“Time to run in the transports,” said McClellan.
“I’ll have the captain raise the signals,” replied Rear Admiral David Farragut. He went to give the order to the captain. The signals to send in the transports went up and fluttered overhead, casting their wobbling shadows on the bow.
Secretary of the Navy Franklin Buchanan stood next to Farragut, watching the ships of the transport fleet align on the harbor. “Front row seats, eh, Mac?”
“And no waiting in line at the box office!” retorted McClellan.
The warships of the Home Squadron led the way in. McClellan watched Cumberland’s sister ship Savannah enter the harbor with Constellation, Saratoga, Macedonian, and Portsmouth following behind in a “V.” Their mission was to engage and destroy any Rebel warships lying in wait inside the harbor and to pound any on-shore resistance into submission. The St. Louis and Germantown stood outside the harbor, on guard against any Rebel warships that might attempt to interfere with the landings from the high seas. In between the warships came the transports. From McClellan’s viewpoint it looked like the fleet covered the ocean horizon to horizon.
This is how the British must have felt when they saw the Spanish Armada bearing down on them. But we’ll have better luck with the Rebels than the Dagos did against the British!
Brigadier General Benjamin Butler, soon to become the Confederate Union’s Military Governor of New England, was thinking the same. “I would not have imagined there were so many ships in all the world! You must have chartered every steamer from New York to New Orleans.”
“We just about did,” McClellan remarked. “We fooled the Rebels about where they were going, too. The Rebs must have sent whatever ships they could sortie to Delaware Bay. Fooling them into thinking we were going to land in Philly was no small trick, let me assure you.”
McClellan wondered if the other landings would go so well, now that the Rebels were alert that New England, not Philadelphia, would be the Eastern Campaign’s objective. After the first thirty thousand men were landed in Boston the invasion would shift northward to Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Portland, Maine. After the ports were secured McClellan planned to build up an army of a quarter-million men in New England.
McClellan planned to use those reinforcements to complete the capture of New England’s other cities. Worcester, Providence, Hartford, Springfield, Newport, and Augusta were his priorities for what was left of this year’s campaigning season. Then, next spring he planned to move the army inland to take possession of the industrialized area around Albany and the Mohawk Valley that contained most of what was left of the Rebels’ armament manufactories.
This advance would uncover the rear of the Rebels maintaining their cordon around New York City and allow McClellan to establish a continuous front from Metro New York to the Canadian border south of Montreal. After securing that front he would position his army astride the Erie Canal and follow it westward to Buffalo. He would then swing down to destroy whatever was left of the Rebellion around Cleveland while Robert E. Lee approached from the West.
McClellan’s attention was drawn to the thick clouds of black smoke that began to rise from the starboard side of the harbor, soaring high above the thick white gunpowder smoke from the forts and decoy ships. The black smoke flattened out and began blowing inland.
“Our ships are approaching the Charlestown docks,” said Buchanan. “According to our reports the Vincennes and Preble are in ordinary there. The Rebels must be burning them to prevent their capture.”
From time to time McClellan, Buchanan, Farragut, and Butler heard the thunderous broadsides from the Savannah and the other warships echo across Boston Harbor. Other palls of black smoke closer to the city center began to appear above the white smoky mist. Farragut kept his spyglass trained on the harbor but didn’t see far enough through the smoke to give any definite reports.
In early afternoon the transports began returning from the smoke-filled harbor after unloading the troops. Farragut examined each one carefully through his spyglass as they cleared the smoke. “None of our ships have signaled damage yet,” he said after a while. “An amazing operation — over a hundred ships running past the harbor forts without being hit. I wish my brother could be here to see this.”
“Your brother?” asked Butler.
“He means his adoptive brother Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter,” explained McClellan. “He’s supervising the construction of the Western Gunboat Flotilla at the Mississippi and Ohio River ports. He’s going to give Bobby Lee some help with his webfeet out there during next year’s scrimmage with the Rebels.”
If Lee can get to Chicago by next summer, while I am occupying the Rebel’s economic heartland in New York and New England, it will seal the doom of the Rebellion. But can he get there, even with Admiral Porter’s gunboats helping him to keep the Rebels away from the rivers? He surely didn’t accomplish much in the Northwest in this years’ campaign. Will I have to go to the Northwest and help Bobby Lee get to Chicago?
The men stayed out on deck until sunset then adjourned to the captain’s quarters for dinner. They discussed the military and civil governments they would be establishing in Boston and the other New England ports. None of them had ever thought of becoming occupation authorities on American soil.
“We’ll follow the same benign policies of occupation that old Winnie Scott established down in Mexico,” advised McClellan. “You know, the Mexicans offered to elect ‘Old Fuss and Feathers’ president of their country.”
“That’s because he paid the Mexicans fairly for what his army used and wouldn’t tolerate any corruption,” said Buchanan. “It’s the only honest government the Mexicans ever had.”
“I intend to govern in the same spirit,” said Ben Butler. “I’ll let the New Englanders know that the Confederate Union is their country too and that their rights under the Constitution will be respected. We already have the loyalty of thirty-five percent of their people. If I can obtain the loyalty of half the other half, then I will have obtained the loyalty of the majority.”
It took McClellan a few seconds to grasp what Butler meant, but he finally decided that it made sense. McClellan concluded that Butler was not anywhere near as stupid as his corpulent, balding, cock-eyed appearance made him appear.
“We’d best take our rest,” said Farragut. “Tomorrow will be a very long day.”
At first light McClellan and Butler bade farewell to Buchanan and Farragut. The Cumberland and all but two other ships of the Home Squadron headed up the coast to support the landings at Portsmouth and Portland. McClellan and Butler transferred to a steamer and waited for the decoy ships to engage the forts again and blind the defending batteries with smoke.
Getting into Boston this day was not as easy as the day before. The Rebel gunners in the harbor forts had wised up. Instead of smoking up the harbor with massed indiscriminate firing they were aiming two or three of their guns at specific targets then waiting for the smoke to clear before firing again.
“If they don’t run out ammunition soon they’ll learn how to lead their shots,” McClellan said to Butler. “Then it will only be safe to come in at night.” He wondered if he should change his mind and engage the forts with the two ships of the Home Squadron that had remained on station outside Boston Harbor.
No, that won’t do any good. The forts are sure to inflict more damage on the ships than they could inflict on the forts. We will just have to accept our losses until the forts fire down their ammunition to the point where they don’t have enough left to harm us.