USA > Virginia > City of Portsmouth > City of Portsmouth > A record of events in Norfolk County, Virginia, from April 19th, 1861, to May 10th, 1862, with a history of the soldiers and sailors of Norfolk County, Norfolk City and Portsmouth, who served in the Confederate States army or navy > Part 3
USA > Virginia > City of Norfolk > City of Norfolk > A record of events in Norfolk County, Virginia, from April 19th, 1861, to May 10th, 1862, with a history of the soldiers and sailors of Norfolk County, Norfolk City and Portsmouth, who served in the Confederate States army or navy > Part 3
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37
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THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR IN PORTSMOUTHI.
shells, steamed down into Hampton Roads to engage the United States vessels which were anchored there. It was a repetition of the combat between David and Goliath. The frigate Savannah was the first object of the Harmony's attack. She was lying at the mouth of the James river, and the rifle gun from the little craft threw its shells over and into the big frigate, but the shots which were aimed at her in return fell far short of their mark. Captain Fairfax continued the engagement until he had fired away all of his ammunition.
This gun was a great advancement in the science of the manu- facture of ordnance, and the inventor has not received the credit which is justly due him. It was the work of Mr. Thomas Carr of Portsmouth, who, at the time, was a foreman or quarterman in the Steam Engineering Department of the Gosport Navy Yard. Mr. James Flemming was Master Machinist and Chief Engineer William P. Williamson was in charge of the Department. Mr. Carr says he saw two Parrott guns in possession of the 3d Georgia Regiment, which was camped near the Navy Yard, and noticed the manner in which they were rifled and banded, and the thought occurred to him that it would be practicable to rifle and band the six-inch Dahlgren guns, and he got up a machine which could be attached to a lathe and with which the grooves might be cut in the guns. He made a small pencil sketch of it and submitted it to Chief Engineer Williamson, who at once saw its utility and sent for Captain Fairfax, to whom the machine and its objects were explained. Captain Fairfax approved of the idea and di- rected Mr. Carr to go ahead with it, to make his machine and ex- periment on one of the guns. Mr. George Maxwell of Ports- mouth, an experienced machinist, operated the machine and did the mechanical part of the work, and its successful test was made in the engagement between the Harmony and Savannah. Mr. Carr was an humble mechanic, interested only in the success of the Southern cause, and not seeking to make either fame or for- tune for himself out of the war, and has therefore not been men- tioned in connection with this great experiment, but he claims that he is none the less entitled to all the credit which should at- tach to it. Hundreds of heavy cannon were rifled in the South after Mr. Carr's idea. Mr. Carr is alive at this writing and is still a citizen of Portsmouth.
Notwithstanding the fact that the Navy Yard was evacuated by the Federals on the 20th of April and the Confederates had fortified the harbor to prevent the return of the United States men of war, communication was kept up with Baltimore by the Bay Line steamers until the 30th, when the United States Gov- ernment declared the port in a state of blockade. That day the steamer William Selden was permitted to come through with her mails and passengers but the Confederates seized her and refused
3
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NORFOLK COUNTY, 1861-5.
to allow her to return. She brought down a large number of Baltimoreans who had taken part in the riot in that city on the 19th of April, when the Massachusetts troops were passing through. Upon their arrival here they organized themselves into a military company, were joined by a number of recruits from Southampton and Norfolk counties, and were assigned to the 9th Virginia Regiment as Company B, and were on duty on Craney Island until May 10th, 1862, when they marched off with the regiment at the evacnation of this section by the Confederates. The following were the officers of the company at Craney Island : Captain, John D. Myrick of Norfolk.
First Lieutenant, John O'Donnell of Baltimore.
Second Lieutenant, - - Parker of Southampton county, Va.
Third Lieutenant, Benjamin F. Cason of Princess Anne county.
Among the defences of the harbor was the old frigate United States. This was the only vessel spared by Commodore MeCanley when he burned the Navy Yard. The Confederates subsequently changed her name to the Confederate States, fitted her up with a battery, manned her, and anchored her near the bend in the channel just above Craney Island. The sunken vessels Merrimac, Plymouth, Germantown and Dolphin, which were lying alongside the wharves at the Navy Yard, were gotten up by the Baker Wreeking Company, under direction of the Confederate authori- ties, to get them out of the way, and some work was commenced on the last three with a view to fitting them out. The Merrimac was burned down to her water line, and it was not thought any use could be made of her beyond taking her machinery out of her, but subsequent events proved the fallacy of human predic- tions, for "the stone which the builders rejected became the key stone of the temple." But the Merrimac will be made the sub- ject of another chapter, and many matters of local interest will be found in the short historical sketches of the various companies from Portsmouth and the county, which will follow later on in this work.
On the 7th of June, 1861, the companies of the 3d Regiment, under Colonel Roger A. Pryor, which had been on duty at the Naval Hospital batteries, were ordered to Burwell's Bay in Isle of Wight county, and the Hospital batteries were left in the care of the Elliott Grays, Captain Louis Bossieux, of Manchester, at- tached to the 12th Virginia Regiment, and the Jackson Grays, Captain William H. Stewart, of Norfolk county, afterwards Co. A, 61st Virginia Regiment. About the same time the Old Do- minion Guard of Portsmouth was reinforced at Pinner's Point by the Craney Island Artillery of Norfolk county, Captain J. T. Kilby, and the Portsmouth Rifle Company at Pig Point was rein- forced by Company H, 59th Virginia Regiment, Captain Niblett, of Lunenburg county.
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THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR IN PORTSMOUTHI.
Quite an active trade in sugar and fruit was carried on between Norfolk and the West India Islands, by way of Hatteras Inlet, through the agency of light draft schooners, and the steamer J. E. Coffer was converted into a gimboat, armed with one gun, and with her name changed to the Winslow, captured a number of prizes off Cape Hatteras, which she brought into the Carolina sounds. She was finally lost by running upon an obstruction or sunken wreck while going to the assistance of a French vessel which had gotten ashore on the coast near Ocracoke Inlet.
Had Secretary Mallory, of the Confederate States Navy, been possessed of a little foresight about this time, the affairs of the Southern Confederacy might not have turned out so disastrously. Naval Constructor John L. Porter, of Portsmouth, in June, 1861, while in Richmond on business connected with the conversion of the Merrimac into an iron-clad, urged upon Secretary Mallory the importance of importing at once from England steam engines and armor plates for gunboats to defend the Southern ports. Mr. Porter had been a Naval Constructor in the United States Navy, and upon the secession of Virginia resigned his commission and tendered his services to her. He was opposed to the war and to the secession of the State, but when she had decided to go out of the Union he cast his fortunes with her. He knew the resources of the United States and its ability to speedily fit out a large naval force, and called Secretary Mallory's attention to the fact that. while the South was rich in material out of which to build gun- boats, it was deficient in means of building machinery for them and preparing armor plating to protect them. He further told the Secretary that it would not be long before the United States would have afloat a sufficient force to blockade the ports of the South and shut them up from the outside world, and urged that steps be taken at once to import engines and armor iron before it would be too late. Secretary Mallory replied that it was useless to go to all of that expense; that the war would be over in six months, and Mr. Porter could not convince him otherwise. Soon matters turned out just as Mr. Porter had predicted.
On the 29th of August a powerful Federal fleet attacked the forts at Hatteras Inlet, and they surrendered after a short but de- structive bombardment. Lieutenant William H. Murdaugh, of the Navy, of Portsmouth, was severely wounded during the bom- bardment. The Confederates abandoned the fort at Oregon Inlet shortly afterwards, and on the 8th of February, 1862, Roanoke Island was captured, and the United States vessels held undis- puted possession of the North Carolina sounds. The fleet of shells, which the Confederates gathered in the sounds and called gunboats, could afford no material resistance to the overwhelming force which was sent against them. Some were sunk at Roanoke Island, and the rest retreated to Elizabeth City, leaving the troops
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NORFOLK COUNTY, 1861-5.
on Roanoke Island, to the number of 2,500, to their fate, which was not long doubtful. Newbern was captured on the 4th of March, and fifty-eight heavy guns and three hundred prisoners fell into the hands of the enemy. On the 12th of April Fort Pulaski, at the entrance to the Savannah river, surrendered after a short bombardment, and Fort Macon, at the entrance to the harbor of Beanfort, yielded on the 25th, so that on the whole Southern Atlantic coast only two ports, Wilmington and Charles- ton, were left to the Confederacy, and these were closely block- aded. Then, when it was too late, Secretary Mallory's eyes were opened, and he made contracts everywhere, and with every one, to build iron-clad gunboats. Old saw mills were robbed of their machinery to furnish motive power for them, while armor iron with which to cover them could not be obtained at any price. There was only one establishment in the South, the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, where it could be manufactured, and the capacity of that was very limited. While the Merrimac was being changed into an iron-clad at the Navy Yard here a half- dozen smaller and lighter draft vessels could have been built. like the Richmond, had there been machinery and armor iron on hand for them. As it was, the work on the Merrimac was greatly delayed because the Tredegar Works could not furnish the iron fast enough, and others were wholly neglected.
After all of the ports had been closed Secretary Mallory devel- oped an energy which, had it manifested itself earlier, might have saved the Southern Confederacy from destruction, and in May, 1863, according to an official report of Chief Constructor John L. Porter, there were fourteen vessels completed, as to their wood work, waiting for iron to cover them. The amount needed was 4,230 tons. Others were in course of construction, but the ma- chinery with which to propel them was of the crudest kind. So scarce was iron in the Confederacy that, when Captain Cooke was superintending the building of the Albemarle on the Roanoke river, he went through the country blacksmith shops and gathered up every scrap and old bolt he could find. How different would matters have been had Secretary Mallory taken Mr. Porter's ad- vice in 1861. Considerable money was expended in efforts to secure vessels abroad to cripple the enemy's commerce, but the defence of the home ports of the South was neglected.
Matters moved along smoothly in this vicinity after the Federal forces left until the attack upon Fort Hatteras, already alluded to. This, and the fall of Roanoke Island and the loss of its gar- rison of 2,500 men, who could have been saved had there been a vessel present to have taken them off, were severe blows to the Confederacy, as they opened the whole of Eastern North Caro- lina to the incursions of the enemy's gunboats and infantry sup- ports, and forced the Confederates to guard hundreds of miles of
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THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR IN PORTSMOUTH.
territory in their uncertainty as to where the next blow would be struck. Hatteras and Oregon Inlets should have been better pro- tected. The fall of Roanoke Island had an influence on the Con- federate affairs about Portsmouth also, as it exposed the lines there to an attack from the rear, while the Federal force at For- tress Monroe was a constant menace from the front, and, in order to meet demonstrations from the enemy in that direction, the 3d Georgia, 1st Louisiana, 32d North Carolina, the Portsmouth Rifle Company and Grimes' Battery were sent to the vicinity of South Mills. The 3d Georgia had two engagements with the enemy before the arrival of the other troops, one at Chicamicomico, Oc- tober 5th, 1861, and the other near South Mills, April 19th, 1862, and it was daily apprehended that the force which captured New- bern would make an attempt in the direction of Portsmouth. The bulk of this force, however, was subsequently sent to the Penin- sula to reinforce General Mcclellan.
In the Navy Yard everything was activity. Hundreds of skilled mechanics who had enlisted in the army were detailed to work there. Work was commenced on the Merrimac on the 12th of July, 1861, and several other vessels were being built. The Richmond, an iron-clad, to carry four guns, built with slanting roof like the shield of the Merrimac, but with ends above the water line and protected like the shield, was launched, as were the Hampton and Nansemond, two two-gun gunboats, and the Escambia and Elizabeth, two light draft, iron-protected gunboats, to carry two guns each, were also commenced, and later another of the same character, called the Yadkin. Some work was done on the Germantown and Plymouth also, towards fitting them out. The machine shops and foundries were being run to their utmost capacity. Numerous thirty-two pound Dahlgren guns were rifled and banded, like the one with which Captain Fairfax so success- fully contended against the frigate Savannah, and were sent to the different batteries around the harbor and to other localities. Some were sent to Seawell's Point, and a masked battery of them was constructed at the point nearest the Rip Raps, but was never unmasked. It was left there for the Federals when Norfolk was evacuated. Two were placed on the outer battery at Seawell's Point, and were manned by the Jackson Grays, of Norfolk county. Several were sent to Craney Island, four to Pinner's Point, and four to Naval Hospital Point, all of which were sub- sequently donated to the enemy.
During all these trying times the ladies of Portsmouth were not idle. The newly organized companies of Portsmouth and Norfolk county were mustered into service without uniforms, and many of the companies which came from further Sonth were similarly conditioned, but the ladies organized sewing circles and made up hundreds of uniforms for them. They also made organ-
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NORFOLK COUNTY, 1861-5.
ized efforts to care for the sick soldiers in the camps and in the hospital, so that many a poor fellow who was stricken down by disease, in consequence of the exposure of camp life, had his fevered pulses cooled and his couch softened by the tender hands of the ladies of Portsmouth. Nor did their good works stop here, but they were untiring in their efforts to provide the soldiers with shoes, blankets, overcoats and everything else which would make them comfortable, while the families of those who were in the service were tenderly cared for. Nor was the City Council back- ward in aiding the cause in which the State of Virginia was en- gaged, as will be seen by glancing over the records of its proceed- ings from April, 1861, to May, 1862.
On the 18th of April, 1861, $1,500 was appropriated to pur- chase arms and ammunition for the defense of the city, and on the 3d of May the Council passed a resolution authorizing the Mayor to make provision for quartering and feeding the troops. arriving in the city from the South. On the 15th of June the suun of $1,000 was appropriated for the relief of the families of Portsmouth soldiers who were in the field, and an appropriation of $500 was made to purchase sabre bayonets for the Portsmouth Rifle Company. On the 17th of July $500 was appropriated to the Portsmouth Artillery Company to procure side arms and $1,000 to the relief of the families of Portsmouth soldiers, and on the 14th of Angust $1,000 additional was appropriated for this purpose. That night a committee composed of Messrs. Arthur Emmerson, John S. Stubbs and David Griffith was appointed to consider the question of relief of the families of the military, and made their report on the 26th. The committee stated that they had ascertained that four hundred families were in need of assist- ance, and recommended that the sum of $5 per month be appro- priated to each. The report of the connnittee was concurred in and the sum of $10,000 was appropriated to carry the recommen- dation into effect. The reports of the Relief Committee show that there was expended of this sum for Angust and September $2,690, and similar amounts thereafter. For April, 1862, the amount expended was $1,450, distributed among two hundred and ninety families.
On the 4th of May it became rumored that the Confederates intended evacuating the city and that it was the purpose of the anthorities to burn the Navy Yard, and, at a meeting of the Council held that night a committee was appointed to wait upon Captain S. S. Lee, who had been Commandant of the Navy Yard since March 24th, to protest against setting the buildings on fire, as it would endanger the city, besides, if left standing, they would be servicable to the Confederate Government after the close of the war. The Mayor was authorized to employ the watchmen in the Navy Yard after the evacuation to protect the property from
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THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR IN PORTSMOUTH.
incendiaries. The protest of the Council, however, did not avail anything, and the buildings were all burned.
On the 17th of March General Mcclellan began transferring his army from Manassas to Fortress Monroe for the purpose of trying to reach Richmond by the Peninsula route, instead of the overland route, upon which the Federal armies had been operat- ing for the preceding year, and General Joseph E. Johnston, com- mander of the Confederate forces which had been operating in front of him at Manassas, followed him, and the opposing armies con- fronted each other near Yorktown. General Johnston was per- haps the most skillful general in conducting a retreat the world ever saw, and having decided some time in April that he would fall back near Richmond, communicated his plans to the Confed- erate authorities in that city, who approved of them. McClellan was getting ready to open a number of heavy batteries upon Gen- eral Johnston's lines, and the Confederate commander felt appre- hensive of the result of the bombardment, though subsequent events later in the war demonstrated the fact that earthworks could stand an unlimited amount of pounding without being ma- terially injured. There does not seem to have been much ground for his apprehension, for the works at Yorktown prevented an expedition up York river to turn his left flank, and Swinton, in his " Army of the Potomac," says "the iron-plated Merrimac reigned mistress of Hampton Roads and prevented a turning expedi- tion up James river." But General Johnston had determined to fall back, and did not desire to do it by piecemeal, therefore his plan included the evacuation of Norfolk and Portsmouth. Per- haps he wanted the 15,000 troops there to reinforce his army before Richmond, but, be that as it may, it was decided to evac- uate Norfolk and Portsmouth, and to abandon the Navy Yard, with its valuable machinery and its facilities for building ships and casting cannon. It was the principal workshop in the South, and its loss was irreparable.
The latter part of April or the first of May, 1862, Secretary Mallory, of the Confederate States Navy, arrived in Portsmouth and informed Captain S. S. Lee, commanding the Navy Yard, that it was the intention of the Government to evacuate the city. He directed Captain Lee to remove such naval supplies as could be moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and other points. Ac- cordingly the work of evacuating commenced. Several train loads were sent off by rail, and a convoy of vessels started up James river for Richmond. Among them was the new iron-clad Richmond, then ready to receive her armor. These were loaded with such stores as were available, and taking advantage of the darkness of night, the vessels steamed or were towed past New- port News. The terror of the Merrimac's name kept that por- tion of Hampton Roads free from Federal vessels, therefore the
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NORFOLK COUNTY, 1861-5.
expedition was not interfered with in its passage. Two new gun- boats, the Nansemond and Hampton, built at the Navy Yard, also steamed up to Richmond.
Early in the morning of the 10th of May Captain James Byers commanding the tug J. B. White, of Norfolk, deserted with his tug to Old Point, and General Huger became very apprehensive that he would report the condition of affairs in Norfolk to the Federal authorities at Fortress Monroe, and that they would send an expedition to capture the two cities before the Confederates could get away. He therefore determined to leave at once, and hurried away with his splendid division of twelve or fifteen thous- and troops, when no one pursued and thousands of dollars worth of valuable stores were burned in the haste with which the place was abandoned. The buildings in the Navy Yard were burned, as was also what was left of the Germantown and Plymouth. The Escambia and Elizabeth, which might have been towed to Richmond, had the attempt been made in time, were set on fire and destroyed, as was also the Yadkin, which was on the stocks. The dry dock, also, was somewhat injured. As the day ad- vanced General Wool, commanding the forces at Fortress Mon- roe, noticed that the Confederate flag had been hauled down from the batteries at Seawell's Point, landed 6,000 men near the base of Willoughby's Spit and advanced towards Norfolk. He was met in the afternoon about half-past four o'clock near the en- trenched camp by Mayor W. W. Lamb, of Norfolk, who in- formed him that the Confederate forces had left the city, and, as the representative of the civil authorities, he was ready to sur- render it. The next day a force of Federals crossed over the river to Portsmonth and occupied that city. Later an expedi- tionary force was pushed out towards Suffolk.
The scenes at the evacuation of Portsmouth by the Confeder- ates were peculiarly distressing. The soldiers bid adieu to their wives, mothers and little children with the full knowledge that, as the Southern Confederate authorities found themselves unable to hold the city while they had possession of it, they would never be able to recover possession until the close of the war, and in every man's mind was the natural dread and uncertainty as to what would become of their wives and helpless little ones, in the hands of the enemy, with no means of sustenance and no one to take care of them. Under these circumstances it required the highest amount of moral courage and the sublimest degree of pa- triotism for a man to turn his back upon his family and to march forth and encounter the dangers and uncertainties of the future which lay before him.
On the 10th of May, 1862, the last Confederate soldier marched out of Portsmouth, the Portsmouth Rifle Company bringing up the rear, and, looking back through the thirty years which have passed
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THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR IN PORTSMOUTH.
since then, the anxious countenances of the women and children who were left behind, as they thought of what the morrow would bring them, can be seen as vividly to-day as then. It was an im- pression which can never be erased from memory "while the mind holds sway in the seat of thought;" and of the twenty-two hundred men of Portsmouth and Norfolk county who marched away from their homes on that day nearly one-fourth fell upon the field of battle or died from disease contracted in the service, and three years after they bid adieu to their homes and families the remnant came back, broken in health, disabled from wounds, or their bodies enfeebled from seeds of diseases contracted in the loathsome prison camps of the enemy.
The batteries which had been erected around the harbor with so much care and labor, and the scores of heavy guns which had been placed in positions where, it was fondly hoped, they would keep the foe at bay forever, were abandoned without a struggle and in such haste that no effort was made to remove the guns.
Nearly all of the workmen who were employed in the Navy Yard followed the army to Richmond and took their families with them. . These men were employed in the navy yard which was improvised in that eity or sent to Charlotte. to work on ord- nance stores. Those who were retained in Richmond were or- ganized into a battalion for local defence, and elected Martin Curlin. of Portsmouth, major. The battalion was frequently ealled into service defending the city against raiding parties of the enemy, and thus enabled the regular army to remain in front of the enemy's main army.
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