Campfire and battlefield

General Pillow estimated the Confederate loss in killed and wounded at two thousand. No undisputed figures are attainable on either side. Grant began the siege with about fifteen thousand men, which reinforcements had increased to twenty-seven thousand at the time of the surrender. His losses were about two thousand, and many of the wounded had perished of cold. The long, artificial line of defence, from the mountains to the Mississippi, was now swept away, and the Confederates abandoned Nashville, to which Grant might have advanced immediately, had he not been forbidden by Halleck.

When the news was flashed through the loyal States, and bulletins were posted up with enumeration of prisoners, guns, and small arms captured, salutes were fired, joy-bells were rung, flags were displayed, and people asked one another, "Who is this Grant, and where did he come from?"—for they saw that a new genius had suddenly risen upon the earth.

Both before and after the defeat and death of General Lyon at Wilson's Creek (August, 1861), there was irregular and predatory warfare in Missouri. Especially in the western part of the State half-organized bands of men would come into existence, sometimes make long marches, and on the approach of a strong enemy disappear, some scattering to their homes and others making their way to and joining the bodies of regular troops. In Missouri and northern Arkansas guerilla warfare was extensively carried on for more than a year. Many terrible stories are told of the vengeful spirit with which both sides in this warfare were actuated. It is quite possible these stories were exaggerated, but it is certain that many cold-blooded murders were committed. Very few of the guerillas were Unionists.

Gen. John C. Frémont, who commanded the department, believing that Price was near Springfield, gave orders for the concentration at that place of all the National forces in Missouri. But Price was not there, and in November Frémont was superseded by General Halleck, some of whose subordinate commanders, especially Gen. John Pope, made rapid movements and did good service in capturing newly recruited regiments that were on their way to join Price.

Late in December Gen. Samuel R. Curtis took command of twelve thousand National troops at Rolla, and advanced against Price, who retreated before him to the northwestern corner of Arkansas, where his force was joined by that of General McCulloch, and together they took up a position in the Boston Mountains. Curtis crossed the line into Arkansas, chose a strong place on Pea Ridge, in the Ozark Mountains, intrenched, and awaited attack. Because of serious disagreements between Price and McCulloch, Gen. Earl Van Dorn, who ranked them both, was sent to take command of the Confederate force, arriving late in January. There is no authentic statement as to the size of his army. He himself declared that he had but fourteen thousand men, while no other estimate gave fewer than twice that number. Among them was a large body of Cherokee Indians, recruited for the Confederate service by Albert Pike, who thirty years before had won reputation as a poet. On March 5, 1862, Van Dorn moved to attack Curtis, who knew of his coming and formed his line on the bluffs along Sugar Creek, facing southward. His divisions were commanded by Gens. Franz Sigel and Alexander S. Asboth and Cols. Jefferson C. Davis and Eugene A. Carr, and he had somewhat more than ten thousand men in line, with forty-eight guns. The Confederates, finding the position too strong in front, made a night march to the west, with the intention of striking the Nationals on the right flank. But Curtis discovered their movement at dawn, promptly faced his line to the right about, and executed a grand left wheel. His army was looking westward toward the approaching foe, Carr's division being on the right, then Davis, then Asboth, and Sigel on the left. But they were not fairly in position when the blow fell. Carr was struck most heavily, and, though reinforced from time to time, was driven back a mile in the course of the day. Davis, opposed to the corps of McCulloch, was more successful; that general was killed, and his troops were driven from the field. In the night Curtis re-formed and strengthened his lines, and in the morning the battle was renewed. This day Sigel executed some brilliant and characteristic manoeuvres. To bring his division into its place on the left wing, he pushed a battery forward, and while it was firing rapidly its infantry supports were brought up to it by a right wheel; this movement was repeated with another battery and its supports to the left of the first, and again, till the whole division had come into line, pressing back the enemy's right. Sigel was now so far advanced that Curtis's whole line made a curve, enclosing the enemy, and by a heavy concentrated artillery fire the Confederates were soon driven to the shelter of the ravines, and finally put to rout. The National loss in this action—killed, wounded, and missing—was over thirteen hundred, Carr and Asboth being among the wounded. The Confederate loss is unknown. Generals McCulloch and McIntosh were killed, and Generals Price and Slack wounded. Owing to the nature of the ground, any effective pursuit of Van Dorn's broken forces was impracticable.

The Confederate Government had made a treaty with some of the tribes in the Indian Territory, and had taken into its service more than four thousand Indians, whom the stories of Bull Run and Wilson's Creek had apparently impressed with the belief that they would have little to do but scalp the wounded and rob the dead. At Pea Ridge these red men exhibited their old-time terror of artillery, and though they took a few scalps they were so disgusted at being asked to face half a hundred well-served cannon that they were almost useless to their allies, and thenceforth they took no further part in the war. It is a notable fact that in the wars on this continent the Indians have only been employed on the losing side. In the French and English struggle for the country, which ended in 1763, the French had the friendship of many of the tribes, and employed them against the English settlers and soldiers, but the French were conquered nevertheless. In the Revolution and the war of 1812, the British employed them to some extent against the Americans, but the Americans were victorious. In the great Rebellion, the Confederate Government attempted to use them as allies in the West and Southwest, and in that very section the Confederate cause was first defeated. All of which appears to show that though savages may add to the horrors of war, they cannot determine its results for civilized people; nor can irresponsible guerilla bands, of which there were many at the West, nearly all in the service of the Confederacy.

"At the close of Mr. Buchanan's administration nearly all the United States Indian agents in the Indian Territory were secessionists, and the moment the Southern States commenced passing ordinances of secession, these men exerted their influence to get the five tribes committed to the Confederate cause. Occupying territory south of the Arkansas River, and having the secessionists of Arkansas on the east and those of Texas on the south for neighbors, the Choctaws and Chickasaws offered no decided opposition to the scheme. With the Cherokees, the most powerful and most civilized tribes of the Indian Territory, it was different. Their chief, John Ross, was opposed to hasty action, and at first favored neutrality, and in the summer of 1861 issued a proclamation enjoining his people to observe a strictly neutral attitude during the war between the United States and the Southern States. In June, 1861, Albert Pike, a commissioner of the Confederate States, and Gen. Ben. McCulloch, commanding the Confederate forces in Western Arkansas and the Department of Indian Territory, visited Chief Ross, with the view of having him make a treaty with the Confederacy. But he declined to make a treaty, and in the conference expressed himself as wishing to occupy, if possible, a neutral position during the war. A majority of the Cherokees, nearly all of whom were full-bloods, were known as Pin Indians, and were opposed to the South." (Battles and Leaders, Vol. I., pp. 335-336.)

After the battle of Wilson's Creek had been fought, General Lyon killed, and the Union army defeated, Chief Ross was easily convinced that the South would succeed, and entered into a treaty with the Confederate authorities.

But all this could not be done in a day, especially where skilled workmen were scarce, and it was March, 1862, before she was ready for action. The command was given to Franklin Buchanan, who had resigned a commission in the United States navy. On the 8th of March, accompanied by two gunboats, she went out to raise the blockade of James and Elizabeth Rivers by destroying the wooden war vessels in Hampton Roads. Her first victim was the frigate Cumberland, which gave her a broadside that would have riddled a wooden vessel through and through. Some of the shot entered her open ports, killed or wounded nineteen men, and broke two of her guns; but all that struck the armor bounded off like peas. Rifled shot from the Merrimac raked the Cumberland, and then she ran into her so that her iron prow cut a great gash in the side. The Cumberland at once began to settle; but the crew stood by their guns, firing broadside after broadside without producing any impression on the iron monster, and received in return shells and solid shot that made sickening havoc. The commander, Lieutenant Morris, refused to surrender; and at the end of forty-five minutes, when the water was at the gun-deck, the crew leaped overboard and with the help of the boats got ashore, while the frigate heeled over and sank to the bottom. Her topmasts projected above the surface and her flag was flying. While this was going on, three Confederate steamers came down and attacked the Congress with such effect that her commander tried to run her ashore. Having finished the Cumberland, the Merrimac came up and opened a deliberate attack on the Congress, and finally set her on fire, when the crew escaped in their boats. She burned for several hours, and in the night blew up. Of the other National vessels in the Roads, one got aground in water too shallow for the Merrimac to approach her, and the others were not drawn into the fight.

The next morning the Merrimac came down again from Norfolk to finish up the fleet in Hampton Roads, and after that—to do various unheard-of things. The more sanguine expected her to go at once to Philadelphia, New York, and other seaboard cities of the North, and either bombard them or lay them under heavy contribution. The National Administration entertained a corresponding apprehension, and expected to see the Merrimac ascend the Potomac and attack Washington first. A part of these expectations were well founded, and the rest were such exaggerations as commonly arise from ignorance. The Merrimac could not have reached New York or Philadelphia, because she was not a sea-going vessel. With skilful management and good luck, she might have ascended the Potomac to Washington, but she would have had to run the gantlet of numerous dangers. There is a place in the Potomac called "the kettle-bottoms," where a great many conical mounds, composed of sand and oyster-shells, rise from the channel till their peaks are within a few feet of the surface; and their positions were so imperfectly known at this time that the National vessels frequently ran aground upon them. Several devices were in waiting to make trouble for the iron-clad champion at this point, perhaps the most dangerous of which was that prepared by Captain Love, commanding an armed tugboat. He procured a seine three-quarters of a mile long, took off its floats, and stretched it across the channel in such a way that the Merrimac could hardly have passed over it without fouling her propeller, which would have rendered her helpless.

But the dangerous enemy was destined to be disposed of in a more novel and dramatic way. In August, 1861, the Navy Department had advertised for plans for steam batteries, to be iron-clad and capable of fighting the Merrimac and other similar armored vessels that the Confederates were known to be constructing. The plan adopted was that presented by Capt. John Ericsson. Its essential features were an iron-clad hull, with an "overhang" to protect the machinery, all of which was below the waterline, surmounted by a round revolving tower or turret, in which were two heavy guns. The idea of a revolving tower was not Ericsson's; it had been put forth by several inventors, especially by Abraham Bloodgood in 1807. But this special adaptation of it, with the application of steam power, was his. The vessel was built in Brooklyn, and was launched January 30, 1862, one hundred days after the laying of the keel. She was named Monitor, for the obvious significance of the word. The extreme length of her upper hull was one hundred and seventy-two feet, with a breadth of forty-one feet, while her lower hull was one hundred and twenty-two feet long and thirty-four feet broad. Her depth was eleven feet, and when loaded she drew ten feet of water, her deck thus rising but a single foot above the surface. The turret was twenty feet in diameter and nine feet high. The only conspicuous object on the deck, besides the turret, was a pilot-house about five feet square and four feet high. This was built of solid wrought-iron beams, nine by twelve inches, laid one upon another and bolted together. At a point near the top a slight crack was left between the beams all round, through which the commander and the pilot could see what was going on outside and get their bearings. The guns threw solid shot eleven inches in diameter. The advantage of presenting so small a surface as a target for the enemy, having all the machinery beyond reach of any hostile shot, carrying two large guns, and being able to revolve the turret that contained them, so as to bring them to bear in any direction and keep the ports turned away from danger except at the moment of firing, is apparent.

This novel war-machine sailed from the harbor of New York on March 6, in command of Lieut. John L. Worden, destined for Hampton Roads. She was hardly out at sea when orders came changing her destination to Washington; but fortunately she could not be reached, although a swift tugboat was sent after her. She had a rough passage of three days, the perils of which were largely increased by the fact that her crew did not as yet understand all her peculiarities. They neglected to stop the hawse-hole where the anchor-chain passed out, and large quantities of water came in there, besides what poured down the low smoke-stacks when the waves broke over her.

Outriding all dangers, she arrived in Hampton Roads on Saturday evening, March 8, where the mournful condition of things did not diminish the dispiriting effect of the voyage upon her crew. The Cumberland was sunk, the Congress was burning, the Minnesota was aground, and everybody was dismayed. But Worden seems to have had no lack of confidence in his vessel and his crew. He took on a volunteer pilot, and promptly in the morning went out to his work. He first drove away the wooden vessels that were making for the helpless Minnesota, and then steered straight for the Merrimac, which was now coming down the channel.

The Confederates had known about the building of the Monitor (which they called the Ericsson), just as the authorities at Washington had known all about the Merrimac. When their men first saw her, they described her as "a cheese-box on a raft," and were surprised at her apparently diminutive size. Buchanan had been seriously wounded in the action of the previous day, and the Confederate iron-clad was now commanded by Lieutenant Jones.

Worden stationed himself in the pilot-house, with the pilot and a quartermaster to man the wheel, while his executive officer, Lieut. Samuel D. Greene, was in the turret, commanding the guns, which were worked by chief engineer Stimers and sixteen men. The total number of men in the Monitor was fifty-seven; the Merrimac had about three hundred.

The Merrimac began firing as soon as the two iron-clads were within long range of each other, but Worden reserved his fire for short range. Then the battle was fairly open, the National vessel firing solid shot, about one in eight minutes, while the Confederates used shells exclusively and fired much more rapidly. The shells struck the turret and made numerous scars, but inflicted no serious damage, except occasionally when a man was leaning against the side at the moment of impact and was injured by the concussion. Worden had his eyes at the sight-hole when a shell struck it and exploded, temporarily blinding him, and injuring him so severely that he turned over the command to Lieutenant Greene and took no further part in the action. Each vessel attempted to ram the other, but always without success. Once when the Monitor made a dash at the Merrimac's stern, to disable her steering-gear, the two guns were discharged at once at a distance of only a few yards. The two ponderous shots, striking close together, crushed in the iron plates several inches, and produced a concussion that knocked over the entire crews of the after guns and caused many of them to bleed at the nose and ears. The officers of the Monitor had received peremptory orders to use but fifteen pounds of powder at a charge. Experts say that if they had used the normal charge of thirty pounds their shots would undoubtedly have penetrated the Merrimac and either sunk her or compelled her surrender. The Monitor had an advantage in the fact that she drew but half as much water as the Merrimac and could move with much greater celerity. The fight continued for about four hours, and the Confederate iron-clad then returned to Norfolk, and she never came down to fight again till the 11th of April, when no battle took place because both vessels had orders to remain on the defensive, each Government being afraid to risk the loss of its only iron-clad in those waters. The indentations on the Monitor showed that she had been struck twenty-two times, but she was not in any way disabled. Twenty of her shots struck the Merrimac, some of which smashed the outer layers of iron plates. It was claimed that the Merrimac would have sunk the Monitor by ramming, had she not lost her iron prow when she rammed the Cumberland the day before; but a description of the prow, which was only of cast iron and not very large, makes this at least doubtful.

Just what damage the Merrimac received in the fight is not known. But it was observed that she went into it with her bow up and her stern down, and went out with her bow down and her stern up; that on withdrawing she was at once surrounded by four tugs, into which her men immediately jumped; and she went into the dry-dock for repairs.

The significance of the battle was not so much in its immediate result as in its effect upon all naval armaments, and because of this it attracted world-wide attention. The London Times declared: "There is not now a ship in the English navy, apart from these two [the Warrior and the Ironside], that it would not be madness to trust to an engagement with that little Monitor." The United States Government ordered the building of more monitors, some with two turrets, and they did excellent service, notably in the battle of Mobile Bay.

In May, when Norfolk was captured, an attempt was made to take the Merrimac up the James River; but she got aground, and was finally abandoned and blown up. When the Confederates refitted her they rechristened her Virginia, but the original name sticks to her in history. In December of that year the Monitor attempted to go to Beaufort, N. C., towed by a steamer; but she foundered in a gale off Cape Hatteras and went to the bottom, carrying with her a dozen of the crew.

The defences of New Orleans against an enemy approaching from the sea consisted of two forts, on either side of the stream, thirty miles above the head of the five great passes through which it flows to the Gulf. The smaller, Fort St. Philip, on the left bank, was of earth and brick, with flanking batteries, and all its guns were en barbette—on the top, in plain sight. These numbered about forty. Fort Jackson, on the right bank, mounted seventy-five guns, fourteen of which were in bomb-proof casemates. Both of these works had been built by the United States Government. They were now garrisoned by about one thousand five hundred Confederate soldiers, commanded by Gen. Johnson K. Duncan. Above them lay a Confederate fleet of fifteen vessels, including an iron-clad ram and a large floating battery that was covered with railroad iron. Just below the forts a heavy chain was stretched across the river—perhaps suggested by the similar device employed to keep the British from sailing up the Hudson during the Revolutionary war. And it had a similar experience; for, at first supported by a row of enormous logs, it was swept away by the next freshet. The logs were then replaced by hulks anchored at intervals across the stream, and the chain ran over their decks, while its ends were fastened to great trees. One thing more completed the defence—two hundred sharp-shooters patrolled the banks between the forts and the head of the passes, to give warning of an approaching foe and fire at any one that might be seen on the decks.

The idea at Washington, probably originated by Commander (now Admiral) David D. Porter, was that the forts could be reduced by raining into them a sufficient shower of enormous shells, to be thrown high into the air, come down almost perpendicularly, and explode on striking. Accordingly, the first care was to make the mortars and shells, and provide the craft to carry them. Twenty-one mortars were cast, which were mounted on twenty-one schooners. They threw shells thirteen inches in diameter, weighing two hundred and eighty-five pounds; and when one of them was discharged, the concussion of the atmosphere was so great that no man could stand close by without being literally deafened. Platforms projecting beyond the decks were therefore provided, for the gunners to step out upon just before firing.

The remainder of the fleet, as finally made up, consisted of six sloops-of-war, sixteen gunboats, and five other vessels, besides transports carrying fifteen thousand troops commanded by Gen. B. F. Butler. The whole number of guns was over two hundred. The flagship Hartford was a wooden steam sloop-of-war, one thousand tons' burden, with a length of two hundred and twenty-five feet, and a breadth of forty-four feet. She carried twenty-two nine-inch guns, two twenty-pounder Parrott guns, and a rifled gun on the forecastle, while her fore and main tops were furnished with howitzers and surrounded with boiler iron to protect the gunners. The Brooklyn, Richmond, Pensacola, Portsmouth, and Oneida were similar to the Hartford. The Colorado was larger. The Mississippi was a large side-wheel steamer.

This was the most powerful expedition that had ever sailed under the American flag, and the man that was chosen to command it, Capt. David G. Farragut, was as unknown to the public as Ulysses S. Grant had been. But he was not unknown to his fellow-officers. Farragut was now sixty years of age, being one of the oldest men that took part in the war, and he had been in the navy half a century. He sailed the Pacific with Commodore Porter years before Grant and Sherman were born, and participated in the bloody encounter of the Essex and Phoebe in the harbor of Valparaiso. He was especially familiar with the Gulf of Mexico, and had pursued pirates through its waters and hunted and fought them on its islands. There was nothing to be done on shipboard that he could not do to perfection, and he could have filled the place of any man in the fleet—except perhaps the surgeon's. He was born in Tennessee, and married twice in Virginia; and if there had been a peaceable separation he would probably have made his home in the South. He was at Norfolk, waiting orders, when Virginia seceded, but he considered that his first duty was to the National Government, which had educated him for its service and given him rank and employment. When he said that "Virginia had been dragooned out of the Union," and that he thought the President was justified in calling for troops after the firing on Sumter, he was told by his angry neighbors that a person holding such sentiments could not live in Norfolk. "Very well, then," said he, "I can live somewhere else." So he made his way North with his little family, and informed the Government that he was ready and anxious for any service that might be assigned to him.

This was in April, 1861; but it was not till January, 1862, that he was appointed to command the New Orleans expedition and the Western gulf blockading squadron. He sailed from Hampton Roads February 2, in the flag-ship Hartford. Some sentences from the sailing-orders addressed to him by the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, are significant and suggestive. "As you have expressed yourself perfectly satisfied with the force given to you, and as many more powerful vessels will be added before you can commence operations, the department and the country require of you success.... There are other operations of minor importance which will commend themselves to your judgment and skill, but which must not be allowed to interfere with the great object in view, the certain capture of the city of New Orleans.... Destroy the armed barriers which these deluded people have raised up against the power of the United States Government, and shoot down those who war against the Union; but cultivate with cordiality the first returning reason which is sure to follow your success." In a single respect Farragut was not satisfied with his fleet. He had no faith in the mortars, and would rather have gone without them; but they had been ordered before he was consulted, and were under the command of his personal friend Porter. Perhaps his distrust of them arose from his knowledge that, in 1815, a British fleet had unavailingly thrown a thousand shells into a fort at this very turn of the river where he was now to make the attack.

The mortar schooners were to rendezvous first at Key West, and sail then for Ship Island, off Lake Borgne, where the transports were to take the troops and the war-vessels were to meet as soon as possible.

A considerable portion of March was gone before enough of the fleet had reached the rendezvous to begin operations. The first difficulty was to get into the river. The Eads jetties did not then exist, and the shifting mud-banks made constant soundings necessary for large vessels. The mortar schooners went in by Pass à l'Outre without difficulty; but to get the Brooklyn, Mississippi, and Pensacola over the bar at Southwest Pass required immense labor, and occupied two or three weeks. The Mississippi was dragged over with her keel ploughing a furrow a foot deep in the river bottom, and the Colorado could not be taken over at all.

The masts of the mortar schooners were dressed off with bushes, to render them indistinguishable from the trees on shore near the forts. The schooners were then towed up to a point within range, and moored where the woods hid them, so that they could not be seen from the forts. Lieut. F. H. Gerdes of the Coast Survey had made a careful map of that part of the river and its banks, and elaborate calculations by which the mortars were to be fired with a computed aim, none of the gunners being able to see what they fired at. They opened fire on April 18, and kept up the bombardment steadily for six days and nights. Six thousand enormous shells—eight hundred tons of iron—were thrown high into the air, and fell in and around the forts. For nearly a week the garrison saw one of Porter's aërolites dropping upon them every minute and a half. They demolished buildings, they tore up the ground, they cut the levee and let in water, and they killed and mangled men; but they did not render the forts untenable nor silence their guns. The return fire sank one of the mortar boats and disabled a steamer. Within the forts about fifty men were killed or wounded—one for every sixteen tons of iron thrown.

While the fleet was awaiting the progress of this bombardment, a new danger appeared. The Confederates had prepared several flat-boats loaded with dry wood smeared with tar and turpentine; and they now set fire to them one after another, and let them float down the stream. But Farragut sent out boats' crews to meet them, who grappled them with hooks, and either towed them ashore or conducted them past the fleet, and let them float down through the passes and out to sea.

In his General Orders, Farragut gave so many minute directions that it would seem as if he must have anticipated every possible contingency. Thus: "Trim your vessel a few inches by the head [that is, place the contents so that she will sink a little deeper at the bow than at the stern], so that if she touches the bottom she will not swing head down the river." "Have light Jacob-ladders made, to throw over the side for the use of the carpenters in stopping shot-holes, who are to be supplied with pieces of inch-board, lined with felt, and ordinary nails." "Have a kedge in the mizzen chains on the quarter, with a hawser bent and leading through in the stern chock, ready for any emergency; also grapnels in boats, ready to tow off fire-ships." "Have many tubs of water about the decks, both for extinguishing fire and for drinking." "You will have a spare hawser ready, and when ordered to take in tow your next astern do so, keeping the hawser slack so long as the ship can maintain her own position, having a care not to foul the propeller." It was this minute knowledge and forethought, quite as much as his courage and determination, that insured his success. In addition to his own suggestions he called upon his men to exercise their wits for the occasion, and the crews originated many wise precautions. As the attack was to be in the night, they painted the decks white to enable them to find things. They got out all the spare chains, and hung them up and down the sides of the vessels at the places where they would protect the machinery from the enemy's shot. Farragut's plan was to run by the forts, damaging them as much as possible by a rapid fire as he passed, then destroy or capture the Confederate fleet, and proceed up the river and lay the city under his guns.

The time fixed upon for starting was just before moonrise (3:30 o'clock) in the morning of April 24. On the night of the 20th two gunboats went up the river, and a boat's crew from one of them, under Lieut. Charles H. B. Caldwell, boarded one of the hulks and cut the chain, under a heavy fire, making an opening sufficient for the fleet to pass through. Near midnight of the 23d the lieutenant went up again in a gunboat, to make sure that the passage was still open, and this time the enemy not only fired on him, but sent down blazing rafts and lighted enormous piles of wood that they had prepared near the ends of the chain. The question of moonrise was no longer of the slightest importance, since it was as light as day for miles around. Two red lanterns displayed at the peak of the flag-ship at two o'clock gave the signal for action, and at half-past three the whole fleet was in motion.

The sloop Portsmouth, and Porter's gunboats moved up to a point where they could engage the water-battery of Fort Jackson while the fleet was going by. The first division of eight vessels, commanded by Capt. Theodorus Bailey, who was almost as old and as salt as Farragut, passed through the opening in deliberate fashion, unmindful of a fire from Fort Jackson, ran over to the east bank, and poured grape and canister into Fort St. Philip as they sailed by, and ten minutes afterward found themselves engaged at close quarters with eleven Confederate vessels. Bailey's flag-ship, the Cayuga, was attacked by three at once, all trying to board her. He sent an eleven-inch shot through one of them, and she ran aground and burst into a blaze. With the swivel gun on his forecastle he drove off the second; and he was preparing to board the third when the Oneida and Varuna came to his assistance. The Oneida ran at full speed into one Confederate vessel, cutting it nearly in two, and in an instant making it a shapeless wreck. She fired into others, and then went to the assistance of the Varuna, which had been attacked by two, rammed by both of them, and was now at the shore, where she sank in a few minutes. But she had done effective work before she perished, crippling one enemy so that she surrendered to the Oneida, driving another ashore, and exploding a shell in the boiler of a third. The Pensacola steamed slowly by the forts, doing great execution with her rifled guns, and in turn sustaining the heaviest loss in the fleet—thirty-seven men. In an open field men can dodge a cannon-ball; but when it comes bouncing in at a port-hole unannounced, it sometimes destroys a whole gun's-crew in the twinkling of an eye. In such an action men are under the highest possible excitement; every nerve is awake, and every muscle tense; and when a ball strikes one it completely shatters him, as if he were made of glass, and the shreds are scattered over the ship. The Mississippi sailed up in handsome style, encountered the Confederate ram Manassas, and received a blow that disabled her machinery. But in turn she riddled the ram and set it on fire, so that it drifted away and blew up. The other vessels of this division, with various fortune, passed the forts and participated in the naval battle.

The second division consisted of three sloops of war, the flag-ship leading. The Hartford received and returned a heavy fire from the forts, got aground on a shoal while trying to avoid a fire-raft, and a few minutes later had another raft pushed against her, which set her on fire. A portion of the crew was detailed to extinguish the flames, and all the while her guns were loaded and fired as steadily as if nothing had happened. Presently she was got afloat again, and proceeded up the river, when, suddenly, through the smoke, as it was lighted by the flashes of the guns, she saw a steamer filled with men bearing down upon her, probably with the intention of carrying her by boarding. But a ready gun planted a huge shell in the mysterious stranger, which exploded, and she disappeared—going to the bottom, for aught that anybody knew. The Brooklyn, after getting out of her course and running upon one of the hulks, finally got through, met a large Confederate steamer, and gave it a broadside that set it on fire, and then poured such a rain of shot into St. Philip that the bastions were cleared in a minute, and in the flashes the gunners could be seen running to shelter. A Confederate gunboat that attacked her received eleven shells from her, all of which exploded, and it then ran ashore in flames. The Richmond sailed through steadily and worked her guns regularly, meeting with small loss, because she was more completely provided with splinter-nettings than her consorts, as well as because she came after them.