CHAP. I. Lincoln to Gen. Scott, Sept. 16, 1861. W. R. Vol. IV., p. 613. 1861. lowing characteristic letter from President Lincoln to General Scott: MY DEAR SIR: Since conversing with you I have concluded to request you to frame an order for recruiting North Carolinians at Fort Hatteras. I suggest it to be so framed as for us to accept a smaller force even a company - if we cannot get a regiment or more. What is necessary to now say about officers you will judge. Governor Seward says he has a nephew (Clarence A. Seward, I believe) who would be willing to go and play colonel and assist in raising the force. Still, it is to be considered whether the North Carolinians will not prefer officers of their own. I should expect they would. Before the expedition against Hatteras set sail, preparations for another naval expedition on a more extended scale were under way. It will be remembered that the “Anaconda" plan of General Scott contemplated that the insurgent States should be completely enveloped. Such a course necessarily comprised eventual military possession of the entire coast line, and this was a part of the problem to be studied by the board of officers who had been convened by the Navy Department on June 28. Careful reports made by the board on July 5 and 13 recommended that either Bull's Bay, Port Royal Sound, or Fernandina should be, if possible, captured and occupied, both to facilitate the blockade and to furnish a base for military operations. Accordingly, orders were issued on August 2 and August 11 to Brigadier-General Thomas W. Sherman to proceed to New England and recruit an expeditionary land force of twelve thousand men, while Captain SamVI., p. 168. uel F. Du Pont, of the navy, was instructed to gather a fleet of vessels at Hampton Roads to be Thomas A. Scott to Sherman, Aug. 2 and 11, 1861. W. R. Vol. used in the same movement. When General Sherman (who must not be confounded with General William Tecumseh Sherman, afterwards the famous leader of the march to the sea) was called to Washington, President Lincoln, in presence of the Cabinet, explained to him that this expedition was specially favored by General Scott; described in a general way its extent and purpose; directed that the utmost secrecy be observed, both as to its organization and probable point of descent; and expressed the wish of himself and his Cabinet that it should be ready to start early in September. Fuller consideration, however, recalled the fact that this was the unhealthy season, and the time of starting was afterwards postponed to October. The details were settled by General Scott and a military council of the most experienced officers. Obstacles and delays arose, as a matter of course. Before Sherman had more than three of his twelve regiments in camp on Long Island, where he proposed to drill and equip them, he was summoned to Washington with his whole command to help meet the danger of a rumored movement of the enemy against the capital. Here the remainder of his force was gathered, in constant competition with the all-absorbing accumulation of the grand Army of the Potomac, and not without apprehension that his command would be dribbled away in fragments to this or to some one of the many urgent calls for troops which beset the Administration from every quarter. "To guard against misunderstanding," wrote Lincoln to the Secretary of War, September 18, "I think fit to say that the joint expedition of the army and CHAP. I. 1861. CHAP. I. Lincoln to Cameron, 1861. W. R. Vol. VI., p. 171. 1861. navy, . . . in which General T. W. Sherman was and is to bear a conspicuous part, is in no wise to be abandoned, but must be ready to move by the first or very early in October. Let all preparations go forward accordingly." Instead of the first, it was the end of October before the expedition got off. On the 29th, a fleet of fifty sail, including transports, went to sea from Fort Monroe, the naval force under command of Captain Du Pont. The following day brought a severe storm, in which two or three transports with supplies were lost, and others put back for safety. The main fleet, however, assembled on the 4th of November before Port Royal Sound, and on the 7th, fourteen war steamers, carrying a total armament of 130 guns, stood in to the attack of the rebel forts at the Port Royal entrance. To the north, on Bay Point, stood Fort Beauregard, mounting twenty guns. To the south, on Hilton Head, stood Fort Walker, a much stronger work, mounting twenty-three guns. A broad sheet of water, two miles in width, spread between the two forts. Both were formidable earthworks, scientifically constructed, and armed with ordnance of no mean power. Fort Walker had a garrison of about 250 men, and the plan of attack marked this out as the principal obstacle to Overcome. Everything being ready, and the weather fine, in the early forenoon of the 7th nine of the principal war steamers, with a total of 112 guns, formed in a line following each other at a distance of little more than a ship's length, with Du Pont leading in the flag-ship Wabash of forty-four guns. Moving |