Battle of Mobile Bay brings the Civil War to the Register's backyard

Battle of Mobile Bay, 5 August 1864 (1890), by Xanthus Russell Smith. The monitor ships are CSS Tennessee (left), shown surrendering, and USS Chickasaw (foreground). Admiral Farragut's USS Hartford is right
 and USS Winnebago, left.

The Mobile Register reported in its edition of Aug. 3, 1864, that 23 Union warships had gathered in the Gulf of Mexico off the entrance to Mobile Bay. This buildup of warships indicated a pending attack.

Register owner John Forsyth confidently wrote that forts Morgan and Gaines at the mouth of the bay, the Confederate bay fleet and other defenses would send the federal ships to the bottom.

On Aug. 5, 1864, Union Rear Adm. David G. Farragut steamed past Fort Morgan and into history as he damned the torpedoes and captured lower Mobile Bay.

Farragut and Captain Percival Drayton standing by the wheels
of a Dahlgren howitzer on the quarter deck of the squadron flagship,
USS Hartford, 1864. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

In series of editorials about the action, Forsyth sharply criticized Lt. Col. John K. Williams of Mobile for the surrender of tiny Fort Powell, which guarded Grant’s Pass in the Mississippi Sound. Forsyth called the minor action in the battle for the bay a “disgraceful surrender.” 

The article so offended Williams that he sent Forsyth a letter “as usually precedes a challenge.” But Williams accepted a follow-up article as an apology from Forsyth and the editor was not forced to defend himself on the field of honor.

Union forces were content to control the bay for the time. Mobile would continue under the Confederacy for another eight months. But the end of the war was becoming increasingly obvious, although Forsyth and the Register would not surrender until forced to do so.