Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction Allen Guelzo (novels to read .txt) 📖

ship, even if he could find enough iron plate or iron rails to armor her. Then, on June 23, 1861, two of Mallory’s lieutenants at Norfolk reminded Mallory about the scuttled steam frigate Merrimack in the Norfolk Navy Yard. They pointed out that a salvage company had pumped out the half-sunken shell of the frigate and placed her in dry dock, and as it turned out, the hull and boilers of the Merrimack were still relatively intact. It would be possible to cut away her burned-over masts and useless upper decks, rebuild her upper works with an iron casemate like one of the Crimean “floating batteries,” and arm her with enough guns to sink anything the Federal navy could send against her. Mallory bought the idea at once: he had the sunken frigate inspected, and in July 1861 work began on reconstructing the Merrimack as a seagoing ironclad.

On February 17, 1862, the rebuilt Merrimack was launched and commissioned—and given a new name, CSS Virginia. The reborn steam frigate now looked nothing like its first form—or, for that matter, like anything else afloat. The Confederate engineers had cut the hull of the ship down to the waterline and then erected a thirteen-and-a-half-foot-high iron-plated casemate on top of the hull, using two layers of two-inch-thick wrought-iron plates, eight feet long by eight inches wide; the armored casemate would be rounded at each end and with sides sloping outwards at a 36-degree angle, and roofed over by an iron grille with three hatches. Four gunports with iron shutters gaped in each side, and at each rounded end of the casemate were three more gunports for a 7-inch rifled pivot gun. Just beneath the waterline at her bow was a 1,500-pound cast-iron ram, which the ironclad could use to smash the timber hulls of the Federal blockading fleet. On February 24 the Virginia was given a captain, Franklin Buchanan, and on March 8 Buchanan nosed the makeshift ironclad’s way out of Norfolk and down the ten-mile-long channel into Hampton Roads.48

Standing out in the Roads, sealing off Confederate access to Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic, were seven ships of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron—the prize steam frigates Minnesota and Roanoke, the twenty-four-gun sail-powered sloop Cumberland, an obsolete forty-four-gun sail frigate named Congress, and an assortment of supporting craft. Shortly after 1:00 PM, the Virginia bore down on them, selecting the Cumberland as its target as the most heavily armed ship in the line. As the startled Federal seamen beat to quarters, the Virginia cruised ominously past the antiquated frigate Congress, which unleashed a twenty-five-gun broadside at the passing monster. The broadside banged and rattled on the Virginia’s side, bouncing harmlessly off the iron plates and splashing hugely into the waters of the Roads. The Virginia then opened up on the Congress with a point-blank broadside of her own, dismounting an 8-inch gun and turning her “clean and handsome gundeck into a slaughter-pen, with lopped-off legs and arms and bleeding, blackened bodies scattered about by shells.” But the Virginia’s real object was the Cumberland. The Confederate behemoth bore down remorselessly on the Federal sloop as shot from the Cumberland’s 9-inch pivot gun made no more impression on the ironclad than the Congress’s guns had. The Virginia returned the fire, then drove directly at the Cumberland, crushing its ram into the Cumberland’s side. The stricken sloop sank bow first, its gun crews still trying to bang shot off the Virginia’s sides until the water closed over the ship’s unlowered flag. One hundred and twenty-one of her crew went down with her.49

The rest of the Federal squadron, having watched the easy destruction of the Cumberland, attempted to escape. But the Congress, Minnesota, and Roanoke all managed to run aground in the shallow waters of the Roads. The Virginia drew up behind its first antagonist, the old frigate Congress, and pounded it into a blazing shambles in half an hour; one of her few surviving officers struck her colors. The Virginia would probably have done the same to the rest of the Federal ships had not the tide started to ebb. Anxious not to be caught aground themselves, the Confederates turned their triumphant experiment around and the Virginia slowly steamed back up the Roads, intending to finish off the stranded Minnesota the next morning. Despite being hit ninety-eight times on her armor plate, she had suffered only two of her crew killed (by a Federal shell exploding near one of Virginia’s gun ports) and a handful (including Captain Buchanan) wounded.

With the Virginia’s capabilities proven, the Confederates had only to choose how to deploy the ship next. In his original orders to Captain Buchanan, and in a follow-up letter on March 7, Mallory grandly suggested that once the Virginia finished off the Federal ships in Hampton Roads, she should steam out into the Chesapeake and then up the Potomac to bombard Washington. “Could you… make a dashing cruise on the Potomac as far as Washington, its effect upon the public mind would be important to the cause.” The Virginia could then continue on to New York and “burn the city and the shipping.” With that, “peace would inevitably follow. Bankers would withdraw their capital from the city. The Brooklyn navy yard and its magazines and all the lower part of the city would be destroyed, and such an event, by a single ship, would do more to achieve our independence than would the results of many campaigns.” Whether the Virginia’s unwieldy bulk ever could have survived the first pitch and roll of the open ocean, much less navigate the shallow reaches of the Potomac River, is debatable. However, Mallory thought she could, and what was more, so did Lincoln’s cabinet.50

The next morning, the Virginia steamed back down to Hampton Roads to destroy the Minnesota and perhaps put an end to the war. As the Confederate ironclad bore down on the stranded Minnesota, the officers of the Virginia noticed that the Federal ship was not alone. At first they thought a