However, Ward was a great man. He had already distinguished himself as a writer on gunnery and naval tactics and as an inventor. He now showed his pluck by bravely attacking the forts.
It was on Friday, May 31, 1861, at 10.30 o’clock at night, that the first shot of this war was fired from a naval ship at a fort. In all, fourteen shots were fired, and the Confederates fired fifty-six at the ships. The forts were not damaged, and one Confederate soldier lost a finger. However, the Confederates abandoned the battery they had erected at the water level and took the guns to the top of the bluff. Next day, the Pawnee having come to reinforce the fleet, the attack was renewed, and for five hours the four little steamers hurled their shot at the forts. The Confederates fired over 1,000 shot in return. It is instructive to note that no one was hurt on either side by all that firing. The ships were struck several times, but “there was no irreparable damage done.” The attack failed absolutely.
Ward was afterwards killed in an attack on the Confederate forts erected at Matthias Point, fifteen miles or so farther down the river. This was on June 27, 1861. The Federal forces attempted to land there and were driven off easily. But for the coolness of Lieut. J. C. Chaplin, of the Pawnee, who rallied his force, in spite of a heavy fire, the whole landing party would have been captured. Ward was the only one killed, but four others were wounded.
On the whole, the work of the navy on the Potomac was confined to patrolling the stream for the purpose of preventing the Confederates of the two slave-holding States that bordered it from communicating with each other. The men engaged in it have not received and never can receive the credit they deserve for what they did, simply because there was nothing striking about the work. More unfortunate still, they had steamers that were wholly inadequate to the work, and the fighting, when any was done, was like that at Acquia Creek—ineffective necessarily. Instead of an opportunity to win fame, the men found toil of the most wearisome kind, and as a reward for it they got the reproaches of ignorant editors at the North and the jeers of exultant editors at the South. Nevertheless, this much was done: The river was kept open, so far as was needed, for the transportation of troops and supplies, to and fro, and when, in 1862, the Confederates found that their forts could not stop traffic, even though their guns had an effective range greater than the width of the river, they retired from the bank of the Potomac altogether.
CHAPTER IV
A STORY OF CONFEDERATE PRIVATEERS
THEY DID PLENTY OF DAMAGE FOR A TIME, BUT THEIR CAREER WAS BRIEF—CAPTURE OF THE FIRST OF THE CLASS, AND TRIAL OF HER CREW ON A CHARGE OF PIRACY—REASONS WHY THEY COULD NOT BE HELD AS CRIMINALS—LUCK OF THE JEFFERSON DAVIS—A NEGRO WHO RECAPTURED A CONFEDERATE PRIZE TO ESCAPE THE TERRORS OF SLAVERY—A SKIPPER WHO THOUGHT A GOVERNMENT FRIGATE WAS A MERCHANTMAN—THE “NEST” BEHIND CAPE HATTERAS.
From a blockade of the ports of the Southern States it was a short and natural step for the navy to land and effectually close some port to Confederate commerce by occupying it. But before telling the story of the first expedition organized for this purpose the story of the Confederate privateers—real privateers, as distinguished from Confederate cruisers like the Alabama—will be told, for the reason that it was the work of these privateers that in good part led the government to decide on the first expedition for occupying a Southern port.
As a matter of fact, the idea of blockading the Southern ports was born of the determination of the Confederates to commission privateers. The sequence of events was as follows: The Confederates captured Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861. On the 15th President Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to protect the government property and enforce the laws of the nation in the seceding States. On the 17th Jefferson Davis “published a counter proclamation inviting applications for letters of marque and reprisal to be granted under the seal of the Confederate States against ships and property of the United States and their citizens.” The quotation is from Scharf’s “Confederate States Navy.” It was on receipt of this that Mr. Lincoln, on the 19th, ordered the blockade of the Southern ports.
However, Mr. Davis did not issue any commissions to privateers until after the Confederate Congress had passed, on May 6, 1861, an act authorizing him to do so. This act provided such safeguards as had ruled American privateers in the War of 1812. On May 14th another act supplemented the first by regulating the sale of prizes and the distribution of the proceeds.
Sufficient time has passed since that war to enable at least the younger generation of Northern-born men to view its events judicially, and it is therefore likely that no student of history will now be found to deny that the letters of marque subsequently issued under these acts of the Confederate Congress were entirely legal. The Confederates were entitled to the rights of belligerents—they at least became entitled to them the moment that President Lincoln issued his proclamation blockading the Southern ports. There is no point of international law more firmly established now than that a proclamation of a blockade carries with it a concession that war exists between the blockaders and the blockaded. And this is worth remembering, because Secretary of State Seward was unwilling to admit it for a very long time after a state of war did actually exist. At the same time it was entirely natural that Northern shipping men should have called these privateers pirates. Business operations tend to concentrate one’s nerves in his pocket and to render them so sensitive that any diminution of weight in the pocket causes excruciating agony. Naturally these would not hesitate to ignore the belligerent rights of an enemy, nor to use harsh and unjust language when they felt this pain.