Nipping Away at Dixie: The Port by Port Campaign to Seal the Confederate Coast

Renshaw’s squadron included the flagship Westfield, Harriet Lane, Owasco, Clifton, and the mortar schooner Henry James. To assist in the occupation, the little gunboats Corypheus and Sachem arrived from New Orleans, along with three companies from the 42th Massachusetts Infantry led by Colonel Isaac Burrell that did not reach Galveston until December 24. ⁵ Renshaw had hoped for a larger contingent from the Army. Indeed, Farragut had written Navy officials in Washington, “All we want is a few soldiers to hold the places, and we will soon have the whole coast.” ⁶ However, Major General Benjamin Butler, notorious for a resistance to cooperation with the Navy, especially if it meant weakening his own command, would release only this token force of 260 men. ⁷

This small band of soldiers did what they could to secure the immediate area around the waterfront docks at the end of Kuhn’s Wharf. There stood a large three-story storehouse that Burrell ordered his men to reinforce with sacks of plaster and a barricade. He also had his men pull up all but one of the planks from a section of wharf near the shore and use the lumber to create another barricade. Burrell’s strategy was that the single plank would limit the number of Confederates that could attack down the wharf. In spite of such detail in this area, Burrell left unguarded the bridge that linked Galveston Island with the mainland, a bridge over which any land attack would have to come across. Army transports with field artillery arrived, but the guns were not landed. ⁸ It was by all accounts a lightly defended position.

Magruder’s Attack. When Major General John Magruder assumed command of the Confederate military forces in Texas in late November 1862, he made retaking Galveston, which he considered the key to the survival of the Confederacy in the west, a priority. He wrote Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith, “In my judgment, Texas is virtually the Trans-Mississippi Department, and the railroads of Galveston and Houston are virtually Texas. For whoever is the master of the railroads of Galveston and Houston is virtually master of Texas, and this is not the case with any other part of Texas.” ⁹

Magruder envisioned a joint Army-Navy operation in which Confederate land forces would attack the Federal troops while Confederate ships prevented the Federal Navy from interfering. The only problem was that Magruder had no naval forces whatsoever assigned to his command and a land force of only a few small companies of artillery and a handful of local militia units. Many of Magruder’s subordinates questioned the feasibility of attacking amidst such deficiencies, but one officer told Magruder, “General, I think the best plan is to resolve to retake [Galveston]. And then canvass the difficulties.” ¹⁰ Buoyed by such optimism, Magruder moved forward with his plans.

To handle the naval end of things, Magruder was fortunate to have at his disposal the industrious and brave Leon Smith to build and command the Confederate flotilla. Smith was an experienced steamboat captain who called himself “Major” or “Commodore,” depending on the occasion. Although there were no suitable Confederate naval vessels available, there were plenty of large steamers that had been used to transport cotton between Galveston and Houston. Smith procured two of these, the Bayou City and Neptune, and began converting them into “cottonclads” by protecting their vulnerable points with two and three layers of cotton bales.

Captain Armand Weir, commander of Company B of Cook’s 1st Texas Heavy Artillery, offered some of his guns to outfit the cottonclads, and Magruder placed Weir in charge of a 32-pounder rifled gun on the Bayou City. Captain L. C. Harby and Lieutenant Harvey Clark commanded two 24-pounder howitzers on the Neptune. For soldiers, Magruder turned to the Sibley Brigade which was recruiting and regrouping near Houston in preparation for an impending relocation to Louisiana. Magruder was able to persuade the commander to provide about 300 soldiers from the brigade. Magruder then equipped them with Enfield rifles or double-barreled shotguns and assigned the soldiers to the cottonclads to serve as sharpshooters and boarders. These makeshift warships were accompanied by the armed tenders John F. Carr and Lucy Gwin. ¹¹

Renshaw had long suspected some Confederate attack was in the works. In fact, in the first week of November he had warned his men of a possible attack “by boats drawing very little water, and they may come upon us without coming through the channel; and their object will be to board us.” ¹² Nonetheless, the Federals were seemingly caught off guard when Magruder attacked in the predawn hours of January 1, 1863. Magruder had hauled more than 20 pieces of artillery, including an 8-inch Dahlgren mounted on a railway car, across the unguarded Houston & Galveston Railroad bridge that linked Galveston Island and the mainland. Magruder had hoped to have his guns in position by midnight, but the seven to nine mile movement took longer than anticipated, and all the guns did not arrive until 4:00 a.m. Once he did arrive, Magruder spread his artillery out along the waterfront for about two and a half miles, placing some in the second stories of buildings to improve their fields of fire. Shortly after 4:00 a.m., Magruder personally fired the first gun at the Owasco to signal the Confederate attack. Having performed this task, Magruder announced, “Now, boys, I have done my best as a private, I will go and attend to that of General” and moved to his headquarters at a large house ten miles from the waterfront. ¹³

Rather than attack frontally down the single plank of Kuhn’s Wharf, Magruder’s plan called for his men to wade through the shallow waters on each side, climb ladders at the end of the wharf, and attack the Federals from the rear. The plan failed when the ladders the Confederates carried proved to be too short to reach the top of the wharf, and the wet and dejected Confederates were forced to wade back to shore under heavy fire. By now it was daylight, and the Federal ships had pinpointed the Confederate artillery positions and were delivering a deadly fire. It looked as if the Confederate attack was a disaster, and Magruder was beginning to consider ordering a general retreat when Leon Smith and his cottonclads arrived and completely changed the tide of the battle. ¹⁴

Smith had been in place at midnight according to the original plan but had not attacked because of Magruder’s delay in moving the artillery. Magruder had told Smith the land forces would initiate the attack, and Smith had grown tired of waiting and turned around and headed up Galveston Bay. By the time the Confederate attack actually began shortly after 4:00 a.m., Smith was far away and now had to make a dash to the sound of the guns. Once he got in range of the Federal ships, Smith began firing, but as Captain Wier fired the fourth shot from his big 32-pounder aboard the Bayou City, the gun exploded, killing Wier and wounding several of the crew. Smith was undeterred by the loss of his big long range gun. He knew all along that his best hope for success lay in a close fight. “Our only chance is to get along side before they hit us,” Smith explained to one sharpshooter. ¹⁵

The first Federal ship Smith encountered was the Harriet Lane whose large paddlewheels on each side made her vulnerable to the type of ramming attack Smith envisioned. First, the Bayou City made a run at the Harriet Lane’s port paddle wheel but skidded off with little effect. Then, the Neptune rammed the Harriet Lane’s starboard side. The Neptune hit the Harriet Lane firmly but missed the paddle wheel. In fact, the Neptune received the worse of the encounter and began to sink. Her captain, however, was an experienced Galveston Bay skipper who skillfully navigated her to a nearby reef. This maneuver allowed the Neptune to sink in such a fashion that her decks remained sufficiently above water for her sharpshooters to continue engaging the Harriet Lane. ¹⁶

In the meantime, the Bayou City turned and rammed the Harriet Lane again. The ships became hopelessly entangled in the collision, and Confederate troops aboard the Bayou City rushed the Federal ship and took it by storm. Both the Harriet Lane’s captain, Commander Jonathan Wainwright, and the first officer Lieutenant Commander Edward Lea, were killed. Unbeknownst to Lea, his father, Albert Lea, was then serving as a volunteer on Magruder’s staff. During the battle, the senior Lea had been posted on one of the tall buildings to observe the status of the attack, and he saw the Harriet Lane disabled. Only after the battle did Lea reveal to Magruder that his son was aboard the Harriet Lane. Lea reached his son before he died, but could offer him no help to save his life. ¹⁷

The Confederates then arranged a truce and called for Renshaw to surrender, but he refused. Instead, he ordered Lieutenant Commander Richard Law, captain of the Clifton, to withdraw the remaining Federal vessels from the harbor and escape. In the meantime, Renshaw would scuttle the Westfield which had run aground in the Bolivar Channel as it had initially rushed into the battle. Disaster struck when fire reached the Westfield’s magazine before Renshaw and his crew could clear the ship, and all aboard were killed. Law, however, succeeded under a hail of Confederate fire in saving the remainder of the Federal fleet. The blockade of Galveston had been lifted. ¹⁸

Results. The daring Confederate attack was a stunning victory. In addition to destroying two Federal ships, the Confederates killed or captured 414 Federals. The Confederates lost the Neptune, along with 26 dead and 117 wounded. It had been a poor showing for the Federals. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox complained, “It is too cowardly to place on paper. Poor Wainwright did well. Renshaw—bah! He is dead. The others ran.” ¹⁹ Admiral David Porter records that “many officers consider the retreat from before the harbor a disgraceful affair.” ²⁰

Farragut moved quickly to reestablish the blockade off Galveston, dispatching Captain Henry Bell with the Brooklyn and six gunboats to retake the position. Bell’s force was not completely in place on January 11 when Confederate Commander Raphael Semmes arrived with the Alabama. Semmes had learned from Northern newspapers that Major General Nathaniel Banks was about to set sail with a force of 20,000 men for the Gulf of Mexico, and Semmes deduced Galveston was a likely destination for Banks’s expedition. There Semmes decided to try to wreak some havoc among the transports as they lay at anchor outside the bar. ²¹

The battle was a proud moment for Semmes, as it was a unique victory over a Federal warship. Porter, however, laments it as a lost opportunity in which Bell violated the maxim to “never send a boy on a man’s errand.” Had Bell dispatched two gunboats instead of just the Hatteras, Porter believes the Alabama “would probably have fallen into our hands and her wild career would have ended then and there.” ²³

Farragut wrote in his diary, “Our disaster at Galveston has thrown us back and done more injury to the Navy than all events of the war.” ²⁴ Federal commanders all along the Gulf were thrown into a panic, and Farragut was beset by frantic requests for reinforcements from Pensacola and Ship Island. Farragut tried to go to Texas to shore things up himself, but his flagship grounded on the Mississippi River bar, so he returned to New Orleans. ²⁵

The failure at Galveston showed just how frazzled the Federal campaign in the Gulf had become. Instead of a juggernaut gaining steam with each successive victory, the Gulf Campaign was now haphazard and uncoordinated. As a result, Galveston was the only major port the Confederates recaptured during the war, and it remained in Confederate hands until it surrendered June 2, 1865.

In fact, both the Atlantic and Gulf Campaigns had reached their culminating points. The Atlantic Campaign suffered from weakening Army-Navy cooperation and a disparity in the capabilities of the two services to cover a large geographic area. The Gulf Campaign also was plagued by a paucity of planning that resulted in “only the opening phases of the campaign [being] a success.” ²⁶ As a consequence, the remaining battles of the coastal war would present much tougher challenges for the Federals.

Endnotes

Du Pont was disgusted by this missed opportunity, complaining to Fox, “Oh those Soldiers I put them nearly on top of the house in Charleston, but I did not push them into the windows and they came back.” ⁴ Still, the Secessionville debacle only served to reinforce Du Pont’s opinion that an Army force, if competently led, was critical to any operation against Charleston.

Some saw promise in Admiral Farragut’s daring run past the forts at New Orleans. Secretary Welles and others reasoned that if Du Pont similarly ran past Fort Sumter, the Confederates would be forced to withdraw. Du Pont, however, felt otherwise, believing that Welles had woefully underestimated the might of Charleston’s defenses. Charleston had been steadily strengthened, and by 1862 a combination of land-based artillery, torpedoes, submersible vessels, obstructions, and prepared positions had made it the Confederate city best able to withstand an assault from the sea. By 1863, these formidable defenses had been expanded into a three-tiered defensive system. The end result was that the “only thing that awaited the attacking force once they passed Fort Sumter was additional fortifications.” ⁵

The outer layer consisted of fortifications which covered the mouth of the harbor and the channel from the barrier islands and Fort Sumter. These included Morris Island to the left of the harbor entrance with its Fort Wagner and Battery Greg. Fort Sumter was immediately ahead, guarding the main harbor entrance, while Sullivan’s Island and its Fort Moultrie and Batteries Bee and Beauregard stood on the left of the main entrance. Battery Greg, Fort Sumter, and Fort Moultrie combined to deliver three-sided fire on any vessel that reached the harbor mouth.

Behind this tier was a second layer of artillery batteries in the inner harbor, sighted to engage any Federal ships that might break through. These included Fort Jackson and Battery Glover on James Island, Fort Ripley and Castle Pinckney in the harbor itself, and the White Point Battery (Battery Ramsay) in Charleston. Finally, a series of land forts protected the flanks, barring a repeat of the strategy the British had used to seize Charleston during the American Revolution. ⁶




Even nature seemed to conspire against the attacker. Fast currents and a shallow bar with irregular breaks were made even more difficult after the Confederates had removed the buoys marking the channels. As it was, the wide and deep Main Ship Channel was the only safe approach. ⁷ The result was that Charleston Harbor was a “bag” or “cul de sac”
according to Du Pont’s apt description. Once a naval force entered it, there was no clear channel that could be used to run past the fortifications as there had been at New Orleans. ⁸

Secretary Welles believed that these stout defenses could be matched by ironclads including the New Ironsides, the Navy’s most powerful monitor. Du Pont was skeptical, but he agreed to try if Welles could provide the necessary quantities. “The limit of my wants in the need of ironclads,” Du Pont wrote Welles, “is the capacity of the [Navy] Department to supply them.” Ultimately, Du Pont received all but one of the Navy’s new ironclads, making his fleet at Charleston the first integration of the revolutionary monitor technology into the Navy’s larger organization. Still, Du Pont’s requests for more and more resources and his continued delay in attacking caused Lincoln and Welles to liken him to the overly cautious George McClellan, a man Lincoln complained was infected by “the slows.”

The root of the problem was a clash in philosophies. Du Pont thought the solution to Charleston lay in a joint operation with a robust Army component. Welles, on the other hand, favored an all-Navy solution he felt was made possible by the new miracle weapon, the monitor. ⁹ Reconciling these disparate positions proved problematic.

Indeed, there was a serious rift developing with Lincoln, Welles, and Fox on one side and Du Pont on the other. The civilian leadership was pushing Du Pont into an operation about which he had serious reservations and felt unprepared. In a series of meetings in Washington in October 1862, Du Pont reiterated his position that a joint operation was necessary and that no number of ships, even ironclads, could take Charleston alone. Lincoln and the Navy Department leadership, however, had already made up their minds. After providing his informed counsel, Du Pont accepted the realities of the civil-military relationship and returned to Charleston. ¹⁰