Henry Jacob Winser (1833 - 1896) began his journalistic career as a proofreader for Henry Raymond's New York Times shortly after the newspaper was established in 1851. Winser then become a reporter covering a local beat before resigning at the commencement of the Rebellion to assist Colonel Elmer Ellsworth recruit a regiment of zouaves from the fire companies of New York City. As Ellsworth's private secretary, Winser accompanied the Colonel and his men, the 11th New York Infantry Regiment, to Washington City and thence across the Potomac to Alexandria, Virginia. There on May 24, 1861, Ellsworth was gunned down by the enraged proprietor of the Marshall House for tearing down a large secessionist flag from the rooftop of his establishment. Colonel Ellsworth was struck full in the chest by a blast from both barrels of James Jackson's shotgun as he was descending a narrow stairway. Mortally wounded, Ellsworth collapsed into the arms of Henry Winser.
Returning to the newspaper after Ellsworth's shocking and sudden demise, Winser was dispatched by the Times to cover the joint Army-Navy expedition to capture Port Royal, South Carolina, during the autumn of 1861. Perhaps because his father had served as an officer in England's Royal Navy, Winser seemed to gravitate toward news coverage of naval affairs. Consequently, Winser sailed with the Federal fleet to chronicle Flag Officer Samuel F. Du Pont's warships demolishing the rebel-held Fort Walker at Hilton Head Island. This uplifting triumph for the Union secured an important coaling station critical for the maintenance of the Federal blockade along the South Atlantic coast.
Following the Navy's victory at Port Royal, Winser scored one of the great journalistic coups of the war with his incisive and timely reporting on the Battle of New Orleans in April 1862. Observing from a skiff borrowed from the USS Owasco, Winser witnessed Commodore David Dixon Porter's mortar schooners rain fire upon Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, the nearly impregnable masonry works on opposite sides of the lower Mississippi River. These forts guarded the approaches to the South's most populace and, arguably, most important city. Winser watched as Admiral David G. Farragut's gunboats sailed upstream past the forts, dodged the menacing fire rafts, and dispersed the Confederate "Mosquito Fleet" on its way to demand and receive the surrender of the Crescent City.
Although other correspondents from rival newspapers were with the fleet at New Orleans, Winser scooped them all by paddling 50 miles downstream in a leaky dugout canoe to the Southwest Pass at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi. There he delivered his dispatches to a steamship bound for Havana, Cuba. From Havana, Winser's report of the battle was taken to New York and printed in the Times a full 24 hours before any other account of Farragut's great victory hit the streets.
Winser's next report was not as joyfully received at the North as the Navy failed in its attempt to reduce Fort Sumter and sail past the obstructions into Charleston Harbor. Despite having nine powerful ironclads at his command, Admiral Du Pont's attack went awry from the beginning. After an ineffective three-hour bombardment, the flotilla steamed slowly back out of range after absorbing a severe pounding from the rebel batteries. All the ships reported extensive damage while the experimental, double-turreted Keokuk sank in shallow waters the next day. Before she foundered, Winser had climbed aboard the damaged vessel and wrote that "she was leaking badly through several shot holes just at the water line." Charleston would defy all attempts at capture until the final months of the Civil War.
Winser reported from dry land as well as from the sea. Winser followed as the Army of the Potomac grappled with Lee's veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia during General Grant's Overland Campaign in the spring and summer of 1864. At Cold Harbor, Winser was near enough to the fighting to have his horse shot out from under him. The well-travelled Winser also covered the opening stages of the Petersburg campaign, reporting from the field with the Army of the James, as General Martindale's Division attacked the city's extensive earthworks from the northeast on June 15, 1864.
Perhaps Winser's most compelling report covered the entire front page of the New York Times on November 26, 1864. In that edition Winser described the intense suffering of Union prisoners released from Andersonville prison and exchanged on the Savannah River in November 1864. Winser described the heart-wrenching plight of hundreds of sick, emaciated, tattered Union prisoners recently liberated from the infamous prison pen. Winser wrote one of the first reliable accounts of the horrific conditions endured by Union POWs at Andersonville, which shocked and outraged readers at the North.
Civil War correspondent Henry J. Winser had a colorful and eventful career covering the war for the Times. Winser risked his life to report the truth for his readers on the home front and was even briefly incarcerated by the Federal government for allegedly violating rules of censorship. This blog is dedicated to his memory as well as to the invaluable contributions of the U. S. Navy in winning the war for the Union.
