9 March in military history: Battle of Hampton Roads, 1862

When Union forces abandoned the Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk, Virginia, in April 1861, they scuttled and burned the steam frigate USS Merrimack. The Confederates raised her hull and rebuilt it in the yard's dry dock as an armored ironclad, the CSS Virginia; Union reports of the battle still call her the Merrimack. In the North, John Ericsson designed the USS Monitor, built at Greenpoint, Brooklyn, around a revolving gun turret.¹

On 8 March 1862 the Virginia, under Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan, steamed out into Hampton Roads against the wooden ships of the Union blockade. Early in the afternoon she rammed the sloop of war USS Cumberland, which went down with 121 of her crew killed or drowned. She then turned on the frigate USS Congress, which had run aground; the Congress surrendered and was set on fire, and after midnight the flames reached her magazine and she blew up. Buchanan was wounded and handed command to Lieutenant Catesby ap Roger Jones. That evening the Virginia withdrew, leaving the frigate USS Minnesota aground.²

Monitor against Virginia

The Monitor reached Hampton Roads at about nine that evening and was ordered to protect the Minnesota. When the Virginia came out again on the morning of 9 March, the Monitor, under Lieutenant John L. Worden, stood in her way. For about four hours the two ironclads fought, at times at very close range, without doing each other serious damage.³

Late in the morning a shell from the Virginia burst against the Monitor's pilothouse and temporarily blinded Worden, who handed command to his executive officer, Lieutenant Samuel Dana Greene. The Monitor drew off into shallow water where the Virginia could not follow, and shortly after noon the Virginia steamed back toward Norfolk.⁴

The battle was a draw. It was the first fight between ironclad warships, and the National Park Service and the Mariners' Museum both see in it the start of a new era of naval warfare. The Monitor stayed in Hampton Roads to guard the fleet, and the Virginia never broke the blockade. The Monitor herself sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras on 31 December 1862. The war as a whole is told in our article on the American Civil War.⁵

9 March 1811 · 215 years ago

Also on 9 March: Battle of Tacuarí, 1811

In 1810 the revolutionary junta of Buenos Aires sent Manuel Belgrano with an expedition to Paraguay, governed by Bernardo de Velasco. Beaten at Paraguarí on 19 January 1811, the expedition fell back south to the Tacuarí River. Velasco sent Juan Manuel Gamarra with 400 men and three guns to reinforce the Paraguayan commander, Manuel Atanasio Cabañas, whose men cut a path through the forest and bridged the river upstream of Belgrano's camp.⁶

At daybreak on 9 March Paraguayan guns opened fire on the crossing and boats came up the river, while the column that had crossed the bridge closed on the camp from behind. Belgrano's second in command, Machain, sent against it, was surrounded and surrendered with his two guns. Summoned to surrender at discretion, Belgrano refused and attacked with the 135 infantry he had left, and the Paraguayans fell back into the woods.⁷

Belgrano then sent his intendant, José Alberto Cálcena y Echeverría, to tell Cabañas that he had come to help Paraguay, not to conquer it, and would recross the Paraná if hostilities ceased. Velasco's report, which Mitre quotes, says Cabañas accepted because he had more than 100 prisoners to guard, little artillery ammunition and tired men and horses. At three in the afternoon of 10 March Belgrano's troops marched out, and the Paraguayan army rendered them honors. Mitre saw in Belgrano's proposals of that day the program of Paraguay's own revolution.⁸