THE NAVY IN THE CIVIL WAR
Published
1883, 1885
------------------------
VOLUME II.
THE
ATLANTIC COAST.
BY
DANIEL AMMEN
REAR-ADMIRAL, U.S. NAVY
CHAPTER
XI
Conclusions
The Navy Department had an
immense work to perform in the civil
war. Except so far as the purchase abroad of vessels of war was concerned, it had the markets of the world to
supply its wants without impediment, and it had money without stint. That millions of dollars should have been wasted was a probable, not to say an inevitable result of
a lack of preparation, and of
empiricism, as shown in the construction
of the Chime and her twenty
counterparts, known as the "totally
submerged class of monitors." The defect of the latter was radical; no professional doctors could cure or
even better them; their office was "to lie in cold obstruction and to rot." All that appears in
these pages relating to them is given in the language of the
Department, without comment.
To build and purchase vessels more or less
adapted to war purposes; to fit, arm, officer, man, and provision them, and
to keep up their supplies over a coast line of three thousand miles,
with hundreds of inlets to blockade, and to provide
fleets here and there to bombard, as at Fort Fisher, required great
energy on the part of the Navy Department and
its subordinates; and
these onerous requirements were fulfilled
with a reasonable degree of success and with an immense outlay of money.
There are teachings that seem to belong to war exclusively.
Officers learned to anchor vessels anywhere off the Southern coast, where
they rode out with safety the heaviest gales that swept those waters during four
years, and they learned to appreciate the
advantage of carrying a heavy kedge on the quarter, ready to let go
instantly when operating in narrow waters.
They learned, too, what was
new then, the power of rifled guns at long distances against brick
or stone forts, and also that wooden vessels
armed with heavy spherical shell-guns, aided by a few ironclads, can smother and control the fire from
an earthwork when brought within sixteen hundred yards
of it, or better at two-thirds that distance; and
further, that if vessels attack an
earthwork there should be no cessation until the troops advance to the
assault.
To the general, as well as the
professional reader who has followed
the writer through these pages, a few ideas are ventured in connection with the civil war.
Accepting the political conditions as existent facts presented by the late Alexander H. Stephens in his
remarkable address at Milledgeville, Ga., on
November 14, 1860, the reader
is lost in wonder that a sanguinary war of four years' duration could have followed, without other inciting causes than
those so fairly and clearly stated by him. Hundreds
of thousands of men perished in battle or by disease through exposure;
hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children,
many of them former slaves, died from violence, exposure,
and want. Thousands of millions of dollars were spent in
war, by the North and by the South, and
when the forces of the latter laid
down their arms, they were absolutely without resources;
many of the inhabitants in various
sections would have suffered greatly,
or actually perished, had not the gratuitous
private charity of the North supplied shiploads of provisions immediately after the cessation of hostilities.
No one can deny the fact that the South commenced and continued the war
with the utmost intensity of purpose, worthy of a sense of the most poignant wrongs. It is most difficult to reconcile this fact with the
plain statements of Stephens, which were not, and never can be, fairly
controverted.
In view of all this, does it not appear that the civil
war was the result of prejudices, of
obliquity, and misconceptions, the
output of a long-continued material prosperity? Mankind after a time regard this as a normal condition, which is
far from the fact. With the Jews of old the
image of the Golden Calf seems but the
symbol of great material prosperity,
bringing in its train woes and repentance in sackcloth and ashes.
Eighteen years have passed
since the Confederate forces laid down
their arms and returned to their homes unharmed, nor has a human being been held to accountability for all the wretchedness and misery produced by the civil war; and yet we find that prejudices, unfounded and without reason, are
still paraded as facts, and as justifications of a long and
sanguinary struggle. May we not
say, as a rational deduction, that the
prejudices of men far outweigh their reason?
These reflections grew out of a conversation with a lifelong
friend that has lately passed away. He
had been a large slave-owner, and a kind and considerate one;
the comfortable cabins and the happy faces of the occupants, and the attention
given them in sickness and in health could not fail to be observed. The
gentleman referred to was opposed to
secession, yet when the many around him insisted on war, he
took up arms, and bravely did his part. When
the war was over he was broken down in fortune and no longer young, but
his courage did not forsake him, and he bravely and honestly struggled to supply the necessities that existence
imposes. Sitting in the gloam of the
evening, a few years ago, he
said: " Had we succeeded in our efforts, our troubles would have but begun. South Carolina on the one side, and
Florida on the other, would have seceded from Georgia,
and we would have been a dismembered people." In
sadness and in toil he had passed many succeeding years, and
these were his final reflections. May
we not properly--nay, can we do other
than give to such men our entire sympathy,
and, in all sincerity, extend the hand of fellowship? He
was a man of thought, of courage, of action, and of purpose; it is not
given to the vulgar to be possessed of such qualities, whether it be the rich or
the poor vulgar, whether it be the educated
or the uneducated vulgar. With them thought
and reason are as nothing; with
them appetites, selfishness, and
prejudices are everything.
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