Ohio History Journal

56       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

These swarming hordes of careless, unclean, illy housed

and frequently immoral people make the conservation

of the health of the children a moral question with

which religionists as well as humanitarians must deal.

Let us not forget that while we are doing something

for the children, they are doing a great deal for us.

Those who freely give out love, and service and sacri-

fice, get much that is of inestimable value in return.

The reflex action upon them is infinitely uplifting and

exalting. These little children who come under our

ministrations will make better men and women of all of

us. Whittier has very beautifully expressed the idea

in these words:

 

We need love's tender lessons taught

As only weakness can,

God hath His small interpreter,

The child must teach the man.

In conclusion let me express the belief that all who

faithfully and unselfishly discharge their duty to the

children of this generation will deserve to share the

commendation of the Master who said: "Inasmuch as

ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye

have done it unto Me."

 

THE MISSISSIPPI SQUADRON

If this toast had been to "Our Navy," without words

or restriction, my task would have been easy for the

mere words bring to vivid remembrance the stirring

tales of youth, when the heroes we worshipped were

Paul Jones the venturesome, Decatur the intrepid, Law-

rence the defiant and Perry the modest. The theme as-

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Recent Addresses of James Edwin Campbell  57

signed me, however, while more circumscribed than dif-

ficult, might to some be yet more inspiring, for an elo-

quent tongue it would be that could pay an adequate

tribute to the Mississippi Squadron -- that wonderful

flotilla which sprang into existence as by enchantment

and disappeared as by magic; which lived but four

short years, yet long enough to emblazon one of the

proudest pages of human history.

The Mississippi Squadron! The words seem to con-

jure up a phantom -- so brief, yet so marvelous and

fantastic, was its career. Long after the reverberation

of the guns of Sumter had died away on the remotest

northern frontier; long after the loyal sons of the north

were locked in battle's embrace with their frenzied

brethren of the south; there was, as yet, not a federal

gun afloat on the waters of the West. There were

neither ships nor ordnance, navy-yards nor stores. The

famous gunboats that were to carry our brave boys

from the Ohio to the gulf, were uncut timber growing

in the forest and unforged iron lurking in the earth;

yet, before the war closed, there floated upon the un-

vexed waters of the Mississippi Valley, more than a

hundred vessels armed, equipped and exultant in vic-

tory. No scene of history resembles that fairy-like

transformation which suddenly covered, with a vast

and invincible navy, those muddy rivers where war-

ships were before unknown and where, let us pray, they

may never be known again. Miracles were performed;

the subtle alchemy of patriotism transmuted everything

it touched; and the hull of a snag boat was metamor-

phosed into the famous flagship "Benton" which will

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58       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

go down to posterity as a companion-in-honor of "Old

Ironsides" of an earlier day.

As these stirring events pass before us they seem al-

most like a dream. We see Rodgers and his three lit-

tle wooden steamboats which are the nucleus of the

squadron; then follows Foote, of blessed memory, with

his broad-horned "turtlebacks;" then Davis and, later,

the indomitable Porter with a storm of varied craft --

iron-beaked rams, invulnerable monitors and cockle

shell "tin-clads" -- all carrying the flag to victory upon

every accessible water course; closing the picturesque

and bloody drama with that far-famed expedition up

the Red River, of which a great historian has said that

for romantic adventures, unusual perils, heroic courage

and severe fighting on the part of the navy, it has no

parallel in the events of the war.

Not only, at the outset, were we without ships and

material, but we were also without experience. None,

as yet, were skilled in that amphibious form of warfare

which was the untried lot of the Mississippi Squadron.

Aside from the few regular officers who came out to

lead and instruct us, we were a veritable set of land-

lubbers. I recall my own awkward and ignorant ad-

vent on the scene when that gallant officer, Commodore

Breese, subsequently the famous hero of Fort Fisher,

created me a Master's Mate. Like the other boys I was

young and raw but earnest; yet I could not have de-

scribed wherein a "half-hitch" varied from a "Turk's

head," nor the difference between a needle and a mar-

linspike. Nevertheless, under the tuition of these regu-

lar officers, as brave and gentle warriors as ever trod a

deck, we learned.

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The only men who knew their business were the pi-

lots to whose indispensable service, cheerfully rendered,

justice has never been done. The pilot house was

known as the "slaughter-pen" and on the "tin-clads" --

upon which it was my unhappy lot to serve -- it was

preeminently the post of danger. It was a matter of

history that they freely volunteered for this perilous

service knowing that they would be targets for every

sharpshooter on the bank, and it was not unusual for

a single shell to wound or kill both pilots and to blow

the steering wheel in their hands into a thousand frag-

ments; yet they were poorly paid and never had either

rank or rating as officers of the navy, nor a recognized

share in the memory of its glories.

Then there were the "powder monkeys" -- those lit-

tle chaps who ran the errands in the days of quiet, and

scudded between the magazine and the guns in the hour

of battle. No speech could be complete that did not pay

a tribute to those lightfooted, roguish but lionhearted

youngsters who stood fire like veterans. Nobody ever

heard of one who blanched or deserted. I never saw

but one leave his post, and that was when a shell rolled

into the little wooden cubbyhole used by the surgeon as

a dispensary and exploded amongst the bottles and sur-

gical instruments. For a moment it looked as if the

sky had opened and was raining dynamited drug stores.

The scene was so weird, grotesque and terrifying

withal, that one poor little towhead, not fourteen years

old, dodged behind a stanchion until this unnatural

shower was over, and then went bravely back to duty.

In this affair the little vessel was struck nine times;

and, to show how these frail boats would hold on

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Recent Addresses of James Edwin Campbell  61

amidst a pitiless storm of shot and shell, we will enu-

merate the damages inflicted on the "Naiad:"

"The first shot passed through the smoke-stack; the

second and third shots passed through the pilot-house,

the third striking the barrel of the wheel, cutting the

tiller rope, and literally tearing the wheel to pieces; the

fourth shot passed a few  feet abaft the pilot-house

shattering the steerage and skylights, but doing no fur-

ther damage; the fifth shot passed through the cabin.

*  *  *  Also *  *  four shots through the star-

board casemates; one striking abreast of the boilers,

one abaft of No. 2 gun, tearing up the decks and ex-

ploding within a few feet of the shell-room; one abaft

of No. 3 gun, killing John T. Crennell, ordinary seaman,

and wounding three others; another passed through the

port of No. 4 gun, tearing away the shutter and ex-

ploding in the dispensary."

We had our little trials too, as well as our triumphs,

in the Mississippi Squadron. I can yet see and almost

feel, in the pride of their strength, the Red River mos-

quitoes which struck terror alike to us and the foe.

When an oar, a boarding pike, a capstan bar or like im-

plement was missing, the tradition ran that they had

been carried off by a mosquito; and it has never been

denied that the least of those pests, bred in the swamps

and bayous of the lower rivers, was more than a match,

singlehanded, for any man in the navy. Then there

were the splinter, which, on the tinclad, during a bat-

tle flew like a cloud of dust. This kind of a gunboat

was ingeniously contrived so that, while a solid shot

would go clear through it, taking only what came in

its way, a shell would be carefully and safely nursed on

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the covered deck until it had fully exploded. While it

was bad enough to be hit by a piece of a flying shell, yet

there was some glory to go home to parents, friends

and sweethearts with a genuine wound like that, but to

be scratched all over with stinging splinters, which bled

you like a butcher but left no scar, was alike disconcert-

ing and inglorious. Then worst of all was the fact

that you could not run away when you were whipped.

After escaping the peril from shot and shell, from the

explosion from magazine or boilers, from consumption

by fire or drowning by water -- sevenfold the terrors of

a battle on land -- and knowing that you were thor-

oughly licked, you realized there was no place else to

go. I decided, on several occasions, that if ever I went

to war again, I would select the army instead of the

navy upon the solid, bed-rock, copperfastened principle

that I could run, or hide, when fighting ceased to be a

virtue.

But a truce to this persiflage. There is too much of

pathos in the thought that a mighty squadron which

floated upon the waters of the west has gone never to

return. When I recall the names of the men who bled

and died upon her decks, and their deeds of valor, the

emotions that well up from my heart almost choke my

utterance; and, more than all, when I realize that not

one man is left who served with me on the gunboat

Naiad, an indescribable sense of desolation overcomes

me.

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