CHAP. XXIII. DESTRUCTION OF THE "ALABAMA." 1671 manded by Captain Raphael Semmes, a native of Maryland, who died in August, 1877, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. She continued her depre dations on the high seas, eluding the Government vessels until the 19th of June, 1864, when she encountered the Kearsarge, Captain John A. Winslow, off the port of Cherbourg, France. They fought desperately for an hour, when the Alabama, badly bruised, began to sink. Her flag was struck, and twenty minutes afterward she went to the bottom of the sea, leaving her commander and his crew struggling for life in the water. At that moment the Deerhound, a yacht, with its owner (an English gentleman) and his family, appeared. The Englishman sympathized with the Confederates, and went out from Cherbourg ostensibly to see the contest, but really to bear away Semmes and his officers from the grasp of the Nationals should misfortune befall them. These officers, with a few of the crew, were rescued by the yacht and borne in safety to England, where the commander of the Alabama was honored with a public dinner (at Southampton); and Admiral Anson, of the royal navy, headed a list of subscribers to a fund raised for the purchase of an elegant sword to be presented to Semmes as a token of sympathy and esteem. The "common people" of the Alabama were saved by the boats of her antagonist, and some French vessels. The news of Winslow's victory was received with joy by the friends of the Government; and it was determined to close the ports of Wilmington and Mobile, the only ones open to blockade-runners. For that purpose Admiral Farragut appeared off the entrance to Mobile (August 5, 1864) with a fleet of eighteen vessels, four of them iron-clads. Five thousand troops under General Gordon Granger had been sent by General Canby from New Orleans, to co-operate with the fleet. The latter (the wooden vessels lashed together in couples) sailed in between the two forts that guarded the entrance-Fort Morgan on the main and Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island. In order to have a general oversight of all the movements, the admiral was fast-bound to the rigging at the maintop of his flag-ship (Hartford), that he might not be dislodged by the shock of battle. Through a tube extending from his lofty position to the deck, he gave orders clearly in the midst of the uproar of battle; and in that perilous situation he remained during the passage by the forts and the severe conflict with Confederate vessels that followed. In that passage one of his iron-clad gun-boats (Tecumseh) was destroyed by a torpedo, but the rest of the fleet was only slightly bruised. When he had passed the forts, a formidable "ram," two hundred feet long, named Tennessee, was seen coming swiftly down the bay with other gun-boats. These made a ferocious dash at the fleet; but after a sharp conflict, brief and decisive, the Tennessee was captured and victory remained with the Nationals. The forts were now attacked by land and water, and were capturedFort Gaines on the 7th of August, and Fort Morgan on the 23d. With these were surrendered one hundred great guns and over fourteen hundred men. The port of Mobile was effectually closed, and vigorous measures were adopted for ending the war. On the 3d of September the President called for three hundred thousand men to reinforce the armies in the field. A most cheerful response was made; and in view of omens of peace in the near future, the President issued a request that the people should, in their respective places of public worship, on a specified Sabbath-day, offer united thanksgivings to God for his blessings. In the fall of 1864, a very exciting canvass for the election of President of the Republic occurred. President Lincoln had been nominated by the Republicans, with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee for Vice-President. The Democrats nominated General George B. McClellan of the army for President, and George H. Pendleton of Ohio for Vice-President. The sentiments of the Peace-Faction prevailed among the adherents of McClellan and Pendleton, and they had the support of all the sympathizers with the Confederates, in the free-labor States. The consequence was that only one of CHAP. XXIII. EVACUATION OF CHARLESTON. 1673 these States (New Jersey) gave them the electoral vote, and Lincoln and Johnson, supported by the loyal people, were chosen by an unprecedented majority. We left General Sherman and his army at Savannah. After resting for about a month, they began a rapid march through South Carolina, in widely separated columns, and so distracted the Confederates that they did not concentrate a large body of troops anywhere. Incessant rains flooded the country, and the swamp-lands were overflowed; but Sherman pressed forward toward Columbia, the capital of the State, and captured it on the 17th of February, 1865. This disaster caused the Confederates to evacuate Charleston. Hardee and his troops fled into North Carolina and joined the forces there, commanded by General Joseph E. Johnston. Colored troops entered the abandoned city and put out the fires which the Confederates had kindled when they fled. A few weeks afterward, on the anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Sumter four years before, Major Anderson, with his own hand, raised over the ruins of that fortress the identical Union flag which he had carried away from it in April, 1861. Through the carelessness or folly of General Wade Hampton, who com manded the rear-guard at the evacuation of Columbus, the city was set on fire and a large part of it was laid in ashes. Sherman soon passed on to Fayetteville, in North Carolina, which place he reached on the 12th of March, leaving behind him a blackened path of desolation, forty miles in width. Most of the fighting on that march was done by the cavalry of Kilpatrick and Wheeler. From Fayetteville Sherman communicated with General Schofield, who was in command on the coast; and finding Johnston in front of him with forty thousand troops, he rested his army a few days. At near the close of 1864, when Sherman was approaching the sea from Atlanta, a destructive raid through northern Mississippi was made by General Grierson with twenty-five hundred well-mounted men. He left Memphis on the 21st of December, and pushed forward to the Mobile and Ohio Railway, which he struck at Tupelo and destroyed all the way to Okolona, burning Confederate stores and alarming the whole country. After a successful contest at Okolona, Grierson went westward, distracting his foes by feints. He struck the Mississippi Central Railroad at Winona Station, and after several skirmishes he made his way to Vicksburg with trophies consisting of five hundred prisoners, eight hundred beeves, and a thousand liberated slaves. During this raid Grierson destroyed ninety-five railway cars, three hundred wagons, and thirty full warehouses. It was late in 1864 when an attempt was made to close the port of Wilmington by the capture of Fort Fisher, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. The expedition sent against that post was composed of a powerful fleet of war-vessels commanded by Admiral D. D. Porter, and land troops under the immediate command of General Godfrey Weitzel, accompanied by General B. F. Butler, who was in charge of the department whence the troops were taken. The attempt (December 25, 1864) was unsuccessful; but another made in February following, by the same fleet, and land troops led by General Alfred H. Terry, resulted in the capture of the fort and garrison on the 15th of that month. Terry was then joined by Schofield, who, being the senior officer, took the chief command. The fleet destroyed two Anglo-Confederate cruisers lying in the Cape Fear River, and the National army entered Wilmington as victors on the 22d of February. Sherman's rest at Fayetteville lasted only three days. Then he moved CHAP. XXIII. THE FALL OF MOBILE. 1675 his army forward in another distracting march that puzzled his antagonists. On the 16th of March, while moving eastward toward Goldsboro', his troops fought twenty thousand Confederates under General Hardee, at Averysboro', and defeated them. Two days afterward, a part of the army under General Slocum were attacked by the whole of Johnston's forces, near Bentonville. The conflict was terrible. Sherman's army had been sur prised, and nothing but the most desperate efforts saved it from destruction It received six distinct assaults by the combined forces of Hoke, Hardee and Cheatham, under the immediate command of General Johnston himself. The conflict ended at twilight. It had been conducted chiefly by General Jefferson C. Davis, of the Fourteenth Army Corps. Had the battle been lost by the Nationals, the results might have been most disastrous to the Union cause. Sherman's army might have been annihilated; so, also, might Grant's, at Petersburg, and the struggle would have been prolonged. It was won by the army of the Republic, and its enemies retreated hastily toward Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. Sherman was joined by Schofield and Terry at Goldsboro', when he hastened to City Point on the James River, by water, and there consulted the President and General Grant about future operations. He was back to his army three days after he left it. After the sealing of Mobile harbor, arrangements were made for the capture of that city and gaining possession of Alabama. General Canby in command of the Department of the Gulf, moved twenty-five thousand troops against Mobile, in March, 1865. At the same time General Wilson, of Thomas's army, with thirteen thousand horsemen and about two thousand foot-soldiers, swept down from the Tennessee to co-operate with Canby. In the space of thirty days, Wilson raided six hundred and fifty miles through Alabama and Georgia, meeting with scarcely any opposition but from Forrest's cavalry, whom he kept from assisting the besieged Confederates at Mobile. Wilson captured cities and towns, and destroyed an immense amount of public property. Meanwhile Canby was reducing Mobile to submission; and on the 10th and 11th of April, General Maury, in command there, fled up the Alabama River with nine thousand troops, leaving five thousand men as prisoners, with one hundred and fifty cannon, in the hands of the victors. The war was now virtually at an end in the Gulf region. During the winter of 1864-65, the Armies of the Potomac and of the James lay in comparative quiet in front of Petersburg and Richmond, holding the Confederate government and army so tightly in their grasp, that the latter could not form a junction with Johnston's forces, nor interfere |