(This volume from the "Incidents in the American Civil War...)
This volume from the "Incidents in the American Civil War" series contains the edited battle reports of five Union and six Confederate officers who participated in the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. Featured reports are by David G. Farragut, Rear-Admiral, USN, and Franklin Buchanan, Admiral, CSN. Other reports are by commanders of United States Steamers Hartford, Metacomet, Brooklyn, and the monitor Manhattan.
Franklin Buchanan was an American naval officer. He is noted for his service as a Civil War Confederate Navy Admiral.
Background
Franklin Buchanan was born on September 17, 1800, Baltimore, Baltimore City, Maryland, United States. He was the eighth of eleven children. His father was Dr. George Buchanan, son of a distinguished Scotch physician who came to Maryland in 1723. His mother, Laetitia McKean, was the daughter of the Pennsylvania "Signer" Thomas McKean, who was of Scotch-Irish descent.
Career
Young Buchanan, becoming a midshipman on January 28, 1815, served first on USS Java, under Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. After five years on various ships, chiefly in the Mediterranean, he made, with the permission of the Navy Department, a fifteen months' voyage to China as mate on a merchant's vessel. He then spent six strenuous years in the West India Squadron, suppressing piracy in the Caribbean.
Meanwhile, becoming a lieutenant January 13, 1825, Buchanan in July following, delivered at Rio de Janeiro the frigate Baltimore, to the Emperor of Brazil. After another Mediterranean cruise in the Constellation, he went in 1833 as the first lieutenant on the ship of the line Delaware which carried the United States minister Edward Livingston to France, and among other officers, he was invited to dine with King Louis Philippe.
He was afterward ordered to shore duty, during which he tested guns at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and then commanded the receiving ship at Baltimore. This service was followed by a cruise in the Pacific, April 1839 - June 1840, in the frigate Constitution and the sloop Falmouth. Promoted to commander September 8, 1841, he was early the next year placed in command of the steam frigate Mississippi; but after a few months, he was transferred to the sloop Vincennes, which he commanded for nearly two years. While cruising in this ship in search of pirates and slave-traders, he assisted two British merchantmen in peril in Galveston Harbor, for which service he received the official thanks of Great Britain.
On August 14, 1845, having submitted, in obedience to Secretary of the Navy Bancroft, a plan for organizing the new Naval School at Annapolis, he was appointed its first superintendent, which position he filled, from the formal opening of the School, October 10, 1845, until his detachment, March 2, 1847, after "renewed" application for active service in the Mexican War.
In 1852, after some years of shore duty chiefly at Baltimore, he took command of the steam frigate Susquehanna, the flagship of Perry's squadron in the expedition to Japan. When on July 14, 1853, the President's letter was presented with due ceremony to representatives of the Emperor at Uraga, Buchanan was the first officer to set foot on Japanese soil. On his return home, he became a member of the Board of Officers to Promote Efficiency of the Navy and was afterward made commander of the Washington Navy Yard, meanwhile becoming captain September 14, 1855.
Under the impression that Maryland would secede from the Union, he resigned from the navy April 22, 1861; but soon thereafter becoming convinced that there would be a reconciliation between the North and the South, he wrote to the Navy Department requesting to withdraw his resignation.
On May 14, 1861, however, he was "dismissed" from the service. Going to Richmond soon afterward, he joined the Confederate States Navy, with the rank of captain, September 5, 1861. He was chief of the Bureau of Orders and Detail until February 24, 1862, when he was placed in command of the Chesapeake Bay Squadron, with his flag on the reconstructed USS Merrimac, renamed the CSS Virginia.
On March 8, he surprised the Union squadron in Hampton Roads and destroyed the frigate Congress, of which his brother McKean was purser, the sloop of war Cumberland, and three small steamers. Having been seriously wounded, however, in the left thigh by a Minié ball from the shore batteries during the engagement, he was prevented from commanding his ironclad in the Monitor-Merrimac battle of the following day. He was "promoted for gallant and meritorious conduct" to the admiral, August 26, 1862, thus becoming the ranking officer, and was then made commander of the naval forces at Mobile. In the battle of Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864, he commanded the Confederate squadron, his flagship being the ram Tennessee. His smaller vessels having been captured or driven to cover, "Old Buck" made a heroic attack single-handed against Farragut's entire squadron. In the furious engagement, Tennessee's rudder chain jammed, she became unmanageable, and other injuries forced her to surrender. Her commander seriously wounded again, remained a prisoner of war until exchanged in February 1865.
Returning to his home, "The Rest," Talbot County, Maryland, he became president of the Maryland Agricultural College (now University of Maryland), September 1868 - June 1869.
After about a year in Mobile where he was secretary of the Alabama Branch of the Life Insurance Company of America, he returned again to his Maryland home where he died May 11, 1874.
Buchanan initiated the high standards of discipline and efficiency for which the Naval Academy is famous; Bancroft commended his "precision and sound judgment" and his "wise adaptation of simple and moderate means to a great and noble end".
He moved with grace and had an affable, courteous bearing; while his magnetism and great personal courage gave him a remarkable influence over men.
Physical Characteristics:
In personal appearance, Buchanan was slightly below middle stature, but he was compactly built and had great physical strength, being in his prime the third strongest man in the navy, according to his brother McKean.
Connections
Franklin Buchanan was married at Annapolis on February 19, 1835, to Ann Catharine, daughter of Governor Edward Lloyd of Wye House. They had nine children: eight daughters and a son.