At Fort Donaldson, when it became apparent it could not be defended, Floyd and Pillow escaped, leaving Simon B. Buckner in command to deal with the attacks of Grant. Buckner was an old friend of Grants knew him well enough to loan him enough money to get out of a hotel after a week-long drunk left him broke and humiliated. Buckner hoped that his friend would be more accepting to the terms of surrender he sent forth upon notification that he was now in command.
But Grant was a pit bull when it came to war...he would literally bite the hand that fed him...and he did so to his old friend, showing no quarter sending forth a terse response to Buckner... “I will accept nothing less than your immediate and unconditional surrender!”
The northern press, with so little good news coming out of the White House eagerly pushed their papers onto the doting public with stories of the heroic efforts of Grant in winning two battles, definitively. Grant was glorified in the press and the headlines substituted his initials (U.S.) for his now famous demand for unconditional surrender.
But other Union generals were not so thrilled with the press generated by the “runt of the litter.” In particular, his immediate superior, was still incensed by Grants drunken stupors causing at least one major loss at Belmont, Missouri. Henry Halleck, fearful that Grant’s rising star might damage his own career, demoted him using the drunken incident as cause seeking to smear his name and run him back out of the military. But an influential Illinois congressman, Ellhu Washburne came to Grant’s aid by routing the case directly to the President.
It didn’t take much time for Lincoln to decide the matter. He had been thrilled by Grant’s aggressive attacks and his “take no prisoner” approach to each battle and he saw in Grant what he had been looking for in several other generals. He immediately exonerated Grant and nominated him for promotion to major general. And is so doing, it is reported that Lincoln invoked a few expletives aimed at Henry Halleck by quoting Confucius, somewhat altered... “That god-damn Halleck tried to kill a mosquito using liquor on the throat of my cannon.”
It is reported as well that Grant came to the aid of his old friend, Simon B. Buckner after his reinstatement and promotion. Buckner had been imprisoned, Grant had him released and brought to him...whereupon he gave Buckner his money pouch and his freedom.
The brief glimmer of hope brought by the exploits of Grant, the first major blow to the Confederacy was tempered by personal tragedy for the President. Even as Grant assaulted the Tennessee fort, a debilitating fever gripped Lincoln’s two youngest sons, Willie and Tad, the condition contracted from the water of the polluted Potomac, the source of the White House drinking water.
Eleven-year –old Willie died on February 20, 1862, the grief-stricken President and the bewildered Mrs. Lincoln had to bury their second son. Deeply depressed and heavily medicated Mrs. Lincoln was bedridden for several months from a nervous breakdown. The President used his grief to focus on the war and a bit of secret information, which had come to him from one of the most unusual sources, the information would change forever the way wars are fought on the water.
While the Union seemed to be mired in the corruption and malaise of big government, the undermanned and deeply under-financed Confederacy fought for its very life. The memories of the sacrifices of the American Revolution had long since faded from the north and the eastern seaboard had no idea what loyalty and love of land could drive the human spirit to accomplish. General Winfield Scott’s, “Anaconda Plan” may have been scoffed at and ridiculed by the members of the northern military intelligencia, the President, the politicians and the press but after it had been leaked to the press, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet took notice. They knew that Scott was correct and they knew as well that the prices of cotton in Europe had fallen drastically by an obsessive market condition the previous two years permitting the industrial buyers to warehouse the product, further complicating the economies of cotton for the south were the entries of foreign grown cotton coming from India and other countries whose climates recreated those in the south.
The north would soon know that only a minor blockade at either New Orleans or Charleston, disrupting the movement of goods, machines and supplies would indeed strangle, as the anaconda and quickly bring to an end the cause of the south. But while the north fumbled and fussed, fidgeted and pursed, laughed and manipulated... the brilliant military minds, which the south had bred and inherited from the regular army, were creatively at work. Son’s of the south that had gone off to West Point returned now in major numbers to stand on inherited pride and love of the land.
They raised the frigate Merrimac, scuttled by the Union navy and were covering the wooden sides of the warship with iron prepared at Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Works. A brilliant concept which had never before been used because the technology wasn’t available...and this invention and would bring about a technological change unmatched until the introduction of the airplane in World War I.
But even as the southern leaders creatively scrimped by using restored warships with iron-sides, danger lurked in the iron works themselves as slaves were put to the task by their masters to cast the cannons to be used against their future dreams. Late in February of 1862, a free black woman from Norfolk, passed through enemy lines and went to the Navy Department. Hidden in her underwear was a letter from a Union sympathizer who worked in the Confederate navy yard (shades of the Diplomat Wilson and his spy bride for the CIA in 2005) reporting on theMerrimac.
A contract to design and build a competitor for the south’s now, nonsecret super warship was let to New Yorker, John Ericsson, a man who would not meet the qualifications of the Know-Nothings because he was a Swedish immigrant and internationally renowned engineer. His design, to be known as the Monitor, was not simply a wooden warship covered in steel. He drew plans for a flat, raft like ship with a revolving turret equipped with two eleven-inch guns...very much along the lines of the first submarines.
John Eriksson struggled with the contract deadline of one hundred days but he could not meet the schedule of the Confederacy which launched the Merrimac, (Virginia), and headed to Hampton Roads, the channel through which three of Virginia’s rivers: the James; the Nansemond and the Elizabeth empty into the Chesapeake Bay, The northern shore of the channel at Fort Monroe and Newport News were occupied by the Union. The Gosport Navy Yard was occupied by the Confederates since the Union navy abandoned the port at the beginning of the war. In the channel itself, the water route to Richmond was controlled by the Union fleet.
The Merrimac (Virginia) steamed out of port under the command of Franklin Buchanan (1800-1874), a Baltimorean who was the first superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. Buchanan had also accompanied Commodore Matthew Perry on the expeditions to the Orient that opened Japan to the western world. Buchanan had resigned from the U.S. Navy to enter the service of the Confederacy. On Saturday, March 8, he led a small fleet out to do battle with the Union’s blockading fleet and shore batteries.
One Union observer reported, “We saw what to all appearances looked like a giant barn roof that was on fire. We were all divided in opinion as to what was coming at us. The boatswain’s mate was the first to make out the Confederate flag. And then we all guessed it was the Merrimac (Virginia) coming at us at last.”
On the Union’s Cumberland, pilot A.B. Smith said, “As she came plunging through the water...she looked like a submerged prehistoric crocodile. Her sides seemed of solid iron, except where the guns pointed out from the narrow ports...at her prow I
could see the iron ram projecting straight forward like the giant penis of an elephant, lapping at the water’s edge as though it was seeking a big vagina.”
The Union shore batteries fired as fast as they could, A.B. Smith recalled, “still she came on, the balls bouncing off her mailed sides like India-rubber, apparently not making the least impression, except to cut off her flag-staff, bring down the Confederate colors...but a Reb grabbed it and held it aloof and waved it at us as the fearsome warship came on and then her cannons let loose and five of our marines were killed...it was impossible for our vessel to get out of the way of that big