Civil War Primer — by Pat Granstra

Union General Fitz John Porter unintentionally entertained troops on both sides during the seige of Yorktown.  

 

When war became a certainty, Thaddeus Lowe, an avid hot-air balloonist, offered his services to the United States Army for reconnaissance and observation. Part self-educated scientist, part shameless showman, Lowe staged a series of tethered flights around Washington to promote the potential of aerial surveillance.  Having equipped his balloon with telegraphic equipment and an operator, he  transmitted the following message to Abraham Lincoln on June 18,1861: 

 I have pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station and in acknowledging indebtedness to your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the military service of the country. 

The ploy impressed the president, whose support led to the establishment of the United States  Balloon Corps, with Lowe as its Chief Aeronaut.  Assigned to the Bureau of Topographical Engineers, the Corps employed civilians as aeronauts and ground crews.  Operating between the fall of 1861 and the summer of 1863, the Corps rendered its most significant service during McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign. 

 

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In 1862, a wet spring  on the peninsula turned roads into quagmires and rendered rivers unfordable, forcing McClellan to delay his plans for  marching  “on to Richmond”  in favor of laying seige to Yorktown.  

McClellan’s engineers spent weeks building massive field fortifications.  Lowe and his men used the time to map Confederate encampments and fortifications from balloons tethered behind the Union camps, safely out of range of Confederate guns.  Lowe often allowed interested officers to accompany him on ascensions.   Some, no doubt, took to the air out of sheer boredom or mere curiosity, but General Fitz John Porter, a firm believer in the value of aerial surveillance,  rode as a student and learned to make ascensions on his own.

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The aeronauts had adopted the practice of going aloft  just before daybreak  when the air was usually calm and clear.  It was a good time for conducting reconnaissance as Confederate campfires, visible in the semi-darkness, revealed changes in rebel positions from the previous day .

Shortly before dawn on April 11, General Porter set about making a routine aerial reconnaissance.  As he likely intended to remain aloft only long enough to count campfires before descending and enjoying his own breakfast, he climbed into the basket alone and called for the cables tethering the partially-inflated balloon to be let out rapidly.

Perhaps Porter had overslept and feared losing the advantage of the pre-dawn gloom.  Perhaps he was hungry and in a rush to get to breakfast.  Perhaps he placed too much confidence in Lowe’s ground crew.  Perhaps he was simply careless.  Whatever the reason for his haste, Porter  was about to regret it.

Instead of being tied to four lines, Porter’s balloon was secured by only a single cable.  As the balloon rose, the tether snapped, setting the balloon– and General Porter– adrift. 

The recoil of the earthbound half of the broken cable struck George Alfred Townsend, a journalist, knocking him to the ground.  Fortunately, he recovered quickly enough to witness and record Porter’s flight for posterity. 

Startled outcries of witnesses to the unexpected free flight drew the attention of soldiers from “the brink of the York to the mouth of Warwick River,” recalls Townsend.  Alerted by the clamor coming from the Yanks’ camp and bewildered at seeing the manned balloon shooting upward, the Rebs added to the cacaphony by firing “alarm guns.”

Porter, seemingly diminishing in size as he rose, leaned over the edge of the gondola, gesticulated and yelled something lost amidst the increasing pandemonium in the Union camp.  

Porter may have heard instructions bellowed from below telling him to  release some of the balloon’s gas, or he may have come to the same conclusion on his own, as the groundlings saw him climb the netting and reach for the valve rope.  Unfortunately, erratic air currents repeatedly blew it out of his reach.  Unsuccessful, he descended the netting and motioned to the crowd before vanishing into the basket.

A few tense moments passed as Porter’s audience– now numbering hundreds, perhaps thousands– contemplated his disappearance.  Had he fainted or succumbed to motion sickness?  Was he praying?  Could he be writing his will?

Apparently, the General was simply retrieving his telescope, for Townsend reports that when next seen, Porter “was reconnoitring the Confederate works through a long black spyglass,” an act applauded by his Union spectators.

Porter’s reconnaissance was short-lived as the balloon, according to Townsend,  began to drift “southeastward towards Fortress Monroe.”  An account of the General’s adventure written by Ben Perley Poore (published in the Boston Budget and reprinted in the New York Times in 1884), asserts that Porter claimed not to have been nervous at this juncture.  Still, he may have recalled and been disconcerted by Lowe’s theory that easterly air currents over the Atlantic were powerful enough to sustain flights to Europe.

The possibility of Porter’s making a transoceanic flight of any distance soon evaported, as a westerly wind reversed the direction of the balloon, carrying it over the Union camps again and into Confederate airspace above the Yorktown fortifications.   Townsend reports that the General continued making his telescopic observations despite becoming the target of “some discharges of  musketry.” (Poore’s account indicates Porter claimed to have been “above the reach of the bullets,” while Robert K.  Sneden claims the balloon was descending dangerously over the Rebel encampments until Porter “threw over all the sand bag ballast attached to the balloon,” causing it to abruptly ascend.) 

Still another change of wind drove the balloon over the Union lines, from which hundreds of soldiers watched Porter climb the netting a second time to grab the valve rope.  Pulling hard on the rope, he allowed the gas to be too-quickly released, causing the craft to plung toward the ground “like a stone,” in Townsend’s words. (Lowe, in an official report, explains that Porter’s “descent was not rapid enough to be dangerous” because the balloon’s “silk was kept extended, and presented so large a surface to the atmosphere that it served the purpose of a parachute.”)

Concerned for the welfare of their general, Union soldiers– cavalry and infantry– raced to Porter’s landing spot near McClellan’s headquarters.  They found that the basket had fallen onto a large but unoccupied canvass tent (everyone in camp was, after all, outdoors watching the drama unfold).  The tent softened the landing, allowing General Porter to emerge unscathed from a tangle of  oiled silk balloon to greet his audience.  Townsend describes the happy scene:  “While the officers shook his hands, the rabble bawled their satisfaction in hurrahs, and a band of music marching up directly, the throng on foot and horse gave him a vociferous escort to his headquarters.”

Presumably, he found breakfast awaiting him there. 

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 Author’s Note

While researching Fitz John Porter’s unintentional free flight, I found discrepancies among the accounts located.  Considering that the balloon traveled several miles, making it impossible for any single observer to view its entire journey in detail,  a certain degree of variation is to be expected. 

For example, Townsend writes that Lowe was among those yelling at Porter to climb the netting and grab the valve rope immediately after the tether broke.  In Robert Sneden’s account, “Lowe soon came up on horseback and went after his balloon.”  The differences between these accounts is minor.

However, when viewed in light of Lowe’s official report of the subject, neither of these statements is correct.  Lowe writes that at the time of Porter’s mishap, he was returning from Warwick Court-House, where General McClellan had ordered him to place a second observation balloon.  Lowe writes “[I] left the one [balloon] then inflated and in use before Yorktown in charge of the only assistant aeronaut I was then allowed . . . .” Townsend may have mistaken this assistant for Lowe.

Lowe’s report also says that he spent the night of April 10 in “the camp of one of [the Union’s] forward regiments” and started for the camp before Yorktown at dawn.  He writes, “. . . at 6.30 I was surprised by the descent of a balloon very near me.  On reaching the spot I found it to be the one I had left in charge of my assistant at Yorktown, and General Fitz John Porter the occupant.”  Thus, it appears that Sneden placed Lowe on horseback at the wrong end of the Porter timeline.

Other questionable comments also appear in Sneden’s version of events.  He omits any mention of Porter’s balloon drifting toward Fortress Monroe, writing only of its being carried over the Confederate lines while losing altitude and being fired upon.  He describes Porter’s tossing out sand bags used as ballast in order to allow the balloon to reascend and carry him beyond the range of Rebel riflefire.  In subsequent passages Sneden assumes the role of omniscient author rather than reporter.  He claims Porter “fear[ed]”  being carried to the James River, “became desperate, climbed out of the car and gave the valve line a hard jerk.”  After losing his hold, “he fell into the basket, one half of his body hanging over the side with the balloon 2,000 feet above the earth!”

As the balloon lost altitude, Sneden claims Porter jumped into a tree and “in a second was hanging in the branches by one arm and leg, completely enfolded by the shattered balloon with the escaping gas filling his lungs at every breath.”  Soldiers, says Sneden, lowered an “exhausted” Porter to the ground.

Sneden’s image of the newly-landed Porter differs vastly from Townsend’s and from that of McClellan who writes that after the incident “Mr. Fitz [walked in] just as cool as usual.” 

In fact, Sneden seems to have taken every opportunity possible to protray Porter as an emotional and physical weakling.  One passage, in particular, suggests that he cared little for the General:  “The Rebels would have been delighted to have got the balloon with Fitz-John in it.  We at headquarters did not care as long as they did not get the balloon.”

If Sneden’s narrative carries sinister overtones, an article published in the New York Times on August 19, 1894, gives a purely absurd version of events. It claims Porter “had never been in a balloon before and knew nothing of managing it” when he found himself adrift at 7:00 a.m. on April 11.  After Porter meandered through the atmosphere all day, the article claims nighttime found him behind enemy lines being fired on a dozen times by artillery.  In this version, the totally inexperienced general manages in complete darkness to pilot the balloon back to Union lines, let the gas out gradually, and land safely after 20 hours aloft.  The next morning, he is challenged by a Federal picket as he walks back to headquarters.

No author’s name appears on this article.  I think we know why.

 

 

Tags: Fitz John Porter, Thaddeus Lowe