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Norfolk Highlights 1584 - 1881
By George Holbert Tucker
Chapter 44
Norfolk's Civil War Phase
The storm clouds of the Civil War began to gather over Norfolk as early
as November 10, 1860, when the Daily Southern Argus, the city's "states'
rights" paper editorialized:
"Sooner or later the ties which now link together the North and
South must be sundered. How closely the inevitable effect will follow
the cause, may be a matter of speculation, but it can only be a matter
of time. When those shall govern the confederacy who pronounce Southern
life utter 'barbarism,' and denounce as 'the sum of all villanies' a
practice on which our whole section sustains itself, the South must
secede if secession is practicable."
But there were those in Norfolk who felt otherwise. A correspondent
to the Herald and Norfolk and Portsmouth Advertiser suggested that Virginia
cast her lot with the North rather than the cotton states. "Their
slave property," he wrote, "both by the duty and policy of
the free States, would be secured, until it could be gotten rid of by
gradual sales. There would be, on the part of the free States, a cordial
and sincere co-operation in this scheme."
Such were the two schools of thought in Norfolk on the eve of the war.
But as time passed, the more radical Southern attitude prevailed.
On December 20, 1860, when South Carolina seceded from the Union, the
Herald, strongly Unionist in sentiment, asked why Virginia should "dance
crazily out of the Union to the fiddling of South Carolina?"
But the Argus applauded the act by trumpeting, "Right nobly the
proud and brave sons of South Carolina met the emergency. At one stroke
they have severed the chains which bind them to a tyrannous North, and
they now stand before the world an independent people."
South Carolina's move was followed in rapid succession by Mississippi,
Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Finally, when President
Lincoln called for volunteers to put down the rebellion, Virginia voted
to secede from the Union on April 17, 1861.
Prior to this, Southern sentiment was rapidly gaining the upper hand
in Norfolk, and one impatient citizen had already unfurled the Confederate
flag, with its seven stars encircling the letters "Va.," from
the roof of a house on Wolfe Street on April 2, 1861. This was followed
on April 12, 1861, by a party of young enthusiasts who sailed down the
river to Craney Island and hoisted the same colors over the old blockhouse
there.
With the secession of Virginia, followed rapidly by Arkansas, North
Carolina, and Tennessee, the die was cast and life in Norfolk marched
to a quicker pace as its citizens prepared for war. From then on, Norfolk's
Confederate history blazed bravely, if briefly.
At 3:20 a.m. on April 21, 1861, the Gosport Navy Yard containing millions
of dollars of naval stores and arms, together with several naval vessels
moored in the Elizabeth River, were put to the torch by the evacuating
Federal forces. According to one contemporary account, "The scene
was grand and terrific beyond description. The roar of the conflagration
was loud enough to be heard at three or four miles distance, and to
this were added occasional discharges from the heavy guns of the old
Pennsylvania."
One of the vessels that was partially burned was the new steam frigate,
the USS Merrimack, then regarded as the "Queen of the Navy."
What was left of her was later converted into the CSS Virginia that
locked horns with the USS Monitor on March 9, 1862, in the first battle
between ironclads, the grand finale of Norfolk's Confederate phase.
On May 10, 1862, Federal forces recaptured Norfolk, the Merrimack was
scuttled and blown up by her crew early the next morning, and the United
States flag again flapped atop the Corinthian portico of the Customs
House on Main Street.
 Chapter
45
Virginia's First Civil War Engagement
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