A Yankee in Gray: Danville Leadbetter and the Defense of Mobile Bay, 1861-1863

A Yankee in Gray: Danville Leadbetter and the Defense of Mobile Bay, 1861-1863 Jeffrey N. Lash Recognizing the importance of protecting Mobile against Union military or naval attacks, early in 1861 the Confederate War Department prepared to build or consolidate an extensive system of forts and fortifications around Mobile Bay. Specifically, the War Department's Engineer Bureau concentrated on deploying more armament and improving the design of ramparts and parapets at three lower bay forts, erecting redoubts and entrenchments around Mobile, and establishing batteries on bluffs north of Mobile near the point where the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers joined to form the Mobile River, which flowed farther south into Mobile Bay. The Engineer Bureau planned to strengthen further the coastal defenses by improving the fortifications at four upper bay forts and by deploying obstructions in Mobile Bay. Although the small Confederate fleet at the Gulf port—a squadron of four ships and the ironclad Tennessee—assumed primary responsibility for defending Mobile, the War Department prepared to assist the Confederate navy. The Engineer Bureau, therefore, strove to provide Confederate military forces at Mobile and the garrisons in Mobile Bay with the equipment and resources needed to deter or repulse Federal amphibious assaults. The bureau also proposed to support the Confederate fleet's efforts to protect a host of contraband runners from Federal warships that spearheaded the Union blockade of Mobile Harbor.1 1 For more on the Confederate War Department's plans and preparations to defend Mobile Bay, see James L. Nichols, Confederate Engineers (Tuscaloosa, AIa.: Confederate Publishing Company, 1957), 13-14, 73-74; William C. Harris, Leroy P. Walker: Confederate Secretary of War (Tuscaloosa, AIa.: Confederate Publishing Company, 1962), 51; Howard P. Nash, A Naval History of the Civil War (Cranbury, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1972), 24255 ; William N. Still, Iron Afloat, The Story of the Confederate Armorclads (Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ. Press, 1971), 187-88, 190, 194; Jim Dan Hill, Sea Dogs of the Sixties, Farragut and Seven Contemporaries (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1935; reprint, Cranbury, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1961), 47-58; and Hamilton Cochran, Blockade Runners ofthe Confederacy (Indianapolis, 1958; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), 16, 155, 222, 245, 249, 260, 264, 266. Civil War History, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, ß 1991 by the Kent State University Press 198CIVIL WAR HISTORY Entrusting the duty of improving the defenses of Mobile to a Northerner turned Confederate officer, after March 1861 the War Department assigned to Danville Leadbetter responsibility for the execution of engineer operations around Mobile Bay. Born on August 26, 1811, at Concord, Maine, in the 1820s Leadbetter attended Anson Academy, where he prepared for a law career. Following graduation, he served as a deputy law clerk in Norridgewock Township, fifty miles north of Augusta, the state capital. Leadbetter, who stood five feet ten inches tall and who struck one observer as "altogether a fine looking person," impressed his tutors with this intelligence and ambition. In 1830 he sought admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Appointed a cadet in March 1832, he graduated from West Point in 1836, standing third in his class. Following a stint in the Artillery Corps, in July 1837 Leadbetter gained the rank of second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. Beginning in August 1839, he directed the reconstruction of Fort Ontario near Oswego, New York, and acquired experience in procuring ordnance.2 After July 1845 Leadbetter performed post duty at New York and in New England. In November 1848, he resumed field duty when Major General John G. Totten, the Engineer Corps chief, promoted him to first lieutenant and made him recorder for the Joint Board of Naval and Engineer Officers for the Pacific Coast, a mission appointed to survey San Francisco Bay and other harbors on the coast of California—land that Mexico had ceded in 1848 to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago. Returning to the east in January 1851, Leadbetter did post duty until December 1852 when he reported to Mobile, Alabama. Appointed chief inspector of the Eighth Lighthouse District in June 1853, he undertook repairs to Fort Morgan and the construction of Fort Gaines in Mobile Bay. Beginning...