Meantime the soldiers in charge of the three forts that guarded the harbor had been concentrated at Fort Pickens on the 10th by Lieut. Adam J. Slemmer, U. S. A. At that time Commander Henry Walke was in Pensacola, in command of the transport Supply. She was en route to Vera Cruz with stores for the government ships lying there. On January 9th, Walke was ordered by Commodore Armstrong to assist Slemmer in concentrating the troops and army supplies at Fort Pickens. Walke at once started to obey this order; but when about to engage in doing so, another order came under which he was to merely give some food to the men already in Fort Pickens and then return to the navy yard, leaving the army forces scattered among the three forts about the harbor. Walke, in his “Reminiscences,” says Farrand “hood-winked” the commodore into issuing that order. Walke showed it to Slemmer, and Slemmer, in despair, said if that order was obeyed, no further effort to hold the forts should be made. But Walke at once determined to disobey the order in so far as he must in order to concentrate the army forces at Fort Pickens.
Walke’s act was one of the most remarkable of that day. It was almost without precedent that a naval officer should be independent-minded enough to do what was right in the interests of the government without first receiving an unmistakable order to do it. But that a man should save a fort for the government by actually disobeying the order of a superior—that was then unheard of, though an officer of a higher grade saved three fine ships from the Merrimac in like fashion some time later. By concentrating the army forces at Pickens, contrary to Armstrong’s orders, Walke saved the fort. Then, when the yard had been surrendered to the Confederates, he took the paroled officers and men, with their families, from the yard and carried them to New York. This, although done in the interest of the government, and as an act of humanity, was also contrary to his original order which contemplated a passage to Vera Cruz. So Walke was court-martialled, found guilty, and sentenced to be censured! This is perhaps the only case on record where the legal censure of an American naval officer was as a badge of honor.
Henry Walke.
From a photograph.
Meantime the Buchanan administration was in some way moved, after the navy yard was captured, to send the Brooklyn down there with eighty-six artillery men and 115 marines. But before these could be landed the administration repented, and the Brooklyn was ordered to lie off the harbor. And there she lay when Mr. Lincoln came into office. On March 12th an order was sent to Capt. J. Vodges, commanding the artillery company on the Brooklyn, to land. This order was received by Vodges on March 31st, and on April 1st he called on Capt. H. A. Adams, of the Brooklyn, for boats, etc., for the landing. Instead of giving them, Adams declined, and wrote a letter to the Navy Department, saying that the order to Vodges “may have been given without a full knowledge of the condition of affairs here.” He was sure that reinforcing the fort “would be viewed as a hostile act, and would be resisted to the utmost.” The department was warned that “it would be a serious thing to bring on, by precipitation, a collision.” In short, this officer, who was a Union man, had been cajoled into a state of mind where he ignored the fact that the Confederates were working day and night to place their defences in the best possible order and were adding to their forces daily. He had, in truth, been instructed by Buchanan’s Secretary of the Navy “not to land the company unless said fort shall be attacked or preparations be made for its attack.” The italics are not in the original document, of course, but they are inserted to make plain the way in which Adams ignored the Confederate work of preparing to capture Fort Pickens by increasing the effectiveness of Fort McRae and Fort Barrancas. To land a man in Fort Pickens would be “viewed as a hostile act,” and would “bring on, by precipitation, a collision.” To improve the Confederate Fort McRae was not to be considered! Certainly the contempt which the Southern people of that day felt for men of the North was not without some justification.
These facts seem worth giving because they show the difference between the state of mind on the Union side and that on the Confederate. The Confederates knew what they wanted and were reaching after it ceaselessly: The Union forces at this time were not much short of mental demoralization, anywhere, and the quick-witted Confederates took advantage of it.
This letter was carried to Washington by Lieut. Washington Gwathmey, who afterwards joined the Confederates. It took him five days to cover the distance, and the reinforcement of Fort Pickens was delayed by that much.
The department could hardly tell whom to trust, but Lieut. John L. Worden was chosen to carry an order to Adams for the landing of the troops; and no mistake was made in his case, for he was the Worden who afterward commanded the Monitor. He reached Pensacola on April 11th, and on telling Gen. Braxton Bragg, of the Confederate forces, that he had an oral order for the captain of the Brooklyn, was allowed to go off to her on the 12th. He had committed the order to memory and destroyed the document. That night, April 12, 1861, Fort Pickens was reinforced. Bragg had planned an attack on Fort Pickens for the night of the 13th—an attack that must have succeeded, because the Union force had been only eighty-three men, all told; but when the artillerymen and the marines were landed the face of matters was changed and the attack postponed indefinitely. The flag has never ceased to float over Fort Pickens. The Confederates were greatly exasperated, and Worden was arrested in Montgomery and held a prisoner for seven months.
In September the general dulness of affairs about Pensacola was relieved by a brilliant dash which a force from the blockader Colorado made into the harbor. The Confederates had been strengthening their works along shore gradually, and had at last started fitting out a schooner called the Judah at the navy yard for use as a privateer. This schooner was guarded by a ten-inch columbiad (a columbiad being a gun half-way between a carronade and a long gun) and a field-piece, both being placed to sweep her deck. There was also a large force of men camped in the yard—some accounts say 1,000—while the schooner had a full crew on board, with a long pivot gun and two broadside guns in place. It is a remarkable fact that the yard where she was fitted and the schooner herself were within easy range and plain sight of Fort Pickens, and the fact that she intended to sail out after American merchant ships was obvious. But not a shot was fired from the fort to disturb her owners or the workmen.