A Youth's History of the Great Civil War
Van Evrie, Horton & Co., ©1866
Revised edition, ©2006 www.ronie-mooney-encs.us
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CHAPTER XXXIX, THE CONFEDERATE NAVY AND PRIVATEERS
ONE of the greatest difficulties the Confederates labored under from the beginning was their want of a Navy. Almost all the abolition successes at the commencement of the war were owing to gun-boats. The South had never been a mechanical or manufacturing people, but had yielded all these advantages to the North, content to pursue their course as planters and farmers. They saw now, when their social life was in danger, how important these vocations were to their defence.
Lincoln declared a blockade of all Southern ports and the North exerted every effort to make it effectual. President Davis tried to overcome somewhat of the inequality between his people and the North by issuing letters of marque, that is, he commissioned privateers, just as our fathers did in the wars of 1776 and 1812 against Great Britain. This has always been held to be legitimate warfare, and yet the abolitionists styled the Confederate privateers "pirates," and said they would not treat them as prisoners of war. When, however,they captured some they never dared to carry their threats into effect. If the Confederate cruisers were "pirates" then Paul Jones and thousands of the heroes of 1776 were pirates also. But such trash ought to deceive no one.
One of the most gallant and startling events of the war was the sudden attack of the iron-clad ship Virginia on the Federal fleet in Hampton Roads in 1862. This vessel was formerly the U.S. frigate Merrimac. She had been sunk by the Federals in 1861 at Norfolk when they abandoned the Navy Yard at that place. The Confederates raised her, changed her name to the Virginia and plated her over the top like an ark, with railroad iron. It was the first iron-clad vessel the world had ever known.
On the 8th of March she steamed out of Norfolk Harbor. The United States had four vessels in Hampton Roads, the Minnesota and Roanoke, large steamers, and the Cumberland and Congress, sailing vessels.
On she came, that queer-looking black ark, taking no heed, to the right or the left. She steered directly for the Cumberland. The Congress fired a broadside into her, but the balls danced from her sloping sides like hail-stones. When she came within range of the Cumberland, that vessel opened her guns upon her. But in vain. Her iron armor was invulnerable. The Virginia did not fire a shot. But with her monster iron prow now plainly visible made direct for the Cumberland. Crash! went the timbers, and soon down, down went the Cumberland with all on board.
The Virginia then turned to the Congress. But the commander of that vessel, fearing the fate of the Cumberland, ran her ashore. She them steamed for the Minnesota, but that vessel had got aground, and the Virginia could not reach her. She fired some shots into her without effect, and, as night was now coming on, she steamed back to Norfolk.
The next day the Virginia came out and confronted the Monitor, a new species of war vessel invented by a Mr.John Ericsson. This vessel has been described as "an iron cheese box set on an iron raft, and the whole set on a light hull shaped like a bark canoe." The fight between these two strange vessels lasted several hours, without any material damage to either. At last the Virginia returned to Norfolk. She had twisted her prow in sinking the Cumberland, or else the little Monitor might not have got off so easily. The commander of the Virginia, Franklin Buchanan, was wounded, and afterwards she was placed under the command of the gallant and noble Commodore Tatnall.
Both of these vessels finally ended their career without further glory. The little Monitor went down in a gale off Hatteras, while the Confederates were compelled to blow up the Virginia when they evacuated Norfolk, as she drew too much water to take her up the James River.
Notwithstanding all the drawbacks under which the Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Mr.Mallory, labored, it must be confessed he had achieved great results. He had been chairman of the Naval Committee in the U.S. Senate for many years, and his experience there was invaluable to him.
In the short space of two years he had purchased and equipped forty-five war vessels; had built twelve wooden and fourteen iron-clad vessels, besides having in progress of construction twenty more.
Several privateers, too, had been fitted out, and had done great damage to Northern commerce. And yet, though Great Britain and France recognized the Confederate States as belligerents, that is, as a government in fact, they refused to allow their vessels to take prizes, that is, captured ships, into neutral ports.
This was a serious drawback upon the Confederate cruisers, for it left them no course but to destroy the captured vessels. An immense number of Northern ships were thus destroyed.
One of the first vessels got afloat by the Confederates was the Sumter, under the command of Admiral Raphael Semmes. Then came the Florida, and afterwards the Alabama and Georgia. The abolitionists charged that all these vessels were fitted out with the knowledge and connivance of the English Government, for the purpose of driving all American ships from the sea.
It is impossible to say whether such was the fact or not. But certain it is it had that effect. No Northern man scarcely dared to send a ship to sea, for the Sumter, or the Alabama, or Florida, was pretty sure to pounce upon her and destroy her. Sometimes when one of these saucy Confederate cruisers would approach our coasts, whole squadrons of vessels would start out to catch her, but after a fruitless search would return home as wise as they went.
It would require a good deal of space to detail all the movements of these daring Confederates privateers. Sometimes they would be heard of in the Atlantic Ocean, and the next time they were heard from, they would be in the Indian Ocean, or the Cape of Good Hope,or in the China Seas, or the South Atlantic. They gave the North an infinite deal of trouble. Finally, the Alabama, while under the command of Admiral Semmes, engaged in a fight with the United States steamer Kearsarge, Captain Winslow. The Kearsarge was too much for her, and she was sunk. But Admiral Semmes made the abolitionists very mad, and to tell the truth, I think they have owed him a great grudge ever since.
The Confederates at last tried to build two large iron-clad rams in England, with which they expected to be able to break the blockade. But the earnest efforts made by Mr.Adams, the abolition minister in England, induced Earl Russell to seize them, though it is said it was done on suspicion, and not from any valid evidence that they were destined for the Confederates.
This was after Lincoln had issued his so-called Emancipation Proclamation. Before that the British Government seemed disposed to favor the Confederates. But after Mr.Lincoln made the war distinctly for negro equality, then the monarchists in England looked upon Mr. Lincoln as simply carrying out their policy on this continent, and were disposed to favor him. Indeed the abolition papers openly stated that the united States Government could not receive the sympathy of the monarchical countries of Europe until they came out distinctly for abolitionism.
This,no doubt, accounts for the change in the course of the British ministry. They ignored the Treaty of Paris, which requires that a blockade in order to be binding shall be effectual. But it was notorious that the Confederates always had more or less egress and ingress from their ports. At one time the steamers ran almost regularly from Charleston and Wilmington.
It had been well said that the South not only fought the North, but the whole world, leagued together in deadly warfare against the democratic and republican principles of liberty. The monarchists of Europe knew that to degrade whites to a level with negroes was the first step for the re-establishment of monarchical institutions in America. It was, in fact, the secret mine underneath the government of George Washington, which would blow it to atoms.
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