The following summer the Navy Department placed at his disposal the dispatch steamer Tallapoosa, which took him and his family to Portsmouth, New Hampshire; where he became the guest of the late Rear-Admiral Pennock, then commandant of the Navy Yard at that place and a connection by marriage of Mrs. Farragut. It was his last sea voyage, and he appeared to have a presentiment that it was so; for as the ship drew near the yard he arose from his sick bed at the sound of the salute being fired in his honor, dressed himself in full uniform, and went on deck. Looking up with a sad smile at his flag flying from the mast-head, he said: "It would be well if I died now, in harness." Shortly after his arrival, an old sailor who had charge of the sloop-of-war Dale, then lying dismantled at the wharf, met there the admiral, who had wandered on board. He looked about the ship and, as he left her to go ashore, said: "This is the last time I shall ever tread the deck of a man-of-war." This prediction proved true. He passed quietly away at the commandant's house, on the 14th of August, 1870, aged sixty-nine years; surrounded by his family and loving friends, including many of his old companions in arms. The body was laid temporarily in Portsmouth, the naval officers and citizens of the place uniting to pay every respect to his memory.
In September the Navy Department sent the steam frigate Guerrière to bring the admiral's body to New York. This ship running aground on Nantucket Shoal, the remains were transferred to another vessel and so conveyed to the city. The final and public funeral ceremonies were held on the 30th of September; the day being observed as one of general mourning, the city edifices draped, bells tolled, and minute guns fired. In the procession was General Grant, then President of the United States, with the members of his Cabinet, many military and naval officers, ten thousand soldiers, and a large number of societies. By these the coffin of the admiral was escorted to the railroad station, whence it was transported to Woodlawn Cemetery, in Westchester County, where the body now lies.
To his memory the United States Government has erected a colossal bronze statue in the national capital, in Farragut Square, the work of Miss Vinnie Ream. A committee of New York citizens have placed a similar memorial, by Mr. St. Gauden, at the northwest corner of Madison Square in that city. There is also a mural tablet, with a likeness of the admiral, in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Incarnation; of which he was a communicant after taking up his residence in New York.
CHAPTER XII.
THE CHARACTER OF ADMIRAL FARRAGUT.
The brilliant and victorious career which has secured for Farragut a leading place among the successful naval commanders of all time was of brief duration, and began at an age when men generally are thinking rather of relaxing their efforts than of undertaking new and extraordinary labors. The two great leaders of the United States armies during the civil war—Grant and Sherman—were not over forty-five when the return of peace released them from their cares; while Nelson and Napoleon were but a year older than these when Trafalgar and Waterloo terminated their long careers. Farragut was nearly sixty-one at the time of passing the Mississippi forts, and his command of the Western Gulf Squadron lasted not quite three years, or rather less than the ordinary duration of a naval cruise in times of peace. Though not unprecedented, the display of activity and of sustained energy made by him at such an advanced period of life is unusual; and the severity of the strain upon the mental and physical powers at that age is evidenced by the prostration of Farragut himself, a man of exceptional vigor of body and of a mental tone which did not increase his burdens by an imaginative exaggeration of difficulties. He never committed the error, against which Napoleon cautioned his generals, "de se faire un tableau." On the other hand, the study of his operations shows that, while always sanguine and ready to take great risks for the sake of accomplishing a great result, he had a clear appreciation of the conditions necessary to success and did not confound the impracticable with the merely hazardous. Of this, his reluctance to ascend the Mississippi in 1862, and his insistence in 1864 upon the necessity of ironclads, despite his instinctive dislike to that class of vessel, before undertaking the entrance to Mobile Bay, are conspicuous illustrations; and must be carefully kept in view by any one desirous of adequately appreciating his military character.
As in the case of Nelson, there is a disposition to attribute Farragut's successes simply to dash—to going straight at the enemy regardless of method and of consequences. In the case of the great British admiral the tendency of this view, which has been reproduced in successive biographies down to the latest, is to sink one of the first of naval commanders beneath the level of the pugilist, who in his fighting does not disdain science, to that of the game-cock; and it is doubtless to be attributed to the emphasis he himself laid upon that direct, rapid, and vigorous action without which no military operations, however wisely planned, can succeed. In the want of this, rather than of great professional acquirements, will be most frequently found the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful general; and consequently Nelson, who had seen so much of failure arising from slowness and over-caution, placed, and rightly placed, more stress upon vigor and rapidity, in which most are found deficient, than upon the methods which many understand, however ill they may apply them. Like the distinguished Frenchman, Suffren, who is said to have stigmatized tactics as "the veil of timidity," yet illustrated in his headlong dashes the leading principles of all sound tactics, Nelson carefully planned the chief outlines of operations, in the execution of which he manifested the extremes of daring and of unyielding firmness. There was in him no failure to comprehend that right direction, as well as vigor and weight, is necessary to a blow that would tell; but experience had taught him that the average man wants to be much too sure of success before venturing to move, and hence the insistence upon that one among the features of his military character which to the superficial observer has gradually obscured all others. Vigor even to desperateness of action both Nelson and Farragut on occasion showed—recklessness never. Neither fought as one who beateth the air; and while for neither can be claimed an entire exemption from mistakes, the great outlines of their action can safely challenge hostile criticism.
While, however, both in their respective spheres illustrated the great leading principles of war, the circumstances under which they were called to practice them were too diverse to permit any close comparison, or parallel, to be instituted between their actions. Nelson, for the most part, shone upon the battle-field—by his tactical combinations, by the rapidity and boldness with which he carried out plans previously laid, or, on occasion, by the astonishing coup d'œil and daring with which, in unforeseen crises, he snatched and secured escaping victory. Farragut in actual battle showed that careful adaptation of means to ends which has a just claim to be considered tactical science; but his great merit was in the clearness with which he recognized the decisive point of a campaign, or of a particular operation, and threw upon it the force under his direction. Nelson acted chiefly against ships, against forces of a type essentially the same as his own, and accessible in all parts to his attack, because belonging to the same element; he might therefore hope to overcome them by the superior quality of his crews or by his better tactical dispositions. Farragut contended with fortifications, whose military powers, offensive and defensive, were essentially different from those of a fleet. Their endurance so greatly exceeded that of his ships as to exclude any hope of reducing them by direct attack; and their advantages of position, deliberately chosen and difficult of approach, could not be outweighed by any tactical arrangement open to him to adopt. He was therefore compelled to seek their fall by indirect means, by turning and isolating them, by acting against their communications—a conception not tactical, but strategic.