Grant’s 1864 plan for North Carolina

   We seem to have this idea about the Overland Campaign of 1864. Overall Federal commander U.S. Grant was going to steal a march on Robert E. Lee, getting between Lee and the Confederate capital and forcing Lee to attack. We know, of course, Lee was up to the challenge, catching the Army of the Potomac in the Wilderness and negating the advantage of numbers that Lee had. Grant was stopped in the Wilderness and forced to shift his army once again to the east, where he once again ran into portions of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Spotsylvania Court House. This same scenario would play out for the rest of May and June. What seems to be missing from the conversation is that Grant did not want to march over the same old ground that his predecessors had fought over during the course of the past two years. Instead of moving from the north, like McDowell, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker, or from the east, Like McClellan, Grant wanted to come from the south.

Henry Halleck and U.S. Grant 

   On January 19, 1864, Grant presented his plan for the upcoming spring campaign to Federal General-in-Chief Henry Halleck. Grant wrote: “I would suggest Raleigh North Carolina as the objective point and Suffolk as the starting point. Raleigh once secured I would make New Bern the base of supplies until Wilmington is secured. A moving force of sixty thousand men would probably be required to start on such an expedition. This force would not have to be increased unless Lee should withdraw from his present position. In that case the necessity for so large a force on the Potomac would not exist.”

   “A force moving from Suffolk would destroy first all the roads about Weldon, or even as far north as Hicksford. Once there the most interior line of rail way still left to the enemy, in fact the only one they would have, would be so threatened as to force . . . him to use a large portion of his army in guarding it. This would virtually force an evacuation of Virginia and indirectly East Tennessee. It would throw our Armies into new fields where they could partially live upon the country and would reduce the stores of the enemy. It would cause thousands of North Carolina troops to desert and return to their homes. It would give us possession of many Negroes who are not indirectly aiding the rebellion. It would draw the enemy from Campaigns of their own choosing, and for which they are prepared, to new lines of operations never expected to become necessary. It would effectually blockade Wilmington, the port now of more value to the enemy that all the balance of their sea coast. It would enable operations to commence at once by removing the war to a more southern climate instead of months of inactivity in winter quarters.”[i]

   The plan may not have been Grant’s. It might have come from Lt. Col. Cyrus B. Comstock. In Comstock’s diary is this entry dated January 18, 1864: “Gen. W. F. Smith & I submitted Mem. to Gen. as to landing 60000 men at Norfolk or Newbern & operating against Rail R. south of Richmond & alternately against Raleigh & Wilmington.” Regardless, Grant obviously thought the plan had merit and submitted it to Halleck.[ii]

   It took Halleck a month to reply, writing on February 17, 1864. Halleck did not seem to grasp the finer points of Grant’s proposal. Lee’s army, not Richmond, was to be Grant’s object, although Grant had not mentioned the Confederate capital. He had mentioned cutting off supplies from Wilmington sustaining Lee’s army. The plan had been debated before by military men in Washington, Halleck told Grant, and most plans required more than 60,000 men. Where were the men to come from, Halleck asked. “There is evidently a general public misconception of the strength of our army in Virginia and about Washington,” a misconception Halleck thought wise to perpetuate. Meade’s army numbered 70,000 men, with about 18,000 soldiers in various garrisons around Washington, D.C. “Suppose we were to send thirty thousand men from that army to North Carolina; would not Lee be able to make another invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania?” Would Grant’s proposal force Lee to come to the aid of North Carolina? Halleck did not think so. “Uncover Washington and the Potomac river, and all the forces which Lee can collect will be moved north, and the popular sentiment will compel the Government to bring back the army in North Carolina to defend Washington, Baltimore, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia.” Halleck did not believe that Lee would exchange Richmond for Raleigh and Wilmington. Halleck then reminded Grant that a large force had been sent against Charleston, and for a year, had achieved no “important results.” Halleck went on to mention other operations in Texas and Alabama. “We have given too much attention to cutting the toe nails of our enemy instead of grasping his throat.” Halleck then goes on to lay out the tried and true Federal strategy in the East. “The overthrow of Lee’s army being the object of operations here.” Grant’s plan was probably mentioned to Lincoln, but the plan of bypassing the Army of Northern Virginia and cutting the railroad in eastern North Carolina was null and void in the eyes of the Lincoln administration. [iii]

   Grant replaced Halleck as General in Chief of the Armies of the United States on March 9, 1864. Grant was named Commanding General and given the rank of Lieutenant General. As commanding general, he could have revisited the idea of a campaign into southeastern Virginia and North Carolina, cutting that all-so important rail line coming out of Wilmington. It is interesting to speculate just how much shorter the war in the east would have been had a foray from New Bern to Goldsboro or Tarboro been approved. To cut and hold the railroad at those places, combined with the actions of Hunter and Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, would have pretty much starved out the Army of North Virginia. Of course, Halleck was wrong about clipping the toe nails. It is not until the toe nail at Wilmington is clipped that the situation in Virginia becomes dire.

   For more information, check out Brooks D. Simpson’s essay, “Ulysses S. Grant and the Problem of Command in 1864,” in The Art of Command in the Civil War, Steven Woodsworth, ed.

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[i] The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 10: 39-40.

[ii] The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 10:41n.

[iii] The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 110-112.

Confederate submarines

When someone mentions Confederate submarines, everyone thinks of the C.S.S. Hunley, and rightfully so. The Hunley did become the first submersible combat vessel to sink an enemy warship. But the South’s drive to build and successfully implement innovative warships goes far beyond one ship in February 1864. There were several other Confederate submarines and attempts to disrupt the blockade of Southern ports.

An excellent resource on the subject is Mark Ragan’s Union and Confederate Submarine Warfare (1999). The only thing that could make this book more beneficial would have been an appendix, maybe a quick reference guide, listing the barest details of each submarine.

Another note: the Confederacy built both semi-submersible and completely submersible vessels. The former are at times referred to as torpedo boats or David-Class Torpedo Boats. These craft were built of wood, contained a single screw, and had a steam boiler. They were fifty feet in length, had a four-man crew, and boasted a spar torpedo on the end. They were designed to run at night semi-submerged toward a Federal vessel, to drive the torpedo inside the vessel, and to then back away. On October 5, 1863, a “David” vessel attacked the U.S.S. Ironsides in Charleston, seriously damaging the vessel. The Confederate David was able to return to harbor. (135-137)

Information on many of these Confederate submarines is extremely limited. Many of the Confederate naval records were destroyed at war’s end. 

The Hunley by Chapman

Franklin G. Smith wrote to the Columbia Herald on June 10, 1861, about building a fleet of Confederate submarines: “Excepting our privateers the Confederate States have not a single ship at sea. Throughout our southern seaports, men of a mechanical turn and of the right spirit must go to work, maturing the best plans for the destruction or the capture of every blockading ship. From the Chesapeake to the mouth of the Rio Grande, our coast is better fitted for submarine warfare than any other in the world. I would have every hostile keel chased from our coast by submarine propellers. The new vessel must be cigar shaped for speed - made of plate iron, joined without external rivet heads, about thirty feet long, with a central section about 4 x 3 feet - driven by a spiral propeller. The new Aneroid barometer made for increased pressure, will enable the adventurer easily to decide his exact distance below the surface.” Of course, there never was a fleet of submarines built, but there were a few of note.

Pioneer – built in New Orleans, Louisiana, and tested in February 1862. The ship was 34 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 4 feet high. It was powered by a hand crank that was attached to a propeller. The Pioneer was scuttled in a canal near Lake Pontchartrain when New Orleans was evacuated. The Federals raised and examined the ship, and in 1868, it was sold for scrap.

Bayou Saint John submarine – no one seems to know the name of this vessel. It was dredged out of Bayou Saint John in 1878. When it was eventually opened, three skeletons were found inside. The submarine is now on display at the Capitol Park Museum – Baton Rouge.

Shreveport submarines – there were supposedly five submarines under construction in Shreveport, Louisiana, by the Singer Submarine Corporation in 1863. One of these was sent to Houston, Texas, while the other four were scuttled toward the end of the war. The other four are still submerged but apparently “surface” in the news when they are exposed during low water levels at the Cross Bayou. See https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/24/mystery-of-missing-civil-war-subs-resurfaces/22288817/

Richmond submarines--these include several built by Tredegar Iron Works. One was tested on the James River below Rocketts at the end of 1861. In this test, a diver emerged from the submerged vessels and planted an explosive charge on the bottom of a barge. Once secure in the submarine, the charge was detonated, sinking the barge. On October 12, 1861, an unnamed submarine, possibly the one above or maybe a different vessel, was launched at Sewall’s Point and made for the U.S.S. Minnesota. The craft became entangled in a net and was almost captured. It is not really clear what became of these vessels.  

Pioneer II (American Diver) – built in Mobile late 1862. It started out with some type of electrical motor, and then had a steam engine, and eventually had a hand crank. On its first mission in February 1863, in an attempt to attack the Federal blocking fleet there at Mobile Bay, it foundered in heavy seas and sank. But the crew did survive.

Colonel E. H. Agaman – was the idea of Col. E.H. Agaman. His submarine was rocket powered. It is not clear if the submarine itself was rocket powered, or the torpedo. After the fuel for the rocket was shipped from Augusta, Georgia, to Mobile in April 1863, this vessel disappears from the pages of history.  

CSS Squib also operated in the James River. In April 1864, the Squib placed a torpedo on the hull of USS Minnesota and detonated it. The torpedo was too close to the surface, and the Minnesota was not seriously damaged. The final disposition of the Squib is unknown. The Squib is also referred to as the Infanta. There were also operating at the end of the war three others: the Scorpion, Hornet, and Wasp.

CSS Hunley – most famous. Constructed in Mobile and transported to Mobile, the Hunley sank twice and killed a crew and a half before the attack the USS Housatonic. Of course we know that the final crew of the Hunley did not return and sank as well, somewhere beyond where the Housatonic went down.

CSS Captain Pierce might have sunk the USS Tecumseh in August 1864 in the battle of Mobile Bay. The boiler of the submarine might have exploded shortly thereafter.

CSS St. Patrick was privately built in Mobile and transferred to the Confederate navy in January 1865. The St. Patrick struck the Federal ship USS Octorara with a torpedo, but the torpedo misfired and did no damage and the St. Patrick escaped.

There were at least two submarines under construction in Wilmington, North Carolina, in late 1864, early 1865. But their final dispositions are unknown.

(For more information, please check out Ragan’s Union and Confederate Submarine Warfare in the Civil War, or, Daniel Franignoul’s “Submarine Monsters of the Confederacy,” Confederate Historical Society of Belgium)

Wilmington, Fort Fisher, and Historiography

Monument at Fort Fisher. 

   Has the importance of Fort Fisher and the great Wilmington area been missed in the historiography of the past 160 years? I recently came up with this question during our annual visit to the greater Wilmington area. In working on my upcoming book on food and the Army of Northern Virginia, I came to the conclusion that Wilmington, at least during the second half of the war, was second only to Richmond.

   So what do the historians say? How important were Wilmington, Fort Fisher, and the Cape Fear River area? Charles Roland, The Confederacy (1960), William C. Davis, Look Away! A History of the Confederacy (2002), and Russell F. Weigley, A Great Civil War (2000) make no real mention of the importance of the area.

   Keegan, while making mention of Fort Fisher and the ensuing battle, does not really get to the importance of the area, writing that  “The most important military operation in North Carolina during the closing phase of the war was not the work of Sherman’s army but a deliberate and separate operation to close down the South’s last large blockade-running port at Wilmington…”[1] Vandiver writes that “In Wilmington. . . the best of the blockade ports outside of Bagdad, Mexico, things settled into a pattern of hard work. Most citizens decamped in fear of invasion or of pestilence from foreign ships, or because the town became little more than a military depot.” Once again, he does not really seem to get the importance that Wilmington had to the entire war effort.[2]  

   There are a couple of historians who kind of get it. James McPherson writes that “Wilmington became the principal Confederate port for blockade runners because of the tricky inlets and shoals at the mouth of the Cape Fear River…”[3] Edward Pollard, in his early (as in 1867) history of the Confederacy, concludes that Wilmington was the “the most important sea-coast port left to the Confederates, through which to get supplies from abroad, and send cotton and other products out by blockade-runners.”[4]

Only two of the texts in the sample survey (i.e., books on my shelf) seem to get the importance. Robert S. Henry writes in 1931 that Wilmington was “most important of all” ports in the South. Due to this, it became “one of the great centers of the business of blockade running.”[5]    One other example comes from the pen of Shelby Foote. Foote tells us that in the last nine weeks of 1864, supplies landed at the port of Wilmington included “8,632,000 pounds of meat, 1,507,000 pounds of lead, 1,933,000 pounds of saltpeter, 546,000 pairs of shoes, 316,000 pairs of blankets, 520,000 pounds of coffee, 69,000 rifles, 97 packages of revolvers, 2,639 packages of medicine, 43 cannons,” along with other munitions. “Just how important those cargoes were to the continued resistance by the rebels was shown by the fact that R.E. Lee himself had sent word…that he could not subsist his army without supplies brought in there.”[6]

   Overall, I think the importance of the port of Wilmington, with its surrounding fortifications, has been underrepresented in the greater portion of the historiography of the past 160 years.

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[1] Keegan, The American Civil War, 278.

[2] Vandiver, Their Tattered Flags, 107.

[3] McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 380.

[4] Pollard, The Lost Cause, 671.

[5] Henry, The Story of the Confederacy, 239, 437.

[6] Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, 3:741.

French Blockade Runner? The arrest of Louis de Bebian.

   While the exact number of citizens arrested by the Lincoln Administration during the war is unknown (13,000-38,000) we really know the stories of only a handful. Clement Vallandingham and Rose O’Neal Greenhow come to mind. Louis de Bebian is not one of those names, but, in August 1861, he was arrested.

   Louis was born in 1829 on the French Island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. In 1855, he moved with his family to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he taught French and worked as a partner in O. G. Parsely & Company, lumber and commission merchants. Once the war commenced, he engaged in blockade running, traveling through the French Antilles, working on acquiring supplies for the Confederacy. It was determined to send de Babian to England and France, and on August 6, 1861, he boarded the schooner Adelso in Wilmington, bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Running into bad weather, the Adelso was forced to put into port in Newport, Rhode Island, on August 12. Upon hearing that the Adelso had sailed from a Southern Port, the USS Henrietta seized the ship’s cargo of spirits, turpentine, and rosin, and de Bebian.

William H. Seward

   No one was allowed to leave the Adelso, and all of the papers on board were seized. While de Bebian claimed to be simply a passenger, among the papers in his trunk was a letter authorizing him to purchase between 5,000 to 0,000 “army blankets,” 1,000 bags of coffee, “tons of iron of various sizes,” along with personal clothing. The items were to be shipped on a British or French vessel. Included were instructions on how to signal the shore once the vessel was off the coast of Wilmington, so a pilot could be sent out to guide the vessel into the Cape Fear River. Because of his French citizenship, he was allowed to go ashore on August 17, the same day that he made an affidavit stating he was simply a passenger. But de Babian was arrested on William H. Seward’s order on August 19 and sent to Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor. S, W. Macy, the collector at the port of Newport, found de Babian’s demeanor pleasant at first, but on his arrest, he “commenced abusing both the Government and the people of the United States… He also stated that he should go to England and blow the United States to hell, and then he would go to France and return with fifty ships of war and have full redress…” 

   A lengthy paper trail soon developed. De Bebian wrote Count Montholon, the French Consul in New York, of his plight. He then wrote to Price Napoleon, and the French Consul in Washington, D.C.  De Babian’s children, who lived in New York City, wrote to both the French Consul in New York, and to Seward, asking for their father’s release. In September, due to an attack of “violent diarrhoea,” de Bebian was paroled and allowed to visit his family in New York, a parole that was extended. In the meantime, but to the chagrin of Seward, the incriminating papers found in de Bebian’s trunks, were lost. On October 4, Seward ordered the release of de Bebian, and about a month later, he was on his way to Britain and France. Once in France, de Bebian complained of his treatment, and the loss of his papers, which the French Consul in Washington took up, asking for indemnity. Eventually, Seward came to the conclusion that de Bebian was not an “innocent passenger,” nor was the Adelso “a neutral vessel.”[1]

   Louis de Bebian spent little time in Europe. A North Carolina newspaper reported that after he was released, Seward granted him a passport, with an endorsement that de Bebian was “not to enter into any of the insurrectionary States.” He sailed to Britain, and then France, where he met with Emperor Napoleon. “The Emperor said that he should be allowed to return to his place of business, and the French Minister of Foreign Affairs prepared the necessary papers for the French minister at Washington.” De Bebian “returned to Washington and applied for a passport to Wilmington, but Seward refused it. The next day the French minister called on Seward and showed his papers, when Seward granted the passport.”[2] De Bebian was reported to be in Norfolk, Virginia, on February 4.[3]

Emperor Napoleon III 

   There is not much of a record of de Bebian for the rest of the War. Following the conflict, he moved to New York City, becoming an agent for a French steamer company. Louis de Bebian passed in December 1893, and is buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx County, New York. An obituary on findagrave states that his casket was carried into the church by twelve French sailors, all in uniform. It is not really clear just who de Bebian was working for. While he denounced the United States government, he might have just been seeking stock for his company. He does not appear in Bullock’s The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe, or in Wise’s Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil Way. De Bebian’s arrest and imprisonment could have caused an international incident with France, something that Seward and the Lincoln administration wished to avoid.

 

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[1] Official Records, Series II, Vol. 2, 432-455.

[2] Fayetteville Semi-Weekly, February 6, 1862.

[3] The Daily Journal, February 5, 1862.

Visiting the Condor.

Once a year, I make the trip from the mountains to Fort Fisher, to speak at during the "Beat the Heat" speaker series. It is usually the last weekend in July that I go, which was last weekend. My family often tags along, looking forward to a quick trip to the beach before school starts. We were at Fort Fisher about noon and pulled into the parking area overlooking the beach. It was storming at the time, and we really had no other place to go.

As the rain subsided, we could see two buoys off the coast. A little online research showed that these buoys mark the final resting place of the blockade runner Condor. The Condor was originally a steamer, 270 feet long and built in Scotland, with a crew of forty-five.  On September 7, the Condor steamed into Halifax. She was reportedly loaded to the gunwales with war supplies. Before long, she was on her way to the port at Wilmington. The US Navy was alerted to the Condor's  mission, and the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron was always on the lookout for ships trying to run into the Cape Fear River.

Hamilton Cochran, in his 1858 book Blockade Runners of the Confederacy, painted this picture of what happened next: The U.S.S. Niphon was the first to sight [the Condor's] long, gray hull, a mere shadow in the darkness. Up shot the warning calcium flares and the chase was on... The Condor was thrashing towards the Inlet with every ounce of steam her boilers could produce A cloud of black smoke belched from her triple stacks. The Niphon's bow chasers barked and shells tore through the Condor's sparse rigging, then plunged into the sea in white geysers of brine.

Ridge [the Captain] knew that he could outrun the Niphon, for the bar was close. To starboard loomed the Mound Battery at Fort Fisher. It would be only a matter of minutes now before the Condor would plunge within the protective range of those big Confederate guns. Just then, out of the blackness ahead, loomed a vessel's hull and spars. To the Condor's pilot that meant only one thing - "a damned Yankee" gunboat barring the way. In an instant response to his cry of "Hard a-starboard," the Condor heeled and swung away. Seconds later the keel struck the treacherous shoals to the right of the channel. She lurched, scraped, then came to a jarring halt... In the misty dawn those aboard the stranded Condor saw that it was not a Federal man-of-war that had loomed in their path, but the wreck of the British blockade runner Night Hawk... the Niphon moved in for the kill. More calcium flares soared skyward as the Union cruiser again fired at the helpless Condor. Instantly Fort Fisher replied and drove off the eager Niphon with a barrage of shells.

The Condor later broke up in the relentless surf.

Among the cargo and passengers was the famous Rose O'Neal Greenhow. She was a Confederate spy, who had been captured, imprisoned, released, and then sent to Europe to help build support for the Confederacy. On August 19, 1864, Greenhow left Europe, bound for Richmond, carrying dispatches. When the Condor ran aground, she transferred to a rowboat, determined to reach the shore. The boat was swamped in the surf, and Greenhow drowned, possibly weighted down by dispatches and gold sewn into her skirt. She is buried in Wilmington.

The Condor was recently declared a North Carolina Heritage Dive Site by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. The ship is roughly 700 yards off the beach, in 25 feet of water. Much of the Condor's infrastructure, like the boilers and engines, paddle wheel shafts and hubs, and other hull plating are still visible.

The story of the Condor is just one story of the many stories of the blockade runners that are sunk in and around the Fort Fisher area. In the area between Wrightsville Beach and the southern tip of Bald Head Island are the wrecks of at least nineteen blockade runners, and three US vessels. There are more in the Cape Fear River, and along Oak Island, Holden Beach, and Ocean Isle Beach. Each of these also has stories to be told.

I did not get to dive the wreck of the Condor. Maybe one day that opportunity will present itself. For now, I must be content on gazing off into the surf, wondering what treasures lie beneath the waves. 

The two buoys on the right mark the final resting place of the Condor.