Private & Confidential
‘Wabash’ Port Royal
April 3. 62.
My Dear Sir
Since writing to the Department for more force Genl Hunter
informs me that he considers the Army here too much spread, and he contemplates
withdrawing the troops from North Edisto and Jacksonville!
We have many contraband at the former and its occupation was
a thorn in the flank of Charleston, though the force naval and military was
much too small. At the latter place the people committed to the Union movement
will be checked, if not maltreated, and we shall lose Florida politically if
not otherwise. The gun boats cannot hold Jacksonville without troops, and will
have to be drawn down to the mouth of the St. Johns for a simple inside
blockade of that river, losing all the moral effect of the splendid reconnaissance
up it, for more than one hundred and fifty miles by Stevens.
The Henry Andrew the only vessel I could get into Mosquito
inlet, to prevent the further ingress of Enfield rifles from Nassau and to
guard the Live Oak, is seriously threatened by the rebels and will be driven
out. A Regiment for a few days would scatter these wretches to the four
winds—but of course I cannot now expect one, and we shall lose two hundred
thousand dollars worth of live oak and pine.
Do not understand me as wishing to criticise the new order
of things. Genl Hunter has good military reasons for his intentions, but they
run counter to what we have been doing, and to your urgent pressure on me to
take more ports. We had better have left Florida and the lower coast of Georgia
alone, than to show an inability to keep what we have captured. We are informed
that the Rebel order to evacuate Florida has been rescinded, and Genl Wright is
threatened at Jacksonville by 2500 men.
I have not yet told you, that we have a ram as well as
yourself to haunt our imaginations. Some swear to one as getting ready under
Fort Jackson, others doubt. I get a new sketch of it every few days from Wall's
Cut. Our friends in the batteries are greatly exercised thereby, and I cannot
get away my light draft vessels to send and help my own people elsewhere. By
the Charleston paper of the 25" ulto Tattnall passed through with his two
sons to assume the command of the Merrimac.
Yesterday seventeen stupid volunteers and a Lieutenant, were
captured by the rebels on Wilmington island, and of course I was called upon
for assistance to prevent a recurrence. It is apprehended the enemy may extract
from them the preparations on Tybee for the bombardment of Pulaski, which will
now have to be accelerated—carriages or no carriages. When all patience was
exhausted, they were looked for by the Atlantic but she came without them.
Hamilton Chf. of Artill[er]y thinks it will be reduced in three days when they
once commence. I fear mischief in the mean time.
Now my Dear Sir, there is an easy solution to all these
difficulties and complications. Five thousand troops should be dispatched at
once and give me the gun boats and Tugs I have asked for.
General Sherman leaves us in the morning. I have asked
Eldridge to pass near us on going out that we may give him three hearty cheers
from the Wabash. His position has never been understood by the Government or
the people—he was required to make bricks without straw. All think well of having
made a Military Department and sending a Major General, but why could not
Sherman have remained in command of the Division? A more arduous, onerous and
responsible but thankless work, no public officer ever went through, and none
ever brought to such a task more true and unselfish devotion. It seems hard
when such labors are about to bear fruit, that he who ploughed, harrowed, and
sowed, should not be allowed even to participate in the gathering of the
harvest.
He is a true friend to the Navy, and when I compare his
noble endorsement of us fellows for the Port Royal affair with the meagre,
stinty approval given by others on similar occasions, so properly commented on
by Mr. Grimes in the Senate, I feel still more for Sherman.
Last not least—Stevens with this ships boats and the prize
Steamer Darlington & Ellen has raised the America and brought her to
Jacksonville. He had made one fruitless search; but a carpet bag was found
containing a letter which gave the precise spot where she had been sunk, 147
miles up the St. Johns River; the letter closing with one of those refined
rebel phrases, “They had so fixed her that all the Yankees outside of hell
could not get her up.” She is not much injured but without sails or ground
tackling. As you have heard doubtless, she was purchased by the Rebel
Government to carry Mason and Slidell to England.
It occurred to me that so historical a craft, so curiously
restored to us and to the North where she could only have been built,
might be with a happy moral effect presented to the Governor of the State of
New York, if the Department will allow me to do it. I would of course fit her
up nicely, put an officer on board send her home and have it all done secundum
artem.
Please remember this is a confidential letter. With
best regards to Mr Welles
Yours faithfully,
S. F. DUPONT
G. V. Fox Esq
Ass. Sec. Navy,
Washington.
SOURCE: Robert Means Thompson & Richard Wainwright, Editors,
Publications of the Naval Historical Society, Volume 9: Confidential
Correspondence of Gustavus Vasa Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1861-1865,
Volume 1, p. 115-8