ON LINCOLN'S MIND

A bad idea for clearing Charleston Harbor

[November 02, 2013]  SPRINGFIELD -- With Nov. 19 marking the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is featuring letters to or by Lincoln, written between the end of Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, and his famous speech at Gettysburg. Each letter represents one of the many issues he had to face as chief executive of the nation during its greatest crisis.

With stalemate the order of the day, many citizens and friends offered Lincoln unsolicited advice on solving some of the military's most vexing problems. Case in point: Charleston Harbor.

Charleston's political and economic importance to the war effort was clear to both sides: It was the birthplace of secession and a hotbed for blockade-running. However, the massive harbor was extremely difficult to invade due to its formidable fortifications (the famous charge of the 54th Massachusetts at Battery Wagner was also part of the larger campaign to take Charleston) and the preponderance of Confederate mines or "torpedoes."

Here is one potential solution:

___

Logan U. Reavis to Abraham Lincoln
Oct. 19, 1863

(Copy of letter transcript)

Central Illinoian Office

Beardstown Ill. Oct 19, 63

President Lincoln

Dear sir:

As difficulties naturally suggest remedies, the ingenuity of the war department is brought to bear upon the difficulties in Charleston Harbor, and as the difficulties consist in the rebel Torpedoes and their removal would insure the success of our arms, may I not suggest one thing of a novel nature to you, that you may consider whether their can be any thing made of it. You are aware that there are a kind of people in the world which owing to some freek of nature can see better in the night than they can in the daytime now might not some of those kind of men be hunted up and taken to gen. Gilmore and let him arrange some small boats say not much larger than canoes, then let ropes be prepared with hooks tied down in the manner of anchors, then let these night seers quietly go out at night and pay out these ropes in the manner of a sein, and then by dragging them in, the hooks will catch the Torpedoes and the ropes holding them and that way a good work may be done for our cause. Of course the idea is a novel one, but may their not be some good in it. some of those kind of people lived at Greenville Bond co. some years ago. If such couild be used I suppose plenty could be found.

Respectfully
L. U. Reavis
 

Reavis was an Illinois lawyer and newspaper editor. His plan to use the supposed "night seeers" of Greenville Bond County was certainly bizarre but was far from the strangest military idea offered to Lincoln.

Regardless, the desperation to capture Charleston that undergirds Reavis' scheme was very real. Indeed, Union soldiers did not occupy the city until February 1865, and then only after almost a full year of constant artillery bombardment combined with the approach of William T. Sherman's army from the rear.

Nevertheless, propositions like Reavis' surely did not hold the key to Charleston Harbor, and Lincoln likely condemned this letter to the same file that was home to numerous other supposedly war-winning ideas that were discarded.

___

To see one of only five copies of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's hand and to receive a free booklet titled "On Lincoln's Mind: Leading the Nation to the Gettysburg Address," containing this and other document stories, visit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum between Nov. 18 and 24.

[By the editors of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln. Text from file provided by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and received from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency]