Admiral Farragut

It was not merely in the acquisition of knowledge, commonly so called, that this practice contributed to prepare Farragut for his great mission as a naval commander-in-chief, but also in the discipline of character and in the development of natural capacities admirably suited for that position. It should not be overlooked that before the war, and now again in our own day, the idea of professional improvement in the United States Navy has fastened for its fitting subject upon the development of the material of war, to the comparative exclusion of the study of naval warfare. This naturally results from the national policy, which does not propose to put afloat a fleet in the proper sense of the word; and whose ideal is a number, more or less small, of cruisers neither fitted nor intended for combined action. Under these circumstances, the details of the internal economy of the single ship usurp in the professional mind an undue proportion of the attention which, in a rightly constituted navy, might far better be applied to the study of naval tactics, in the higher sense of that word, and of naval campaigns. Farragut could not but feel the influence of this tendency, so strongly marked in the service to which he belonged; the more so, as it is a thoroughly good tendency when not pushed to an exclusive extent. But here the habit of study, and stretching in every direction his interest in matters professional, stood him in good stead, and prepared him unconsciously for destinies that could not have been foreseen. The custom of reading had made him familiar with the biography and history of his profession, the school to which the great Napoleon recommended all who would fit themselves for high military command; and of which a recent distinguished authority has said that it may be questioned whether a formulated art of war can be said to exist, except as the embodiment of the practice of great captains illustrated in their campaigns.

From these, with his great natural aptitudes for war, Farragut quickly assimilated its leading principles, which he afterward so signally illustrated in act and embodied in maxims of his own that have already been quoted. He did not employ the terminology of the art, which, though possibly pedantic in sound, is invaluable for purposes of discussion; but he expressed its leading principles in pithy, homely phrases of his own, which showed how accurate his grasp of it was. "If once you get in a soldier's rear, he is gone," was probably in part a bit of good-natured chaff at the sister profession; but it sums up in a few words the significance and strategic importance of his course in passing the batteries of the river forts, of Port Hudson and of Mobile, and brings those brilliant actions into strict conformity with the soundest principles of war. The phrases, whose frequent repetition shows how deep a hold they had taken upon him—"The more you hurt the enemy the less he will hurt you"—"The best protection against the enemy's fire is a well-directed fire from our own guns"—sum up one of the profoundest of all military truths, easily confessed but with difficulty lived up to, and which in these days of armor protection needs to be diligently recalled as a qualifying consideration. It is, in fact, a restatement of the oft-admitted, readily-forgotten maxim that offense is the best defense. "I believe in celerity," said he, when announcing his determination soon to pass the Mississippi forts; and good reason had he to congratulate himself that this faith showed itself in his works below New Orleans, and to lament before Mobile the failure of his Government to observe the maxim which all acknowledge. "Five minutes," said Nelson, "may make the difference between victory and defeat." "False (circuitous) routes and lost moments," wrote Napoleon, "are the determining elements of naval campaigns." All admit the value of time; but with what apathetic deliberation is often watched the flight of hours which are measuring the race between two enemies!

The personal character of Admiral Farragut afforded the firm natural foundation upon which alone a great military character can be built; for while no toleration should be shown to the absurd belief that military eminence leaps fully grown into the arena, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter—that, unlike every other kind of perfection, it grows wild and owes nothing to care, to arduous study, to constant preparation—it is still true that it can be developed only upon great natural aptitudes. The distinction conveyed by a phrase of Jomini, applied to Carnot, the great war minister of the French Revolution, is one that it is well for military and naval officers to bear constantly in mind. "Carnot," he says, although a soldier by profession, "was rather a man with a natural genius for war than an accoumplished (instruit) officer;" and to the lack of that studious preparation which marked Napoleon he attributes the mistakes which characterized some of Carnot's projects, although as a whole his career showed profound intuitions in the conduct of war. It is open to many able men to be accomplished and valuable officers; a few only—how few, the annals of the past show—receive the rare natural gifts which in their perfect combination make the great captain the highest manifestation of power attainable by human faculties.

The acquirements of the accomplished officer may enable him to see the right thing to be done under given conditions, and yet fail to lift him to the height of due performance. It is in the strength of purpose, in the power of rapid decision, of instant action, and, if need be, of strenuous endurance through a period of danger or of responsibility, when the terrifying alternatives of war are vibrating in the balance, that the power of a great captain mainly lies. It is in the courage to apply knowledge under conditions of exceptional danger; not merely to see the true direction for effort to take, but to dare to follow it, accepting all the risks and all the chances inseparable from war, facing all that defeat means in order thereby to secure victory if it may be had. It was upon these inborn moral qualities that reposed the conduct which led Farragut to fame. He had a clear eye for the true key of a military situation, a quick and accurate perception of the right thing to do at a critical moment, a firm grip upon the leading principles of war; but he might have had all these and yet miserably failed. He was a man of most determined will and character, ready to tread down or fight through any obstacles which stood in the path he saw fit to follow. Of this a conspicuous instance was given in the firmness with which he withstood the secession clamor of Norfolk, his outspoken defense of the unpopular Government measures, and the promptitude with which he left the place, sundering so many associations at the call of duty; and to this exhibition of strength of purpose, through the impression made upon Mr. Fox, was largely due his selection for command in the Gulf.

One of the greatest of naval commanders, whose experience of men extended through an unusually long and varied career—Earl St. Vincent—has declared that the true test of a man's courage is his power to bear responsibility; and Farragut's fearlessness of responsibility in order to accomplish necessary ends, while yet captain of a single ship, was the subject of admiring comment among his subordinates, who are not usually prone to recognize that quality in their commanders. "I have as much pleasure in running into port in a gale of wind," he wrote, "as ever a boy did in a feat of skill." The same characteristic was markedly shown under the weight of far greater issues in his determination to pass the river forts, in spite of remonstrances from his most able lieutenant, of cautious suggestions from other commanding officers, and with only the ambiguous instructions of the Navy Department to justify his action. It was not that the objections raised were trivial. They were of the most weighty and valid character, and in disregarding them Farragut showed not only the admirable insight which fastened upon the true military solution, but also the courage which dared to accept on his sole responsibility the immense risks of disaster which had to be taken.

The same moral force showed itself again, in combination with the most rapid decision and strength of purpose, when his ship was nearly thrown on shore under the batteries of Port Hudson; and yet more in the highest degree at that supreme moment of his life when, headed off from the path he had himself laid down, he led his fleet across the torpedo line in Mobile Bay. To the same quality must also be attributed the resolution to take his ships above Port Hudson, without orders, at the critical period of the campaign of 1863; and it is to be regretted in the interest of his renown that the merit of that fine decision, both in its military correctness and in the responsibility assumed, has not been more adequately appreciated. For the power to take these momentous decisions, Farragut was indebted to nature. He indeed justified them and his general course of action by good and sufficient reasons, but the reasons carried instant conviction to him because they struck a kindred chord in his breast. Speaking on one occasion of his gallant and accomplished fleet captain, Percival Drayton, he said: "Drayton does not know fear, and would fight the devil himself, but he believes in acting as if the enemy can never be caught unprepared; whereas I believe in judging him by ourselves, and my motto in action," he continued, quoting the celebrated words of Danton, "is, 'L'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace.'"

With all his fearlessness and determination, severity was not one of Admiral Farragut's characteristics. He was easily approachable, entering readily into conversation with all; and added much to the labors of his position as commanding officer by his great patience in listening to matters to which a subordinate might have attended. "His kindness was what most impressed me," says one officer who was a very young man when first reporting to him for duty. Another, who as a midshipman saw much of him, writes: "He had a winning smile and a most charming manner, and was jovial and talkative. If any officer or man had not spontaneous enthusiasm, he certainly infused it into him." Captain Drayton, who had many opportunities of observing, once said of him: "I did not believe any man could be great if he did not know how to say 'No,' but I see he can; for certainly here is a great man, and he is too kind-hearted to say 'No' in some cases where it should be said."

In person, Admiral Farragut was not above the medium size—about five feet six and a half inches high, upright in carriage, well-proportioned, alert and graceful in his movements. In early and middle life he was rather slight than heavy in frame; and it was not until the war, with the prolonged physical inactivity entailed by the river and blockade service, that he took on flesh. Up to that time his weight was not over one hundred and fifty pounds. He was very expert in all physical exercises, and retained his activity to the verge of old age. Even after his fiftieth year it was no unusual thing for him to call up some of the crew of the ship under his command and have a bout with the single-sticks. He felt great confidence in his mastery of his sword, which he invariably wore ashore; and when returning to the wharves at night, through low parts of a town where there was danger of molestation, he relied upon it to defend himself. "Any one wearing a sword," he used to say, "ought to be ashamed not to be proficient in its use."

For many years it was his habit on his birthday to go through certain physical exercises, or, as he worded it to a young officer of the fleet shortly before passing the river forts, to take a handspring; until he failed in doing this he should not, he said, feel that he was growing old. This practice he did not discontinue till after he was sixty. A junior officer of the Hartford writes: "When some of us youngsters were going through some gymnastic exercises (which he encouraged), he smilingly took hold of his left foot, by the toe of the shoe, with his right hand, and hopped his right foot through the bight without letting go." The lightness with which he clambered up the rigging of the flag-ship when entering Mobile Bay, and again over the side to see the extent of injury inflicted by the collision with the Lackawanna, sufficiently prove that up to the age of sixty-three he was capable of showing upon occasion the agility of a young man. This bodily vigor powerfully supported the energy of his mind, and carried him from daylight to dark, and from vessel to vessel of his fleet, in seasons of emergency, to see for himself that necessary work was being done without slackness; illustrating the saying attributed to Wellington, that a general was not too old when he could visit the outposts in person and on horseback.

The features of the admiral can best be realized from the admirable frontispiece. As a young man he had the sallow, swarthy complexion usually associated with his Spanish blood. His hair at the same period was dark brown, becoming in middle life almost black. In his later years he was partially bald—a misfortune attributed by him to the sunstroke from which he suffered in Tunis, and which he to some extent concealed by the arrangement of the hair. The contour of the face was oval, the cheek-bones rather prominent, until the cheeks filled out as he became fleshier during the war; the eyes hazel, nose aquiline, lips small and compressed. At no time could he have been called handsome; but his face always possessed the attraction given by animation of expression and by the ready sympathy which vividly reflected his emotions, easily stirred by whatever excited his amusement, anger, or sorrow. To conceal his feelings was to him always difficult, and, when deeply moved, impossible. The old quartermaster who lashed him in the rigging at Mobile Bay told afterward how the admiral came on deck again as the poor fellows who had been killed were being laid out on the port side of the quarter-deck. "It was the only time I ever saw the old gentleman cry," he said, "but the tears came in his eyes like a little child." A casual but close observer, who visited him on board the flag-ship in New Orleans, wrote thus: "His manners are mild and prepossessing, but there is nothing striking in his presence, and the most astute physiognomist would scarcely suspect the heroic qualities that lay concealed beneath so simple and unpretending an exterior; unless, indeed, one might chance to see him, as we did shortly afterward, just on receipt of the news from Galveston, or again on the eve of battle at Port Hudson. On such occasions the flashing eye and passionate energy of his manner revealed the spirit of the ancient vikings."

Throughout his life, from the time that as a lad still in his teens he showed to Mr. Folsom his eagerness to learn, Farragut was ever diligent in the work of self-improvement, both professional and general. His eyes were weak from youth, but he to some extent remedied this disability by employing readers in the different ships on board which he sailed; and to the day of his death he always had some book on hand. Having an excellent memory, he thus accumulated a great deal of information besides that gained from observation and intercourse with the world. Hobart Pasha, a British officer in the Turkish Navy and an accomplished seaman, wrote: "Admiral Farragut, with whom I had many conversations, was one of the most intelligent naval officers of my acquaintance." He loved an argument, and, though always good-tempered in it, was tenacious of his own convictions when he thought the facts bore out his way of interpreting their significance. When told by a phrenologist that he had an unusual amount of self-esteem, he replied: "It is true, I have; I have full confidence in myself and in my judgment"—a trait of supreme importance to a man called to high command. But against the defects of this quality he was guarded by the openness of mind which results from the effort to improve and to keep abreast of the times in which one lives.

Farragut was naturally conservative, as seamen generally tend to be; but while averse to sudden changes, and prone to look with some distrust upon new and untried weapons of war, he did not refuse them, nor did they find in him that prejudice which forbids a fair trial and rejects reasonable proof. Of ironclads and rifled guns, both which in his day were still in their infancy, he at times spoke disparagingly; but his objection appears to have arisen not from a doubt of their efficacy—the one for protection, the other for length of range—but from an opinion as to their effect upon the spirit of the service. In this there is an element of truth as well as of prejudice; for the natural tendency of the extreme effort for protection undoubtedly is to obscure the fundamental truth, which he constantly preached, that the best protection is to injure the enemy. Nor was his instinct more at fault in recognizing that the rage for material advance, though a good thing, carries with it the countervailing disposition to rely upon perfected material rather than upon accomplished warriors to decide the issue of battle. To express a fear such as Farragut's, that a particular development of the material of war would injure the tone of the service, sounds to some as the mere echo of Lever's commissary, who reasoned that the abolition of pig-tails would sap the military spirit of the nation—only that, and nothing more. It was, on the contrary, the accurate intuition of a born master of war, who feels, even without reasoning, that men are always prone to rely upon instruments rather than upon living agents—to think the armor greater than the man.

The self-confidence which Farragut exhibited in his military undertakings was not only a natural trait; it rested also upon a reasonable conviction of his mastery of his profession, resulting from long years of exclusive and sustained devotion. He did not carry the same feeling into other matters with which he had no familiarity; and he was jealously careful not to hazard the good name, which was the honor of his country as well as of himself, by attaching it to enterprises whose character he did not understand, or to duties for which he did not feel fitted. Accordingly, he refused a request made to him to allow his name to be used as director of a company, accompanied by an intimation that stock representing one hundred thousand dollars had been placed in his name on the books. "I have determined," he replied, "to decline entering into any business which I have neither the time nor perhaps the ability to attend to." In like manner he refused to allow his name to be proposed for nomination as a presidential candidate. "My entire life has been spent in the navy; by a steady perseverance and devotion to it I have been favored with success in my profession, and to risk that reputation by entering a new career at my advanced age, and that career one of which I have little or no knowledge, is more than any one has a right to expect of me."

Farragut was essentially and unaffectedly a religious man. The thoughtfulness and care with which he prepared for his greater undertakings, the courage and fixed determination to succeed with which he went into battle, were tempered and graced by a profound submission to the Almighty will. Though not obtruded on the public, his home letters evince how constantly the sense of this dependence was present to his thoughts; and he has left on record that, in the moment of greatest danger to his career, his spirit turned instinctively to God before gathering up its energies into that sublime impulse, whose lustre, as the years go by, will more and more outshine his other deeds as the crowning glory of them all—when the fiery admiral rallied his staggered column, and led it past the hostile guns and the lost Tecumseh into the harbor of Mobile.

INDEX

Anecdotes of Admiral Farragut, 11, 12, 22, 26, 35, 45-49, 58, 92, 112, 124, 168-170, 267, 281, 286, 288, 292, 297, 306, 313, 318, 319, 321, 322, 323, 325;

lashed in rigging at Mobile, 272;

visit to Ciudadela, his father's birthplace, 300.

Arkansas, Confederate ironclad, description of, 189;

dash through United States fleet at Vicksburg, 191;

destruction of, 193.

Bailey, Captain Theodorus, U. S. N., leads the fleet at the passage of Mississippi forts, 149, 151-155;

demands surrender of New Orleans, 168 et seq.

Banks, General Nathaniel P., relieves Butler in command in the Southwest, 201;

movement in support of Farragut's passage of Port Hudson, 211;

operations west of the Mississippi, 229, 232;

Port Hudson surrenders to, 235.

Barnard, Major J. G., U. S. Engineers, opinion as to effect of passing Mississippi forts, 121.

Battles:

Essex with Phœbe and Cherub, 38-44;

passage of New Orleans forts, 149 et seq.;

passage of batteries at Vicksburg, 187, 192;

Port Hudson, 211 et seq.;

Mobile Bay, 269 et seq.

Baudin, French admiral, sketch of, 77;

attack on Vera Cruz by, 79-83.

Bell, Commodore Henry H., U. S. N., fleet captain to Farragut in 1862, 132, 140;

breaking barrier below river forts, 132;

extract from journal of, 140;

hoists U. S. flag over New Orleans, 171;

at Galveston, 202;

at Rio Grande, 240.

Blair, Montgomery, account of interview with Farragut concerning New Orleans expedition, 124.

Boggs, Commander Charles S., U. S. N., commands Varuna at passage of Mississippi forts, 163, 164.

Brooklyn, U. S. steamer, Farragut commands, 1858-'60, in Gulf, 103-105.

Buchanan, Franklin, Confederate admiral, at Mobile, 244, 279, 281-288.

Butler, General Benjamin F., commands New Orleans expedition, 164, 179, 291.

Caldwell, Lieut. C. H. B., U. S. N., commands Itasca in Mississippi River, 132, 162;

daring action in breaking chain below forts, 133, 150;

commands ironclad Essex at Port Hudson, 220.

Craven, Commander Tunis A. M., U. S. N., commands monitor Tecumseh at Mobile, 268;

eagerness to engage Tennessee, and consequent error, 273, 274;

goes down with his ship, 275.

Drayton, Captain Percival, U. S. N., Farragut's chief of staff at Mobile, 98, 250, 269, 270, 272, 278, 281, 282, 292, 319, 320.

Essex, U. S. frigate, building of, 14;

armament, 15;

history of, 16;

cruise under Porter, 17-44;

capture of, by Phœbe and Cherub, 44;

fate of, 50.

Essex, U. S. ironclad, 192, 193, 211, 220, 232.

Essex Junior, prize to Essex, and equipped as a tender to her, 25;

mentioned, 26, 27, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36;

conveys to the United States the survivors of the action, 49, 50.

Farragut, Admiral David G.:

family history, 1-6, 300;

birth, 4;

appointed midshipman, 8;

joins frigate Essex, 11;

cruise in Essex, 11-50;

first battle, between Essex and two British ships, 38-44;

returns to United States, 49;

service in Mediterranean, 1815-'20, 53-62;

returns to United States, 62;

serves in Mosquito fleet in West Indies, 1823, 63-67;

first marriage, 67;

promoted to lieutenant, 71;

Brazil station, 1828-'34, 71-74;

witnesses French attack on Vera Cruz, 1838, 75-88;

death of first wife, 88;

promoted to commander, 89;

Brazil station again, 1841, 90-94;

second marriage, 94;

Mexican war, 94-97;

ordnance duties, 97-98;

commandant Mare Island yard, 99-101;

promoted to captain, 101;

commands Brooklyn in Gulf, 1858-'60, 101-105;

question of secession, 107-112;

abandons his home in Norfolk and settles in New York, 112;

chosen to command New Orleans expedition, 122-125;

appointed to command West Gulf squadron, December, 1861, 125;

assumes command at Ship Island, 127;

operations below Mississippi forts, 127-149;

passage of the forts, 149-165;

surrender of New Orleans, 166-176;

operations above New Orleans, 1862, 177-195;

promoted to rear-admiral, 197;

blockade operations, 1862-'63, 196-204;

operations above New Orleans, 1863, 203-235;

passage of batteries at Port Hudson, 211-216;

effect of this passage, 222-229;

relinquishes to Porter command above New Orleans, 235;

return North, Aug., 1863, 235;

resumes command in Gulf, Jan., 1864, 243;