Arriving on the coast, after reporting to the commander-in-chief and discharging his cargo, the Lexington was assigned to duty as a cruiser, and coöperated with Colonel Benton in the conquest and holding of Lower California, capturing San Blas and other places. In this duty Lieutenant Commanding Bailey's zeal and efficiency were complimented by his superiors, and gave great satisfaction. He was soon after promoted to the grade of commander. His next command was the sloop-of-war St. Mary's, in which he again visited the Pacific and cruised for three years. One of the incidents of this voyage was the arrival of the St. Mary's `at Panama immediately after the massacre. Captain Bailey took prompt and efficient measures to protect the lives and property of American citizens in the future and seek indemnity for the past, and closed his correspondence with the Governor in these words: "I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your replies to my communications of the twenty-second and twenty-fourth, (April, 1856.) Apart from the announcement of the restoration to the owners of the cannon and arms illegally taken from the steamer Taboga, I must confess they afford me little satisfaction. I had expected, when asking for information as to the causes of the frightful occurrences of the fifteenth, that, apart from the immediate origin of the tumult, you would have deemed it due to yourself, as the chief magistrate of this community, to state why and wherefore you undertook the fearful responsibility of ordering your police to fire upon my countrymen, women and children, and to state what steps you had taken to punish the guilty and restore the plunder. Ten days have elapsed since the catastrophe, and I have yet to learn that a single criminal has been arrested, or that any portion of the immense amount of valuables taken from the passengers and railroad company has been restored. I have yet to learn that your high 'consciencia de mis deberes í la inteligencia de los grandes intereses que se lígon á la conservacion de esta line de transito universal' extended any further than to order an indiscriminate massacre of the passengers over this transit. I have yet to discover that when a riot or collision shall take place here between foreigners on the one side and natives on the other, that you recognize any higher obligation on your part than to protect and assist the latter, and to disarm, murder, maltreat, and plunder the former. Is it possible that your Excellency recognizes but one party to a riot, that you shelter yourself under the philosophic assurance that the fearful catastrophe of the fifteenth instant was the result of 'elementos tam hetorogenos como los que forman nuestra poblacion y la emigracion Californiana.' This conclusion, I regret to state, affords me little. assurance of the safety of the transit for the future, unless your Excellency shall devise some most speedy and efficacious method for rendering these unfortunate elements less 'heterogeneous' hereafter. The police who took part in this horri ble tragedy now guard the lives and property of the transit passengers. The 'Jendarmeria' who, with the same philosophy as your Excellency, deemed it best in the late emergency to destroy the foreign 'element,' are the reliable means of protection which your Excellency will furnish us to any extent for the future; and it no doubt should be a source of gratification that they have, since the fifteenth instant, (the St. Mary's being present,) permitted the passengers and treasure of the steamers Uncle Sam and Golden Age to make the transit without murdering the one or plundering the other. I am, with the force under my command, but from eight to ten days removed from my Government, and am therefore bound to submit to their judgment the manner in which the fearful accountability which you have incurred shall be investigated, and to their decision the indemnity which shall be demanded for the past and security for the future; meanwhile I shall do all in my power to avert any danger that may occur to the transit passengers, from whatever quarter it may come and under every emergency, without relying on your Excellency's Jendarmeria. In directing my first communication to your Excellency, I had no desire to listen to apologies for certain parties or certain acts, but an earnest wish to know what you did toward punishing the parties concerned in this frightful atrocity. I wanted action not sophistry-the names of criminals arrested-the officials dismissed-and some allusion to plunder restored, not unmeaning phrases or flattery. That I have not been thus gratified I have no doubt arises from the fact that you deem the origin of the affair a sufficient justification for its frightful conclusion. I shall here take my leave of your Excellency as a correspondent, and shall have the honor to submit your two communications to my Government, presuming they will not be more satisfactory to them than to me." The foregoing letter is inserted to show that Captain Bailey has a talent for correspondence, although a little Jacksonian in style, and that Señor Don Franco de Falnega, Acting Governor of Panama, had cause to be thankful that the writer was only eight days distant from his Government, for the safety of his tawny dynasty under the frowning batteries of the St. Mary's and with her marines near to his strong places. The character of a man is often better judged by his own letters than the pen of his biographer. This caustic effusion shows the mood of the tough old sailor smarting under a sense of insult to his flag, and burning to redress it, but with his hands tied from redress by a want of authority, of technical not of physical power. He evidently applied to this particular Governor the result of his experience of Spanish officials, based upon his old Mexican observations, and is more frank than complimentary. On the news of the bombardment of Sumter, Captain Bailey, then at Plattsburgh, N. Y., hastened to Washington and asked an opportunity for service. He was at once assigned to the command of the steam frigate Colorado, repaired to Pensacola, then held by the insurgents, and became a terror to the rebels by his restless activity. Finding General Harvey Brown in command at Fort Pickens, he coöperated with him in the operations there planned, and matured the details of an expedition to the mainland and the capture of Barrancas, which for no want of his was not carried out. Seeing a privateer (the Judith) lying at the dock at Pensacola, he planned a cutting-out expedition. The first reconnoissance he made in person, is thus graphically described in a letter from an officer: "On the night of the third of August we were sent by the flag-officer into Pensacola harbor to reconnoitre, and if possible capture some of the schooners or steamers of the rebels. We started from the ship as soon after dark as our movements would be obscured and concealed from the numerous glasses and telescopes constantly pointed at us from the forts and works of secessiondom, passed into the harbor with five boats, Captain Bailey, of the Colorado, who commanded, leading in his light gig, without being observed by the rebel forts or batteries. The night was dark, and after rowing about the harbor and finding that there were no vessels anchored off that we could prey upon, we pulled in for the 'navy-yard,' which, perhaps you have heard, is defended by a strong battery. Treating the rebel sentries' hails of 'boat ahoy, who comes there?' with silent contempt, we pulled steadily in with the boats. Leaving them off the pier end, the captain went in the slip with his gig to see what could be done; found a schooner tied up to the wharf by the guard-house and a guard of soldiers mustering on the wharf by her. The long-roll was being beaten, and a general mustering of rebel forces, together with sending up of rockets and a fire-balloon as a signal of attack, we thought it prudent to retire, which we did, with the boats, without a shot being fired on either side. We knew or were informed previously at 'Pickens' that the wharf where we found the schooner was defended by two thirty-twopounders and two howitzers, but were in hopes to have found the schooner tied up somewhere else than at the wharf immediately alongside of the guard-house, where we could not burn her without lighting up the whole harbor and sacrificing our boats to their point-blank fire. As it was, we gave the rebels a terrible fright, and as we retired we could hear the long-roll beat and see the batteries all lit up from the navy-yard to Fort Barrancas. We do not intend to let General Bragg send all his troops to Manassas with impunity. He must keep at least five thou sand men here to make his position a safe one, for the fleet, the regulars, and the 'pet lambs' are all watching him with deep interest.” A few nights afterward the boats, under the command of the gallant Lieutenant Russell, of the Colorado, went in and burned her at the dock, the Captain being prevented by etiquette from depriving his junior of this chance for distinguished service. From Pensacola he was ordered to the South-West Pass to blockade the mouth of the Mississippi and coöperate with Admiral Farragut in the conquest of New-Orleans. The iron-clads were daily expected down the river to attack the fleet, and Captain Bailey made ample preparations and longed for their coming, confident in his ability to fight his ship. At length the order came to cross the bar, and every exertion was made to get the Colorado over in vain, her draught preventing it. Determined not to remain on her inactive, Captain Bailey, although suffering from the effects of a recent surgical operation, asked of Admiral Farragut a command. His services were at once accepted, and most of the guns and men of the Colorado were distributed amongst the gunboats, and her commander hoisted his flag as commander of the Division of the Red or second division, on the gunboat Cayuga, commanded by Captain N. B. Harrison, as gallant a sailor and as loyal a Virginian as our navy ever possessed. His reports to the Secretary of the Navy tell the story of the fight: "UNITED STATES GUNBOAT CAYUGA, "HON. GIDEON WELLES, Secretary of the Navy: AT SEA, May 7, 1862. "SIR: Having found it impossible to get the Colorado over the bars of the Mississippi, I sent up a large portion of her guns and crew, filling up deficiency of both in the different vessels, and with my aid, Acting Midshipman Higginson, steward, and boat's crew, followed up myself, hoisting by authority of the FlagOfficer my red distinguishing flag as second in command, first on the Oneida, Commander Lee, and afterward on the Cayuga. "That brave, resolute, and indefatigable officer, Commander D. D. Porter, was at work with his mortar-fleet, throwing shell at and into Fort Jackson, while General Butler, with a division of his army in transports, was waiting a favorable moment to land. After the mortar-fleet had been playing upon them for six days and nights, without perceptibly diminishing their fire, and one or two changes of programme, Flag-Officer Farragut formed the ships into two columns, ‘line ahead,' the column of the red, under my orders, being formed on the right, and consisted of the Cayuga, Lieutenant Commanding Harrison, bearing my flag and leading the Pensacola, Captain Morris; the Mississippi, Commander Smith; Oneida, Commander S. P. Lee; Varuna, Commander C. L. Boggs; Katahdin, Lieutenant Commanding Preble; Kineo, Commanding Ransom; and the Wissahickon, Lieutenant Commanding A. W. Smith. "The column of the blue was formed on the left and up the river, and consisted of flag-ship Hartford, Commander R. Wainwright, and bearing the flag of Commander-in-Chief Farragut; the Brooklyn, Captain T. T. Craven; the Richmond, Commander Alden; the Scioto, bearing the divisional flag of the fleet, Captain H. H. Bell, followed by the Iroquois, Itasca, Winona, and Kennebec. |