The visitor who crosses the narrow way leading across the moat and penetrates to the interior of Fortress Monroe will not be greatly impressed by show of military works. These are all quietly and modestly ready in the background, somewhere. He will find himself in a charming sort of park which strongly suggests the tropics in its luxuriance of foliage of all kinds. Indeed the air of Old Point, for some reasons, supports tropical plant growth that will not live in the countryside immediately adjoining. One of the effective sights that the visitor sees in the fort are the clumps of fig trees which are to be found, and there are to be found, too, magnolia and rhododendron and crape myrtle.
There is a large parade ground, flanked on the east and north by long barracks. The rest of the grounds, not including the casemates, is given over to residences, to various store-houses and to a building of the Coast Artillery School which has been located at Monroe since 1867.
The casemates of the old fort are used as residences for married private soldiers and for other purposes, not transparently military. The long rows of heavy cannon once to be seen here are to be found no more, their place being taken by modern batteries elsewhere.
There is to be seen the casemate in which Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States, was confined after the working out of the destiny of the Lost Cause. It is not different from its neighbors, and is an inconspicuous little compartment in a wall with an ornamental little two-post doorway and one window. Many curious visitors stop before it.
Old Point Comfort and all of this section of the lower Chesapeake have seen many strange visitors and cargoes in the Past. Doughty old Captain John Smith came to Hampton Roads and wrote about what he saw with that wealth of picturesque detail which those old chroniclers loved to pour forth. The name Point Comfort itself came from the circumstance that Smith was cast into this Hampton Roads on the wings of a storm at sea and that he hailed the first strip of solid land that he saw as a comfort, indeed. At an early period a settlement was made here, as a subsidiary of the Jamestown colony, and, as early as 1611, a fort was built on the point as a defence against Indians and freebooting marauders of buccaneer type. The fort was armed and known as Fort Algernon, in honor of Lord Algernon Percie, one of the directors of the Virginia Company. The greatest fort of the country was once called Algernon!
This little fortification was not of long life, however. It was maintained for a few years by the Jamestown colony but went into decay after the failure of its parent. The strategic value of the Point as a place for defence was not lost sight of, however, in any succeeding generation, though the place was not called into service for many years.
The foundations of Fortress Monroe were laid in 1819, and the works were carried forward actively for ten years. The plans were drawn by the famous Bernard, one-time aide-de-camp of the first Napoleon, and one of his leading engineers. It was Bernard’s ambition to construct in the United States (he came to the United States in 1816 and immediately entered the employ of the government) one great fortress like the works of Antwerp, in the fortification of which he had a large share. Fort Monroe, named in honor of the president who did so much to make sure that the coast defences of the country should be adequately founded, was the result of this vision.
It is to be seen that the life of the present fortification begins after the War of 1812, but the military history of the vicinity of Fort Monroe prior to that time is full of interest.
During the Revolution the mouth of the Chesapeake was guarded by British cruisers and a rigorous blockade was maintained. Despite this, during the war no less than 248 privateers were fitted out in the waters of the Chesapeake and managed to gain the high seas by eluding the vigilance of the patrol beyond the capes.
In 1779 General Leslie sailed from New York with 3000 of His Majesty’s troopers to land upon the peninsula not far from the site of Fort Monroe and there to await orders from Lord Cornwallis, who was in North Carolina. He entered Hampton Roads and took Norfolk and Portsmouth, fortifying the latter place as a base for future operations. After some weeks of inactivity, he re-embarked and sailed to reinforce Cornwallis at Charleston. In the following year Clinton ordered the traitor Arnold with 50 sail and 1600 soldiers to replace Leslie.
The Arnold expedition proceeded up the James River in 1781 and set the torch to the public buildings of Richmond. After pillaging Petersburg, it returned to Portsmouth and threw up strong intrenchments. Lafayette attempted to stay this destroying band but had not force enough of his own and did not receive expected reinforcement. The fleet which had been sent to augment his numbers was engaged by the British under Admiral Arbuthnot off the capes and compelled, after a hot engagement, to withdraw to Newport. The English thus retained their hold on Hampton Roads and were enabled to send additional forces to General Arnold under General Phillips. In April the combined forces under Arnold moved again up the James River, burning and pillaging.
Cornwallis occupied Portsmouth shortly after this, but soon again moved to Yorktown, where he threw up huge intrenchments, the outlines of which are plainly discernible at the present day. In September, 1781, the French under Comte de Grasse were successful in entering the Chesapeake to co-operate with Washington, Lafayette and Rochambeau. The British fleet under Admiral Graves sturdily contested the capes, but was forced to surrender the hold which it had maintained so effectively. In the ensuing month occurred the historic surrender of Cornwallis.
During the War of 1812, a British order in council declared the Chesapeake to be in a state of blockade, and in 1813 Rear-Admiral Cockburn of His Majesty’s navy was sent to Lynnhaven Bay, near Norfolk. The Americans had a large flotilla in Hampton Roads, and had constructed Forts Norfolk and Nelson on the Elizabeth River near Norfolk and had thrown up intrenchments on Craney Island, these dispositions all being under the direction of Brigadier General Robert B. Taylor.
At daybreak of June 22, 1813, a determined attack was made by the British under Cockburn from land and sea, which was repulsed. Three days later quiet Hampton was captured after a gallant defence by an inadequate garrison and the town pillaged in barbaric fashion. Soon after, Cockburn withdrew to the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, but resumed his operations in the lower Chesapeake March 1, 1814. In July, 1814, he was largely reinforced and with a combined land and naval expedition commenced that march up the Chesapeake which culminated in the sacking of Washington and the final repulse of the expedition at Fort McHenry. This was the last important engagement of the War of 1812.
During the Civil War Fortress Monroe saw stirring scenes, though it had no very active part in any of them. In October, 1861, Hampton Roads off the fort was the rendezvous for great land and naval forces under Admiral Dupont and General Sherman designed to capture Hilton Head. In the January following another great force was brought together here for operations on the Carolina coast. In the spring of 1862 McClellan’s army arrived at Old Point and went to Yorktown.
In March of 1862 occurred in Hampton Roads the episodes of the Merrimac. A watcher on the walls of Fort Monroe would have seen this queer, square vessel, covered with railroad iron, sailing down the blue waters. He might have seen the sinking of the Cumberland with the greater part of her crew despite her desperate, impotent efforts against this new kind of adversary. He might have witnessed the destruction of the Congress by fire and the partial disabling of the Minnesota. He might have heard in the old fort that night the barrack-room gossip of the new giant and whispers of the expected arrival of a United States champion which was to take up the gage of combat. The next day he might have seen from the ramparts the struggle between the Merrimac and the Monitor, which ushered in a new chapter in naval warfare and began the era of the steel-clad knight of the seas.
Later Old Point Comfort became the base of operation of the Army of the James.
In 1893, during the celebration of the Columbian Exposition, Hampton Roads was the rendezvous under the guns of old Monroe for the vessels of all of the nations of the world. The old fort sees the most important manœuvres of the United States navy of to-day.
The bombardment of Fort Sumter from Fort Moultrie began at dawn of April 12, 1861, and continued without remission for about 36 hours, or until noon of the second day. During that time, though shot and shell played havoc with the walls of both the besiegers and the besieged, no human being was hurt,—a strange preliminary, indeed, to the most murderous civil war since the invention of gunpowder in the history of the world.
This has been called the first time in history that two forts waged battle against each other. It was like two strong men, tied by the feet, almost beyond reach of each other, being allowed to strike at each other until one or the other should fall.
To understand something of the conditions which governed this very historic bout between Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, one must have some idea of the lay of the land at Charleston. Charleston, itself, it may be pointed out, is situated on a long narrow spit of land at the juncture of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. The arrow-head formed by these two rivers points almost directly toward the mouth of Charleston Bay, where the waters of the two rivers joined mingle with the Atlantic Ocean. Let us go to the point of the arrow-head upon which Charleston is situated, to the Battery,—that is, Charleston’s most famous public park,—and gaze seaward: Five miles away, across a shimmering blue, we see a little geometrical dot almost midway between the jaws which hold Charleston Bay. This is Fort Sumter, a little stone work built by the United States Government in 1828 on a sandy shallow. Fort Moultrie is situated on Sullivan’s Island, on the northern one of the two jaws of the bay, a body of land really distinct from the mainland but which seems from this distance to be a part of that land. Of the two fortifications, Fort Moultrie is the older and by long odds the more interesting as to past.
Wise heads of both sections in 1860 saw that war was inevitable between the North and the South, though patriots did their best to prevent armed conflict. But the doctrine of State individualism or State’s Rights was too firmly established to be gotten from the body corporate without a purging of blood, just as individual rights in the social structure can never be enforced to the last limit without conflicting with the community purpose. So when, on Christmas night, 1860, Major Anderson, commanding at Fort Moultrie, moved his whole force secretly over to the sub-post, Fort Sumter, and sent his women and children to Charleston, with the request that they be sent north, the citizens of Charleston, at least, knew that the issue had been squarely met, to be settled at the court of last resort.
Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, in her delightful reminiscences of Charleston, writes:
Doubt and delay were gone. Then came the call to arms.... January, February, and March were so full of crowded life that they seemed an eternity, yet one dreaded lest eternity should end. End it did when one night at eleven o’clock seven guns thundered out over the town and every man sprang up, seized his rifle and ran to the wharves. It was the signal that the relieving fleet (from the north) was on its way south, and that the whole reserve must hurry to the islands.
During all this time Fort Sumter had been supplied with provisions and necessaries by the citizens of Charleston.
When Major Anderson in command at Fort Sumter accepted Beauregard’s terms of surrender and saluted the new flag, he was conveyed, with all the honors of war, in the steamer Isabel to the United States fleet which had lain idle in the offing.
From this time until the end of the Civil War Charleston was in a state of siege. There was a short period of preparation on both sides before the Federal fleet appeared, November, 1861, outside the quaint old city. The city maintained its integrity complete against attacks by water, and finally fell to a move in force by land in the last year of the war, when the defenders of Charleston were withdrawn and all of the men of the remnants of the armies of the Confederacy were being concentrated for one last desperate protest against the inevitable.
After the Civil War Fort Sumter was repaired and strengthened and is still a seat of military power as a sub-post of Fort Moultrie.
To reach Fort Moultrie one goes from Charleston by ferry to the northern side of the Cooper River and takes a trolley which leads seaward along the coast across an inlet to Sullivan’s Island, which has become a popular summer place with many people of Charleston.
Fort Moultrie, when once it is reached, is not a pretentious place,—the old works, that is,—being simply a star-shaped fort of brownish-red brick on which the hot southern sun pours down in quantity. It overlooks a rumpled beach and the sea on one side and flat uninteresting land on the other. To the seaward one can gaze upon Fort Sumter and find it not more interesting of aspect close at hand than it is at a distance. Beside the gate of Fort Moultrie is a small marble shaft which marks the grave of Osceola, the Seminole chieftain. If one has devoured Indian tales in his youth he will no doubt be more interested in this simple memorial than in the immediate aspect of military things around him. It was in Fort Moultrie that Osceola was jailed after his capture in Florida and it was here that he died,—from a broken heart, if one is still interested in Indian stories!
The present Fort Moultrie was started in 1841 on the site of a famous old palmetto structure of the same name which had stood since early Revolutionary days. In 1903, with the exquisite tact which it displays occasionally, army headquarters in Washington decided to change the name of the fort to Fort Getty in honor of some deserving soldier whose career is recorded in the files of the Army Department, but the loud chorus of indignation that greeted this move carried all the way from Charleston to Washington, and the name of that delightful old Revolutionary character, William H. Moultrie, is still preserved at the spot where his first battle was fought.
The foundations of Fort Moultrie were laid in January, 1776, when a Mr. Dewees, owner of the island which bears his name, was ordered to deliver at Sullivan’s Island palmetto logs eighteen to twenty feet long and not less than ten inches in diameter in the middle; and Colonel Moultrie was ordered to superintend the erection of a fort from this material. It was not completed in June when the British came into view. In design a double square pen it was built of palmetto logs piled one upon the other and securely bolted together; the space between the outer and inner pen was about sixteen feet and this was filled in with sand; there were square bastions. The walls were intended to be ten feet high above the gun platforms where were mounted 64 guns.
The British fleet bearing a land force was under the command of Admiral Sir Peter Parker, and reached Cape Fear early in May, where it was joined by Sir Henry Clinton from New York with a portion of the troops which had participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Clinton assumed command of all the land forces. On the 4th of June the fleet appeared off Charleston bar and a small force of men was landed on Long Island, the island just north of Sullivan’s Island, and on the 28th of June advanced under Sir Peter Parker to give battle to Fort Sullivan, as Moultrie was then known. There were brought into action in this engagement the following English vessels: The Bristol and Experiment of 50 guns each; the frigates Active, Solebay, Acteon, Siren, and Sphinx of 28 guns each; the Thunderbomb and Ranger, sloops, of 28 guns; and the Friendship of 22 guns, in all, a very powerful squadron. The Americans had their unfinished palmetto fort, 64 guns and 1200 men. Several days before the battle the fussy General Charles Lee, whom Washington afterwards in his only recorded uncontrolled exhibition of temper called, at the battle of Monmouth, “a damned poltroon,” had removed to another defence of the city half of the small quantity of gunpowder which Moultrie had been given for the defence of his fort.
The command of the defence of Charleston had been given to General Lee by the Continental Congress, and General Lee had appeared in the city on the same day that the British fleet was sighted off the bar. From the first he seems to have been in conflict with Moultrie. Moultrie’s fort, he said, was poorly designed, and doubtless it was; Moultrie should provide a means of retreat for his men, and Moultrie replied that they would never use it; and Moultrie this and that. Moultrie himself, his admirers were forced to admit, was “a man of very easy manners, leaving to others many things which he had better have attended to himself.”
But the point is that Moultrie carried this same easiness of manner and mental poise into battle with him and was on this account an ideal officer to direct a fight. He had, moreover, the unlimited confidence and affection of his men and he knew the people he was working with.
The British appeared off Fort Sullivan just when the feeling between General Lee and Moultrie was at an acute stage. We find Moultrie now at face with the problem of defending his “slaughter pen” fort against an overwhelming force with the insufficient quantity of gunpowder which General Lee had left him.
The ships formed in double column and poured a terrific fire upon the fort. Moultrie feared that the concussion of the shells would rock his guns off their platforms. “Concentrate upon the Admiral, upon the fifty-gun ships!” This was Moultrie’s direction to his men. The Americans, expert marksmen that they were, obeyed his commands and the Bristol and the Experiment suffered fearfully, the captains of these two great ships being mortally wounded.
The Americans now began to run short of powder. Colonel Moultrie sent a despatch for more. He was in pressing need, but no one would have guessed it from his message which read as follows:
I think we shall want more powder; at the rate we go on I think we shall. But you can see for yourself; pray send more if you think proper.
Rutledge sent 500 pounds, and Lee, who was at Haddrell’s with 5000 pounds he had taken from Fort Sullivan, sent no powder but the message:
If you should unfortunately expend your ammunition without driving off the enemy spike your guns and retreat with all the order you can. I know you will be careful not to expend your ammunition.
General Lee had an idea that battles were fought with bows and arrows and gunpowder kept to celebrate the victory afterwards with! And he was determined that that retreat should take place, because he had prophesied a retreat by all the laws of war some weeks before.
The cannonade went on, the fire from the fort being at a much slower tempo than that from the ships. And now a new fact was discovered in the art of war: The soft palmetto logs with sand in between were a better bulwark than solid stone. Cannon balls entered them easily and stopped just as easily without sending splinters all around. Shells threw the sand up in the air and the sand fell back again to the spot whence it had risen.
The Bristol, the flag-ship, suffered more than any other of the British vessels. At one time Sir Peter was the only man unwounded on the quarter-deck, and he, too, presently was hurt.
The Acteon went hard aground on the shoal where Fort Sumter was afterwards to be raised and had to be abandoned, being set on fire before she was deserted.
The rattle-snake flag flying over the American fort was shot down, and Sergeant Jasper, leaping over the parapet, braved the fire of the British to recover the emblem. Sergeant Jasper lost his life at Savannah in an effort to duplicate this same feat.
At length the British drew off beaten. They had lost heavily, on the flag-ship alone 104 men being killed. The American loss was 12 killed and 25 wounded. When the news of this defeat reached England, though the intelligence was given out by the Admiralty in the most politic fashion possible, it was a terrible blow to English pride. “That an English admiral with a well-appointed fleet of 270 guns should be beaten off by a miserable little half-built fort on an uninhabited sand bank was incomprehensible,” wrote a correspondent from London. Had Moultrie had powder enough the British loss must have been much heavier than it was.
On the 9th of April, 1780, Fort Moultrie was again in action, when it opened upon Admiral Arbuthnot’s fleet which was sailing into the harbor in the course of the operations against Charleston that year. It was unable to prevent the passage of the fleet but it inflicted some damage to the vessels and killed 27 of the enemy. Shortly after Fort Moultrie fell to an overwhelming force of British who attacked by land, and was not again in action during the Revolution.
The trip from beautiful Savannah to the battered ruins of the once famous brick fortress, Pulaski, takes one through that gold and green country which one comes to associate with the name of this charming southern city. Fort Pulaski is that great hexagon of brick which one sees from incoming steamers on Cockspur Island at the mouth of the muddy Savannah River, and all the country round about is marshy, reedy land, cut up by big and little streams with no hills to be seen and only scraggy pine trees breaking the flat monotony of the horizon.
If one would go to Fort Pulaski from Savannah, he seeks out the little railroad which runs to Tybee, and whose passenger traffic is confined almost exclusively to summer. There he will be received by the hospitable southern trainmen and put off the train near the light-house which graces the northern end of Cockspur Island. Here, if he has been wise and has made his arrangements properly, the will be met by a boat from the light-house and will be carried across to the island.
Arrived at the landing which gives access to the fort, one is struck by the graceful desolation of the scene. The boards and timbers of the wharf have rotted, and ends of planks hang down toward the water like withered arms. Yet the brilliant Georgia sunshine gives a charm to it all. One does not feel in the presence of decay; one feels only in the presence of something that is passing painlessly away.
This same feeling one carries up the long, straight, muddy path leading to the ruined monument of valor through the marsh which surrounds that work. One comes to a broad ditch now full of mud and weeds and faces the remains of a once sturdy draw-bridge. Passing over this and between the mounds of former outworks one at last faces the entrance to Fort Pulaski.
The walls of this great brick fortress, which cost a million dollars and was one of the greatest brick fortresses of its time, tower over one with great impressiveness. The brick face is pierced by long narrow slits for rifle fire, and these peer at one vacantly. A large ditch, or moat, surrounds the fort, and this still contains water owing to the low elevation of the island above tide, but it is choked with rank vegetation and though horrid of aspect would not be a serious bar to the approach of any storming force.
Crossing the ditch, one passes through a long passage and past massive wooden gates studded with iron bolts and, at length, comes out upon the parade ground. Where brilliant columns once formed and marched in martial evolutions now wave tall saplings except where the solitary care-taker of the fort has cut these growths down to make room for a vegetable garden. The walls go around in a great circle above this parade, the angles of the circumference not being easily perceptible from our vantage point. To the right hand and the left hand stretch casemates in which officers and men dwelt. On the far side of the parade are open casemates fitted for cannon, for this is the quarter from which attack might be expected. Close at hand is a spring whose clear water flows ceaselessly from the rusty iron mouth which the hand of man has provided and neglected.
Passing across the parade to the gun casemates, which occupy the flanks of the fort on three quarters of the compass, one finds the flooring still in good condition, this fact being due to the protected nature of this part of the fort and to the sturdy quality of the planks which are three inches thick and of some close-grained wood—probably cypress. The circular gun-tracks are still visible. Where one can peer through holes in the floor one gazes down into dank, dark depths from which the light is reflected evilly by scummy water.
At the northeast angle of the fort are the remains of one of the magazines. If one cares to prowl in here and is willing to make entrance through a mysterious black hole into an uncanny void, he will be rewarded for his adventure by being able to pick up some rusty grape-shot and smaller odds and ends of murderous looking iron.
Ascending to the parapet of the fort by means of one of the twisting iron stairs which are to be found at each angle, or by the broad stone stairs adjacent to the habitable casemates, one has a wide view of land and sea. To the east lies the mouth of the Savannah River where this stream joins the Atlantic Ocean. In this direction, too, can be seen long, low, sandy Tybee Point, where Fort Screven, the modern defensive work, lies. To the south are marshes and in the distance the gleam of the river up which the Union forces brought their cannon to attack Fort Pulaski in 1862. To the north and west—more marshes.
The island on which Fort Pulaski is situated was acquired by the government in 1830 by purchase from Alexander Telfair and sisters (an old and wealthy Savannah family) and the title of the government thereto for the purposes of a fortification was confirmed by the State of Georgia by act December 27, 1845. The entire reservation occupies about 150 acres.
The site for the fort was selected by Major General Babcock, United States Corps of Engineers, and work was begun in 1831 under the direction of Major General Mansfield. Sixteen years passed before its mighty walls, containing thirteen millions of bricks, were completed. The name Pulaski was given to the fort in honor of Count Casimir Pulaski, the Polish patriot who lost his life in the siege of Savannah by the Americans during the Revolution, the scene of this sad event being the Spring Hill redoubt near the site of the present Central of Georgia railway station.
The military history of Fort Pulaski does not cover a long period of time. When, in December, 1860, the news reached Savannah of the removal of Major Anderson, in command of the United States forces in Charleston Harbor, from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, there was an open expression of opinion that Georgia should forestall such occupation of the forts on her coast by the forces of the Federal government; and when, on January 2, 1861, it became known that Governor Brown had ordered the seizure and occupation of Fort Pulaski by the military under the command of Colonel A. R. Lawton on the following day, the city was wild with enthusiasm.
Says Adelaide Wilson in her delightful history of Savannah:
Looking back upon the arrangements that were made for the setting out of that first military expedition, there is temptation to smile at the amount of impedimenta that was prepared for the small forces of less than two hundred men. There was scant time between the promulgation of the order and the hour named for its execution, yet when, on the morning of the third, the companies marched down to the wharf to embark on the little steamer Ida, it is safe to say that they were encumbered with much more baggage than served later in the war for an entire division in the field. Every man had his cot, every three or four men his mess-chest, with kettles, pots, pans and other cooking utensils in liberal allowance, not to speak of trunks, valises, mattresses, camp-chairs, etc.,—in all a pile large enough to make the heart of a quartermaster sink within him. It was evident that the troops long had anticipated the call upon their services, and also that the mothers, wives and sisters of Savannah had, with anxious forethought, determined that their loved ones should carry into service as many of the comforts of home as possible.
The siege of Pulaski by the Federal troops, April, 1862, was not long at the climax, though it was long in preparation. The Federal forces gathered slowly south of Savannah and then moved to the attack. By means of a channel in the flats to the south of the fort which the Confederates had left unguarded, they were able to post their guns in advantageous positions. As the result of a heavy bombardment the walls of the fort were battered in at the east salient and the garrison was obliged to surrender.
The visitor to Fort Pulaski to-day may see some of the wounds in the walls which the fort sustained on that occasion. The worst injuries were repaired by the United States troops during their occupancy of the fort, and the course of these repairs may be traced by the discerning eye through the different color of the bricks.
Shortly after the Civil War, Fort Pulaski was abandoned. It is still controlled by the government and is in the care of a retired soldier of the United States who lives a life of seclusion, disturbed only by the very infrequent sight-seer or by parties of young men of the neighborhood who find the marshes of the reservation an excellent gunning preserve.
Mobile Bay, that pear-shaped body of water, with its far-reaching system of water tributaries, has been a scene of settlement and fortification since the early days of French attempts at settlement in the New World. There was, to begin with, Fort Louis de la Mobile, which protected the infant first settlement of Mobile, precursor of the city of to-day. In various guises Fort Louis passed from one to another of the different races of men with which the history of Mobile Bay is associated. Then there are the forts placed on the islands at the mouth of Mobile Bay and the forts at the head of the bay where the big rivers flow in. Finally there is Fort Morgan (Fort Bowyer to begin with) which occupies the point of that long, thin peninsula of land which forms the southern boundary of Mobile Bay, dividing its waters from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Fort Morgan to-day is in ruins and has never been thoroughly rebuilt since its capitulation to Farragut in one of the hottest battles of the Civil War. The governmental reservation of land on which the works are situated contains about 500 acres and is occupied, as well, by modern defences. The view from the point on which the old fort is situated gives a wide prospect of blue water and sky. Across the ship channel is historic Dauphine Island, on which Fort Morgan’s sister fort, Fort Gaines, was situated, and where the government to-day maintains extensive batteries. To the right are the waters of Mobile Bay, with the smoke of the city thirty miles to the north. To the left are the sunny waves of the Gulf.
The first that we hear of Mobile Point as a place of fortification was in 1812, when the Spanish evacuated Mobile. General Wilkinson, in command of the United States forces in the southwest, put nine guns as a battery on Mobile Point and made his way on up to the city, where he commenced to fortify the perdido. Subsequently Mobile Point appealed to him as a better place for defensive works than a spot so far up the bay, and he placed a fortification here, which was called Fort Bowyer in honor of Lieutenant-Colonel Bowyer.
The next occupant of Fort Bowyer was a more picturesque personage than General Wilkinson, none other than Andrew Jackson. Upon his retirement from Pensacola in 1814, Jackson stopped at Fort Bowyer and left a force there of 130 men under the leadership of Major William Lawrence. On September 12 the British appeared before the fort with land and naval strength and demanded the surrender of the little structure. Major Lawrence refused to surrender.
The British strength on this occasion consisted of the Hermes of 22 guns, the Sophia of 18 guns, the Caron of 20 guns, Anaconda of 18 guns, all vessels of large size, under the command of Captain Percy. It was a squadron which Jackson had driven from Pensacola Bay and it was thirsting for revenge. There was, in addition, a land force under Colonel Nichols of a few marines and about 600 Indians which assailed Fort Bowyer from the rear.
The battle began early on the morning of the 15th. The word for the day in the American ranks was “Don’t give up the fort,” and this originated an oft-repeated phrase. A heavy cannonade continued without interruption until 5.30 o’clock in the afternoon. The flag-staff of the Hermes, Captain Percy’s flag-ship, was shot away and Lawrence gave the order to cease firing while he hailed the vessel to find out whether she had lowered her colors. The only answer was a murderous volley of grape-shot from another quarter. The flag-staff of the fort then happened to be struck, and the Indians and British on shore, thinking that the plucky little garrison had surrendered, ran forward with terrible cries. They were met by a terrific hail of lead which drove them back for good.
Finally the battered English vessels drew off. The Hermes was found to be in such bad shape that she was set on fire by her crew and abandoned. Her destruction was completed by the explosion of her magazine. The British loss was 232, of which number 163 were killed. The American loss was 4 killed and 4 wounded. The British in this engagement outnumbered the Americans more than six times.
The great adventure of Fort Morgan’s life, however, was in the Civil War at the time of the taking of Mobile. The stronghold had been considerably enlarged and strengthened and had been re-christened by its Confederate possessors at the outbreak of that disastrous struggle between brother and brother. It is described in official records of the time as a pentagonal bastioned work, with a full scarp brick wall, 4, feet 8 inches thick, its armament consisting of 86 guns of various calibres. The garrison, including officers and men, numbered 640.
The force under Farragut consisted of fourteen large wooden steam vessels of war and four iron-clads of which the Tecumseh arrived from Pensacola just in time for the engagement. The wooden vessels were lashed together in pairs and the whole column was headed by the iron-clads.
It was on the morning of August 5, 1864, that Farragut commenced his passage into Mobile Bay. Long before the break of day through the whole fleet could be heard the boatswain’s whistles and the cheery cries of “all hands” and “up all hammocks.” The wind was west-southwest, just where Farragut wanted it, as it would blow the smoke of the guns on Fort Morgan. At four o’clock the fleet set in motion, led by the four monitors. At 6.47 the booming of the Tecumseh’s guns was heard and shortly afterward Morgan replied. The story may now be taken up in the words of an officer on board the flag-ship Hartford:
The order was to “go slowly, go slowly” and receive the fire of Fort Morgan. At six minutes past seven the fort opened, having allowed us to get into such short range that we apprehended some snare; in fact, I heard the order passed for our guns to be elevated for fourteen hundred yards some time before one was fired. The calmness of the scene was sublime. No impatience, no irritation, no anxiety, except for the fort to open; and after it did open full five minutes elapsed before we answered. In the meantime the guns were trained as if at a target and all the sounds I could hear were “steady boys, steady! Left tackle a little! So, so!” Then the roar of a broadside and the eager cheer as the enemy were driven from their water battery. Don’t imagine they were frightened; no man could stand under that iron shower; and the brave fellows returned to their guns as soon as it lulled, only to be driven off again.
At twenty minutes past seven we had come within range of the enemy’s gunboats which opened their fire upon the Hartford, and as the Admiral afterward told me made her their special target. First they struck our foremast and then lodged a shot of 120 pounds in our mainmast. By degrees they got better elevation; and I have saved a splinter from the hammock netting to show how they felt their way lower. Splinters after that came by cords, and in size sometimes were like logs of wood. No longer came the cheering cry “Nobody hurt yet.” The Hartford by some unavoidable chance fought the enemy’s fleet and fort together for twenty minutes by herself, timbers crashing and wounded pouring down,—cries never to be forgotten.
By half past seven the iron-clad Tecumseh was well up with the fort and drawing slowly by, when suddenly she reeled to port and went down straightway with almost every soul on board. She had struck a mine. For a time this appalling disaster spread confusion in the fleet.
“What’s the matter?” was shouted from the flag-ship to the Brooklyn just ahead.
“Torpedoes,” was the response.
“Damn the torpedoes,” said Farragut, “go ahead.”
Go ahead the fleet did and at length had passed Fort Morgan and was in the sheltering waters of the bay. The cost of this operation in the Union fleet was 335 men. Of the 130 men in the Tecumseh when she was struck only 17 were saved.
Fort Gaines, the works on the western side of the channel, now surrendered. But Fort Morgan kept on fighting. The Union vessels were in Mobile Bay, but they had not yet forced the indomitable fort on Mobile Point to its knees. Admiral Farragut wrote to a friend:
We are now tightening the cords around Fort Morgan. Page is as surly as a bull-dog and says that he will die in his ditch....
How little people know the risks of life. Drayton made his clerk stay below because he was a young married man. All my staff,—Watson, McKinley and Brownell,—were in an exposed position on the poop deck but escaped unhurt while poor Heginbotham was killed.
For seventeen days Fort Morgan held out, though bombarded continuously. Then at length she surrendered, her citadel destroyed and her walls nearly blown to pieces. It is this pathetic shell that now greets the visitor’s eye on Mobile Point.
The two forts which were the scene of Farragut’s first brilliant exploit in running by the enemy’s works with wooden vessels have not been regularly garrisoned since 1871 and have been maintained only in a casual sort of a fashion. Stronger and newer defences have taken their place, though these two spots have had a long and honorable existence in the defence of the mouth of America’s greatest river and of its picturesque French-Spanish-American chief city, New Orleans. Situated 32 nautical miles by river from the Gulf of Mexico and about 22 miles from the light-house at the head of the passes of the Mississippi, they occupy the first habitable ground bordering the river, at a sharp bend known as English Turn. Fort St. Philip is on the northern bank of the river, Fort Jackson on the southern. Though so far from the Gulf by river, Fort St. Philip, owing to the peculiar formation of the mouth of the Mississippi, with long fingers spread out into the sea, is only a short distance from the Gulf as the crow flies.
About a mile above the site of Fort Jackson there stood an ancient French fortification known as Fort Bourbon, which gradually yielded to the encroachments of time so that now there is of it nothing left. Fort St. Philip, itself, was founded by the French and was surrendered to the United States in 1803 with the purchase of the Louisiana territory.
The situation of the two forts was early recognized by the United States as possessing much military value, and in 1812–1815 St. Philip was made over by the United States authorities and Fort Jackson was built. Fort St. Philip at the time of the Civil War consisted of a quadrangular earthwork with brick scarp rising 19 feet above the level of the river and a wet ditch with exterior batteries above and below. Fort Jackson, largely added to between 1824 and 1832, was a pentagonal bastioned fortification built of brick with casemates, glacis and wet ditch; and of the two was the more formidable work.
The two forts saw service in 1814 against the British. At this time the name Jackson was applied to the southern fort in honor of the fiery American commander whose defence of that city has become an inspiring legend.
The Confederate Government had early taken possession of the forts and had put them in complete order. When Farragut’s fleet appeared, early in the spring of 1862, Fort Jackson with its water battery mounted 75 guns and Fort St. Philip about 40. The works were garrisoned by about 1500 men, commanded by Brigadier General J. K. Duncan; St. Philip being under the direct command of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Higgins. Just above the forts the Confederates had placed a fleet of 15 vessels, including the iron-clad ram Manassas. Below Fort Jackson they had obstructed the river with a heavy chain brought from Pensacola. This chain was pinned to the under side of a row of cypress logs which were 30 feet long and four or five feet in diameter. The spring freshets caused this chain to break and it was replaced by two lighter chains supported in similar fashion.
As a first move against the Confederate strongholds, Farragut sent Commander Porter with his fleet of mortar vessels to bombard the forts. The bombardment opened on the 18th of April and continued without remission for six days, but though breaches were made in the walls and the levee was broken at one place so that the beleaguered men had a difficult task to keep the waters of the Mississippi from drowning them out, the action was inconclusive.
It was then that Farragut determined upon the bold move (later duplicated at Mobile) which was so great an element of his fame. At two o’clock on the morning of April 24, 1862, he set his fleet in motion up the river. The chain barriers were cut and the fleet contrived to get past the fort without serious damage or loss of life. Thus was accomplished the feat of passing, with wooden vessels in a stream half a mile wide, two forts specially prepared to resist such an effort. The Confederate fleet was met beyond the forts and repulsed after a sharp engagement.
Farragut now passed on to New Orleans to make sure of the rich prize of a city whose export business at that time was the greatest in the world, while Porter was left behind with a sufficient squadron to continue the bombardment of the forts. After being under continuous fire until the 28th of the month the forts surrendered, and have never since been in active service.
The reservation of Fort Jackson contains 557.6 acres and that of Fort St. Philip 1108.85 acres. The reservations consist entirely of swamp lands, during season of high water being almost completely inundated. Those portions containing the forts, quarters and other buildings are leveed on all sides, but notwithstanding the protection thus afforded there are times when the water rises so high as to become a source of great inconvenience in going about. This is especially the case when rain is added to the water which percolates through the levees.
Any account of Fort Jackson would be incomplete without allusion to its alligators. These reptiles constitute one of the principal objects of interest to visitors and may be seen in numbers floating in the moats or basking on shore in the sunlight. They are from five to fifteen feet in length and possess great strength. It was customary to feed them with bread and crackers from the bridges over the moats, calling them up by whistling, and from frequent occurrence of this act they seemed to become accustomed to the signal and responded to it just as might dogs.
The rattlesnakes of the vicinity are numerous and formidable. One was caught here measuring 11½ feet and having 27 rattles. Black snakes are large but rare. Moccasins, of which there are two varieties, attain a large size and are frequently very venomous.
The mosquitoes constitute a serious obstacle to the enjoyment of life to the infrequent garrisons at this post, for they not only ply their calling with great diligence during the night but in summer are equally zealous throughout the day. Various expedients are adopted to avoid and drive them away. The smudge is brought into frequent and useful requisition. Gloves are worn and covering of mosquito netting is frequently used to protect the neck and head.