RECEPTION AT ST. AUGUSTINE. fully respect the persons and property of all citizens who submitted to the authority of the United States; that you had a single purpose to restore the state of affairs which existed before the rebellion. I informed the municipal authority that so long as they respected the authority of the government we serve, and acted in good faith, municipal affairs might be left in their hands, so far as might be consistent with the exigencies of the times. The mayor and council then informed me that the place had been evacuated the preceding night by two companies of Florida troops, and that they gladly received the assurance I gave them, and placed the city in my hands. I recommended them to hoist the flag of the Union at once, and in prompt accordance with the advice, by order of the mayor, the national ensign was displayed from the flagstaff of the fort. The mayor proposed to turn over to me the five cannon mounted at the fort, which are in good condition and not spiked, and also the few munitions of war left by the retreating enemy. I desired him to take charge of them for the present, to make careful inventories, and establish a patrol and guard, informing him that he would be held responsible for the place until our force should enter the harbor. I called upon the clergymen of the city, requesting them to reassure their people, and to confide in our kind intentions toward them. About fifteen hundred persons remain in St. Augustine, about onefifth of the inhabitants having fled. I believe there are many citizens who are earnestly attached to the Union, a large number who are silently opposed to it, and a still larger number who care very little about the matter. I think that nearly all the men acquiesce in the condition of affairs we are now establishing. There is much violent and pestilent feeling among the women. They seem to mistake treason for courage, and have a theatrical desire to figure as heroines. Their minds have doubtless been filled 375 with the falsehoods so industriously circulated in regard to the lust and hatred of our troops. On the night before our arrival, a party of women assembled in front of the barracks and cut down the flag-staff, in order that it might not be used to support the old flag. The men seemed anxious to conciliate us in every way. There is a great scarcity of provisions in the place; there seems to be no money, except the wretched paper currency of the rebellion, and much poverty exists. In the water-battery at the fort are three fine army 82-pounders of seven thousand pounds, and two 8-inch seacoast howitzers of fifty-six hundred pounds, with shot and some powder. There are a number of very old guns in the fort, useless, and not mounted. Sev, eral good guns were taken away some months ago, to arm batteries at other harbors. The garrison of the place went from St. Augustine at midnight on the 10th, for Smyrna, where are said to be about eight hundred troops, a battery, the steamer Carolina, and a considerable quantity of arms and ammunition." One post was yet left on the sea-coast, Mosquito inlet, fifty miles south of St. Augustine, and the entrance to Smyrna, mentioned in the last paragraph. It was used by the blockade runners from the island of Nassau for the introduction of arms transhipped from English ships and steamers at that colony into small vessels of light draught, and was the depot of large quantities of live oak timber on the government lands, cut and ready for shipment. To protect this property and put an end to the illicit traffic, Commodore Dupont ordered the Penguin, Acting Lieutenant Commanding T. A. Budd, and the Henry Andrew, Acting Master S. W. Mather, to proceed to the spot. On arriving himself in the Wabash, on the 22d, he found that an expedition of four or five light boats, carrying some forty-three men, and commanded by the chief officers of the two vessels, had moved southward through the inland passage leading past Smyrna into Mosquito bayou. The sequel is thus related by the Commodore. 'It appears," says he, in his report to the secretary of the Navy, "that after going some fifteen or eighteen miles, without any incident, and while on their return, and within sight of the Henry Andrew, the order of the line being no longer observed, the two commanding officers quite in advance, landed under certain earthworks, which had been abandoned or never armed, now a dense growth of live-oak with underbrush. A heavy and continuous fire was unexpectedly opened upon them from both these covers. Lieutenant Commanding Budd and Acting Master Mather, with three of the five men composing the boat's crew, were killed; the remaining two were wounded and made prisoners. As the other boats came up they were also fired into, and suffered more or less. The rear boat of all had a howitzer, which however, could not be properly secured or worked, the boat not being fitted for the purpose, and could, therefore, be of little use. The men had to seek cover on shore, but as soon as it was dark Acting Master's Mate McIntosh returned to the boats, brought away the body of one of the crew who had been killed, all the arms, ammunition, and flags, threw the howitzer into the river, passed close to the rebel pickets, who hailed, but elicited no reply, and arrived safely on board the Henry Andrew. On hearing of this untoward event, I directed Commander Rogers to send off the launch and cutters of the Wabash to the support of the Andrew. The boats crossed the bar at midnight, and the next morning the vessel was hauled close up to the scene of the late attack, but no enemy could be discovered. The bodies of Lieutenant Budd and Acting Master Mather were received under a flag of truce. The commanding officer, a Captain Bird, who had come from a camp at a distance, made some show of courtesy by returning papers and a watch, as if ashamed of this mode of warfare; for these were the very troops that, with sufficient force, means, and material for a respectable defence, had ingloriously fled from St. Augustine on our approach. Lieutenant Commanding Budd and Acting Master Mather were brave and devoted officers. The former commanded the Penguin in the action of the 7th of November, and received my commendation. The latter, in the prime of life, was a man of uncommon energy and daring, and had no superior, probably, among the patriotic men who have been appointed in the navy from the mercantile marine." Having thus secured the main ends of his Florida expedition, Commodore Dupont returned to Port Royal. CHAPTER LXIII. BOMBARDMENT OF FORTS JACKSON AND ST. PHILIP, AND CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS, APRIL 18-26, FROM the conquests of the fleet and army on the Atlantic coast, we turn to the brilliant parallel series of operations on the Mississippi ending in the capture of New Orleans. Our last mention of 1862. the naval movements in this quarter was in connection with the attack in October, 1861, by Captain Hollins, upon the United States squadron at the passes of the river. That affair, doubtless, OCCUPATION OF SHIP ISLAND. 377 On the 3d of December, an advance portion-nearly two thousand-of the newly-levied New England troops which General Butler had been busied in collecting since his return from the Hatteras expedition, were landed on the island from the new transport steamship Constitution, a model of marine architecture constructed for the Pacific Mail Company's service. They were commanded by Brigadier-General John W. Phelps, whom the reader will remember with the rank of Colonel, as the associate of General Butler in his department at Newport News.* One of the first proceedings of this energetic officer, after landing his men, was to issue a remark brought vividly before the governmeut the enemy in the interval, and that enthe necessity of preparations on a larger trenchments were being thrown up for scale, adequate to the dangers and ob- its defence. The next day, the 9th of stacles which beset the advance up the July, a battery on the island opened fire Mississippi. The first important step on the steamer which was returned, with was taken in the occupation of Ship little effect, however, for the Massachuisland. Lying intermediate between San- setts retired, and the island was left in ta Rosa island and the mouths of the possession of the enemy till the middle Mississippi, near the entrance to the in- of September, when in anticipation of a terior water communication with New more serious attack from the Gulf squadOrleans by Lake Borgne and Lake Pont-ron, they abandoned it for the main land. chartrain, this was one of the most valu- It was then used, and partly occupied as able stations along the coast. Though a station for the United States navy. but a small barren bank of sand, but seven miles in length, narrow and unequal in width, it afforded sufficient anchorage for the blockading vessels of the gulf, and held in convenient control the water communication between Mobile and New Orleans. It was ninety miles distant from Fort Pickens, forty from Mobile bay, sixty from New Orleans, and at about the same distance from the northernmost pass at the mouth of the Mississippi. Sheltering the shore of Mississippi from the gulf, its value as a harbor to that State had been indicated in the designation of a proposed line of railway, the Gulf and Ship island road, to terminate at the neighboring Mississippi city. Its value as a defensive po-able proclamation, of a somewhat startsition was felt by the national govern- ling theoretical character, which made ment, and the construction of a fort was considerable stir on its arrival at the commenced there by the side of the North, but which was of little conselighthouse at the west end in 1859. The quence at the South at the time, since laborers were busy at this work at the the island where it was dated was occuoutbreak of the rebellion, when the island, pied only by our own troops, and there being without protection by the govern- was no communication with the neighment forces, was abandoned. Soon after boring land. The document, in fact, was a body of insurgents from the mainland a counterblast to slavery of a social and burned the few houses of the workmen, political, rather than a military characand barracks, and destroyed the light- ter, denouncing the institution in good house and the fort. At the end of June the set terms, and on fixed principles, from island was visited by the United States the point of view of a zealous abolitionist. gunboat Massachusetts, when five schoon- Addressing himself "To the loyal citizens ers were captured in one day. The of the south-west," Governor Phelps deisland was then unoccupied, but the Mas-clared at the outset his belief, "that sachusetts returning about ten days after every State that has been admitted as a from the mouths of the Mississippi found slave State into the Union since the that it had been taken possession of by * Vol. I., p. 254. slavery out of existence." "Indeed," said he, "we feel assured that the moment slavery is abolished, from that moment our Southern brethren-every ten of whom have probably seven relations in the North-would begin to emerge from a hateful delirium. From that moment, relieved from imaginary terrors, their days become happy and their nights peaceful and free from alarm; the aggregate amount of labor under the new stimulus of fair competition becomes greater day by day; property rises in value, invigorating influences succeed to stagnation, degeneracy, and decay, and union, harmony, and peace-to which we have so long been strangers become restored, and bind us again in the bonds of friendship and amity, as when we first began our national career, under our glorious government of 1789."~ adoption of the Constitution, has been admitted in direct violation of that Constitution," adding "that the slave States which existed, as such, at the adoption of our Constitution, are, by becoming parties to that compact, under the highest obligations of honor and morality to abolish slavery." He then proceeded to declare his conviction that monopolies are as destructive as competition is conservative of the principles and vitalities of republican government; that slave labor is a monopoly which excludes free labor and competition; that slaves are kept in comparative idleness and ease in a fertile half of our arable national territory, while free white laborers, constantly augmenting in numbers from Europe, are confined to the other half, and are often distressed by want; that the free labor of the North has more need of expansion into the Southern States, from which it is virtually excluded, than slavery had into Texas, in 1846; that free labor is essential to free institutions; that these institutions are naturally better adapted and more congenial to the Anglo-Saxon race, than are the despotic tendencies of slavery; and, finally, that the dominant political principle of this North American continent, so long as the Caucasian race continues to flow in upon us from Europe, must needs be that of free institutions and free government." Dilating upon these aspects of slavery, he compared the efforts of the Southern slaveholders" to give political character to an institution which was not susceptible of political character" with the cause of the French revolution, which he found in a similar design to establish the church in France-a not over-prudent suggestion in a proclamation to the Catholic inhabitants of Louisiana. Yet, the proclamation contained home truths by which they might have profited. There was evidently a sterling conviction in the mind of the writer when he penned the On the 31st of December, the town of following glowing statement as an induce- Biloxi, a watering-place on the shore of ment to his hearers "to revolutionize the State of Mississippi, was visited by a "It is the conviction of my command,' concluded General Phelps, "as a part of the national forces of the United States, that labor-manual labor-is inherently noble, that it cannot be systematically degraded by any nation without ruining its peace, happiness, and power; that free labor is the granite basis on which free institutions must rest; that it is the right, the capital, the inheritance, the hope of the poor man everywhere; that it is especially the right of five millions of our fellow countrymen in the slave States, as well as of the four millions of Africans there; and all our efforts, therefore, however small or great, whether directed against the interference of governments from abroad or against rebellious combinations at home, shall be for free labor. Our motto and our standard shall be, here and everywhere, and on all occasions, Free Labor and Workingmen's Rights. It is on this basis, and on this basis alone, that our magnificent government, the asylum of nations, can be perpetuated and preserved." 1 |
