The force which General Sherman was fitting out at Annapolis was destined, in conjunction with the navy, to secure a harbor on the Southern coast to serve as a base for the blockading fleets. General Sherman was a veteran regular officer of artillery, who had greatly distinguished himself at the battle of Buena Vista, a thorough soldier, a strict disciplinarian, devoted to his profession, and moreover a man of ability, sound judgment, and true patriotism, but perhaps somewhat deficient in enterprise. He personally applied for General Stevens, for whom he entertained great esteem, as one of his brigade commanders. His force numbered some twelve thousand, all new, raw volunteers, except two regular batteries and the Highlanders, who, having fought at Bull Run, were looked up to as veterans by the other troops, and was divided into three brigades, commanded by Brigadier-Generals Egbert L. Viele the first, Isaac I. Stevens the second, and Horatio G. Wright the third.
General Stevens’s brigade consisted of the Highlanders, the 100th Pennsylvania or Roundheads, Colonel Daniel Leasure; the 50th Pennsylvania, Colonel B. C. Christ; and the 8th Michigan, Colonel William M. Fenton. They were all brave, patriotic, and intelligent men, the best types of American volunteers, and destined to render great and glorious service to the very end of the war, participating in many battles and engagements, and preserving their colors without a stain. The Michiganders, as they were familiarly called, were largely of New England stock, many of them farmers’ boys, and had all the grit, intelligence, and enterprise of their lineage. The 50th Pennsylvania were Pennsylvania Dutch, descendants of the Germans who settled the central part of the State before the Revolution, and were slower, more heavily moulded than the others, but always steadfast and reliable. The Roundheads came from the western, more mountainous part of the Keystone State, and were of the vigorous Scotch-Irish stock, with many tall, rawboned men.
The regiments were quartered in the Naval Academy buildings and grounds. On Colonel Leasure’s recommendation, General Stevens took a large brick building as headquarters, but soon after moving into it an ambulance was driven up to the front door, and a soldier in an advanced stage of the smallpox, his face perfectly black and festering, was taken out of the vehicle on a stretcher and borne into the house, which, it seems, had been selected as a smallpox hospital. Needless to say that headquarters fled before this visitation. General Stevens, indignant at Leasure’s carelessness in the matter, summarily ordered him out of his own spacious quarters and took them for himself, greatly to the colonel’s disgust, who was heard to exclaim that there were too many Roundheads about for him to submit to such an indignity; but the incident had a good effect in showing that the new commander would stand no trifling.
The Highlanders arrived on the 18th, and the next day the troops were taken off in small bay steamboats to the large ocean steamships anchored two miles out, and embarked upon them. The largest of these vessels, and second only to the Great Eastern, was the Vanderbilt, a noble side-wheel ship of three thousand tonnage, which had recently been given the government by Cornelius Vanderbilt, the old commodore, and was named after him. His favorite captain, Le Favre, a skillful navigator and accomplished gentleman, commanded her. On this fine steamer were crowded General Stevens and staff, the Highlanders, the 8th Michigan, and a hundred quartermaster’s employees, all together over two thousand men. A large number of surf-boats and quantities of tents and baggage were piled in confusion on her decks, leaving scarce standing-room for the troops. The Roundheads and one battalion of the 50th embarked on the Ocean Queen, while Colonel Christ with the remainder of his regiment were loaded on the Winfield Scott.
Captain and Assistant Quartermaster William Lilly here joined the command as brigade quartermaster. He had met General Stevens during the presidential campaign and won his confidence, of which he proved unworthy, and owed his appointment to the general’s recommendation. General Stevens was also joined by Colonel William H. Nobles, who had seen much service on the frontier, and whom he appointed lieutenant-colonel of the Highlanders, but he was unequal to the position and soon afterwards resigned. The general appointed as his first aide-de-camp Lieutenant William T. Lusk, of the Highlanders, an educated and high-toned gentleman, who had abandoned his studies in Germany to fight for his country, and who proved a brave and excellent officer, and has since achieved distinction in his profession as a physician. The remaining members of the staff were Dr. George S. Kemble, brigade surgeon; Captain L.A. Warfield, brigade commissary; and Lieutenants Henry S. Taft and William S. Cogswell, signal officers.
The transports sailed on the 20th and reached Fortress Monroe the next day. Here were awaiting them a fleet of thirty warships, under Commodore Samuel F. Dupont, and a large number of sailing vessels laden with munitions and stores. The expedition lay here at anchor for a week, completing the necessary preparations. Commodore Dupont held many conferences on his flagship, the Wabash, with General Sherman and the brigade commanders, at which the objective point was decided upon. The weather was fine, the sea smooth, and the blue road-stead, covered with the great fleet, comprising every variety of vessel,—the great, grim, black warships, with their frowning batteries; the transports, swarming with blue-clad soldiers; the deep-laden sailing ships, with their tall spars,—presented an impressive and animated scene, enlivened by the numerous launches and cutters darting from ship to ship with officers bearing dispatches or exchanging calls. One of the swiftest and nattiest of these small craft was the captain’s gig of the Vanderbilt, manned by a crew of fine oarsmen from the Highlanders, which attracted much attention from the army and navy alike, was the envy of other headquarters, and was kept busy conveying General Stevens and staff over the waters blue.
It was a fine, bracing autumn afternoon, October 29, when the great fleet sailed out of the Chesapeake in two parallel columns a mile apart. The giant warship Wabash led the right column, followed in single file by the war vessels, thirty in number, a black and formidable array. The left column was composed of the transport steamers, crowded with troops, each towing one of the sailing-vessels, and also contained some thirty ships. The Vanderbilt towed the Great Republic, a four-masted, full-rigged ship of four thousand tons, the largest sailing-ship then afloat. Besides a vast cargo of stores, she carried on her main and upper decks a great number of artillery horses. Thus the mighty armada steadily ploughed its way out to sea, with flags waving and bands playing, a glorious and awe-inspiring sight; while the troops, exhilarated by the novel and stirring scene and the excitement of sailing to an unknown destination, their hearts swelling with the hope and determination of soon dealing the rebel lion a mighty and perhaps fatal blow, cheered and cheered again until they could cheer no more.
The third day a furious storm struck the combined fleet and scattered it far and wide. At midnight, in the height of the tempest, the great hawsers by which the Vanderbilt was towing her consort threatened to tear off her quarters under the terrific strain of the mountain billows, and had to be cut asunder with axes, and the Great Republic was abandoned to her fate in the raging storm, furious sea, and black night. When day broke no other sail was visible amid the driving and tossing billows. Later in the day General Stevens opened the sealed orders with which every ship was provided, to be opened in case of separation from the fleet, in presence of Captains Le Favre, Stevens, and Lilly, and announced that the destination and point of rendezvous was off Port Royal, one of the finest harbors on the Southern coast, situated midway between Charleston and Savannah. The Vanderbilt, the swiftest of the fleet, arrived off the entrance on November 3, among the first. The other ships came straggling in, and by the 6th were nearly all assembled and anchored just outside the bar, save four, the Governor and Peerless, that foundered in the storm, and the Osceola and Union, that were driven ashore. The loss of life, however, was small under the circumstances, being seven drowned and ninety-three captured. The 50th Pennsylvania, on the Winfield Scott, came near going to the bottom, and were only saved by incessant pumping and bailing, and throwing overboard the entire cargo.
Port Royal was defended by earthworks on each side of the entrance, Fort Walker on Hilton Head, the south side, and Fort Beauregard on Bay Point, on the north. These were strong and well-constructed forts, with heavy parapets, traverses, and bomb-proofs, mounted forty-one guns of large calibre, and were garrisoned and defended by three thousand troops, under General Thomas F. Drayton, whose brother, Captain Percival Drayton, commanded the gunboat Pocahontas in Dupont’s fleet. The enemy had also three small gunboats in the bay, under Commodore Tatnall, formerly an officer of the United States navy.
After reconnoissance by his gunboats, Commodore Dupont decided to attack the forts with his fleet, and arranged with General Sherman that the troops were to land in small boats on the open beach during the naval bombardment and carry the works by assault, in case the navy failed to shell the enemy out. Accordingly, on the morning of November 7 the surf-boats, of which there were a large number, and all the boats belonging to the vessels, were launched, and brought up alongside or astern of the transports, and the troops of Stevens’s and Wright’s brigades were provided with ammunition and one day’s cooked rations, and held in readiness to land and attack. While they awaited this movement in high-wrought expectation, the following order was written by General Stevens and read to them, and had a marked effect to increase their determination and ardor:—