FOOTNOTE:
[1] Lossing, vol. i, p. 617.
[FORT MIFFLIN]
ON THE DELAWARE—PHILADELPHIA
A visit to Fort Mifflin, Mud Island, on the Delaware River, Pennsylvania, to-day reveals a star-shaped fort of familiar pattern and of most substantial construction. It has the distinction of being within the corporate limits of one of the largest cities on the continent of North America,—Philadelphia,—yet a more deserted or forlorn looking spot it would be hard to imagine. Without benefit of policemen or any of the familiar marks of a great city, it might well serve in a “movie” for an ancient stronghold in a desert waste and may have been discovered by some enterprising movie manufacturer before these words are in print. Not always quiet, however, Fort Mifflin was the scene of one of the heaviest cannonadings of the War of Independence, when it sturdily held off the combined English naval and land forces until its own walls were reduced to powder.
The ground on which the Fort Mifflin of to-day stands was deeded to the Federal government by the State of Pennsylvania in 1795, and the present works were commenced in 1798. As the strategic advantage and the ease of fortification of the point had been amply demonstrated during the Revolution, a large and strong fortress was built and garrisoned until changing conditions of warfare caused its importance to be a thing of the past and its garrison to be withdrawn in 1853. During the Civil War the fort was garrisoned by a volunteer regiment and served as a detention place for prisoners taken during that conflict, but this structure saw no service in this war and, indeed, has never fired a shot in anger. After the Civil War the place was deserted, though the government has ever since kept a care-taker there. The government land reservation includes over three hundred acres. In other parts of the island are more modern government stations, but in these we have no present interest.
The old fortification is surrounded by a deep moat over which are bridges leading to its three sally-ports. Only one of these entrances is open now. Passing through the thick walls of this entrance, one finds one’s self facing a large parade ground, which is surrounded by quaint, old-fashioned structures—the barracks and officers’ quarters of a by-gone day. On the south of the parade is a very charming little Georgian chapel, through whose broken window-panes pour in damp winds.
ENTRANCE TO FORT MIFFLIN, PHILADELPHIA
In the casemates of the old fort were confined Morgan’s men during the Civil War. It is a dark and dismal trip to the damp rooms in which these men were confined, as one goes through narrow subterranean corridors beneath the thick walls of the fort. One comes to a large cavernous chamber lighted from above by a single narrow slit. At one end of this chamber is an open fire-place. On the walls are scribbled numerous names and messages from Morgan’s men. It might perhaps be an interesting matter to copy down these names and messages, if one had the patience and time to do so, but hardly a task within the province of this chapter. May be the room was cheerful enough in the days of its use with the big fire-place containing a roaring fire, but it is dismal now, in all conscience!
From the walls of Fort Mifflin there is a fine view of the Delaware River. Natives of the neighborhood say that the marshes round about yield fine gunning during the season. Directly across the Delaware from Fort Mifflin—the river being about a mile wide, here—are the remains of Fort Mercer and the outworks which made up this strong little post in the days of the Revolution. Fort Mercer and its earthworks are preserved by the nation, forming a public reservation which annually receives many visitors.
The ancient Whitall house—a two-story building of red brick—still stands at Fort Mercer, reminding one of the intrepid old lady who occupied it during the battle. Old Mrs. Whitall was urged to flee from the house but refused, saying, “God’s arm is strong and will protect me; I may do good by staying.” She was left alone in the house and, while the battle was raging and cannon-balls were driving like sleet against her dwelling, calmly plied her spinning-wheel. At length a twelve-pound ball from a vessel in the river, grazing the American flag-staff (a walnut tree), at the fort, passed at the north gable through a heavy brick wall, perforated a partition at the head of the stairs, crossed a recess, and lodged in another partition near where the old lady was sitting. Conceiving Divine protection a little more certain elsewhere after this manifestation of the power of gunpowder, the old lady gathered up her spinning implements and with a step as agile as youth retreated to the cellar, where, not to be pushed out of her house by any circumstance, she continued her spinning as industriously as before. When the wounded and dying were brought to her house to be cared for, she went industriously at the work of succor, not caring whether she tended friend or foe. She scolded the Hessians vigorously for coming to this country on a work of butchery, and at the same time ministered to their sufferings.
The third American redoubt lay farther down the river at Billingsport.
It will be recalled that Howe, with his English regulars and Hessians, spent the winter of 1776–77 in New York with occasional forays from that point. In July, 1777, after a trial of wits with Washington in northern New Jersey, he embarked his troops and set sail to the south. Washington’s uneasiness as to the whereabouts of his foe was set at rest after three weeks by hearing of the landing of Howe at the head of the Chesapeake Bay. There then ensued the battle of the Brandywine and that series of skirmishes which ended in Howe’s taking possession of Philadelphia, then the capital of the country, with the removal of the American official papers to York.
To secure his position and keep his lines open in Philadelphia, however, it was necessary for Howe to take the American positions at Billingsport, at Fort Mercer and at Fort Mifflin. The works at Billingsport fell quickly before a surprise attack, and it now remained to take Mifflin and Mercer.
The garrison at Mercer consisted of two Rhode Island regiments under Colonel Christopher Greene. At Mifflin there was about the same number of the Maryland line under Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Smith. The American fleet in the river consisted chiefly of galleys and floating batteries, and was anchored off the present League Island. It was under the command of Commodore Hazlewood.
Count Donop, with 1200 picked Hessians, was sent by Howe to take Fort Mercer. On the morning of October 24, he appeared before the little fort. Though the Americans had only 400 men with fourteen cannon they were not dismayed but stood to their arms. The battle commenced at four o’clock in the afternoon and raged with great fierceness. It resulted in the repulse of the assailants and the death of their commander, Count Donop, to whom a monument has been erected at Fort Mercer Park.
The firing of the first gun against Fort Mercer was the signal for the British fleet to open upon Fort Mifflin. A heavy cannonade continued until the British were obliged to draw off. A hot shot struck one of their large ships, the Augusta, and this vessel burned to the water’s edge.
THE MOAT IN WINTER, FORT MIFFLIN, PHILADELPHIA
For a season the Americans held undisputed possession of their section of the Delaware, but then the British returned the charge with increased force. Fort Mifflin was made the centre of attack. Batteries were posted upon Province Island,—now a part of the mainland directly off Mud Island on which the little fort stood,—and on this side the fort was not finished. A large floating battery was also brought up the river within forty yards of one angle of the fort. Altogether the British had fourteen strong batteries, in addition to four 64-gun and two 40-gun ships. The engagement opened on the 10th of November and continued for six consecutive days without interruption. In the course of the last day more than a thousand discharges of cannon were made against the little fort on Mud Island. By this time there was little left of its walls and no single chance of the garrison holding out longer. The officer in command escaped to Fort Mercer with the remnants of his force. It is said that the British were preparing to draw away from Fort Mifflin and had made up their minds to give up the siege, but information from a deserter caused them to keep on for the few days necessary to reduce the weakened stronghold.
So strong a force was now sent against Fort Mercer that Colonel Greene was obliged to evacuate that post, leaving behind some guns and ammunition with military stores.
The American fleet sought safety in flight up the Delaware. One brig and two sloops escaped to Burlington. Seventeen other vessels, unable to escape, were abandoned by their crews and burned at Gloucester, just across from the Philadelphia of to-day.
The Delaware River and Philadelphia were now in the hands of Howe. For a long winter he was to lie inactive while Washington took up position at Valley Forge and spent that historic winter with his men of which so much has been written. Instead of working for the future the British spent their time in balls and the Meschianza. Let Americans of to-day be thankful that they found Philadelphia manners and Philadelphia belles so altogether delightful!
[FORT McHENRY]
BALTIMORE
The spot whereon the flag-staff stood which bore the stars and stripes that fervid morning upon which Francis Scott Key arose, saw that our flag was still there and jotted down the national anthem on the back of an envelope before going down to breakfast, still conspires with a large and lusty successor of this first staff to keep Old Glory flying in the heavens. The immediate surroundings, the harbor outlook, the busy city now sending its clamor over the point on which the old fort stands, all have changed in the years, but the part of the fort from which the banner of the new republic was sent forth so many years ago has undergone little transformation. A triangle of ground pointing toward open water, and a bare staff, these have little that Time can work wizardry with. The simple focus of Key’s inspiration has not been lost in the years, but the rest of the picture which roused his songster’s mood is only to be brought back by effort of imagination.
A View from an Aeroplane [top]
The Guard-House
FORT McHENRY, BALTIMORE, MD.
Fort McHenry is now a public park, the last federal trooper having been drawn out of the reservation in the fall of 1913. As such it has been beautified by the City of Baltimore, if the placing of benches in convenient spots, the sodding of terraces, and the cleaning of walks are to be considered in the nature of beautification; and it is occasionally used by Baltimoreans as a place of airing. Situated on a point of land separating the two parts of Baltimore’s heart-shaped harbor, it gives charming views of the city. Gazing straight ahead from the walls of old Fort McHenry, one can see far down the river (very wide here) into the distance where the river joins the Chesapeake Bay. In the blue of the horizon can be faintly discerned the low squatty outline of the little hexagon of stone built by General Robert E. Lee before the Civil War and known as Fort Carroll.
To the right hand, from this vantage point on the water side of Fort McHenry’s parapets, lies Spring Garden, the larger but the less busy part of Baltimore’s water-front. To the left is the entrance to “the harbor,” as it is affectionately called by Baltimoreans, with entire disregard for that magnificent half-moon of water of more recent development which we have already descried to the right.
The various points of historic interest in the fort and its grounds are marked with tablets and appropriate memorials, this work having been done in recent years by the city, by the Maryland chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and by various public-spirited bodies of the municipality.
As one enters the grounds of the old fort, he is confronted first by a long, low, wooden structure with an archway through which can be gained a glimpse of a broad grass space. This is the parade. On the right of the parade is a row of cottages facing a narrow street, and at the end of this modest thoroughfare can be seen the eastern abutments of the old fort. As one approaches the fort itself the star shape of the walls is plainly observable and its dimensions easily taken in. It is not a large place, this historic old work, and makes no great impression upon the beholder from its material aspect. Batteries of ancient guns are mounted on the walls fronting the river. These were saved from destruction some years ago by the energetic work of some of the historical societies of the city. The reservation is entirely surrounded by a stone sea-wall which makes a very acceptable promenade, and here on summer days may be found couples viewing the beautiful marine prospects, and small boys indefatigably crabbing or fishing, but these energies have a purely legendary interest, for the crabbing and fishing for which the place was once famous are not now what they ought to be.
Looking Toward the Lazaretto [top]
One of the Old Batteries in Place
FORT McHENRY, BALTIMORE, MD.
Seen from the river as one enters Baltimore by steamer the old fort is at its best, for then one sees the long grassy inclines and the level of the parade ground and the soft foliage of trees contrasted sharply with the smoky city in the background. The fort proper is barely visible from the river, its walls not rising above the crests of the high embankments thrown up in front of it.
The point of land on which Fort McHenry is situated—Whetstone Point, as it was known in old times—was patented in 1662 by Mr. Charles Gorsuch of the Society of Friends, and the stretch that he acquired amounted to about fifty acres. It is thus that it comes upon the pages of history in the possession of one sworn not to use methods of violence. Time passed on, Mr. Gorsuch’s tract was divided, and at last came the brewing of the Revolution. It was this which brought Fort McHenry into existence.
A battery was thrown up on the point, and in 1776 a boom was stretched across the river to the Lazaretto, a little projection of land on the northern side of the stream. Two hundred and fifty negroes were employed in this work and their labors extended over a period of almost two years.
Yet this original of Fort McHenry did not see active service during the Revolution. Its greatest days were to be reserved for that short conflict which finally decided the Mother Country in the opinion that the American Colonies were of a right and ought to be free and independent. That so decisive a battle as the repulse of the British fleet before McHenry should have been staged at Baltimore is peculiarly appropriate when we remember the prominence of that type of sailing vessel known as the Baltimore “clipper” in the commerce of the country before the war and the great service these same slim, speedy vessels did as privateers during that conflict. The Baltimore clippers, it is not amiss to note, were built at Fell’s Point, about a mile and a half across the river from Fort McHenry, where modern Broadway, a thoroughfare, now has its terminus.
It was before the outbreak of the War of 1812 that the foundations of present-day Fort McHenry were laid. In the closing ten years of the eighteenth century there was much ill feeling against England and war was declared in rumor many times before the actual outbreak of hostilities took place. At one of these periods of apprehension the citizens of Baltimore, at their own expense, started the erection of a star-shaped fort under the direction of John J. Rivardi, engineer. In 1794 this erection, not complete but well started toward completion, passed to the Federal government and was named Fort McHenry in honor of James McHenry, secretary to Washington during the Revolution and Secretary of War from 1796 to 1800. The works were completed in 1805 and the formal cession to the Federal government took place in 1816.
It is hard to over-estimate in the history of the country the importance of the defence of Fort McHenry and of the engagement at North Point,—a corollary of this defence,—though Marylanders themselves have been comparatively indifferent to it until lately. With that pride of race which is a heritage of the South and the feeling which that pride engenders that their men will do well as a matter of course, Marylanders have given this engagement rather casual attention until very recent years. Indeed, up to the last decade, it was not unusual to hear Baltimoreans refer to the heroic defenders of North Point, who checked a force many times more powerful than their own and inflicted terrible injury in mortally wounding the assailants’ commanding officer, as the “North Point racers,” in humorous appreciation of the nimbleness of foot and ingenuity in evading observation which the men showed when finally they did break ground and retreated to Baltimore. Yet the times were critical enough, Heaven knows, and the part that these same racers and Fort McHenry played a worthy one in the final summing up.
The British, it will be remembered, had proceeded by easy stages up the Chesapeake Bay, burning and pillaging wherever they chose and meeting little opposition. A detachment had crossed to the northwest through Bladensburg and had seized and given to the flames Washington, the capital of the nation, itself; and now the united force was turning its attention to a leisurely march north through Baltimore to the northern cities, where they hoped to complete their subjugation of the country. Their complete reverse at McHenry set back all of their plans, giving the northern cities time to arm and prepare, and demoralized them to a great degree, their demoralization being accompanied by a corresponding enheartening of all American sympathizers. The importance of the action is thus readily seen.
The historic attack upon Fort McHenry began on the morning of September 13, 1814, and continued until 7 o’clock of the next morning. During the engagement more than 1800 shells were fired by the attacking force. The total American loss was four killed and twenty-four wounded. In the land engagement of North Point which preceded the attack by water on the city the American loss was 150 killed and wounded and the British loss about 600.
From This Point the Star Spangled Banner Flew [top]
The Entrance
FORT McHENRY, BALTIMORE, MD.
While Fort McHenry was the main defence of Baltimore, the city showed arms in other directions as well. On the northern side of the harbor (across the river from Fort McHenry) were two long lines of fortifications which extended from Harris Creek, northward across Hampstead’s Hill, now Patterson Park,—about a mile in length, along which at short distances were thrown up semicircular batteries. Behind these on more elevated sites were additional batteries, one of which, known as Rodger’s Bastion, overlooked Fort McHenry. There were, also, connecting lines of breastworks and rifle-pits running parallel with the northern boundary of the city, connected in turn by inner bastions and batteries, the precise location of which is not known. A four-gun battery was constructed at Lazaretto Point, and between this point and Fort McHenry across the mouth of the harbor a number of vessels were sunk. Southwest of the fort, guarding the middle branch of the Patapsco (known as Spring Garden) against the landing of troops to assail Fort McHenry in the rear, were two redoubts, 500 yards apart, called Fort Covington and the City Battery. In the rear of these upon the high ground of the present Battery Square was a circular battery. A long line of platforms for guns was erected in front of Fort McHenry and was known as the Water Battery.
During the night which followed the unsuccessful afternoon engagement of the 13th a landing party was sent in boats with muffled oars to slip past the City Battery and Fort Covington and to take these works and McHenry in the rear. That this effort was not more successful is due to the presence of a large hay-stack near one of the American sentries. This sentry, becoming suspicious, touched a match to the hay-stack, and the sudden flames showed the landing party of British. In the engagement that followed the British were repulsed.
It was at dawn of the 14th that Francis Scott Key, who was a prisoner on the British flag-ship, received the inspiration to write “The Star Spangled Banner.” He saw that, despite the furies of the night, the American flag still waved over the little fort. The words which he jotted down in the joy of that moment were the subject of some reworking on his part, but, it is understood, had not been materially changed when he showed them to his brother-in-law, Judge Nicholson, after his exchange the next morning. The words were found to fit perfectly to the popular tune “Anacreon in Heaven.” Carrying the stanzas to the printing office of Benjamin Edes, copies of it were ordered printed. This was the birth of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
The real hero of the attack upon Fort McHenry, is not, perhaps, given the acclaim that should be his. It was sturdy Colonel Armistead, commander of the fort. His intrepid spirit and fine ingenuity undoubtedly saved the day.
Among the tributes which were rendered to Colonel Armistead after the engagement may be repeated that of his old friend, the veteran Colonel John Eager Howard, who sent him a brace of ducks and some wine with the words:
The British are off and the Devil with them. You deserve the thanks of a grateful country. I am sending a brace of ducks and a bottle of Burgundy. I hope you may enjoy them.
COL. GEORGE ARMISTEAD
In command of Fort McHenry during the siege
During the Civil War Baltimore was again fortified. On the night of May 13, 1861, Major-General Butler occupied Federal Hill, a commanding eminence over-looking the city and harbor. In the following month a strong fort was erected here by General Brewerton, which included the entire crown of the hill and mounted fifty guns. The building of Federal Hill Fort was an answer to the action of a mob in Baltimore in April, 1861, which planned to seize Fort McHenry. This effort was frustrated by the garrison of 100 men under Captain Robinson which put up such a war-like front with such a display of grape and canister, that the enterprise was abandoned.
In September, 1914, during the Star Spangled Banner Centennial, the fort and grounds were loaned to the City of Baltimore by the War Department for use as a public park. It is not to be expected that the old fort will ever again be called into active service.
[FORT MARION]
ST. AUGUSTINE—FLORIDA
The ancient city of St. Augustine, the oldest place of European settlement on the North American continent, is on the east coast of Florida at the mouth of the St. Augustine River and at the northern end of a long lagoon formed by Anastatia Island, which separates the waters of the lagoon and of the Atlantic Ocean. Our interest in the quaint spot may be concentrated in Fort Marion, a Spanish bravo which has fought the city’s battles for more than three hundred and fifty years. Probably the most picturesque of fortifications in the United States, Fort Marion annually receives thousands of visitors, many drawn from the leisured throng who have made St. Augustine the winter social capital of the American nation.
By courtesy of the St. Augustine Historical Society
MOAT AND ENTRANCE, FORT MARION, ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA.
Fort Marion is situated at the northern end of St. Augustine, where its lonely watch-tower may have a clear view of the shipping channel which leads from the city across the long bar Anastatia Island to the ocean. The fortification is a regular polygon of four equal sides and four bastions. A moat surrounds the structure, but the moat has been dry for many years. The entrance is to the south and is protected by a barbican, or, less technically, an arrow-shaped out-work. A stationary bridge leads part way across the moat and the path is then continued on into the fort by a draw-bridge.
Over the entrance is an escutcheon bearing the arms of Spain with gorgeous coloring, which has been much dimmed by the hot sun of Florida. A legend now partially obliterated sets forth that “Don Ferdinand, the VI, being King of Spain and the Field Marshal Don Alonzo Fernando Hereda, being Governor and Captain General of this place, San Augustin of Florida, and its province, this fort was finished in the year 1756. The works were directed by the Captain Engineer Don Pedro de Brozas y Garay.”
Passing through the entrance to the fort one finds one’s self in a dark passage, on the right and left of which are low doorways, that on the right being the nearer. Glancing through the right door-way one sees three dark chambers, the first of which was used as a bake-room and the two others of which were places of confinement for prisoners. Looking through the dark door-way a few steps forward to the left one gazes into the guard-room.
Walking on one comes into the open court, 103 feet by 109 feet; immediately to the right is the foot of the inclined plane which leads to the upper walls. To the left is the well. On all sides of the court are entrances to casemates. Directly across from the entrance is the ancient chapel, which heard masses sung while the English colonies were just being started. The altar and niches still remain and over the door of this place of worship is a tablet set in the wall by French astronomers, who here once observed the transit of Venus.
Passing up the inclined plane to which allusion has already been made one finds one’s self on the ramparts of the fort. A charming view is to be obtained on all sides, but particularly looking out to sea. At each angle of the fort was a sentry-box and that at the northeast corner was also a watch-tower. This tower, probably the most familiar remembrance of old Fort Marion, is twenty-five feet high. The distance from watch-tower to sentry-box (or from corner to corner) of the old fort is 317 feet.
The material of which the fort is constructed is the familiar sea-shell concretion used so largely in Florida and known as “coquina.” It was quarried on Anastatia Island, across Matanzas Inlet from the city, and was ferried over to the fort site in large barges. The substance is softer when first dug than when it has been exposed to the air and light for a season, sharing this property with concrete, to which it is analogous in other ways, so the walls of the fort are more solid to-day than when they were built.
The history of Fort Marion takes one back to early bickering between Spanish and French on the North American continent. In 1562 Jean Ribaut, a sturdy French mariner, sailed into the waters of Florida, explored the waters of the St. John’s River (at the mouth of which busy Jacksonville now stands) and planted a colony and a fort on the St. John’s with the name of Fort Caroline. The river he called the River of May, in remembrance of the month in which he first set eyes upon it. In 1564, Laudonierre, a second Frenchman, came with supplies and reinforcements for Fort Caroline, but paused on his passage to investigate an inlet farther south than the mouth of the St. John’s River. This inlet he called the River of Dolphins, from the abundance of such creatures at play in the waters here and on the shores of the inlet, which later generations were to know as St. Augustine harbor; he descried an Indian village known as Seloy.
The jealous King of Spain heard of the French settlement in Florida and was displeased. He sent an expedition under Juan Menendez de Aviles to colonize the country with Spaniards and to exterminate the French, who added to the misfortune of not being Spaniards the mistake of not being Catholics. Menendez sailed into Florida waters in September, 1565, reconnoitred the French colony on the St. John’s River and then sailed south several days, landing at the Indian village of Seloy. Here he decided to establish the capital of his domain. The large barn-like dwelling of the Indian chief was made into a fort. This was the original of Fort Marion of to-day. Then on September 8, 1565, Menendez took final possession of the territory, and named his fort San Juan de Pinos.
Of the Sixteenth Century quarrels of Frenchman and Spaniard, of Huguenot and Catholic, there is not space in this chapter to tell. Suffice it to say that even in so broad a land as Florida, which according to the interpretation of the day included all of the present United States and British Canada, there was not room enough for two separated small French and Spanish colonies to subsist together, and for Catholic and Huguenot to be in one world together was beyond all reason. So the next step in the history of our fort is the expedition of Menendez against the French and the perpetration by him of one of the most horrid massacres that has ever stained the New World.
Let us picture a blinding night in September, 1565, at Fort Caroline. The Spanish leader, it is known, has established himself at the River Dolphins. One of the equinoctial tempests to which Florida is subject was raging. The French in their dismantled little post have deemed no enemy hardy enough to venture out in such elemental fury. Laudonierre himself has dismissed the weary sentinels from the wall, secure in the thought that Nature, herself, is his protection. He does not know the tenacity of the Spaniard. Menendez, setting out from his new stronghold with a few hundred men and struggling on against the storm, is even now within striking distance of the doomed French retreat. A sudden rush upon the sleeping garrison and the Spaniards are within the fort. No mercy is shown. One hundred and thirty men are killed with little resistance. One old carpenter escaped to the woods during the mêlée, but surrendered himself to the Spaniards the next morning with pleas for mercy. He was butchered with his prayers upon his lips.
Menendez returned to St. Augustine and in a few days heard that some of the French ships which had fled in disorder during the rout at the fort had landed their crews about twenty miles south of St. Augustine. He immediately set out for the spot with one hundred and fifty men. The hapless French without food and without shelter surrendered themselves to Menendez. All of them (over a hundred in number) with the exception of twelve Breton sailors, who had been kidnapped, and four ships’ caulkers who might be useful to the Spaniards, were put to the knife in cold blood. Again, word came to Menendez that castaway Frenchmen were south of St. Augustine. It was the remainder of the French squadron under Ribaut—more than three hundred and fifty in number. Menendez repeated his tactics with this company as well. He allowed them to trust themselves to his mercy and then conclusively proved that there was no mercy in the heart of a Spaniard of the Inquisition by putting the whole company to death ten at a time. The spot where these two butcheries took place is known to this day as Matanzas, or the Place of the Slaughters.
Immediately now the Spaniard began to make himself more secure in Florida. His stronghold at St. Augustine was amplified and Fort Caroline, the luckless French fort, was rebuilt and renamed San Mateo. In 1568 the French under de Gorgues descended upon the Spanish at San Mateo and put the whole garrison to the sword. San Augustin was not attacked, however, and for two hundred years held the Spanish flag supreme in this part of the New World.
For twenty years after its foundation Menendez’s little fort of San Juan de Pinos saw no military service, though it was made strong and formidable. Then the clash of arms came to its ears, accompanied by great catastrophe. These were the years of the English sea-kings. Raleigh, Drake, Grenville, Gilbert, Frobisher were sweeping the oceans in their diminutive craft, making anxious the captains of many a Spanish galleon. In September, 1585, Drake sailed on a freebooting voyage from the harbor of Plymouth, England, with more than an ordinarily large number of men and ships, and in May, 1586, this little armada chanced to be in sight of San Augustin. The procedure may now be told in the words of one of Drake’s seamen:
Wee descried on the shore a place built like a Beacon which was indeede a scaffold upon foure long mastes raised on ende.... Wee might discover over against us a Fort which newly had bene built by the Spaniards; and some mile or therabout above the Fort was a little Towne or Village without walls, built of wooden houses as the Plot doeth plainely shew. Wee forthwith prepared to have ordnance for the batterie; and one peece was a little before the enemie planted, and the first shot being made by the Lieutenant generall himself at their ensigne strake through the Ensigne, as wee afterwards understood by a Frenchman, which came unto us from them. One shot more was then made which strake the foote of the Fort wall which was all massive timber of great trees like Mastes.
By courtesy of the St. Augustine Historical Society
INCLINE LEADING TO RAMPARTS, FORT MARION, ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA.
And so, in the charming, inconsequential fashion of the times, the narrative goes on, carrying the battle with it. The fort fell into the hands of the English after a stubborn defence by its Spanish occupants and was destroyed. The village was sacked and burned. Drake then sailed on his way.
The fort was rebuilt and stood secure until 1665, when San Augustin was sacked by buccaneers under Captain John Davis and it shared the destruction of the town. Then a substantial structure, the Fort Marion of to-day, was begun. Work was continued for successive generations, until in 1756 the stronghold was declared finished. The new structure was christened San Marco.
During these years the fort was not without service, however. In 1702 and again in 1740 San Augustin was attacked by English forces from the English colonies to the north, and Fort San Marco, even while not complete, bore the brunt of these attacks. The second expedition against San Augustin was under the leadership of Governor Oglethorpe, of Georgia, and arose to the dignity of a siege of the city. For weeks the English forces lay beyond the city walls and were then driven off by reinforcements brought from Cuba.
With the construction of Fort San Marco the erection of city walls was undertaken, too. The walls of old San Augustin ran from Fort San Marco around the city and were constructed of “coquina.” Only the so-called “City Gate” remains of these walls to-day.
In 1763 the warrior which had withstood armed assault fell to the attack of diplomacy, for it was in this year that England made its trade with Spain whereby Spain was given back Cuba, which England had wrested by force of arms from that country, and England was given Florida. The flag of Castile and of Aragon was hauled down from the wall of the old fort and the British lion was raised in its place. Fort San Marco became in British hands Fort St. Mark.
During the American revolution Florida was the only one of the fourteen British colonies which remained loyal to the Mother Country. The fervor of the northern coasts found no kindred spark in old St. Augustine. The town became a haven for Tories. She opened her gates and an oddly-assorted throng came flocking in. There was the Tory colonel Thomas Browne, of Georgia, tar and feathers still sticking to his skin from his experience with the Liberty Boys, of Savannah. There was Rory McIntosh, always attended by Scotch pipers, who paraded the narrow streets breathing out fire and slaughter against the colonies. The Scopholites, so-called from Scophol, their leader, marched down, 600 strong, from the back country of North Carolina, burning and killing in their course through Georgia. With such additions, St. Augustine was not content with passive loyalty and became a centre for military operations against the southern colonies. Many a council did the rooms of Fort St. Mark witness, which had as its result death and privation to the rebellious Americans.
Two expeditions were attempted by the colonists against Fort St. Mark. The first under General Charles Lee fell short because of mismanagement. The second advanced as far as the St. John’s River. Consternation in St. Augustine reigned supreme; slaves were impressed to help strengthen the fortifications; citizens ran hither and thither with their valuables. But the Americans were menaced by fever at the St. John’s and faced the prospect of a midsummer encampment in Florida, so they turned about and went north. Fort St. Mark was not to leave English hands by force.
In 1783 took place another one of those shuffles between high contracting parties by which each party thinks that he has secured the better of the bargain. England traded Florida to Spain for Jamaica. Spain traded Jamaica to England for Florida. In 1821 Spain ceded Florida to the United States, and in 1825 the name of the fort was changed from Fort St. Mark to Fort Marion in honor of General Francis Marion, of Revolutionary fame.
The Seminole War began in 1835 and continued until 1842, costing the United States two thousand lives, and forty million dollars. Fort Marion was the centre of the military operations of this conflict and it was the scene of the disgraceful episode of treachery by which Osceola and other Indian chieftains were captured. In 1838 General Hernandez, in command of the United States forces, sent word to Osceola that he would be protected if he should come to Fort Marion for talk of peace. With seventy of his followers the Indian came to the conference and was placed in irons. The prisoner was taken to Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, where from much brooding and confinement he died. The same tactics were repeated in another sitting with Coacoochee, the remaining great leader of the Seminoles, and the Seminole War was ended. Coacoochee was confined in Fort Marion, where his cell is pointed out to visitors. His fate became that of an exile, for with his people he was transported to a western reservation.
During the Civil War Fort Marion had a brief flurry of excitement when the fort was seized by Southern sympathizers in 1861. It quickly fell before Federal troops, however, and had no further active part in that war.
The old fort is still government property, but its days of activity are long since past. That it will be maintained for many years as a reminder of the past is, however, well assured.
[LA FUERZA, MORRO CASTLE, AND OTHER DEFENCES]
HAVANA—CUBA
The city of Havana was located where it stands to-day in 1519, after a four years’ unsatisfactory trial of a site on the opposite, or south, coast of the island. It jogged along comfortably through all of the ordinary perils of that time until 1538, when it was attacked and sacked by a French privateersman. The authorities in the home country determined to provide some means of defence for the baby metropolis, and one Hernando de Soto, an impecunious adventurer who had followed Pizarro to Peru, and had returned enriched with plunder from that unhappy land, was commissioned governor of Cuba and Florida with instructions to build a fortress at Havana.
De Soto came to Havana in the fashion of leisure of the times, and in pursuit of his royal master’s instructions, laid the foundations of a fortress. This work was finished under the direction of his lieutenant while he, himself, was searching an El Dorado in Florida and was finding a miserable death by fever on the Mississippi. The structure which de Soto left as his legacy to Havana is the Castillo de la Fuerza, half hidden, to-day, between the Senate and old post-office building on the Plaza de Armes. La Fuerza has been credited with being the oldest inhabitable and inhabited structure in the Western Hemisphere and the claim is not easily disputed. As early as 1544 a royal decree had been given forth that all vessels entering Havana harbor should salute the little fortress with a ceremony not enjoyed by any other city in the New World save Santo Domingo.
The form of la Fuerza is that of a quadrilateral, having a bastion at each of the four corners. The walls are twenty-five feet in height and are double. There is a moat which has not contained water for many years, and arrangements for a draw-bridge which has been replaced by a permanent plank walk. To the seaward is a watch-tower similar in design to that on the fort at St. Augustine, and in this tower is a bell which, tradition says, was rung wildly whenever in the old days a suspicious sail came into the view of the watchman. The little bronze image in the top of the tower is known as “La Habana.” When de Soto sailed out from Havana harbor on that storied expedition through the American wilds which was to end in his death, he left la Fuerza, and with it his command as governor, in charge of his bride, Isabel de Bobadilla. For four years Lady Isabel waited for her lord’s return, spending anxious hours in the little watch-tower of the fort. Only when the tattered remnants of that splendid army which had accompanied the adventurer were brought back to Havana was her long suspense ended.
MORRO CASTLE, HAVANA, CUBA
The cellars of la Fuerza contain damp dungeons used as receptacles for modern rifles and ammunition, this part of the old fort being given over to the purposes of an armory.
In 1554 Havana was again attacked by the French and partially destroyed and in the following year it fell a victim to pirates. During the wars which marked the reigns of the Emperor Charles V, of Spain, and his son, Philip II, the colony became more and more the object of attack by Spain’s enemies, and in 1585, Havana having been seriously menaced by Sir Francis Drake, it was determined to build additional defences for the city. In 1589 Morro Castle, the Castle of the Three Kings and the Bateria de la Punta were begun; by 1597 they were completed.
The word “Morro” means promontory, and Castle del Morro is merely the fortress on the point. The design of Morro is that of the quaint Moorish fortress in the harbor of Lisbon, but it has been changed so much for modern defensive uses that it does not now greatly resemble its original. The work is irregular in shape, is built on solid rock, and rises from 100 to 120 feet above the level of the sea. Its situation on the northern one of the two points of the entrance to the harbor of Havana gives it a great importance. Opposite Morro, across the harbor mouth, is la Punta.
To visit Morro one climbs to the fort by an inclined road cut out of rock, shaded with laurels and royal poincianas. Hedges of cactus hem in the road. The pilgrim reaches at last the moat. This was cut out of solid rock and is seventy feet in depth. Passing over the draw-bridge and advancing through the dark walls of the work, one comes to the inner court, from whence there is a passage to the ramparts. Here is a fine outlook over city and harbor, from the seaward side of the ramparts, where there is a battery of twelve guns known as the “Twelve Apostles.”
Some of the prison cells in Morro are directly over the water and in one spot a steep chute leads to the sea. Your guide will tell you that from here bodies of prisoners, both living and dead, were shot out to become the food of innumerable sharks waiting below.
The most active service that Morro has seen was in 1762, when Havana was taken by the English under Admiral Pocock and Lord Albemarle. In June of that year, shortly after the outbreak of war between France and Spain as allies against England, a fleet of 44 English men-of-war and 150 lighter vessels, bearing a land force of 15,000 men, appeared off Havana. The Spanish defenders numbered 27,000 men, of whom a sufficient garrison was at Morro. The English landed on the coast to the east of our fortress and worked around to the rear of that structure to an eminence where the fortification of Cabanas now stands. The siege began on June 3 and continued until July 30, when, after a stubborn defence, Morro fell.
The long resistance of the point against an over-whelming force is largely to be credited to the indomitable spirit of its commander, Velasco, who, though he knew that his position had been undermined and his men were deserting him, refused to surrender. The fort was taken after the mines had been sprung and the walls had been battered down. Captain Velasco died of wounds received during the siege, and on the day of his funeral hostilities were suspended by the English in recognition of his bravery.
The authorities in Spain decreed that a ship in the Spanish navy should always bear the name of Velasco, and the vessel so named at the time of the Spanish-American war was sunk in Manila Bay by the Boston.
Havana fell thirteen days after Morro and for a year was in the hands of the enemy.
Stretching along bare hilltop back of Morro is Havana’s greatest fortress, built in 1763 after the departure of the unwelcome English guests whose coming had shown the weakness of the city’s defences. Cabanas, or to give its full name, Castillo de San Carlos de Cabanas (Saint Charles of the Cabin), is nearly a mile in length with a width of about one-fifth of a mile. Its cost was $14,000,000. When King Charles III of Spain, under whose direction the work was commenced, was told the total of expenditures, it is said that he walked to the window of his study and gazed intently out of it, remarking that such an enormous and expensive construction should be visible from Spain.
Within the fort are innumerable walks, dungeons and secret passages. To the right of the entrance is the famous “Laurel Moat” where unfortunate Cubans and other political prisoners were shot without benefit of trial. The condemned men were compelled to kneel facing a wall, and this wall marked with bullets in a line nearly one hundred feet long is a grim present-day memento of Spain’s ruthless rule in the island. The spot has been marked with a bronze tablet which records its history.
Other fortifications in Havana include Principe Castle, built in 1774, and Atares Castle, 1767. There are two ancient little round towers of defence at Chorrera and Cojimar.
[FORT SAN CARLOS]
PENSACOLA BAY—FLORIDA
Pensacola Bay is a lozenge-shaped body of water, the entrance to which from the Gulf is at the southern point of the figure, and the southern side is formed by Santa Rosa Island, which stretches out in a long sandy line here to divide sea and inland water. On the western shore, near the head of the bay, is situated the busy city of Pensacola, one of the most active shipping points on the Gulf and also one of the most ancient. About six miles south of Pensacola, and near the mouth of the bay, is the city’s ancient defence, Fort San Carlos de Barrancas, which has gone through ten generations and more of life as humans reckon it and has done valiant service under four flags.
The military (and social) history of Pensacola Bay commences in 1558, when Philip II, of Spain, commissioned Luis de Valesca, viceroy of New Spain, to undertake the settlement of Florida. After a preliminary survey Valesca, in the summer of 1559, sent 1500 soldiers and settlers to make a beginning at Pensacola Bay, this body of water having been adjudged the best roadstead and the most favorable for the support of human life on the Gulf Coast. A tentative settlement was established, but for some reason the site did not please the expedition and its leaders attempted unsuccessfully to find a better one. The winter that followed and the next summer were filled with privation and the colony became much reduced in numbers. During the second summer most of the settlers went with Angel de Villafane to Santa Elena, Port Royal Sound, south on the Atlantic coast (South Carolina, to-day) and the remainder was recalled by Philip II, who thereupon decreed that no further effort should be made to settle the west coast of Florida, a royal promulgation which circumstance and lack of incentive to the contrary conspired to make effective for more than a century. If one accepts this abortive expedition as the beginning of settlement in Florida then Pensacola is the oldest point of European residence in the United States, antedating St. Augustine by seven years.
The Spaniards did not regard La Salle’s effort at colonization at the mouth of the Mississippi River with favor and were not at all displeased at his misfortunes. To forestall other efforts of the French they undertook a survey of the coast and established a colony at Pensacola in the last years of the Seventeenth Century. This was the beginning of Pensacola of to-day.
By courtesy of the Pensacola Chamber of Commerce
FORT SAN CARLOS DE BARRANCAS, NEAR PENSACOLA, FLORIDA
When Iberville, in 1699, sailed from France with several vessels containing colonists for Louisiana and when in due course of time he arrived off Pensacola, he found the Spaniards firmly established with a fort with four bastions and some ships of war. The Frenchmen asked for permission to disembark his forces. His request was refused and he then sailed along the coast until he found a landing to his liking near the present-day Biloxi, Mississippi. The governor of Pensacola at this time—and the first governor of the colony—was Don Andre D’Arriola. The fort was named San Carlos de Barrancas.
There came in 1719 a war against Spain in which France and England were allies opposed to her. The French thereupon sent in this year M. de Serigny with a sufficient force to take possession of Pensacola which was valuable to the French on account of its proximity to Louisiana and its accessibility to the West India Islands. The expedition was entirely successful as, after an attack by land by 700 Canadians, the commander of the Spanish garrison, Don John Peter Matamoras, surrendered with the honors of war.
It is probable that the Spanish stronghold at that time was not the one which has come down to us to-day, though it bore the same name and was, very possibly, built on the same site.
The news of the surrender of Pensacola caused a great stir in Spain, and an expedition was fitted out to recover the lost territory. The command of the expedition was given to Don Alphonse Carracosa and the force consisted of 12 vessels and 850 fighting men. Don Carracosa achieved success, as at the sight of his fleet part of the French garrison deserted and the rest surrendered, to be treated with great severity by the Spanish. Don Matamoras was re-established and an expedition was despatched against the French at Mobile without result satisfactory to the Spanish.
The French were to have their day, again, however. De Bienville invested Pensacola by land and Count de Champmelin by sea. After a stubborn resistance Matamoras surrendered, giving the French between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred prisoners. The French dismembered the greater part of the fort and left a small garrison in the remainder of the structure.
Under the peace of 1720 Pensacola was restored to the Spanish and thus was ended the port’s first experience of warfare. Fort San Carlos was rebuilt substantially in the form that it bears to-day, and in 1722 another fortification was built on the point of Santa Rosa Island where Fort Pickens long years afterward was to maintain a gallant defence.
Fort San Carlos is a little semicircular structure most solidly put together but not of great pretension as to size. On account of its fine location, however—having no heights near which could dominate it, and having a fine sweep over the entrance to the bay which it is designed to protect—it was of importance in the days of short-range cannon.
In 1763 the whole of Florida, which, of course, included our brave little fort at Pensacola, passed into the hands of the English by treaty with Spain, and an English garrison took possession of Fort San Carlos. Upon the outbreak of hostilities again between Spain and England, Galvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, sailed from New Orleans in February, 1781, with 1400 men and a sufficient fleet to reduce Pensacola. He was joined by squadrons from Havana and Mobile and in May of that year entered Pensacola Bay. The fort here was in the command of Colonel Campbell with a small garrison of English. After a sufficient resistance Colonel Campbell surrendered and Galvez took charge. In 1783 the whole province of Florida was ceded to Spain, and Pensacola remained under a Spanish ruler for thirty-one years after this latter date.
The next eventful interval in the life of Fort San Carlos had to do with one of the most popular figures of United States history, Andrew Jackson. In 1814, during the progress of the second war of the United States with England, Jackson was made a major-general and was given command of the Gulf Coast region where he had been operating against the Creek Indians. While arranging a treaty with these conquered savages he was informed by them that they had been approached by English officers, through the connivance of the Spanish commander at Pensacola, with offers of supplies and assistance to fight against the Americans. Two British vessels arrived at Pensacola August 4 and Colonel Edward Nicholls in command was allowed to land troops and to arm some Indians. Late in August seven more British vessels arrived at Pensacola and the mask of Spanish neutrality was thrown aside when Fort San Carlos was turned over to the British, the British being allowed to hoist their ensign thereon, and Colonel Nicholls was entertained by the Spanish governor as his guest.
Jackson was at Mobile, Alabama, not very far distant as the crow flies from Pensacola, and when the intelligence of these happenings had been confirmed immediately set about raising a force of Americans. By November he had 2,000 volunteers and early in that month marched from Fort Montgomery (Montgomery, Alabama) upon Pensacola. November 6 he was two miles from that city. To ascertain the Spaniard’s intentions he sent Major Pierre to wait upon the commandant of the city and was rewarded for his pains by having his envoy fired upon. By midnight Jackson had his men in motion against the city, and in the hot engagement which followed the Spanish and British were badly worsted. The British fled down the Bay in their ships, blowing up Fort San Carlos in their retreat and carrying away one of the higher Spanish officers—certainly, on the whole, a not very grateful return for the benefits bestowed upon them by their hosts.
The Creek and Seminole Indians who had begun to rally to the English standard were much impressed by this display of force on the part of the Americans and esteeming Jackson a very bad medicine, indeed, wisely decided to return to the prosaic paths of peace.
During the Civil War, Fort San Carlos played no conspicuous part. The limelight of fame was thrown on its close neighbor, Fort Pickens, on Santa Rosa Island. This latter post at the outbreak of the war was in charge of Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer, a Pennsylvanian, who, seeing the conflict impending, concentrated (in Fort Pickens as being the easiest one of them all to defend) the forces in the various forts under his jurisdiction. From January 9 to April 11, 1861, Slemmer was in a state of siege in Fort Pickens and on the latter date was relieved by forces from the North. The point was held by Federal troops throughout the war.
A curious incident which occurred early in 1914 at Fort San Carlos recalled vividly to the officers there the part the little Spanish post played in the days when pirates roamed the Spanish Main and all of this part of the world was new. A stranger came to the fort with an old parchment which he declared showed the location of buried treasure in the old fort. He would not tell how he came by the document, but its evident antiquity aroused interest and for an idle hour’s interest the officers of the post decided to dig for the buried treasure. On the parchment was a well drawn plan of the fort with a cross in a particular corner of the parade. This point was located with some little difficulty and men were set to digging. For a time nothing interesting occurred, but after a while one of the men struck a rotten wooden board which proved to be the top of an old well. At the bottom of this covered-over well was discovered a lot of watery mud which, when it had been dug into, revealed the top of an old chest. Darkness fell now and it was not considered worth while to continue operations until the next day. The next morning when the men went back to work they found that the stirring up of the earth and water had caused the object, whatever it was, to sink so deep into the unstable soil of the spot that it could not be recovered!
[THE PRESIDIO OF SAN FRANCISCO]
GOLDEN GATE—CALIFORNIA
Hand in hand with the Military went the Church during Spain’s days of dominion in the New World. Where the soldier walked, there too, came the priest. At first when all of the New World was new, when the hold of the Old World was insecure, it was the soldier who pointed the path, but when Spain’s hand had a firm grasp upon her possessions it was the priest who took the lead. The records of Spain on the east coast of America are records of bloodiness and cruel oppression. On the west coast where the friar led the way we find deeds of gentleness and love. Where Florida reveals a memory of hate in two old bastioned fortresses—Marion and San Carlos—with dingy dungeons and rusty chains, California shows its missions with their silvery chimes and its presidios, the two institutions being bound together.
Four presidios were established by Spain in old California to guard its missions; the first, at San Diego; the second, at Monterey; the third, at San Francisco; and the fourth, at Santa Barbara. It is the third which bespeaks our interest in this chapter, owing to its importance in the present day as well as to its historic and natural charm.
The presidio at San Francisco was established in 1776 by an expedition which set out in two parts in June of that year from Monterey; one part to go by land, the other by water. The objective point of the two was a bay which had been discovered in 1769 by an expedition from San Diego. It was named in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, hence, San Francisco. The land expedition included Friars Palou and Cambon, a few married settlers with large families, and seventeen dragoons under the command of Don Jose Moraga, who was to be the commandant of the new post. It carried garden seed, agricultural implements, horses, mules and sheep. This party reached the neighborhood of the Golden Gate on June 27 and, without waiting for the detachment which was coming by sea, chose a site for the presidio and began work upon the modest buildings of that station. The seed was placed in the ground, the cattle and sheep put out to graze and the horses and mules set to labor. All was activity.
The first part of September saw the buildings of the post substantially complete and on September 17, the feast of the Stigmata of Saint Francis, solemn possession of the Presidio, in the name of the King of Spain, was taken by the grizzled soldier Moraga, while a mass was celebrated by Palou. A Te Deum was sung, a cross was planted and salutes were fired over land and water. Thus was the presidio of San Francisco founded.
By courtesy of R. J. Waters & Co.
FORT SCOTT AND THE GOLDEN GATE, PRESIDIO RESERVATION, SAN FRANCISCO
It is a far cry from 1776 to the present day (though not so long as from 1776 back to the first day of Spanish settlement in the future United States), but, while the immediate aspect of the country round about Spain’s presidio of 1776 at San Francisco has changed, the situation of the post has remained the same; and the view of land and water here is just as entrancing to-day as it was on that day in 1769 when the expedition from San Diego saw the far-famed Golden Gate.
The Presidio of San Francisco, the most important military station of the Pacific coast, is situated on the northwest rim of the city, north of Golden Gate Park (and north of the exposition grounds of 1915) and connected with that park by a beautiful boulevard one mile long. The grounds comprise more than fifteen hundred acres, developed for military purposes in the most modern fashion. From almost any part of the grounds or the approach thereto enchanting views of the wonderful bay of San Francisco are to be obtained.
A description of the view of the presidio as you approach the place on the boulevard from Golden Gate Park has been given by Ernest Peixotto in his “Romantic California,” which may well be repeated here:
In the meantime the city boasts one splendid driveway that, with a connecting link completed, will rank with the famous roadways of the Old World.
Only a decade or two ago the Presidio (it still bears its Spanish appellation) was an isolated military post separated from the city by several miles of barren, sandy thoroughfares. Now some of the handsomest homes crown the hill tops about it, and owe their chief attraction to the glorious views of bay and shore that they command. To start some fine afternoon toward sunset from one of these homes and take a drive around the cliffs is an experience not soon to be forgotten.
A few blocks run brings you to a stone gateway, its posts topped with eagles; you turn sharply to the right through a grove of eucalypti, swing round a curve and then you stop the motor. From the red Macadam roadway upon which you stand, the hills fall gently in a broad amphitheatre to the barracks and parade grounds laid out symmetrically along the shore, and teeming with soldier life. Beyond, the waters of the bay mirror the azure of the sky—a blue, tinged with green, like those half-dead turquoises that they sell in the marts of Tunis. The North Beach hills, thick-studded with the modest homes of the city’s alien population, gleam white against the Contra Costa Mountains—verdant in winter, tawny and dry in summer—with the lumpy silhouette of the Monte Diablo, the Devil’s Mountain, poking over the shoulder as if it, too, wished a peep at so fair a prospect.
Across the stretch of intervening water, stern-wheeled river steamers ply northward to San Pablo Bay; on through the Carquinez Straits and up the Sacramento River, their silhouettes varied once in a while by some grim battle-ship or cruiser steaming to the Navy Yard at Mare Island, headquarters, home and hospital for all our ships in the Pacific. Anchored in the middle of the bay, Alcatraz lies terraced with batteries, low, forbidding, while to the north rise the hills of Marin County bathed in purple shadows and clustered around the base of Tamalpais. The whole scene is suffused with the rosy flush of the westering sun that gilds the islands, warms the greens of the eastern sky, and blushes the hills with its ardent glances.
One turns from the picture with regret, only to follow on to new vistas. You wind through groves of evergreens and eucalypti out into the open meadows, a riot of flowers in springtime, that top the cliffs above the Golden Gate. The famous straits lie just below, Fort’s Point antiquated bastions on their hither shore fronting the white-washed walls of the harbor-light on the Point Bonita bluffs opposite.
To take up the thread of our historical narrative, the presidio remained a possession of Spain’s until 1824 when Mexico finally became free from its mother country and the flag of Mexico took the place of the banner of Castile and Aragon at the Golden Gate.
In 1846 the American flag was raised in all of the presidios of California, an interesting chapter of national expansion far too large for abridgment here. In 1849 commenced the era of San Francisco’s prosperity and presidio’s importance with the discovery of gold in California and the onset of the hordes of goldseekers who came through the Golden Gate.
The presidio was visited by Richard H. Dana in 1859 and is described by him:
I took a California horse of old style and visited the Presidio. The walls stand as they did, with some changes made to accommodate a small garrison of United States troops. It has a noble situation and I saw from it a clipper ship of the very largest class coming through the Gate under her fore and aft sails. Thence I rode to the fort, now nearly finished, on the southern shore of the Gate, and made an inspection of it. It is very expensive and of the latest style. One of the engineers is Custis Lee, who has just left West Point at the head of his class, a son of Colonel Robert E. Lee who distinguished himself in the Mexican war.
The fort with the “expensive equipment” to which he refers is Fort Winfield Scott, which was seven years building and cost $2,000,000. It is now out of date, but is a picturesque feature of the harbor and is of service to the presidio authorities of the present in various minor capacities.
Opposite Fort Winfield Scott, across the Golden Gate, which is here at its narrowest width of one mile, can be seen the white buildings of Fort Baker. Other defences of San Francisco, visible from the presidio, include Fort Miley, on Point Bonita; Point Lobos, and Alcatraz Island, a picturesque body of land whose Spanish name memoralizes the pelicans which once made the place their home.
During the Spanish-American War the presidio was a scene of activity as the point of departure of our soldiers for the Philippines. The national cemetery for the burial of soldiers who have died on duty in the Philippines is situated here, too, and each returning transport brings back its sad burden, far lighter now than in the days when the islands were first feeling the weight of American rule.
Connected with the history of the presidio is a pretty story which Bret Harte has woven into a familiar one of his poems. It concerns the pathetic love of Dona Concepcion Arguello, daughter of the Spanish Commandant Don Luis Arguello, for Rezanov, chamberlain of the Russian emperor, who came, during the days of Spain’s possession of this land, to negotiate for Russian settlements in California. Rezanov won the heart of his host’s daughter and sailed away to gain the consent of his emperor to marriage with her. Years passed and no word came from Rezanov. At length Sir George Simpson, the Englishman, in his trip around the world, brought word that Rezanov had been killed by a fall from his horse while crossing Siberia on his homeward journey. Dona Concepcion, who had faithfully waited his return, became a nun and when she died was buried near the old Mission church in the Presidio grounds.
[FORT ADAMS AND NEWPORT’S DEFENSIVE RUINS]
NEWPORT—RHODE ISLAND
There is an odd little cluster of islands on the eastern side of the entrance to Narragansett Bay. The most important of these is Aquidneck and on the southern extremity of Aquidneck Isle is situated Newport. At the southern extremity of Newport is Brenton’s Point and on Brenton’s Point is Fort Adams. This is the proper way to build up a climax!
Picture to yourself a sunny Fourth of July in 1799; this is the day on which Fort Adams is to be dedicated with imposing ceremonies. From out of the little many-spired city across the sparkling blue waters of Newport Bay winds a little procession around the shore road which leads to the fort. First of all, comes the company of soldiers which is to garrison the post. It is Captain John Henry’s company of artillery. After this comes the major-general of the State militia with his staff in gorgeous gold braid. Following him is the famous Newport Artillery Company with two brass field pieces making a brave show. Then there are the Newport Guards with two brass field pieces. Finally there is a company of citizens.
LIME ROCK LIGHT HOUSE, NEWPORT HARBOR, LOOKING TOWARD FORT ADAMS
They are all assembled at the fort. Major Tousard, of the corps of engineers of the army of the infant republic, is speaking: He says: “Citizens: Happy to improve every occasion to testify my veneration for that highly distinguished citizen who presides over the government of the United States, I have solicited the Secretary of War to name this fortress, Fort Adams. He has gratified my desire. I hope that the brave officers and soldiers who are and shall be honored with its defence will by valor and good conduct render it worthy of its name, which I hereby proclaim Fort Adams.” A salute was fired from the four brass field pieces and the great cannon of the new fort. In the distance Fort Wolcott on Goat Island fired guns and the standard of the young United States was unfurled at the head of the flag-staff. Thus was christened one of the most important of American coast defences.
For twenty-five years thereafter Fort Adams was maintained with a small garrison supplied from Fort Wolcott, under whose jurisdiction it was. In 1824 the present Fort Adams was commenced, a star-shaped fortress of grey granite, with outworks, upon an initial appropriation by the Federal government of $50,000. It was finished, under successive appropriations, in 1841. The garrison was withdrawn from 1853 to 1857 and between the years 1859 and 1862, since when it has been continuously occupied. The present area of Fort Adams reservation is about 200 acres, and it contains modern works which need no description.
If one should go back in point of Time beyond the gay little ceremony which marked the beginning of Fort Adams, he would find that Brenton’s Point had been a site for martial works before this. Its strategic possibilities for defence were early recognized in the Revolution, as, in the spring of 1776, a light breast-work was thrown up here by the Americans behind which they mounted several guns. In April, 1776, the Glasgow, a British war vessel of twenty-nine guns, came into Newport Harbor and anchored near Goat Island. On the following morning such a heavy fire was brought to bear upon the ship from Brenton’s Point that it cut its cable and made out to sea. A few days after this the Scarborough and the Scymetar of His Majesty’s service were, likewise, badly battered by fire from these earthworks.
Late in the summer of 1776 the British obtained possession of Aquidneck Island. They made their head-quarters at Newport, and erected a temporary barracks on Brenton’s Point where the American battery had been. For three years they held possession of Rhode Island and then were removed by orders from their commander-in-chief, embarking October 25, 1779.
Parade, Old Fort Adams [top]
Present-Day Aspect of Fort Greene
GLIMPSES OF NEWPORT’S HISTORIC DEFENCES
The next visitors to Newport were the French. The French fleet, under the command of Admiral de Ternay, appeared in Newport Harbor August 10, 1780. General Rochambeau and his army shortly put ashore. General Heath, in command of the American forces in Rhode Island, was at the wharf to welcome Rochambeau. There were speeches and the American officers wore cockades of black and white as a courtesy to the allies, the cockade of the formal American uniform being black and that of the French, white. It was not long before the French had been made to feel at home and had settled down to a long stay.
General Rochambeau’s defences consisted of a line of earthworks completely enclosing Newport on the north, cutting off access to it by land from any other part of the island. Traces of this line can still be discerned by the inquiring visitor to Newport. Strong temporary fortifications were thrown up at Brenton’s Point on the future site of our Fort Adams, and on all of the islands of the harbor were placed guns. The northern water-front of the city was held by a strong redoubt, built by Rochambeau and known as Fort Greene. This was at the site of the present Fort Greene Park, at the head of Washington Street.
Rochambeau was the second visitor to these shores with a French army. The first allies had not made a pleasant impression with the Americans, it must be admitted, chiefly because of their leader’s, D’Estaing’s, apparent unwillingness to come to grips with the enemy except where such action might directly benefit his own country. Doubtless he acted on orders from Versailles! But General Rochambeau seemed to be under different instructions, for he immediately placed himself under the authority of the American leaders and ingratiated himself with the people. His stay at Newport is a brilliant chapter in the social history of that city.
One of the pleasantest episodes of the French occupation of Newport was the visit of Washington to his French associate in arms. Rochambeau had chosen as his residence and headquarters the comfortable and beautiful dwelling at the corner of Clarke and Mary Streets known as the Vernon House. In March, 1781, Washington, accompanied by his young aide-de-camp, Lafayette, came to Newport and was received here with much formality. The interest with which the French officers regarded their guest is evidenced in some of the journals which they published at the close of the war on their return to their own country. Amongst minor incidents, Washington led a dance with the beautiful Miss Champlin, and French officers, taking the instruments from the musicians’ hands, played a minuet, “A Successful Campaign.”
A merry time this French occupation of Newport brought about, and traditions of the gayeties and portentous politenesses of the period are still retailed in the little city. A finer body of men than the French army had probably never taken the field. Many had been through the Seven Years War. Officers of the most cultured circles of the Old World embraced a chance of campaigning in the New World with the pleasure of school-boys in a new experience.
One of the officers of the French force was the Viscount de Noailles, in whose regiment Napoleon was afterward a subaltern. Another was Biron, a figure in the French Revolution, and who in 1793, having unsuccessfully commanded the republican armies in La Vendee, was guillotined. There was the Marquis de Chastellux,—an elegant,—whose petits soupers became the talk of every one fortunate enough to be invited. Later Chastellux’s “Travels in America” were to become a treasured gallery of pictures of the nation when it was new. There were Talleyrand, Chabannes, Champcenetz, de Melfort, la Touche, de Barras, de Broglie, Vauban, and Berthier, the military confidant of Napoleon, and many others. With such an infusion of genius and culture it is not remarkable that the little city developed an exotic bloom and that the records of this period in Newport are among the gayest in American social history. Nor should one be surprised that the anxious mothers of young daughters of Newport in that time (as we learn now from the betraying evidences of long preserved letters) passed vigilant hours of watchfulness in the sudden maelstrom of French gallantry!
The Chevalier de Ternay, commander at sea of the French forces, died soon after the arrival at Newport and was buried in Trinity church-yard where a slab was erected to his memory.
In 1781 the French marched out of Newport, joined Washington in his campaign at Yorktown, and the result soon was the surrender of Cornwallis and the virtual end of the War of Independence.
In May, 1794, Governor Fenner addressed the following letter to George Champlin, of Newport:
Last evening I received a letter from Mr. Rochefontaine the engineer dated New London ... informing me that he should depart from New London for Newport this day and desiring me to transmit to him my orders and the names of the gentlemen appointed by me to be the agents for the fortifications and to supervise their execution. I have to ask the favor of you to undertake the business with Col. Sherburne until my arrival at Newport, and to wait on the engineer and deliver him my letter of appointment. Give him the necessary information and assistance. Your compliance will render great service to the State and in a particular manner oblige your ob’t servant,
A. Fenner.
The building of the new fort was assigned to Major Louis Toussard, and soon it was ready for its dedication. At the time of this ceremony the battery was completed and was mounted with 32-pounders on sea-coast carriages.
Strangely enough it was as a protection from the very allies with whom the United States had triumphed against Great Britain that Fort Adams was called into being. It will be recalled by the reader of history that at this period France under the Directory was in constant embroilment with the United States. Citizen Talleyrand was bent upon turning the new nation to France’s ends. In 1798 a French cruiser actually had the impudence, after the capture of several American vessels, to bring her prizes into an American port to escape the more dreaded British. President Adams, as all know, eventually brought the Directoire Exécutif and Citizen Talleyrand to their senses in no uncertain fashion, but for a time affairs between the two countries were in a very unsatisfactory condition.
To President Adams is due, too, the foundation of the present American navy and the increasing importance of Fort Adams. He saw the necessity in the future for a great naval base well located on the coast. A commissioner sent out by him reported that the harbor of Newport most fully answered the specifications he had in mind, and from this time the works on Brenton’s Point acquired a new value.
The greater part of the construction of the second Fort Adams, which was begun in 1824, was done under the personal supervision of General J. G. Totten of the United States army in coast defence. It is said that during the progress of the work a full set of plans of the fortress mysteriously disappeared and as mysteriously reappeared after a long interval. Gossip also gratuitously asserts that a copy of these plans could be found in the Admiralty office of Great Britain. However that may be, the plans would be of little value to any one to-day.
Associated with Totten was that General Bernard of the first Napoleon’s staff who was raised from the ranks by the Corsican for his skill as a military engineer. Bernard came to the United States in 1816 and offered his services to the infant republic. While his gifts have been generally conceded, his personality must have been far from winning. Colonel McCree, chief of engineers, resigned rather than serve with him, and harmony between the Frenchman and Colonel Totten was only secured by an agreement through which work was divided and each man was bound to accept the other’s plans.
There are passages beneath the walls of Fort Adams known only to the engineers. These are always closed, for they are of no use in piping times of peace and might become a trap for curious, unwary visitors. A story is told of an exploring party years ago, before the entrances were barred. This party penetrated far beneath the fort. Suddenly their lantern went out and a scream and a splash from the front showed that one of the party was in distress. A beautiful girl had stepped over the edge of a subterranean reservoir. What could be done! There was a rush and another splash. One of the young men had jumped in the dark into the dank pool beside the drowning girl. He was able to keep himself and his fair charge afloat until a rope reached them. The hero of the tale was the late Washington Van Zandt of the Newport family.
PANORAMA OF NEWPORT HARBOR, R. I., SHOWING FORT ADAMS AT LEFT MIDDLE DISTANCE
Goat Island in Central Distance
FORT DUMPLINGS, CONANICUT ISLAND, A REVOLUTIONARY RELIC NEAR NEWPORT
During the War of 1812 Fort Adams saw no active service, and this is true, too, of the Civil War.
The vicinity of Newport held many fortified points during the Revolutionary War and some of the remains of these can be seen to-day. One of the most interesting of these relics is “Dumplings,” at the southern tip of Conanicut Isle. A belligerent little round stone tower, it has as pugnacious an appearance to-day as it had when a few hardy Americans garrisoned it against the English; and it is a favorite picnic point for parties from Newport or from the summer colonies on the west side of Narragansett Bay. Other ruined defences (grass-grown and decayed) are to be found on Conanicut whose history is so obscure that even legend has little to say about them; but they are all a part of the expression of the doughty spirit which moved Newport and its vicinity during the Revolution.
Goat Island in Newport Harbor, now the home of the Fort Wolcott torpedo station, and a naval hospital, was, we are told by Edward Field, in his interesting monograph, “Revolutionary Defences in Rhode Island,” the site of a fortification as early as 1700. This early fortification was known as Fort Anna; later Fort George; then, Fort Liberty; and, at the time of the Revolution, Fort Washington.
[FORT MONROE]
OLD POINT COMFORT—VIRGINIA
Morning bugle call, the evening gun, grey ships of war stealing in from a misty sea with long plumes of soft black smoke, military uniforms on the streets and trig bright houses are, probably, the average civilian’s impressions of a stay at Old Point Comfort where is located Fort Monroe. “Fort” or “Fortress,” for the place changes its sex indifferently according to the state of mind of the speaker, it probably satisfies the popular conception of a mighty stronghold of defence more completely than any other such establishment in the United States. And, indeed, it is a great defensive work, guarding one of the most vital points of entrance in this country, menacing hostile approach to the very capital of the country itself.
By courtesy of the War Department
FROM THE RAMPARTS OF FORT MONROE, LOOKING TOWARD HAMPTON ROADS
(Taken during the Jamestown Celebration by the United States War Department and Reproduced by Special Permission.)
At the southern limit of the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay is a long sandy peninsula whose extremity in times of flood is cut off from the mainland by a narrow wash of water, and on this sometimes isolated tip of the peninsula is situated Fort Monroe. The grounds of the reservation, which includes all of the residence portion of the little community, too, embrace about 280 acres of almost always dry land. The walls of the fort itself encircle the greater part of this number of acres.
From the summit of these walls one looks out upon a wide prospect of waters. To the south is Hampton Roads, into which empty the waters of the James, the Elizabeth and the Nansemond Rivers. To the east lies the wide expanse of the lower Chesapeake Bay, giving access to the Potomac and the network of other rivers which the bay holds as tributaries. From all directions except from the west pours in upon Old Point a vivifying draught of pure salt air. From the west,—from the mainland,—come all manner of humidities, unpleasantness and mosquitoes, but this is only one of four points of the compass.
It is a healthy place, this Old Point Comfort, so healthy, indeed, that in a grave government report of 1877 the army surgeon at the post tells his superiors in Washington that there is a legend in the army that the air of the place conduces to fecundity in the families stationed there. He adds that from his own professional practice and his observation of the number of children playing in the streets he believes that there is more than fancy in the idea!
The visitor to Fort Monroe will almost invariably come by water, though there is a roundabout way of reaching the post by way of trolley from Newport News—through quaint old Hampton, past Hampton Institute and over a long trestle to the reservation. He will see, first, on putting foot upon the wharf and fighting off the hungry hordes of hackmen and baggage smashers, the red walls of a popular hotel. To the right is a triangular park, on the far side of whose spread of green is a row of modern cottages of pretentious architecture, which are given over to the superior officers stationed at the post. Beyond the roofs of these can be seen, in glimpses, the battlements of the old fort. Perhaps our visitor will penetrate on farther back into the grounds, along the winding main street, until he comes to the main entrance to the fort, faced by an inn much used by officers and the military set. Here there are cottages, of less imposing aspect than those facing the sea, which are given over to the younger officers and their families. Here also one has his first clear view of the fort walls.
Without a doubt it is recollection of the moat that one carries away from Fortress Monroe, primarily. This broad band of water, encircling the high, grey old walls of the place, appeals strongly to one’s romantic sense. Ho, warder! to the draw-bridge! And all that sort of thing. There is a draw-bridge, too,—five of them, in fact, at the five entrances to the fort. So, ho, for the draw-bridge and a view inside the fort!
GARDEN VIEW OF ONE OF MONROE’S ANTEBELLUM RESIDENCES
The visitor who crosses the narrow way leading across the moat and penetrates to the interior of Fortress Monroe will not be greatly impressed by show of military works. These are all quietly and modestly ready in the background, somewhere. He will find himself in a charming sort of park which strongly suggests the tropics in its luxuriance of foliage of all kinds. Indeed the air of Old Point, for some reasons, supports tropical plant growth that will not live in the countryside immediately adjoining. One of the effective sights that the visitor sees in the fort are the clumps of fig trees which are to be found, and there are to be found, too, magnolia and rhododendron and crape myrtle.
There is a large parade ground, flanked on the east and north by long barracks. The rest of the grounds, not including the casemates, is given over to residences, to various store-houses and to a building of the Coast Artillery School which has been located at Monroe since 1867.
The casemates of the old fort are used as residences for married private soldiers and for other purposes, not transparently military. The long rows of heavy cannon once to be seen here are to be found no more, their place being taken by modern batteries elsewhere.
There is to be seen the casemate in which Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States, was confined after the working out of the destiny of the Lost Cause. It is not different from its neighbors, and is an inconspicuous little compartment in a wall with an ornamental little two-post doorway and one window. Many curious visitors stop before it.
Old Point Comfort and all of this section of the lower Chesapeake have seen many strange visitors and cargoes in the Past. Doughty old Captain John Smith came to Hampton Roads and wrote about what he saw with that wealth of picturesque detail which those old chroniclers loved to pour forth. The name Point Comfort itself came from the circumstance that Smith was cast into this Hampton Roads on the wings of a storm at sea and that he hailed the first strip of solid land that he saw as a comfort, indeed. At an early period a settlement was made here, as a subsidiary of the Jamestown colony, and, as early as 1611, a fort was built on the point as a defence against Indians and freebooting marauders of buccaneer type. The fort was armed and known as Fort Algernon, in honor of Lord Algernon Percie, one of the directors of the Virginia Company. The greatest fort of the country was once called Algernon!
This little fortification was not of long life, however. It was maintained for a few years by the Jamestown colony but went into decay after the failure of its parent. The strategic value of the Point as a place for defence was not lost sight of, however, in any succeeding generation, though the place was not called into service for many years.
By courtesy of the War Department
FIRE!!!
Showing shells just leaving mortars, Fort Monroe, Va. (This remarkable photograph was taken with modern high speed appatratus by the Corps of Enlisted Specialists stationed at this post.)
The foundations of Fortress Monroe were laid in 1819, and the works were carried forward actively for ten years. The plans were drawn by the famous Bernard, one-time aide-de-camp of the first Napoleon, and one of his leading engineers. It was Bernard’s ambition to construct in the United States (he came to the United States in 1816 and immediately entered the employ of the government) one great fortress like the works of Antwerp, in the fortification of which he had a large share. Fort Monroe, named in honor of the president who did so much to make sure that the coast defences of the country should be adequately founded, was the result of this vision.
It is to be seen that the life of the present fortification begins after the War of 1812, but the military history of the vicinity of Fort Monroe prior to that time is full of interest.
During the Revolution the mouth of the Chesapeake was guarded by British cruisers and a rigorous blockade was maintained. Despite this, during the war no less than 248 privateers were fitted out in the waters of the Chesapeake and managed to gain the high seas by eluding the vigilance of the patrol beyond the capes.
In 1779 General Leslie sailed from New York with 3000 of His Majesty’s troopers to land upon the peninsula not far from the site of Fort Monroe and there to await orders from Lord Cornwallis, who was in North Carolina. He entered Hampton Roads and took Norfolk and Portsmouth, fortifying the latter place as a base for future operations. After some weeks of inactivity, he re-embarked and sailed to reinforce Cornwallis at Charleston. In the following year Clinton ordered the traitor Arnold with 50 sail and 1600 soldiers to replace Leslie.
The Arnold expedition proceeded up the James River in 1781 and set the torch to the public buildings of Richmond. After pillaging Petersburg, it returned to Portsmouth and threw up strong intrenchments. Lafayette attempted to stay this destroying band but had not force enough of his own and did not receive expected reinforcement. The fleet which had been sent to augment his numbers was engaged by the British under Admiral Arbuthnot off the capes and compelled, after a hot engagement, to withdraw to Newport. The English thus retained their hold on Hampton Roads and were enabled to send additional forces to General Arnold under General Phillips. In April the combined forces under Arnold moved again up the James River, burning and pillaging.
Cornwallis occupied Portsmouth shortly after this, but soon again moved to Yorktown, where he threw up huge intrenchments, the outlines of which are plainly discernible at the present day. In September, 1781, the French under Comte de Grasse were successful in entering the Chesapeake to co-operate with Washington, Lafayette and Rochambeau. The British fleet under Admiral Graves sturdily contested the capes, but was forced to surrender the hold which it had maintained so effectively. In the ensuing month occurred the historic surrender of Cornwallis.
CASEMATES OF FORT MONROE, AS THEY WERE DURING THE CIVIL WAR
During the War of 1812, a British order in council declared the Chesapeake to be in a state of blockade, and in 1813 Rear-Admiral Cockburn of His Majesty’s navy was sent to Lynnhaven Bay, near Norfolk. The Americans had a large flotilla in Hampton Roads, and had constructed Forts Norfolk and Nelson on the Elizabeth River near Norfolk and had thrown up intrenchments on Craney Island, these dispositions all being under the direction of Brigadier General Robert B. Taylor.
At daybreak of June 22, 1813, a determined attack was made by the British under Cockburn from land and sea, which was repulsed. Three days later quiet Hampton was captured after a gallant defence by an inadequate garrison and the town pillaged in barbaric fashion. Soon after, Cockburn withdrew to the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, but resumed his operations in the lower Chesapeake March 1, 1814. In July, 1814, he was largely reinforced and with a combined land and naval expedition commenced that march up the Chesapeake which culminated in the sacking of Washington and the final repulse of the expedition at Fort McHenry. This was the last important engagement of the War of 1812.
During the Civil War Fortress Monroe saw stirring scenes, though it had no very active part in any of them. In October, 1861, Hampton Roads off the fort was the rendezvous for great land and naval forces under Admiral Dupont and General Sherman designed to capture Hilton Head. In the January following another great force was brought together here for operations on the Carolina coast. In the spring of 1862 McClellan’s army arrived at Old Point and went to Yorktown.
In March of 1862 occurred in Hampton Roads the episodes of the Merrimac. A watcher on the walls of Fort Monroe would have seen this queer, square vessel, covered with railroad iron, sailing down the blue waters. He might have seen the sinking of the Cumberland with the greater part of her crew despite her desperate, impotent efforts against this new kind of adversary. He might have witnessed the destruction of the Congress by fire and the partial disabling of the Minnesota. He might have heard in the old fort that night the barrack-room gossip of the new giant and whispers of the expected arrival of a United States champion which was to take up the gage of combat. The next day he might have seen from the ramparts the struggle between the Merrimac and the Monitor, which ushered in a new chapter in naval warfare and began the era of the steel-clad knight of the seas.
Later Old Point Comfort became the base of operation of the Army of the James.
In 1893, during the celebration of the Columbian Exposition, Hampton Roads was the rendezvous under the guns of old Monroe for the vessels of all of the nations of the world. The old fort sees the most important manœuvres of the United States navy of to-day.
[FORTS SUMTER AND MOULTRIE]
NEAR CHARLESTON—SOUTH CAROLINA
The bombardment of Fort Sumter from Fort Moultrie began at dawn of April 12, 1861, and continued without remission for about 36 hours, or until noon of the second day. During that time, though shot and shell played havoc with the walls of both the besiegers and the besieged, no human being was hurt,—a strange preliminary, indeed, to the most murderous civil war since the invention of gunpowder in the history of the world.
This has been called the first time in history that two forts waged battle against each other. It was like two strong men, tied by the feet, almost beyond reach of each other, being allowed to strike at each other until one or the other should fall.
To understand something of the conditions which governed this very historic bout between Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, one must have some idea of the lay of the land at Charleston. Charleston, itself, it may be pointed out, is situated on a long narrow spit of land at the juncture of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. The arrow-head formed by these two rivers points almost directly toward the mouth of Charleston Bay, where the waters of the two rivers joined mingle with the Atlantic Ocean. Let us go to the point of the arrow-head upon which Charleston is situated, to the Battery,—that is, Charleston’s most famous public park,—and gaze seaward: Five miles away, across a shimmering blue, we see a little geometrical dot almost midway between the jaws which hold Charleston Bay. This is Fort Sumter, a little stone work built by the United States Government in 1828 on a sandy shallow. Fort Moultrie is situated on Sullivan’s Island, on the northern one of the two jaws of the bay, a body of land really distinct from the mainland but which seems from this distance to be a part of that land. Of the two fortifications, Fort Moultrie is the older and by long odds the more interesting as to past.
Wise heads of both sections in 1860 saw that war was inevitable between the North and the South, though patriots did their best to prevent armed conflict. But the doctrine of State individualism or State’s Rights was too firmly established to be gotten from the body corporate without a purging of blood, just as individual rights in the social structure can never be enforced to the last limit without conflicting with the community purpose. So when, on Christmas night, 1860, Major Anderson, commanding at Fort Moultrie, moved his whole force secretly over to the sub-post, Fort Sumter, and sent his women and children to Charleston, with the request that they be sent north, the citizens of Charleston, at least, knew that the issue had been squarely met, to be settled at the court of last resort.
Copyright Detroit Publishing Co.
FORT SUMTER, A PILE OF STONE ON A SANDY SHOAL
Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, in her delightful reminiscences of Charleston, writes:
Doubt and delay were gone. Then came the call to arms.... January, February, and March were so full of crowded life that they seemed an eternity, yet one dreaded lest eternity should end. End it did when one night at eleven o’clock seven guns thundered out over the town and every man sprang up, seized his rifle and ran to the wharves. It was the signal that the relieving fleet (from the north) was on its way south, and that the whole reserve must hurry to the islands.
During all this time Fort Sumter had been supplied with provisions and necessaries by the citizens of Charleston.
When Major Anderson in command at Fort Sumter accepted Beauregard’s terms of surrender and saluted the new flag, he was conveyed, with all the honors of war, in the steamer Isabel to the United States fleet which had lain idle in the offing.
From this time until the end of the Civil War Charleston was in a state of siege. There was a short period of preparation on both sides before the Federal fleet appeared, November, 1861, outside the quaint old city. The city maintained its integrity complete against attacks by water, and finally fell to a move in force by land in the last year of the war, when the defenders of Charleston were withdrawn and all of the men of the remnants of the armies of the Confederacy were being concentrated for one last desperate protest against the inevitable.
After the Civil War Fort Sumter was repaired and strengthened and is still a seat of military power as a sub-post of Fort Moultrie.
To reach Fort Moultrie one goes from Charleston by ferry to the northern side of the Cooper River and takes a trolley which leads seaward along the coast across an inlet to Sullivan’s Island, which has become a popular summer place with many people of Charleston.
Fort Moultrie, when once it is reached, is not a pretentious place,—the old works, that is,—being simply a star-shaped fort of brownish-red brick on which the hot southern sun pours down in quantity. It overlooks a rumpled beach and the sea on one side and flat uninteresting land on the other. To the seaward one can gaze upon Fort Sumter and find it not more interesting of aspect close at hand than it is at a distance. Beside the gate of Fort Moultrie is a small marble shaft which marks the grave of Osceola, the Seminole chieftain. If one has devoured Indian tales in his youth he will no doubt be more interested in this simple memorial than in the immediate aspect of military things around him. It was in Fort Moultrie that Osceola was jailed after his capture in Florida and it was here that he died,—from a broken heart, if one is still interested in Indian stories!
The present Fort Moultrie was started in 1841 on the site of a famous old palmetto structure of the same name which had stood since early Revolutionary days. In 1903, with the exquisite tact which it displays occasionally, army headquarters in Washington decided to change the name of the fort to Fort Getty in honor of some deserving soldier whose career is recorded in the files of the Army Department, but the loud chorus of indignation that greeted this move carried all the way from Charleston to Washington, and the name of that delightful old Revolutionary character, William H. Moultrie, is still preserved at the spot where his first battle was fought.
The foundations of Fort Moultrie were laid in January, 1776, when a Mr. Dewees, owner of the island which bears his name, was ordered to deliver at Sullivan’s Island palmetto logs eighteen to twenty feet long and not less than ten inches in diameter in the middle; and Colonel Moultrie was ordered to superintend the erection of a fort from this material. It was not completed in June when the British came into view. In design a double square pen it was built of palmetto logs piled one upon the other and securely bolted together; the space between the outer and inner pen was about sixteen feet and this was filled in with sand; there were square bastions. The walls were intended to be ten feet high above the gun platforms where were mounted 64 guns.
The British fleet bearing a land force was under the command of Admiral Sir Peter Parker, and reached Cape Fear early in May, where it was joined by Sir Henry Clinton from New York with a portion of the troops which had participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Clinton assumed command of all the land forces. On the 4th of June the fleet appeared off Charleston bar and a small force of men was landed on Long Island, the island just north of Sullivan’s Island, and on the 28th of June advanced under Sir Peter Parker to give battle to Fort Sullivan, as Moultrie was then known. There were brought into action in this engagement the following English vessels: The Bristol and Experiment of 50 guns each; the frigates Active, Solebay, Acteon, Siren, and Sphinx of 28 guns each; the Thunderbomb and Ranger, sloops, of 28 guns; and the Friendship of 22 guns, in all, a very powerful squadron. The Americans had their unfinished palmetto fort, 64 guns and 1200 men. Several days before the battle the fussy General Charles Lee, whom Washington afterwards in his only recorded uncontrolled exhibition of temper called, at the battle of Monmouth, “a damned poltroon,” had removed to another defence of the city half of the small quantity of gunpowder which Moultrie had been given for the defence of his fort.
The command of the defence of Charleston had been given to General Lee by the Continental Congress, and General Lee had appeared in the city on the same day that the British fleet was sighted off the bar. From the first he seems to have been in conflict with Moultrie. Moultrie’s fort, he said, was poorly designed, and doubtless it was; Moultrie should provide a means of retreat for his men, and Moultrie replied that they would never use it; and Moultrie this and that. Moultrie himself, his admirers were forced to admit, was “a man of very easy manners, leaving to others many things which he had better have attended to himself.”
But the point is that Moultrie carried this same easiness of manner and mental poise into battle with him and was on this account an ideal officer to direct a fight. He had, moreover, the unlimited confidence and affection of his men and he knew the people he was working with.
The British appeared off Fort Sullivan just when the feeling between General Lee and Moultrie was at an acute stage. We find Moultrie now at face with the problem of defending his “slaughter pen” fort against an overwhelming force with the insufficient quantity of gunpowder which General Lee had left him.
The ships formed in double column and poured a terrific fire upon the fort. Moultrie feared that the concussion of the shells would rock his guns off their platforms. “Concentrate upon the Admiral, upon the fifty-gun ships!” This was Moultrie’s direction to his men. The Americans, expert marksmen that they were, obeyed his commands and the Bristol and the Experiment suffered fearfully, the captains of these two great ships being mortally wounded.
The Americans now began to run short of powder. Colonel Moultrie sent a despatch for more. He was in pressing need, but no one would have guessed it from his message which read as follows:
I think we shall want more powder; at the rate we go on I think we shall. But you can see for yourself; pray send more if you think proper.
Rutledge sent 500 pounds, and Lee, who was at Haddrell’s with 5000 pounds he had taken from Fort Sullivan, sent no powder but the message:
If you should unfortunately expend your ammunition without driving off the enemy spike your guns and retreat with all the order you can. I know you will be careful not to expend your ammunition.
General Lee had an idea that battles were fought with bows and arrows and gunpowder kept to celebrate the victory afterwards with! And he was determined that that retreat should take place, because he had prophesied a retreat by all the laws of war some weeks before.
The cannonade went on, the fire from the fort being at a much slower tempo than that from the ships. And now a new fact was discovered in the art of war: The soft palmetto logs with sand in between were a better bulwark than solid stone. Cannon balls entered them easily and stopped just as easily without sending splinters all around. Shells threw the sand up in the air and the sand fell back again to the spot whence it had risen.
The Bristol, the flag-ship, suffered more than any other of the British vessels. At one time Sir Peter was the only man unwounded on the quarter-deck, and he, too, presently was hurt.
The Acteon went hard aground on the shoal where Fort Sumter was afterwards to be raised and had to be abandoned, being set on fire before she was deserted.
The rattle-snake flag flying over the American fort was shot down, and Sergeant Jasper, leaping over the parapet, braved the fire of the British to recover the emblem. Sergeant Jasper lost his life at Savannah in an effort to duplicate this same feat.
At length the British drew off beaten. They had lost heavily, on the flag-ship alone 104 men being killed. The American loss was 12 killed and 25 wounded. When the news of this defeat reached England, though the intelligence was given out by the Admiralty in the most politic fashion possible, it was a terrible blow to English pride. “That an English admiral with a well-appointed fleet of 270 guns should be beaten off by a miserable little half-built fort on an uninhabited sand bank was incomprehensible,” wrote a correspondent from London. Had Moultrie had powder enough the British loss must have been much heavier than it was.
On the 9th of April, 1780, Fort Moultrie was again in action, when it opened upon Admiral Arbuthnot’s fleet which was sailing into the harbor in the course of the operations against Charleston that year. It was unable to prevent the passage of the fleet but it inflicted some damage to the vessels and killed 27 of the enemy. Shortly after Fort Moultrie fell to an overwhelming force of British who attacked by land, and was not again in action during the Revolution.
[FORT PULASKI]
AT MOUTH, SAVANNAH RIVER—GEORGIA
The trip from beautiful Savannah to the battered ruins of the once famous brick fortress, Pulaski, takes one through that gold and green country which one comes to associate with the name of this charming southern city. Fort Pulaski is that great hexagon of brick which one sees from incoming steamers on Cockspur Island at the mouth of the muddy Savannah River, and all the country round about is marshy, reedy land, cut up by big and little streams with no hills to be seen and only scraggy pine trees breaking the flat monotony of the horizon.
If one would go to Fort Pulaski from Savannah, he seeks out the little railroad which runs to Tybee, and whose passenger traffic is confined almost exclusively to summer. There he will be received by the hospitable southern trainmen and put off the train near the light-house which graces the northern end of Cockspur Island. Here, if he has been wise and has made his arrangements properly, the will be met by a boat from the light-house and will be carried across to the island.
Arrived at the landing which gives access to the fort, one is struck by the graceful desolation of the scene. The boards and timbers of the wharf have rotted, and ends of planks hang down toward the water like withered arms. Yet the brilliant Georgia sunshine gives a charm to it all. One does not feel in the presence of decay; one feels only in the presence of something that is passing painlessly away.
This same feeling one carries up the long, straight, muddy path leading to the ruined monument of valor through the marsh which surrounds that work. One comes to a broad ditch now full of mud and weeds and faces the remains of a once sturdy draw-bridge. Passing over this and between the mounds of former outworks one at last faces the entrance to Fort Pulaski.
The walls of this great brick fortress, which cost a million dollars and was one of the greatest brick fortresses of its time, tower over one with great impressiveness. The brick face is pierced by long narrow slits for rifle fire, and these peer at one vacantly. A large ditch, or moat, surrounds the fort, and this still contains water owing to the low elevation of the island above tide, but it is choked with rank vegetation and though horrid of aspect would not be a serious bar to the approach of any storming force.
THE DESERTED CASEMATES OF FORT PULASKI, NEAR SAVANNAH, GA.
Crossing the ditch, one passes through a long passage and past massive wooden gates studded with iron bolts and, at length, comes out upon the parade ground. Where brilliant columns once formed and marched in martial evolutions now wave tall saplings except where the solitary care-taker of the fort has cut these growths down to make room for a vegetable garden. The walls go around in a great circle above this parade, the angles of the circumference not being easily perceptible from our vantage point. To the right hand and the left hand stretch casemates in which officers and men dwelt. On the far side of the parade are open casemates fitted for cannon, for this is the quarter from which attack might be expected. Close at hand is a spring whose clear water flows ceaselessly from the rusty iron mouth which the hand of man has provided and neglected.
Passing across the parade to the gun casemates, which occupy the flanks of the fort on three quarters of the compass, one finds the flooring still in good condition, this fact being due to the protected nature of this part of the fort and to the sturdy quality of the planks which are three inches thick and of some close-grained wood—probably cypress. The circular gun-tracks are still visible. Where one can peer through holes in the floor one gazes down into dank, dark depths from which the light is reflected evilly by scummy water.
At the northeast angle of the fort are the remains of one of the magazines. If one cares to prowl in here and is willing to make entrance through a mysterious black hole into an uncanny void, he will be rewarded for his adventure by being able to pick up some rusty grape-shot and smaller odds and ends of murderous looking iron.
Ascending to the parapet of the fort by means of one of the twisting iron stairs which are to be found at each angle, or by the broad stone stairs adjacent to the habitable casemates, one has a wide view of land and sea. To the east lies the mouth of the Savannah River where this stream joins the Atlantic Ocean. In this direction, too, can be seen long, low, sandy Tybee Point, where Fort Screven, the modern defensive work, lies. To the south are marshes and in the distance the gleam of the river up which the Union forces brought their cannon to attack Fort Pulaski in 1862. To the north and west—more marshes.
The island on which Fort Pulaski is situated was acquired by the government in 1830 by purchase from Alexander Telfair and sisters (an old and wealthy Savannah family) and the title of the government thereto for the purposes of a fortification was confirmed by the State of Georgia by act December 27, 1845. The entire reservation occupies about 150 acres.
The site for the fort was selected by Major General Babcock, United States Corps of Engineers, and work was begun in 1831 under the direction of Major General Mansfield. Sixteen years passed before its mighty walls, containing thirteen millions of bricks, were completed. The name Pulaski was given to the fort in honor of Count Casimir Pulaski, the Polish patriot who lost his life in the siege of Savannah by the Americans during the Revolution, the scene of this sad event being the Spring Hill redoubt near the site of the present Central of Georgia railway station.
The military history of Fort Pulaski does not cover a long period of time. When, in December, 1860, the news reached Savannah of the removal of Major Anderson, in command of the United States forces in Charleston Harbor, from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, there was an open expression of opinion that Georgia should forestall such occupation of the forts on her coast by the forces of the Federal government; and when, on January 2, 1861, it became known that Governor Brown had ordered the seizure and occupation of Fort Pulaski by the military under the command of Colonel A. R. Lawton on the following day, the city was wild with enthusiasm.
Says Adelaide Wilson in her delightful history of Savannah:
Looking back upon the arrangements that were made for the setting out of that first military expedition, there is temptation to smile at the amount of impedimenta that was prepared for the small forces of less than two hundred men. There was scant time between the promulgation of the order and the hour named for its execution, yet when, on the morning of the third, the companies marched down to the wharf to embark on the little steamer Ida, it is safe to say that they were encumbered with much more baggage than served later in the war for an entire division in the field. Every man had his cot, every three or four men his mess-chest, with kettles, pots, pans and other cooking utensils in liberal allowance, not to speak of trunks, valises, mattresses, camp-chairs, etc.,—in all a pile large enough to make the heart of a quartermaster sink within him. It was evident that the troops long had anticipated the call upon their services, and also that the mothers, wives and sisters of Savannah had, with anxious forethought, determined that their loved ones should carry into service as many of the comforts of home as possible.
The siege of Pulaski by the Federal troops, April, 1862, was not long at the climax, though it was long in preparation. The Federal forces gathered slowly south of Savannah and then moved to the attack. By means of a channel in the flats to the south of the fort which the Confederates had left unguarded, they were able to post their guns in advantageous positions. As the result of a heavy bombardment the walls of the fort were battered in at the east salient and the garrison was obliged to surrender.
The visitor to Fort Pulaski to-day may see some of the wounds in the walls which the fort sustained on that occasion. The worst injuries were repaired by the United States troops during their occupancy of the fort, and the course of these repairs may be traced by the discerning eye through the different color of the bricks.
Shortly after the Civil War, Fort Pulaski was abandoned. It is still controlled by the government and is in the care of a retired soldier of the United States who lives a life of seclusion, disturbed only by the very infrequent sight-seer or by parties of young men of the neighborhood who find the marshes of the reservation an excellent gunning preserve.
Parade and Ramparts [top]
The Battered Eastern Salient
SCENES OF DESOLATION AT FORT PULASKI, NEAR SAVANNAH, GA.
[FORT MORGAN]
MOBILE BAY—ALABAMA
Mobile Bay, that pear-shaped body of water, with its far-reaching system of water tributaries, has been a scene of settlement and fortification since the early days of French attempts at settlement in the New World. There was, to begin with, Fort Louis de la Mobile, which protected the infant first settlement of Mobile, precursor of the city of to-day. In various guises Fort Louis passed from one to another of the different races of men with which the history of Mobile Bay is associated. Then there are the forts placed on the islands at the mouth of Mobile Bay and the forts at the head of the bay where the big rivers flow in. Finally there is Fort Morgan (Fort Bowyer to begin with) which occupies the point of that long, thin peninsula of land which forms the southern boundary of Mobile Bay, dividing its waters from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Fort Morgan to-day is in ruins and has never been thoroughly rebuilt since its capitulation to Farragut in one of the hottest battles of the Civil War. The governmental reservation of land on which the works are situated contains about 500 acres and is occupied, as well, by modern defences. The view from the point on which the old fort is situated gives a wide prospect of blue water and sky. Across the ship channel is historic Dauphine Island, on which Fort Morgan’s sister fort, Fort Gaines, was situated, and where the government to-day maintains extensive batteries. To the right are the waters of Mobile Bay, with the smoke of the city thirty miles to the north. To the left are the sunny waves of the Gulf.
The first that we hear of Mobile Point as a place of fortification was in 1812, when the Spanish evacuated Mobile. General Wilkinson, in command of the United States forces in the southwest, put nine guns as a battery on Mobile Point and made his way on up to the city, where he commenced to fortify the perdido. Subsequently Mobile Point appealed to him as a better place for defensive works than a spot so far up the bay, and he placed a fortification here, which was called Fort Bowyer in honor of Lieutenant-Colonel Bowyer.
The next occupant of Fort Bowyer was a more picturesque personage than General Wilkinson, none other than Andrew Jackson. Upon his retirement from Pensacola in 1814, Jackson stopped at Fort Bowyer and left a force there of 130 men under the leadership of Major William Lawrence. On September 12 the British appeared before the fort with land and naval strength and demanded the surrender of the little structure. Major Lawrence refused to surrender.
The British strength on this occasion consisted of the Hermes of 22 guns, the Sophia of 18 guns, the Caron of 20 guns, Anaconda of 18 guns, all vessels of large size, under the command of Captain Percy. It was a squadron which Jackson had driven from Pensacola Bay and it was thirsting for revenge. There was, in addition, a land force under Colonel Nichols of a few marines and about 600 Indians which assailed Fort Bowyer from the rear.
The battle began early on the morning of the 15th. The word for the day in the American ranks was “Don’t give up the fort,” and this originated an oft-repeated phrase. A heavy cannonade continued without interruption until 5.30 o’clock in the afternoon. The flag-staff of the Hermes, Captain Percy’s flag-ship, was shot away and Lawrence gave the order to cease firing while he hailed the vessel to find out whether she had lowered her colors. The only answer was a murderous volley of grape-shot from another quarter. The flag-staff of the fort then happened to be struck, and the Indians and British on shore, thinking that the plucky little garrison had surrendered, ran forward with terrible cries. They were met by a terrific hail of lead which drove them back for good.
Finally the battered English vessels drew off. The Hermes was found to be in such bad shape that she was set on fire by her crew and abandoned. Her destruction was completed by the explosion of her magazine. The British loss was 232, of which number 163 were killed. The American loss was 4 killed and 4 wounded. The British in this engagement outnumbered the Americans more than six times.
The great adventure of Fort Morgan’s life, however, was in the Civil War at the time of the taking of Mobile. The stronghold had been considerably enlarged and strengthened and had been re-christened by its Confederate possessors at the outbreak of that disastrous struggle between brother and brother. It is described in official records of the time as a pentagonal bastioned work, with a full scarp brick wall, 4, feet 8 inches thick, its armament consisting of 86 guns of various calibres. The garrison, including officers and men, numbered 640.
The force under Farragut consisted of fourteen large wooden steam vessels of war and four iron-clads of which the Tecumseh arrived from Pensacola just in time for the engagement. The wooden vessels were lashed together in pairs and the whole column was headed by the iron-clads.
It was on the morning of August 5, 1864, that Farragut commenced his passage into Mobile Bay. Long before the break of day through the whole fleet could be heard the boatswain’s whistles and the cheery cries of “all hands” and “up all hammocks.” The wind was west-southwest, just where Farragut wanted it, as it would blow the smoke of the guns on Fort Morgan. At four o’clock the fleet set in motion, led by the four monitors. At 6.47 the booming of the Tecumseh’s guns was heard and shortly afterward Morgan replied. The story may now be taken up in the words of an officer on board the flag-ship Hartford:
The order was to “go slowly, go slowly” and receive the fire of Fort Morgan. At six minutes past seven the fort opened, having allowed us to get into such short range that we apprehended some snare; in fact, I heard the order passed for our guns to be elevated for fourteen hundred yards some time before one was fired. The calmness of the scene was sublime. No impatience, no irritation, no anxiety, except for the fort to open; and after it did open full five minutes elapsed before we answered. In the meantime the guns were trained as if at a target and all the sounds I could hear were “steady boys, steady! Left tackle a little! So, so!” Then the roar of a broadside and the eager cheer as the enemy were driven from their water battery. Don’t imagine they were frightened; no man could stand under that iron shower; and the brave fellows returned to their guns as soon as it lulled, only to be driven off again.
At twenty minutes past seven we had come within range of the enemy’s gunboats which opened their fire upon the Hartford, and as the Admiral afterward told me made her their special target. First they struck our foremast and then lodged a shot of 120 pounds in our mainmast. By degrees they got better elevation; and I have saved a splinter from the hammock netting to show how they felt their way lower. Splinters after that came by cords, and in size sometimes were like logs of wood. No longer came the cheering cry “Nobody hurt yet.” The Hartford by some unavoidable chance fought the enemy’s fleet and fort together for twenty minutes by herself, timbers crashing and wounded pouring down,—cries never to be forgotten.
By half past seven the iron-clad Tecumseh was well up with the fort and drawing slowly by, when suddenly she reeled to port and went down straightway with almost every soul on board. She had struck a mine. For a time this appalling disaster spread confusion in the fleet.
“What’s the matter?” was shouted from the flag-ship to the Brooklyn just ahead.
“Torpedoes,” was the response.
“Damn the torpedoes,” said Farragut, “go ahead.”
Go ahead the fleet did and at length had passed Fort Morgan and was in the sheltering waters of the bay. The cost of this operation in the Union fleet was 335 men. Of the 130 men in the Tecumseh when she was struck only 17 were saved.
Fort Gaines, the works on the western side of the channel, now surrendered. But Fort Morgan kept on fighting. The Union vessels were in Mobile Bay, but they had not yet forced the indomitable fort on Mobile Point to its knees. Admiral Farragut wrote to a friend:
We are now tightening the cords around Fort Morgan. Page is as surly as a bull-dog and says that he will die in his ditch....
How little people know the risks of life. Drayton made his clerk stay below because he was a young married man. All my staff,—Watson, McKinley and Brownell,—were in an exposed position on the poop deck but escaped unhurt while poor Heginbotham was killed.
For seventeen days Fort Morgan held out, though bombarded continuously. Then at length she surrendered, her citadel destroyed and her walls nearly blown to pieces. It is this pathetic shell that now greets the visitor’s eye on Mobile Point.
[FORTS JACKSON AND ST. PHILIP]
AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI—LOUISIANA
The two forts which were the scene of Farragut’s first brilliant exploit in running by the enemy’s works with wooden vessels have not been regularly garrisoned since 1871 and have been maintained only in a casual sort of a fashion. Stronger and newer defences have taken their place, though these two spots have had a long and honorable existence in the defence of the mouth of America’s greatest river and of its picturesque French-Spanish-American chief city, New Orleans. Situated 32 nautical miles by river from the Gulf of Mexico and about 22 miles from the light-house at the head of the passes of the Mississippi, they occupy the first habitable ground bordering the river, at a sharp bend known as English Turn. Fort St. Philip is on the northern bank of the river, Fort Jackson on the southern. Though so far from the Gulf by river, Fort St. Philip, owing to the peculiar formation of the mouth of the Mississippi, with long fingers spread out into the sea, is only a short distance from the Gulf as the crow flies.
About a mile above the site of Fort Jackson there stood an ancient French fortification known as Fort Bourbon, which gradually yielded to the encroachments of time so that now there is of it nothing left. Fort St. Philip, itself, was founded by the French and was surrendered to the United States in 1803 with the purchase of the Louisiana territory.
The situation of the two forts was early recognized by the United States as possessing much military value, and in 1812–1815 St. Philip was made over by the United States authorities and Fort Jackson was built. Fort St. Philip at the time of the Civil War consisted of a quadrangular earthwork with brick scarp rising 19 feet above the level of the river and a wet ditch with exterior batteries above and below. Fort Jackson, largely added to between 1824 and 1832, was a pentagonal bastioned fortification built of brick with casemates, glacis and wet ditch; and of the two was the more formidable work.
The two forts saw service in 1814 against the British. At this time the name Jackson was applied to the southern fort in honor of the fiery American commander whose defence of that city has become an inspiring legend.
The Confederate Government had early taken possession of the forts and had put them in complete order. When Farragut’s fleet appeared, early in the spring of 1862, Fort Jackson with its water battery mounted 75 guns and Fort St. Philip about 40. The works were garrisoned by about 1500 men, commanded by Brigadier General J. K. Duncan; St. Philip being under the direct command of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Higgins. Just above the forts the Confederates had placed a fleet of 15 vessels, including the iron-clad ram Manassas. Below Fort Jackson they had obstructed the river with a heavy chain brought from Pensacola. This chain was pinned to the under side of a row of cypress logs which were 30 feet long and four or five feet in diameter. The spring freshets caused this chain to break and it was replaced by two lighter chains supported in similar fashion.
As a first move against the Confederate strongholds, Farragut sent Commander Porter with his fleet of mortar vessels to bombard the forts. The bombardment opened on the 18th of April and continued without remission for six days, but though breaches were made in the walls and the levee was broken at one place so that the beleaguered men had a difficult task to keep the waters of the Mississippi from drowning them out, the action was inconclusive.
It was then that Farragut determined upon the bold move (later duplicated at Mobile) which was so great an element of his fame. At two o’clock on the morning of April 24, 1862, he set his fleet in motion up the river. The chain barriers were cut and the fleet contrived to get past the fort without serious damage or loss of life. Thus was accomplished the feat of passing, with wooden vessels in a stream half a mile wide, two forts specially prepared to resist such an effort. The Confederate fleet was met beyond the forts and repulsed after a sharp engagement.
Farragut now passed on to New Orleans to make sure of the rich prize of a city whose export business at that time was the greatest in the world, while Porter was left behind with a sufficient squadron to continue the bombardment of the forts. After being under continuous fire until the 28th of the month the forts surrendered, and have never since been in active service.
The reservation of Fort Jackson contains 557.6 acres and that of Fort St. Philip 1108.85 acres. The reservations consist entirely of swamp lands, during season of high water being almost completely inundated. Those portions containing the forts, quarters and other buildings are leveed on all sides, but notwithstanding the protection thus afforded there are times when the water rises so high as to become a source of great inconvenience in going about. This is especially the case when rain is added to the water which percolates through the levees.
Any account of Fort Jackson would be incomplete without allusion to its alligators. These reptiles constitute one of the principal objects of interest to visitors and may be seen in numbers floating in the moats or basking on shore in the sunlight. They are from five to fifteen feet in length and possess great strength. It was customary to feed them with bread and crackers from the bridges over the moats, calling them up by whistling, and from frequent occurrence of this act they seemed to become accustomed to the signal and responded to it just as might dogs.
The rattlesnakes of the vicinity are numerous and formidable. One was caught here measuring 11½ feet and having 27 rattles. Black snakes are large but rare. Moccasins, of which there are two varieties, attain a large size and are frequently very venomous.
The mosquitoes constitute a serious obstacle to the enjoyment of life to the infrequent garrisons at this post, for they not only ply their calling with great diligence during the night but in summer are equally zealous throughout the day. Various expedients are adopted to avoid and drive them away. The smudge is brought into frequent and useful requisition. Gloves are worn and covering of mosquito netting is frequently used to protect the neck and head.
[FORT SNELLING]
NEAR ST. PAUL—MINNESOTA
The historic post of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, for more than a generation after its establishment, in 1819, the most remote western outpost of the United States, is situated at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, eight miles southeast of Minneapolis by river and six miles from St. Paul. It lies in a region of rare natural beauty, in the vicinity of the Falls of Minnehaha, Bridal Veil Falls, and other points locally notable and is, itself, no mean attraction to the many visitors who are attracted to the locality every year. The old fort standing on its high bluff at the headwaters of America’s greatest river is a most picturesque object.
Copyright, Detroit Publishing Co.
OLD STONE TOWER AT FORT SNELLING, NEAR ST. PAUL, MINN.
The reservation of Fort Snelling contains 1,531 acres, though originally this tract was much larger than now. The fort structure which one sees from the river is an irregularly shaped bastioned wall conforming in outline to the high plateau of land upon which it is situated. It occupies the extreme end of the point of land formed by the juncture of the two rivers, and on the Mississippi side the bluff upon which the fort is situated descends abruptly to the water, the river there running almost in a canyon. On the Minnesota side the slope is more gradual and ends in a low marshy flat which extends from one-third to one-half a mile and is frequently submerged during high water. The altitude of the post plateau above the river is 300 feet.
The establishment of Fort Snelling was one of the fruits of the work of Lieutenant Z. M. Pike, the first American to explore and chart the peak which bears his name. In 1805 this officer was in command of an exploring expedition and held a conference with the Sioux Indians on an island at the mouth of the Minnesota River which now bears his name. He secured from the Indians for military purposes a strip of land nine miles on each side of the Mississippi River and extending from the conference island to the Falls of St. Anthony, near which Fort Snelling is.
It is to be remembered that in 1805 the settlement of the American nation did not extend beyond the Mississippi River. The country west of Lake Michigan and on the headwaters of the Mississippi River, though a part of the United States, thanks largely to George Rogers Clark, was in a state of nature with only the trails of Indians and traders and the remains of little French settlements as the foundation for the civilization which was to grow up within it.
The privileges which Lieutenant Pike secured from the red men were not immediately taken advantage of by the United States authorities. Time passed and the War of 1812 with England gave the War Department of this country quite as much as it could take care of. Finally, in 1819, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Leavenworth, of the Fifth United States Infantry, was sent with his regiment to locate a fort upon the reserve selected by Lieutenant Pike. Colonel Leavenworth reached the headwaters of the Mississippi without incident and rendered his first monthly report in September, 1819.
Scurvy broke out now among the troops and this, added to the natural inclemencies of the climate here in winter, prevented any work being done until the spring of 1820. In May, 1820, Colonel Leavenworth moved his troops to a point on the west bank of the Mississippi River, about a mile and a half above the present location of Fort Snelling. The site chosen by him for the fort was the present military cemetery. He made preparations to commence the work, but Colonel Josiah Snelling assumed command in August and selected the location where the fort now stands.
Work actually commenced September 10, 1820, and went steadily ahead until October, 1822, when the post was first occupied. During this time Colonel Snelling was in command and his regiment was engaged in the work.
For two years after it had been finished the post was known as Fort St. Anthony—at Colonel Snelling’s suggestion—after the falls which are near the place, but, in 1824, it was visited by General Scott, who suggested to the War Department that the name should be changed to that which it bears to-day as a compliment to its builder.
The defences and some of the store-houses and shops were built of stone, but the quarters for the soldiers were log huts until after the Mexican War. The huts have now given way to comfortable barracks of modern construction, but the stone construction and the shops remain to-day as they were when the fort was far distant from civilization.
During the Civil War the fort was a concentration point for volunteers. In 1878 a plan of enlargement to accommodate a full regiment was entered upon in accordance with the policy then inaugurated by the War Department of having the soldiers of the country concentrated at a few points rather than scattered through a number of small posts.
While Fort Snelling has never seen active service itself it has had an active existence as a distribution point for those posts which were in conflict with the enemy during the United States’ occasional Indian Wars. During the serious Sioux outbreak of 1862 in Minnesota it was the head-quarters of the campaign against the Indians, though the fighting took place from subsidiary posts in contact with the red men.
For twenty years after its completion Fort Snelling was in the midst of the Sioux with no white neighbors except traders, agents of fur companies, refugees from civilization and disreputable hangers-on. In 1837 an enlargement of the military reserve and the coming of the first tide of white settlers who were to develop this country caused the eviction of this last class of dependents. One of the nearby squatters took his grog-shop to a point not far away. Around this point a settlement grew up. This settlement is now the proud city of St. Paul.
[FORT LARAMIE]
AT THE FORKS OF THE PLATTE RIVER—WYOMING
One of the most famous of the western Indian forts of the United States is situated on the west bank of the Laramie River, one and a half miles above the junction of that stream with the Platte. Though deserted the post is still a picturesque figure, recalling the days when it administered authority for seven hundred miles around. The property now comprises part of the ranch of Mr. John Hunton.
Before the white man had established a habitation where Fort Laramie stands the whole of the country of the North Platte River was a hunting-ground and battle-field for different tribes of Indians. Countless herds of buffalo roamed the land and it was rich in fur-bearing animals, as well.
In 1834 William Sublette and Robert Campbell, coming to this part of the country to trap beaver, found themselves obliged to construct some sort of protection against the roving bands of vagabond Crows and Pawnees which occasionally swept along the Platte, stealing where they could. They built in that year upon the present site of Fort Laramie a square fort of pickets 18 feet high, with bastions at two diagonal corners, and a number of little houses inside for their employés. In 1835 they sold out to Milton Sublette, James Bridger and three other trappers, who went into partnership with the American Fur Company and continued the beaver trapping business.
In that year the American Fur Company sent two men named Kiplin and Sabille to the Bear Butte and Northern Black Hills to persuade the Sioux Indians to come over and hunt their game and live in the vicinity of the fort. Their ambassadors succeeded so well that they returned with over one hundred lodges of Oglala Sioux under Chief Bull Bear. This was the first appearance of the powerful Sioux nation in this part of the country, which they speedily overran, driving away Pawnees, Cheyennes, Crows and all others from its very borders.
Of course the fort speedily became a trading post where the Indians bartered a buffalo robe for a knife, an awl, or a drink of “fire water.” Anything that the company had to trade was at least of the value of one buffalo robe. An American horse brought fifty of them; any pony was worth twenty or thirty. Any old scrap of iron was of great value to an Indian and by him would be speedily converted into a knife. Fire-arms he had none and his arrow-heads were all made of pieces of flint or massive quartz, fashioned into proper shape by laborious pecking with another stone. The Sioux then had no horses, but herds of wild horses were abundant on their arrival and it was not many years before they learned their use.
In 1836 the picket fort began to rot badly and the American Fur Company rebuilt it of adobe at an expense of $10,000. The people who lived inside of the fort at this time called it “Fort William,” after William Sublette, but the name could not be popularized. The fort being built on the Laramie River, not far from Laramie Peak, the American Fur Company’s clerks in their city offices labelled it Fort Laramie and by that name it was destined to be called.
It seems that Laramie was a trapper, one of the first French voyageurs who ever trapped a beaver or shot a buffalo in the Rocky Mountains. He was one day killed by a band of Arapahoes on the headwaters of the stream which has ever since been called by his name.
The American Fur Company retained possession of the fort until 1840 when it sold it to the United States government for four or five thousand dollars. Bruce Husaband was the last representative of the company who had charge of Fort Laramie.
The first United States troops which arrived here came in July, 1840, under the command of Major Sanderson of the Mounted Rifles. They were companies C and D of that regiment. Company G of the Sixth United States Infantry arrived in August of the same year under command of Captain Ketchum. In the summer and fall of 1840 a large number of additions were made to the buildings at the post.
In 1846, just prior to its occupancy by the United States, Francis Parkman, the future historian, then little more than a boy, visited Fort Laramie and wrote a description of the place in that singularly vivid style which characterized his best work as a historian. His description may be abridged:
Looking back, after the expiration of a year, upon Fort Laramie and its inmates, they seem less like a reality than like some fanciful picture of the olden time; so different was the scene from any which this tamer side of the world can present. Tall Indians, enveloped in their white buffalo robes, were striding across the area or reclining at full length on the low roofs of the buildings which enclosed it. Numerous squaws, gayly bedizened, sat grouped in front of the rooms they occupied; their mongrel offspring, restless and vociferous, rambled in every direction through the fort; and the trappers, traders, and engagees of the establishment were busy at their labor or their amusements....
Fort Laramie is one of the posts established by the “American Fur Company” which well nigh monopolizes the Indian trade of this region. Here its officials rule with an absolute sway; the arm of the United States has little force; for when we were there the extreme outposts of her troops were about seven hundred miles to the eastward. The little fort is built of bricks dried in the sun, and externally is of an oblong form, with bastions of clay, in the form of ordinary blockhouses, at two of the corners. The walls are about fifteen feet high, and surmounted by a slender palisade. The roofs of the apartments within, which are built close against the walls, serve the purpose of a banquette. Within, the fort is divided by a partition: on one side is the square area, surrounded by the offices, store-rooms and apartments of the inmates; on the other is the corral, a narrow place, encompassed by high clay walls, where at night, or in presence of dangerous Indians, the horses and mules of the fort are crowded for safe keeping. The main entrance has two gates, with an arched passage intervening. A little square window, high above the ground, opens laterally from an adjoining chamber into this passage; so that when the inner gate is closed end barred, a person without may still hold communication with those within, through this narrow aperture. This obviates the necessity of admitting suspicious Indians, for the purposes of trading, into the body of the fort; for when danger is apprehended, the inner gate is shut fast and all traffic is carried on by means of the window. This precaution, though necessary at some of the Company’s posts, is seldom resorted to at Fort Laramie; where though men are frequently killed in the neighborhood no apprehensions are felt of any general design of hostility from the Indians.
A train of emigrants encamped outside the fort for the night on their long journey across the plains.
A crowd of broad-rimmed hats, thin visages, and staring eyes appeared suddenly at the gate. Tall, awkward men in brown homespun; women, with cadaverous faces and long lank figures, came thronging in together, and as if inspired by the very demon of curiosity ransacked every nook and corner of the fort. The emigrants prosecuted their investigations with untiring vigor. They penetrated the rooms, or, rather, dens, inhabited by the astonished squaws. Resolved to search every mystery to the bottom, they explored the apartments of the men, and even that of Marie and the bourgeois (the commandant of the fort). At last a numerous deputation appeared at our door but found no encouragement to remain.... Having at length satisfied their curiosity, they next proceeded to business.
On the 19th of August, 1854, a Mormon train was encamped about ten miles below the fort on the Platte River. The Indians having killed a cow or ox belonging to the train had been complained of by the Mormons to the commanding officer, who sent Lieutenant Grattan, of the Sixth United States Infantry, with thirty men of Company G and two howitzers, to recover the cow and bring the thieves to the garrison. They met a large number of Indians (Sioux) under the leadership of a chief named Mattoioway about eight miles from the fort and a conflict ensued in which Lieutenant Grattan’s command, with the exception of one man, was annihilated. The survivor was hidden in some bushes by a friendly Indian and brought to the fort that night where he died two days afterward. The bodies of the slain were buried in one grave where they fell and a pile of stones marks their resting place.
[THE ALAMO AND FORT SAM HOUSTON]
SAN ANTONIO—TEXAS
The Alamo, which is famous for its heroic defence against the Mexicans by Travis and his men, is situated in San Antonio, Texas, and is the point of pilgrimage annually for many hundreds of the visitors to the southwestern United States. On the outskirts of San Antonio is the modern great military plant, Fort Sam Houston, the Alamo’s lusty successor.
The Alamo, as late as 1870, was used for military purposes by the United States government, but of recent years it has been preserved purely as a monument to those brave men who lost their lives in it fighting bravely to the last a battle which they knew to be hopeless from the first. Upon the front of the building has been placed an inscription which reads, “Thermopylæ had its messenger of defeat. The Alamo had none.” The building, itself, is a low structure of the familiar Spanish mission type, and its main walls, though constructed in 1744, are almost as solid to-day as when new. The chapel of the Alamo bears the date 1757, but this was of later building than the rest of the place.
The city of San Antonio owes its foundation to the establishment in 1715 by Spain of the mission of San Antonio de Valero, which in accordance with the custom of that country combined priestly enterprise with military prerogative. The Alamo was a quadrangular, central court structure built to house the troops of Spain and to sound the call to worship. It was acquired by Mexico with the rest of the Spanish possessions when this southern neighbor of the United States, in 1824, finally secured its independence from the parent country.
At the time of the siege, San Antonio was a town of about 7,000 inhabitants, the vast majority Mexican. The San Antonio river which, properly speaking, is a large rivulet, divided the town from the Alamo, the former on the west side and the latter on the east. South of the fort was the Alamo village, a small suburb of San Antonio.
The fort itself was in the condition in which it had been left by Cos, the Mexican general, when it had been surrendered in the fall of 1835. It contained twelve guns which were of little use in the hands of men unskilled in their use, and owing to the construction of the works most of the guns had little width of range.
In command of the place at the beginning of the winter of 1835 was Colonel Neill, of Texas, with two companies of volunteers, among whom was a remnant of the New Orleans Greys. Early in 1836 Lieutenant Colonel William B. Travis, a brave and careful officer, was appointed by the Governor of Texas, which had as yet only a provisional government, to relieve Colonel Neill of his command.
By courtesy of the War Department
RUINS OF THE ALAMO IN 1845
From a sketch upon Map of the Country in the Vicinity of San Antonio de Bexar made by J. Edmund Blake, 1st Lieut. Topographical Engineers, U. S. A.
The volunteers, a hard-headed and independent lot, wished to choose their own leader though they were willing to have Travis second in command, and called a meeting, where they elected as full colonel one of their number, James Bowie, a forceful figure of early Texan history. Bowie’s name to-day unfortunately is chiefly remembered by virtue of the “Bowie” knife. Travis arrived at the fort early in February, just two weeks before the Mexicans under the detested Santa Ana came in view, and naturally enough refused to recognize the superior authority of the officer so informally placed in power, as did the men whom he had brought with him. There was thus divided authority in the Alamo at the time of the siege.
All disputes were dropped, however, upon the approach of the enemy. The advance detachment of the Mexican force which came in four divisions arrived in San Antonio on February 22, and was welcomed by an eighteen-pound shot from the little American garrison. Santa Ana procured a parley and demanded the surrender of the entire garrison, the terms to be left to his discretion.
A dramatic scene took place in the Alamo, tradition tells us, when news of this proposal came to the ill-starred place. Colonel Travis drew a line upon the ground. “All those who prefer to fight will cross this line,” he is reported to have said. Every man crossed the line and Bowie, who had been stricken to his bed with pneumonia, roused enough to ask that his cot be carried with his men. It was well understood that the issue of the fray, if once Santa Ana succeeded in taking the post, would be the death of every man without mercy; and the chances of withstanding an attack were known to be weak.
When finally the Mexican host was assembled it numbered about twenty-five hundred men. The American garrison, which was swelled by a reinforcement of 32 men from Gonzales who managed to get through the lines of the besiegers into the fort, numbered altogether 188 men. The siege commenced on the 24th of February and continued without cessation until the morning of the 6th of March, when there was a grand assault.
The final assault occupied not more than half an hour. The blast of a bugle was followed by the shuffle of a rushing mass of men. The guns of the fort opened upon the charging columns which came from all directions. The outer walls were taken despite the efforts of the pitiful handful of their defenders, and the battle then became a series of desperate fights from room to room of the old structure. Travis fell with a single shot through his forehead and his gun was turned on the building. Bowie was found on his cot in his room at the point of death from the malady which had stricken him; with his last flicker of strength he shot down with his pistols more than one of his assailants before he was butchered where he lay, too weak to move his body.
The chapel was the last point taken and the inmates of this stronghold fought with unremitting fury, firing down from the upper part of the structure after the enemy had taken the floor. Toward the close of this episode Lieutenant Dickenson, with his child strapped to his back, leaped from the east embrasure. Both were shot in the act.
One of the garrison was Davy Crockett, a well-known and beloved backwoodsman, known for his quaint sayings and homely wisdom. Crockett was found beside a gun in the west battery with a pile of slain around him.
The number of Mexicans killed has never been correctly estimated though it has been placed as high as a thousand. The most accurate estimate lies probably between 500 and 600.
A few hours after the engagement the bodies of the slaughtered garrison were gathered by the victors, laid in three heaps and burned. On February 25, 1837, the bones and ashes were collected by order of General Sam Houston, as well as could be done, and buried with military honors in a peach orchard then outside Alamo village and a few hundred yards from the fort. The place of burial was not preserved and the ground which contains the remains of these heroic men has long since been built over.
During the Mexican War the walls of the Alamo buildings were repaired and the buildings newly roofed for the use of the quartermaster’s department.
Fort Sam Houston, the modern successor of the ancient Alamo, was first located on Houston Street where one of San Antonio’s great new hotels now stands. Its present ideal situation on a high plateau 762 feet above the level of the Gulf of Mexico was chosen in 1872 and the grounds first comprised 162 acres of land. The fort was built around a quadrangle 624 feet square, in the centre of which was erected a gray stone tower 88 feet in height. Of recent years large accessions of land have made the post over one thousand acres in extent and the buildings have been largely added to, over two and a half millions of dollars being expended upon the fort by the national government. It is now one of the most important of the United States’ military possessions. During the Spanish-American war the place acquired celebrity as being the scene of organization and training of the Rough Riders.
Immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War the Alamo was commanded by that soldier who was to lead the armies of the Lost Cause and whose name is a household heritage in the south to-day, Robert E. Lee. Associated with him here was Albert Sydney Johnston. The house occupied by General Lee was situated on South Alamo street and here he wrote his resignation to the United States authorities before assuming command of the enthusiastic and untrained masses of Southerners.
During the Civil War San Antonio was the headquarters of the Confederacy in the southwest and the Alamo was used for storage.
[OTHER WESTERN FORTS]
FORT PHIL KEARNEY, NEBRASKA; FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS; FORT FETTERMAN, WYOMING; FORT BRIDGER, WYOMING; FORT KEOGH, MONTANA; FORT DOUGLAS, UTAH
One of the most dreadful Indian fights in the history of the Middle West is associated with Fort Phil Kearney, on the Platte River, Nebraska, which was in 1848, at the time of its establishment, the only United States post between Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 350 miles distant, and Fort Laramie, 420 miles to the west. It stood midway between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains on the California Overland route and was established for the protection of west-bound emigrant trains from hostile Indians.
Fort Phil Kearney was a storm centre during the Sioux War, which began in 1863 and continued intermittently for nearly ten years, and the “Kearney Massacre” occurred during this time. On the morning of December 21, 1866, the fort received word that the wood train was being attacked by Indians and was in need of assistance. Immediately Brevet Lieutenant Colonel W. I. Fetterman with seventy-six men was ordered to protect the train.
Colonel Fetterman moved rapidly upon his errand, and the sound of heavy firing soon showed that he was in contact with the enemy. The firing continued so long that the commandant, Colonel Carrington, became alarmed for the safety of the detachment and sent out as many men as he could spare for reinforcement. These men were under Captain Ten Eyck. The rest of the story may be taken up in the words of Senate Document 13, 1867:
Colonel Ten Eyck reported as soon as he reached the summit commanding a view of the battle-field that the valley was full of Indians; that he could see nothing of Colonel Fetterman’s party, and requested that a howitzer should be sent him. The howitzer was not sent.
The Indians who at first beckoned him to come down now commenced retreating and Captain Ten Eyck, advancing to a point where the Indians had been standing in a circle, found the dead, naked bodies of Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Fetterman, Captain Brown and about sixty-five of the soldiers of their command.... At about half the distance from where these bodies lay to the point where the road commences to descend to Peno Creek was the dead body of Lieutenant Grummond, and still farther on, at the point where the road commences to descend to Peno Creek, were the dead bodies of three citizens and four or five of the old, long-tried and experienced soldiers.
Our conclusion, therefore, is that the Indians were massed on both sides of the road; that the Indians attacked vigorously in force from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred warriors and were successfully resisted for half an hour or more; that the command then being short of ammunition and seized with panic at this event, and the great numerical superiority of the Indians, attempted to retreat toward the fort; that the mountaineers and old soldiers who had learned that movement from the Indians in an engagement was equivalent to death remained in their first position and were killed there; that, immediately upon the commencement of the retreat, the Indians charged upon and surrounded the party who could not now be formed by their officers and the party was immediately killed.
Only six of the whole command were killed by balls and two of these, Lieutenant Colonel Fetterman and Captain Brown, no doubt inflicted this death upon themselves, or each other, by their own hands for both were shot through the left temple and powder was burnt into the skin and flesh about the wound. These officers had also oftentimes asserted that they would not be taken alive by the Indians.
In its appearance Fort Kearney was typical of the Indian forts of the period, being little more than a stockade on the level prairie with the necessary houses inside. The parade ground occupied four acres and was flanked by a few straggly cottonwood trees. The post was deserted not long after the building of the Union Pacific railroad six miles away, which destroyed the reason of its being; after its desertion fell victim to its ancient enemy, for it was burned by the Indians.
Fort Leavenworth, Leavenworth, near Kansas City, Kansas, whose name occurs so often in the records of Indian warfare of the West, was established May, 1827, by Colonel Henry Leavenworth, commanding a detachment of the Third United States Infantry. At first the post was extremely unhealthy, a large part of the command being prostrated by malarial fever. It was evacuated in 1820 and reoccupied in 1830, then, and for several years, being known as Cantonment Leavenworth. Since the latter date the place has never been without United States troops and it is to-day the largest fixed post in the United States military service.
The first mission of Fort Leavenworth was to protect the emigrant trains which set out from St. Louis, several hundred miles to the east, and passed this point on the way to California, or Oregon, by the famous old Santa Fé Trail, the California Overland Trail or the Oregon Trail, each of which went by this place. As the years went on the fort became more and more a base of supply for the army posts established further west. Its central location, which made it ideal as a distributing point to any part of the West, is the factor which is at the base of its importance in the present day.
Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, was established in July, 1867, and named in honor of the officer who lost his life commanding the detachment destroyed by the Indians at Fort Kearney. In the following month the Indians of the vicinity were actively hostile. The old post was a most picturesque point in its day, being situated on a high bluff which shows its pointed palisade in fine relief against the sky. It is now deserted.
FORT KEOGH, NEAR MILES CITY, MONTANA
Fort Bridger, Wyoming, another of the Indian posts of the past, was one of the most important points on the Great Salt Lake Trail. It was located on the Black Fork of the Green River and was established in June, 1858. The immediate locality had long been known as Bridger’s Fort because of the situation here of a trading post of James Bridger, one of the most noted trappers and guides of this section. In its establishment it was intended to be a base of supplies for the army of General Albert Sydney Johnston moving against the Mormons in Salt Lake Valley in 1857 to 1858. That winter the entire command encamped in the valley just above the site of Fort Bridger and upon its removal the permanent post was located.
Fort Keogh, Montana, one of the still existing Indian posts, was established, in 1876, on the right bank of the Yellowstone River, two miles above the mouth of the Tongue River, Custer County, on a high elevation above the river bottom, by General Terry during a campaign against the Sioux. It was named in honor of Captain Miles Keogh, killed in the battle of the Little Big Horn, popularly known as Custer’s Massacre, June 25, 1876. The area of the post reservation is 90 square miles. In appearance Fort Keogh is typical of the other forts of its class.
Fort Douglas, Utah, is at the base of the plateau of the Wahsatch Mountains and is part of the suburbs of Salt Lake City. The reservation contains two square miles of territory, and the scenery from any part thereof is extremely fine. The post was established October, 1862, by Colonel P. E. Connor, of the Third Regiment of California Infantry.
[FORT VANCOUVER]
COLUMBIA RIVER—WASHINGTON
To delve into the history of Fort Vancouver, or Vancouver Barracks as it is known to-day, is to recall that time when the far northwest of the United States was in the making, when there was no definite boundary between England, Spain, Russia and the American nation in this part of the American continent and when all of these great nations, with the addition of France and little Portugal, to boot, were claimants to the Columbia River and the wildernesses which it held tributary.
The first white men to descry the mouth of the Columbia from the sea were, no doubt, the Spaniards, for Heceta, in 1775, and Bodega and Arteaga in the same year and, again, in 1779, made brief excursions into the river. In 1792 Captain Robert Gray, of Boston, with the good ship “Columbia,” ascended the stream for twenty-five miles and claimed possession of it for the United States. He named the river for his vessel. Several months after Gray had been on the stream the English nation, as represented by Captain Cook’s lieutenant, ascended the stream for over a hundred miles, making careful record of his trip. The three great nations Spain, England, and the United States had each valid claims. Portugal, Russia and France were early eliminated from the struggle for possession which was thereupon fought determinedly by the first three countries.
In 1819 by the Florida treaty with Spain that country ceded to the United States all of her claims north of the 42nd degree of latitude and so, here, Spain gracefully stepped out of the ring.
The close of the War of 1812 with Great Britain saw that power in possession of the disputed country, but the Treaty of Ghent, 1815, provided that each nation should restore what it had taken from the other by force. Thereupon the United States resumed possession of the fort at the mouth of the Columbia which it had formerly maintained. In 1818 was signed the Joint Occupation Treaty between the two countries, by which it was provided that the northwest coast of America should be open to citizens of both powers for the period of ten years. Finally, in 1846, was signed the agreement between Great Britain and the United States by which the northern boundary of the Northwest was fixed at the line of 49 degrees, where it rests to-day. The United States received about 750 miles of the river and England about 650 miles. While there was much diplomatic jockeying and juggling and while the two nations came perilously close to a resort to arms, the question, on the whole, was settled with great amicableness and the decision once arrived at was accepted with entire good nature by each party to the contract.
Now let us ask why was it that the Northwest of those days was considered so great a prize that six of the World Powers should contend for its possession? The domain, though a princely one, was not a necessity to a young nation—our own—which had illimitable leagues of arable soil still unfilled. It was remote from all of the powers of Europe. The answer to our question is to be found in the one word, furs. The Northwest was a treasure house through virtue of the fur-bearing animals which it contained.
As early as 1806 a trading station was established in the valley of the Columbia River by The Northwest Fur Company, an English corporation. In 1810 the Pacific Fur Company, which was to found the fortunes of John Jacob Astor, was organized by that gentleman in New York and, in 1811, the first of Astor’s ships arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River to erect the trading post of Astoria, whose fortunes have been so entertainingly told by Washington Irving in the book of that name. The Hudson Bay Company had also made entrance to this rich field.
During the War of 1812 the Pacific Fur Company retired from its positions in the Columbia valley and the Hudson Bay Company absorbed its English rival, the Northwest Fur Company. The English built a strong fort at Astoria which they called Fort George. But several years after the conclusion of the war between England and America, the Pacific Fur Company resumed possession of its posts in the Columbia, with the backing of the United States government, under the authority of the Treaty of Ghent and the Hudson Bay Company, and though events proved that it could maintain an amicable joint household with Astor’s corporation at Astoria, began to look about for a site for headquarters of its own. Since the Columbia River at that time seemed destined to become the dividing line between English and American possessions, a site was chosen on the north side of the river, about 120 miles above its mouth. Here a strong post was established in 1825 and named Vancouver, in honor of the British mariner. The site was not deemed as suitable for the purposes of a fort as a situation a short distance away, so a second Fort Vancouver was built on the last chosen spot. This is the Fort Vancouver of the present day, and the site of the city of Vancouver, Washington.
The new post was made the Pacific head-quarters for the Hudson Bay Company and became a great mart of trade from California to Alaska and for innumerable little stations in the Rocky mountains and the hinterland thereof. The fort, itself, was an imposing structure with a picket wall twenty feet high, buttressed with massive timbers inside. It enclosed a parallelogram five hundred feet by seven hundred feet and contained forty buildings, including a governor’s residence of generous proportions. The lands outside of the fort proper were cultivated and were exceedingly productive. The employees of the company were comfortably housed and formed a happy community, and to the point came red men in various garbs, hunters, trappers and woodsmen, a picturesque throng in craft of all description.
This is a sketch of the post in 1816, the year in which, through the treaty between England and America, it became a possession of the United States. In 1810 a company of United States Artillery, under Captain J. H. Hathaway, took possession of the place in the name of the republic and the stars and stripes waved where the lion of St. George had held the breeze. It is an interesting commentary of the times to remember that to reach their destination Captain Hathaway and his soldiers were obliged to sail around Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, the voyage consuming many months. In the Spring of 1850 a company of mounted riflers arrived at the post overland from Fort Leavenworth.
An additional interest is given Fort Vancouver by knowing that at various periods prior to the Civil War Grant, Sheridan, McClellan, Hooker, and other of the famous United States leaders of the Civil War were stationed here. It was in a campaign against the Indians not far distant from Fort Vancouver that General Sheridan fought his first battle.
[FORT YUMA]
AT HEAD OF NAVIGATION, COLORADO RIVER—CALIFORNIA
The comedian of Uncle Sam’s military posts is old Fort Yuma on the Colorado River at the southwestern extremity of California. To mention the name in a barrack-room where there are seasoned soldiers is to call forth a reminiscent smile and the old story of the hen that laid hard-boiled eggs. These and that other one of the officers, who when they die at Fort Yuma and appear before his Satanic Majesty (by some strange miscarriage of justice) shiver with cold and send back to the fort for their blankets.
Other posts in Uncle Sam’s itinerary are hot, but Fort Yuma spends all of its time in heating up with a passion for its work and an unrelenting attention to detail that have become legendary. During the months of April, May, and June no rainfall comes, and the average temperature is 105° in the shade. Of course the post does much better on some occasions, and at other times it falls below this batting average.
The most active days of Fort Yuma as a military post were found just before and for a few years subsequent to the Civil War, though that great conflict had no part in Yuma’s past. During the days that California was having its mind made up for it to become a part of the United States, and during the days in which it was beginning the great experiment indicated, Yuma was of much importance as a base for United States troops. In addition to this it exercised and has always exercised a restraining influence upon those restless spirits of the desert, the Apache Indians. Being situated on the border between the United States and Mexico, it has some little to do in seeing that the customs regulations of this country are preserved. And it has always secured importance from being one of the stations on the old Santa Fé trail.
After receiving the Gila at a point 100 miles from its mouth, the Colorado River turns suddenly westward and forces its way through a rocky defile, 70 feet high and 350 yards long and 200 yards wide, thus cutting off a narrow rocky bluff and leaving it as an isolated eminence on the California side of the river. Here stands Fort Yuma, grey and sombre above the green bottom lands of the river, which are covered with a dense growth of cottonwood and mesquite. Chains of low serrated hills and mountains limit the view on nearly every side—all bare and grey save when painted by the sun with delicate hues of blue and purple.
By courtesy of the War Department
FORT YUMA, CALIFORNIA
Before reaching the fort the traveller passes through a long road shaded by young cottonwoods and mesquite interspersed with an impenetrable growth of arrow-bush and cane. Then he comes to a bend of the river where the water loses the ruddy tint which gives it its musical name of “Colorado” and, finally, he brings up at the fortification, which in the distance appeared heavy and forbidding but which near at hand resolves itself into a collection of substantial adobe houses inclosed by deep verandas with Venetian blinds which shut out every direct ray of sunlight.
All the buildings at the post are of sun-dried brick and neatly plastered within and without. They are one story in height, have large rooms with lofty ceilings and facilities for the freest ventilation. The roof and walls are double, inclosing an air chamber. Each house is surrounded by a veranda and adjacent houses have their verandas in communication, so that the occupants may pass from one to another without exposing themselves to the heat of the sun.
What entitles the post to the name of fort are certain unpretentious intrenchments scattered along the slopes of the bluff overlooking the river and commanding the bottom lands adjacent. They are not visible from the river and the visitor is not aware of their existence until he steps to the edge of the bluff and looks down upon them. The parade is a stony lawn. Not a blade of grass is to be seen and everything is of that ashy light-grey color so trying to the eyes. It is a relief to gaze out upon the green bottom lands through which one passed before ascending to the top of the eminence where stands the fort.
Being so excessively dry the air at this post plays strange pranks with articles made for use in less arid climates, as many a young officer’s wife has found to her cost when bringing trunks and other household paraphernalia to her new home. Furniture put together in the North and brought here falls to pieces; travelling chests gape at their seams, and a sole-leather trunk contracts so much that the tray must be pried out by force.
Ink dries so rapidly upon the pen that it requires washing off every few minutes and a No. 2 pencil leaves no more trace upon a piece of paper than a piece of anthracite coal would leave. To use a pencil it is necessary to have it kept immersed in water before calling upon it for service. Newspapers require to be unfolded with care, for if handled roughly they crumble. Boxes of soap that weigh twelve pounds when shipped to Fort Yuma weigh only ten pounds after having been there for several weeks. Hams lose 12 per cent. in weight and rice 2 per cent. Eggs lose their watery contents by evaporation and become thick and tough. The effort to cool one’s self with an ordinary fan is vain, because the surrounding atmosphere is of higher temperature than the body. The earth under foot is dry and powdery and hot as flour just ground, while the rocks are so hot that the hands cannot be borne upon them.
“The story of the dog that ran across the parade at mid-day on three legs barking at every step may be correct,” writes an officer who was stationed there, “though I have never seen it tried.”
[VALLEY FORGE—YORKTOWN—VICKSBURG—LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN—GETTYSBURG—THE “CRATER”]
In the nature of the case field fortifications are temporary erections, earthworks thrown up for an immediate emergency; but, occasionally some bright deed or some momentous consequence gives these defences a fame more enduring than walls of stone planned with deliberation and executed with leisured care.
Who has not heard of Valley Forge and the heroic winter of 1777–1778 which Washington spent there with his meagerly clad men? Valley Forge is now a public reservation about twelve miles north of Philadelphia, on the Schuylkill River. Excursion trains run out from that city to the park, so it is easy of access. The grounds cover hundreds of acres, but the principal points are plainly marked and may be quickly reached.
One of the most interesting souvenirs of Washington’s immortal encampment at Valley Forge is the little stone house which the great commander used as his headquarters. An unpretentious, substantial structure of the typical style of building of the days in which it was constructed, it is in excellent preservation, strong and sturdy as on the day of its erection. The building contains numerous Washington relics and curios collected by the State authorities or presented to the park by men and women of various parts of the nation.
One of the most conspicuous objects of the reservation is the Memorial Arch erected by the United States government to the memory of the men and officers who shared the privations of that terrible winter at this spot. It is of Roman character and stands on a commanding eminence in the central part of the grounds. Near at hand is planned the Washington Memorial Chapel, which the Future may complete, or leave unbuilt, as it sees fit.
Fort Washington, a small redoubt or earth, is not far from the Arch and has been carefully preserved against the encroachments of Time. The lines of the earthworks may also be made out.
A historic site is Yorktown, Virginia, the sleepy little village on the peninsula between the James and York rivers Cornwallis surrendered to Washington and the French allies in 1781, thus making sure of American Independence, and where the Army of the Potomac encamped under McClellan in 1862, throwing up massive earthworks. The traces of both Cornwallis’ and McClellan’s encampments are easily to be made out to-day.
National Memorial Arch [top]
Washington’s Headquarters
SCENES AT VALLEY FORGE
The American and French forces marched from Williamsburg, September 28, 1781, driving in the British outposts at Yorktown as they approached and taking possession of the abandoned outworks. Forming a semicircular line about two miles from the British intrenchments they completely invested the enemy, the York River enclosing his forces to the northeast. October 17, Cornwallis offered to discuss terms of surrender.
The beginning of the year 1863—to make a jump from the Revolution to the Civil War—saw the turning of the tide for the United States, and it was in this year that the decisive battles of Vicksburg, Gettysburg and Chattanooga were fought. The battle-grounds of each of these engagements have been created national parks and are maintained in such a fashion that the visitor may follow the movements of the troops in those great clashes.
After the capture of the posts north of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi, and the opening of the mouth of the river by Farragut’s taking of New Orleans in 1862, Vicksburg was the only remaining defence of the Confederacy on the Mississippi, and the sole remaining link between the Confederacy’s east and west portions. The principal works of the city were on a commanding eminence, giving a clear sweep of the river and the surrounding country, which was swampy and almost impassable. They were competently manned, capably officered and well supplied.
The place, altogether, was deemed almost impregnable. To follow out all of the steps by which its reduction was brought about is not the province of this chapter. The United States troops under the comparatively unknown commander, U. S. Grant, began to operate at the end of January, 1863, and on July 4 concluded their task in the unconditional surrender of the main fortification of the Confederates. The surrender of Vicksburg came one day after the conclusion of the battle of Gettysburg which occupied the first three days of July.
The reservation of the Vicksburg National Park contains 1,255.07 acres and was acquired pursuant to an Act of Congress approved February 21, 1899.
The grounds of the Gettysburg National Park, Adams County, Pennsylvania, comprise 2,054 acres and their acquisition was commenced in 1873. The scenes of the principal movements of the battle have been marked with suitable monuments. The battle of Gettysburg proved conclusively that the South could not invade the North. It was the last gallant attempt of a completely invested country to strike a fatal blow before the strangle-hold of its enemy should bring the end.
The Slaughter Hollow [top]
The Entrance to the Tunnel
TWO VIEWS TO-DAY OF THE “CRATER,” PETERSBURG, VA.
The largest of the national military parks is Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Park, which comprises 5,688 acres in the State of Georgia, in addition to nearly 150 acres in the State of Tennessee, the park being situated on the line between the States. In Tennessee is located Lookout Mountain. The acquisition of this reservation began under the provisions of an Act of Congress approved August 19, 1890.
On the outskirts of Petersburg, Virginia, the remains of Forts Haskell and Steadman, the scene of the “Crater” episode, and part of the defences of the capital of the Confederacy which fell before Grant in 1865, have been preserved as a private enterprise. For a small consideration the “Crater” and the earthworks will be shown to the visitor. The Federal forces opposed to Fort Steadman—at the suggestion of a miner from Chambersburg, Pa., it is said—constructed a long tunnel from their lines to beneath the Confederate stronghold. An enormous quantity of powder was here, and when it was set off a body of soldiers was to charge through the breach and take the Confederate positions.
The powder was exploded and the plan was successful in so far that it blew several hundred men into eternity, but when the attacking column reached the cavity in the ground its men became confused, giving the Confederates time to reform and to pour in a terrible fire upon the Union men concentrated in the broken ground below. The result was terrible carnage of United States troops. The “Crater” had become a death trap. Nearly three thousand men were killed in it in thirty minutes, the most disastrous loss the Federal forces suffered in so short a time during the war.
The “Crater” to-day is a peaceful spot glorified by tall trees which keep the scene in continual gloom. The depression in the ground is ten feet or more in depth and about two hundred feet in diameter. A short walk brings one to the entrance to the tunnel where the lines of the United States were stretched.
[INDEX]
Adams, Fort, Newport, R. I., [222-231]
Alamo, Texas, [279-284]
Allen, Ethan, [63], [70]
Amsterdam, Fort, [37]
André, Major, [156]
Andros, Edmund, Royal Governor of Mass., [29], [107]
Annapolis Royal, [2], [84-92]
Arnold, Benedict, [64], [82];
his treason, [154] et seq., [169], [171], [238]
Atares Castle, Havana, [206]
Baltimore, Fort at, [180-189]
Battery, The, New York City, [46]
Belfast, Me., [90]
Belle Rive, Louis St. Ange de, Commanding Chartres, [12];
stationed at Vincennes, [14];
surrenders Chartres to English, [14]
Boston, Fort at, [25-35]
Boston Tea Party, [31]
Bourbon, Fort, on the Mississippi, [263]
Bowie, James, inventor of Bowie knife, [281]
Braddock, [18];
his march and death, [19], [53], [127]
Bradford, Wm., [106]
Brownsville, Pa., [21]
Burgoyne, General, [64]
Burnet, Governor of New York, [122], [123], [124]
Cadillac, La Motte, [132]
Caen, Emery de, [75]
Canseau, Nova Scotia, expedition against, [2];
fleet arrives at, [7]
Castine, Baron Vincent de, [103], [104]
Castle Garden, New York City, [46]
Castle St. Louis, Quebec, [72], [77], [82]
Castle William, Boston, [25], [35]
Castle Williams, New York Harbor, [46]
Champlain, Memorial Light House, [67]
Champlain, Samuel, [49], [50], [51], [52], [60], [72], [73];
dies at Quebec, [76]
Charles, Fort, Me., [107]
Charleston, South Carolina, Fort at, [241-250]
Chartres, Fort, site selected, [11];
disastrous expedition leaves, [12];
second fort built, [12];
surrenders to English, [14]
Chebucto Bay, [93], [94], [97]
Chicago, Illinois, [21];
historical Society, [23]
Cincinnati, Ohio, [24]
Citadel of Halifax, [93-97]
Citadel of Quebec, [72-83]
Clark, Fort, Illinois, [24]
Clark, George Rogers, [23], [24], [144], [145]
Clinton, Fort, New York City, [46]
Clinton, Fort, New York, [148], [149]
Columbus, Fort, New York, [36-48]
Constitution, Fort, New Hampshire, [161-166]
Constitution, Fort, New York, [150]
Cornbury, Governor of New Amsterdam, [41]
Covington, Fort, [187]
“Crater,” The, near Petersburg, Virginia, [303]
Crevecœur, Fort, [15]
Crockett, Davy, falls at Alamo, [283]
Crown Point, [53], [66-71]
Damariscotta, [3]
Davenport, Captain Richard, [28]
Davis, Jeff, cell at Fort Monroe, [235]
Dearborn, Fort, [21], [22], [23]
Dearborn, General, Secretary of War, [35]
Defiance, Mount, [64]
De Soto, [142], [201]
Diamond, Fort, [45]
Dieskau, [54], [55], [56], [69]
Donop, Count, [177]
Dorchester, Mass., [32]
Douglas, Fort, Utah, [289] et seq.
Drake, Sir Francis, menaces Havana, [203]
Duchambon, successor to Duquesnel, [8]
Dufferin Terrace, Quebec, [72], [83]
Dummer, William, Governor of Mass., [29]
Dumplings, Fort, near Newport, R. I., [231]
Duquesne, Fort, erected, [18];
falls to England, [19]
Duquesne, Governor-General of Canada, [18]
Duquesnel, Commandant of Louisburg, [2]
Edward, Fort, New York, [57]
Erie, Pa., [20]
Falls of Minnehaha, [268]
Federal Hill Fort, Baltimore, [188], [189]
Fetterman, Wyoming, [288] et seq.
Franklin, Pa., [21]
Frederick, Fort, Maine, [105-112]
Frenchman’s Bay, Me., [88]
Frontenac, in command at Quebec, [77], [78], [79], [110]
Frontenac, Fort (Kingston, Canada), [114], [127]
Gage, Fort, [23], [24]
George, Fort, at mouth of Columbia River, Ore., [292]
George, Fort, Me., [98-104]
George, Fort, New York City, [37]
Gettysburg, [302]
Governor’s Island, New York Harbor, [36], [37], [41], [42], [43], [44-48]
Griswold, Fort, Conn., [167-172]
Hamilton, Fort, New York, [45]
Havana, Cuba, Forts at, [201-206]
Heald, Captain Nathan, [22], [23]
Heights of Quebec, [72-83]
Hennepin, Friar Louis, and his map, [114]
Holmes, Major, [140]
Holmes, Fort, Michigan, [131-140]
Howe, Sir William, [59]
Independence, Fort, Boston, [25-35], [148]
Irving, Washington, [36]
Jackson, Fort, Louisiana, [263-267]
Jay, Fort, New York, [36-48]
Johnson, William, of New York, [53], [54], [55], [56], [69], [104], [117], [119]
Johnston, General Albert Sidney, [284]
Kaskaskia, Illinois, [143]
Keogh, Fort, Montana, [289]
Key, Francis Scott, [180], [187]
Kirke, Admiral Sir David, attacks Quebec, [74]
Kosciuszko, [151]
Lafayette, Fort, [45]
La Fuerza, Cuba, [201-206]
Laramie, Fort, Wyoming, [273-278]
Larrabee, Captain Lieutenant John, [30]
La Salle, Robert Cavelier, [114], [131]
Laurel Moat, Havana, [206]
Leavenworth, Fort, Kansas, [287] et seq.
Le Bœuf, Fort, [20], [21]
Lee, Robert E., [181];
resigns from U. S. Army, [284]
Lescarbot, Marc, [86]
Louisburg, Nova Scotia, importance of, [1];
incentives to attack, [2];
preparations against, [4];
a novel plan, [5];
expedition sails, [6];
strongest outlying work, [8];
siege progresses, [10];
restored to France, [10]
Louis de la Mobile, Fort, Alabama, [257]
McHenry, Fort, Maryland, [180-189]
McHenry, James, Secretary of War, [184]
McKenzie, Sir William’s experiment in Nova Scotia, [88], [89]
M’Lean, Colonel Francis, [100]
Mackinac Island, State park commission, [140]
Marion, Fort, Florida, [190-200]
Marion, General Francis, [199]
Marquette, Father, [131-132]
Massac, Fort, Illinois, [21], [141-146]
Matanzas Inlet, Florida, [192]
Menendez, Juan, de Aviles, [193]
Mercer, Fort, New Jersey, [175]
Mermet, Father, [142], [143]
Metropolis, Illinois, [141]
Michillimackinac, Michigan, [131-140]
Mifflin, Fort, Pa., [173-179]
Monitor and Merrimac, seen from Fort Monroe, [240]
Monroe, Fort, Virginia, [232-240]
Montcalm, Marquis de, [57], [59], [60], [62], [69], [127], [128]
Montgomery, Fort, Alabama, [212]
Montgomery, Fort, New York, [148], [149]
Montgomery, Richard, [82], [83]
Montmagny, Governor of Canada, [76]
Monts, Sieur de, discovers Annapolis basin, [82]
Morgan, Fort, Alabama, [257], [262]
Morro Castle, Cuba, [201-206]
Moultrie, Fort, South Carolina, [200], [241-250]
New London, Conn., [167] et seq.
Newport, R. I., Forts at, [222-231]
Newport Artillery Co., [222]
Niagara, Fort, New York, [113-121]
Nonsense, Fort, [170]
Ontario, Fort, New York, [122-130]
Ordre de la Bon Temps, [86]
Osceola, Monument at Fort Moultrie, [244]
Oswego, New York, [122], [130]
Pell, S. H. P., of New York, restores Ticonderoga, [65]
Pell, William F., of New York, acquires Ticonderoga, [65]
Pemaquid, Maine, [105], [106], [111]
Pensacola, Florida, Fort at, [207-214]
Pentagoet, or Castine, [103], [105], [107]
Peoria, Illinois, [24]
Pepperell, William, of Kittery, Maine, chosen to head expedition, [5];
home still standing, [5], [30], [125]
Phil Kearney, Fort, [285] et seq.
Philadelphia, Fort at, [173-179]
Phips, Sir William, [29], [78], [79], [90], [108], [109]
Pickens, Fort, Florida, [213]
Pike, Lieutenant C. M., secures Fort Snelling reservation, [269]
Pipon, Captain John, [29]
Pitt, Fort, Block-house at Pittsburgh, [17]
Plains of Abraham, [81]
Port Henry, New York, [68]
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Fort at, [161-166]
Potrincourt, Baron, founds Annapolis Royal, [84], [85], [87]
Presidio of San Francisco, Cal., [215-221]
Presque Isle, a memorial of, [20]
Principe Castle, Havana, [206]
Pulaski, Fort, Georgia, [251-256]
Putnam, Fort, [152]
Putnam, General Israel, [148], [151]
Quebec, [49], [51], [62];
Historic Forts at, [72-83]
Redstone Old Fort, [21]
Renault, Phillippe Francois de, introduces negro slavery to Illinois, [11]
Revere, Lieutenant Colonel Paul, [33], [100], [163]
Ribaut, Jean, [192]
Richelieu Cardinal, [73]
Robinson, Col. Beverly, [156]
Roxbury, Mass., [32]
St. Augustine, Florida, Fort at, [190-200]
St. Clair, General Arthur, [64]
St. Denis, Juchereau de, [141], [142], [143]
St. Frederic, Fort, New York, [67], [68], [69], [70]
St. Louis, Fort, [14]
St. Paul, Minn., foundation, [272]
St. Philip, Fort, Louisiana, [263-267]
Sam Houston, Fort, Texas, [279-284]
Samoset sells land at Pemaquid, [106]
San Antonio, Texas, Forts at, [284-289]
San Carlos, Fort, Florida, [207-214]
Sandusky, Ohio, [21]
San Francisco, Cal., Presidio at, [215-221]
San Marco, Fort, [197], [198]
Scott, Fort Winfield, San Francisco, [220]
Screven, Fort, Georgia, [254]
Shippen, Margaret, [157-158]
Shirley, William Governor of Mass., organizes expedition against Louisburg, [3];
his list of instructions, [6], [53], [116], [125]
Smith, Capt. John, sees Hampton Roads, [236]
Snelling, Fort, Minn., [268-272]
Stanwix, Fort, [129]
Star Spangled Banner, [188]
Starved Rock, Ill., [14]
Stony Point, New York, [158-160]
Sumter, Fort, South Carolina, [241-250]
Ticonderoga, New York, [49-65], [147]
Tracy, Uriah, [137]
Travis, Col. William B., of the Alamo, [280]
Trumbull, Fort, Conn., [167-172]
Turnbull, Col. John, [33]
Valesca, Luis de, his settlement at Pensacola Bay, [207]
Valley Forge, [179]
Vancouver, Fort, Washington, [290-294]
Van Twiller, Wouter, or Walter, Governor of New Amsterdam, [37], [38]
Vauban, [1], [56], [79]
Vaudreuil, last Governor of New France, [81]
Vaughan, William, of Damariscotta, suggests attack on Louisburg, [2];
his career, [3];
captures grand battery, [8], [9]
Venango, [21]
Vicksburg, Miss., [301]
Vincennes, Ind., [12]
Wadsworth, Peleg, [100], [102]
Walker, Admiral Sir Hovenden, [81]
Warren, Fort, [35]
Washington, Fort, Valley Forge, Pa., [300]
Washington, Fort, Cincinnati, Ohio, [24]
Washington, George, [18], [32], [33], [129], [155], [157], [168], [176], [226], [228]
Waterford, Pa., [20]
Wayne, “Mad” Anthony, [145], [159]
Wentworth, Sir John, Governor of New Hampshire, [162]
West Point, New York, [147-160]
White Hall, New York, [55]
Wilkinson, James, [145]
William Henry, Fort, Mass., [109], [110]
William and Mary, Fort, New Hampshire, [161-166]
William Henry, Fort, New York, [54], [56], [57], [58], [59], [119]
Winthrop, Fort, Boston, [26]
Winthrop, Governor of Mass., [27], [34]
Wolcott, Fort, Torpedo Station, [231]
Wolfe, captures, Quebec, [81]
Yorktown, Va., [64]
Yuma, Fort, Cal., [295-298]
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. For example: headquarters, head-quarters; care-taker, caretaker; employees, employés; emprize; rhymester; coehorns; repealment; gayety; equinoctial.
[Pg 26], ‘the frying fishes’ replaced by ‘the flying fishes’.
[Pg 34], ‘is certaintly’ replaced by ‘is certainly’.
[Pg 133], ‘the little setttlement’ replaced by ‘the little settlement’.
[Pg 190], ‘by a barbacan’ replaced by ‘by a barbican’.
[Pg 274], ‘Ogalla Sioux’ replaced by ‘Oglala Sioux’.
[Pg 291], ‘periously close’ replaced by ‘perilously close’.
[Pg 299], ‘his meagrely clad’ replaced by ‘his meagerly clad’.
[Pg 301], ‘on the Mississpipi’ replaced by ‘on the Mississippi’.
[Index:]
‘Cadillac, La Moote’ replaced by ‘Cadillac, La Motte’.
‘St. Philip, Fort, Louisana’ replaced by ‘St. Philip, Fort, Louisiana’.