Then, under cover of the Benton, the trans-Mississippi army could readily have crossed the river; and with such a body of fresh, well-armed men in his rear, Sherman might never have reached the seaboard. Slighter chances than this have changed the course of mighty campaigns, as all know who have read history.
In conclusion, I wish to say that this incident is veritable truth, entirely uncolored, and a bit of unwritten history of the only naval traitor of the great Civil War.
CHAPTER X
HUNTING FOR BUSHWHACKERS
Early in September, 1864, after Admiral Porter had been transferred to the North Atlantic Squadron, I was ordered from the Benton to the command of the United States steamer Tyler, relieving Lieutenant Commander Edward Pritchett, who, in command of the Tyler, had also been in charge of the White River division of the Mississippi Squadron.
The Tyler, like the Benton, was a ship with a history. She was one of the two steamers that had performed such excellent service at the battle of Pittsburg Landing; and the navy claimed that those two boats really saved the day on the 6th of April, by keeping a large body of Albert Sidney Johnston’s army in check and covering our disorganized troops that had been driven down to the bank of the river. By thus preventing the rebel attack until the next day, Buell was enabled to effect a junction with Grant, and then turn what had been a check to our arms into a decided victory for the Union. It is quite certain that Grant in his dispatches spoke in very high terms of the service rendered by the gunboats on that occasion.
The Tyler was a large high-pressure wooden steamer, entirely unarmored, her wheels unusually far aft, and with two very tall smokestacks. In fitting her for the naval service she had been divested of all her upper or “hurricane deck” and “texas,” thus giving her a flush spar deck three quarters of her length, with a spacious poop deck, raised some six feet, which afforded comfortable cabins for the commander.
She mounted ten 8-inch guns of sixty-three hundredweight on the berth deck, a 30-pound Parrott rifle on the forecastle, and two brass 12-pounders on the poop. This was a very formidable battery for a river steamer; and as she was very high out of the water, when the river was at a good stage her guns commanded the low banks and could sweep the level country for a great distance.
Captain Pritchett was a very vigilant and active young officer, and he kept the Tyler in a high state of efficiency, and nearly always in motion, so that she had earned from the Confederates the name of the “Black Devil,” from her color and her apparent ubiquity.
Late in October, 1864, Major-General E. R. S. Canby, who was at the time in command of the military division of the West Mississippi, with headquarters at New Orleans, came up to White River on the passenger steamer General Lyon on a tour of inspection of our army in Arkansas. Brigadier-General Maginnis was in command of ten thousand United States troops encamped at the mouth of White River.