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Oregonians
display courage in the Civil War by Randy Fletcher The final assault
would
come from land and sea. Aboard the USS Gettysburg, anchored off
The Gibraltar of the South During the Civil War, Confederate forces built a series of forts guarding coastal river inlets leading to the interior of South Atlantic states. The movie Glory depicts the Union assault on South Carolina’s Fort Wagner. Fort Fisher, built from earth and sand, ideal to absorb enemy shelling, with walls as high as 30 feet and protected by 47 heavy guns, guarded the mouth of the Cape Fear River, twenty-nine miles upstream from Wilmington, North Carolina. The rebel garrison force numbered about two thousand men under the command of Colonel William Lamb. On a peninsula just north of the fort was positioned another sixty-four hundred soldiers under Confederate General Robert Hoke. The fort, called the Gibraltar of the South, protected Robert E. Lee’s last major supply route to Virginia. The Union had tried and failed to take Fort Fisher in December. As time for the attack neared, Lamson boarded a small boat with his men who began rowing for the sandy beach. Lamson, twenty-six years old, was the captain of the Gettysburg. Although he was born in Iowa, Lamson’s boyhood reads like a history of Oregon. He was nine years old when he crossed the Oregon Trail with his parents who took a Donation Land Claim near present day Willamina. Young Roswell was sent to the Oregon Institute at Salem for his education. After school he joined the militia and fought in the Yakima Indian War, and was present at the large battle that took place near where La Grande, Oregon is now located. In 1858, Lamson became the first Oregonian appointed to the United States Naval Academy. On his journey from Oregon to Annapolis, Lamson stopped at the Ohio home of his uncle, General C.P. Buckingham. The general’s beautiful young daughter Catherine, whom everyone called Kate, was just fifteen at the time. Kate began a correspondence with her older cousin Roswell that would continue throughout the war and beyond. Oregon’s First Naval Cadet Lamson proved to be an outstanding midshipman. He was in his senior year at Annapolis when the Civil War began and he was assigned to a ship and took his final exams at sea, graduating second in the class of 1862. Lamson rose quickly in the ranks and was soon given command of the Union gunboat USS Mount Washington. While supporting army operations along the James River in 1863, Lamson and the Mount Washington engaged in a fierce battle with Confederate artillery and infantry. The ship’s boiler was destroyed and the powerless and grounded Mount Washington had to repel boarders before being rescued towed to safety by another gunboat. The Mount Washington lost five men dead and fourteen wounded. Lamson’s courage and steady leadership under fire in this engagement was cited in dispatches from Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells. To be mentioned in dispatches is a great honor for military personnel. His home state newspapers covered Lamon’s heroics and had his father speculating on financial opportunities that waited after the war. The elder Lamson wrote to his son “The people of Oregon feel proud.” Roswell Lamson went on to command more ships and flotillas than any other officer of his rank or age in the Civil War, climaxed by his captaincy of the navy's fastest ship, the USS Gettysburg. The Gettysburg was a nine hundred fifty ton steam powered ship of the line, two hundred twenty-one feet in length with seven guns and a crew of ninety-six officers and men. With a top speed of fifteen knots, the Gettysburg was swift on the water and captured seven rebel blockade-runners; their prize money shared by Lamson and his crew. Prize money, a powerful incentive for Union sailors, was awarded by the Navy Department based on the value of the captured ship and its cargo. While Alaric Chapin and his fellow soldiers were paid as little as $13 a month, the enlisted crew of ships like the USS Gettysburg could earn $500 or even $1,000 for capturing a blockade runner. Prize money for officers could run into the thousands of dollars. During the Civil War more than twenty-five million dollars was paid in prize money. The powder ship Following the
failed first
infantry assault on Fort Fisher, Union Admiral David Porter developed
a plan to blow a hole in the seaward side of the fort by loading a
ship with thousands of pounds gunpowder and exploding it under the
fort’s walls. Lamson courageously volunteered to pilot the powder
ship into position. Two days before Christmas 1864, the USS Louisiana
was packed with two hundred tons of black powder and rigged for
towing. Lamson was placed in command of the USS Wilderness and
assigned to tow the powder ship as close to the enemy fort as
possible. Lamson guided the tandem ships well within range of
Confederate guns, the blackness of night offering his only protection
from being spotted by the enemy. Just before midnight, within three
hundred yards of Fort Fisher, Lamson cut loose the Louisiana while
its crew of volunteers lit timing fuses on the powder kegs. Among the
valiant volunteers onboard the Louisiana was Lieutenant Samuel
Preston who had graduated first in the Naval Academy Class of 1862,
just above Lamson. At the very last survivable moment, Preston and
his crewmates boarded a small boat and rowed like mad men back to the
safety of the Wilderness. Lamson described the Louisiana explosion as
an “immense column of flame with four distinct reports like heavy
thunder” after which a “dense mass of smoke enveloped
everything”. As spectacular as the blast was, the fortress was
soundly built and the damage was not extensive enough to ignite the
fort’s powder magazine and cave Fisher’s outer walls. The morning
after their heroics, former classmates Lamson and Preston were
reunited at breakfast with Admiral Porter on the Union flagship, USS
Malvern.
Fort Fisher had to be taken by storm. The Union Army commander, General Alfred Terry, devised a three-pronged plan to seize the fort: First, an infantry division of United States Colored Troops would engage the Confederate troops outside Fort Fisher to prevent the rebels from reinforcing the fort. Second, sailors and marines from Admiral Porter’s fleet would make an amphibious landing and assault the fort from the beach. Third, in a coordinated attack, other Union infantry would storm Fort Fisher from land. Protecting the fort from land assault was an extensive palisade, a nine-foot high solid fence made from logs set on end and lashed together with heavy rope. A squad of volunteers were recruited to advance before the Federal column and, using axes, cut through the ropes and timbers creating a breech in the palisades allowing northern troops to storm the fort. Opening a bloody gate Alaric Chapin, the
teenage
farm boy from upstate New York, was one of thirteen soldiers who
volunteered to chop through the palisade. Chapin had been sixteen
years old in 1864 when he told the recruiting officer his age was
eighteen and enlisted in the 142nd New York State Infantry. Chapin’s
enlistment papers included a physical description: Brown hair, blue
eyes, fair complexion, and 5’ 10” in height (tall in a day when
the average male stood 5’ 6”). Now, less than a year later and
still under the legal enlistment age, Chapin was a seasoned veteran.
He had been promoted to corporal of Company G, and had fought with
the 142nd New York in the battles of Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and at
New Market Heights where his feet froze in the Virginia mud. His
patriotism and sense of duty called him to volunteer for the perilous
mission on which he was about to engage. Volunteering along with Chapin was his best friend, Jimmy Spring, his comrade in Company G. Like Chapin, Spring was from upstate New York and he too had overstated his age to fight for the Union. Chapin and Spring, muskets slung on their backs, axes in hand, waited with eleven compatriots for the order to advance. At two o’clock in the afternoon the navy guns fell silent. It was time to move forward. Creeping along the ground for almost three hundred yards, the thirteen volunteers reached the enemy palisade unobserved. Concentrating their axe blows on the lashing ropes, and using shovels and battering rams to loosen then topple some of the posts; they cut openings in the palisades. Because of the breach they had opened, the volunteers came under fire from two rebel cannons positioned at the front of the fort. The axe men had chopped open a “bloody gate” and nine thousand Union soldiers poured through to engage the enemy. The navy makes its charge While Chapin and
Spring
were attacking the palisade with their axes, the beach assault began.
U.S. Marines, armed with rifles, were the first to land. The Marine’s
mission was to provide covering fire while the sailors who landed
converged on the fort. From the USS Gettysburg, Lieutenant Roswell
Lamson led a storming party of seventy blue jackets; enlisted sailors
nicknamed for the uniforms they wore. The sailors, armed with drawn
pistols and cutlasses, were to storm the fort and fight their way
over the walls in hand-to-hand combat. Like Lamson, all of the navy
officers had gone into battle wearing dress uniforms and, as they
charged, the navy men cheered loudly. Next to Lamson, leading the
assault party from the USS Malvern, was Lt. Samuel Preston. While the
Marine riflemen tried to keep the defenders of the fort off the
ramparts, Lamson, Preston and the other navy officers led the charge
up the beach but were hit with withering canister fire from the
fort’s cannons. Many of the
charging attackers pulled their blue
caps low over their eyes so as not to see the flashes of the enemy
guns. Sailors are not trained in infantry tactics and the assault
became an unorganized mess. The Marines failed to keep up their
covering fire and joined the charge. Of the two thousand sailors that
landed on the beach, no more than two hundred made it to the walls of
the fort but that number included all of the officers. As the blue
jackets approached the fort, North Carolina troops to poured volley
after volley of musket fire into the sailors. Preston, running next
to Lamson, was shot in the groin and fell face down. No more than
twenty paces from where Preston fell, musket balls struck Lamson in
the left shoulder and arm, knocking him to the sand. The wounded
Lamson crawled to where his classmate lay but as the blue jackets
rolled Preston on his back, Lamson could see his friend was already
dead. The musket ball had severed the femoral artery in Preston’s left thigh and he had quickly bled to death without regaining consciousness. Lamson rose to his feet and resumed the fight but while pistols and cutlasses may be suitable for boarding an enemy vessel, they are woefully inadequate for assaulting entrenched infantry. One sailor remarked “we might as well have had broom sticks” for all the good the swords did. The few Marines and sailors, including the wounded Lamson, that reached the walls of the garrison were pinned down below the sand cliffs under Fort Fisher. The North Carolinians taunted the attackers by hooting and catcalling for the sailors “to come on up and fight.” To provide some protection for his sailors that were pinned down on the beach, Admiral Porter ordered the fleet to resume the bombardment of the fort. Lamson and his remaining men were trapped under the enemy guns until dark. Although unsuccessful, the navy’s beach assault kept the Confederates busy on one side of the fort and gave the army time to exploit their breach on the land side of the garrison. As Union troops, led by his own New York regiment poured through the breach he had created, Spring was shot in the head by a Confederate rifleman. He died instantaneously. Chapin, seeing his friend fall, threw down his axe, unstrapped his musket, fixed his bayonet, and joined the bloody hand-to-hand struggle. The inside of the fort was a killing ground; the fighting lasted more than six hours. Long after darkness fell, with most of the senior Confederate officers dead or wounded, Fort Fisher, the last great bastion of the Carolina Sounds, surrendered to Federal forces. The rebels had lost six hundred dead with fifteen hundred more captured along with the fort. The Union lost thirteen hundred men. Among those killed were six sailors from the USS Gettysburg. The ship also had six of its men, including Lamson, severely wounded. With the capture of Fort Fisher, the Union army could directly attack Wilmington, which fell a month later. Two-month’s after the fall of Wilmington, his supply lines cut, Robert E. Lee surrendered his army in Virginia. General Adelbert Ames, commander of the Union division that breached the Confederate palisades at Fort Fisher, recommended Chapin and all thirteen volunteer axe men for the Medal of Honor. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the battle, Ames’ report was misplaced and his recommendation never made it to the War Department. Peace ends military service Roswell Lamson recovered sufficiently from his wounds to return to duty as captain of the Gettysburg. Peace brought an end to the taking of enemy ships and the lucrative prize money that accompanied their capture. After the fleet toured European ports in 1866, Lamson resigned from the Navy and married his pen pal cousin Kate Buckingham. Roswell and Kate had become engaged on Christmas Day 1862 while he was on a brief leave from the war. Lamson brought his bride home to Oregon in 1870 where the publicity of his wartime exploits had made him a celebrity.
Alaric Chapin mustered out of the Army on June 7, 1865, still eleven days shy of his eighteenth birthday. He returned home to New York then headed west with his parents, Albert and Sylvia Chapin, who had bought a farm near River Falls, Wisconsin. On April 6, 1871 Alaric married Mary Smith and bought his own farm where he and his wife raised three sons of two daughters. After thirty years of farming in Wisconsin, Chapin moved his family to a new farm near the tiny Minnesota hamlet of Workman Township. Medal of Honor arrives in the mail
The Army then launched a search for the surviving volunteers. In addition to Anderson, three other volunteers, including Chapin, were still alive and were awarded the Medal. A letter from the War Department was delivered to Chapin’s Minnesota farm in early January 1915. Almost fifty years to the day after the desperate fight for Fort Fisher, two typewritten paragraphs on government stationary informed the sixty-seven year old grandfather that he had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The medal arrived a few days later in a separate parcel and Chapin took great pride in the golden medal with the blue ribbon and frequently wearing it in public, especially to his G.A.R. meetings. Sixteen U.S. sailors were awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantry in the assault against Fort Fisher but there would be no Medal for Lt. Lamson. His bravery under fire and his heroic charge on the Carolina beach are unquestionable feats of valor but, unlike their Army counterparts, naval officers were not eligible for the Medal of Honor, a rule that remained in effect until World War I. The veterans move to Portland Upon his return to Oregon, Lamson briefly worked his father’s farm. He never achieved the fortune he dreamed of but his fame landed him appointment to a number of government positions. He was appointed as the County Clerk of Yamhill County in 1873 and later taught mathematics at Pacific University in Forest Grove. In 1877 Judge Matthew Deady appointed Lamson to serve as Clerk of the U.S. District Court in Portland. Kate Lamson would bear seven children but sadly, all but two would die before reaching adulthood. Kate passed away in 1893 at the age of forty-nine. Following his wife’s death, Lamson’s health deteriorated from old battle wounds and malaria contracted during the war. He retired from the court in 1894 and petitioned for a military disability pension. In 1895, in recognition of his war time heroism, the U.S. Navy re-commissioned Lamson and placed him on its retired list, entitling Lamson to draw a pension. Lamson was a member of Portland’s Grand Army of the Republic Post 13 but his illness kept him largely confined to his home. Roswell Lamson died in 1903. Lamson’s death was front-page news in the Morning Oregonian. The newspaper printed a lengthy summary of Lamson’s navy exploits and included a four by six-inch picture of the distinguished officer. Lamson was well known in Portland “and held in the highest esteem by all who met him.” At his funeral, Lamson’s coffin was covered with the bullet-riddled flag from the USS Mount Washington. He was laid to rest in Portland’s River View cemetery, next to his wife and four of his children. Lamson’s ability and courage were praised in Admiral Porter’s memoirs. A collection of his wartime correspondence, letters to and from his father, his fiancé, and other contemporaries has been published in a book Lamson of the Gettysburg: The Civil War Letters of Lieutenant Roswell H. Lamson, U.S. Navy edited by James and Patricia McPherson. Three U.S. Navy ships, including a World War II destroyer, have been named in Lamson’s honor. After a half century of working the land, his children pursuing their own careers, Alaric Chapin decided it was time to retire from farming. Chapin and his wife Mary traveled first to Canada to visit eldest son Orris in Calgary. Then they moved to Oregon where their two younger sons lived. Earl Chapin was the proprietor of a Portland grocery store while youngest son Arthur Chapin worked as a bridgeman for the railroad. Like Lamson, Chapin was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and in Portland he joined Post 21. Nearly sixty years after the fall of Fort Fisher, on Thanksgiving Day, 1924, Alaric Chapin passed to history at his home located at 1452 Cleveland Avenue in Portland. His funeral notice made no mention of the Medal of Honor, only that the G.A.R. would oversee the funeral service. Chapin was laid to rest in Rose City Cemetery. Many years after his death a modern Medal of Honor military marker was placed next to his private headstone. Chapin’s granddaughter, Miriam Adams, donated his Medal of Honor and his musket and bayonet to the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta. Alaric Chapin and Roswell Lamson never met in life. The tall teenager and the dashing officer fought valiantly for the Union on a sand spit in North Carolina on a winter afternoon in 1865. They both saw good friends die at their side. But Lamson and Chapin had attacked from opposite sides of the rebel fortress and their lives took different courses after that day. Chapin did not arrive in Oregon until long after Lamson had passed to the ages. Yet, the bones of the Heroes of Fort Fisher rest just eight miles apart in separate Portland cemeteries. Perhaps they have met in heaven and recounted their adventures to the angels. The veterans of the Civil War are no longer with us to tell what they did for our country; it is up to us to remember them. Text © 2009 Randy Fletcher Bibliography available on request. All illustrations from public domain sources |
the
coast of North Carolina, navy Lieutenant 
On land, despite
the
winter chill, beads of sweat formed on the brow of seventeen year-old
soldier 
More Medals of
Honor for
gallantry in the Civil War were awarded in the decades after the war
than during the war itself. As military histories were compiled,
individual recognition was meted out, sometime at the personal
request of the recipients. Forty-nine years after the end of the
Civil War, Bruce Anderson, one of the thirteen volunteers who chopped
through the palisading at Fort Fisher, hired a lawyer to petition
Congress for the Medal of Honor. Anderson’s attorney convinced
the
Adjutant General of the Army to launch an investigation, which
uncovered General Ames’ letter of recommendation. (photo