Mosquito Soldiers

by Andrew McIlwaine Bell

  Butler was certainly worried about yellow fever. He believed the locals were intentionally creating unsanitary conditions in the city in order to increase the likelihood of an epidemic, a scenario that made his men nervous as well. Residents preyed upon these fears. The city’s schoolchildren chanted blood-curdling nursery rhymes in the streets about how the pestilence would soon wreak havoc on the Yankees, while parishioners with southern sympathies were said to be praying in the pews for the disease to arrive. Two locals even went so far as to measure and record the height of a group of soldiers; when asked to explain their behavior, they claimed to be taking measurements for the coffins that would become necessary once yellow fever burned through the Union ranks. These theatrics had some effect. A number of Butler’s subordinates requested transfers or leaves of absence. Captain C. R. Merrill of the Fifteenth Maine Volunteers, for example, resigned his command when he suddenly realized after nine months of service that he did not possess “that peculiar military ability to command men, without which no one can be of much use in my present position.” Butler believed that the real motivation behind Merrill’s resignation was his fear of yellow fever and asked the War Department to strike the captain’s name from its record books.3

  But punishing weak-willed officers did not solve the problem of how to keep the city healthy. After consulting with his medical staff and a few local doctors (some of whom were openly hostile), Butler decided that yellow fever was an imported malady that required local unsanitary conditions to survive. As a result, he chose to implement simultaneously the two strategies best known at the time for preventing the spread of the disease—a strict quarantine and fastidious sanitation measures. A quarantine station was set up seventy miles below the city and its officers given firm orders to detain any potentially infected vessels for forty days. In addition, a local physician was appointed to inspect incoming ships at the station and was threatened with execution if any vessels known to be carrying yellow fever were allowed to proceed upriver. These new rules caused a minor diplomatic row with the Spanish, who believed that their ships arriving from Cuba (where yellow fever was endemic) were being unfairly targeted for lengthy detentions. Butler assured Señor Juan Callejon, Her Catholic Majesty’s consul in New Orleans, that he was not imposing “any different quarantine upon Spanish vessels sailing from Havana.” To the relief of the State Department, Spain eventually dropped the matter but not before firing off a few strongly worded communiqués.

  In town Butler put an army of laborers to work round the clock flushing gutters, sweeping debris, and inspecting sites thought to be unclean such as stables, “butcheries,” and New Orleans’s many “haunts of vice and debauchery.” Steam-powered pumps siphoned stagnant water from basins and canals into nearby bayous. The northern press picked up the story and ran articles praising Butler’s methods. “He will probably demonstrate before the year is out that yellow fever, which has been the scourge of New Orleans, has been merely the fruit of native dirt, and that a little Northern cleanliness is an effectual guarantee against it,” predicted the editors at Harper’s Weekly. The magazine published a cartoon five months later which featured the general holding a soap bucket and scrub brushes in front of an approving Abraham Lincoln.4

  Butler’s two-pronged approach ultimately proved successful; only two yellow fever deaths occurred within the city of New Orleans during the 1862 sickly season. His stringent sanitation policy eliminated many of the places where Aedes aegypti mosquitoes preferred to breed, such as rain-filled receptacles and stagnant pools, and the quarantine he enacted isolated infected insects and men. The Massachusetts general believed these actions preserved the health of the city, but residents were convinced that their enemies had simply gotten lucky. They held out hope that the next season would bring yellow jack and end their subjugation.5

  That yellow fever might save the South was not a far-fetched idea in 1862, nor was it confined to the city of New Orleans. Butler’s concerns over the disease were shared by the other Union commanders who were busy establishing beachheads and patrolling the waters along the Confederate coastline in response to Lincoln’s April 1861 order to blockade southern ports. Outbreaks surfaced in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas during the first full year of the war which took a physiological and psychological toll on northern military personnel and disrupted Union operations. As events would show, the wall of mosquitoes which encircled the South’s coastal areas sometimes proved to be a better defense barrier against Yankee incursions than Confederate cannon.

  Such was the case in Texas. After seizing New Orleans, Farragut realized that his fleet could not effectively stop the illicit flow of weapons and supplies coming into the Confederacy through the Lone Star State without controlling the cities that offered smugglers safe harbor. When he learned in the fall of 1862 that Confederates were trading “hundreds of bales” of cotton through Matamoros, Mexico, Farragut wanted to seize Fort Brown and establish a Union troop presence in the area as quickly as possible. But his concerns about what yellow fever might do to an occupation force (the disease was “very bad on both sides” of the Rio Grande River at the time) and Butler’s unwillingness to provide troops for the expedition kept Brownsville in Confederate hands for another year. Farragut seemed less concerned, however, about the health of his jack-tars. One of them, Henry French, was so worried by the cases of yellow fever which showed up on board the USS Albatross while it was off the coast of Texas that he ordered the ship back to the navy yard at Pensacola, Florida. Brownsville’s Confederates were not surprised by French’s abrupt departure. Soon after the Union commander’s ship was spotted near Brazos Santiago Pass, one editor at the Brownsville Flag dared the enemy to enter his town. “Come on, Mr. Yankee,” he taunted, “Fort Brown is garrisoned at present by Yellow Jack, and if you have a mind to try your strength with him, there will be no particular objections.”

  Unwilling to watch his entire crew fall prey to such a dangerous disease, “Mr. Yankee” set course for a healthier climate. Farragut was incensed at French’s unauthorized retreat. “You were sent to blockade the Rio Grande, and you had no right to leave that station until regularly relieved by some other vessel,” railed the admiral, who made it clear that for the navy at least, the importance of the mission trumped all other concerns: “Our duties in war are imperative, and we are as much bound to face the fever as the enemy, and to face both when necessary in our duty.” An unlucky ship, the Albatross was again plagued with yellow fever the following year.6

  French was not the only one of Farragut’s officers in Texas waters who was worried about yellow fever. Brooklyn native William Renshaw received instructions in September 1862 to move his mortar flotilla “down the coast of Texas” in order to intercept blockade-runners and if possible, capture Galveston. Renshaw, inspired by Farragut’s audacious seizure of New Orleans, ordered his fleet into Galveston Bay and demanded “the unconditional surrender of the city” after a brief exchange of fire with Confederate shore batteries. Renshaw’s tough terms were softened, however, when he learned from two clever southern negotiators that yellow fever was raging in Galveston (in reality there was no epidemic in the city at the time). Not wishing to expose unacclimated Union troops to the disease, he agreed to a four-hour truce, during which time civilians could evacuate the city as long as Confederates did not bolster their defenses. Confederate colonel Joseph J. Cook took advantage of a loophole in these terms— there was never an explicit prohibition of the withdrawal of forces—to save several guns from capture by moving them to the mainland.

  Renshaw was outraged at this apparent breach of faith and considered launching an attack in retaliation. But after considering the diplomatic implications of potentially killing the foreign nationals in the city, the strength of Confederate forces, and “the great danger of contagion from yellow fever,” he allowed Cook to proceed without incident. Renshaw believed that “two old-fashioned 24-pounders, one 80-pounder rifle, and another gun” were not worth the
price of exposing his sailors to a “fatal disease” that promised to kill “many innocent people.” When the city was surrendered a short time later, he was content to lead a small force to raise the Stars and Stripes over the customhouse for thirty minutes and then retreat to the safety of his ship. His troops stayed close to Galveston’s wharves. The guns and men Cook saved—in large part thanks to Renshaw’s fears of yellow fever—were used by Major General John B. Magruder the following January to recapture Galveston for the Confederacy.7

  When Renshaw learned that Farragut was having trouble scrounging up an occupation army for Galveston, he took two ships down the Texas coast and steamed into Matagorda Bay, an area infested with Aedes aegypti mosquitoes carrying yellow fever. After three people died and several others fell ill with the disease in September in the city of Matagorda, municipal authorities downplayed the significance of the deaths and confidently predicted that the worst was over. As evidence, they pointed to the diagnoses of two local physicians who were not convinced yellow fever was present (one had no experience with the disease, and the other only heard about the symptoms from patients who were mostly recovered). By October 22 their incompetence was exposed when at least thirty more people died, including a mother and her two daughters. Across the bay the virus was attacking the citizens of Lavaca at the same time. On October 31, 1862, Renshaw demanded the surrender of the city, which was defended by a small Confederate force under the command of Major Daniel D. Shea. Shea refused to give up but asked for time to evacuate the noncombatants, including many people who were ill with yellow fever. Because of Lavaca’s epidemic, Renshaw granted the Confederate commander an extra thirty minutes (for a total of an hour and a half) to empty the town before his ships opened fire. Sick men and women hastily grabbed belongings and made their way to the railroad station to escape disaster. At least one ill man died along the way. When the shooting started, Rebel soldiers only partially recovered from yellow fever helped man the defense batteries and return fire. Shea’s forces had been “decimated” by the disease but fought tenaciously to retain possession of the port town. In the town of Lavaca sick civilians unable to leave in the time allotted faced the twin scourges of war and pestilence as Union shells pocked the streets and damaged homes and businesses.

  Although no one was killed during the bombardment, the Texas press later lambasted Renshaw for firing into a town of sick civilians. “The giving of an hour and a half to a community prostrated with yellow fever to evacuate the town, as was done at Lavaca, is of a piece with the savage enormities of our inhuman foe,” railed one Houston editor. “It matters not to him if people are battling with a pestilence more deadly than his shells.” He went on to predict that a “just God” would punish such “wickedness.”

  After a two-day bombardment Renshaw abandoned the expedition and left the city under Confederate control. Southerners were able to claim victory, and Shea was praised in the highest possible terms for his leadership. In reality yellow jack played a bigger role than the Confederates knew. Renshaw, who had been so reluctant to enter Galveston on account of yellow fever, was not about to expose his men to the same disease in a smaller, and strategically less important, town.8

  But Texas’s Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were without political sympathies and worked against southern forces in 1862 as well. In Sabine City, three hundred miles east of Lavaca, the Eleventh Battalion of Texas Volunteers (better known as “Spaight’s Battalion”) had a battle on its hands even before Union gunboats showed up in autumn. In July a British blockade-runner had arrived at the city’s docks from the Gulf and disgorged along with its smuggled cargo either a sailor or insect carrying yellow fever. By September a full-blown epidemic was under way, with between three and six new cases of the disease appearing “every 24 hours.” Before it ended, 150 civilians and a third as many southern soldiers were dead.

  Panicked residents and military personnel alike evacuated the town. Those who fled to Houston and Beaumont were quarantined on the outskirts of both cities as Confederate authorities fretted about the possibility that the outbreak might spread. Mrs. Otis McGaffey lived in Sabine at the time and in later years recalled how her family’s suffering was compounded by the egregious incompetence of local doctors: “[They] seemed to know little if anything about treating the patients, some getting drunk, and useless (as they were afraid of it)[,] others not knowing what to do.” The McGaffeys fled to nearby Weiss’ Bluff but were turned away by neighbors who were afraid of contracting the disease. Confederate officials dispatched Dr. George Holland, Dr. A. J. Hay, and several nurses to assist sick and dying patients, a number of whom were holed up in a local hotel that had been converted into a hospital. After a careful inspection of the town, Holland concluded that piles of “decaying fish and oysters” had contributed to the epidemic, which he believed stemmed from a combination of local and imported causes. He recommended a ban on all traffic coming in and out of the city in order to prevent the further spread of the illness, a decision that added food and supply shortages to Sabine’s list of problems. Most of the Confederates occupying Fort Sabine were moved out of town to escape the plague. By the last week of September a Union squadron consisting of three vessels—the Henry Janes, the Kensington, and the Rachel Seaman—arrived and opened fire on the fort, then commanded by Confederate major Josephus Irvine. Realizing his position was untenable, Irvine ordered the guns spiked and withdrew his skeleton force by eight o’clock on the morning of September 25, 1862.9

  The skipper in charge of the Union squadron that drove off Irvine’s Confederates was forty-one-year-old Frederick W. Crocker, a former whaler from Massachusetts who had sailed around the world before joining the navy. Crocker soon realized his enemies had retreated and went ashore to raise the Union standard over Fort Sabine. One of his subordinates, Lewis Pennington, who commanded the Henry Janes and had once lived in Sabine, entered the city and learned from the few dozen residents left that yellow fever had killed “nearly one-half of the population” (including the town’s mayor) and that the disease had forced several hundred Rebel troops to withdraw to nearby Beaumont. Pennington and Crocker were shocked to find the dreaded “scourge of the South” raging in Sabine and kept their men “close to their boats” as much as possible during the brief occupation, only sending them ashore to perform necessary tasks such as capturing a family of Confederate spies and burning the town’s railroad depot. Thirty miles away, in Beaumont, the Confederates in Elmore’s Twentieth Texas Regiment, who had been sent as reinforcements to drive the Yankees out of Sabine, were terrified at the prospect of entering an area plagued by yellow fever. The lieutenant colonel in charge of the regiment raised such a ruckus about the danger of the disease that he was ordered not to mention the phrase yellow fever in the presence of his superior officer. Equally uninterested in occupying a plague town, the Federals moved into Taylor’s Bayou, ten miles away, and fired a railroad bridge (which was temporarily saved by an alert Confederate private who doused the flames, though Union troops later returned to destroy it). Crocker’s forces continued to operate with impunity for another month, capturing prisoners and burning blockade-runners, before rumors of a massive Confederate attack unnerved Union commanders, who resumed their blockading duties and allowed the forts along the Texas coast to fall back under southern control.10

  Crocker’s bloodless conquest of Sabine was made possible by the swarms of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that inhabited the city. One resident remembered that the pests were so numerous in the area that they “actually killed young calves and chickens” and tortured visitors, who were forced to cover themselves from head to toe in order to keep from being bitten. Yellow fever had killed several dozen Rebel soldiers and driven away those who remained to defend the area. In late September Union gunboats showed up and, together with a measles epidemic that was under way at the same time, helped keep the Confederates from mounting a counterattack. Shortly after the Federals attempted to burn the bridge at Taylor’s Bayou, the Eleventh’s namesak
e commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ashley W. Spaight (a lawyer and Alabama native who had moved to Texas only a year earlier), wrote to his commanding officer from Beaumont, describing the poor health of his troops: “Half of one of my infantry companies are down with measles and quite a number of two others [are] not yet entirely convalescent from yellow fever, which renders me short of men to guard all points and do the work on hand.” A few days later he was asking for reinforcements to replace the large number of men who had become “unfit for duty” from both diseases. Spaight was never able to coordinate an effective response to the Union invasion, and Crocker’s forces continued their campaign unmolested.11

  Rumors of a yellow fever epidemic in Houston also emerged in the fall of 1862. When a handful of people in the city were diagnosed with the disease in October, a “stampede” of frightened residents fled to the countryside. They were shunned by neighboring communities seized with fear. In Richmond, Texas, authorities banned travelers from Houston from staying in the city for longer than a half-hour or from disembarking from railroad cars without an armed escort. Hempstead’s city council prohibited evacuees from remaining in town longer than three hours and banned the importation of woolen goods from infected areas (the material was thought to easily absorb and transmit yellow fever). In reality the Houston outbreak never reached epidemic proportions. Although thirty to forty people contracted the disease, fewer than a dozen died from it. In late October freezing temperatures halted the area’s mosquito activity.12

  As these examples show, yellow fever raged all along the Texas coast during the autumn of 1862. From Sabine Pass to Brownsville Aedes aegypti mosquitoes helped create a military stalemate in the Lone Star State which ultimately worked to the South’s advantage. Although the U.S. Navy outgunned the Confederacy’s shore defenses, the task of occupying the major trade hubs along six hundred miles of coastline proved impossible for the North during the sickly season, both because troops were needed elsewhere and because sending unacclimated northern military personnel into areas known to be plagued with yellow fever was an unwise and potentially dangerous strategy. Farragut, French, Renshaw, and Crocker were all unnerved at some point by the prospect of exposing their men to yellow jack and either withdrew their forces or altered their plans in the region.