Assault on New York City - Part One

[Here is a podcast of this blog entry!]

Dozens of book and documentaries are out this year to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. But there was another man, an Alabama nemesis of Lincoln, who was also born in 1809. And during the Civil War, he did so much damage to commercial merchant marine shipping that northern newspapers called for him to be hanged on the yardarm of his own ship. Raphael Semmes was born 200 years ago this September 27th. His story has been told in dozens of books and articles over the decades since his death, so I'm always surprised to find Alabamians who know his name, but not much more. 2011 will mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the war, and the story of Semmes exploits is a good way to leap into the commemoration of that war a touch early.

Semmes was born in Maryland and orphaned at an early age. He and his brother Samuel were sent to Maryland to live with their Uncle Benedict, who had maritime interests. It was there Raphael first nurtured a love of the sea.

Before The War During the months leading up to The Civil War, in the latter part of 1861, northern ship owners in New York City were not at all concerned about risks to their vessels that might be posed by the potential war with the southern states:

“…not a dream of any damage possibly to be inflicted on them, disturbed the serenity of their votes for the invasion of the South. Their fleets entered harbour proudly; their marine swam the ocean unmolested. Though there was war imminent, the insurance offices were content to maintain their terms upon a peace standard. What, indeed, was to be feared?"

(From "The Cruise of The Alabama and The Sumter" *)

After all, the expected battlefields were far off, and the new so-called “Confederate” Government had no navy to speak of. In fact, when Jefferson Davis called on defecting U.S. Navy officers to bring their ships with them when they resigned their posts and joined The South, none did.* Davis recognized the importance of a naval force. He appointed the former Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, Stephen Mallory, as Confederate Secretary of the Navy. And Mallory quickly called on Mobile Alabama resident Raphael Semmes to join him. Mallory’s idea?

"I propose to adopt a class of vessels hitherto unknown to naval services. The perfection of a warship would doubtless be a combination of the greatest known ocean speed with the greatest known floating battery and power of resistance."

(4/26/1861 - Confederate Secretary of The Navy Mallory)

Semmes would do just that: use two combination sail/steam warships to quickly shatter the complacency of New York ship owners, and to become a constant irritant to the Yankee Navy.

He was 52 in early 1861 when his adopted State of Alabama became the fourth to secede from the Union. At that point, he was captain of a desk, head of the U.S. Navy Lighthouse Board in Washington where he lived with his family. He was a seasoned Navy veteran who had fought in the Mexican War. Despite his age, he still yearned for another ship to command.

The nation was being torn apart, and that was to provide him the action he wanted. In December, he wrote:

"The Great Government under which we have lived so long and prospered so greatly is probably destroyed."

Semmes met with U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis at his home in Washington on January 23rd, 1862, and talked about the growing potential for war. Three weeks later the chairman of the newly created Confederate Senate Committee on the Navy sent him a telegram, urging him to come to the new Confederate Capitol. Semmes resigned his U.S. Naval Commission and traveled by train to Montgomery, Alabama, where the new government was being formed. During the trip he passes near a woods fire:

"This night-ride through the burning pine woods of Alabama afterward stood as a great gulf in my memory, forming an impassable barrier, as it were between my past and my future life.

Semmes was in the first Capitol of The Confederacy to witness the Inaugural Address by Jefferson Davis on February 18, 1861. The new President’s first signed order sent the new Confederate naval officer on a New York City shopping trip to buy armament. On his way there, Semmes stopped in the “other capitol”, Washington, D.C., to see to his family, and sp he was present in that city as Abraham Lincoln was about to be sworn in. There couldn't have been too many people who could say they were in both Capitols as the two new presidents of the divided country took their oaths of office. Semmes left quickly for New York so as not to see what he called “the desecration of the capitol.”

Semmes in The Big Apple

He had been to New York before. The teenage midshipman Semmes had reported there for duty in the U.S. Navy on September 8, 1826. His first assignment was on the USS Lexington, a 127-foot sloop built in the New York (now Brooklyn) Navy Yard. Semmes first ship was as new to the Navy as was he. It had been commissioned just weeks earlier, on June 11.

Now, decades later, the adult Semmes was back in NYC, just weeks before the firing on Fort Sumter would mark the start of what would be America‘s deadliest conflict. Semmes toured the city‘s waterfront, looking for ships to purchase and convert to Confederate battleships. He found none suitable for the task, but he easily obtained other armament:

“I purchased large quantities of percussion caps…and sent them by express without any disguise to Montgomery. I made contracts for batteries of light artillery, powder and other munitions, and succeeded in getting large quantities of the power shipped. It was agreed between the contractors and myself, that when I should have occasion to use the telegraph, certain other words were to be substituted, for those of military import, to avoid suspicion.”

[Raphael Semmes in "Service Afloat", 1887]

During his shopping trip, Semmes stayed at the luxurious Astor House on Broadway between Vesey and Barclay Streets. (At the end of the war he would stay at Astor House again, on December 27th of 1865.* But he was a Yankee prisoner then, and probably didn’t enjoy his stay quite as much.) Ironically, The Astor was one of ten hotels targeted in a covert Confederate raid on the city on November 25, 1864. Incendiary devices were set off in the hotels, but they weren‘t sufficient to do anything but start small fires that were easily extinguished.

He met there with New York businessmen, mocking them as opportunists who didn't care which side they profited from. Men whom, he wrote:

“…being unable to carry out their contracts with the Confederate States, because of the prompt breaking out of the war, afterwards obtained lucrative contracts with the Federal Government, and became, in consequence, intensely loyal."

[NEXT: In part two, Semmes is given his first command in the new Confederate Navy* and heads out to sea. The New York newspapers paint him as a pirate. And then Semmes is put in charge of the "high-tech" ship he would forever be associated with. He takes The CSS Alabama out to sea to hunt Northern commerce. Part two will be posted on Sunday, September 13, 2009] [ADDENDUM: Residents of, or visitors to Montgomery, Alabama, may find it interesting to walk past one particular downtown building: Knox Hall. The building is used as offices now, but it was the home of the Irish born banker William Knox, the father-in-law of a Semmes cousin. His bank was the first to lend money to The Confederacy. Semmes stayed in the house in February of 1861, on the eve of the war, and again at the war's end, on May 25, 1864, after he had surrendered to Northern forces and was headed back to his home in Mobile. The building is located at 419 South Perry Street. On Dexter Avenue is the Winter Building, from which Semmes was summoned by telegram, and from which the telegram authorizing the firing on Fort Sumter was sent.]

[ADDENDUM: Semmes wasn't alone in selecting The Astor House. When Abraham Lincolm gave his "Cooper Union" Speech in February of 1860, he too stayed there.]

[*MORE READING: The official records of The Confederate Navy are online here.]

[PART TWO will be posted next Sunday morning, September 13, 2009.]