Part 9

Soon Santa Anna approached with his army, took possession of the town, and besieged the fort. The defenders knew there was scarcely a chance of rescue, and that it was hopeless to expect that one hundred and fifty men, behind defenses so weak, could beat off four thousand trained soldiers, well armed and provided with heavy artillery; but they had no idea of flinching, and made a desperate defense. The days went by, and no help came, while Santa Anna got ready his lines, and began a furious cannonade. His gunners were unskilled, however, and he had to serve the guns from a distance; for when they were pushed nearer, the American riflemen crept forward under cover, and picked off the artillerymen. Old Crockett thus killed five men at one gun. But, by degrees, the bombardment told. The walls of the Alamo were battered and riddled; and when they had been breached so as to afford no obstacle to the rush of his soldiers, Santa Anna commanded that they be stormed.

The storm took place on March 6, 1836. The Mexican troops came on well and steadily, breaking through the outer defenses at every point, for the lines were too long to be manned by the few Americans. The frontiersmen then retreated to the inner building, and a desperate hand-to-hand conflict followed, the Mexicans thronging in, shooting the Americans with their muskets, and thrusting at them with lance and bayonet, while the Americans, after firing their long rifles, clubbed them, and fought desperately, one against many; and they also used their bowie-knives and revolvers with deadly effect. The fight reeled to and fro between the shattered walls, each American the center of a group of foes; but, for all their strength and their wild fighting courage, the defenders were too few, and the struggle could have but one end. One by one the tall riflemen succumbed, after repeated thrusts with bayonet and lance, until but three or four were left. Colonel Travis, the commander, was among them; and so was Bowie, who was sick and weak from a wasting disease, but who rallied all his strength to die fighting, and who, in the final struggle, slew several Mexicans with his revolver, and with his big knife of the kind to which he had given his name. Then these fell too, and the last man stood at bay. It was old Davy Crockett. Wounded in a dozen places, he faced his foes with his back to the wall, ringed around by the bodies of the men he had slain. So desperate was the fight he waged, that the Mexicans who thronged round about him were beaten back for the moment, and no one dared to run in upon him. Accordingly, while the lancers held him where he was, for, weakened by wounds and loss of blood, he could not break through them, the musketeers loaded their carbines and shot him down. Santa Anna declined to give him mercy. Some say that when Crockett fell from his wounds, he was taken alive, and was then shot by Santa Anna's order; but his fate cannot be told with certainty, for not a single American was left alive. At any rate, after Crockett fell the fight was over. Every one of the hardy men who had held the Alamo lay still in death. Yet they died well avenged, for four times their number fell at their hands in the battle.

Santa Anna had but a short while in which to exult over his bloody and hard-won victory. Already a rider from the rolling Texas plains, going north through the Indian Territory, had told Houston that the Texans were up and were striving for their liberty. At once in Houston's mind there kindled a longing to return to the men of his race at the time of their need. Mounting his horse, he rode south by night and day, and was hailed by the Texans as a heaven-sent leader. He took command of their forces, eleven hundred stark riflemen, and at the battle of San Jacinto, he and his men charged the Mexican hosts with the cry of "Remember the Alamo." Almost immediately, the Mexicans were overthrown with terrible slaughter; Santa Anna himself was captured, and the freedom of Texas was won at a blow.

HAMPTON ROADS

Then far away to the south uprose A little feather of snow-white smoke, And we knew that the iron ship of our foes Was steadily steering its course To try the force Of our ribs of oak.

Down upon us heavily runs, Silent and sullen, the floating fort; Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns, And leaps the terrible death, With fiery breath, From her open port.

* * *

Ho! brave hearts, that went down in the seas! Ye are at peace in the troubled stream; Ho! brave land! with hearts like these, Thy flag, that is rent in twain, Shall be one again, And without a seam! --Longfellow

The naval battles of the Civil War possess an immense importance, because they mark the line of cleavage between naval warfare under the old, and naval warfare under the new, conditions. The ships with which Hull and Decatur and McDonough won glory in the war of 1812 were essentially like those with which Drake and Hawkins and Frobisher had harried the Spanish armadas two centuries and a half earlier. They were wooden sailing-vessels, carrying many guns mounted in broadside, like those of De Ruyter and Tromp, of Blake and Nelson. Throughout this period all the great admirals, all the famous single-ship fighters,--whose skill reached its highest expression in our own navy during the war of 1812,--commanded craft built and armed in a substantially similar manner, and fought with the same weapons and under much the same conditions. But in the Civil War weapons and methods were introduced which caused a revolution greater even than that which divided the sailing-ship from the galley. The use of steam, the casing of ships in iron armor, and the employment of the torpedo, the ram, and the gun of high power, produced such radically new types that the old ships of the line became at one stroke as antiquated as the galleys of Hamilcar or Alcibiades. Some of these new engines of destruction were invented, and all were for the first time tried in actual combat, during our own Civil War. The first occasion on which any of the new methods were thoroughly tested was attended by incidents which made it one of the most striking of naval battles.

In Chesapeake Bay, near Hampton Roads, the United States had collected a fleet of wooden ships; some of them old-style sailing-vessels, others steamers. The Confederates were known to be building a great iron-clad ram, and the wooden vessels were eagerly watching for her appearance when she should come out of Gosport Harbor. Her powers and capacity were utterly unknown. She was made out of the former United States steam-frigate Merrimac, cut down so as to make her fore and aft decks nearly flat, and not much above the water, while the guns were mounted in a covered central battery, with sloping flanks. Her sides, deck, and battery were coated with iron, and she was armed with formidable rifle-guns, and, most important of all, with a steel ram thrust out under water forward from her bow. She was commanded by a gallant and efficient officer, Captain Buchanan.

It was March 8, 1862, when the ram at last made her appearance within sight of the Union fleet. The day was calm and very clear, so that the throngs of spectators on shore could see every feature of the battle. With the great ram came three light gunboats, all of which took part in the action, harassing the vessels which she assailed; but they were not factors of importance in the fight. On the Union side the vessels nearest were the sailing-ships Cumberland and Congress, and the steam-frigate Minnesota. The Congress and Cumberland were anchored not far from each other; the Minnesota got aground, and was some distance off. Owing to the currents and shoals and the lack of wind, no other vessel was able to get up in time to take a part in the fight.

As soon as the ram appeared, out of the harbor, she turned and steamed toward the Congress and the Cumberland, the black smoke rising from her funnels, and the great ripples running from each side of her iron prow as she drove steadily through the still waters. On board of the Congress and Cumberland there was eager anticipation, but not a particle of fear. The officers in command, Captain Smith and Lieutenant Morris, were two of the most gallant men in a service where gallantry has always been too common to need special comment. The crews were composed of veterans, well trained, self-confident, and proud beyond measure of the flag whose honor they upheld. The guns were run out, and the men stood at quarters, while the officers eagerly conned the approaching ironclad. The Congress was the first to open fire; and, as her volleys flew, the men on the Cumberland were astounded to see the cannon-shot bound off the sloping sides of the ram as hailstones bound from a windowpane. The ram answered, and her rifle-shells tore the sides of the Congress; but for her first victim she aimed at the Cumberland, and, firing her bow guns, came straight as an arrow at the little sloop-of-war, which lay broadside to her.

It was an absolutely hopeless struggle. The Cumberland was a sailing-ship, at anchor, with wooden sides, and a battery of light guns. Against the formidable steam ironclad, with her heavy rifles and steel ram, she was as powerless as if she had been a rowboat; and from the moment the men saw the cannon-shot bound from the ram's sides they knew they were doomed. But none of them flinched. Once and again they fired their guns full against the approaching ram, and in response received a few shells from the great bow-rifles of the latter. Then, forging ahead, the Merrimac struck her antagonist with her steel prow, and the sloop-of-war reeled and shuddered, and through the great rent in her side the black water rushed. She foundered in a few minutes; but her crew fought her to the last, cheering as they ran out the guns, and sending shot after shot against the ram as the latter backed off after delivering her blow. The rush of the water soon swamped the lower decks, but the men above continued to serve their guns until the upper deck also was awash, and the vessel had not ten seconds of life left. Then, with her flags flying, her men cheering, and her guns firing, the Cumberland sank. It was shallow where she settled down, so that her masts remained above the water. The glorious flag for which the brave men aboard her had died flew proudly in the wind all that day, while the fight went on, and throughout the night; and next morning it was still streaming over the beautiful bay, to mark the resting-place of as gallant a vessel as ever sailed or fought on the high seas.

After the Cumberland sank, the ram turned her attention to the Congress. Finding it difficult to get to her in the shoal water, she began to knock her to pieces with her great rifle-guns. The unequal fight between the ironclad and the wooden ship lasted for perhaps half an hour. By that time the commander of the Congress had been killed, and her decks looked like a slaughterhouse. She was utterly unable to make any impression on her foe, and finally she took fire and blew up. The Minnesota was the third victim marked for destruction, and the Merrimac began the attack upon her at once; but it was getting very late, and as the water was shoal and she could not get close, the rain finally drew back to her anchorage, to wait until next day before renewing and completing her work of destruction.

All that night there was the wildest exultation among the Confederates, while the gloom and panic of the Union men cannot be described. It was evident that the United States ships-of-war were as helpless as cockle-shells against their iron-clad foe, and there was no question but that she could destroy the whole fleet with ease and with absolute impunity. This meant not only the breaking of the blockade; but the sweeping away at one blow of the North's naval supremacy, which was indispensable to the success of the war for the Union. It is small wonder that during that night the wisest and bravest should have almost despaired.

But in the hour of the nation's greatest need a champion suddenly appeared, in time to play the last scene in this great drama of sea warfare. The North, too, had been trying its hand at building ironclads. The most successful of them was the little Monitor, a flat-decked, low, turreted, ironclad, armed with a couple of heavy guns. She was the first experiment of her kind, and her absolutely flat surface, nearly level with the water, her revolving turret, and her utter unlikeness to any pre-existing naval type, had made her an object of mirth among most practical seamen; but her inventor, Ericsson, was not disheartened in the least by the jeers. Under the command of a gallant naval officer, Captain Worden, she was sent South from New York, and though she almost foundered in a gale she managed to weather it, and reached the scene of the battle at Hampton Roads at the moment when her presence was all-important.

Early the following morning the Merrimac, now under Captain Jones (for Buchanan had been wounded), again steamed forth to take up the work she had so well begun and to destroy the Union fleet. She steered straight for the Minnesota; but when she was almost there, to her astonishment a strange-looking little craft advanced from the side of the big wooden frigate and boldly barred the Merrimac's path. For a moment the Confederates could hardly believe their eyes. The Monitor was tiny, compared to their ship, for she was not one fifth the size, and her queer appearance made them look at their new foe with contempt; but the first shock of battle did away with this feeling. The Merrimac turned on her foe her rifleguns, intending to blow her out of the water, but the shot glanced from the thick iron turret of the Monitor. Then the Monitors guns opened fire, and as the great balls struck the sides of the ram her plates started and her timbers gave. Had the Monitor been such a vessel as those of her type produced later in the war, the ram would have been sunk then and there; but as it was her shot were not quite heavy enough to pierce the iron walls. Around and around the two strange combatants hovered, their guns bellowing without cessation, while the men on the frigates and on shore watched the result with breathless interest. Neither the Merrimac nor the Monitor could dispose of its antagonist. The ram's guns could not damage the turret, and the Monitor was able dexterously to avoid the stroke of the formidable prow. On the other hand, the shot of the Monitor could not penetrate the Merrimac's tough sides. Accordingly, fierce though the struggle was, and much though there was that hinged on it, it was not bloody in character. The Merrimac could neither destroy nor evade the Monitor. She could not sink her when she tried to, and when she abandoned her and turned to attack one of the other wooden vessels, the little turreted ship was thrown across her path, so that the fight had to be renewed. Both sides grew thoroughly exhausted, and finally the battle ceased by mutual consent.

Nothing more could be done. The ram was badly damaged, and there was no help for her save to put back to the port whence she had come. Twice afterward she came out, but neither time did she come near enough to the Monitor to attack her, and the latter could not move off where she would cease to protect the wooden vessels. The ram was ultimately blown up by the Confederates on the advance of the Union army.

Tactically, the fight was a drawn battle--neither ship being able to damage the other, and both ships, being fought to a standstill; but the moral and material effects were wholly in favor of the Monitor. Her victory was hailed with exultant joy throughout the whole Union, and exercised a correspondingly depressing effect in the Confederacy; while every naval man throughout the world, who possessed eyes to see, saw that the fight in Hampton Roads had inaugurated a new era in ocean warfare, and that the Monitor and Merrimac, which had waged so gallant and so terrible a battle, were the first ships of the new era, and that as such their names would be forever famous.

THE FLAG-BEARER

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; His day is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never beat retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat; Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. --Julia Ward Howe.

In no war since the close of the great Napoleonic struggles has the fighting been so obstinate and bloody as in the Civil War. Much has been said in song and story of the resolute courage of the Guards at Inkerman, of the charge of the Light Brigade, and of the terrible fighting and loss of the German armies at Mars La Tour and Gravelotte. The praise bestowed, upon the British and Germans for their valor, and for the loss that proved their valor, was well deserved; but there were over one hundred and twenty regiments, Union and Confederate, each of which, in some one battle of the Civil War, suffered a greater loss than any English regiment at Inkerman or at any other battle in the Crimea, a greater loss than was suffered by any German regiment at Gravelotte or at any other battle of the Franco-Prussian war. No European regiment in any recent struggle has suffered such losses as at Gettysburg befell the 1st Minnesota, when 82 per cent. of the officers and men were killed and wounded; or the 141st Pennsylvania, which lost 76 per cent.; or the 26th North Carolina, which lost 72 per cent.; such as at the second battle of Manassas befell the 101st New York, which lost 74 per cent., and the 21st Georgia, which lost 76 per cent. At Cold Harbor the 25th Massachusetts lost 70 per cent., and the 10th Tennessee at Chickamauga 68 per cent.; while at Shiloh the 9th Illinois lost 63 per cent., and the 6th Mississippi 70 per cent.; and at Antietam the 1st Texas lost 82 percent. The loss of the Light Brigade in killed and wounded in its famous charge at Balaklava was but 37 per cent.

These figures show the terrible punishment endured by these regiments, chosen at random from the head of the list which shows the slaughter-roll of the Civil War. Yet the shattered remnants of each regiment preserved their organization, and many of the severest losses were incurred in the hour of triumph, and not of disaster. Thus, the 1st Minnesota, at Gettysburg, suffered its appalling loss while charging a greatly superior force, which it drove before it; and the little huddle of wounded and unwounded men who survived their victorious charge actually kept both the flag they had captured and the ground from which they had driven their foes.

A number of the Continental regiments under Washington, Greene, and Wayne did valiant fighting and endured heavy punishment. Several of the regiments raised on the northern frontier in 1814 showed, under Brown and Scott, that they were able to meet the best troops of Britain on equal terms in the open, and even to overmatch them in fair fight with the bayonet. The regiments which, in the Mexican war, under the lead of Taylor, captured Monterey, and beat back Santa Anna at Buena Vista, or which, with Scott as commander, stormed Molino Del Rey and Chapultepec, proved their ability to bear terrible loss, to wrest victory from overwhelming numbers, and to carry by open assault positions of formidable strength held by a veteran army. But in none of these three wars was the fighting so resolute and bloody as in the Civil War.

Countless deeds of heroism were performed by Northerner and by Southerner, by officer and by private, in every year of the great struggle. The immense majority of these deeds went unrecorded, and were known to few beyond the immediate participants. Of those that were noticed it would be impossible even to make a dry catalogue in ten such volumes as this. All that can be done is to choose out two or three acts of heroism, not as exceptions, but as examples of hundreds of others. The times of war are iron times, and bring out all that is best as well as all that is basest in the human heart. In a full recital of the civil war, as of every other great conflict, there would stand out in naked relief feats of wonderful daring and self-devotion, and, mixed among them, deeds of cowardice, of treachery, of barbarous brutality. Sadder still, such a recital would show strange contrasts in the careers of individual men, men who at one time acted well and nobly, and at another time ill and basely. The ugly truths must not be blinked, and the lessons they teach should be set forth by every historian, and learned by every statesman and soldier; but, for our good fortune, the lessons best worth learning in the nation's past are lessons of heroism.

From immemorial time the armies of every warlike people have set the highest value upon the standards they bore to battle. To guard one's own flag against capture is the pride, to capture the flag of one's enemy the ambition, of every valiant soldier. In consequence, in every war between peoples of good military record, feats of daring performed by color-bearers are honorably common. The Civil War was full of such incidents. Out of very many two or three may be mentioned as noteworthy.