2004-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2004
As Admiral Farragut's fleet of 14 frigates and four iron-clad monitors prepared to engage Forts Gaines and Morgan on August 5, 1864, Colonel Charles Anderson and his 800 Confederate troops were ordered to hold Fort Gaines at any cost. The Union monitor Tecumseh struck a torpedo and sank immediately. Seeing the screw propellers of the sinking Tecumseh turning in the air, Admiral Farragut bellowed, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" Immediately after gaining safety in Mobile Bay, Farragut's attention turned upon Fort Gaines. On August 8, Fort Gaines surrendered. Manuscript Document Signed, 4p. quarto, October 1864, signed by F.M. Johnston, Captain Commanding, Henry V. Couch, 1st Sergt. 21st Alabama, and James E. Couch, Lieutenant Commanding, titled “Preamble and Resolutions” it reads in most part: “...We the undersigned, members of the late garrison of Fort Gaines, feeling ourselves aggreived by certain statements in a letter written by Col. Anderson to his wife from this prison, dated Augt. 18/64 and published in the Mobile Register & Advertiser of 22nd Sept. and copied in the N.O. Times of Sept. 30th in which he expresses his firm conviction that under certain circumstances ‘ there would have been mutiny and disgraceful surrender of the Fort’ and in which we are representated as being ‘seized with an appaling conviction that our case was hopeless, and seemed paralyzed with the prospect of certain and useless destruction’ and in which it is intimated that the feeling was so plainly manifested as to compel him to surrender the fort contrary to his own inclinations, therefore be it Resolved 1st That while we regret the necessity of appearing before the public in self defense, we feel that our silence must force public opinion to one of two conclusions: either that by our cowardly conduct we forced our commander to surrender the fort or, what is even worse, he has misrepresented us and we have not the moral courage to speak out in self defense. RESOVLED 2nd That if Col. Anderson ‘realized all these horrors of the situation’ and saw that all hope of escape or of accomplishing the slightest good by holding out was gone....he should have come out boldly and declared that he had done what he believed to be his duty in surrendering the fort...RESOLVED 3rd That as to there being any disobedience of orders, any lack of energy, any shrinking from duty, or any other symptom of a state of paralysis on our part, we deny most emphatically any & every such insinuation from whatever source it may come...to the fact that we stood by our guns to the last minute, that we maintained our skirmish line until ordered in, when the Enemy’s gunboats had taken a position to rake that exposed and open line from end to end and that in every way we were willing & ready to do whatever our leaders thought best. RESOLVED 4th That as a final refutation of these charges we refer to the communication presented by the officers to Col. Anderson and published in the Mobile papers in which they assured him that while the men too realized the true condition they were ready & willing to follow wherever the officers might lead...” About Good. Historically important.
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