Tag: side-wheeler Carrie Martin

Temple, Lincoln’s Travels On The River Queen says: As planned, the Army leased the River Queen as a dispatch boat for Lt. Gen. Grant who already had his own vessel, the Carrie Martin, for his necessary travel by water…

These Peace Commissioners from Davis were finally halted opposite U.S. Grant’s headquarters at City Point, and President Lincoln eventually telegraphed his permission for Grant to let them pass through the Union lines the following day. These negotiators were: Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens; Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter, President of the Confederate Senate; and John Archibald Campbell, Confederate.

Asst. Sec. of War and formerly a Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. Gen. Grant put them aboard his own ship, the Carrie Martin, a 25-ton-screw-propeller steamship from the Hudson River Line then in Union service on the James River for the use of the Union commander. (Grant rarely used this ship as a residence; he generally lived ashore with his wife in a dwelling at City Point.) This vessel served as the Commissioners’ living quarters as well as their transportation to and from the waters off Fort Monroe—often erroneously referred to as “Fortress Monroe”—where the conference would be held. The Commissioners came and went from their floating rooms without a guard, even visiting around City Point…

President and Mrs. Lincoln were scheduled to pay a visit to the Army of the James, commanded by Maj. Gen. of Volunteers Edward Otho Cresap Ord since January of 1865.

At the appointed hour, a little party departed from Grant’s headquarters and boarded his ship, the Carrie Martin. This group included Lincoln and his wife, Grant and his wife, Porter, Ord and the diminutive Major General Philip Henry Sheridan and a few other officers…

From the deck of the Carrie Martin, Lincoln watched as Sheridan’s tough troopers in huge numbers were crossing the James River to the south bank on a pontoon bridge at Deep Bottom. The Presidential excursion had only been sailing up the river for an hour when this sighting was observed by Lincoln with keen interest…

Basler, ed., The Collected Works, VIII, 286; O. R., Ser. I, XLVI, Pt. II, 352. In 1906, the Carrie Martin spent several months being refurbished by the T. S. Marvel Shipbuilding Company of Newburgh where she got new furniture, carpeting, pilot house, an enlarged Captain’s quarters on the Main Deck, upholstering replaced, and a new boiler, plus an engine nearly new. However, the original sideboard used by Gen. Grant in the dining room was kept on the ship and is “in a fine state of preservation,” a most valuable piece. But by 1906, this ship was called the Milton Martin and owned by the Central-Hudson Steamboat Company. Hudson Morning Republican, July 25, 1906.