Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[751] C. Ludlow, begging him not to open Dutch Gap Canal because, this done, Parker was afraid that the enemy's fleet would come down, and he did not know that he could sustain himself against their attack.

Here was a situation; I had been trying to make an opening by which the dog could get at the fox and destroy him, and the dog begged of me that I would not, lest the fox should eat him up. And so I never did a stroke more work on the canal, and the country rang with “another of Butler's failures” at Dutch Gap Canal. I could not publish that letter in my justification to show that the canal was not a failure, because I should have to disclose to our enemy, as well as to our people, the fact that our navy did not consider itself capable of meeting the rebel navy on James River. As a patriot I must keep that fact quiet, and I have so done.

I may as well finish the story of this matter now by saying that I was relieved from my command of the Army of the James on the 8th of January, 1865, perhaps ten or twelve days later, and possibly this “failure” of mine was one of the grounds in the mind of the President for my being allowed to be removed, or which caused the removal, and so I suffered.

But within less than thirty days afterwards Farragut was summoned to City Point to look into the naval matters on James River. The enemy, taking courage, had come down through Trent's Reach, with three of their light-draught, iron-clad gunboats during the high water to attack our monitors lying near the lower mouth of Dutch Gap Canal. Parker ordered his vessels to up anchor, and he ran away with them so fast down the river that he could not stop to have the draw in the pontoon bridge opened to let him through, which might have taken five minutes, and so broke through the bridge and never stopped running until he got down to City Point. He would not have stopped then had he not found that from some cause, he knew not what, he was not pursued. What prevented the rebels from following Parker and capturing City Point, destroying all Grant's transports and shipping, was that one of the rebel ironclads got aground in Trent's Reach, and the others went back to help it off. This took so long that the night passed, and in daylight when they got the vessel off, the forts opened upon them, and they ran back up river and never came down afterwards.