By the fall of the last and most powerful of the Confederate strongholds upon the Mississippi, and the consequent assertion of control by the United States Government over the whole of the great water course, was accomplished the first and chief of the two objects toward which Farragut was to co-operate. After manifold efforts and failures, the combined forces of the United States had at last sundered the Confederacy in twain along the principal one of those natural strategic lines which intersected it, and which make the strength or the weakness of States according as they are able or unable to hold them against an enemy. Of the two fragments, the smaller was militarily important only as a feeder to the other. Severed from the body to which they belonged, the seceded States west of the Mississippi sank into insignificance; the fire that had raged there would smoulder and die of itself, now that a broad belt which could not be passed interposed between it and the greater conflagration in the East.

It next became the task of the Union forces to hold firmly, by adequate defensive measures, the line they had gained; while the great mass of troops heretofore employed along the Mississippi in offensive operations were transferred farther east, to drive yet another column through a second natural line of cleavage from Nashville, through Georgia, to the Gulf or to the Atlantic seaboard. How this new work was performed under the successive leadership of Rosecrans, Grant, and Sherman, does not fall within the scope of the present work. Although the light steamers of the Mississippi squadron did good and often important service in this distant inland region, the river work of Farragut's heavy sea-going ships was now over. In furtherance of the great object of opening the Mississippi, they had left their native element, and, braving alike a treacherous navigation and hostile batteries, had penetrated deep into the vitals of the Confederacy. This great achievement wrought, they turned their prows again seaward. The formal transfer to Admiral Porter of the command over the whole Mississippi and its tributaries, above New Orleans, signalized the fact that Farragut's sphere of action was to be thenceforth on the coast; for New Orleans, though over a hundred miles from the mouth of a tideless river, whose waters flow ever downward to the sea, was nevertheless substantially a sea-coast city.

As the opening of the Mississippi was the more important of the two objects embraced in Farragut's orders, so did it also offer him the ampler field for the display of those highest qualities of a general officer which he abundantly possessed. The faculty of seizing upon the really decisive points of a situation, of correctly appreciating the conditions of the problem before him, of discerning whether the proper moment for action was yet distant or had already arrived, and of moving with celerity and adequate dispositions when the time did come—all these distinctive gifts of the natural commander-in-chief had been called into play, by the difficult questions arising in connection with the stupendous work of breaking the shackles by which the Confederates held the Mississippi chained. The task that still remained before him, the closing of the Confederate seaports within the limits of his command, though arduous and wearisome, did not make the same demand upon these more intellectual qualities. The sphere was more contracted, more isolated. It had fewer relations to the great military operations going on elsewhere, and, being in itself less complex, afforded less interest to the strategist. It involved, therefore, less of the work of the military leader which was so congenial to his aptitudes, and more of that of the administrator, to him naturally distasteful.

Nevertheless, as the complete fulfilment of his orders necessitated the reduction of a fortified seaport, he found in this undertaking the opportunity for showing a degree of resolution and presence of mind which was certainly not exceeded—perhaps not even equaled—in his previous career. At Mobile it was the tactician, the man of instant perception and ready action, rather than he of clear insight and careful planning, that is most conspicuous. On the same occasion, with actual disaster incurred and imminent confusion threatening his fleet, combined with a resistance sturdier than any he had yet encountered, the admiral's firmness and tenacity rose equal to the highest demand ever made upon them. In the lofty courage and stern determination which plucked victory out of the very jaws of defeat, the battle of Mobile Bay was to the career of Farragut what the battle of Copenhagen was to that of Nelson. Perhaps we may even say, borrowing the words of an eloquent French writer upon the latter event, the battle of Mobile will always be in the eyes of seamen Farragut's surest claim to glory.[W]

Up to the time of Farragut's departure for the North, in August, 1863, the blockade of the Gulf sea-coast within the limits of his command, though technically effective, had for the most part only been enforced by the usual method of cruising or anchoring off the entrances of the ports. Such a watch, however, is a very imperfect substitute for the iron yoke that is imposed by holding all the principal harbors, the gateways for communication with the outer world. This was clearly enough realized; and the purpose of Farragut, as of his Government, had been so to occupy the ports within his district. At one time, in December, 1862, he was able to say exultingly that he did so hold the whole coast, except Mobile; but the disasters at Galveston and Sabine Pass quickly intervened, and those ports remained thenceforth in the hands of the enemy. On the Texas coast, however, blockade-running properly so called—the entrance, that is, of blockaded Confederate harbors—was a small matter compared with the flourishing contraband trade carried on through the Mexican port Matamoras and across the Rio Grande. When Farragut's lieutenant, Commodore Henry H. Bell, visited this remote and ordinarily deserted spot in May, 1863, he counted sixty-eight sails at anchor in the offing and a forest of smaller craft inside the river, some of which were occupied in loading and unloading the outside shipping; to such proportions had grown the trade of a town which neither possessed a harbor nor a back country capable of sustaining such a traffic. Under proper precautions by the parties engaged, this, though clearly hostile, was difficult to touch; but it also became of comparatively little importance when the Mississippi fell.

Not so with Mobile. As port after port was taken, as the lines of the general blockade drew closer and closer, the needs of the Confederacy for the approaching death-struggle grew more and more crying, and the practicable harbors still in their hands became proportionately valuable and the scenes of increasing activity. After the fall of New Orleans and the evacuation of Pensacola, in the spring of 1862, Mobile was by far the best port on the Gulf coast left to the Confederates. Though admitting a less draught of water than the neighboring harbor of Pensacola, it enjoyed the advantage over it of excellent water communications with the interior; two large rivers with extensive tributary systems emptying into its bay. Thanks to this circumstance, it had become a place of very considerable trade, ranking next to New Orleans in the Gulf; and its growing commerce, in turn, reacted upon the communications by promoting the development of its railroad system. The region of which Mobile was the natural port did not depend for its importance only upon agricultural products; under somewhat favorable conditions it had developed some manufacturing interests in which the Southern States were generally very deficient, and which afterward found active employment in the construction of the Tennessee, the most formidable ironclad vessel built by the Confederates.

For all these reasons the tenure of Mobile became a matter of serious consequence to the enemy; and, as Farragut had from the first foreseen, they made active use of the respite afforded them by the unfortunate obstinacy of the Navy Department in refusing him permission to attack after New Orleans fell. The enterprise then was by no means as difficult as the passage of the Mississippi forts just effected; and once captured, the holding of the harbor would require only the small number of troops necessary to garrison the powerful masonry fort which commanded the main ship channel, supported by a naval force much less numerous than that required to blockade outside. The undertaking was therefore not open to the objection of unduly exposing the troops and ships placed in unfortified or poorly fortified harbors, which received such a sad illustration at Galveston; but it was dropped, owing, first, to the preoccupation of the Government with its expectations of immediately reducing the Mississippi, and afterward to the fear of losing ships which at that time could not be replaced. Hesitation to risk their ships and to take decisive action when seasonable opportunity offers, is the penalty paid by nations which practise undue economy in their preparations for war. When at last it became urgent to capture Mobile before the powerful ironclad then building was completed, the preparations of the defense were so far advanced that ironclad vessels were needed for the attack; and before these could be, or at least before they were, supplied, the Tennessee, which by rapid action might have been forestalled like the similar vessel at New Orleans, was ready for battle. Had she been used with greater wisdom by those who directed her movements, she might have added very seriously to the embarrassment of the United States admiral.

When Farragut, after an absence of nearly six months, returned to his station in January, 1864, it was with the expectation of a speedy attack upon Mobile. On his way to New Orleans he stopped off the bar, and on the 20th of January made a reconnaissance with a couple of gunboats, approaching to a little more than three miles from the forts commanding the entrance. He then reported to the department that he was satisfied that, if he had one ironclad, he could destroy the whole of the enemy's force in the bay, and then reduce the forts at leisure with the co-operation of about five thousand troops. "But without ironclads," he added, "we should not be able to fight the enemy's vessels of that class with much prospect of success, as the latter would lie on the flats, where our ships could not get at them. By reference to the chart you will see how small a space there is for the ships to manoeuvre. Wooden vessels can do nothing with the ironclads, unless by getting within one or two hundred yards, so as to ram them or pour in a broadside." He repeats the information given by a refugee, that the ironclad Nashville would not be ready before March, and that the Confederate admiral announced that when she was he would raise the blockade. "It is depressing," he adds, "to see how easily false reports circulate, and in what a state of alarm the community is kept by the most absurd rumors. If the Department could get one or two ironclads here, it would put an end to this state of things and restore confidence to the people of the ports now in our possession. I feel no apprehension about Buchanan's raising the blockade; but, with such a force as he has in the bay, it would be unwise to take in our wooden vessels without the means of fighting the enemy on an equal footing." Having made this reconnaissance, he went on to New Orleans, arriving there January 22d.

It appears, therefore, that, regarded as a naval question, Farragut considered the time had gone by for an attempt to run the forts of Mobile Bay, and that it would not return until some ironclads were furnished him by the Department. The capture of the forts he at no time expected, except by the same means as he had looked to for the reduction of those in the Mississippi—that is, by a combined military and naval operation. In both cases the navy was to plant itself across the enemy's communications, which it could do by running the gantlet of his guns. It then remained for the land forces either to complete the investment and await their fall by the slow process of famine, or to proceed with a regular siege covered by the fleet. Without the protection of the ships in the bay, the army would be continually harassed by the light gunboats of the enemy, and very possibly exposed to attack by superior force. Without the troops, the presence of the ships inside would be powerless to compel the surrender of the works, or to prevent their receiving some supplies. But in the two years that had very nearly elapsed since Farragut, if permitted his own wish, would have attacked, the strengthening of the works and the introduction of the ironclads had materially altered the question. He was, it is true, misinformed as to the readiness of the latter. The vessels that were dignified by that name when he first returned to his station, took no part in the defense, either of the bay or, later, of the city. He was deceived, probably, from the fact that the Confederates themselves were deceived, with the exception of a few who had more intimate knowledge of their real value; and consequently the reports that were brought off agreed in giving them a character which they did not deserve.

An attack upon Mobile had been a cherished project with General Grant after the fall of Vicksburg. It was to that—and not to the unfortunate Red River expedition of 1864—that he would have devoted Banks's army in the Southwest; moving it, of course, in concert with, so as to support and be supported by, the other great operations which took place that year—Sherman's advance upon Atlanta and his own against Richmond. It was to Mobile, and not to Savannah, that he first looked as the point toward which Sherman would act after the capture of Atlanta; the line from Atlanta to Mobile would be that along which, by the control of the intervening railroad systems, the Confederacy would again be cleft in twain, as by the subjugation of the Mississippi. For this reason chiefly he had, while still only commander of the Army of the Tennessee, and before he succeeded to the lieutenant-generalship and the command of all the armies, strenuously opposed the Red River expedition; which he looked upon as an ex-centric movement, tending rather to keep alive the war across the Mississippi, which would fade if left alone, and likely to result in the troops engaged not getting back in time or in condition to act against Mobile.

As Grant feared, so it happened. The expedition being already organized and on the point of starting when he became commander-in-chief, he allowed it to proceed; but it ended in disaster, and was the cause of forty thousand good troops being unavailable for the decisive operations which began two months later. Not until the end of July could a force be spared even for the minor task of reducing the Mobile forts; and until then Farragut had to wait in order to attack to any purpose. By the time the army in the Southwest, in the command of which General Canby relieved Banks on the 20th of May, was again ready to move, Sherman had taken Atlanta, Hood had fallen upon his communications with Chattanooga, and the famous march to the sea had been determined. Farragut's battle in Mobile Bay therefore did not prove to be, as Grant had hoped, and as his passage of the Mississippi forts had been, a step in a series of grand military operations, by which the United States forces should gain control of a line vital to the Confederacy, and again divide it into two fragments. It remained an isolated achievement, though one of great importance, converting Mobile from a maritime to an inland city, putting a stop to all serious blockade-running in the Gulf, and crushing finally the enemy's ill-founded hopes of an offensive movement by ironclads there equipped.

[Illustration text:
REFERENCE
1. Tecumseh.
2. Manhattan.
3. Winnebago.
4. Chickasaw.
5. Brooklyn.
6. Octorora.
7. Hartford, Flag-ship.
8. Metacomet.
9. Richmond.
10. Port Royal.
11. Lackawanna.
12. Seminole.
13. Admiral's barge Loyall.
14. Monongahela.
15. Kennebec.
16. Ossipee.
17. Itasca.
18. Oneida.
19. Galena.
------ Course of chasing vessels.
...... Course of chased vessels.

The city of Mobile is itself some thirty miles from the Gulf, near the head of a broad but generally shallow bay which bears the same name. The principal entrance from the Gulf is between Mobile Point—a long, narrow, sandy beach which projects from the east side of the bay—and Dauphin Island, one of a chain which runs parallel to the coast of Mississippi and encloses Mississippi Sound. At the end of Mobile Point stands Fort Morgan, the principal defense of the bay, for the main ship channel passes close under its guns. At the eastern end of Dauphin Island stood a much smaller work, called Fort Gaines. Between this and Fort Morgan the distance is nearly three miles; but a bank of hard sand making out from the island prevents vessels of any considerable size approaching it nearer than two miles. Between Dauphin Island and the mainland there are some shoal channels, by which vessels of very light draft can pass from Mississippi Sound into the bay. These were not practicable for the fighting vessels of Farragut's fleet; but a small earthwork known as Fort Powell had been thrown up to command the deepest of them, called Grant's Pass.

The sand bank off Dauphin Island extends south as well as east, reaching between four and five miles from the entrance. A similar shoal stretches out to the southward from Mobile Point. Between the two lies the main ship channel, varying in width from seven hundred and fifty yards, three miles outside, to two thousand, or about a sea mile, abreast Fort Morgan. Nearly twenty-one feet can be carried over the bar; and after passing Fort Morgan the channel spreads, forming a hole or pocket of irregular contour, about four miles deep by two wide, in which the depth is from twenty to twenty-four feet. Beyond this hole, on either side the bay and toward the city, the water shoals gradually but considerably, and the heavier of Farragut's ships could not act outside of its limits. The Confederate ironclad Tennessee, on the contrary, drawing but fourteen feet, had a more extensive field of operations open to her, and, from the gradual diminution of the soundings, was able to take her position at a distance where the most formidable of her opponents could neither follow her nor penetrate her sides with their shot.

Between the city and the lower bay there were extensive flats, over which not even the fourteen feet of the Tennessee could be taken; and these in one part, called Dog River Bar, shoaled to as little as nine feet. To bring the Tennessee into action for the defense of the entrance and of the lower bay, it was necessary to carry her across these flats—an undertaking requiring both time and mechanical appliances, neither of which would be available if an enemy were inside to molest the operations. As the Tennessee was distinctly the most formidable element in the dangers Farragut had to encounter, and as the character of the soundings gave her a field of action peculiarly suited to utilize her especial powers, which consisted in the strength of her sides and the long range of her heavy rifled guns, it was particularly desirable to anticipate her crossing the upper bar by the fleet itself crossing the lower. That done, the Tennessee was reduced to impotence. It was not done, for two reasons. First, the Navy Department did not send the ironclads which Farragut demanded; and second, the army in the Southwest, having wasted its strength in a divergent operation, was unable to supply the force necessary to reduce Fort Morgan. That the delay was not productive of more serious consequences was due to the impatience or recklessness of the Confederate admiral, and to the energy with which Farragut seized the opportunity afforded by his mistake.

Six months passed before the moment for decisive action arrived. Though devoid of military interest, they were far from being months of idleness or enjoyment. The administrative duties of so large a command drew heavily upon the time and energies of the admiral, and, as has been said, they were not congenial to him. When the Tennessee crossed Dog River Bar, which she did on the 18th of May, Farragut felt that he must be on the spot, in case she attempted to execute her threat of coming out to break up the blockade; but up to that time he was moving actively from point to point of his command, between New Orleans on the one side, and Pensacola, now become his principal base, on the other. From time to time he was off Mobile, and for more than two months preceding the battle of the Bay he lay off the port in all the dreary monotony of blockade service. The clerical labor attaching to the large force and numerous interests entrusted to him was immense. Every mail brought him, of course, numerous communications from the Department. "I received your letter last evening," he writes to a member of his family, "but at the same time received so many from the Department that my eyes were used up before I came to yours, so that mine to you will be short and badly written." A very large part of this correspondence consisted of letters from United States consuls abroad, forwarded through the State Department, giving particulars of vessels fitting or loading for the Confederacy or to break the blockade. "Nearly all my clerical force is broken down," he writes on another occasion. "The fact is, I never saw so much writing; and yet Drayton, who does as much as any of them, says it is all necessary. So I tell them to go on. I do not mind signing my name. Although I write all my own letters, some one has to copy them. My fleet is so large now that it keeps us all at work the whole time."

But while he spoke thus lightly of his own share in these labors, the confinement, the necessary attention to and study of larger details, even while he intrusted the minor to others, and the unavoidable anxieties of a man who had so many important irons in the fire, and at the same time was approaching his sixty-fourth year, told upon him. To this he bore witness when, after the capture of the Mobile forts, the Department desired him to take command of the North Atlantic fleet, with a view to the reduction of Wilmington, North Carolina. "They must think I am made of iron," he wrote home. "I wrote the Secretary a long letter, telling him that my health was not such as to justify my going to a new station to commence new organizations; that I must have rest for my mind and exercise for my body; that I had been down here within two months of five years, out of six, and recently six months on constant blockade off this port, and my mind on the stretch all the time; and now to commence a blockade again on the Atlantic coast! Why, even the routine of duty for a fleet of eighty sail of vessels works us all to death; and but that I have the most industrious fleet-captain and secretary, it would never be half done. It is difficult to keep things straight." "I know," he writes on another occasion, "that few men could have gone through what I have in the last three years, and no one ever will know except yourself perhaps.... What the fight was to my poor brains, neither you nor any one else will ever be able to comprehend. Six months constantly watching day and night for an enemy; to know him to be as brave, as skilful, and as determined as myself; who was pledged to his Government and the South to drive me away and raise the blockade, and free the Mississippi from our rule. While I was equally pledged to my Government that I would capture or destroy the rebel."

Besides his labors and the official anxieties due to his individual command, he again, as in 1862, felt deeply the misfortunes with which the general campaign of 1864 opened, and especially in the Southwest. There was continually present to the minds of the leaders of the United States forces during the war the apprehension that the constancy of the people might fail; that doubtful issues might lead to a depression that would cause the abandonment of the contest, in which success was nevertheless assured to perseverance and vigor. Grant's memoirs bear continual testimony to the statesmanlike regard he had, in planning his greater military operations, to this important factor in the war, the vacillation under uncertainty of that popular support upon which success depended. The temperament of Farragut reflected readily the ups and downs of the struggle, and was saddened by the weaknesses and inconsistencies of his own side, which he keenly appreciated. "I am depressed," he writes, "by the bad news from every direction. The enemy seem to be bending their whole soul and body to the war and whipping us in every direction. What a disgrace that, with their slender means, they should, after three years, contend with us from one end of the country to the other!... I get right sick, every now and then, at the bad news." "The victory of the Kearsarge over the Alabama," on a more auspicious occasion, "raised me up. I would sooner have fought that fight than any ever fought on the ocean"; and his exultation was the greater that the first lieutenant of the Kearsarge had been with him in the same capacity when the Hartford passed the Mississippi forts.

But, while thus sensitive to the vicissitudes of his country's fortunes, he did not readily entertain the thought of being himself defeated. "As to being prepared for defeat," he wrote before New Orleans, "I certainly am not. Any man who is prepared for defeat would be half defeated before he commenced. I hope for success; shall do all in my power to secure it, and trust to God for the rest." And again: "The officers say I don't believe anything. I certainly believe very little that comes in the shape of reports. They keep everybody stirred up. I mean to be whipped or to whip my enemy, and not to be scared to death." "I hope for the best results," he wrote a week before forcing the passage into Mobile Bay, "as I am always hopeful; put my shoulder to the wheel with my best judgment, and trust to God for the rest"; or, in more homely language: "Everything has a weak spot, and the first thing I try to do is to find out where it is, and pitch into it with the biggest shell or shot that I have, and repeat the dose until it operates." "The Confederates at Fort Morgan are making great preparations to receive us. That concerns me but little"—words used not in a spirit of mere light-heartedness, but because it was a condition he had from the first accepted, and over which he hoped to triumph; for he continues, "I know they will do all in their power to destroy us, and we will reciprocate the compliment. I hope to give them a fair fight if once I get inside. I expect nothing from them but that they will try to blow me up if they can."

Amid such cares and in such a spirit were spent the six months of monotonous outside blockade preceding the great victory that crowned his active career. The only relief to its weariness was a bombardment of Fort Powell, undertaken by the light-draft steamers of the squadron from Mississippi Sound in February, to create a diversion in favor of Sherman's raid from Vicksburg upon Meridian, which was then in progress. The boats could not get nearer to the work than four thousand yards, and even then were aground; so that no very serious effect was produced. A greater and more painful excitement was aroused by the misfortunes of the Red River expedition in April and May. Begun on unsound military principles, but designed politically to assert against French intrigues the claim of the United States to Texas, that ill-omened enterprise culminated in a retreat which well-nigh involved the Mississippi squadron in an overwhelming disaster. The Red River was unusually low for the season, and falling instead of rising. There was not, when the army retired, water enough to enable the gun-boats which had ascended the river to repass the rapids at Alexandria. The army could delay but for a limited time, at the end of which, if the boats had not passed, they must be left to their fate. Farragut, who was in New Orleans when the news arrived, wrote bitterly about the blunders made, and was sorely distressed for the issue to the navy. "I have no spirit to write," he says. "I have had such long letters from Porter and Banks, and find things so bad with them that I don't know how to help them. I am afraid Porter, with all his energy, will lose some of his finest vessels. I have just sent him some boats to help him." The boats, however, were saved by the skill and energy of Colonel Joseph Bailey, the chief-of-engineers in Franklin's corps of Banks's army; by whom was thrown across the river a dam, which raised the water on the shoals sufficiently for the boats to cross.

A more pleasant incident occurred to vary the sameness of the blockade days, in the presentation to the admiral, by the Union League Club of New York, of a very handsome sword, with scabbard of massive gold and silver, the hilt set in brilliants. The gift was accompanied by a letter expressive of the givers' appreciation of the brilliant services rendered to the nation, and was a grateful reminder to Farragut, then watching before Mobile for his last grapple with the enemy in his front, that his fellow-countrymen in their homes were not wanting in recognition of the dangers he had incurred, nor of those he was still facing on their behalf.

The time was now close at hand when the weary and anxious waiting, which the admiral afterward so feelingly described, was to be exchanged for the more vigorous action he had so long desired. The co-operation of a division from Canby's army was assured toward the end of July; and at the same time the long-promised, long-delayed monitor ironclads began to arrive. As the want of these and the presence of the enemy's ironclads had been the reasons which, in Farragut's opinion, had made necessary the postponement of the purely naval part of the combined operation, a short description of the vessels which formed so potent an element in his calculations will not be out of place.

The idea of the monitor type of ironclads, which was then the prevalent one in the United States Navy, was brought by John Ericsson from his home in Sweden, where it had been suggested to him by the sight of the rafts with a house upon them crossing the waters with which he was familiar. In its conception, the monitor was simply a round fort, heavily plated with iron, resting upon a raft nearly flush with the water, and provided with the motive power of steam. The forts, or turrets, as they are commonly called, might be one or more in number; and each carried usually two heavy guns, standing side by side and pointing in exactly the same direction, so that if discharged together the projectiles would follow parallel courses. Within the turret the guns could be turned neither to the right nor to the left; if such a change of aim were wished, the turret itself was revolved by steam machinery provided for the purpose. When loading, the port through which the gun was fired was turned away from the enemy; so that if a shot happened to strike at that time it fell on the solid armor. Above the gun-turret there was a second of much smaller diameter, which did not revolve. It was also heavily plated and designed to shelter the commanding officer and those charged with the steering of the ship. So much inconvenience was, however, experienced from smoke and from concussion when these steering turrets were struck, and their dimensions were so contracted, that many captains preferred to remain outside, where they could see better, their orders being transmitted to the helmsmen through the sight-holes pierced in the armor. Of these ironclads, four accompanied Farragut in his attack upon Mobile Bay. Two, the Tecumseh and Manhattan, came from the Atlantic coast, and were sea-going monitors. They had each but one turret, in which they carried two fifteen-inch guns, the heaviest then in use afloat. The other two were river monitors, built at St. Louis for service in the Mississippi. They were consequently of light draught, so much so that to obtain the necessary motive power they each had four screw propellers of small diameter, and they carried four eleven-inch guns in two turrets. Their names were the Winnebago and the Chickasaw. The armor of the two single-turreted monitors was ten inches thick, and that of the river monitors eight and a half inches.

The Tennessee, to which these were to be opposed, was a vessel of different type, and one to which the few ironclads built by the Confederates for the most part conformed—called commonly the broadside ironclad, because the guns, like those of ships-of-war generally, were disposed chiefly along the sides. Her hull was built at Selma, on the Alabama River, and thence towed to Mobile to be plated; it being desirable to take her down the river while as light as possible. She was two hundred and nine feet long and forty-eight feet wide, drawing, as has been said, fourteen feet when loaded. Upon her deck, midway between the bow and the stern, was a house seventy-nine feet long, whose sides and ends sloped at an angle of thirty-four degrees and were covered with iron plating, six inches thick on the forward end and five inches thick on the other end and the sides. With the inclination given, a cannon ball striking would be likely to be turned upward by the iron surface, instead of penetrating. The sloping sides of the house were carried down beyond the point where they met those of the vessel, until two feet below the water. There they turned and struck in at the same angle toward the hull, which they again met six or seven feet under water. Thus was formed all round the ship a knuckle, which, being filled-in solid and covered with iron, was a very perfect protection against any but the most powerful ram. The Tennessee herself was fitted with a beak and intended to ram, but, owing to the slender resources of the Confederacy, her engines were too weak to be effective for that purpose. She could only steam six knots. Her battery, however, was well selected and powerful. She carried on each side two six-inch rifles, and at each end one seven-inch rifle—six guns in all. There were, besides the Tennessee, three wooden gunboats, and Farragut was informed that there were also four ironclads; but this, as regards the lower bay at least, was a mistake.

It will be seen from this account, and from the description before given of Mobile Bay, that the advantages of the Tennessee were her great protective strength, a draught which enabled her to choose her own position relatively to the heaviest of the enemy's ships, and the superior range and penetrative power of her guns, being rifles; for while there were cannon of this type in the United States fleet, the great majority of them were smooth bores. The ironclads opposed to her had only smooth-bore guns, incapable of penetrating her side, and therefore only able to reduce her by a continued pounding, which might shake her frame to pieces. The chief defects of the Tennessee as a harbor-defense ship, for which she was mainly intended, were her very inferior speed, and the fact that, by an oversight, her steering chains were left exposed to the enemy's shot. This combination of strong and weak points constituted her tactical qualities, which should have determined the use made of her in the impending battle.

Although the ironclads were, as Farragut esteemed them, the controlling factors in the defense and attack, the Tennessee was by no means the only very formidable obstacle in the way of his success. Except the ironclads, the fleet he carried into Mobile Bay was not substantially stronger than that with which he fought his way up the Mississippi; but since that time the enemy had done much to strengthen the works which he now had to encounter. The number of heavy guns in Fort Morgan bearing upon the channel was thirty-eight. In Fort Jackson, excluding the obsolete caliber of twenty-four pounders, there were twenty-seven, and in St. Philip twenty-one—total, forty-eight; but in caliber and efficiency those of Morgan were distinctly superior to those of the river forts, and it may be considered an advantage that the power was here concentrated in a single work under a single hand. The gunners of Fort Morgan, moreover, had not been exposed to the exhausting harassment of a most efficient bombardment, extending over the six days prior to the final demand upon their energies. They came fresh to their work, and suffered during its continuance from no distraction except that caused by the fire of the fleet itself. While, therefore, Fort Gaines could not be considered to support Morgan by any deterrent or injurious influence upon the United States fleet, the latter work was by itself superior in offensive power to the two Mississippi forts.

To the general defense the Confederates had here brought two other factors, one of a most important and as yet unknown power. As the sand bank extending eastward from Dauphin Island was to some extent passable by light gunboats, a line of piles was driven in the direction of Fort Morgan nearly to the edge of the channel. Where the piles stopped a triple line of torpedoes began, following the same general course, and ending only at a hundred yards from Fort Morgan, where a narrow opening was left for the passage of friendly vessels—blockade runners and others. Had the electrical appliances of the Confederacy been at that time more highly developed, this narrow gap would doubtless also have been filled with mines, whose explosion depended upon operators ashore. As it was, the torpedo system employed at Mobile, with some few possible exceptions, was solely mechanical; the explosion depended upon contact by the passing vessel with the mine. To insure this, the line was triple; those in the second and third rows not being in the alignment of the first, but so placed as to fill the interstices and make almost impracticable the avoidance of all three torpedoes belonging to the same group.

These arrangements were sufficiently well known to Farragut through information brought by refugees or deserters. They—the power of the works, the disposition of the torpedoes, the Tennessee and her companions—constituted the elements of the problem which he had to solve to get his fleet safely past the obstacles into the bay. Although not disposed to lay as much stress as others upon the torpedoes, which were then but an imperfectly developed weapon, prudence dictated to him the necessity of passing between them and the fort; and this was fortunately in accordance with the sound policy which dictates that wooden vessels engaging permanent works, less liable than themselves to penetration, should get as close as possible to the enemy, whose fire they may then beat down by the rapidity of their own. There were certain black buoys floating across the channel, between the piles and Fort Morgan, and it was understood that these marked the position of the torpedoes. The admiral's flag-lieutenant, Lieutenant (now Captain) John C. Watson, had examined these buoys in several nightly reconnaissances; but, although he had not been able to discover any of the mines, the assurances of their existence could not be disregarded. His examination doubtless had some effect upon the admiral's instant determination, in the unforeseen emergency that arose during the action, to pass over the spot where the hidden dangers were said to lie; but in the dispositions for battle the order was given for the fleet to pass eastward of the easternmost buoy, where no torpedoes would be found.

The closeness of this approach, however, and the fact that the line of the channel led in at right angles to the entrance, had the disadvantage of obstructing the fire of the broadside wooden vessels, in which the offensive strength of the fleet, outside the monitors, consisted. The guns of those ships, being disposed along the sides, were for the most part able to bear only upon an enemy abreast of them, with a small additional angle of train toward ahead or astern. It was not, therefore, until nearly up with the fort that these numerous cannon would come into play, and exercise that preponderating effect which had driven off the gunners at Forts St. Philip and Jackson. This inconvenience results from the construction of such ships, and can only be overcome by a movement of the helm causing the ship to diverge from her course; a resort which led a witty Frenchman to say that a ship-of-war so situated is like a shark, that can only bite by turning on its back. The remedy, however applicable under certain circumstances and in the case of a single ship, causes delay, and therefore is worse than the evil for a fleet advancing to the attack of forts, where the object must be to close as rapidly as possible. There are, however, on board such vessels a few guns, mounted forward and called chase guns, which, from the rounding of the bows, bear sooner than the others upon the enemy toward whom they are moving. To support these and concentrate from the earliest moment as effective a fire as possible upon the works, Farragut brought his ironclads inside of the wooden vessels, and abreast the four leaders of that column. The heavy guns of the monitors could fire all around the horizon, from right ahead to right astern; and the disposition had the additional great advantage that, in the critical passage inside the torpedo buoys, these all-important vessels would be on the safer side, the wooden ships interposing between them and the sunken dangers, which threatened an injury far more instantaneous and vital than any to be feared from the enemy's shot and shell.

The position of the ironclads being determined by these considerations, the arrangement of the wooden ships for the attack conformed to the admiral's principle, that the greatest security was to be found in concentrating upon the enemy the heaviest fire attainable from his own guns. As at Port Hudson, a large proportion of the fourteen vessels he purposed to take in with him were of the gunboat class, or a little above it. Resort was accordingly again had to the double column adopted there; the seven ships that had the most powerful batteries forming the right column to engage Fort Morgan. The lighter ones were distributed in the other column, and lashed each to one of the heavier ships, in an order probably designed, though it is not expressly so stated, to make the combined steam power of the several pairs as nearly equal as possible. Among the gunboats there were three that had side-wheel engines, the machinery of which is necessarily more above water, and so more exposed than that of a screw—a condition which, although their batteries were powerful for their tonnage, emphasized the necessity of sheltering them behind other ships during the furious few minutes of passing under the guns of the fort.

The sum of these various considerations thus resulted in the fleet advancing into action in a column of pairs, in which the heaviest ships led in the fighting column. To this the admiral was probably induced by the reflection that the first broadsides are half the battle, and the freshest attack of the enemy should be met by the most vigorous resistance on his own part; but it is open to doubt whether one of these powerful vessels would not have been better placed in the rear. Upon a resolute enemy, the effect of each ship is simply to drive him to cover while she passes, to resume his activity when relieved from the pressure of her fire. The case is not strictly similar to the advance of a column of troops upon a fortified position, where the head does the most of the fighting, and the rear mainly contributes inertia to the movement of the mass. It is at least open to argument that a fire progressively diminishing from van to rear is not, for the passage of permanent works, a disposition as good as a weight of battery somewhat more equally distributed, with, however, a decided preponderance in the van. The last of the ships in this column received a shot in the boiler, which entirely disabled her—an accident that may have been purely fortuitous, and to which any one of her predecessors was in a degree liable, but also possibly due to the greater activity of the enemy when no longer scourged by the more powerful batteries which preceded. She was saved from the more serious results of this disaster, and the squadron spared the necessity of rallying to her support, by the other admirable precautions dictated by Farragut's forethought.

Subjected thus to analysis, there seems much to praise and very little to criticise in the tactical dispositions made by the admiral on this momentous occasion. But the tactical dispositions, though most important, are not the only considerations; it is the part of the commander-in-chief to take advantage of any other circumstances that may make in his favor. Until the forts were passed the character of the bottom left Farragut no choice as to the direction of his attack. There was but one road to take, and the only other question was the order in which to arrange his ships. But there were two conditions not entirely within his control, yet sure to occur in time, which he considered too advantageous to be overlooked. He wanted a flood tide, which would help a crippled vessel past the works; and also a west wind, which would blow the smoke from the scene of battle and upon Fort Morgan, thereby giving to the pilots, upon whom so much depended, and to the gunners of the ships, the advantage of clearer sight. The time of the tide, in most quarters a matter of simple calculation, is in the Gulf often affected by the wind. The wind, on the other hand, in the summer months, blows from the south during the early morning, and then works round to the westward; so that the chances were in favor of his obtaining his wishes.

The dispositions taken by the Confederates to meet the assault which they saw to be impending were more simple; they having but a small mobile force, and their fortifications being tied to their places. A seaport liable to attack is a battle-field, in utilizing whose natural features, so as to present the strongest tactical combination against entrance or subjection by an enemy, the skill of the engineer is shown; but, unlike battle-fields in general, much time and study is allowed to develop his plans. In the case of Mobile Bay, the narrow and direct character of the approach by the main ship channel left little opportunity for skill to display itself. To place at the end of Mobile Point the heaviest fort, enfilading the channel, and to confine the latter to the narrowest bed, compelling the assailant into the most unfavorable route, were measures too obvious to escape the most incapable. To obtain the utmost advantage from this approach of the enemy, the little naval force was advanced from Mobile Point, so as to stretch at right angles across the channel just within the torpedo line. There, without being incommoded by the fire of the fort, or in any way embarrassing it, they secured a clear sweep for their guns, raking their opponents; who, being for the time unable to deviate from their course, could not reply to this galling attack. By gradually retiring, the Confederate gunboats could retain this superiority during the advance of their foes, until the latter reached the wide hole within, where there was room to manoeuvre. This position and the subsequent course of action described comprise the tactical management of the Southern vessels during the engagement. It was well devised, and made probably the best use of the advantages of the ground possible to so inferior a force. The Tennessee took position with them, but her after action was different.

As the day of the last and, with the exception of the Essex fight of his boyhood, the most desperate battle of his life drew near, a certain solemnity—one might almost say depression—is perceptible in the home letters of the admiral. Had the action proved fatal to him it could scarcely have failed to attract the attention which is similarly arrested by the chastened tone of Nelson's life and writing immediately before Trafalgar; and although there is certainly none of that outspoken foreboding which marked the last day of the English hero, Farragut's written words are in such apparent contrast to the usual buoyant, confident temper of the man, that they would readily have been construed into one of those presentiments with which military annals abound. "With such a mother," he writes to his son a week before the battle, "you could not fail to have proper sentiments of religion and virtue. I feel that I have done my duty by you both, as far as the weakness of my nature would allow. I have been devoted to you both, and when it pleases God to take me hence I shall feel that I have done my duty. I am not conscious of ever having wronged any one, and have tried to do as much good as I could. Take care of your mother if I should go, and may God bless and preserve you both!" The day before the action he wrote the following letter to his wife, which, as his son remarks in his Life of the admiral, shows that he appreciated the desperate work before him:

A more touching and gratifying testimony of unwavering attachment, after more than twenty years of marriage, no wife could desire. It was an attachment also not merely professed in words, but evidenced by the whole course of his life and conduct. Infidelity or neglect of a wife was, in truth, in the estimation of Admiral Farragut, one of the most serious of blots upon a man's character, drawing out always his bitterest condemnation.

A pleasing glimpse is at this same period afforded of his relations to the surviving members of his father's family, who still remained in or near New Orleans, and from whom by the conditions of his profession he had been separated since his childhood. "My dear sister," he writes, "has sent me a Holy Virgin like the one Rose gave me. She said it was blessed by the archbishop, who said I was good to the priests. I only tell you this," adds the admiral dryly, "to show you that they did not succeed in impressing the bishop with the idea that I had robbed the church at Point CoupÉe." This is not the only mention of his sister during this time, and it is evident that two years' occupation of New Orleans by the Union forces had done much to mollify public sentiment; for immediately after the surrender he had written home, "It is a strange thought that I am here among my relatives, and yet not one has dared to say 'I am happy to see you.'"

On the 8th of July General Canby, accompanied by General Granger, who was to have immediate charge of the land operations against the Mobile forts, had called upon the admiral to make the preliminary arrangements. Somewhat later Canby sent word that he could not spare men enough to invest both Gaines and Morgan at the same time; and at Farragut's suggestion it was then decided to land first upon Dauphin Island, he undertaking to send a gunboat to cover the movement. Granger visited him again on the 1st of August, and as the admiral then had reason to expect the last of his monitors by the 4th, that day was fixed for the attack and landing. Granger was up to time, and his troops were put ashore on the evening of the 3d; but the Tecumseh had not arrived from Pensacola. The other three had been on hand since the 1st, anchored under the shelter of Sand Island, three miles from Fort Morgan.

To Farragut's great mortification he was unable to carry out his part of the programme; but on the evening of the 4th the Tecumseh arrived, together with the Richmond, which had been for a few days at Pensacola preparing for the fight. "I regret to have detained you, admiral," said Craven, the commander of the monitor, "but had it not been for Captain Jenkins (of the Richmond), God knows when I should have been here. When your order came I had not received an ounce of coal." In his report of the battle, Farragut warmly acknowledged the zeal and energy of Jenkins, to which he owed the seasonable arrival of this important re-enforcement. "He takes," he said, "as much interest in the fleet now as formerly when he was my chief-of-staff. He is also commanding officer of the second division of my squadron, and as such has shown ability and the most untiring zeal.... I feel I should not be doing my duty did I not call the attention of the Department to an officer who has performed all his various duties with so much zeal and fidelity." Farragut has been charged with failure to notice adequately the services of those under him; but the foregoing words, which are not by any means unparalleled in his dispatches, show that he could praise cordially when he saw fitting occasion.

The night of August 4th was quiet, the sea smooth, with a light air just rippling the surface of the water. At sundown it had been raining hard, but toward midnight cleared off, the weather becoming hot and calm. Later on a light air again sprang up from the southwest. The admiral was not well, and slept restlessly. About three in the morning he called his servant and sent him to find out how the wind was. Learning that it was from the quarter he wished, he said, "Then we will go in in the morning." Between four and five the lighter vessels got under way and went alongside those to which they were to be lashed. When daybreak was reported Farragut was already at breakfast with the captain of the Hartford, Percival Drayton, and the fleet-surgeon, Dr. James C. Palmer, who had left his usual post at the hospital in Pensacola to superintend the care of those wounded in the approaching battle. It was then about half-past five; the couples were all formed, and the admiral, still sipping his tea, said quietly, "Well, Drayton, we might as well get under way." The signal was made and at once acknowledged by the vessels, which had all been awaiting it, and the seamen began to heave round on the cables. The taking their assigned positions in the column by the different pairs consumed some time, during which the flag-ship crossed the bar, at ten minutes past six. At half-past six the column of wooden vessels was formed, and the monitors were standing down from Sand Island into their stations, in gaining which some little further delay was caused. At this time all the ships hoisted the United States flag, not only at the peak where it commonly flies, but at every mast-head as well.

It had been the intention of the admiral to lead the column of wooden vessels with his own ship; but at the earnest request of many officers, who thought the fleet should not incur the greater risk consequent upon having its commander in so exposed a position, he reluctantly consented to waive his purpose, and the Brooklyn was appointed to this post of honor. To this selection contributed also the fact that the Brooklyn had more than the usual number of chase guns, the advantage of which has been explained, and also an arrangement for picking up torpedoes. Bitterly afterward did Farragut regret his yielding on this occasion. "I believe this to be an error," he wrote in his official report of the battle; "for, apart from the fact that exposure is one of the penalties of rank in the navy, it will always be the aim of the enemy to destroy the flag-ship, and, as will appear in the sequel, such attempt was very persistently made." "The fact is," he said in one of his letters home, "had I been the obstinate man you sometimes think me, I would have led in the fleet and saved the Tecumseh"—meaning, doubtless, that, by interposing between that important vessel and the buoy which marked the torpedo line, he would have prevented the error which caused her loss. Some notes upon the action found afterward among his papers contain the same opinion, more fully and deliberately expressed. "Allowing the Brooklyn to go ahead was a great error. It lost not only the Tecumseh, but many valuable lives, by keeping us under the fire of the forts for thirty minutes; whereas, had I led, as I intended to do, I would have gone inside the buoys, and all would have followed me." The Hartford took the second place in the column, having secured on her port or off side the side-wheel gunboat Metacomet, Lieutenant-Commander James E. Jouett.

While the monitors were taking their stations, the Tecumseh, which led their column, fired two shots at the fort. At five minutes before seven, the order of battle now being fully formed, the fleet went ahead. Ten minutes later Fort Morgan opened fire upon the Brooklyn, which at once replied with her bow guns, followed very soon by those of the fighting column of wooden ships; a brisk cannonade ensuing between them, the monitors, and the fort. In order to see more clearly, and at the same time to have immediately by him the persons upon whom he most depended for governing the motions of the ship, Farragut had taken his position in the port main-rigging. Here he had near him Captain Jouett, standing on the wheel-house of the Metacomet, and also the pilot, who, as at Port Hudson, had been stationed aloft, on this occasion in the maintop, so as to see well over the smoke. As this increased and rose higher, Farragut went up step by step until he was close under the maintop. Here, without losing touch with Jouett, he was very near the pilot, had the whole scene of battle spread out under his eyes, and at the same time, by bracing himself against the futtock shrouds, was able to use his spy-glass more freely. Captain Drayton, however, being alarmed lest he might be thrown to the deck, directed a seaman to carry a lashing aloft and secure him to the rigging, which the admiral, after a moment's remonstrance, permitted. By such a simple and natural train of causes was Farragut brought to and secured in a position which he, like any other commander-in-chief, had sought merely in order better to see the operations he had to direct; but popular fancy was caught by the circumstance, and to his amusement he found that an admiral lashed to the rigging was invested with a significance equivalent to that of colors nailed to the mast. "The illustrated papers are very amusing," he wrote home. "Leslie has me lashed up to the mast like a culprit, and says, 'It is the way officers will hereafter go into battle, etc.' You understand, I was only standing in the rigging with a rope, that dear boy Watson had brought me up," (this was later in the action, when the admiral had shifted his position), "saying that if I would stand there I had better secure myself against falling; and I thanked him for his consideration, and took a turn around and over the shrouds and around my body for fear of being wounded, as shots were flying rather thickly."

Shortly after the monitors and the bow guns of the fleet began firing, the enemy's gunboats and the Tennessee moved out from behind Morgan and took their position enfilading the channel. Twenty minutes later, through the advance of the column, the broadsides of the leading ships began to bear upon the fort; and as these heavy batteries vomited their iron rain the fire of the defense visibly slackened. Amid the scene of uproar and slaughter, in which the petty Confederate flotilla, thanks to its position of vantage, was playing a deadly part quite out of proportion to its actual strength, the Tecumseh alone was silent. After the first two shots fired by her, which were rather the signal of warning than the opening of the battle, she had loaded her two guns with steel shot, backed by the heaviest charge of powder allowed, and, thus prepared, reserved her fire for the Tennessee alone. "I believe," wrote Farragut in a private letter, "that the Tecumseh would have gone up and grappled with and captured the Tennessee. Craven's heart was bent upon it."

The two columns, of ironclads and of wooden vessels lashed together in pairs, were now approaching the line of torpedoes and the narrow entrance through which lay the path of safety; and the broadsides of the heavy sloops which led—the Brooklyn, the Hartford, the Richmond—supported by the less numerous but still powerful batteries following, and by the guns of the turreted ironclads, overbore the fire of the works. All promised fairly, provided the leaders of the two columns pushed rapidly and unhesitatingly in the direction assigned them. But almost at the same moment doubt seized them both, and led to a double disaster. As Craven, leading the monitor column, and then about three hundred yards in advance of the Brooklyn, drew up to the buoy, to the eastward of which he had been directed to go, he saw it so nearly in line with the point beyond that he could not believe it possible to pass. "It is impossible that the admiral means us to go inside that buoy," he said to the pilot; "I can not turn my ship." Just then the Tennessee moved a little ahead, to the westward; and Craven, under the double impulse of his doubt and of his fear lest the hostile ironclad should escape him, changed his course to the left and pushed straight for her, the Tecumseh heading to pass the buoy on the wrong side.

The movement thus indicated, if followed by the succeeding monitors, would throw that column across the path of the wooden ships if the latter endeavored to obey their orders to pass east of the buoy. At the same moment there were seen from the Brooklyn, in the water ahead, certain objects which were taken to be buoys for torpedoes. The ship was at once stopped and backed, coming down upon the Hartford, her next astern, which also stopped, but did not reverse her engines. The Richmond followed the Hartford's movements, and the two ships drifted up with the young flood tide, but with their heads still pointed in the right direction, toward the Brooklyn; the stern of the latter vessel, as she backed, coming up into the wind so that her bows turned toward the fort. Fortunately, the rear ships were some little distance off; but Farragut, ignorant of the cause of the Brooklyn's action, saw his line of battle doubling up and threatened with an almost inextricable confusion, in the most difficult and exposed part of the passage, under a cross-fire from the fort and the enemy's vessels. Immediately upon this frightful perplexity succeeded the great disaster of the day. Craven, pursuing his course across the suspected line of danger, had reached within two hundred yards of the Tennessee, and the crews of both vessels were waiting with tense nerves for the expected collision, when a torpedo exploded under the Tecumseh, then distant a little over five hundred yards from the Hartford. From his elevated post of observation Farragut saw her reel violently from side to side, lurch heavily over, and then go down head foremost, her screw revolving wildly in the air as she disappeared.

It was the supreme moment of his life, in which the scales of his fortunes wavered in the balance. All the long years of preparation, of faithful devotion to obscure duty awaiting the opportunity that might never come—all the success attending the two brief years in which his flag had flown—all the glories of the river fights—on the one side; and on the other, threatening to overbear and wreck all, a danger he could not measure, but whose dire reality had been testified by the catastrophe just befallen under his own eyes. Added to this was the complication in the order of battle ahead of him, produced by the double movements of the Brooklyn and Tecumseh, which no longer allowed him to seize the one open path, follow his own first brave thought, and lead his fleet in person through the narrow way where, if at all, safety lay. The Brooklyn, when she began to back, was on the starboard bow of the flag-ship, distant one or two hundred yards, and falling off to starboard lay directly in the way athwart the channel. The second monitor, Manhattan, of the same class as the Tecumseh, had passed ahead; but the two light-draughts, the Winnebago and Chickasaw, were drawing up abreast of the three ships thus massed together. As they passed, the admiration of the officers of the flag-ship was stirred to see Captain Stevens, of the Winnebago, pacing calmly from turret to turret of his unwieldy vessel, under the full fire of the fort; while of Perkins, in the Chickasaw, the youngest commander in the fleet, and then about twenty-seven years of age, an officer of high position in the flag-ship says, "As he passed the Hartford he was on top of the turret, waving his hat and dancing about with delight and excitement."

But as they went thus gallantly by, the position of these vessels, combined with that of the Brooklyn relatively to the flag-ship, forbade the latter's turning in that direction unless at the risk of adding to a confusion already sufficiently perilous. A signal was made and repeated to the Brooklyn to go ahead; but that vessel gave no sign of moving, her commander being probably perplexed between his orders to pass east of the buoy and the difficulty of doing so, owing to the position into which his ship had now fallen and the situation of the monitors. But to remain thus motionless and undecided, under the fire of the fort with the other ships coming up to swell the size of the target offered to its gunners and to increase the confusion, was out of the question. To advance or to recede seemed alike dangerous. Ahead lay the dreaded line of torpedoes; behind was the possibility of retreat, but beaten, baffled, and disastrous. All depended upon the prompt decision of the admiral. If he failed himself, or if fortune failed him now, his brilliant career of success ended in the gloom of a defeat the degree of which could not be foreseen. In later days, Farragut told that in the confusion of these moments, feeling that all his plans had been thwarted, he was at a loss whether to advance or retreat. In this extremity the devout spirit that ruled his life, and so constantly appears in his correspondence, impelled him to appeal to Heaven for guidance, and he offered up this prayer: "O God, who created man and gave him reason, direct me what to do. Shall I go on?" "And it seemed," said the admiral, "as if in answer a voice commanded, 'Go on!'"

To such a prompting his gallant temper and clear intuitions in all matters relating to war were quick to respond. Personal danger could not deter him; and if it was necessary that some one ship should set the example and force a way through the torpedo line by the sacrifice of herself, he was prepared by all his habits of thought to accept that duty for the vessel bearing his flag. Describing the spirit in which he began an arduous enterprise, after once deciding that it should be undertaken, he said: "I calculate thus: The chances are that I shall lose some of my vessels by torpedoes or the guns of the enemy, but with some of my fleet afloat I shall eventually be successful. I can not lose all. I will attack, regardless of consequences, and never turn back." To a mind thus disciplined and prepared, the unforeseen dilemma presented before the barriers of Mobile Bay caused but a passing perplexity. Like the Puritan soldier who trusted in God and kept his powder dry, Farragut met the overthrow of his carefully arranged plans and the sudden decision thrust upon him with the calm resolution of a man who has counted the cost and is strengthened by a profound dependence upon the will of the Almighty. He resolved to go forward.

The Hartford was now too near the Brooklyn to go clear by a simple movement of her helm. Backing hard, therefore, the wheels of the Metacomet, while turning her own screw ahead, her bows were twisted short round, as in a like strait they had been pointed fair under the batteries of Port Hudson; then, going ahead fast, the two ships passed close under the stern of the Brooklyn and dashed straight at the line of the buoys. As they thus went by the vessel which till then had led, a warning cry came from her that there were torpedoes ahead. "Damn the torpedoes!" shouted the admiral, in the exaltation of his high purpose. "Four bells![X] Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!" The Hartford and her consort crossed the line about five hundred yards from Mobile Point, well to the westward of the buoy and of the spot where the Tecumseh had gone down. As they passed between the buoys, the cases of the torpedoes were heard by many on board knocking against the copper of the bottom, and many of the primers snapped audibly, but no torpedo exploded. The Hartford went safely through, the gates of Mobile Bay were forced, and as Farragut's flag cleared the obstructions his last and hardest battle was virtually won. The Brooklyn got her head round, the Richmond supporting her by a sustained fire from her heavy broadside; and, after a delay which allowed the flag-ship to gain nearly a mile upon them, the other ships in order followed the Hartford, "believing," wrote the admiral in his dispatch, "that they were going to a noble death with their commander-in-chief."

After the flag-ship had passed the torpedo line the enemy's three gunboats began retreating slowly up the bay, keeping ahead and on her starboard bow, where her guns could not bear while their own raked her. The conditions of the channel did not yet allow her to deviate from her course in order to return their fire. At no period of the battle did the Hartford suffer so much as during the fifteen minutes she had to endure this galling punishment. The Tennessee, being inferior in speed to her consorts as well as to the Hartford, could not accompany this movement; and, moreover, Buchanan, the Confederate admiral, had set his heart upon ramming the vessel that bore the flag of his old friend Farragut. The Tennessee therefore stood toward the Hartford, but failed in her thrust, the Union vessel avoiding it easily with a movement of her helm. The ram then fired two shots at very short range, but singularly enough both missed. "I took no further notice of her," wrote Farragut, "than to return her fire." The Tennessee followed some little distance up the bay, and then, changing her mind, turned toward the column of wooden vessels that was now approaching, with the three monitors covering their right flank and somewhat in the rear; these having delayed to engage the fire of the fort while their more vulnerable companions went by. The Confederate ironclad passed along the column from van to rear, exchanging shots with most of the vessels in it. The Monongahela attempted to ram her, but, being embarrassed by the gunboat lashed alongside, succeeded only in giving a glancing blow; while the Oneida, the ship on the fighting side of the rear couple, already completely disabled in her motive power by a shot through the boiler, received a raking broadside, by which her captain, Mullany, lost an arm.

At the time the Tennessee went about to encounter the remaining vessels of the fleet, which was about eight o'clock, the course of the channel enabled the Hartford to turn sufficiently to bring her broadside to bear on her puny assailants. By the fire she then opened, one, the Gaines, was so much injured as to be with difficulty kept afloat until she could take refuge under Fort Morgan, where she was that night burned by her commander. All three retreated rapidly toward the shoal water on the east side of the bay. Farragut then signaled for the gunboats of his fleet to chase those of the enemy. Jouett, being alongside, received the order by word of mouth, and the admiral often afterward spoke with enthusiasm of the hearty "Ay, ay, sir!" he received in reply, and of the promptness with which the fasts were cut, the men being already by them, hatchet in hand. The Metacomet backed clear at once and started rapidly in pursuit. The gunboats in the rear followed as soon as the signal was made out; but, both from their position and from the inevitable delay in reading signals, they were at a disadvantage. A thick rain squall coming up soon after hid both pursuers and pursued from each other's sight. The Morgan and the Gaines took advantage of it to change their course for Fort Morgan; the third Confederate, the Selma, kept straight on, as did the Metacomet. When the squall cleared, the latter found herself ahead of her chase. One shot was fired, killing the first lieutenant and some of the crew of the Selma, whose flag was then hauled down. The Morgan made good her retreat under the fort, and that night succeeded in escaping up the bay to the city, although she was seen and fired upon by several of Farragut's vessels.

At half-past eight o'clock, three hours after the first signal was made to get under way and an hour and a half after the action began, the flag-ship anchored in the upper part of the deep pocket into which the channel expands after passing the entrance. She was then about four miles from Fort Morgan, and the crew were sent to breakfast. The admiral had come down from his post in the main rigging and was standing on the poop, when Captain Drayton came up to him and said: "What we have done has been well done, sir; but it all counts for nothing so long as the Tennessee is there under the guns of Morgan." "I know it," replied Farragut, "and as soon as the people have had their breakfasts I am going for her." These words were exchanged in the hearing of the first lieutenant of the Hartford, now Rear-Admiral Kimberly, and at present the senior officer upon the active list of the United States Navy. In writing home a few weeks later, the admiral said: "If I had not captured the Tennessee as I did, I should have taken her that night with the monitors, or tried it." The latter undoubtedly represents the more deliberate opinion, that would have guided him had Buchanan not played into his hands by attacking the fleet; for if the Tennessee had remained under Morgan and there been sought by the monitors, the fight would have been at such close quarters that in the darkness the fort could scarcely have joined without imminent risk of hurting friend as well as foe.

As it was, the Confederate admiral seems never to have contemplated any more prudent or sagacious course than a single-handed free fight with the fleet. As soon as the Tennessee had passed the rear of the enemy's column, Buchanan said to the captain of the ram: "Follow them up, Johnston; we can't let them off that way." In turning, the Tennessee took much room, appearing from the fleet to have gone back under the guns of Fort Morgan; and the various ships, as they came up, were anchoring near the Hartford, expecting a few quiet hours. They were soon undeceived. The brief conversation above reported between Farragut and his flag-captain had scarcely ended when the ram was seen to be moving out from under the fort. Captain Drayton reported the fact to the admiral, saying that she was going outside to attack the United States vessels still remaining there. "Then," said Farragut, "we must follow him out." The remark indicates an alternative to the course actually adopted by Buchanan, and one whose issue would depend less upon the United States commander-in-chief than upon the conduct of the vessels outside. If these were so imprudent as not to retire, Farragut might have been forced to run twice again the gantlet of Fort Morgan and of the torpedo line—once to protect them, and afterward to regain the position he had just achieved.

It must be admitted that the question before the Confederate admiral, what to do with one unwieldy though powerful vessel opposed to fourteen enemies, was hard to solve; nor did he have, in a precise knowledge of the speed, battery, and other qualities of his opponents, the data needed for an accurate solution. In a general way, however, he must have known that the guns of the United States fleet were mainly smooth-bores, with but moderate penetrative power upon iron-plating such as the Tennessee's; and during the morning's encounter he had acquired experimental knowledge of their impotence against her sides, unless by a continuous pounding such as he was now about to invite. He knew also that several of the hostile vessels were of too heavy draught to take any efficient part, if he refused, as was in his power, to enter the pocket in which they were now anchored; while the general gentle shelving of the bottom enabled a foot's difference in draught to secure a very considerable separation in distance. Every wooden ship was vulnerable to him and impotent against him at the ranges which his rifles permitted him to use.

With the monitors Buchanan had not yet come into collision; but one of the most formidable was sunk, and until he had learned something about their endurance and the power of their guns relatively to those of his own vessel, it would seem that his action, though immediate, should have been only tentative. If it proved on trial that the speed of the Tennessee was greater than that of the monitors, she might yet prove master of the situation. Despite the beak, which her wretched speed and exposed steering chains rendered untrustworthy, her great defensive strength and the fact of carrying rifled guns indicated that long range, and not close quarters, was the first game of the Tennessee. There she could hurt, and she could not be hurt. Had she, for instance, hovered at a distance, firing deliberately at the Union vessels, Farragut must have attacked; and she could then have retired either into shoaler water, retaining her advantage in range, or else under the guns of Morgan, which would have strongly re-enforced her fight. The fact that Farragut, whose instinct for war was commonly accurate, proposed to attack her at close quarters and by night, is the best argument that Buchanan should have sought long range and daylight for his action. As it was, his headlong charge into the Union fleet was a magnificent display of inconsiderate bravery, in which such advantages as he had were recklessly thrown away. Its purpose is not clear. If, as Farragut thought, it was to sink his flag-ship, it can only be replied that an admiral's flag is not a red rag for a bull to charge. Had the Hartford been sunk when the column doubled up an hour or so before, the loss of the leader at so critical a moment might have decided the day; but to sink her in the mÊlÉe within would have been a barren, though brilliant, feat of arms.

As soon as it was ascertained that the Tennessee was really coming up to attack, the mess-gear was hurried aside and the orders given to get under way. Some of the fleet had not yet anchored, and the monitors were not yet arrived at the place where the others were gathered. Dr. Palmer, the fleet surgeon, was just leaving the flag-ship in a steam-launch, for the purpose of making a round among the other vessels to see to the condition of their wounded. Farragut called him alongside and directed him to go to the monitors with orders to attack the Tennessee. These Palmer delivered in person to each ironclad. "Happy as my friend Perkins (of the Chickasaw) habitually is," he wrote in his diary, "I thought he would turn a somersault overboard with joy when I told him, 'The admiral wants you to go at once and fight that Tennessee.'" The wooden vessels at the same time were directed to charge the ram, bows on, at full speed, as well as to attack her with their guns.

The monitors being, like the Tennessee herself, very slow, the ramming contest first began. The first to reach the hostile ironclad was the Monongahela, Captain Strong, which struck her squarely amidships on the starboard side, when she was still four hundred yards distant from the body of the fleet. Five minutes later the Lackawanna, Captain Marchand, going at full speed, delivered her blow also at right angles on the port side, abreast the after end of the armored superstructure. As they swung round, both United States vessels fired such guns as would bear, but the shot glanced harmlessly from the armor; nor did the blow of the ships themselves produce any serious injury upon the enemy, although their own stems were crushed in for several feet above and below the water line. Upon them followed the Hartford, approaching, like the Lackawanna, on the port side; but toward her the Tennessee turned, so that the two met nearly, though not exactly, bows on. The Hartford's anchor, which there had not been time to cat, was hanging at the water's edge; it took the brunt of the collision, which doubled it up, and the two antagonists scraped by, their port sides touching. At that close range seven nine-inch guns were discharged against the sloping sides of the ironclad, but without effect. The admiral had clambered again into the rigging, on this occasion into the port mizzen-rigging, whence he watched the effects of this encounter. Both the Lackawanna and the Hartford now made a circuit to get a position whence they could again charge the enemy; but in the midst of their sweep the Lackawanna ran square into the flag-ship, striking near where Farragut stood, and cutting the vessel down to within two feet of the water. The immediate impression among the ship's company was that the injury was fatal; and the general cry that arose, "Save the admiral! Get the admiral on board the Lackawanna!" by its ignoring of their own danger, testified how Farragut's martial and personal qualities had won a way into the affections of his subordinates. With an activity for which he had been remarkable in middle life, and retained even now when in his sixties, the admiral jumped into the chains to ascertain the extent of the injury; then, finding that the ship was in no present danger, he ordered her again to be headed for the Tennessee.

Meanwhile the monitors had come up, and the battle had begun between them and the enemy. One of the Manhattan's fifteen-inch guns had been disabled; and the slow firing of those unwieldy weapons, with the imperfect mechanical appliances then used for loading them, prevented her doing the injury that might have been expected. One shot struck square, breaking through the port side of the armor; but even so the missile itself did not enter the vessel, a strong evidence of the power of the Tennessee to resist a single shot. But she was not equally invulnerable to the sustained and continuous hammering of even lighter projectiles. The Winnebago's turrets, being out of order, could not be turned, and consequently the guns could be brought to bear only by moving the helm; a circumstance which materially reduced her fire. The Chickasaw, however, was in better case. Lieutenant-Commander Perkins got her into position under the stern of the Tennessee just after the latter's collision with the Hartford; and there he stuck to the end, never over fifty yards distant, and keeping up a steady rapping of eleven-inch shot upon the fabric which they could not at once penetrate, but which they visibly shook. Fifty-two of these projectiles were fired from the Chickasaw in the short half-hour of her attack. The exposed rudder-chains were shot away, and at nearly the same time the smoke-stack came down. Admiral Buchanan was wounded by an iron splinter, which broke his leg and otherwise injured it to such an extent that the limb was with difficulty saved. He turned over the command to Captain Johnston, who stood the pounding for twenty minutes longer and then reported to his superior that the ship was helpless, could not be steered, and that for half an hour he had not been able to bring a gun to bear. "Well," replied Buchanan, "if you can not do them any further damage you had better surrender."

The Tennessee's flag had been several times shot away, and was now flying from a boat-hook. Not being very conspicuous, its removal was not immediately noticed, and Johnston had to show a white flag to put a stop to the firing. "She was at this time sore beset," said Farragut in his dispatch to the Navy Department; "the Chickasaw was pounding away at her stern, the Ossipee was approaching her at full speed, and the Monongahela, Lackawanna, and Hartford were bearing down upon her, determined upon her destruction. Her smoke-stack had been shot away, her steering chains were gone, compelling a resort to her relieving tackles, and several of her port shutters were jammed. Indeed, from the time the Hartford struck her until her surrender she never fired a gun." No stronger evidence can be offered than this last sentence, which Johnston's account corroborates, of how completely Buchanan miscalculated, or disregarded, the capabilities of the important vessel he controlled. Great as was her power to resist a single shot, or the end-on charge of a heavy vessel, when she surrendered nearly all the plating on the after side of the casemate was found to be started, and the after gun-carriage was disabled; there being distinct marks of nine eleven-inch solid shot having struck within a few square feet of that port. Three of her port shutters also were so damaged that their guns could not be fired.

Thus ended the great battle of Mobile Bay, the crowning achievement of Farragut's naval career; "one of the hardest-earned victories of my life," to quote his own words, "and the most desperate battle I ever fought since the days of the old Essex." "You may pass through a long career and see many an action," he remarked to one of the junior officers of the Hartford, in the interval between first anchoring and the conflict with the Tennessee, "without seeing as much bloodshed as you have this day witnessed." The loss of the flag-ship herself had been twenty-five killed and twenty-eight wounded out of a ship's company of some three hundred souls. The Brooklyn, a ship of the same force, had almost exactly the same number of casualties—eleven killed and forty-three wounded. Contrasting the equal suffering of the latter—delayed so long under the numerous guns of the fort, but supported by the fire of the other vessels—with that of the flag-ship, inflicted by the batteries of the enemy's gun-boats, few in number, but worked for the time with impunity, we find an excellent illustration of Farragut's oft-repeated maxim, that "to hurt your enemy is the best way to keep him from hurting you." The total loss of the United States fleet in the battle was three hundred and thirty-five; of whom one hundred and thirteen were at the bottom of the bay, coffined in the iron hull of the Tecumseh.

Not quite three hours elapsed from the time that Morgan fired its first gun to the moment when the Tennessee hauled down her flag and confessed the United States fleet mistress of the bay. The forts still stood with the Confederate flag flying from them in defiance; and it is reported that the commander of Morgan retorted to a summons to surrender, that he looked upon Farragut's fleet as practically prisoners in a port whose keys he held. If so, it was the high-hearted resolve of a man determined to hold his charge to the last, and not the sober conviction of a soldier, that spoke. Like the river forts when Farragut's fleet forced its way past and stood between them and their base of supplies, the defenses of Mobile were isolated by the results of the morning's fight, and their fall became but a question of time. There was no mutiny of the garrison, as on the former occasion, for the stern experience of war had better taught the men the business of a soldier; but it was at once practicable here to begin siege operations, which in the river would perhaps have been for a time postponed, owing to the overflowed state of the country. The preparations for these were pushed with vigor, and the navy also took a hand against the works. Four hours after the surrender of the Tennessee, the Chickasaw weighed her anchor and steamed down toward Grant's Pass to shell Fort Powell. Built to resist an attack from Mississippi Sound, the work was weak in the direction of the bay. "The ironclad's fire," reported the officer in command, "made it impossible to man the two guns in the rear, and I made no attempt to do so." That night the fort was evacuated and blown up. The following day the Chickasaw threw some shells into Fort Gaines, in consequence of which, and of the progress made by General Granger in his approaches, that work was surrendered on the 7th of August. Morgan still standing out, the army was transferred from Dauphin Island to Mobile Point, batteries were constructed, and on the 17th a siege train from New Orleans was landed. On the 22d, at daylight, the siege guns, the three monitors, the captured Tennessee, and the ships, both outside and inside the bay, opened together. The following day Fort Morgan capitulated.

A gratifying feature in these operations, as well as in all Farragut's official association with the army, was the cordial good feeling and co-operation which existed between the two services, and which were equally manifested in the upper Mississippi between Grant and Porter. General Butler, Farragut's first colleague in the Gulf and at New Orleans, but who had long since left the department, wrote him a most enthusiastic letter of congratulation upon receiving the news of the battle of Mobile Bay; and General Granger, in concluding his report of the siege operations against Gaines and Morgan, said: "I am pleased to record the perfect harmony existing between these two branches of the service. For my own part, I can not sufficiently acknowledge the assistance rendered by the fleet and the admiral in command in transporting and disembarking the troops, guns, and materials employed by me in the operations. In brief, during all our relations, the officers of the fleet, with their distinguished commander, displayed in a high degree those qualities which mark their gallant service." To the officers of the navy the testimonies thus given can not but be most grateful; not merely as acknowledgments of the important part played by a service whose work is too often ignored by historians, but chiefly as giving an added lustre to the brilliant reputation of its two most distinguished representatives, who successively filled the high position of admiral of the navy.

After the capitulation of the forts, Admiral Farragut remained in Mobile Bay until the following November. The lower bay was cleared of torpedoes and reconnoissances made toward Mobile; but he wrote adversely to any attempt against the city, now that it was sealed as a port to blockade runners. "It would be an elephant," he wrote, "and take an army to hold it. And besides, all the traitors and rascally speculators would flock to that city and pour into the Confederacy the wealth of New York." He confesses also his dislike to operations in very shoal water. "I am in no way diffident about going anywhere in the Hartford, but when I have to leave her and take to a craft drawing six feet of water I feel badly."

The admiral's health was now suffering much from the combined effects of his labors, his anxieties, and the climate. "I am as well as a man can be who can neither sit, walk, nor stand five minutes at a time on account of Job's comforters. But, thank God (I have so much to be thankful for that I am thanking him all the time), I am otherwise in pretty good condition." Despite this brave effort at cheerfulness, his letters from time to time began to show symptoms of depression, and he longed for rest. "This is the last of my work," he said, "and I expect a little respite." His enfeebled condition drew the attention and excited the alarm of those about him. "I was talking to the admiral to-day," wrote Perkins, of the Chickasaw, the day after Morgan surrendered, "when all at once he fainted away. He is not very well and is all tired out. It gave me quite a shock, and shows how exhausted he is, and his health is not very good, any way. He is a mighty fine old fellow." Captain Drayton also wrote home to his family that, if the admiral remained longer in the Gulf, he feared for the consequences.

Under these circumstances an order from the Navy Department, dated the 5th of September, assigning him to the command of the Fort Fisher expedition, greatly upset him. He had about a week before written to the Secretary to say that his strength was almost exhausted. "I am willing," he concluded, "to do the bidding of the department as long as I am able to the best of my abilities. I fear, however, that my health is giving way. I have now been down in the Gulf five years out of six, with the exception of the short time at home last fall; the last six months have been a severe drag upon me, and I want rest, if it is to be had."

To so reasonable a request, after such distinguished and valuable service, the department could not have closed its ears had it been so disposed. Farragut was authorized to leave his squadron in charge of Commodore James S. Palmer, a very gallant and efficient officer, and to come north in the Hartford. On the 30th of November, 1864, he sailed from Pensacola, and on the 12th of December the flag-ship again anchored in New York Harbor.