Litchfield enquirer., 1868-01-30

what was doing there had to be done in si- fence; and the only puhiq acknowledge ment Of It which he received was an attack on his character from the New York Tu- bune, whose blunder-headed good inten- tons, throughout the war, betrayed it by ;a strange but undertaking fatality into some insult and cailmny upon every man who was just about to render eminent service to his country.
 Those who knew the diligence and wis dom with which Foote had labored in this office, learned to estimate him better, and the counsellors of Abraham Line oln mark ed him as the fit man to inauguriete nov el and untried method of naval warfare on the western rivers No such task perhaps, had ever been thrown upon naval officer before; for he was first to createsa navy, and then to command it.-(Com. Perry By and-by, when the lapse of time shall have put n purple haze over these late events, and men shall read of them with 8 glamour upon the eyes, some Homer shall recite his catalogue of the ships," and sing of the wonders which it is for us to tell in homeiy prose:-how one of the men of the sea was dropped at once into the center of the continent @ thousand miles from any navy yard, and bidden there produce navy in the midst of the dry land, as if 1t had been Gnostic Demiurge pitched out into Chaos, with orders to create world; how by the force of his enormous will, he made the immemorial forests to bow, and the everlasting hills to disgorge their iron and their coal. and wrought them ln order and in form, until soon the dwell lers on the prairie looked abroad from their cabins, and beheld strange sea-monsters, of c,1aI cnrta hol before, swimming athwart green fields and under spreading trees, and making the in land bluffs and slopes to below with such Titanic warfare as was wont of old to rage only upon the ocean, and level its waves with it's concussions. Months afterward, the Admiral then the central figure for the admiration and love of the Ameri- can people, sitting in his parlor here at New Haven with his wounded foot in chair, used to beg his friends not to think that his fighting was the thing for which he had deserved we'll of the government; anybody he said could have done that, with such men and such officers. But the great work which he had done the ariuousness of which history would never know, was the work of improving that hotilla., He wrote to friend: We have had to impro- wise navy here without money credit, or means: to establish two navy yards, bu- reaux Of ordnance, construction, provision and clothing, reviewing ships at Cairo and St. Louis, besides making contracts for coal and clothing, and getting guns and amuni- tlon, from army and navy as we best could and then to appoint quartermasters, engin- eers. pilots and paymasters, to each of the twelve Sunloontt, and a,ora thora ell, 4it ont and man mortar boats, and all these no navy people except eight commanders and five lieutenants. Don't you pity and con- dole with me? We hope to get ready in December, but all depends on contractors and men. We have four shells of gunboats afOat?'
 The full meaning of those words " every thing depends on contractors and men that we may get ready by Dec. 1,' few apprcci- ted beside Foote and the brave officers who stood beside him. As the gallant Captain Pennock, who through all those anxious days stood at his right hand as his chief of staff declares, G if that fotilla could but have been equipped by the time promised in the contracts, there would have been no Fort Donelson, no Island No. 10, no Port Hudson, no Vicksburg, no permanent clo- sing of the great river. Burdened with these thoughts, Foote fought like lion against impossibilities night and day sleep ing and waking, by labor and by prayer, moving not only earth, but heaven, to ac- compllsh the salvation of the country :" ' Every morning. wrote he, ''I wake with gun boat on my breast" But, alas he had more than n0tUrN impossbilities to overthrow. He had, after while, to con- tend with morose, sullen, conceited militia ry stupidity in high military position. I Ip T0O atfar11Vl+ at fH lo concerning the 0rney administration at the West, but it was an evil hour for Foote, when Gen. Fremont, who had fully con ceived tho importance of the naval force, and rendered 1t all the help in his power, was superseded by Gen. HallecIz This gentleman had not only read 0 great deal about military affairs, but, unhappily for his country, had also written great deal. He had come all the way from California, heralded with blaze of newspaper trum- pets, and with a certificate of capacity from Fowler & Wells, with the intention not on ly of conquering the rebellion in the South west, but of conquering 1t in strict con- formity with the doctrines. of Gen. Hal leck's books. Among the maXims Of these printed oracles, was one derived from 6 former age of warfare, that one gun ashore wasa match for twenty guns afoat. He was much in the position of Dr. San grado, whose patients were dying by the dozen under the administration of bleed- ing and hot water, but who found it i'm possble-to change their treatment because he had written book in favor of that prac- tice. He scorned to whip the rebels out of their forts by means so unscientifc as a fresh water navy. Consequently he treated the hotills and it's commander with con- tempt. In reply to Foote's application for men to be discharged for enlistment in the naval service, he turned him off with the insolent answer, "Not a man, sir.'' And afterwards, when the necessity of the na- , val service was forced upon him, he attempt
 ed the extraordinary method of manning a
 gunboat by regiment of volunteer in- fantry, with their colonel and captains. It is pity he did not try it with a battalion
 of cavalry. Says Foote: The mortar boats were stopped in their equipment.
 The wharf boat was taken away from me,
 thereby rendering abortive all my efforts to fit out the fotilla, without consultinp
 me or giving me 8 hearing" At last, on
 the 2Sth of January, 1862, having got part
 of his little fleet equipped and manned, af.
 ter fashion, with undisciplined men.
 Foote telegraphed to Halleck proposing
 that with the gunboats and several regi