12

War’s End, Squadron’s End, 1865

Military action along the Western waters subsided almost daily from the end of January 1865 when the Army of Tennessee crossed the river back into Alabama until the conclusion of the war in April. Just as it was reported that Confederate soldiers were deserting from the lines in the East, so too did many disappear from duty in the West—but not all. “The guerrilla war continued,” observed historian Richard Gildrie, “having a logic of its own, even though the military purposes were negligible.”

As the new year started, the army cooperation role played in the districts of the U.S. Mississippi Squadron was maintained. Military leaders occasionally called upon the bluejackets for assistance in countering the movements of large Southern units while local ground commanders often requested USN reconnaissance, gunfire, or amphibious assistance in sweeps of suspected Confederate (usually irregular) locations.

While maintaining often minimal patrols, the Mississippi Squadron was gradually altered from a ­­war-fighting command to a coast guard force which handled various police duties, some counterinsurgency activities, and customs inspections. When 1865 began, the U.S. Navy Department, believing that the Rebellion would soon be over, began seeking significant economy in its operations. After Appomattox, a few ­­USN-supported surrender and pacification activities continued in the Mississippi Valley and in the ­­Trans-Mississippi area. However, the Mississippi Squadron, under Acting RAdm. Samuel P. Lee, would be the first USN fleet decommissioned, with most of its volunteers discharged, its regulars transferred, and its assets sold off or reallocated elsewhere before the end of the year.

Acting RAdm. Samuel P. Lee, USN. Formerly in command of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Lee swapped positions with RAdm. David Dixon Porter in October 1864. Arriving at the time of the Johnsonville disaster and prevented by low water from commanding at Nashville in December, he coordinated with the army in the pursuit of Confederate Gen. Hood, but was unable to prevent him from crossing to safety over the Tennessee River. Appreciated by Washington for his business skills, it fell to Lee to disband the Mississippi Squadron in April–August 1865, an unhappy task he performed with great efficiency (Naval History and Heritage Command).

Though they were not as ferocious as in previous years, the need to interrupt or counter partisan and guerrilla activities remained a major concern for the Federal gunboatmen through April. Thereafter for a short time, they remained alert even while carrying out such duties as surveying and base closures. ­­War-mission Rebel ­­hit-and-run or incendiary attacks continued to be made on shipping plying the Mississippi, White, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers even as did many other raids, such as those originating out of western Kentucky. Although a number of boats were shot up, only six more were actually destroyed by their enterprise before the end of the war, including three actually or allegedly burned.

As they had for some time, guerrillas, as well as deserters and just plain outlaws, continued to operate in or near towns and communities up and down the Western streams and in rural areas beyond major cities. Outrages, such as robberies and shootings, became more frequent even as genuine ­­war-mission activities, like those against rail connections, declined.¹

Since the earliest Vicksburg operations in ­­mid-1862, the Mississippi Squadron and its ocean neighbor, the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, had shared a cordial working relationship. RAdm. David Dixon Porter was a relative of RAdm. David G. Farragut, famed commander of the latter unit. After the opening of the Mississippi in July 1863, the geographical responsibilities of the two organizations were redrawn to more closely reflect their names, though both shared basing at New Orleans.

Bad weather and a shallow Tennessee River ended Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas’ pursuit of his defeated foe. During that expedition, Federal planning was intensified for a campaign against Mobile, Alabama, a push long favored by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. The Union’s top commander now ordered capture of the Alabama city and assistance from his Western captains, land and water, in the enterprise. We note here only Western waters support of the campaign.

To boost the growing number of Federal troops to some 45,000 men, the XVI Corps of Maj. Gen. A. J. Smith was detached from Thomas and sent to New Orleans. Smith’s 18,000 soldiers arrived at New Orleans aboard 43 ­­tinclad-escorted transports on February 21 in a convoy reminiscent of that which delivered them to the Tennessee capital in early December. Once ashore, they would join the forces of the healed Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby, who would lead the mission east to attack the crumbling defenses of the Confederacy’s last remaining seaport.

Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby, USA. Regarded like Acting RAdm. Lee for his administrative acumen, Canby became Commander of the Federal Military District of Western Mississippi in late spring 1864. Wounded by a sniper while on a White River inspection trip aboard USS Cricket in November, he recovered to organize and lead the Union campaign against capture of Mobile, Alabama, in March–April 1865. He accepted the surrenders of the Confederate leaders of the Southern Trans-Mississippi Department in May (Library of Congress).

Navy Secretary Gideon Welles now wired Acting RAdm. Lee requiring his assistance in growing the naval component of the assembling Gulf expedition by forwarding two of his best light draught ironclads to the Crescent City. The admiral cut the orders on February 1, sending the monitor Osage and the casemate Cincinnati, along with four tinclads. The heavy units were, as Lee pointed out to his Gulf colleagues, “the very best I had, all of the few others are in such very bad condition as to be wholly useless in your operations.” After the six vessels arrived, on or about February 24, they were inspected by the West Gulf Blockading Squadron’s fleet engineer, who found fault with all of them. The four light draughts were returned to their previous upriver posts, it being noted by the recipients that it would “require a great deal of time and expense to repair them.”

Looking north following the departure two weeks later of the Union invasion fleet to its forward base on Dauphin Island, Mobile Bay, we find the rivers of the Mississippi Valley largely quiet. One example was the Upper Tennessee, which was now largely clear of organized Confederate resistance, though several large Southern groups were known to be in the area, including the brigade of Brig. Gen. Philip Roddy, the onetime commander at Decatur, Alabama.

Taking advantage of unusually high water, the General Burnside (flag) and General Thomas crossed the Elk River Shoals on February 26 proceeding to Muscle Shoals. News was received by Eleventh District commander Lt. Moreau Forrest that one of Roddy’s smaller camps was located near the giant natural river obstruction. Moving against the bivouac, the gunboatmen found it plush with horses, wagons, and even baled cotton. Landing parties from the light draughts were able to drive away the butternut defenders and captured several of their animals, along with seven cotton bales.

As part of this late winter expedition, the General Burnside and General Thomas also penetrated Elk River. During a brief cruise through the end of the month, the sailors believed themselves “meeting with a great deal of success in endeavoring to encourage loyal feelings on the south side of the river.”

When winter turned into spring, the Mississippi and its tributaries appeared more pacified. Acting RAdm. Lee informed Secretary Welles on February 16 that “quiet prevails on the river,” while “trading under Treasury permits is largely increasing.” Only scattered incidents excited the gunboat sailors of the Western rivers from this point on.

Arriving from New Orleans, the ­­side-wheeler Mittie Stephens put into the east bank of the Mississippi, near Cole’s Creek, Mississippi, on February 18, to pick up a load of legally permitted cotton. As the stages dropped away and the deckhands prepared to take aboard the first of 100 bales, a group of partisan scouts under Confederate Capt. Buckley B. Paddock of the 1st Mississippi Cavalry sprang up and began shooting. As they volleyed, several men split off to fire the produce. As soon as the steamer backed out, the escorting tinclad, Prairie Bird, opened upon the graycoated riflemen. Unable to withstand her 10 rounds of shrapnel, the “scoundrels” scampered off and an armed party went ashore to save the bales.

USS Prairie Bird. Assigned to the White River–Arkansas shore area from 1863 into 1864, this tinclad (shown off Vicksburg) was on mission up the Yazoo River in April of the latter year when her consort, USS Petrel, was taken. Escaping, she returned to her Mississippi beat only to come under fire by Confederate Col. Colton Greene during his successful, if short blockade, a month later. She would spend the remainder of the war between Vicksburg and the Arkansas River, making two notable rescues of merchantmen: the sunken B. M. Runyan off Skipwith’s Landing (July 23, 1864) and the Mittie Stephens, under attack at Cole’s Creek, Mississippi (February 18, 1865) (Naval History and Heritage Command).

Although irregular attacks continued, the logistical lifelines of the Mississippi and its tributaries were held open for the remainder of the war. Even though the ­­Trans-Mississippi area west of the great river was still held largely intact by the Confederates, the Federal navy blockaded it tightly.²

Fresh from a Mound City overhaul following her participation in the January chase of Gen. Hood up the Tennessee, Lt. Henry Glassford’s super light draught Reindeer was permitted, during the last week of February, to return from temporary duty with the Ninth District to the Tenth under Lt. Cmdr. Le Roy Fitch. Hardly back in familiar waters, Glassford learned at the beginning of March that he had been chosen to once more visit the wilds of the Upper Cumberland River. The refurbished tinclad arrived off the Nashville levee on March 7, the day news arrived that the steamer Stephen Bayard was burnt out at Memphis, the supposed victim of a Confederate firebomb.

On March 8, Glassford met with Maj. Gen. Thomas at Nashville, who requested that the experienced USN captain undertake a special reconnaissance as far upstream as possible, one which would check the river depth and on the peace of the shoreline population. Guerrilla activity in the areas above and below Tennessee’s capital remained a topic of Yankee concern, though details on actual attacks or gatherings remained scarce. The commanding general wanted the navy to take a look, and Glassford, who seemingly owned a patent on such Upper Cumberland investigations, officially received the job. The next day, the Reindeer along with the Victory departed upriver.

At Louisville during an upriver visit at this time, Acting RAdm. Lee met with Maj. Gen. John M. Palmer. The Department of Kentucky commander asked if it would be possible for a USN gunboat to escort a supply convoy up the Cumberland to Burkesville. Lee agreed to request the cover and sent an order to Lt. Cmdr. Fitch at Smithland ordering him to handle the matter. Fitch was to wire Palmer at Louisville in cipher and inform him whether the depth of the Upper Cumberland would permit such a trip and whether or not any gunboats were available to provide cover. He was also to inform the admiral as to what action, if any, was taken.

While Palmer, Lee, and Fitch were exchanging wires, the Reindeer and Victory steamed to Wolf Creek Shoals, a point about 40 miles below Camp Burnside, the name given the army camp at Big South Fork. When the two tinclads arrived, they found only five feet of water on the obstructions. With the river rapidly falling, Glassford determined it would be imprudent to proceed further and his little task unit began to descend.

All the way back downstream, the Reindeer and Victory, as they had on the way up, stopped at the important towns and landings, as well as many farmhouses, to convey the benevolent intentions of the United States government so long as attacks were avoided. It was expected—hoped might be a better word—that word of this good intent would be carried inland.

At one point, Lt. Glassford was informed that a force of 200 irregulars had crossed the river near Celina, at the mouth of Obey’s River, on Sunday March 12 for unknown reasons. That intelligence was passed to the army commander at Carthage and to a camp of woodcutters at Dixon’s Springs, 30 miles lower.

Fitch received Lee’s orders regarding the Palmer convoy while on a convoy stop of his own at Fort Donelson on March 13. He immediately telegraphed his superior that Thomas had already sent Glassford upstream. On March 15, Lee informed Fitch that the decision to send Glassford up the Cumberland was sound. Neither man knew then that their subordinate had found the Upper Cumberland so shallow and was on his way back. The squadron commander also sent along a copy of his General Order No. 48, which enclosed a copy of the March 9 issue of the Louisville Daily Journal, which reprinted a fantastic story of local Confederate naval activity as told in that day’s issue of the Chattanooga Daily Gazette.

The newspaper stories revealed that a Confederate torpedo boat, accessory equipment, and a ­­nine-man party under Lt. Arthur D. Wharton, CSN, a former captain of the CSS Webb, was captured by armed citizens near Kingston, Tennessee, on March 5. According to intelligence, the Southern expedition was organized in Richmond in early January and went by rail to Bristol, Tennessee, where a boat was obtained and launched in the Holston River. The boat made it undetected past Federal guards at Kingsport and under the bridge at Knoxville and was not sighted before it was four miles below Kingston. Wharton’s mission, the last offensive effort by the Confederate Navy on Western waters, was to destroy Union commerce and key bridges on the Tennessee River, but he failed before achieving any of his goals. During his subsequent interrogation, it was learned that he was also part of a plan to clear obstructions which would allow Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army “to leave Richmond about the 1st of March and retreat in the direction of East Tennessee.”

Acting RAdm. Lee also said that “the highest military sources” had informed him “that the rebel navy is reported to have been relieved from duty on the Atlantic coast and sent to operate on the Western rivers.” Fitch, like the other district commanders who received copies, were to make the report widely available to their officers and men. Additionally, he and they were to “keep an active patrol of the river, and a constant and bright lookout.”

Upon his return to Nashville on March 17, Lt. Glassford reported to Thomas that there was a good deal of suspicion on the north side of the Cumberland that the guerrillas that crossed at Celina, if that they were, had plans to attack the woodmen. The Reindeer’s skipper also reported his findings on civilian sentiment, the lack of irregular activity, and the stages of the upper stream to Lee and Fitch. The squadron commander, in turn, sent a letter with the dispatch boat mail from Mound City to Louisville telling Maj. Gen. Palmer that his Burkesville supply petition could not be honored.³

Begun in earnest on March 17, the Federal campaign to capture Mobile proceeded while final military operations in the East also progressed. As the collapse of the Confederacy and an end of the war appeared increasingly imminent Navy Secretary Welles and a host of government and political leaders looked ahead to peace and intensified plans to reduce the huge military and naval force. Soon after the Nashville and Fort Fisher victories in January, orders went out beginning the retrenchment of the U.S. naval establishment. Similar requirements would soon affect the Union Army.

Welles, a fiscal conservative, “determined to dismantle the Navy as efficiently as it had been built up.” This would, however, be no haphazard enterprise. Care had to be taken to scale back in such a fashion as to not harm material and human requirements. Eventually, however, the number of vessels would be reduced from several thousand to no more than 100. The directives from the Navy Department were sent out in stages with an overall goal of cutting costs wherever possible. For example, on March 30, Acting RAdm. Lee received a Department communication ordering that all vessels chartered by the Mississippi Squadron be immediately discharged. In the future, their duties would be carried out by the squadron boats “least serviceable as gunboats.”

The final push by the Army of the Potomac against Gen. Lee’s lines began southwest of Petersburg, Virginia, on April 1 as the Western army of Maj. Gen. Canby, with naval support, continued to invest Mobile. Richmond fell early on April 4, but word of the Union victory was not received in the West until late in the day. At noon the next day, a ­­36-gun salute was fired in honor of the triumph. Two days later, Acting RAdm. Lee began to execute Welles’ order regarding chartered vessels.

With the necessity of convoys gone, the Cumberland River gunboats Reindeer and Victory were ordered to report to Mound City, along with the newer Sibyl, “a former towboat,” from the Seventh District. These light draughts would be among the first tinclads demilatarized and turned into transports or employed on other duties. The Tenth District, perhaps the most famous squadron unit in the ­­war-long convoy campaign, was now reduced to just the Moose and Abeona.

On April 6, Fourth District supervisor Lt. Cmdr. Robert L. May, who had just assumed command of the new tinclad Ibex, was tasked by Lee with overseeing the withdrawal of the squadron’s chartered steamers. On April 15, the Reindeer and Victory, with their guns and casemates removed, would begin their temporary careers as naval auxiliaries, replacing several withdrawn chartered transports.

Gen. Lee surrendered to Lt. Gen. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, a fact soon communicated to friend and foe alike. Union celebrations of the welcome event began as appropriate all over the North. At precisely 12 p.m. on April 10, a ­­100-gun salute was fired in honor of the Appomattox ceremony. It was repeated at sunset. Mobile was captured two days later. At this point, no one knew precisely where Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his followers were, least of all the men of the Mississippi Squadron. A belief would soon take hold that they were trying to escape west to continue the war from Texas.⁴

After the fall of Richmond and Mobile, it was only a matter of time before impact of the Northern achievement announced at Appomattox spread across the land. In these heady early days of Union victory, unregulated navigation on the Western rivers was resumed and military responsibility to police them was significantly reduced.

Resources devoted to war were now reduced by the Federals accordingly. On April 14, General Order No. 60 was received by district commanders of the Mississippi Squadron. Henceforth, the remaining gunboats were not required to cover the landings by steamboats engaged in lawful trade unless desired by military authorities or the parties making the landings.

The big ironclads were—as some had been for some time—idled and convoy escort was ended, with any conflicting squadron orders on this point revoked. In general, the tinclads were to concentrate specifically on coast guard duties or special activities such as survey or salvage work. To save fuel costs, all of the boats were to be kept underway “under easy steam to preserve a vigilant police of the rivers and protect public and private interests as required.”

President Lincoln was shot shortly after 10 p.m. that Good Friday while watching Our American Cousin at DC’s Ford’s Theatre. He died at 7:22 a.m. the next morning and, by late that Saturday evening or early on Sunday the 16th, everyone in the Mississippi Squadron, as in every other naval squadron or shore base and among the citizenry, had heard the awful news. While the nation came to grips with the enormity of the assassination and Vice President Andrew Johnson became president, plans were put in place to honor the late chief executive.

On Sunday, Navy Secretary Welles wired all of his squadron commanders requiring them to observe the funeral with appropriate respect. More complete special orders were sent by mail. From Mound City, Acting RAdm. Lee passed official word of Lincoln’s death by telegram and dispatch boats to all of his district commanders, who in turn notified their vessel captains. On most ships and boats, crews were assembled and Lee’s announcement was read, along with an order for mourning. The same was true at naval shore locations. All officers started wearing crape, something which would adorn their uniforms for the next six months, and, beginning on April 17, all squadron flags were lowered to half staff until after the funeral. At bases, one gun was fired every half hour from sunrise to sunset.

Sporadic “outrages” against civilian shipping infrequently continued as the seasons changed. These crimes were usually perpetrated by lawless guerrilla bands or just plain outlaws, though a few groups of regular Confederate military and naval personnel, such as those up the Red River, had yet to surrender. One such example was brought to the attention of Acting RAdm. Lee, who passed on what he knew on to Secretary Welles. Three steamers, the St. Paul, Sylph, and Anna Everton, were, he wrote, captured up Tennessee’s Hatchie River between April 15 and 17 and all were, according to the master of the former, probably burned. The raiders were reportedly led by the younger half brother of Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Sgt. James Madison Luxton (aka “Matt” Luxton), 7th Tennessee Cavalry (CSA).

After receiving this information, the captain of the Eighth District tinclad Siren, then lying off Randolph, Tennessee, on the south side of the Hatchie’s mouth, immediately forwarded it to Mound City. A few days later, Lee offered his superior clarification when another Siren report arrived indicating that only two of the three boats captured were destroyed. Initial indication regarding Luxton as strike leader was also changed; the organizer was, in fact, a Memphis man named Wilcox who had supposedly posed as one of Brig. Gen. Jo Shelby’s staff officers.

When news reached the Federals, an army expedition, under the command of Brig. Gen. E. D. Osband, was loaded aboard two transports and sent down to Fulton (on the north side of the mouth of the Hatchie River) and Randolph. Under cover of the Siren, troops disembarked and went inland, with the column from Randolph shortly thereafter engaging the Rebel perpetrators near Brownsville, Tennessee. Among the prisoners taken was the Shelby imposter.

When the bluecoats returned to Randolph, Brig. Gen. Osband immediately assembled a ­­court-martial in the cabin of his transport and within an hour the instigator was convicted and condemned. As the Siren’s captain wrote: “General Osband hung him from a cotton wood tree at this place this evening; his body is still hanging from the tree.”

As spring greeted the lands touched by the Western waters, danger to vessels of the Mississippi Squadron from action or accident continued unabated. In midmorning on April 22, the fleet flagboat Black Hawk, anchored on the Ohio River just below the Mound City naval station, caught fire (from coal oil or a magazine fire). Before she sank, several tugs and the newly arrived tinclad Tempest were able to get alongside and save all but four of the crew. Most of the official records and accounts, the payroll, and all personal effects aboard were lost. The surviving crew were transferred to the local receiving ship, and the Tempest, the last light draught Western rivers gunboat to enter service, became the new flagboat on April 26.⁵

USS Black Hawk fire. In mid-morning on April 22, 1865, the Mississippi Squadron flagboat Black Hawk, anchored on the Ohio River just below the Mound City naval station, caught fire (from coal oil or a magazine fire). Before she sank, several tugs and the newly arrived tinclad Tempest were able to get alongside and save all but four of the crew. Most of the official records and accounts, the payroll, and all personal effects aboard were lost (Naval History and Heritage Command).

In response to an April 23 telegram from Secretary Welles to his squadron commanders urging the utmost vigilance to prevent the escape of Jefferson Davis and his cabinet across the Mississippi, Acting RAdm. Lee alerted his subordinates: “The immediate engrossing and important duty is to capture Jeff. Davis and his Cabinet and plunder. To accomplish this, all available means and every effort must be made to the exclusion of all interfering calls.” This was, in fact, the second such fugitive alert within two weeks, coming upon the heels of a ­­short-lived watch for Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Each divisional officer was ordered to “live aboard of a gunboat in which he can quickly and readily move about within the limits of his command, to see that orders are properly attended to, and that the duties required of the different vessels of his district are well performed.” In the event that any of them picked up Davis or any of his followers, they were not to be turned over to military, but were to be immediately sent to Mound City aboard a gunboat.

Gen. Joseph Johnston surrendered in North Carolina to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman on April 26, thereby effectively ending the war in the East. That night America’s most horrific maritime tragedy occurred in the West.

As after every war through the Iraq conflict over a hundred years later, the U.S. accelerated the downsizing of its large military establishment. The army and the USN rapidly consolidated the divisions of their organization and made plans to sell weapons and equipment stockpiles or sell ships and surplus goods. Primary emphasis, however, was given to manpower demobilization as the triumphant Union almost immediately began releasing most of its active duty soldiers and sailors from service and rapidly returned them to their states of residence. Many breveted regular army officers and those with acting rank in the navy were soon to hold lesser titles (Acting RAdm. Lee, for example, would revert to his permanent rank of captain) while the majority of volunteer officers were discharged.

Rescue, relief, and repatriation of POWs from both sides received early attention, with immediate succor to those from the North. Vicksburg was chosen as a center for the return home of Western POWs and men released from such Southern camps as Andersonville and Cahawba. As the result of USQMD contracts with ship owners and shipping combines, numerous steamboats landed at the town levee to board former prisoners for trips upriver and home. Among the vessels participating in this repatriation program was the large Sultana, often chartered by the military as a troop transport. Interestingly, on her last downriver trip that April, she stopped at various isolated locations en route delivering the news of President Lincoln’s murder.⁶

Carrying somewhere between 75 and 100 passengers, plus her regular ­­85-man crew, the Sultana cleared New Orleans for up the river on April 21. She put into Vicksburg to make repairs to one of her leaky boilers⁷ and to board additional people. During her stay, new lift papers were signed with the local quartermaster and over 2,000 ­­ex-POWs, mostly from Ohio, many of whom were sick or weak from exposure, crowded aboard, taking up every berth or other space. To accommodate this gross overload (her legal capacity was 376 souls), the decks were strengthened with supporting stanchions, but still they sagged. During this layover that, because it was so common, was unnoticed elsewhere, a stirring escape attempt occupied naval officers some miles below.

A few coal barges and several Union gunboats were now stationed at the mouth of the Red River, which, for most of the past year had, like the Yazoo, been largely ignored as a site of active Federal naval attention. According to intelligence reports received in New Orleans, the Confederate ironclad Missouri and the ram Webb, previously at Shreveport, Louisiana, had arrived at Alexandria several weeks earlier. Northern spies concentrating on the former also saw that the latter, previously neglected, was being physically refreshed by the energetic and newly arrived Lt. Charles W. “Savez” Read. A veteran of Mississippi River service aboard the famous CSS McRae and CSS Arkansas, as well as the ­­ocean-going warships Florida and Tacony, he had gained Richmond’s permission to run the ­­paddle-wheeler out of hiding and down to the Gulf of Mexico to become a commerce raider.

While Read finished his preparations and started downstream, the Union Navy, having been alerted, reinforced the tinclads in the waters off the mouth of the Red, adding the ironclads Choctaw and Lafayette, as well as the monitor Manhattan. On the night of April 23/24, the Webb stealthily broke out into the Mississippi, where two years earlier she had helped overwhelm and capture the Federal ironclad Indianola. Discovered, she speedily outran the big Federal pickets and enjoyed smooth steaming.

Not far above New Orleans, Read sent a landing party ashore to cut telegraph wires and thereby stop news of his run reaching the city. The effort failed as the Yankees, wiring out alerts, had sent a dispatch down from Donaldsonville, Louisiana, giving military and naval leaders in the town three hours’ advance warning that the Webb was en route. At the same time, newspapermen all over the North published extras on the exodus, recapping with various degrees of credulity the Rebel’s departure and repeating speculation, including the idea that Jefferson Davis was aboard escaping to Havana.

Masquerading as Northern bluejackets and, while passing other boats even dipping the ship’s colors in honor of Lincoln’s death, the Southern crew, looking for all the world like another commercial cotton trader, moved down to Algiers fooling numerous gunboat lookouts. The pilot of the USS Lackawanna, a veteran steamboatman familiar with river shipping, recognized the passing steamer and raised the alarm. Raising her Dixie ensign, the interloper rushed away under fire, moving, according to Sharf, at a remarkable 25 mph.

CSS Webb destruction. Notorious in Union eyes for her participation in the February 1863 sinking of the U.S. ironclad Indianola, this cottonclad ram, which was not actually transferred from the Confederate Army to the navy until early 1865, hid out far up the Red River of Louisiana. Under command of Lt. Charles S. Read, she broke out into the Mississippi on April 23–24 headed toward the Gulf of Mexico, but was forced to scuttle when confronted by a powerful Federal warship near New Orleans (Harper’s Weekly, May 20, 1865).

As alarm bells sounded in New Orleans, the Webb eluded at least four Union warships and by Monday afternoon was past the city, headed toward the Gulf, Yankee ships tailing behind. About 23 miles downstream, the masts of the ­­sloop-of-war Richmond were sighted behind a shoal blocking the river channel. Knowing the power of her broadside and electing not to test it, Read ordered his ­­would-be raider run up on the left bank. Hitting the beach, the ship was set ablaze after her men abandoned. All were soon rounded up to become POWs.⁸

Two days later, severely overloaded, the Sultana paddled up the Mississippi, making intermediate stops at Helena, Arkansas, and reached Memphis about 7 p.m. on April 26. With a thunderstorm gathering, she coaled and departed, working her way north against a stiff spring current. At Redman Point, on the Arkansas shore between Harrison’s and Bradley’s Landings, approximately seven to nine miles above the city at Paddy’s Hen and Chickens, the Sultana exploded at about 2 a.m., April 27.⁹ Numerous passengers were thrown into the churning waters as hot coals turned the boat into a blazing torch. It was recorded that the disaster “torched a ruddy glare among the cottonwoods of Tennessee and Arkansas and a dull rumble shook the countryside.” The thunderstorm broke at the same time.¹⁰

The glare from the burning Sultana could be seen at Memphis and numerous boats and vessels put out to the scene to learn what had occurred and to rescue survivors. In the hour before the first rescue boat arrived (the steamer Bostona II), many not already dead died from burns or hypothermia or could no longer remain afloat in the icy water and drowned.

Among the craft lying at the U.S. Navy yard just north of Memphis that morning were the repairing timberclad Tyler and the idle tinclad Grosbeak. Aboard the latter, an Acting Master’s Mate, William B. Floyd, had witnessed the Sultana depart the coal yard and then, not long after, “noticed a red glow in the sky, which very soon showed plainly as a fire.” This development was pointed out to the senior master’s mate of the boat, in command in the temporary absence ashore of Acting Master Thomas Burns. Unwilling to assume responsibility for firing up the boiler, he ordered that the tinclad not speed to the rescue.

Sultana destruction. This sidewheeler was one of several Northern steamers given contracts to return Union POWs at the end of the war. With a capacity of 376 passengers, she was transporting 2,137 on the Mississippi seven miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, when she exploded and burnt out on April 27, 1865, killing well over a thousand souls. A number of vessels, civilian and military, participated in rescue operations, including the USS Essex, Tyler, and the tinclad Grosbeak, which latter alone saved 90 men. This remains the greatest maritime disaster in American history (Harper’s Weekly, May 20, 1865).

When “faint cries for help” were heard echoing over the water sometime after 3 a.m., Pilot Karnes, awakened by Floyd, overrode the master’s mate and sent the crew of the Grosbeak into action. Quickly, the tinclad’s cutters were launched and began rowing toward the sound of the cries. Over a dozen survivors were quickly rescued. About this same time, small boats also set out from the Tyler and the ironclad Essex.

Within a short time, both the Grosbeck and the Essex were, themselves, underway, picking up people as they proceeded, including men (sometimes naked) along the shore. The Essex halted her effort at Fort Pickering; however, the Grosbeck continued, going as far as the other side of President’s Island. When she returned to Memphis about 11 a.m., the tinclad had approximately 90 survivors on board.

The hulk of the devastated steamboat drifted to the west bank of the Mississippi at Hen Island, off the tiny settlement of Mound City, Arkansas, where it sank about dawn. Bodies would be recovered for months, but, altogether, some 700–800 people survived the Sultana disaster. Of the 1,700–1,800 who perished (no one knew how many were aboard, so accurate estimates remain impossible), many were buried in the Memphis National Cemetery.

Also on April 27, Maj. Gen. Thomas at Nashville wrote to Acting RAdm. Lee to say that he had received information that Davis and his followers were planning to make their escape across the Mississippi. The squadron commander laid the highest priority on effecting a capture and ordered all of his ­­in-theater commanders “to make a minute report of the dispositions made” to accomplish the “great object.”

The following afternoon Secretary Welles and Lt. Gen. Grant forwarded hearsay information on the Confederate president’s escape route. Welles advised Lee to continue to watch the Mississippi and its tributaries while Grant thought Davis was headed to South Carolina and eventual escape out of the United States, maybe via the great river.

Lee now began sending reinforcements from the upper flotillas to Memphis and lower points where it was realistically expected that the Davis party might make a run. Among the boats transferred to the pursuit were the Silver Lake, Brilliant, Ozark, Naumkeag, Tyler, Victory, Neosho, Ibex, Kate (on her first duty), Juliet, Marmora, Colossus, Louisville, Romeo, and Abeona. The acting rear admiral took personal charge from the Tempest (Tinclad No. 1), off the mouth of the White River.

Over the next few days, the target search area shifted gradually south to the regions near Grand Gulf, Rodney, or Bruinsburg, Mississippi. Much of the land through which it was thought the Confederate president might flee (given that he had a home just below Vicksburg) was seen to be “overflowed and swampy.” Still, all skiffs, flats, and other manner of small boats crossing any of the adjacent rivers were frequently investigated and often impounded or destroyed. Several lengthy gunboat penetrations inland were attempted. For example, on May 4–6, the old Fifth District veteran Mound City undertook a scout up the Big Black River, finding the fast stream “quite narrow and the bends short.” A thick ­­150-foot thick driftwood obstruction or “raft” blocked passage to the river’s great bridge, forcing the ironclad to back stern first all the way back to the Mississippi. The trip was similar to that she had made out of Steele’s Bayou back in early 1863.

No Mississippi Squadron boat ever came close to intercepting the Confederate president, who never actually made it very far west at all. With members of his Cabinet, he had reached and departed Abbeville, South Carolina, on May 2. After several more days of fruitless running, Davis, his family and part of his Cabinet were arrested at Irwinville, some 15 miles from Macon, Georgia, on May 10. Acting Rear Adm. Lee received a telegram from Maj. Gen Thomas on May 15 announcing the capture.¹¹

As might be expected after such a gigantic disaster, the literature concerning the Sultana explosion is of significant size. We have noted here those publications directly bearing upon the USN involvement in the rescue effort. Numerous newspapers recalled the event, particularly during its sesquicentennial.

As the death throes of the Confederacy continued, so too did the Mississippi Squadron’s police work on the Western waters. Taking into account occasional dustups such as the Davis chase, the rivers were now mostly pacific and fully open to commercial steamboat traffic. As the season grew warmer, it brought the certainty that the water stage was in decline.

On the upper rivers guarded by the Tenth District, planning started to transfer naval operations for the annual ­­low-water period from the Cumberland and Tennessee to the Ohio and a temporary base at Evansville, Indiana. With both Lt. Cmdr. Fitch and Lt. Glassford on other duties, Acting Master Washington C. Coulson, the executive officer of the Moose, was, as of April 29, acting commander of the district and its flagboat Moose.

Then off Tennessee Rolling Mills, which was actually a Lyon County, Kentucky, village where the iron works lay deeply immersed by ­­late-winter flooding, the Moose was alerted by the passing Abeona that a large party, reportedly of 150–200 ­­un-surrendered Rebels, was two miles inland at Center Furnace and headed toward the Cumberland intent upon crossing it and sacking nearby Eddyville, Kentucky. The Confederates were supposedly led by a Maj. Hopkins of Brig. Gen. Abraham Buford’s Second Division, a part of the Cavalry Corps of Lt. Gen. Forrest. This report was not correct; a review of the officer roster for Forrest’s entire command published as the appendix to Jordan and Pryor shows no leader down to company level named Hopkins. This may have been another case of outlaws masquerading as military officers and intent on doing mischief for their own personal gain.

Even though the river was falling, Coulson got his warship underway for an interception. Upon rounding the point at the head of Big Eddy, lookouts aboard sighted a large body of armed butternuts on shore, with two ­­troop-laden boats shoving off for the opposite bank. Seeing the tinclad, the men in the small craft began jumping overboard.

Coming to, the Moose began backing while simultaneously the forward gun on the upper deck was fired and sailors volleyed with rifles. Few of the men caught in the boats reached shore; most were wounded, killed, or drowned. The tinclad quickly landed a party of “­­small-arms men” to engage the visible ­­revolver-armed and disorganized survivors. No match for the bluejackets, most were dispersed, with 20 or so men killed or wounded and six captured. Additionally, 19 horses and three mules plus small arms and equestrian accouterments were also taken.

About 60 Southerners and their leader managed to escape into the woods on the river’s north side. Deciding it was not prudent for his men ashore to venture far inland, the sailors were recalled and the gunboat returned to Eddyville with her prisoners and plunder aboard, including the animals. After, the men and livestock were turned over to the local post military commander with a recap on the action.

Having recently returned to Smithland from Mound City duty, Lt. Cmdr. Fitch was present when Coulson returned. Taking his subordinate’s report, the veteran officer had the satisfaction of knowing that his flagboat had emerged triumphant in what turned out to be the last significant naval counterinsurgency engagement on the Western rivers during the Civil War. A report on the skirmish was forwarded to Mound City and, on May 15, Lee sent a paraphrased copy to Secretary Welles.¹²

Implementation of plans to reduce the overall size of the U.S. Navy were in full swing by the start of May. On the third day of the month, Secretary Welles ordered the expenses of the Mississippi Squadron, the major organization we consider here, reduced as far as possible. To start with, only 25 vessels of all types were to be kept in commission. Any units that belonged to the army or USQMD were to be dismantled of naval property and returned. These specifically included the four chartered Upper Tennessee gunboats and the leased facilities at Bridgeport, Alabama. The resignations of any officers who wished to leave the service were to be approved. Requests for leave or transfer would also be considered, as long as a sufficient number of officers were retained to man the dwindling number of boats.

Almost two weeks later on May 18, after returning to Mound City from New Orleans, Acting RAdm. Lee sent Washington two vessel lists. One identified those to be retained in the Mississippi Squadron ­­long-term and the second showing those only needed for the present.

Those on the first register included the ironclads Benton, Tennessee, Neosho, and Pittsburg, the timberclads Lexington and Tyler, the tinclads Ouachita, Fort Hindman, Tempest, Hastings, Grossbeak, Gazelle, Ibex, St. Clair, Abeona, Gamage, Collier, Oriole, Moose, and Sibyl, and the auxiliaries William H. Brown, General Lyon, and Samson. The second register included the ironclads Louisville and Mound City, the tinclads Argosy, Colossus, Exchange, Forest Rose, Fairplay, Fairy, Kate, Kenwood, Little Rebel, Mist, Naumkeag, Prairie Bird, Alfred Robb, Reindeer, Siren, Silver Lake, and Silver Cloud, and the auxiliaries General Price and Volunteer, plus eight tugs.

While the squadron commander’s attention increasingly turned to downsizing his operation, he was still required to provide army cooperation whenever possible. In response to a May 18 request from Maj. Gen. Thomas, Lee immediately ordered the tinclads Fairplay and Abeona to Nashville to provide escort for three transports scheduled to return POWs from Brig. Gen. Daniel C. Goven’s brigade to their homes along the Mississippi River shoreline.

When the two vessels arrived at the Tennessee capital on May 23, the Fairplay was diverted to escort a different POW steamer on a “milk run” to Memphis. Along the way, she oversaw the delivery of hundreds of former Confederate soldiers at numerous intermediate landings, returning to Cairo, Illinois, on May 29. After coaling, she continued on to Nashville, where, together with the Abeona, she undertook the Goven mission.

Lee took the opportunity on May 19 to pen a long report that provided his recommendations “regarding the reduction of the squadron.” Once the last Confederate ­­Trans-Mississippi holdouts surrendered, all of the ironclads could be laid up in ordinary and withdrawn. Only a handful of service craft were needed and all of the others, plus the tinclads and auxiliaries, could be brought to Mound City. Blessed with valuable workmen and facilities, the Illinois complex was centrally located and would be a convenient site for later public sales.

Given an anticipated civilian demand, it was recommended that the withdrawn vessels be readied for disposal as soon as possible. Armor from casemates could be quickly and easily removed for separate sale or storage by crews of the various gunboats. Cannon could similarly be withdrawn, along with the heavy anchors, cables, and other surplus and salable items. Ammunition could be relocated to other military magazines.

After the vessels were stripped, a grand public sale (terms cash) should be held to gain as much return as possible on their original purchase prices. Given the expected early opening of trade on the tributaries of regions lately in secession, it was suggested that the light draughts would be the first sold and could be converted within a short time, perhaps by June 20.

Acting RAdm. Lee also recommended that, for 15 days in advance of whatever auction date was chosen, newspaper advertisements be placed in the daily newspapers of the principal river cities, including Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Cairo, St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans. For a week or so prior to the sale, prospective buyers would be allowed to inspect the boats.

Although Lee was not a favorite of Welles, the latter did recognize that his Western man had the requisite business skills to organize the squadron’s liquidation. Agreeing with the commander’s proposals, Welles approved the downsizing proposals, indicating that the vessels would be disposed of under the direction of the Department’s Bureau of Construction. His rush to conclude Western activities was reinforced by an important supporter. “Lt Gen. Grant,” the Secretary confided, “does not consider it necessary to have ­­men-of-war upon any river but the Mississippi.” Upon receipt of Washington’s authority, Lee began selecting vessels to demobilize. A series of dispatches on the subject were then ordered delivered by the Sibyl to “every gunboat on the river.”¹³

Although it was anticipated that the sale of some of the boats could occur as early as the end of June, removal of the guns from the heavy and light units of the fleet took more time, as did the dismantlement of their military bulwarks, casemates and other protections. Additionally, there remained a few police and surrender tasks yet to finish. The first of these was the last ­­large-scale naval escort operation associated with the Civil War on Western waters.

Throughout the Civil War years in a development far outside the scope of our story until now, French forces under instructions from Napoleon III occupied and attempted to fully subject Mexico. During the final days of the Confederacy, a number of Southern commands, officers, or parts of Rebel outfits, notably that of Brig. Gen. Joseph O. (“Jo”) Shelby, refused to quit and either did or threatened to remove south of the Rio Grande. These actions, plus the general threat posed by the puppet Emperor Maximilian to the U.S. southwestern border, caused President Andrew Johnson to order Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, newly appointed commander of the Military District of the Southwest, to undertake an expedition into Texas.

Although most of the soldiers sent would go by sea, a number would be dispatched up the Red River from Louisiana. On May 24, Acting RAdm. Lee revealed to his Third District commander, Lt. Cmdr. James P. Foster, that, in the process of moving into Texas, Maj. Gen. Sheridan intended to garrison Shreveport and Alexandria with those troops and also wanted at least two light draughts to patrol the river between those communities. Foster was expected to cooperate with Sheridan and his deputies in whatever manner was desired, and to do so, Lee beefed up his local force with the tinclads St. Clair, Fort Hindman, Collier, Gamage, and Little Rebel.

Having learned the tricks of the Red a year earlier, the leaders of the Mississippi Squadron knew that the water in that stream could be too low for ironclads. As a result, the number of tinclads, including the big gun Fort Hindman, was large. In addition, a last Confederate ironclad caused concern.

Though not high now, the water level upstream at Shreveport was up sufficiently by the end of March to allow the Missouri to move down to Alexandria. Arriving on April 4, she anchored opposite Fort Randolph above the falls that had blocked RAdm. David D. Porter’s fleet a year earlier. There she was seen by Federal informants who reported that she appeared to have been built on the plan of the CSS Tennessee, captured by RAdm. David G. Farragut at Mobile Bay the previous August. Mounting only three guns, she was “very slow, not being able to stem the current alone.”¹⁴

Also on May 24, Lt. Cmdr. Foster sent, by army request, the tinclad Gazelle to Baton Rouge to embark the Confederate generals Simon Bolivar Buckner and Sterling Price, who, on behalf of ­­Trans-Mississippi Department commander Gen. Edmond Kirby Smith, were en route to New Orleans to negotiate surrender terms with Federal Military District of West Mississippi commander Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby. On May 26, the two sides entered into a “military convention” which extended to Kirby Smith’s command (army and navy) the same generous terms as given by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox.

The next day, Canby’s headquarters informed Foster of the surrender and asked, as Lee had indicated, that two or three gunboats be made available to convoy Federal occupation troops from the mouth of the Red River to garrison the various former Confederate posts on that stream. The expedition would depart early the following week. The news of the ­­Buckner-Price accord was officially wired to the Mississippi Squadron commander on May 27, the same day he met with Maj. Gen. Sheridan at Cairo to receive a firsthand briefing on requirements for the forthcoming Texas operation.

In the absence of Foster, who had traveled up to Mound City, Lee now delegated the new Third District commander Lt. Cmdr. William E. Fitzhugh to temporarily act as Mississippi Squadron liaison with Maj. Gen. Canby’s command. At the same time, Fitzhugh’s force was enhanced by assignment of the ironclads Lafayette and Benton plus two more tinclads. Largely unremembered, Fitzhugh, who joined the squadron late in 1864 as captain of the Ouachita, led the last large Union naval force assembled for operations on the Western waters.

On May 28, Fitzhugh informed Canby that he had three gunboats at the mouth of the Red River ready to accompany his force. Consequently and before the day was over, the Benton, Ouachita, and Fort Hindman were sent up the river leading the steamer Ida May, transporting Maj. Gen. Francis J. Herron and his staff. They were followed by eight troop transports loaded with 8,000 soldiers, with their rear protected by the Lafayette, Gamage, and Little Rebel.

USS Benton. Built as a catamaran snagboat for James B. Eads, this vessel was converted by its owner into a powerful Federal gunboat. Serving as flagboat until the arrival of the USS Black Hawk, she actively participated in most of the Western waters campaigns until the conclusion of the Red River operation in May 1864. A guardship for the remainder of the conflict, she was given the honor of joining the Mississippi Squadron task force sent up the Red River in June 1865 to occupy Shreveport, Louisiana, and take possession of the last Confederate ironclad, CSS Missouri (Naval History and Heritage Command).

For several days, Fitzhugh and Herron retraced the route taken by RAdm. Porter and Department of the Gulf troops in early 1864, arriving below Alexandria on the evening of June 2. “There was no public demonstration on the arrival of the troops,” Northern journalists recorded, “yet the feeling of relief manifested by the citizens was unmistakable.”

Early the next morning, Lt. James H. Carter, CSN, presented himself and surrendered the Missouri, its 42 officers and crew. In conversation, the intrepid ­­builder-skipper reported that his was the only Southern naval vessel left on the Red River or its tributaries. The last Rebel ironclad to capitulate in home waters was moved below the falls, cleaned up, and sent down the river to Memphis on June 4 under escort of the Benton.

Also on June 4, the Gamage with both Fitzhugh and Carter embarked, escorted Maj. Gen. Herron and his steamers to Shreveport, arriving, via Grand Ecore, three days later, where Arkansas and Missouri soldiers were found to be keeping order. Aside from some artillery parked in the city, little other public property was found.

On the way up, the Federals noticed that the country through which they passed showed “many signs of the Red River campaign, ruins being seen on every hand.” The city, like the countryside, was destitute of supplies, but large quantities of cotton were found along the riverbanks. It was hoped that it could be pushed out while the river was still high. No Rebel navy yards, ordnance, or supplies of consequence were found at Shreveport, just as none were discovered earlier at Alexandria. Carter did turn over a pair of small supply steamers to Herron.

As the Herron mission began, Fitzhugh was also requested to have a tinclad ascend the Ouachita. Exhibiting complete cooperation, the Third District commander let it be known that he had “seven wooden and two ironclad vessels in readiness” for whatever the commanding general desired. So it was that while he was at Shreveport, the Kenwood and Collier went up the Ouachita River as far as Monroe. A flag of truce was met at one point and those holding it represented “the lawless condition of the soldiers and others” on and inland of the riverbanks.

Having resumed command of the Third District, Lt. Cmdr. Foster traveled up the Red River aboard a USQMD steamer, ordering back downstream the ironclads and most of the tinclads encountered at various points en route. About 70 miles below Shreveport, he met and conferred with Lt. Cmdr. Fitzhugh, whom he ordered to Mound City to report on his mission to Acting RAdm. Lee. Returning down the river, Foster left the Gamage and Fort Hindman to patrol and act in support of the army.¹⁵

As the last Red River expedition unfolded, commanders of Union Navy squadrons continued to downsize. Secretary Welles was determined to reduce his several fleets both efficiently and rapidly. To expedite the Department’s goal from an administrative viewpoint, Acting RAdm. Lee consolidated his squadron’s districts of his command on May 29. Where there were previously eleven, now there were but three: First, “from White River, inclusive, as far up the Mississippi and its tributaries as naval operations extend”; second, “from White River to Grand Gulf”; and third, “from Grand Gulf to New Orleans.” Five tinclads were assigned to the first, four to the second, and five to the third. Lt. Cmdr. Foster retained the third with Lt. Cmdr. Robert L. May in charge of the first and Lt. Cmdr. John J. Cornwell the second.

At the same time, he wrote to the Navy Department asking to retain thirteen light draughts. “Gunboat protection for our trading vessels against guerrillas will be required up the tributaries—the Yazoo, Red, and Arkansas rivers—for some little time to come,” Lee opined. He would, however, “reduce the batteries and crews of the vessels retained.” If his recommendation were accepted, three dozen light draughts would be withdrawn, demobilized, and made ready for sale.

Such retention did not fit into Washington’s ­­cost-cutting plan and, on June 2, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Vasa Fox wrote giving Lee the opportunity to choose and retain 15 vessels overall plus storeships. Additionally, he was to economize wherever possible, especially in the use of coal. All vessels were “to keep steam down, except in an emergency.” These restrictions were noted by the admiral in a June 12 general order to district and vessel commanders. Those tinclads remaining were reshuffled, with three assigned to the First Division; three to the Second Division; and four to the Third Division. The Tempest continued as flagboat, with the General Lyon, William H. Brown, Samson, and Thistle attached to her. The gunboats Little Rebel, General Price, and General Bragg were retained to blockade the Red River’s mouth.

As the withdrawn tinclads reported to Mound City, they were taken in hand by laborers contracted for by base commander Com. John W. Livingston under order of the Bureau of Construction. In an orderly manner, the casemates were removed, along with all other protections, and the guns taken out. Small arms and powder were dispatched to magazines and basic engine repairs completed. Most of the light draughts remained fully functional as steamboats and could soon again serve as transports.

Occasionally, the smaller warcraft undertook special duties. For example, one of the services provided by the tinclads during the war often received little notice: the towing of ironclads. Most of the heavy gunboats had great difficulty making way against the currents of the rivers and often required assistance, which was usually provided by civilian craft or, when available, the light draughts.

In keeping with Navy Department orders that a large number of the ironclads of the Mississippi Squadron be laid up at Mound City (several were sent to New Orleans), it became necessary for several of the tinclads to assist the fleet auxiliaries and wooden gunboats in helping the larger boats reach their destination from locations along the Mississippi at Memphis and below.

It was particularly important that, in the process of relocating the ironclads, they were not grounded on sandbars or other obstructions, escape from which could prove difficult. As it appeared that three of the veterans already at Mound City might be caught by receding waters above the bar as the river continued to recede, they were taken downstream on June 10 and anchored in the deeper water opposite Cairo.

For example, on June 19, the tinclads Argosy and Forest Rose were dispatched to Memphis to tow up the veteran ironclad Essex. Although all practical dispatch was to be employed in accomplishing the mission, the pilots of the light draughts were specifically ordered to “pass no doubtful place until you have thoroughly sounded and buoyed them in [small] boats.” While conducting this service from Vicksburg for another armorclad, an officer aboard the light draught Huntress observed that “returning against the current with an ­­iron-clad in tow was rather slow work.” Opportunities to study life along the riverbank were many.

Another difficulty facing Lee as he dismantled the Mississippi Squadron was finding a place to stow the guns, carriages, stores, and gunpowder taken off the boats. Also on June 19, a telegram arrived from Washington, D.C., that seemed to solve this problem. The admiral was authorized to occupy the grounds of the Jefferson Barracks Reserve near St. Louis. The War Department, to whom Secretary Welles had turned for assistance in the matter, had even agreed to permit the USN to erect temporary sheds, storehouses, and a magazine.

Stone powder magazine at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. While the Mississippi Squadron was being dismantled, a place was required to stow the powder and loaded shells taken off the gunboats. In an arrangement with the War Department, RAdm. Lee was authorized to occupy the grounds of the Jefferson Barracks Reserve near St. Louis and erect such temporary sheds, magazines, etc., as many be required. Not all of the space offered was needed; however, to ensure sufficient storage, two stone magazines, each 150’ by 50’, were constructed by the end of June along with a huge storage shed (Library of Congress).

As it turned out, the Mississippi Squadron did not require all of the Jefferson Barracks storage that Welles obtained. Indeed, all. Lee really needed was a place to send his powder and loaded shell. There was plenty of covered room at Mound City, he wrote his civilian superior, to accommodate everything else. To make certain that there was sufficient storage, however, two stone magazines, each 150' by 50', were constructed along with a huge storage shed. These were in place at Jefferson Barracks by the end of June.

Lt. Cmdr. Fitzhugh was now detailed to Missouri to take charge of the unloading and storage operation, making certain that vessels were turned around to Mound City as quickly as possible. On July 2, the Moose, her casemate gone and her guns removed, steamed to Jefferson Barracks with the first load of ordnance and naval material to be stored under the War Department arrangement. Within days, the famed veteran of Morgan’s Raid and the Battle of Nashville was joined in this duty by numerous other demilitarized light draughts all moving ammunition to Jefferson Barracks, “which we did,” one participant remembered, “trip after trip, working day and night ’till the task was done.” Not only did crewmen have to oversee delivery of shot and shell, they had to participate in its loading, and often its unloading, though much of the latter work was done with local contract labor.

A large percentage of the ammunition, the ­­so-called “fixed ammunition,” was stowed in wooden boxes with rope handles, each of which weighed between 100 and 300 pounds. It required two men to carry one of the boxes and they did so as gingerly as possible so as to avoid explosions. Solid shot was somewhat easier. The loading process was so arranged that it could be rolled right to the gangplank down a trench shoveled out of the riverbank. Men were stationed along this ditch and if a ball stopped, it could be started again with a kick.¹⁶

Another requirement of squadron demobilization was recovery, where possible, of lost ordnance. On June 20, the tinclad Kate was ordered to the Lower Tennessee River to “raise or wreck, as the case may require, the gunboats Undine, Key West, Elfin, and Tawah at or near Johnsonville.” A sunken coal barge there and two at Smithland were also to be raised. It took over two weeks for completion of the Johnsonville mission with nine howitzers recovered. The wrecks themselves would gradually be consumed by the river. Johnsonville, Reynoldsburg, and the surrounding area were covered by the TVA’s Kentucky Lake in 1944. What little remained of the gunboats and transports was sought early in the 21st century in a concerted effort by the state, USN, and private firms, who found a few relics and the ­­burnt-out hull of the Undine.

On June 27, Lt. Moreau Forrest, late commander of the Eleventh District, was given final instructions by Maj. Gen. Thomas in a Nashville interview concerning the procedure for turning back to the War Department the four chartered Upper Tennessee gunboats General Thomas, General Grant, General Burnside, and General Sherman. Returning to Bridgeport, Alabama, where the boats were homeported, he turned them over to the local army quartermaster and was given a $76,000 receipt for each. Forrest also returned and received receipts for all leased property, which consisted primarily of a few buildings and sheds where his paymaster stored provisions and clothing.

Even as the tinclads and other squadron vessels were being retired, the Navy Department, appreciating the fact that it needed to unload a large number of surplus river naval vessels, settled upon a traditional American plan for liquidation. The boats would, as Acting RAdm. Lee had earlier suggested, be auctioned.

Beginning in late June, advertisements were placed by Department officials in all of the leading newspapers from the East Coast through the Midwest and down to New Orleans for a “Large Sale of Gunboats.” Noting that over 50 craft were available, officials submitting the notices anticipated that all of them would be sold in a giant ­­one-day sale overseen by Com. Livingston at Mound City on August 17.

On July 3, Lee sent the Navy Department a report concerning his progress with squadron demobilization. So far as the tinclads were concerned, the work had gone smoothly. One was transporting paymasters’ stores to New Orleans; one was temporarily stationed at Jefferson Barracks; eight were transporting ordnance stores to Jefferson Barracks; seven were on the Mississippi River proceeding under orders to Mound City; thirteen were at Mound City being dismantled; and sixteen were at Mound City, dismantled and about to be put out of commission.

Several other warships continued in service, including the wooden gunboats. One of these, the General Price, together with the transport William H. Brown, completed towing the surrendered Confederate ironclad Missouri from Memphis to Mound City on July 5. Manned by two paroled officers and seventeen seamen, the last Rebel armorclad made the trip upstream in such a “sinking condition” that half of the Brown’s steam power was devoted to keeping her pumped out.

The next day, Secretary Welles, flogging his squadron commanders hard under “the stern injunction of economy,” bluntly informed Lee that the “Department intends to break up the Mississippi Squadron.” Consequently, all bases and stations other than the one at Mound City were to be closed and their functions transferred to Illinois. Additionally, only five active vessels could be retained, in addition to those temporarily moving stores, especially to Jefferson Barracks.

Acting RAdm. Lee meanwhile had borne down heavily upon his task of downsizing the Mississippi Squadron. As the flow to Jefferson Barracks slowed, bluejackets from the unneeded boats were transferred to the receiving ship Great Western. The growing number of men awaiting detachment required that barge after barge, with tents, be lashed side by side to each other and to the Great Western with strong lines.

Each morning, a boatswain sounded his whistle and men listened to learn if their boat was being called in what had become a program of mass discharges by vessel. Upon notification, the bluejackets from a given craft assembled, signed and received the necessary papers, and were provided funds in payment or for passage home. The newspapers reported that Lee gave the former bluejackets his thanks and bid “them farewell in handsome terms.” He did not mention that he and his personnel officers had then to turn over multiple and very specific manpower lists to the Bureau of Navigation and to the Office of Detail.

By July 27, Lee was able to report that most of the men on the receiving ship or the barges were discharged and 25 vessels were “anchored, generally in pairs, in the bend above Cairo.” Many had been decommissioned, stripped of their protections, and turned over to Com. Livingston for sale. Five tinclads were yet on duty, and most of the others were employed as transports on the Jefferson Barracks run. It was hoped that all could be “thoroughly stripped and out of commission” within ten days.

The last two tinclads, and what little remained of the organization, were surrendered to Commodore Livingston on August 12. Two days later, Acting RAdm. Lee hauled down his flag and the Mississippi Squadron ceased to exist.¹⁷

From its practice of covering large absolute sales, the editors of the Chicago Daily Tribune appreciated the impact that Com. Livingston’s forthcoming large auction of tinclads, tugs, and support craft could have. Consequently, they sent one of their better known war correspondents, J. A. Austen, to Mound City about a fortnight ahead of the sale. Austen was asked to review the atmosphere of the community, examine the mechanics of the sale, and take the pulse of potential buyers. By the time he packed his suitcase for the train ride down, the military (both army and navy) had begun selling off surplus items. For example, a large sale of coal and coal barges was held at Natchez on August 7.

As it turned out, according to Austen, the navy’s sale was probably one of the largest meetings of steamboat men in a generation. It was even possible, he suggested, that “so great a meeting of boatmen was never before held in the West.” Every part of the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast were represented and there was talk of taking some of the new acquisitions to rivers in Texas or Alabama.

Austen found a total of 63 boats (timberclads, tinclads, auxiliaries, and tugs) anchored in the Ohio River between Mound City and Cairo “nearly filing the bend between the two places.” Many were, as Lee had reported earlier, tied up in pairs, both for maintenance and security purposes. At night, lights and lanterns were hung aboard. Sparkling on the water, all who saw this illuminated parade perceived it a most beautiful and striking sight, reminiscent of the myriad lights of a large town or city.

In the week before the August 17 sale, earnest buyers and the idly curious who had come for the event took passage aboard every small craft available to examine the offerings, both from the water and by inspections aboard. Potential purchasers were encouraged to seek every nugget of information available on those boats of interest and to ply their sometimes immense knowledge in calculating their value. So thorough was this process, Austen believed, that “if any buyer paid more than his boat was worth, he did so with full knowledge of what he was doing.”

Ashore little remained of the once bustling base, its machinery having been largely removed to St. Louis. Some ordnance stores remained, including a number of ­­15-inch shells not removed to Jefferson Barracks and “guns of every size and pattern.” The grounds appeared to be “covered in old iron—the plating stripped from several vessels—most of it being but half inch in thickness,” though some of it from the City Series boats was two and a half inches thick. Unusable salvaged cannon, boilers, and engines in “every stage of uselessness” were “strewn in utter confusion,” awaiting auction, the enterprising winning “Western ­­iron-monger” certain to thereafter make a fortune.

The arrangements for the sale were familiar to all then and to anyone today who has ever attended the auction of a house, automobile, or farm animals. A large stand was placed in the center of the naval station ordnance building, “handsomely decorated with national ensigns.” Here space and every convenience was afforded to clerks, reporters, and purchasers.

First view of the Mound City Naval Station, ca. 1865. With thanks to Mark F. Jenkins for his ID of some features in the first two shots, we note that the top photograph was taken from a vessel ahead of a tinclad (either Tensas #39 or Fawn #30) looking southwest down the Ohio River. The crosswise-to-view building in the distance was a sawmill, beyond which (not visible) were the marine ways. The closest building was a machine shop with a blacksmith shop just to the right.

Second view of the Mound City Naval Station, ca. 1865. Looking north upstream, the far left building (with a tower in front) appears to have housed gun carriages (note the cannonballs stacked near the tower) and perhaps an office. The Great Mound is visible to the left. Ascending it by a stairway, one finds a USMC guard standing atop left of the tree. Continuing further back is a smaller roofed structure that accommodated sundry items associated with the numerous cannon parked before it. The large two-story building beyond (with cannon in front) was more than likely the main ordnance building.

Third view of the Mound City Naval Station, ca. 1865. A view of the main ordnance building, where the actual auctions of the vessels and items from the Mississippi Squadron were held. The photograph was incorrectly identified in Miller’s, vol. 6, as being located at the Cairo base (Library of Congress; Miller’s Photographic History of the Civil War, vol. 6).

At exactly noon on that sweltering Thursday, ­­Cairo-based auctioneer Solomon A. Silver took the stand and, in a booming voice, began the alphabetical disposal with the tinclad Argosy. She was quickly “knocked down” to U. P. Schenck for $10,000. The sale proceeded rapidly and the light draughts, because of their future trading value, brought the highest bids.

Other sale examples included James Kenison’s pickup of the Fairy for $9,600; John Gilbert’s acquisition of the Gazelle for $10,850; and Thomas Scott’s buy of the Oriole for $17,000. The sale price of some of the more historic included W. Thatcher’s purchase of the Cricket for $6,050; David White’s buy of the Moose for $10,100; the $7,100 pickup of the Romeo by Edward Williams; and the $8,650 sale of the Marmora to D. D. Barry.

After three hours of “good and spirited” bidding, the sale was over and $625,000 was earned for the Federal coffers, most of it ($491,018) of it from the demilitarized tinclads. “Thus ended the great Government sale,” reporter Austen wrote as the auction concluded around dusk, “and with it vanished the Mississippi Squadron.” Only the monitors and other ironclads, a few wooden gunboats, and a couple of auxiliaries remained to be sold, plus three tinclads retained to complete a variety of final tasks required by the Mound City naval station.¹⁸

Within a few weeks, several additional Mound City sales were authorized by the Bureau of Construction for the end of November. Work continued apace at the naval base to ready all of the remaining craft for disposal. Among these was the hospital boat Red Rover, which had dropped anchor offshore in December 1864 at the time of the Nashville campaign. She was retained in active operation until November 17, when her last eleven (of 2,947) patients were transferred ashore.

As they did all fall, laborers continued to strip, sort, and stack the iron plate previously employed as vessel armor while the former ironclads and other vessels were readied for disposal. Touted as fine potential towboats, the rams Avenger and Vindicator were added late to the list. As part of the process, the vessel engines, tackle, and “furniture” were removed and similarly inventoried. A variety of miscellaneous things were also organized for liquidation including a large number of small and ships’ boats, coal and coal barges, 2,500 fathoms (a fathom is 6 feet) of quarter- and ­­half-inch chain, and even two ships bells.

A late addition, USS Vindicator. Transferred to the Mississippi Squadron by the War Department in spring 1864 and modified at Mound City, this ram served off Natchez before her participation in a joint November assault on Confederate communications in western Mississippi. In April 1865 she was one of several vessels to unsuccessfully pursue the CSS Webb from the mouth of the Red River to her destruction at New Orleans. Dismantled at Mound City in July, she was added late to the November sale list, being touted in advertisements as a potentially fine towboat. In this shot, note the small boats tied up alongside below the chimneys (Library of Congress).

By ­­mid-November, it was obvious that too much had still to be accomplished for the earlier plan of multiple sales to proceed. Thus the decision was taken to merge two large sales slated for November 29 and 23 and a smaller one on November 25 (for small craft only) into one giant auction on the order of that held in August. If everything could not be sold in one day, the remainder would be sold the next.

On the morning of November 21, the St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat and St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican both advised the public that most of the former Mississippi Squadron’s remaining vessels were about to go under the gavel. The selling would begin promptly at noon on Wednesday, November 29. All would be sold to the highest bidder, “together with their engines, tackle, and furniture.” The newspapers also advertised the auction of 5,000 tons of the ­­ex-fleet’s coal and a number of coal barges for November 28 and the sale of 250–300 tons of “T” railroad iron—this being the armor of the dismantled ironclads—on November 30.

These were several of many surplus auctions held around the country in 1865–1867 by the navy and the Army Quartermaster Department. During this period, the latter not only sold off the numerous transports it had acquired for service on the Western waters, but what remained of any vessels employed as gunboats. The most famous of those on the Cumberland River, the Newsboy, was rated “serviceable” at Nashville on June 30, 1865, and would be back in private service by March 20, 1866. The Silver Lake No. 2 had the same rating and was also at the Tennessee state capital that June. She was sold out of service on October 7 and redocumented Marion. The Stone River, rated “good,” was at Chattanooga on June 30, 1865, but her fate is unknown. The noteworthy military hospital boat D. A. January was sold privately on March 14, 1865; redocumented Ned Tracy, she was snagged and lost at Chester, Illinois, on December 18, 1867.¹⁹

The morning of the appointed day dawned cold in Mound City; it was now less than a month until Christmas. Upriver at Cincinnati, ice was reported in the Ohio River as well as other tributaries. Although they may have again had the opportunity over the past week to inspect the boats and other surplus items, the press reported that “the attendance was slim.” Still, the potential buyers undoubtedly arrived at the naval station fairly early, where it was soon apparent that some portion of the largess, perhaps the armor plate, would have to be sold the next day.

The futures for the demilitarized ironclads may have been surmised by their prospective buyers, many of whom saw them either during the war or at the time of the great August auction. Some such as the Carondelet would serve as wharf boats while others, like the Tuscumbia, would be burned for the iron in their hulls. The fates of some, like the Red Rover, might be guessed, but remain unknown.

USS Carondelet died a wharf boat. Arriving at Mound City on May 31, 1865, the most famous gunboat in the Mississippi Squadron (seen here earlier tied bows-on to a riverbank) was decommissioned on June 28, by which date she had been converted into an ordnance boat to help accommodate excess guns of all sizes. Over the next few months, her engines, furniture, tackle, and all remaining armor were removed. She was sold on November 29 for $3,600 and in her basic and powerless state became a Gallipolis, Ohio, wharf boat. Cast adrift by an 1873 storm, she was swept 130 miles downstream before grounding near Manchester, Ohio. Her hulk was believed sunk, but was destroyed by dredging before that could be definitively determined (Naval History and Heritage Command).

As the government was regularly taking rather large losses to be rid of surplus, the reconfigured merchandise would not (like the former tinclads turned into plying steamers) quickly prove highly lucrative, and the small number of potential purchasers did not anticipate making large bids. One thing is certain, all of the competing watermen already had their financial arrangements completed. The advertisements specifically required that each bidder be able to place a 5 percent down payment on each vessel successfully won, the balance to be paid within six days, though several ­­non-vessel transactions would be allowed a month.

We do not know for certain exactly how this particular ship auction progressed. There are no accounts of it in known diaries or correspondence and it was not covered in detail by the public press. We do know that one boat, the General Pillow, was sold privately a few days earlier for just $2,000. The ­­no-nonsense chief auctioneer, Solomon A. Silver, who had presided over the earlier sale in the summer heat, gaveled the sale into session at noon this cold Wednesday.

With 21 vessels and tons of equipment to be sold, the afternoon was long and darkness fell by the time the proceedings closed. The boats were not sold alphabetically this time, but in the following order: Essex, Louisville, Pittsburg, Carondelet, Mound City, Chillicothe, Ozark, CSS Missouri, Indianola, Tuscumbia, Benton, Avenger, Vindicator, Champion, Great Western, Little Rebel, Tempest, Red Rover, Sovereign, Volunteer, and the tug Mistletoe.

After a short period of ­­back-and-forth for each craft or lot of furnishings, a high bidder was chosen. Wishing to bid on other possibilities, lot victors moved rapidly to the closing tables, made their full or partial payments in cash, and were awarded bills of sale signed by the base commandant for the Navy Department. When all was totaled up, the press observed, “the boats sold cheap.” The craft, exclusive of armor, furnishings, etc., sold for a total of $78,654. The average price was in the mid-$3,000s, with two boats alone that could quickly enter commercial service alone bringing in $22,050 (Tempest, $12,900 and Volunteer, $9,100).

While the fleet that began as the Western Flotilla was no more by day’s end, the naval station at Mound City continued to function into the 1870s. Her most famous commander after Capt. Alexander Pennock was the Carondelet’s first captain, RAdm. Henry Walke, who served in 1868–1869.²⁰

Regardless of their individual fates, collectively the sailors and warships of the USN Mississippi Squadron, along with a handful of U.S. Army boats, were among the most important, if undersung, participants in the Civil War. Their activities reinforced the claims of the North to an undivided Union through incessant probing into the heartland via the Western rivers, helping to keep open the great Midwestern communication lines by convoy, patrol, and direct support of National military action.

After control of the Mississippi was secured in July 1863, the Confederacy was unable, for more than a few months at any time thereafter, to maintain a continued grip on much of its previously held territory in the war’s Western theater, particularly east of the great river. Her struggle during the remainder of that year and in 1864 was, in the end, unsuccessful, despite momentary successes at Chattanooga or on the Red River. Though not for want of Southern resistance, crushing Federal might either militarily subjected or economically subrogated Dixie’s land and her earlier belief in the exclusivity of “its streams.”

When it was found too difficult or simply too unimportant by Northerners to actively contest or continue to contest several streams, such as the Yazoo or the Red and White after ­­mid-1864, they were militarily neutralized by blockade. At the same time a way was found to pursue upon them a growing commercial trade, covert or even open, in cotton—long the South’s primary source of revenue. From a Union perspective, the great Western portion of the Anaconda Plan first announced by Gen. Winfield Scott in 1861 was largely accomplished on the Western rivers long before the end of the Civil War.

At no time during the final almost two years of the conflict did the South cease to engage on the Western waters. Without a navy, her military still fought Yankee ironclads, though not frequently, and often gave them “what fer.” It was not, however, the big loud shootouts like those at Blair’s Landing or Bell’s Mills that dominated the Confederacy’s waterborne resistance but her ­­anti-shipping campaign against Federal steamers. Though inconsistent in manner and duration of application, these “unrestricted” assaults were relentlessly made against targets plying all the rivers from the Ohio south. Employing muskets, cannon, or a combination of both, organized regular and irregular forces, as well as unorganized partisans usually called “guerrillas,” “kept at it” even past the South’s surrender. As one writer noted, these “tactics caused the Union some concern, but did little more than increase the barbarity of an already vicious war.”

Despite hundreds of attacks by Southerners on river transport during the war, the overall number of U.S. civilian and commercial steamboats sunk by military action was surprisingly few. Bvt. Brig. Gen. Lewis B. Parsons, USQMD river transport czar, later reported that direct “guerrilla” action against river transports on all of the Western streams from 1861 to1865 resulted in 28 vessels of 7,065 tons sunk for a loss of $355,000. Regular Confederate forces sank another 19 craft of 7,925 tons valued at $518,500. Confederate secret agents using incendiaries sank double the tonnage (18,500) of either Rebel cavalry or irregulars, 29 boats worth $891,000. Many more boats were lost to accidents or river obstructions than to Confederate action.²¹

Perhaps not as strategically vital as that mounted in 1862–1863, the Union’s Western naval war in 1863–1865 is worthy of a more complete review than it has previously received. Life was more mundane aboard the ironclads than the light draughts in those latter years, but with occasional spirited actions confronting both, the support rendered was varied, largely unreported, and effective.

The USN Mississippi Squadron in ’63–’65 matured slightly in physical size while the sophistication of its operation was enhanced and its history was recalled with pride. Army cooperation, civilian commercial protection, and miscellaneous functions were, in addition, now maintained over a length of rivers nearly twice what it was before Vicksburg fell. With victory, the need for her existence ended. As Admiral Mahan, her best known early chronicler put it, “The vessels whose careers we have followed, and whose names have become familiar, were gradually sold, and, like most of her officers, returned to peaceful life.” A Philadelphia newspaperman, lacking the humility of squadron knowledge, simply concluded: “If hereafter we shall ever again want a navy in the west, it will be as easily created as this one has been and as successful.”²²

1. Lewis B. Parsons, Reports to the War Department (St. Louis, MO: George Knapp & Co., 1867), 39; Dudley Taylor Cornish and Virginia Jeans Laas, Lincoln’s Lee: The Life of Samuel Phillips Lee, United States Navy, 1812–1897 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986), 149–150; Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 331; Richard Gildrie, "Guerrilla Warfare in the Lower Cumberland River Valley, 1862–1865." Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XLIX (Fall 1990), 173; Between ­­mid-February and ­­mid-March, Gen. Robert E. Lee, for example, lost 8 percent of his army "either into the Union lines or into North Carolina."

2. U.S. Navy Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (31 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894–1922), Series I, Vol. 27, 12–14, 27–28, 89, 96–97, 116–118 (cited hereafter as ORN, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and page[s]); Burton B. Paddock, “Memoir,” in Vol. 1 of his History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), 217–219; ”The Sad Fate of the Mittie Stephens Steamboat and the Kellogg Who Caused It,” http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~jkellogg51/genealogy/ATT/MITTIE.html (accessed May 31, 2020). The most helpful histories of the Mobile campaign for this writer were Chester G. Hearn, Mobile Bay and the Mobile Campaign: The Last Great Battles of the Civil War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1993), and Sean Michael O’Brien, Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1991). We briefly covered the naval aspects of the Mobile operation in our Tinclads in the Civil War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2009), 313–320. The Mittie Stephens was tragically lost with 61 deaths on February 5, 1869.

3. ORN, I, 27: 78, 86–87, 92–93, 102, 104–105; Parsons, Reports, 39; Cornish and Laas, Lincoln’s Lee, 151; Louisville Daily Journal, March 9, 1864.

4. ORN, I, 11: 164; ORN, I, 22: 70, 72–75, 87–89; ORN, I, 27: 4, 40, 125, 131, 135–137; U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (128 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), Series I, Vol. 49, Pt. 1, 320–321 (cited hereafter as OR, followed by the series number, volume number, part number, if any, and the page[s]); Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, April 14, 1865; Harper’s Weekly, May 27, 1865; James Russell Soley, “Closing Operations in the Gulf and Western Waters,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert V. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (4 vols.; New York: The Century Company, 1884–1887; reprint, New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1956), IV, 412; Hearn, Mobile Bay and the Mobile Campaign, 169–170; O’Brien, Mobile, 1865: Last Stand of the Confederacy, 169–170; Christopher C. Andrews, History of the Campaign of Mobile, Including the Cooperative Operations of Gen. Wilson’s Cavalry in Alabama (New York: Van Nostrand, 1867), 94, 132–133; Ida M. Tarbell, "How the Union Army Was Disbanded," McClure’s Magazine (March 1901), reprinted in Civil War Times Illustrated, VI (December 1967), 4–9; William B. Holberton, “Demobilization of the Union Army 1865–1866” (unpublished MA thesis, Lehigh University, 1993); Charles Oscar Paullin, Paullin’s History of Naval Administration, 1775–1911 (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1968), 312; John Niven, Gideon Welles: Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 506–507.

5. ORN, I, 27: 141, 148–149, 154, 159, 171, 711; ORN, II, 1: 46, 221; Allen C. Guetzo, The Crisis of the American Republic: A History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 377–379; Parsons, Reports, 39; Edmund J. Huling, Reminiscences of Gunboat Life in the Mississippi Squadron (Saratoga Springs, NY: Sentinel Print, 1881), pp.57–58; Mary Beth Newland Ross, “Sgt. James Madison ‘Matt’ Luxton,” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/41531271/­­james-madison-luxton (accessed March 12, 2020). The literature surrounding Lincoln's assassination is enormous. The details may be found in any recent biography of the 16th president.

6. ORN, I, 27: 176–177; Lonnie R. Speer, Portals to Hell: Military Prisoners in the Civil War (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997), 287–289; William O. Bryant, Cahaba Prison and the Sultana Disaster (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), pp.127–128; Gene Eric Salecker, Disaster on the Mississippi: the Sultana Explosion, April 27, 1865 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), pp. 1–7; Margie Riddle Bearss, "Messenger of Lincoln Death Herself Doomed," The Lincoln Herald (Spring 1978), 49–51; Jerry Potter, "The Sultana Disaster: Conspiracy of Greed," Blue & Gray Magazine, VII (August 1990), 8–10.

7. Time was money in the 1860s river shipping business just as it is today with modern transport. Rather than take three days to replace his troubling boiler, Capt. Mason ordered that workmen perform a hasty patch. As a result, a section of bulged boiler plate was removed and another, of less thickness than the parent plate, was welded into its place. Robert Frank Bennett, "A Case of Calculated Mischief," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (March 1976), 77–83; Salecker, Disaster on the Mississippi, 40.

8. ORN, I, 27: 142, 155–158; Vicksburg Herald, April 25, 1865; New Orleans ­­Times-Democrat, April 25, 1865; New Orleans Picayune, November 14, 1889; Philadelphia Inquirer, May 1, 1865; Hartford Daily Courant, May 1, 1865; The New York Times, January 26, 1890; Chicago Daily Tribune, January 26, 1890; J. Thomas Scharf, History of the Confederate Navy from Its Organization to the Surrender of Its Last Vessel (New York: Rodgers and Sherwood, 1887; reprint, New York: Fairfax Press, 1977), 364–367; R. Thomas Campbell, Confederate Naval Forces on Western Waters (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2005), 208–217; Michael L. Gillespie, “The Great Gunboat Chase,” Civil War Times Illustrated, XXXIII (July–August 1994), 32–37. Other titles of value include the Read biographies: Robert A. Jones, Confederate Corsair: The Life of Lt. Charles W. “Savez” Read (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006); David W. Shaw, Sea Wolf of the Confederacy: The Daring Civil War Raids of Naval Lt. Lt. Charles W. Read (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); R. Thomas Campbell, Sea Hawk of the Confederacy: Lt. Charles W. Read and the Confederate Navy (Shippensburg, PA: Burd Street Press, 2000); Tony Brown, Charles Read homepage, http://revfrankhughesjr.org/images/The_CHARLES_READ_HOME_PAGE.pdf (accessed April 12, 2020).

9. Marion Bragg, Historic Names and Places on the Lower Mississippi River (Vicksburg: Mississippi River Commission, 1977), 74. The official cause of the explosion was the combined effects of low water, careening due to overloading, and the faulty boiler repair. A conspiracy theory was advanced during the 1880s concerning incendiary sabotage by a former Confederate agent, and discussion of the often discredited notion appears regularly. Bennett, "A Case of Calculated Mischief," 77–83; D. H. Rule, Sultana: A Case for Sabotage (Ramsey, MN: Variations on a Theme, LLC, 2013); David A. Kelly, Jr., “Sultana: Victim of Courtenay’s Coal Torpedo?” Civil War Navy, VI (Fall 2018), 34–44; William A. Tidwell, April ‘65 (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1995), 52.

10. Bennett, "A Case of Calculated Mischief," 77–83; Bearss, "Messenger of Lincoln Death Herself Doomed," 49–51; Salecker, Disaster on the Mississippi, 75–119; Bragg, Historic Names and Places on the Lower Mississippi, 75. Hunter tells us that the Sultana blast was the most tragic episode in the worst year for steamboat disasters, during which total casualties reached 2,050, or 13 times the average for the previous four years. Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 543.

11. ORN, I, 27:154, 160–184, 188–178; 202–203; Memphis Daily Argus, April 28–29, 1865; Memphis Daily Bulletin, April 28, 1865; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, April 29, 1865; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, April ­­28-May 1, 1865; St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, April 28–May 1, 1865; Nashville Daily Union, April 29, 1865; Salecker, Disaster on the Mississippi , 121, 140–142, 171–172; The New York Times, April 29, May 1–4, 1865; New Orleans Daily Picayune, May 5, 1865; Chicago Daily Tribune, May 13, 1865; Bennett, "A Case of Calculated Mischief," 77–83; William B. Floyd, “The Burning of the Sultana,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, XI (September 1927), 70–71; Joseph Taylor Elliott, “The Sultana Disaster,” Indiana Historical Society Publication, V, no. 3 (1913), 177–178; Speer, Portals to Hell, 289; Jerry Potter, "The Sultana Disaster: Conspiracy of Greed," Blue & Gray Magazine, VII (August 1990), 8–24; Charles River Editors, The Capture of Jefferson Davis: The History of the Confederate President’s Attempt to Escape the Union Army (Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016).

12. ORN, I, 27: 185–187, 200; The New York Times, April 8, 1865; Thomas Jordan and J. Pryor. The Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. N. B. Forrest and of Forrest’s Cavalry (New Orleans: Blelock & Co., 1868; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), pp 685–703; Cornish and Laas, Lincoln’s Lee, 153.

13. ORN, I, 27:185, 208–213, 217; Detroit Free Press, May 8, 1865; Niven, Gideon Welles, 506–507; Paullin, Paullin’s History of Naval Administration, 312; Daniel E Sutherland, “No Better Officer in the Confederacy: The Wartime Career of Daniel C. Govan,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, LIV (Autumn 1995), 269–303.

14. ORN, I, 27: 142. 216–217; OR I, 48, 1: 215, 297–303; OR, I, 48, 2: 908, 1141; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 2: Union Army Coastal and River Operations, 1861–1866 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 510–513; Robert L. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The ­­Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 415; Alfred Jackson and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph Over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 238–239; Irving W. Levinson, “Separate Wars and Shared Destiny: Mexico and the United States, 1861–1877,” in Roseann ­­Bacha-Garza, Christopher L. Miller, and Russell K. Skowronek, eds., The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846–1876 (The South and Southwest Series, no. 46; College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019), 119–120; Philip H. Sheridan, Personal Memoirs (2 vols.; New York: C. L. Webster & Co., 1888), II, 210–215, 223–226; Richard O’Connor, Sheridan the Inevitable (Indianapolis, IN: ­­Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), 278–281; After her surrender, a survey was ordered on the Missouri, and its results are printed in the Navy Official Records. ORN, I, 27: 241–242; OR, I, 48, 2: 93; William N. Still, Armor Afloat: The Story of the Confederate Armorclads (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985), 148–149, 226.

15. ORN, I, 27: 219–237, 248–249; OR, I, 48, 2: 600–602; Washington Evening Union, June 10, 1865; The New York Times, June 11, 1865; New York Daily Tribune, June 12, 1865; Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy, 426; Albert Castel, General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968), 271; Joseph H. Parks, General Edmund Kirby Smith, C.S.A. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954), 476–477;

16. ORN, I, 27:252–255, 257, 263, 272–274, 287–288; Chicago Daily Tribune, June 11,1865; National Intelligencer, July 10, 1865; St. Louis Daily Republican, July 11, 1865; The New York Times, July 12, 1865; Rowland Stafford True, “Life Aboard a Gunboat [U.S.S. Silver Lake, No. 23]: A ­­First-Person Account," Civil War Times Illustrated, IX (February 1971), 42–43; Edward J. Huling, Reminiscences of Gunboat Life in the Mississippi Squadron (Saratoga Springs, NY: Sentinel Print, 1881), 22.

17. ORN, I, 17:861; ORN, I, 22: 10, 217–218, 237, 253; ORN, I, 27: 275–276, 283, 285–288, 310,342–344; Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 1865; The New York Times, July 9, 26, 1865; Detroit Free Press, July 26, 1865; True, “Life Aboard a Gunboat,” 42–43; Niven, Gideon Welles, 507; Cornish and Laas, Lincoln’s Lee, 155. Among the Johnsonville studies available at the Tennessee State Library and Archives are Panamerican Consultants, The Battle of Johnsonville: The Forgotten Legacy of the Civil War on the Tennessee River (Memphis, TN: n.d.); J. B. Irion and D. V. Beard, Underwater Archaeological Assessment of Civil War Shipwrecks in Kentucky Lake, Benton and Humphreys Counties, Tennessee (New Orleans, LA: R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, Inc., for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, Department of Environment and Conservation, State of Tennessee, 1993); Michael C. Tuttle, 1999 Field Season Underwater Archaeological Investigation of the Battle of Johnsonville Site, Kentucky Lake, Tennessee (Memphis, TN: Panamerican Consultants, 2000); Tuttle, Remote Sensing and Diver Investigation of the Battle of Johnsonville (Memphis, TN: Panamerican Consultants, 1999); Steve James, Submerged Cultural Resources Associated with the Battle of Johnsonville (Memphis, TN: Panamerican Consultants, 2001); James and Michael C. Krivor, Education by Howitzer Fire: Federal Naval Losses at the Battle of Johnsonville (Memphis, TN: Panamerican Consultants, 2003).

18. Chicago Daily Tribune, August 18, 21, 1865; Detroit Free Press, August 23, 1865. The General Pillow and also the former flagboat Tempest were sold in November. On March 25, 1866, the Kate was the last of her type withdrawn from service; she was auctioned off four days later. The sale of the three final tinclads netted the U.S. Treasury Department a total of $24 650. ORN, II,1: 92, 221, 118.

19. Cairo Evening Times, November 17, 1865; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, November 21, 1865; St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, November 21, 1865; William T. Adams, “The Red Rover: First Hospital Ship of the United States Navy,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, XCIV (November 1968), 151 (whole 149–151); U.S. Congress, House, Vessels Bought, Sold and Chartered by the United States, 1861–1868: House Executive Document 337 (40th Cong., 2nd sess., 4 vols.; Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1868), IV, 160 (cited hereafter as Vessels, followed by volume number and pages in); Vessels, 3: 116–119; Charles Dana Gibson, with E. Kay Gibson, Assault and Logistics, Vol. 1: Dictionary of Transports and Combat Vessels Steam and Sail Employed by the Union Army, 1861–1868 (Camden, ME: Ensign Press, 1995), 239, 295, 303; Frederick Way, Jr., Way’s Packet Directory, 1848–1994: Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System Since the Advent of Photography in ­­Mid-Continent America (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983; rev. ed., 1994), 117, 341, 347, 426.

20. St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, November 21, 30, 1865; Cincinnati Daily Commercial, December 19, 1865; Chicago Daily Tribune, November 30, 1865; “Rear Admiral Henry Walke, U.S.N.,” United Service, VII (March 1892), 320.

21. Bobby Roberts, “Rivers of No Return,” in Mark K. Christ, ed., “The Earth Reeled and Trees Trembled”: Civil War Arkansas, 1863–1864 (Little Rock, AR: Old State House Museum, 2007), 87; Parsons, Reports, 40.

22. Alfred T. Mahan, The Gulf and Inland Waters, Vol. 3 of The Navy in the Civil War (New York: Scribner's, 1883), 217; North American and United States Gazette, May 8, 1865.