financier (SS) ​203, 209; see

Index also Nashville Campaign (1864); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Fitch, Le Roy (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​ 43, 56–​60, 69, 79–​81, 86, 125–​127, 176–​184, 191–​ 195, 201, 204–​217, 227–​ 228, 236–​2 37; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Buffington Island, WV, battle of (1863); Eleventh District (USN) see Mississippi Squadron (USN), District Organization, 11th District, creation and administration; Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864); Knoxville Campaign, (1863); Nashville Campaign (1864) Fitzhugh, William E. (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​239–​241, 243; see also Mississippi Squadron, demobilization (1865); Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Florence, AL, battle of (1864) ​ 217–​218; see also Fairy (Tinclad No. 51); Lee, Samuel Phillips (US Acting RAdm.); Neosho (US monitor); Reindeer (Tinclad No. 35); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Foote, Andrew Hull (US RAdm) ​30–​31, 33, 43–​4 4 Forest Queen (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Forest Rose (Tinclad No. 9) ​61, 91, 109, 141, 237, 242 Forrest, Moreau (US Lt.) ​185, 187–​188, 215–​216, 219, 221, 225, 243; see also General Burnside (Tinclad No. 63); Tennessee Mississippi Squadron (USN), District Organization, 11th District, creation and administration; River Campaign (1864–1865) Forrest, Nathan Bedford (CS Maj.Gen.) ​93–​94, 113–​114, 115–​127, 171, 185–​187, 192–​ 199, 201–​202, 204. 209, 216–​219, 230; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864); Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864); Nashville Campaign (1864–1865); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Fort Anderson, KY ​115–​117; see also Paducah, KY, battle of (1864)

Fort De Russy, LA, battle of (1864) ​94–​95; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Fort Hindman (Tinclad No. 13) ​ 61, 92–​93, 98, 104–​105, 107–​ 111, 237–​2 38, 241; see also Red River Expedition (1864); Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Fort Johnson, TN ​see ​Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864) ​119–​120, 121–​126, 127; see also Forrest, Nathan Bedford (CS Maj.Gen.) Foster, James P. (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​ 238–​240; see also Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Foster, John (US Maj. Gen.) ​81; see also Knoxville Campaign (1863) Fox, Gustavus V. (US Asst. Navy Secretary) ​176, 241 Franklin, TN, battle of (1864) ​ 199, 203; see also Nashville Campaign(1864–1865); Schofield, John (US Maj. Gen.) Frazer, Edward (CS agent) ​see ​ boat burning by Confederate agents (1864) Fretwell, John R. (CS torpedo inventor) ​51–​56 Fretwell torpedo ​54 Frigansa, Romeo (US naval constructor) ​35 Gamage (Tinclad No. 60) ​ 237–​2 38, 240–​241; see also Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Gazelle (Tinclad No. 50) ​93, 150, 237, 239, 246 General Bragg (US gunboat) ​ 39, 241 General Burnside (Tinclad No. 63) ​182–​184, 188, 219–​220, 225, 243; see also Decatur, AL, battle of (1864); Glassford, ​Henry A. (US Lt.); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) General Grant (Tinclad No. 62) ​180–​181, 183–​184, 187–​ 188, 191–​192, 219, 221, 243; see also Decatur, AL, battle of (1864); Guntersville, AL, battle of (1865); Tennessee River Campaign (1864– 1865); Watson, Joseph (US Ensign) General Lyon (US dispatch boat) ​40, 237, 241

General Pillow (Tinclad No. 20) ​249 General Price (US gunboat) ​ 39, 237, 241, 244 General Sherman (Tinclad No. 64) ​182–​184, 190, 219–​ 220, 243; see also Morehead, Joseph W. (US Master); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) General Thomas (Tinclad No. 61) ​179, 182–​184, 187–​190, 219–​221, 225, 243; see also Decatur, AL, battle of (1864); Morton, Gilbert (US Master); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Gennel, Cauis G. (CS sympathizer) ​221; see also Guntersville, AL, battle of (1865) Gettysburg, PA, battle of (1863) ​ 52 Gilburn (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 141 Gladiator (SS), attack on (1863) ​135 Glassford, Henry A. (US Lt.) ​ 81–​87, 91. 137, 183–​184, 186, 207, 209, 226–​228, 236; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); General Burnside (Tinclad No. 63); Mississippi Squadron (USN), District Organization, 11th District, creation and administration; Reindeer (Tinclad No. 35); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865); Upper Cumberland River Campaign (1863–1864) Golden Eagle (SS), attack on (1864) ​150 Golden Gate (SS) ​124; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864) Gorgas, Josiah (CS ordnance chief ) ​49 Gorman, Patrick (SS Capt.) ​ 139; see also Henry Von Phul (SS), attack on (1864) Gorringe, Henry H. (US Lt.) ​ 106; see also Cricket (Tinclad No. 6) Gracey, Julius F. (CS Capt.) ​ 194, 196; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864); Undine (Tinclad No. 55) Graham, George Washington (US contractor) ​33 Grampus (US receiving ship) ​ 40 Grampus No. 2 (SS), attack on (1865) ​151

Index313 Granger, Robert S. (US Brig. Gen.) ​182, 187–​190; see also Decatur, AL, battle of (1864); Stone River (US Army gunboat) Grant, Ulysses S. (US Lt. Gen.) ​ 31, 48–​50, 52, 63–​6 4, 69–​ 70, 73, 76–​79, 80–​8 4, 90, 96, 172–​176, 179, 198, 202, 222, 224, 229, 235, 238 Graves, William H. (US Col.) ​ 168; see also Gregory’s Landing, AR, skirmish (1864) Great Western (US ordnance boat/receiving ship) ​40–​41, 244, 250 Green, Thomas (CS B rig. Gen.) ​ 99, 101–​103; see also Blair’s Landing, battle of (1864); Red River Campaign (1864) Greene, Colton (CS Col.) ​143–​ 147, 153, 156; see also Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Greenville Bends ​see ​Chicot County, AR Campaign (1864) Greer, James A. (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​ 46 Gregory’s Landing, AR, skirmish (1864) ​168–​169; see also Fawn (Tinclad No. 30); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Grossbeak (Tinclad No. 8) ​96, 234–​2 35, 237; see also Sultana (SS), destruction of (1865) guerrilla/irregular suppression (US) ​see ​Mississippi River Commerce War (1863– 1865); Upper Cumberland River Campaign (1863– 1864); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Gunboat A (US Army gunboat) ​ 179–​182; see also General Thomas (Tinclad No. 61); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Gunboat B (US Army gunboat) ​ 179, 182; see also General Burnside (Tinclad No. 63) Guntersville, AL, battle of (1865) ​221; see also Gennel, Cauis G. (CS sympathizer); General Grant (Tinclad No. 61); Lyon, Arthur (US Sgt.) Hagen (US Army gunboat) ​75 Halleck, Henry (US Maj. Gen.) ​ 48, 64, 66, 76–​78, 85. 90, 204–​205

Halliday, William P. (US contractor) ​32–​33 Hambleton, Samuel (US contractor) ​35 Hambleton, William (US contractor) ​35 Hamilton, Oliver P. (CS irregular) ​83 Hammond, J.H. (US Brig. Gen.) ​ 209, 212; see also Nashville Campaign (1864) Harrisonburg, LA ​62–​63; see also Red River Raid (US, 1863) ​61–​63 Hartford (U.S. sloop-of-war/ flagboat) ​29 Hastings (SS) ​75–​76, 101 Hastings (Tinclad No. 15) ​70, 152, 155, 163–​166, 169, 213, 237; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Hatchie River, TN, Raid (1865) ​ 230; see also Luxton, James Madison “Matt” (CS Sgt.); Osband, E.D. (US Brig. Gen.); Siren (Tinclad No. 56) Havana (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Hazel Dell (SS) ​82 Helena, AR, battle of (1863) ​52 Henry Chouteau (SS), attack on (1864) ​149 Henry Von Phul (SS), attack on (1864) ​139 Herron, Francis J. (US Maj. Gen.) ​52, 53–​56, 239–​ 240; see also Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865); Yazoo City, MS (CS naval station); Yazoo River Campaign (1863) Hiawatha (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Hickey, Michael (US Lt.) ​157–​ 159; see also Queen City (Tinclad No. 26) Hicks, Stephen G. (US Col.) ​ 114–​115, 118–​119; see also Paducah, KY, battle of (1864) Hinson, John “Old Jack” (CS irregular) ​137 Hof f, ​A.H. (US surgeon) ​43; see also D.A. January (U.S. Army hospital boat) Hoge, George B. (US Col.) ​ 185–​186, 192; see also Chickasaw Landing, Tennessee River, battle of (1864); Kelley, David C. “Fighting Parson” (CS Lt. Col.) Holston (US transport) ​177; see

314 also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Hood, John Bell (CS Gen.) ​ 171–​173, 186–​187, 190, 192, 198–​200, 202–​204, 206, 212, 214, 216–​218, 221–​222; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Hope (SS) ​121–​122; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864) Howland, Henry (US Quartermaster Capt.) ​197; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Hughes, John M. (CS irregular) ​83 Hunley, Horace L. (CS underwater expert) ​51–​56 Huntress (Tinclad No. 58) ​242 Hurlbut, Stephen A. (US Maj. Gen.) ​65, 80. 113; see also Little Rock Campaign (US, 1863) Ibex (Tinclad No. 10) ​229, 235, 237 Ida May (SS) ​239; see also Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) illicit or contraband trade ​ 63–​64, 91–​92, 95, 98, 110, 133–​135 Imperial (SS) ​57–​60, 142; see also boat burning by Confederate agents (1864); Buffington Island, WV, battle of (1863) Indianola (US ironclad) ​38, 40, 49, 62, 250 Ivey’s Ford, AR, skirmish (1865) ​169–​170; see also White River Campaign (1863–1865) Jacob Strader (US Army hospital boat) ​20 James Glover (US transport) ​ 177; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) James Raymond (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Jefferson Barracks, MO magazine ​242–​244; see also Mississippi Squadron, demobilization (1865) Jesse K. Bell (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 J.F. McComb (SS) ​203, 209; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864)

Index John H. Dickey (SS), John Raine (SS) collision (1865) ​151 John Raine (SS), John H. Dickey (SS) collision (1865) ​151 Johnson, Andrew (TN Gov.) ​ 84–​85, 186, 229 Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) ​186–​187, 192, 193–​ 198; see also Fitch, Le Roy (US Lt. Cmdr.); Forrest, Nathan Bedford (CS Maj. Gen.); Kelley, David C. “Fighting Parson” (CS Lt. Col.); King, Edward M. (US Lt.) Johnston, Joseph E. (CS Gen.) ​ 52, 231; see also Yazoo River Campaign (1863) Julia (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Juliet (Tinclad No. 4) ​93, 104, 106–​109, 235

of (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Kingston (US transport) ​191; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Kirby Smith, Edmund (CS Lt. Gen.) ​90, 142, 239; see also Canby, Edward R.S. (US Maj. Gen.); Red River Campaign (1864) Klinefelter, John Simpson (SS Capt.) ​see ​ Gladiator (SS) Knoxville Campaign (1863) ​ 66–​72, 76–​77, 78–​82, 174 Knoxville Raid (1865) ​see ​ Wharton Raid (1865) Krzyzanowski, Wlodzimierz Bonawentura (US Col.) ​179, 181; see also Bridgeport, AL (US supply/boat-building depot); Gunboat A; Naylor, William A. (US Capt.)

Kaskaskia (SS) ​65 Kate (Tinclad No. 55) ​235, 237, 243; see also Mississippi Squadron, demobilization (1865) Kate Kearney (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Kelley, David C. “Fighting Parson” (CS Lt. Col.) ​185–​186, 205, 206–​212, 214, 218; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Chickasaw Landing, Tennessee River, battle of (1864); Hoge, George B. (US Col.); Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Kendall, Charles F. (US naval constructor) ​179; see also Bridgeport, AL (US supply/ boat-building depot) Kenton (SS) ​185; see also Chickasaw Landing, Tennessee River, battle of (1864) Kentucky (SS) ​213; see also Nashville Campaign (1864) Kenwood (Tinclad No. 14) ​53, 149, 237, 240; see also Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Key West (Tinclad No. 32) ​70, 127, 186, 192–​194, 196, 197, 243; see also Chickasaw Landing, Tennessee River, battle of (1864); Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Kickapoo (US monitor) ​38 King, Edward M. (US Lt.) ​69, 184, 186, 192–​193, 196; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle

Lady Franklin (SS) ​203, 209; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864); Nashville Campaign (1864) Lady Pike (SS) ​125; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864) Lafayette (US ironclad) ​38, 93, 127, 230, 239; see also Red River Expedition (1864) ; Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865); Webb (CS ram) Lancaster (US ram) ​39 Lancaster No. 4 (SS), attack on (1864) ​148 Lane, E.P. (SS Capt.) ​130; see also Maquoketa City (US contract gunboat) Laurel (US tugboat) ​41 Laurel Hill (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Lebanon (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 145 Lee, Samuel Phillips (US Acting RAdm.) ​192, 197–​200, 202, 212, 215–​219, 221, 223–​ 224, 225, 227–​228, 230–​ 231, 235–​2 38, 241, 244–​245; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) ; Mississippi Squadron, demobilization (1865); Nashville, TN, battle of (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Lexington (US timberclad) ​38, 65, 70, 93, 98, 100–​101, 104–​ 105, 108, 110–​111, 132, 152, 156–​157, 163, 217, 221–​222, 237; see also Red River Campaign (1864); Tennessee

River Campaign (1864– 1865); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Liberty No. 2 (SS) ​121–​122; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864) Lily (US tugboat) ​41 Lily (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Lily Martin (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Lincoln, Abraham (US President) ​30, 48, 90, 229–​2 30 Linden (Tinclad No. 10) ​ 65, 153–​154; see also White River Campaign (1863–1865) Lioness (US ram) ​39 Little Rebel (Tinclad No. 16) ​ 237–​2 38, 241, 250 Little Red River Raid of 1863 ​ see ​Red River Raid (US, 1863) Little Rock Campaign (US ​ 1863) ​64–​66 Livingston, John W. (US Com.) ​ 241, 244–​245; see also Mississippi Squadron, demobilization (1865) Lloyd (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 153 Longstreet, James (CS Lt. Gen.) ​67, 76–​7 7, 80–​81; see also Chattanooga Campaign (1863); Knoxville Campaign (1863) Lookout (US transport) ​191; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Lotus (SS), attack on (1865) ​ 170; see also Ivey’s Ford, AR, skirmish (1865) Loudon, Roberet (CS agent) ​ see ​boat burning by Confederate agents (1864) Louisiana Belle (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Louisville (SS) ​62; see also Ouachita (US large tinclad) Louisville (US ironclad) ​38, 93, 143, 147–​148, 235, 237, 250; see also Mississippi River Commerce War (1863– 1865); Red River Campaign (1864) Luxton, James Madison “Matt” (CS Sgt.) ​230; see also Hatchie River, TN, raid (1865) Lyon, Arthur (US Sgt.) ​221; see also Guntersville, AL, battle of (1865)

Index315 Lyon, Hylan B. (CS Brig. Gen.) ​ 212–​213, 221; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864) Madison (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 147 Maggie Hayes (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Magnet (SS) ​203, 206, 215; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864)Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Manhattan (US monitor) ​230; see also Webb (CS ram) Manitou ​ see ​ Fort Hindman (Tinclad No. 13) Maquoketa City (US contract gunboat) ​130 Maratta, James H. (SS Capt.) ​ see ​ Emma No. 2 (SS) Marietta (US monitor) ​38 Mariner (SS) ​82 Marmaduke, John S. (CS Brig. Gen.) ​65, 142–​143, 156–​ 157, 166; see also Price’s Raid (1864); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Marmora (Tinclad No. 2) ​65–​ 66, 144, 203, 235, 246; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Mars (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Marshall, James (US Master) ​ 119–​120, 122, 125; see also New Era (Tinclad No. 7) Masonic (SS) ​213; see also Nashville Campaign (1864) May, Robert L. (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​ 229, 241; see also Mississippi Squadron, demobilization (1865) May Duke (SS) ​80 Mazeppa (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 192, 197; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) McCulloch, Henry E. (CS Brig. Gen.) ​139; see also Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) McFarland, William D. (US engr.). ​182–​183; see also Bridgeport, AL (US supply/ boat-building depot) Meigs, Montgomery C. (US Quartermaster General) ​71, 73, 80, 173, 175, 176, 178, 182, 215 Memphis, TN, battle of (1862) ​ 39

Mercury (SS) ​203, 209; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Metamora (SS) ​209; see also Nashville Campaign (1864) Meteor (SS), burning of (1864) ​ 142 Mignonette (US tugboat) ​41 Milwaukee (US monitor) ​38 Mingo (US ram) ​39 Missionary (US transport) ​177, 191; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Mississippi Marine Brigade (MMB) (US Army) ​39, 47–​ 48, 130–​131, 135. 141–​147; see also Chicot County, AR Campaign (1864); Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) ​128–​151; see also Mississippi Marine Brigade (MMB) (US Army) Mississippi Squadron (USN): ​ demobilization (1865) 223–​ 252; general organization, personnel, ships and stations, summer 1863, 29–​ 50; general review (1863– 1865) 45–​47; 11th District, creation and administration 173–​190; sale of assets (1865) 245–​2 51 Missouri (CS ironclad) ​49, 56, 111, 239–​240, 244, 250; see also Carter, Jonathan H. (CS Lt.); Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Mist (Tinclad No. 26) ​237 Mistletoe (US tugboat) ​41, 250 Mittie Stephens, attack on (1865) ​226 Mobile Campaign (1865) ​224, 228–​229 Mollie McPike (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Molloy, John (SS Capt.) ​see ​ Empress (SS), attack on (1864) Monarch (US ram) ​39 Montgomery (US Army snagboat) ​27 Moose (Tinclad No. 34) ​57–​ 60, 86, 201, 206–​209, 212, 214–​215, 229, 237, 243, 246; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Buffington Island, WV, battle of (1863); Fitch, Le Roy (US Lt. Cmdr.); Mississippi Squadron,

316 demobilization (1865); Nashville Campaign (1864) Morehead, Joseph W. (US Master) ​184; see also General Sherman (Tinclad No. 64) Morgan, John Hunt (CS Brig. Gen.) ​56–​60, 86; see also Buffington Island, WV, battle of (1863) Morton, Gilbert (US Master) ​ 184, 187–​190; see also Decatur, AL, battle of (1864); General Thomas (Tinclad No. 61) Morton, John (CS Capt.) ​194, 197; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Mound City, IL (US naval station/hospital) ​34–​37 Mound City (US ironclad) ​33, 38. 93, 166–​167, 235, 237, 250; see also Red River Campaign (1864); White River Campaign (1863–1865) M.R. Cheek (SS) ​122; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864) Mulford (US tugboat) ​see ​ Daisy (U.S. tugboat) Murphy, John McLeod (US Lt.) ​43 Murphy, William (CS agent) ​ see ​boat burning by Confederate agents (1864) Muscle Shoals, Tennessee River ​see ​Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Naile, Frederick J. (US Flag Lt.) ​ 213; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864) Nashville Campaign (1864– 1865) ​199–​222; see also Fitch, Le Roy (US Lt. Cmdr.); Hood, John Bell (CS Gen.); Lee, Samuel Phillips (US Acting RAdm.); Thomas, George H. (US Maj. Gen.) Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) ​ 201–​204; see also Fitch, Le Roy (US Lt. Cmdr.); Smith, A.J. “Whiskey” (US Maj. Gen.) Naumkeag (Tinclad No. 37) ​ 152, 156, 159–​164, 166–​169, 217, 235, 237; see also Queen City (Tinclad No. 26); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Naylor, William A. (US Capt.) ​ 179, 181, 187–​189; see also Decatur, AL, battle of (1864);

Index Gunboat A (US Army gunboat); Stone River (US Army gunboat); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Nelson (SS) ​62, 92 Neosho (US monitor) ​38, 93, 98, 101, 110–​111, 139, 166, 201–​202, 204, 209–​211, 212–​213, 217–​219, 237; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Florence, AL, battle of (1864); Nashville Campaign (1864); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864); Red River Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign(1864–1865); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Nettie Hartupee (SS) ​82, 88–​89 Nettle (US tugboat) ​41 New Champion (SS) ​see ​ Champion No. 3 (SS) New Chippawa (SS), attack on (1865) ​170; see also Ivey’s Ford, AR, skirmish (1865) New Era (Tinclad No. 7) ​119–​ 120, 122–​123, 125–​126, 151; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864) New Falls City (SS) ​99; see also Red River Campaign (1864) New Iago (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 155 New National (US dispatch boat) ​41, 98 New Uncle Sam ​ see ​ Black Hawk (US flagboat) New York (SS) ​203, 209; see also Nashville Campaign (1864)Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Newsboy (US Army gunboat) ​ 76, 79–​81, 85–​89, 173, 201, 203, 206, 209, 215, 249; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Upper Cumberland River Campaign (1863–1864) N.J. Bigley (SS) ​207, 209; see also Nashville Campaign (1864) Nymph (Tinclad No. 54) ​149 O’Leary, James (US Seaman) ​ 92; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Olive (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Olive Branch (SS) ​121–​122; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864)

Omaha (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) O’Neill, A.F. (US Lt.) ​115–​116, 118; see also Paducah, KY, battle of (1864); Paw Paw (Tinclad No. 31) Oriole (Tinclad No. 52, 237, 246 Osage (US monitor) ​38, 92–​ 93, 98–​103, 108, 110, 136, 224; see also Blair’s Landing, battle of (1864); Green, Thomas (CS Brig. Gen.); Mobile Campaign (1865); Red River Campaign (1864) Osband, E.D. (US Brig. Gen.) ​ 230; see also Hatchie River, TN, Raid (1865); Luxton, James Madison “Matt” (CS Sgt.) Ouachita (US large tinclad) ​ 62, 92–​93, 237, 239; see also Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Ouachita River Raid (US ​1864) ​ 92, 94 Owen, Elias K. (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​ 91, 144–​145; see also Louisville (US ironclad); Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Ozark (US monitor) ​38, 103, 235 Paddock, Buckley B. (CS irregular) ​226; see also Mittie Stephens, attack on (1865) Paducah, KY, battle of (1864). 114–​115, 116–​118; see also Forrest, Nathan Bedford (CS Maj. Gen.) Paine, Eleazer (US Brig.Gen.) ​ 85–​86 Paint Rock (US transport) ​177; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Palmer, John M. (US Maj. Gen.) ​ 227–​228; see also Upper Cumberland River Campaign (1865) Pansy (US tugboat) ​41 Parsons, Lewis B. (US Col.) ​ 174–​175, 251; see also Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Parsons, William Henry (CS Col.) ​144; see also Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Parthenia (SS) ​75–​76

Pattison, Thomas (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​123, 125; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864) Paw Paw (Tinclad No. 31) ​70, 115–​118, 127, 203; see also Paducah, KY, battle of (1864) Pennock, Alexander M. (US fleet captain) ​30–​31, 114. 119, 122, 125, 127, 179, 251 Peosta (Tinclad No. 36) ​70, 115–​117, 118, 127 , 203, 213, 217; see also Paducah, KY, battle of (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Peri (Tinclad No. 57) ​166; see also White River Campaign (1863–1865) Perkins, Simon (US Army Quartermaster Capt.) ​76, 78 Petrel (Tinclad No. 5) ​61, 141 Phelps, Seth Ledyard (U.S. Lt. Cmdr.) ​64–​66, 69–​70, 95, 97 , 103–​104, 108, 152, 154–​ 155, 160, 163–​165, 168; see also Eastport (US ironclad); Red River Campaign (1864); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Pickney, Ninian A. (US fleet surgeon) ​42 Pikeville, AR, skirmish (1864) ​ 164; see also Carr, Eugene A. (US Brig. Gen.); Shelby, Joseph O. “Jo” (CS Brig. Gen.); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Pioneer (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Pittsburg (US ironclad) ​38, 46, 93, 217, 237, 250; see also Red River Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Platte Valley (SS) ​123–​125; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864) Polk, Leonidas (CS Gen.) ​49 Port Hudson, LA ​29, 52 Porter, David Dixon (US RAdm.) ​29–​30, 31, 43–​4 8, 50, 52, 61, 63–​65, 68, 70–​ 71, 75, 78, 80, 84, 86, 90, 92–​ 103, 106–​111, 113–​114, 127, 130–​131, 142, 145, 155, 159, 163, 174, 176, 182, 185, 198, 222, 239 Porter, William D. “Dirty Bill” (US Cmdr.) ​43 Post Boy (SS), burning of (1864) ​142

Index317 Prairie Bird (Tinclad No. 11) ​ 144, 147–​148, 226, 237 Prairie State (SS) ​203, 206–​ 207; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Pratt, Joseph H. (CS Capt.) ​ 143–​147; see also Chicot County, AR Campaign (1864); Greene, Colton (CS Col.); Mississippi River Commerce War (1863– 1865); Red River Campaign (1864) Price, Sterling (CS Maj.Gen.) ​ 142, 168, 199, 239; see also Canby, Edward R.S. (US Maj. Gen.) Price’s Raid (1864) ​142, 168–​169 Prima Donna (SS) ​203, 206–​ 207, 209; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Queen City (Tinclad No. 26), ​ 152, 157, 158–​162; see also Shelby, Joseph O. “Jo” (CS Brig. Gen.); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Queen of the West (US/CS ram) ​39 Ramsay, Frank M. (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​92, 94, 111–​112 Rattler (Tinclad No. 1) ​61, 131–​132, 140 Rawlings Reservation ​see ​ Mound City, IL (US naval station) Read, Charles W. “Savez” (CS Lt.) ​230; see also Arkansas (CS ironclad); Webb (CS ram) Red River Campaign (1864) ​ 90–​94, 95–​114 Red Rover (US hospital boat) ​ 38, 41–​42, 248–​2 50 Reindeer (Tinclad No. 35) ​81–​ 85, 86–​87, 201, 207–​209, 212, 214–​218, 227–​229; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Florence, AL, battle of (1864); Mississippi Squadron, demobilization (1865); Nashville Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign 1864–1865); Upper Cumberland River Campaign (1863–1864) Resaca (US transport) ​191; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Reynoldsburg Island,

Tennessee River ​194–​195; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Rice, Lewis C. (US surgeon) ​ 43; see also D.A. January (US Army hospital boat) Richardson, Robert V. (CS irregular) ​83 Richmond (US sloop-of-war) ​ 233; see also Webb (CS ram) Riley, Robert K. (SS Capt.) ​ 123; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864); Platte Valley (SS) Rob Roy (SS) ​99, 101; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Robb ​ see ​ Alfred Robb (Tinclad No. 21) Robert Campbell, Jr. (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Robert Fulton (SS), attack on (1863) ​137 Robert Lee (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Roberts, John S. (US Lt.) ​75–​ 76, 82, 84; see also Silver Lake No. 2 (US Army gunboat) Roddy, Philip D. (CS Brig. Gen.) ​191, 216–​217, 225; see also Decatur, AL, battle of (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Rodgers, John (US Cmdr.) ​31, 38 Romeo (Tinclad No. 3) ​70, 144–​145, 147, 235, 246 Rosecrans, William (US Maj. Gen.) ​155, 173 Ross, Lawrence “Sul” (CS Brig. Gen.) ​141; see also Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Rucker, Edmund W. (CS Brig. Gen.) ​205; see also Nashville Campaign(1864–1865) Rushmore, B. (SS Capt.) ​see ​ Oliver Branch (SS) Rusling, James F. (US Quartermaster Col.) ​203; see also Nashville Campaign(1864–1865) Ruth (SS), burning of (1864) ​ 142 St. Clair (Tinclad No. 19) ​213, 217, 237–​2 38; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864); Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) St. Cloud (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 166

318 St. Paul (SS), attack on (1865) ​ 230 Samson (US auxiliary/machine shop) ​38, 41, 237, 241 Sanders, William (US Col.) ​67; see also Knoxville Campaign (1863) Sandusky (US monitor) ​38 Schofield, John (US Maj. Gen.) ​64, 199, 203–​ 204; see also Nashville Campaign(1864–1865) Seddon, James A. (CS War Secretary) ​48–​49, 142 Selfridge, Thomas O., Jr. (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​61, 91, 93–​94, 98, 102–​103, 110 Shelby, Joseph O. “Jo” (CS Brig. Gen.) ​143, 154, 156–​163, 167–​168, 230, 238; see also Queen City (Tinclad No. 26); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Shepley, George F. (US Brig. Gen.) ​121–​122; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864); Olive Branch (SS) Sheridan, Philip H. (US Maj. Gen.) ​238; see also Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Sherman, William T. (US Maj. Gen.) ​48, 52, 63, 68–​69, 70, 73, 80, 90–​92, 113, 129, 171–​172, 179, 183, 186, 199–​ 200, 221–​2 22, 231; see also Chattanooga Campaign (1863); Knoxville Campaign (1863) Shirk, James W. (US Lt. Cmdr.) ​ 115–​116, 118–​119, 122, 127, 192, 201; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864); Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864); Paducah, KY, battle of (1864) Shreveport, LA, occupation (1865) ​see ​Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) Shreveport, LA, submersibles ​112 Sibyl (Tinclad No. 59) ​229, 237–​2 38 Signal (Tinclad No. 8) ​53, 139–​140 Silver, Solomon A. (auctioneer) ​245–​2 51; see also Mississippi Squadron, sale of assets (1865) Silver Cloud (Tinclad No. 28) ​ 123–​124, 125, 143, 164, 168, 203, 237; see also Fort Pillow, TN, battle of (1864);

Index Nashville Relief Convoy (1864); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Silver Lake (Tinclad No. 23) ​ 201–​202, 203, 206–​209, 211, 214–​217, 222, 235, 237; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864); Nashville Campaign (1864); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Silver Lake No. 2 (US Army gunboat) ​75, 81–​8 4, 86, 173, 201, 249; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Upper Cumberland River Campaign (1863–1864) Silver Moon (SS), attack on (1864) ​150 Siren (Tinclad No. 56) ​230, 237; see also Hatchie River, TN, raid (1865) Sisters of the Holy Cross ​36, 41–​42; see also Red Rover (US hospital boat) Smith, A.J. “Whiskey” (US Maj. Gen.) ​92–​9 9, 146, 200, 224; see also Chicot County, AR Campaign (1864); Greene, Colton (CS Col.); Nashville Campaign (1864–1865); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864); Red River Campaign (1864) Smith, T. Kilby (US Brig. Gen.) ​ 98, 100–​103; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Smith, Thomas E. (US Lt.) ​ 115–​117; see also Peosta (Tinclad No.36 ); Paducah, KY, battle of (1864) Sovereign (US commissary/barracks ship) ​41, 250 Spray (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Springfield (Tinclad No. 22, 184, 206, 209, 212–​213, 215; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Watson, Joseph (US Ensign) Stanley, Frank (US Maj. Gen.) ​ 203; see also Nashville Campaign(1864–1865) Stanton, Edwin (US War Secretary) ​73, 173–​174 Steedman, James B. (US Maj. Gen.) ​203; see also Nashville Campaign(1864–1865); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Steele, Frederick (U.S. Maj. Gen.) ​64–​67, ​92, 142, 152, 155, 157, 163, 168; see also Little Rock Campaign (US,

1863); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Stevens, S.H. (US Lt.) ​209; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Newsboy (US Army gunboat) Stewart, Ann (laundress) ​106; see also Cricket (Tinclad No. 6) Stockdale, Sidney A. “Sid” (US infantry captain) ​79–​80; see also Bowers, Theodore S. (US Lt. Col.) Stokes, William B. (US Col.) ​ 85 Stone River (US Army gunboat) ​180–​181, 184, 187–​ 190, 219, 249; see also Decatur, AL, battle of (1864); Granger, Robert A. (US Brig. Gen.); Naylor, William A. (US Capt.); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Stringer, Elza Z. (US SS Capt.) ​ 82; see also Nettie Hartupee (SS) Sullivan (SS) ​86 Sultana (SS), destruction of (1865) ​232–​234, 235–​2 36 Sumter (US gunboat) ​39 Sunny South (SS), attack on (1863) ​135 Sunshine (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Sylph (SS), attack on (1865) ​ 230 Tawah (Tinclad No. 29) ​71, 122, 186, 192–​194, 196–​197, 243; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Taylor, Richard (CS Lt. Gen.) ​ 90, 92, 95, 104, 108; see also Red River Campaign (1864) Tecumseh (SS), attack on (1863) ​135 Tempest (Tinclad No. 1) ​230, 235, 237, 241, 250 Tennessee (US ironclad) ​237 Tennessee (US transport) ​177; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) ​171–​198; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Tennessee Rivershed ​172 Tensas (Tinclad No. 39) ​246 Tensas River Raid of 1863 ​see ​ Red River Raid (US, 1863) Texas-Louisiana Expedition (1865) ​238–​2 39; see also Missouri (CS ironclad);

Sheridan, Philip H. (US Maj. Gen.) Thatcher, Charles (US Lt.) ​150; see also Gazelle (Tinclad No.50) Thistle (US tugboat) ​41, 241 Thomas, George (US Maj. Gen.) ​81, 171–​172, 188, 190, 198–​200, 202–​206, 212–​ 217, 219, 221, 227–​228, 235–​ 236; see also Chattanooga Campaign (1863); Nashville Campaign (1864); Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Thomas E. Tutt (SS) ​99, 203, 212; see also Nashville Campaign (1864); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Thompson, Albert P. “Sam” (CS Col.) ​115–​116; see also Paducah, KY, battle of (1864) Thompson, Charles R. (US Col.) ​186; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Tide (SS), burning of (1864) ​ 142 Time (SS), burning of (1864) ​ 142 Tom Sugg (SS) ​65 torpedoes ​see ​ B aron de Kalb (US ironclad); Brown, Isaac Newton (CS Cmdr.); Cairo (US ironclad); ​Fretwell, John R. (CS torpedo inventor); Hunley, Horace L. (CS underwater expert) Trio (SS) ​75–​76 Tucker, J.W. (CS agent) ​see ​ boat burning by Confederate agents (1864) Tuscumbia (US ironclad) ​38, 40, 249–​2 50 Tyler (US timberclad) ​38, 52, 132, 145, 156–​157, 159–​ 162, 163, 165–​167, 235, 237; see also Chicot County, AR Campaign (1864); Greene, Colton (CS Col.); Queen City (Tinclad No. 26); Sultana (SS), destruction of (1865); White River Campaign (1863–1865) Undine (Tinclad No. 55) ​186, 192–​194, 196, 243; see also Chickasaw Landing, Tennessee River, battle of (1864); Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Union City, TN, battle of (1864) ​114; see also Forrest,

Index319 Nathan Bedford (CS Maj. Gen.) Upper Cumberland River Campaign (1863–1864) ​73–​ 89, 137; see also Glassford, Henry A. (US Lt.); Reindeer (Tinclad No.35) Upper Cumberland River Campaign (1865) ​227; see also Glassford, Henry A. (US Lt.); Reindeer (Tinclad No.35); Victory (Tinclad No. 33) Upper Tennessee River ​see ​ Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Van Dorn, T. William (US Lt.) ​ 75; see also W.H. Sidell (US Army gunboat) Venango (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 150 Venus (SS), attack on (1864) ​ 192, 197; see also Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Vicksburg, MS ​29, 48–​49, 51–​56 Victory (SS) ​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Victory (Tinclad No. 33) ​86–​ 87, 203, 213, 229, 235; see also Buffington Island, WV, battle of (1863); Nashville Campaign (1864); Nashville Relief Convoy (1864); Upper Cumberland River Campaign (1865) Vindicator (US ram) ​39, 248, 250 Vohris, William G. (SS Capt.) ​ see ​ Eclipse (SS), attack on (1864) Volunteer (US dispatch boat) ​ 237, 250 Walke, Henry (US Capt.) ​43, 251 Walker, John G. (US Lt. Cmdr.). ​ 52–​56; see also Baron de Kalb (US ironclad) Walker, John G. (CS Maj. Gen.) ​ 138–​139; see also Mississippi River Commerce War (1863–1865) Walton, E.S. (CS Capt.) ​205; see also Bell’s Mills, TN, battles of (1864) Wananita (SS) ​202–​203; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Waterproof, LA, battle of (1864) ​91

Watson, Joseph (US Ensign) ​ 184; see also General Grant (Tinclad No. 62); Springfield (Tinclad No.22) Wauhatchie (US transport) ​ 191; see also Tennessee River Campaign (1864–1865) Weaver, William (CS pilot) ​ 194; see also Undine (Tinclad No. 55); Johnsonville, TN, battle of (1864) Webb (CS ram) ​232–​233; see also Read, Charles W. “Savez” (CS Lt.) Welcome (SS), burning of (1864) ​142 Welles, Gideon (USN Secretary) ​48, 68, 71. 97, 108, 126, 176, 182, 224–​225, 228–​2 30, 235, 237–​2 38, 241, 243 Western Sanitary Commission ​ 36, 43 W.H. Sidell (US Army gunboat) ​75 Wharton, Arthur D. (CS Lt.) ​ see ​Wharton Raid (1865) Wharton Raid (1865) ​228 Wheeler, Joseph (CS Gen.) ​ 67–​68 White Cloud (SS) ​110, 148 White River Campaign (1863) ​ see ​Little Rock Campaign (1863) White River Campaign (1863– 1865) ​152–​170 White River Station, attack on (1864) ​156–​157 Wiard, Norman (ordnance designer) ​175–​176, 178 William H. Brown (US dispatch boat) ​41, 237, 241, 244 Wilson, James (US Maj. Gen.) ​ 219; see also Lee, Samuel Phillips (US Acting RAdm.); Nashville Campaign (1864) Winnebago (US monitor) ​38 Winslow, Ferdinand S. (US Quartermaster Capt.) ​86 W.L. Ewing (SS) ​202; see also Nashville Relief Convoy (1864) Wood, Thomas J. (US Brig. Gen.) ​203–​ 204; see also Nashville Campaign(1864–1865) World (SS) ​88–​89 Yazoo City, MS (CS naval station) ​49, 51–​56; battle of (1864) 91 Yazoo River Campaign (1863) ​ 51–​56