Two New Books on Civil War Naval Operations!

Mark E. Bielski A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy: The Fall of New Orleans, 1862 (Savas Beatie, 2021).

Dwight Sturtevant Hughes Unlike Anything that Ever Floated: The Monitor and Virginia and the Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8-9, 1862 (Savas Beatie, 2021).

Civil War navies do not get nearly the same attention as other branches of the military. Seems strange - seeing that the coasts and rivers loomed so large in the epic Civil War narrative and were in fact a key factor in overall Union strategy.

Now this is just an idea, but military history - at least the traditional understanding of it - doesn’t get the love it once did. But as I have stated before, a focus on the military isn’t just a study of “drums and bugles” but rather a way to get at any number of topics. And if this is true for the armies it is true for the navies as well (is there a “drums and bugles” equivalent for the navy?) So…I would suggest that we can learn a lot from studying Civil War navies and naval operations. The development and implementation of new technology, strategy and tactics, diplomacy, personal stuff like living conditions and day-to-day activities (think of a maritime version of Hardtack and Coffee!!)…even such issues as state rights can come more clearly into focus through a study of Civil War navies.

The good folks at Savas Beatie have published two such books this year as part of the growing Emerging Civil War Series. Both look closely at operations in 1862 - one in the Eastern Theater and the other in the West, and in so doing offer much to consider about the broader contexts of war.

Unlike Anything that Ever Floated, by Dwight Sturtevant Hughes, takes on the famous battle of Hampton Roads between the ironclads CSS Virginia and USS Monitor. Huhges discusses the origins, developments, and introduction of ironclad technology. He looks at Rebel and Yankee ironclads in action on March 8 and 9, 1862 and analyzes the broader implications both in terms of military and civilian response.

A number of things stood out to me as I read through this book. For one, innovation dominates the story. You have to give credit where credit is due here. The Rebs win the prize for creativity. Knowing that they could not match the United States Navy ship for ship, they had to figure something out to offset their numerical disadvantages and thus came up with a great way to harness ironclad technology by using limited available resources. Of course, the United States Navy had ironclad plans of its own that would check the fighting prowess and innovation of the Confederacy. In the end we understand one thing for sure (as if there was any doubt…): the epic fight between the Monitor and Virginia would forever alter the trajectory of naval warfare.

So here’s what really piqued my interest in these ships. Despite looking strange and clunky and old-timey to our 21st-century eyes, they were pretty cutting edge. Hughes’s dedication to detail here is a valuable addition to the study of Civil War navies. The book is filled with cool cutaways and diagrams explaining the engineering that went into the construction of both Monitor and Virginia as well as the ins and outs of operation and navigation. Not being all that familiar with 19th century naval technology, I found Hughes’s in-depth descriptions of such things as the Virginia’s gun deck armored casemate (63) and the Monitor’s turret and turret lifting wedge (116; 118) to be fascinating. What’s more, the book strengthened my understanding of 19th-century military ingenuity.

Of course, the question most pressing on my mind when I started this book was whether it supported the idea that events at Hampton Roads essentially rendered wooden naval vessels obsolete. The American people were watching, as were curious Europeans - and from this point, we might say that Hughes describes a clear path to the eventual phasing out of wooden warships. The devastation inflicted on the U.S. Navy by the Virginia moved presidential secretary William O. Stoddard to note, “Some of our best ships have been shattered by an iron-armored monster against whose sides their bullets rattled like so many peas.” (104). It would be left to the Union ironclad, Monitor to match the Confederate warship. And notably, Hughes suggests that the battle’s winner and loser (spoiler alert: it was a draw…) was really less important than what the fight meant for naval warfare in the future.

For those who enjoy battle narrative, this volume is sure to be pleasing. Hughes’s writing is brisk, engaging, and accessible and is peppered throughout with insightful first-hand accounts recorded by participants and observers alike. There are numerous illustrations that add visual clarity to the action in helpful ways.

A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy, by Mark E. Bielski, looks at the Fall of New Orleans in 1862. This book got me thinking a lot about the significance of the Western Theater, especially in terms of strategy. I have to admit, I tend to consider the East the more important of the two major theaters of operation - and I know that this is not always the most popular take. Fair enough…there is plenty to work with for those who focus on the West, and they should find this book to be a valuable addition to their arsenal.

As the title suggests, Bielski argues that the loss of New Orleans was catastrophic - indeed, it pretty much did the Rebels in. The Confederacy’s biggest city, which opened the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, and thus the Atlantic world, was too important to lose - and Rebel leadership knew it, too. This of course leads us to Bielski’s essential question: how did the forces of the United States take this one with relative ease?

The answer seems to rest with a failure of Confederate leadership, indecision, and a lack of unified command. Bielski makes a decent case, ultimately underscoring three crucial shortcomings in the West: Jefferson Davis’s tendency to micromanage, a state rights political orientation that deprived New Orleans of much needed resources, and limited resources to meet simultaneous threats from the Union blue and brown water navies. Bielski suggests that counter to assertions by other scholars, Confederate General Mansfield Lovell did indeed work to defend the city to the best of his ability, but was simply hamstrung by forces beyond his control. And thus the city fell to the United States Navy and remained occupied for the duration of the war.

This book works to add fuel to the analytical fire suggesting the Rebs did themselves in. I am not 100% sure that this is necessarily the case - the planning and execution and the bringing to bear of Union advantages against this most important city still factors significantly in my eyes - the Yanks had some skills, and they used them. I am not usually one to propose counterfactuals, but maybe just this once I will. Even if the Confederates had had it together, I think the Union still had a solid chance to nab this prize…at a greater cost of course. Still - though Bielski and I diverge on this point, he does a very nice job illuminating exactly how complications with Confederate leadership didn’t help matters much. And he certainly forces one to consider the extent to which the Confederacy defeated themselves (essentially) through mismanagement and bad decisions.

One other thing. Though much of this book deals with naval operations, I especially enjoyed the chapter on Union occupation. Setting the stage for seething resentment of the Union army of occupation both in the immediate sense and for the long term, Bielski does a fine job discussing Union General Benjamin Butler’s infamous “woman order” as well as his General Order No. 41, concerning the oath of allegiance for foreign nationals. I think there is a lot of work left to be done on occupation forces during the war, and so I quite welcomed this chapter.

Again, I found this book to be very accessible and well-supported by documentary evidence - a must have for those with an interest in Civil War era New Orleans. I’ll be referencing both of these new works in the classroom going forward as entry points for discussion of naval operations as well as broader strategic questions. Good books, in my estimation, give the reader a chance to think about things in different ways. Both of these new titles did exactly that.

With compliments,

Keith