Farragut's first employment was as a member of a board to recommend officers for retirement from active service, under an act approved August 3, 1861. The object of this act was to assist the Department in the discrimination necessary to be made between the competent and those disabled by years or infirmity, for up to that time there had been no regular system of retirement, and men were retained on the active list past the period of efficiency, because no provision for removing them existed. The duty, though most important with war actually existing, was delicate and trying, and far from consonant to Farragut's active, enterprising character. More suitable employment was, however, fast approaching.
CHAPTER VII.
THE NEW ORLEANS EXPEDITION.
1862.
The necessity of controlling the Mississippi valley had been early realized by the United States Government. In its hands the great stream would become an impassable barrier between two large sections of the Southern Confederacy; whereas in the possession of the latter it remained a link binding together all the regions through which it flowed, or which were penetrated by any of its numerous tributaries. The extensive territory west of the river also produced a large part of the provisions upon which depended the Southern armies, whose main field of action was, nevertheless, on the eastern side. In a country habitually so unprepared for war as is the United States, and where, of course, such a contingency as an intestine struggle between the sections could not have been provided for, there seemed room to hope that the national forces might by rapid action seize the whole course of the river, before the seceding States were able to take adequate measures for its defense. The Government had the support of that part of the country which had received the largest manufacturing development, and could, therefore, most quickly prepare the material for war, in which both sides were lamentably deficient; and, what was yet more important, it possessed in the new navy built since 1855 an efficient weapon to which the South had nothing to oppose. The hope was extravagant and doomed to disappointment; for to overrun and hold so extensive a territory as the immediate basin of the Mississippi required a development of force on the one side and a degree of exhaustion on the other which could not be reached so early in the war. The relative strengths, though unequal, were not yet sufficiently disproportioned to enable the gigantic work to be accomplished; and the principal result of an effort undertaken without due consideration was to paralyze a large fraction of a navy too small in numbers to afford the detachment which was paraded gallantly, but uselessly, above New Orleans. Nor was this the worst; the time thus consumed in marching up the hill in order at once to march down again threw away the opportunity for reducing Mobile before its defenses were strengthened. Had the navy been large enough, both tasks might have been attempted; but it will appear in the sequel that its scanty numbers were the reason which postponed the attack on Mobile from month to month, until it became the most formidable danger Farragut ever had to encounter.
Despite the extensive sea-coast of the United States and the large maritime commerce possessed by it at the opening of the war, the navy had never, except for short and passing intervals, been regarded with the interest its importance deserved. To this had doubtless contributed the fixed policy of the Government to concentrate its attention upon the internal development of the country, and to concern itself little with external interests, except so far as they promoted the views of that section which desired to give extension to slaveholding territory. The avoidance of entangling alliances had become perverted to indifference to the means by which alone, in the last resort, the nation can assert and secure control in regions outside its borders, but vitally affecting its prosperity and safety. The power of navies was therefore, then as now, but little understood. Consequently, when the importance of the Mississippi Valley was realized, as it immediately was, there was but one idea as to the means of controlling it, and that was by a land invasion from the great Western and Northwestern States. To this a navy was indeed to be adjoined, but in a manner so distinctly subsidiary that it was, contrary to all custom, placed under the orders of the commander-in-chief of the Western army, and became simply a division of the land forces. From this subordinate position it was soon raised by its own intrinsic value and the logic of facts; but the transient experience is noteworthy, because illustrating the general ignorance of the country as to the powers of the priceless weapon which lay ready, though unnoticed, to its hand.
Happily, in the Navy Department itself juster views prevailed; and the general indifference permitted it at least one compensation—to follow its own ways. The Secretary himself was not a professional man, though he had had official connection with the service in the past; but most fortunately there was called to his assistance one who had been for eighteen years in the navy, had passed while in it to the command of mail steamers, and only five years before the war had resigned and entered civil life. This gentleman, Mr. Gustavus V. Fox, thus combined with business experience and an extensive acquaintance with naval officers the capacities of a seaman. He knew what ships could do and what they could not; but to this common knowledge of sea officers, gained by the daily habit of sea life, he had added the results of study and reflection upon events passing elsewhere than under his own observation. The experiences of the allied navies in the Crimean War had convinced him that, if the wooden sides of ships could not be pitted in prolonged stand-up fight against the stone walls of fortresses, they were capable of enduring such battering as they might receive in running by them through an unobstructed channel. This conviction received support by the results of the attacks upon Hatteras Inlet and Port Royal. He might, indeed, have gone much further back and confirmed his own judgment as a seaman by the express opinion of an eminent soldier. Nearly a hundred years before, Washington, at the siege of Yorktown, had urged the French Admiral De Grasse to send vessels past Cornwallis's works to control the upper York River, saying: "I am so well satisfied by experience of the little effect of land batteries on vessels passing them with a leading breeze that, unless the two channels near Yorktown should be found impracticable by obstructions, I should have the greatest confidence in the success of this important service."[C]
In this conviction of Mr. Fox's lay the inception of the expedition against New Orleans. It was, in his view, to be a purely naval attack. Once over the bar at the mouth of the river, the channel as far as the city had no natural obstruction, was clearly defined, and easily followed, by day or night, without a pilot. The heavy current of the early spring months, while it would retard the passage of the ships and so keep them longer under fire, would make it difficult for the enemy to maintain in position any artificial barrier placed by him. The works to be passed—the seaward defenses of New Orleans, Forts Jackson and St. Philip—were powerful fortifications; but they were ultimately dependent upon the city, ninety miles above them, for a support which could come only by the river. A fleet anchored above the forts lay across their only line of communication, and when thus isolated, their fall became only a question of time. The work proposed to the United States Navy was, therefore, to turn the forts by passing their fire, seize their line of communications—the upper river—and their base, New Orleans, and then to give over the latter to the army, which engaged to furnish a force sufficient to hold the conquest.