********************** TARGET PRACTICE ************************
During the Civil War, many unique maritime events occurred, and many of them took place on the rivers of the South.
Lieutenant F. S. Conover, commander of the USS Isaac P. Smith, chafed at being assigned to patrol the Stono River near Charleston. Bored with running up and down the tiny waterway, his men drew a crude figure of a Confederate soldier and placed it on Johns Island to use for pistol practice.
Barely half a mile from the improvised pistol range, Confederates were enraged at seeing the improvised target. Late in January 1863, under cover of darkness, they managed to haul at least four guns close to the bank of the river.
Major Charles Alston concealed his battery under a huge live oak tree. From this concealment, on January 30th, the Confederates opened fire upon the heavily armed Federal vessel. Return fire raked the hidden position as the vessel increased speed to remove itself from the range of the Confederate guns.
Carefully directed fire from shore, combined with luck, caused three hits to the boilers of the Federal vessel. Hopelessly disabled, the Isaac P. Smith became the only warship to surrender to a field battery. Within weeks, the 453-ton warship joined Confederate vessels in the defense of Charleston.
********************** SWITCHING SIDES ************************
During the opening days of the Civil War, while personal allegiances were still being sorted, numerous military departments under Federal control were merged with others or dissolved. Only one, the Department of Texas, was given to the Confederacy by its commander.
Brigadier General David E. Twiggs, a distinguished veteran of the Mexican War, was strongly sympathetic to the Southern cause. Known to many of his officers as "the Bengal Tiger," he repeatedly requested instructions from Washington during the early weeks of 1861.
No orders came, so on February 18th, the Tiger engaged in a brief ceremony with Colonel Ben McCulloch, commander of Confederate troops in Texas. Twiggs formally turned over every fort and outpost in the department, along with two thousand soldiers, all of his equipment, and all U.S. Army funds on hand.
By May 22nd, the long-time veteran of Federal fighting forces was wearing the uniform of a Confederate major general, having been dismissed from Union service just twenty-one days earlier. Twiggs was the oldest and most senior U.S. Army officer to switch uniforms. He also was the only Federal brigadier to surrender to Confederates substantially more than ten percent of all men in the U.S. Army.
*********************** PONTOON MONSTER ***********************
Early in April 1864, the Federal Army of the Potomac appeared to be stymied. Plans called for movement across the James River near Wyanoke Landing. At this point the river was about twenty-one hundred feet wide. Tidal currents had cut some channels to a depth of fifteen fathoms. To amateurs and veterans alike, it seemed impossible to devise a way by which tens of thousands of men could cross the water.
Major J. C. Duane, an experienced pontonier, was put in charge of a handpicked crew of 450 army engineers. Assisted by Captain G. H. Mendell, Duane sketched a temporary bridge that would be supported by three schooners. The materials were assembled and the plans completed, but work did not start until orders were received just before noon on June 15th.
With the first schooner anchored and two others moving toward strategic spots, Duane started putting pontoons together. By using a total of 101 of them, he managed to reach the opposite shore of the river in eight hours. No other pontoon bridge built during the conflict came close to this one in length.
The crossing of the army was completed early on the morning of June 18th. When every man was over, the only improvised bridge of the war to exceed two thousand feet in length was broken into three sections. Treated as rafts, the sections were then floated to Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia.
****************** BAD LUCK FOR A GAMBLER *********************
New Hampshire native Benjamin F. Butler moved to Massachusetts and became a powerful figure in the Democratic Party. A successful criminal lawyer, he took command of Massachusetts Volunteers three days after Lincoln's call for volunteers following the debacle at Manassas Junction.
Within a month Butler was wearing two stars and is now remembered as having been the first of Lincoln's so-called political generals. Some analysts attribute his appointment to the president's political acumen; after all, a leading Democrat couldn't simultaneously fight Confederates and oppose Republicans at the polls.
Regardless of the factors that led the president to honor him, Butler soon became the only Union general to be condemned across Europe. International reactions stemmed from the most violent of several controversial actions. As military head of occupied New Orleans, he was the only Union general to order the execution of a civilian.
Shortly after New Orleans had surrendered, William B. Mumford, a professional gambler, tore down a U.S. flag that had been raised at the former U.S. Mint building and dragged it through the streets. When Butler's troops arrived to occupy the town, the general was informed of Mumford's actions and ordered the gambler's arrest. Tried and convicted of treason, Mumford was hanged on June 7, 1862.
******************* BERDAN'S SHARPSHOOTERS ********************
Federal colonel Hiram Berdan of New York City was a mechanical engineer and an inventor. For a dozen years before the war he was touted as the top rifle shot in the United States. His fame was such that when the war began, it was easy for him to recruit enough volunteers to fill two regiments, dubbed Berdan's Sharpshooters.
Colonel Berdan of the First U.S. Sharpshooters probably entered the recruitment business to develop new markets for his military inventions. His men could be identified at a glance; they wore green coats and green caps adorned with black plumes. Instead of carrying muskets, they were armed with .52-caliber Sharps rifles.
Officers and men who made up the body claimed, probably correctly, that they eliminated more Southern soldiers than any other force of comparable size. Especially proud of often silencing Confederate batteries with their powerful rifles, more than one thousand of the twenty-six hundred sharpshooters were killed or wounded during four years of constant action.
At Chancellorsville and at Gettysburg their leader went into battle at the head of a brigade. In the mellow mood of postwar generosity, Congress awarded two brevets to Berdan, brigadier general and major general.
Apparently initially motivated by the desire to make money from the sale of his inventions, Berdan did not succeed in that effort. Instead, the force he raised and led became one of the most memorable of those who wore, well, at least a bit of blue.
