U.S. Civil War Navies
Civil War - in U.S. history, conflict (1861–65) between the Northern states (the Union) and the Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy. It is generally known in the South as the War between the States and is also called the War of the Rebellion (the official Union designation), the War of Secession, and the War for Southern Independence. The name Civil War Read More...
Civil War - in U.S. history, conflict (1861–65) between the Northern states (the Union) and the Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy. It is generally known in the South as the War between the States and is also called the War of the Rebellion (the official Union designation), the War of Secession, and the War for Southern Independence. The name Civil War, although much criticized as inexact, is most widely accepted. Causes The name Civil War is misleading because the war was not a class struggle, but a sectional combat having its roots in political, economic, social, and psychological elements so complex that historians still do not agree on its basic causes. It has been characterized, in the words of William H. Seward, as the "irrepressible conflict." In another judgment the Civil War was viewed as criminally stupid, an unnecessary bloodletting brought on by arrogant extremists and blundering politicians. Both views accept the fact that in 1861 there existed a situation that, rightly or wrongly, had come to be regarded as insoluble by peaceful means. In the days of the American Revolution and of the adoption of the Constitution, differences between North and South were dwarfed by their common interest in establishing a new nation. But sectionalism steadily grew stronger. During the 19th cent. the South remained almost completely agricultural, with an economy and a social order largely founded on slavery and the plantation system. These mutually dependent institutions produced the staples, especially cotton, from which the South derived its wealth. The North had its own great agricultural resources, was always more advanced commercially, and was also expanding industrially. Hostility between the two sections grew perceptibly after 1820, the year of the Missouri Compromise, which was intended as a permanent solution to the issue in which that hostility was most clearly expressed—the question of the extension or prohibition of slavery in the federal territories of the West. Difficulties over the tariff (which led John C. Calhoun and South Carolina to nullification and to an extreme states' rights stand) and troubles over internal improvements were also involved, but the territorial issue nearly always loomed largest. In the North moral indignation increased with the rise of the abolitionists in the 1830s. Since slavery was unadaptable to much of the territorial lands, which eventually would be admitted as free states, the South became more anxious about maintaining its position as an equal in the Union. Southerners thus strongly supported the annexation of Texas (certain to be a slave state) and the Mexican War and even agitated for the annexation of Cuba. The Compromise of 1850 marked the end of the period that might be called the era of compromise. The deaths in 1852 of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster left no leader of national stature, but only sectional spokesmen, such as W. H. Seward, Charles Sumner, and Salmon P. Chase in the North and Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs in the South. With the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and the consequent struggle over "bleeding" Kansas the factions first resorted to shooting. The South was ever alert to protect its "peculiar institution," even though many Southerners recognized slavery as an anachronism in a supposedly enlightened age. Passions aroused by arguments over the fugitive slave laws (which culminated in the Dred Scott Case) and over slavery in general were further excited by the activities of the Northern abolitionist John Brown and by the vigorous proslavery utterances of William L. Yancey, one of the leading Southern fire-eaters. The Election of 1860 The "wedges of separation" caused by slavery split large Protestant sects into Northern and Southern branches and dissolved the Whig party. Most Southern Whigs joined the Democratic party, one of the few remaining, if shaky, nationwide institutions. The new Republican party, heir to the Free-Soil party and to the Liberty party, was a strictly Northern phenomenon. The crucial point was reached in the presidential election of 1860, in which the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, defeated three opponents—Stephen A. Douglas (Northern Democrat), John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), and John Bell of the Constitutional Union party. Lincoln's victory was the signal for the secession of South Carolina (Dec. 20, 1860), and that state was followed out of the Union by six other states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Immediately the question of federal property in these states became important, especially the forts in the harbor of Charleston, S.C. (see Fort Sumter). The outgoing President, James Buchanan, a Northern Democrat who was either truckling to the Southern, proslavery wing of his party or sincerely attempting to avert war, pursued a vacillating course. At any rate the question of the forts was still unsettled when Lincoln was inaugurated, and meanwhile there had been several futile efforts to reunite the sections, notably the Crittenden Compromise offered by Sen. J. J. Crittenden. Lincoln resolved to hold Sumter. The new Confederate government under President Jefferson Davis and South Carolina were equally determined to oust the Federals. Sumter to Gettysburg When, on Apr. 12, 1861, the Confederate commander P. G. T. Beauregard, acting on instructions, ordered the firing on Fort Sumter, hostilities officially began. Lincoln immediately called for troops to be used against the seven seceding states, which were soon joined by Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee, completing the 11-state Confederacy. In the first important military campaign of the war untrained Union troops under Irvin McDowell, advancing on Richmond, now the Confederate capital, were routed by equally inexperienced Confederate soldiers led by Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston in the first battle of Bull Run (July 21, 1861). This fiasco led Lincoln to bring up George B. McClellan (1826–85), fresh from his successes in W Virginia (admitted as the new state of West Virginia in 1863). After the retirement of Winfield Scott in Nov., 1861, McClellan was for a few months the chief Northern commander. The able organizer of the Army of the Potomac, he nevertheless failed in the Peninsular campaign (Apr.–July, 1862), in which Robert E. Lee succeeded the wounded Johnston as commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Lee planned the diversion in the Shenandoah Valley, which, brilliantly executed by Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, worked perfectly. Next to Lee himself Jackson, with his famous "foot cavalry," was the South's greatest general. Lee then went on to save Richmond in the Seven Days battles (June 26–July 2) and was victorious in the second battle of Bull Run (Aug. 29–30), thoroughly trouncing John Pope. However, he also failed in his first invasion of enemy territory. In September, McClellan, whom Lincoln had restored to command of the defenses of Washington, checked Lee in Maryland (see Antietam campaign). When McClellan failed to attack the Confederates as they retreated, Lincoln removed him again, this time permanently. Two subsequent Union advances on Richmond, the first led by Ambrose E. Burnside (see Fredericksburg, battle of) and the second by Joseph Hooker (see Chancellorsville, battle of), ended in resounding defeats (Dec. 13, 1862, and May 2–4, 1863). Although Lee lost Jackson at Chancellorsville, the victory prompted him to try another invasion of the North. With his lieutenants Richard S. Ewell, James Longstreet, A. P. Hill, and J. E. B. (Jeb) Stuart, he moved via the Shenandoah Valley into S Pennsylvania. There the Army of the Potomac, under still another new chief, George G. Meade, rallied to stop him again in the greatest battle (July 1–3, 1863) of the war (see Gettysburg campaign). Naval Engagements With the vastly superior sea power built up by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, the Union established a blockade of the Southern coast, which, though by no means completely effective, nevertheless limited the South's foreign trade to the uncertain prospects of blockade-running. In cooperation with the army the Union navy also attacked along the coasts. The forts guarding New Orleans, the largest Confederate port, fell (Apr. 28, 1862) to a fleet under David G. Farragut, and the city was occupied by troops commanded by Benjamin F. Butler (1818–93). The introduction of the ironclad warship (see Monitor and Merrimack) had revolutionized naval warfare, to the ultimate advantage of the industrial North. On the other hand, Confederate cruisers, built or bought in England (see Alabama claims) and captained by men such as Raphael Semmes, destroyed or chased from the seas much of the U.S. merchant marine. The War in the West That the "war was won in the West" has become axiomatic. There the rivers, conveniently flowing either north (the Cumberland and the Tennessee) or south (the Mississippi), invited Union penetration, as they did not in Virginia. In Feb., 1862, the Union gunboats of Andrew H. Foote forced the Confederates to retire from their post Fort Henry on the Tennessee to their stronghold on the Cumberland, Fort Donelson. There, on Feb. 16, 1862, Grant, commanding the Army of the Tennessee, won the first great Union victory of the war, and Nashville promptly fell without a struggle. Farther down the Tennessee, Grant was lucky to escape defeat in a bloody contest (Apr. 6–7) with Albert S. Johnston and Beauregard (see Shiloh, battle of). Minor Union successes at Iuka (Sept. 19) and Corinth (Oct. 3–4) followed, while the counterinvasion by the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Braxton Bragg was stopped by Don Carlos |
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved.
U.S. Civil War Navies
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1.
Civil War Sea Battles: Seafights and Shipwrecks in the War between the States
by Edward Stokes Miller. 252 pgs.
This latest volume in the Civil War Guides series examines the major operational challenges confronting American naval commanders, including ironclads, sail versus steam, foreign intervention and many others.
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Guns on the Western Waters: The Story of River Gunboats in the Civil War
by H. Allen Gosnell. 278 pgs.
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Monitor: The Story of the Legendary Civil War Ironclad and the Man Whose Invention Changed the Course of History
by James Tertius deKay. 247 pgs.
Monitor is the fascinating saga of arguably the most famous ship in American history, of the events leading up to and following the battle, and of the people who made them happen. John Ericsson had had an idea for a mobile ironclad as far back as 1826, and refined it during the thirty-five years it took for someone to commission him. The English and the French, in turn, had declined his vision, and his clever mind had focused on other inventions that were more readily accepted. Nonetheless, his "subaquatic system of naval warfare" remained close to his heart, and finally, in the summer of 1861, it became a historical necessity. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was desperate for an answer to the Merrimac, which everyone knew the Confederates were armoring, and turned to venture capitalist Cornelius Bushnell for advice. Bushnell was led to Ericsson, recognized his genius, and used all his persuasive powers to gain Ericsson, whom the navy mistrusted deeply, the chance to build his ship. Her assembly at breakneck speed was a miracle of engineering teamwork. Her timely arrival in Hampton Roads, stand-off with the Merrimac, and ultimate demise eight months later became the stuff of legend. Her impact was revolutionary: Filled with more than forty patentable inventions, the Monitor made every other navy on earth obsolete the moment she opened fire.
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Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Chap. 12 "Blockade and Beachhead: The Salt-Water War, 1861-1862")
by James M. McPherson. 910 pgs.
Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War. James McPherson's fast-paced narrative fully integrates the political, social, and military events that crowded the two decades from the outbreak of one war in Mexico to the ending of another at Appomattox. Packed with drama and analytical insight, the book vividly recounts the momentous episodes that preceded the Civil War--the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry--and then moves into a masterful chronicle of the war itself--the battles, the strategic maneuvering on both sides, the politics, and the personalities. Particularly notable are McPherson's new views on such matters as the slavery expansion issue in the 1850s, the origins of the Republican Party, the causes of secession, internal dissent and anti-war opposition in the North and the South, and the reasons for the Union's victory. The book's title refers to the sentiments that informed both the Northern and Southern views of the conflict: the South seceded in the name of that freedom of self-determination and self-government for which their fathers had fought in 1776, while the North stood fast in defense of the Union founded by those fathers as the bulwark of American liberty. Eventually, the North had to grapple with the underlying cause of the war--slavery--and adopt a policy of emancipation as a second war aim. This "new birth of freedom," as Lincoln called it, constitutes the proudest legacy of America's bloodiest conflict. This authoritative volume makes sense of that vast and confusing "second American Revolution" we call the Civil War, a war that transformed a nation and expanded our heritage of liberty.
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Captains of the Civil War: A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray (Chap. III "The Naval War: 1862")
by William Wood. 424 pgs.
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The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research (Chap. 27 "Leadership--Union Naval Officers" and Chap. 28 "Leadership--Confederate Naval Officers")
by Robin Higham, Steven E. Woodworth. 756 pgs.
"The single most important volume for anyone interested in the Civil War to own and consult." From the foreword by James M. McPherson The first guide to Civil War literature to appear in nearly 30 years, this book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date, and informative survey and analysis of the vast body of Civil War literature. More than 40 essays, each by a specialist in a particular subfield of Civil War history, offer unmatched thoroughness and discerning assessments of each work's value. The essays cover every aspect of the war from strategy, tactics, and battles to logistics, intelligence, and supply, from generals to men in the ranks. Some sections cover civilian leaders, the economy, and foreign policy, while others deal with the causes of war and Reconstruction. Breadth of topics is matched by breadth of genres covered.
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Seth Ledyard Phelps was of the Old Navy and the New. As a midshipman and junior officer he served under sail off West Africa, in the War with Mexico, and in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. As a senior officer in the river squadrons of the Civil War he saw combat at its closest. Phelps, a native of Chardon, Ohio, was a prolific and observant correspondent. His private letters, to his wife, his father, and to political patrons and other naval officers, are among the most compelling and descriptive extant. The heart of Ironclad Captain are these letters, which Jay Slagle has set in context through the judicious use of published documents, memoirs, and scholarly histories of the navy. The result is a small history of the navy and its officer corps for the middle third of the nineteenth century.
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On June 19, 1864, the Confederate cruiser Alabama and the USS Kearsarge faced off in the English Channel outside the French port of Cherbourg. The Kearsarge had seen little action, and its men greeted the battle with enthusiasm. The Alabama, on the other hand, had limped into the harbor with a near-mutinous crew after spending months sinking Union ships all over the globe. Commander Raphael Semmes intended to put the ship into drydock for a few months - but then the Kearsarge steamed onto the scene, setting the stage for battle. About an hour after the Alabama fired the first shot, it began to sink, and its crew was forced to wave the white flag of surrender. Marvel consulted the original muster rolls and logbooks for both ships, the virtually unknown letters of Confederate paymaster Clarence Yonge, and census and pension information. The letters and diaries of officers and crewmen describe the tensions aboard the ships, as do excerpts from the little-used original logs of Alabama commander Raphael Semmes. French sources also help to illuminate the details of the battle between the two ships. Marvel challenges the accuracy of key memoirs on which most previous histories of the Alabama have been based and in so doing corrects a number of long-standing misinterpretations, including the myth that the English builders of the Alabama did not know what Confederate officials intended to do with the vessel. Marvel's greatest contribution is his compelling description of the everyday life of the men on board the ships, from the Liverpool urchins who served as cabin boys on the Alabama to the senior officers on both of the warships.
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Lamson of the Gettysburg: The Civil War Letters of Lieutenant Roswell H. Lamson, U.S. Navy
by Roswell Hawks Lamson, James M. McPherson, Patricia R. McPherson. 248 pgs.
Roswell Lamson was one of the boldest and most skillful young officers in the Union navy. Second in the class of 1862 at Annapolis (he took his final exam while at sea during the war), he commanded more ships and flotillas than any other officer of his age or rank in the service, climaxed by his captaincy of the navy's fastest ship in 1864, USS Gettysburg. Now, in Lamson of the Gettysburg, we have the war-time letters of this striking naval figure. What's more, these are letters of exceptional quality. James M. McPherson, co-editor of the collection with his wife Patricia and one of America's preeminent Civil War historians, writes that "few sets of letters equal and none surpass those of Lamson for richness of description, scope of coverage, or keenness of perception and analysis." Indeed, the McPhersons term Lamson's correspondence "the best Civil War navy letters we have ever read or expect to read." Throughout the war, Lamson always seemed to be where the action was on the South Atlantic coast, and these letters describe with striking immediacy the part he played in these events. While serving on the USS Wabash, for instance, he directed the big deck guns that did the most damage to enemy forts at Hatteras Inlet and Port Royal, two major naval victories. He was the officer who took command of the CSS Planter in May 1862, when slaves led by Robert Smalls ran her past Confederate fortifications in Charleston harbor and delivered her to the Union fleet. He commanded a gunboat fleet on the Nansemond River that helped stop James Longstreet's advance on Norfolk. In a daring attempt to blow up Fort Fisher, the huge earthwork fortress that guarded the entrance into the Cape Fear river, he towed the USS Louisiana (packed with more than two hundred tons of gunpowder) directly under the guns of the fort, sneaking into the shallows behind a rebel blockade runner, (Lamson describes "a terrific explosion. An immense column of flame rose towards the sky, and four distinct reports like that of sharp heavy thunder were heard and a dense mass of smoke enveloped everything"). And a few weeks later, he led a contingent of seventy men from the Gettysburg as part of the January 15, 1865 assault on the sea-face parapets of Fort Fisher, where he himself was wounded and his close friend, Samuel W. Preston, died. The letters also capture the spirited personality of Lamson himself, resolved to "stand by the Union as long as there is a plank afloat," but also deeply ambivalent about the war. In a moving passage early in the collection, he describes leaving Annapolis for war duty on the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides): "We gave three cheers for Capt R., three for the troops, and for old friendship's sake three for those of our number who intending to resign [to join the Confederacy] were requested not to go on board. Some of my best friends were among them. This will be a sad sad war. It will be more painful to strike than to be struck." The publication of the letters of Roswell Lamson marks a major addition to Civil War literature. Featuring superb introductions to each section as well as informative notes that explain references in the correspondence to people, ships, land and sea battles, or homefront news, Lamson of The Gettysburg now joins the first rank of Civil War sources. One of the few accounts we have from the perspective of a navy officer, it is a book that everyone interested in the Civil War or in American naval history will want to read.
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