sp 3 sess. 5 civil war 1

Ex Scientia Tridens

American Sea Power Unprecedented Global Reach

session v American Civil War, 1861-1865

Part 1; The Blockade and the Cruisers

“THE GREAT PARADOX of the British Empire was its exotic centerpiece, India. Here the original web

of trading outposts of the HEIC connected by sea routes dominated by the RN, the very essence of maritime empire, had coalesced into a land power dominating the subcontinent. It had never been planned, but was the cumulative result of a host of local tactical decisions made in response to real or supposed threats to the company’s ops, or opportunities for greater profit. The HEIC, acting as agent for the British Crown, now governed some two-thirds of the country directly and was recognized as paramount power by the remaining third of notionally independent princely states [the practice of Indirect Rule] — an astonishing outcome for what had begun as a trading venture.…”

Peter Padfield, Maritime Dominion and the Triumph of the Free World; Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World, 1852-2001. p. 27.

3The Indian Mutiny, 1857


of trading outposts of the HEIC connected by sea routes dominated by the RN, the very essence of maritime empire, had coalesced into a land power dominating the subcontinent. It had never been planned, but was the cumulative result of a host of local tactical decisions made in response to real or supposed threats to the company’s ops, or opportunities for greater profit. The HEIC, acting as agent for the British Crown, now governed some two-thirds of the country directly and was recognized as paramount power by the remaining third of notionally independent princely states [the practice of Indirect Rule] — an astonishing outcome for what had begun as a trading venture.• “The Company’s armies attached to the three presidencies of Bengal,• Madras, and Bombay.…”

Ibid.



of trading outposts of the HEIC connected by sea routes dominated by the RN, the very essence of maritime empire, had coalesced into a land power dominating the subcontinent. It had never been planned, but was the cumulative result of a host of local tactical decisions made in response to real or supposed threats to the company’s ops, or opportunities for greater profit. The HEIC, acting as agent for the British Crown, now governed some two-thirds of the country directly and was recognized as paramount power by the remaining third of notionally independent princely states [the practice of Indirect Rule] — an astonishing outcome for what had begun as a trading venture.• “The Company’s armies attached to the three presidencies of Bengal,• Madras, and Bombay were composed largely of Indian soldiers—sepoys—recruited from the traditional warrior classes of the populace,• whose loyalty was retained by regular wages and pensions, the high status uniformed fighting men were accorded in India, and above all perhaps by the paternal leadership of British officers.…”


Ibid.

“…British officers. At the core of the armies, providing a decisive moral edge over the forces of local princes and confederacies, were regiments of British troops.…”

op. cit. pp. 27-28.


“…British troops. These were comparatively few in number, giving a ratio of approximately one European to five Indian soldiers in 1857, but they formed in the words of a recent historian of the British Raj, ‘quite literally the cutting edge of empire.’ “As the leaven of the Company’s armies they were equally critical for the maintenance of British rule,• but in this role their proportionately small numbers constituted a danger: should the sepoys become disaffected and band together the British regiments might be overwhelmed, and by early 1857 there were clear signs of sepoy dissatisfaction. Underlying grievances over pay and conditions, the deeper causes lay in fears about recruitment policy and British attempts to anglicize aspects of Indian culture, which seemed to strike at the sepoys’ caste and religious identity. “Mutiny erupted at the beginning of the hot season on 10 May 1857 among Indian regiments at Meerut, a military station 10 miles NE of Delhi, former Mogul capital of India,• which soon became the focus of the rebellion. The British authorities used the telegraph to alert threatened outposts before rebel emissaries could reach them and call up reinforcements. British regiments were transported by steamship from Madras, Burma, and Ceylon to Calcutta to march up the trunk road to Delhi.…”

op. cit. pp. 27-28.


“…British officers. At the core of the armies, providing a decisive moral edge over the forces of local princes and confederacies, were regiments of British troops.• These were comparatively few in number, giving a ratio of approximately one European to five Indian soldiers in 1857, but they formed in the words of a recent historian of the British Raj, ‘quite literally the cutting edge of empire.’ “As the leaven of the Company’s armies they were equally critical for the maintenance of British rule,• but in this role their proportionately small numbers constituted a danger: should the sepoys become disaffected and band together the British regiments might be overwhelmed, and by early 1857 there were clear signs of sepoy dissatisfaction. Underlying grievances over pay and conditions, the deeper causes lay in fears about recruitment policy and British attempts to anglicize aspects of Indian culture, which seemed to strike at the sepoys’ caste and religious identity.…”

op. cit. pp. 27-28.


religious identity. “Mutiny erupted at the beginning of the hot season on 10 May 1857 among Indian regiments at Meerut, a military station 10 miles NE of Delhi, former Mogul capital of India,• which soon became the focus of the rebellion. The British authorities used the telegraph to alert threatened outposts before rebel emissaries could reach them and call up reinforcements. British regiments were transported by steamship from Madras, Burma, and Ceylon to Calcutta to march up the trunk road to Delhi.…”

op. cit. pp. 27-28.


“…British officers. At the core of the armies, providing a decisive moral edge over the forces of local princes and confederacies, were regiments of British troops.• These were comparatively few in number, giving a ratio of approximately one European to five Indian soldiers in 1857, but they formed in the words of a recent historian of the British Raj, ‘quite literally the cutting edge of empire.’ “As the leaven of the Company’s armies they were equally critical for the maintenance of British rule,• but in this role their proportionately small numbers constituted a danger: should the sepoys become disaffected and band together the British regiments might be overwhelmed, and by early 1857 there were clear signs of sepoy dissatisfaction. Underlying grievances over pay and conditions, the deeper causes lay in fears about recruitment policy and British attempts to anglicize aspects of Indian culture, which seemed to strike at the sepoys’ caste and religious identity. “Mutiny erupted at the beginning of the hot season on 10 May 1857 among Indian regiments at Meerut, a military station 10 miles NE of Delhi, former Mogul capital of India,• which soon became the focus of the rebellion. The British authorities used the telegraph to alert threatened outposts before rebel emissaries could reach them and call up reinforcements. British regiments were transported by steamship from Madras, Burma, and Ceylon to Calcutta to march up the trunk road to Delhi.…”

op. cit. pp. 27-28.


“…British officers. At the core of the armies, providing a decisive moral edge over the forces of local princes and confederacies, were regiments of British troops.• These were comparatively few in number, giving a ratio of approximately one European to five Indian soldiers in 1857, but they formed in the words of a recent historian of the British Raj, ‘quite literally the cutting edge of empire.’ “As the leaven of the Company’s armies they were equally critical for the maintenance of British rule,• but in this role their proportionately small numbers constituted a danger: should the sepoys become disaffected and band together the British regiments might be overwhelmed, and by early 1857 there were clear signs of sepoy dissatisfaction. Underlying grievances over pay and conditions, the deeper causes lay in fears about recruitment policy and British attempts to anglicize aspects of Indian culture, which seemed to strike at the sepoys’ caste and religious identity. “Mutiny erupted at the beginning of the hot season on 10 May 1857 among Indian regiments at Meerut, a military station 10 miles NE of Delhi, former Mogul capital of India,• which soon became the focus of the rebellion.…”

op. cit. pp. 27-28.


“…British officers. At the core of the armies, providing a decisive moral edge over the forces of local princes and confederacies, were regiments of British troops.• These were comparatively few in number, giving a ratio of approximately one European to five Indian soldiers in 1857, but they formed in the words of a recent historian of the British Raj, ‘quite literally the cutting edge of empire.’ “As the leaven of the Company’s armies they were equally critical for the maintenance of British rule,• but in this role their proportionately small numbers constituted a danger: should the sepoys become disaffected and band together the British regiments might be overwhelmed, and by early 1857 there were clear signs of sepoy dissatisfaction. Underlying grievances over pay and conditions, the deeper causes lay in fears about recruitment policy and British attempts to anglicize aspects of Indian culture, which seemed to strike at the sepoys’ caste and religious identity. “Mutiny erupted at the beginning of the hot season on 10 May 1857 among Indian regiments at Meerut, a military station 10 miles NE of Delhi, former Mogul capital of India,• which soon became the focus of the rebellion. The British authorities used the telegraph to alert threatened outposts before rebel emissaries could reach them and call up reinforcements. British regiments were transported by steamship from Madras, Burma, and Ceylon to Calcutta to march up the trunk road to Delhi.…”

op. cit. pp. 27-28.


“…to Delhi. An expeditionary force en route for China was diverted to India by urgent telegraph messages, and troops and naval brigades were sent from Malta, Hong Kong, Cape Town and Mauritius. “Besides the advantage of the telegraph and steamships for rapid concentration, the British had the edge in the field:• the new Enfield rifle with which most British regiments were equipped had over twice the effective range of the Sepoy’s smooth-bore musket….”

op. cit. pp. 28-29.


“…smooth-bore musket. Equally crucial for the survival of British India was the quality of leaders

on the ground. Despite failures in imagination before the rebellion, afterwards key senior officers, civil and military, reacted with intelligence, resource, extreme daring and ruthlessness, especially in the most threatened area of the Punjab. It is significant that these men joined absolute belief in Britain’s civilizing mission to usually fervent faith in God. Theirs was an Old Testament reading of the Scriptures, however; from the beginning they fought terror with terror. “Atrocities were committed on both sides•….No significant independent ruler joined the rebellion …and many Indian irregulars, chiefly Punjabis and Sikhs, fought on the British side. Nonetheless it was not until Jul 1859 that the British felt able to declare a ‘State of Peace.’”

op. cit. pp. 28-29.


“…of Peace. “By this date the London government had brought the rule of the HEIC to an end. The India Act of Aug 1858 vested authority…in a Secretary of State for India…while in India the Company’s Governor General was transformed into the Viceroy representing the Crown. Queen Victoria became the Empress of India….”


op. cit. pp. 29-30.

“…of India. Subsequently the Indian army • was reformed to such good effect that it was to serve for almost a century as guarantor to Britain’s hold on the subcontinent, which in turn guaranteed Britain’s eastern empire.• The RN guarded the oceanic supply lines and secured the home country, but it was the Indian army, acting as a reservoir to boost Britain’s minute standing army that provided essential support in policing the empire5….”


______ 5 Ferguson, Ian Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, (2003), p. 174, provides figures showing that the Indian army constituted 62% of all British garrisons in the empire in 1881, and quotes Lord Salisbury’s description of India as ‘an English barracks in the Oriental Seas from which we may draw any number of troops without paying for them;’ and see Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovations and Expansion 1688-1914, (1993) p. 330.

op. cit. pp. 29-30.

“…the empire5.

“If India was the paradox at the heart of Britain’s trading empire,• ‘gunboat diplomacy’ was the contradiction that empowered her liberal trading policy. The so-called ‘Opium Wars’ are notorious examples. Caused by Chinese attempts to prevent the import of opium grown and processed in India under the monopoly control of the HEIC, they were at a more fundamental level an expression of the frustration of Western traders with a Chinese government bureaucracy ideologically opposed to commerce….”


op. cit. pp. 29-30.

“THE RECRUIT” STEAM GUN-BOAT

op. cit. p. 30.


“…to commerce. British victory in the first Opium War of 1839 had forced China to open five ‘treaty ports’ • to British merchants and to cede the island of • Hong Kong to Britain. This had become an emporium for British trade and opium smuggling and a base for naval ops against pirate fleets endemic to the China seas. Subsequently China had concluded treaties with France and the US granting their merchants similar trading rights at certain ports….”

Hong Kong

op. cit. p. 30.


“…certain ports. “Profits in the illegal opium trade to China were extraordinarily high. Captains who survived the hazards of pirates, Chinese customs vessels and typhoons made quick fortunes and retired…. Their ships were ‘clippers’ • evolved from the fast schooners of Baltimore with a sharp entrance, raked masts and clouds of upper sails and stunsails [studding sails] to augment the plain sails whenever the weather allowed. They were armed with cannon and provided with 40-foot long oars which could be run out the gun ports when the ships lay becalmed and at risk of capture. Meeting Chinese smugglers in lonely creeks, they exchanged their high-value freight for silver, usually in the form of Mexican dollars. In this way the EIC, which provided the opium cake, gained the silver needed for its legitimate trades in tea and other Chinese wares. “With free trade and the abolition of the Navigation Laws in 1849 large, ship-rigged clippers of 500 tons upwards, which were making astonishing passages bringing China tea to New York, penetrated the London market….”

“…London market. British shipbuilders responded with their own style of clipper,• and from the early 1850s British and American captains vied each season to race the first China tea to London, the start of a brief flowering of design and hard-driving sailing skills before steamers won the contest in the 1870s.…”


op. cit. pp. 30-31.

“…the 1870s. “The American involvement in China was such that from 1853 US warships worked with British squadrons against the pirates infesting the coasts and islands. Constant friction with Chinese officialdom…in 1856…flared into….the Second Opium War. While opium smuggling was an important contributory factor, it was more about upholding Western privileges, and as in India the deeper cause lay in the tides of Western commercial expansion coming up against the opposing values of a deeply conservative territorial/agricultural nation in which trade was officially despised. It was about the Westernization of the Orient. “The Chinese war junks and their obsolete weapons were no match for the steam-powered gun vessels and gunboats and naval brigades armed with field guns and rifles deployed by the Western powers;…”


op. cit. pp. 30-31.

“…Western powers. [The outcome was inevitable and led to a second “Unequal Treaty,” which gave further treaty ports and privileges to the European victors… op. cit. p. 31.


“…European victors. Russia founds Vladivostok, her first warm-water port in 1860-61]….•

op. cit. p. 31.


“…European victors. Russia founds Vladivostok, her first warm-water port in 1860-61]….•

op. cit. p. 31.


Vladivostok

“…in 1860-61]. “The offlying island empire of Japan was under similar pressure….A naval s q u a d r o n u n d e r Commodore Matthew C. Perry • sailed into Tokyo Bay in Jul 1853 with a demand from the US President to open trade relations….”

op. cit. p. 31.


“…trade relations….over the next two years Britain, Russia and Holland signed similar treaties. Before the end of the decade foreigners had taken up residence and set up businesses at the main ports.• The modernization of Japan had begun. “Free traders may have dreamed of universal peace, but in the eastern seas the concept was imposed by gunboats.”

op. cit. p. 31.


Peace, Progress and Prosperity?

Just as in Dickens’ famous opening of The Tale of Two Cities, the nineteenth century was “the best of times,…the worst of times.”

The decade preceding our Civil War saw the high tide of the age of sail with its beautiful clippers and the beginning of its eclipse.

It saw the apogee of Western civilizing idealism, what Kipling would later call “The White Man’s Burden.”

And in a century of relative peace the American Civil War would produce slaughter on an industrial scale made possible by instruments designed to improve life such as the railroad and the telegraph, and a panoply of new weapons designed to terminate it.

jbp

Peace, Progress and Prosperity?

Just as in Dickens’ famous opening of The Tale of Two Cities, the nineteenth century was “the best of times,…the worst of times.”

The decade preceding our Civil War saw the high tide of the age of sail with its beautiful clippers and the beginning of its eclipse.

It saw the apogee of Western civilizing idealism, what Kipling would later call “The White Man’s Burden.”

And in a century of relative peace the American Civil War would produce slaughter on an industrial scale made possible by instruments designed to improve life such as the railroad and the telegraph, and a panoply of new weapons designed to terminate it.

The democratic process would prove incapable of containing the ‘irrepressible conflict’ • (William Henry Seward, NY, 1858) over slavery. And so Americans would finally turn to the ‘arbitrament of the sword’ • (Robert Toombs, GA, 1861)

jbp

Major Topics

I. The Two Sides

II. The Blockade

III. Blockade Running

IV. Southern Privateers & Cruisers

V. CSS Alabama

The Two Sides Gideon Welles (1802-1878)The 24th US SecNav,

7 Mar 1861-4 Mar 1869

Matthew Brady & Levin Corbin Handy, between 1855 and1865. Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division

“AS THE TIDE of western commerce broke down the walls of the great Eastern civilizations and

flooded in, undermining their foundations, elsewhere in wilderness areas in Australasia and North America Western settlers continued to advance into the domains of less materially endowed peoples. Aborigines in Australia, Maoris in New Zealand and native American tribes [many American Indians prefer that label] found themselves progressively deprived of land by unequal purchase backed by guns, and decimated by Western diseases for which they had no immunity. The cultural divide between these peoples and those who took their inheritance was expressed by the chief of the Duwanish Indians when asked to sell tribal lands in Washington State in 1855: ‘We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us?’ And he closed with a reflection on the lack of quiet in the white men’s cities.…”

op. cit. p. 32.

4The American Civil War, 1861

“…men’s cities. “New York, financial capital and powerhouse of American expansion, might have served as an extreme model for the Duwanish reproach. Enjoying a superb harbor for oceanic shipping and canal and rail links with the interior, the city was the major trading emporium and manufacturing center of the country, as well as chief point of entry each year for thousands of European immigrants escaping famine, unemployment or repression in their homelands, chiefly Irish, German and English. Many stayed in the metropolis.…”

op. cit. p. 32.


“…the metropolis. They existed on the peripheries with the unskilled and free black workers in overcrowded and insanitary tenement blocks • or shanty homes • constructed of scavenged timbers, barrel staves and flattened tin cans, alongside domestic animals reared for local markets, particularly pigs, which roamed the streets rooting out garbage but leaving their own malodorous contribution of waste. Disease, hopelessness, pauperism, radical politics, drunkenness, crime—and, particularly among female immigrants, insanity—bred in these festering slums and spilled out, threatening the health and safety of respectable citizens and the super-rich alike.…”


op. cit. pp. 32-33.

“…super-rich alike. “At the other end of the scale, members of the plutocracy who had inherited or made fortunes in the rapidly expanding US economy lived in style along Fifth Avenue and around Madison Square, employing staffs of servants and enjoying every convenience of the industrial age, hot running water, baths, central heating and water closets • in place of outside privies and chamber pots. Like the merchants of Amsterdam at the height of that city’s prosperity in the seventeenth century, many had abandoned republican simplicity for ostentatious display with increasingly ornate mansions • and showy carriages with liveried footmen. “New York was little different from London or other British industrial cities and growing cities in the northern US in these respects,…”


op. cit. pp. 32-33.

“…these respects, although its problems were exacerbated by the annual flood of poor immigrants • and the sheer pace of industrial expansion driven by railroad construction to open up and exploit the agricultural products of the Midwest. More recently gold had been discovered on the west coast; the sudden flood of specie had not only stimulated the economy but encouraged foreign investors to buy US railway and and government bonds. Practically all foreign investment came through New York.…”

op. cit. p. 33.


“…New York. “As North American arm of the financial system transforming the world, NYC served the plantation economies of the southern states of the Union with banking, shipping and brokering facilities for their staple products of cotton, tobacco and rice. All were produced with slave labor; indeed, the institution of slavery defined the South.• To the N of the [Mason Dixon] line dividing MD from PA or farther W above the ‘MO Compromise’ line of 1820 slavery was illegal. It was the most immediately obvious difference between the northern and southern halves of the Union, but the effects on the two societies were as profound. The North was, like NYC, commercial, entrepreneurial, increasingly industrial and driven by profit, and on the part of rural settlers by the desire to prosper by their own efforts. The South, by contrast, based on land-holding and slave-owning values [although the majority held no slaves], was static or even backward-looking, fearing change that might allow commerce or industry to upset the traditional orders of society.…”

op. cit. p. 33.


MISSOURI COMPROMISE LINE

SLAVE STATES

DISPUTED TERRITORY

F R E E S T A T E S

“…of society. While the overriding desire of northerners was to make money, the southern slave-owning elites were concerned primarily with personal honor, chivalry and style. It could be said that they lived for the moment, graciously, while northerners invested, or speculated, for the future. Thus the two halves of the US exemplified the the opposing power systems designated in these volumes as ‘maritime’ and ‘territorial;’ the South even had the military traditions and reverence for the profession of arms inherent in classic territorial powers.…”

op. cit. p. 33.


13:The American Civil War:

the Blockade and the Cruisers

Potter & Nimitz, eds., Sea Power, p. 244.

“In the US, the political compromises that had so long allowed the nation to exist half free and half slave-holding began to break apart in the decade of the 1850s. In Feb 1861, a month before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated asPresident of the United States, the Confederate States of America proclaimed themselves a new nation. The stage was being set for armed conflict. “The root causes of the American Civil War include cultural antipathy, economic conflict, the slavery issue, the struggle for political dominance, and the right of secession, but guns began firing over a more immediate and practical question: Who has a right to Federal property in the territory of states that elect to secede from the Federal Union? In the seven states that had first seceded there were the Pensacola Navy Yard, 15 forts guarding harbors, and six Federal arsenals. In addition there were in Texas 18 military posts, with substantial quantities of weapons. Though hoping to avoid war, the Southerners were aware of its possibility. Hence to secure these positions and their considerable armament became for them a pressing objective. “The position of the secessionists was that in seizing Federal property the states were merely exercising the sovereign prerogative of eminent domain….”



“…eminent domain. Recompense in money would be granted to the US government after suitable negotiation. For the most part, the custodians surrendered the property without resistance—partly because those in charge were in many instances sympathetic to the secession movement; partly because they possessed inadequate strength for a fight; partly because President James Buchanan • gave no clear, unequivocal orders demanding resistance. Fort Pickens at Pensacola, Fort Taylor at Key West, and Fort Jefferson on the Tortugas, because of their remoteness and strength, remained in Federal hands. Also the forts at Charleston, under the command of Maj Robert Anderson USA,• were not immediately surrendered, though only one, Fort Moultrie, was garrisoned at the time of South Carolina’s secession….”

Ibid.



“…Carolina’s secession. “Because Charleston had been an early center of the secessionist movement, the forts in the harbor—Castle Pinckney, Fort Moultrie, and Fort Sumter—assumed a symbolic significance as soon as it became clear that they would not be peaceably surrendered. • Toward the end of 1860, Buchanan let it be known that he would not order the reinforcements unless Fort Moultrie were attacked, but on 26 Dec, Anderson on his own initiative moved his garrison force of 83 men to the much more defensible Fort Sumter….”

Ibid.



“…Fort Sumter. The South Carolina government thereupon seized and occupied Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie and ordered the emplacement of supplementary batteries to command the water approaches to the city more thoroughly. “General-in-Chief of the US Army Winfield Scott,….”

op. cit., pp. 244-245.



“…Winfield Scott, with the President’s approval, now ordered reinforcements and supplies sent to Anderson. On 5 Jan 1861, the chartered merchant steamer Star of the West left New York, with Charleston as her secret destination. But as almost invariably happened with secret missions in the early part of the war, intelligence of this effort reached the South before the ship did.….”

op. cit., pp. 244-245.



“…Fort Sumter. The South Carolina government thereupon seized and occupied Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie and ordered the emplacement of supplementary batteries to command the water approaches to the city more thoroughly. “General-in-Chief of the US Army Winfield Scott, with the President’s approval, now ordered reinforcements and supplies sent to Anderson. On 5 Jan 1861, the chartered merchant steamer Star of the West left New York, with Charleston as her secret destination. But as almost invariably happened with secret missions in the early part of the war, intelligence of this effort reached the South before the ship did. “When the Star of the West entered Charleston harbor on the morning of 9 Jan, new batteries on Morris Island opened fire on her. The ship received one or two hits but quickly passed out of effective range. The course of the channel however would have required her to pass under the ready guns of Fort Moultrie. The captain, having lost the advantage of surprise, thought better of making the attempt. He turned and steamed out through the fire of the Morris Island batteries, and Major Anderson got no reinforcements….”

op. cit., pp. 244-245.



“…no reinforcements. Thus the first shots of the Civil War were fired in a bloodless naval encounter. “There now followed a drawn-out tacit truce in Charleston harbor while a committee of Confederate senators carried on a dilatory correspondence with the President. Buchanan welcomed the opportunity to postpone unpalatable decisions but was indisposed to retreat any further.…”

op. cit., p. 245.



“… any further. Meanwhile General Pierre Beauregard,• wearing the brand-new stars of a general officer in the CSArmy, arrived in Charleston to prepare for the capture of Sumter, if it could not be won by negotiation.”

op. cit., p. 245.


the Blockade and the CruisersThe surrender of Fort Sumter

“Sumter, a powerful, newly constructed fort, situated on a man-made island in Charleston harbor, would have been almost impregnable had it been properly manned and armed.But when Anderson occupied it, only 48 of its 140 guns had been emplaced, and Anderson’s small detachment numbered only about an eighth of full garrison strength.• Beauregard, a skilled military engineer, therefore undertook assault preparations with confidence, mounting batteries to breech the walls and constructing defenses against expected reinforcements. On 1 Apr he telegraphed Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Montgomery, AL that all was ready. The next day all traffic to and from the fort was prohibited. On the 11th Beauregard demanded the surrender of Sumter, and Anderson refused. Proposals and counterproposals delayed the attack until early morning of 12 Apr. “At dawn on the 12th, the Charlestonians, who were out in force to witness the spectacle, saw the first mortar shell curve through the air and fall into the parade of Fort Sumter. One after another the various Confederate batteries responded to this signal, and in a matter of minutes the fort was under general bombardment. Anderson chose to wait until daylight made his more difficult targets on the shore visible. At about 0700 Sumter began returning a spirited fire. The cannonade continued for two days and part of a third, during which time Anderson, by keeping his men from the exposed barbette positions and the parade, avoided casualties to his force….”

Ibid.



“…his force. “Meanwhile a pair of small screw sloops, a revenue cutter, and a transport carrying 200 soldiers stood off Charleston harbor impotent to intervene. This was part of a relief expedition organized for the US Navy Department by Gustavus V. Fox, a former naval officer turned business man.• Fox’s plan, to send in the transport with supplies and reinforcements for Sumter, depended on the presence of USS Powhatan,• a big paddle-sloop, to provide fire support….” Ibid.

“…fire support. Unknown to the Navy Department however, the big sloop had been sent elsewhere. Secretary of State Seward • and Lt David Dixon Porter USN • had obtained permission from Lincoln to use the Powhatan in a secret expedition for the relief of Fort Pickens. This piece of interdepartmental meddling proved salutary…”

Ibid.



“…proved salutary in that it enabled SecNav Gideon Welles • to demand a clearer definition of cabinet areas of authority, but it rendered the Sumter relief expedition futile. “On 13 Apr the administration buildings at Sumter were fired by hot shot. The magazines thereby threatened, it became necessary to jettison most of the powder. Maj Anderson had been authorized by Lincoln to surrender when in his judgment no useful purpose would be served by prolonged resistance….”

Ibid.



“…prolonged resistance. Without prospect of relief, with limited supplies, and no longer with any effective power to fight back, he bowed to the inevitable and capitulated. The flag of the US was hauled down on 14 Apr, and Sumter was evacuated—the troops being carried away by Fox’s otherwise fruitless relief force.• “The events in Charleston harbor made war inevitable.…”

op. cit., pp. 245-246.

“…war inevitable. Lincoln’s response was prompt and firm. In a proclamation on 15 Apr he summoned 75,000 state militia. “The promise of coercive action by the Federal government led four other Southern states to join the Confederacy. Seeing the middle position between Secession and Federalism melt away, VA, AR, NC and TN passed ordinances of secession. There was strong secessionist sentiment in the slave-holding border states, MO, KY, and MD, but a combination of geography [bold leadership by military and civilian leaders] and loyalist majorities kept them in the union.”

op. cit., pp. 245-246.



op. cit., p. 246.

“The surrender of Fort Sumter, except as a blow to Northern pride, was a much less serious loss than the nearly contemporaneous abandonment of the Norfolk Navy Yard. The Norfolk Yard, biggest in the country, had one of the two large naval dry docks and was a storage arsenal for the Navy’s reserve ordnance. Here were stored 300-odd Dahlgren guns, 50 or more of which were 9-inch weapons of the latest design….”

Loss of the Norfolk Navy Yard

op. cit., p. 246.

“…latest design. Here too were a number of vessels under repair, including the 30-gun screw frigate Merrimac. “While matters were coming to a head in Charleston harbor, the city of Norfolk seethed with secessionist sentiment. Though VA had not yet joined the Confederacy, recruitment for the VA militia was being actively pressed, many of the officers stationed at the Yard were resigning, and desertion and petty acts of mutiny were becoming common. On 10 April, • Secretary Welles warned the aging commandant, Commodore C.S. McCauley, to exercise ‘great vigilance.’ On the 12th,• Engineer in Chief Benjamin F. Isherwood was ordered to Norfolk….”

op. cit., p. 246.

“…to Norfolk to supervise the reassembling of the Merrimac’s machinery so that she could be shifted to Philadelphia. Isherwood quickly complied, but McCauley, reduced to a panicky irresoluteness by the distressing march of events and fearing to provoke an armed clash by any purposeful activity, finally ordered Isherwood to draw [extinguish] the boiler fires….”



“…boiler fires. By this time VA had passed her secession ordnance. Secretary Welles lost no time dispatching Commodore Hiram Paulding • to relieve McCauley and to evacuate or destroy all naval material and shipping at Norfolk….”

Ibid.




“…at Norfolk. “Equipped with combustibles, Paulding took USS Pawnee to Norfolk, arriving the evening of 20 Apr. Here he discovered the Merrimac and three other ships, scuttled by McCauley’s order, gradually sinking in the anchorage. Paulding would have to hurry to complete his mission of destruction. Though reinforced by a troop contingent from Fortress Monroe, across the James River, he lacked an adequate force to defend the sprawling Navy Yard if the VA militia assembled outside were to storm the gates. “Marines and bluejackets [sailors trained and deployed as shore forces] from the Pawnee, dividing into small work parties, mined the drydock, spread turpentine-soaked cotton waste and gunpowder around the wooden buildings and the top-hamper [sails, rigging, or other things above decks] of the sinking ships, and made unsuccessful efforts to sledge off the trunnions • of the big guns in storage.….”

Ibid.




“…in storage. In a matter of hours preparations were as complete as they could make them, and a little before dawn the powder trains were lighted off. As the firing parties rowed from the shore, the whole yard turned into a sheet of flame. “The work of destruction proved far from complete, for when the fires burned themselves out, the Confederates found undamaged among the ruins….

Ibid.




“…the ruins the largest cache of modern ordnance in the Western Hemisphere. Since at the time the South had no facilities for producing such weapons, this was good fortune beyond price. These were the guns that would arm the new forts defending Southern harbors. Moreover, a reckless band of VA militia had rushed into the yard in the nick of time to save the drydock by flooding.

“The Union and the Confederacy were not, except in area, well matched….”Ibid.


Military Resourcesof the Adversaries



“…well matched. The population of the Union exceeded that of the seceded region by a five-to-two ratio.1 The disparity in material resources and particularly in developed industry was much more marked. Even in textile manufacture, the South was far from self-sufficient. In heavy industry, the basic component of economic war potential, the superiority of the North was overwhelming.• The South lacked not only foundries and metal works to make guns and supply her railroads but also skilled workmen and experienced engineers to run such plants….”

op. cit., pp. 246-247.


______ 1 The North had a population of 22,000,000 (1860 census); the South, 9,000,000 of whom approximately 3,500,000 were slaves.



“…well matched. The population of the Union exceeded that of the seceded region by a five-to-two ratio.1 The disparity in material resources and particularly in developed industry was much more marked. Even in textile manufacture, the South was far from self-sufficient. In heavy industry, the basic component of economic war potential, the superiority of the North was overwhelming.• The South lacked not only foundries and metal works to make guns and supply her railroads but also skilled workmen and experienced engineers to run such plants. Her transportation system was hardly adequate to handle her peacetime needs; in relationship to her area, her railroads were relatively few, and these were not planned as a system. In the North, on the other hand, the 1850s had seen a boom in rail construction, and the great trunk line systems were already in operation….”

op. cit., pp. 246-247.




“…in operation. “In 1860 the exports of the South—mostly cotton and tobacco—were valued at $31,000,000. Furthermore Northern ship-owners monopolized the carrying trade; there was not in the entire Confederacy an adequate number of experienced merchant seamen to man a navy—even if there had been the industrial wherewithal to build one. The USN began the Civil War woefully unprepared, but the Confederacy had no navy at all….”

op. cit., pp. 246-247.




op. cit., p. 247.

“…at all. “Though the South was an agricultural region, it was not well supplied even in basic foodstuffs because of the large areas devoted exclusively to raising cotton. The incursions of Northern armies, especially the splitting of TX and AR from the rest of the Confederacy, combined with the breakdown of transportation and the inflation of the currency to produce near-starvation. Even if Lee had saved the Army of Virginia at Appomattox, the South would have been starved into submission within a year. In summary, the North had the economic wherewithal to fight a war, and the South had not. “In the face of these facts, how did the South dare to provoke a war? There is no single answer to this question. [How do you think Padfield would approach it?] In the first place, nobody planned the Civil War; secession was planned, but very few even of the leaders of the Southern population believed that force would be necessary to accomplish it. Second, the educational level of the South was low; a great many ignorant and unreflecting people gave serious credence to the demagogic assurance that the ‘Yankees are cowards.’Third, there was no understanding of the economic demands of modern war; even Jefferson Davis and his cabinet did not at first realize the problem they faced. Fourth, there was some reliance on the hope that Northern ‘politics’ would make the successful prosecution of the war by the North impossible….”




“…North impossible. The Democratic party in the North still had many adherents, and Southern sympathizers were in fact active (though ineffectual) in some Northern states [especially in southern OH]. “Fifth, it was widely believed that to cut off ‘King Cotton’ from British and French mills would ruin their industry and compel Britain and France to intervene in the war, or at least to breech the blockade. Sixth, the South counted on simple war weariness and the mounting cost of the war in casualties and treasure to prompt the people of the North to demand a peace. Seventh, in spite of all her handicaps, the South enjoyed certain real advantages: she had a proud and virile rural population, accustomed to to the use of firearms and possessed of a tradition of violence;2…”

Ibid.


______ 2 The duel, for example, which had disappeared in the North, was still an integral part of a Southern gentleman’s ‘code of honor.’



“… of violence;2 she had a ready-made officer corps in the large number of officers of the US Army who resigned their commissions to take new ones in the Confederacy; furthermore in Lee, Jackson, Joseph Johnston, Beauregard and others, she had some of the ablest military men of the day.3…”

Ibid.


______ 2 The duel, for example, which had disappeared in the North, was still an integral part of a Southern gentleman’s ‘code of honor.’3 In order to avoid asking too much financial sacrifice on the one hand and the imputation of ‘buying loyalties’ on the other, the Confederate government wisely offered identical rank and pay to ‘transfers’ from the US regular forces.



“…the day.3 The territory of the Confederacy was extensive and could be held only by vast armies campaigning through years of fighting.…” op. cit., pp. 247-248.


“…of fighting. Also, the bulk of the Southern population was passionately loyal to the cause. [Much recent scholarship tends to undermine this opinion.] By concentrating on the few Southern strengths, and minimizing the many Southern weaknesses, even shrewd men in the South could bring themselves to believe in the prospect of ultimate victory.

“Both the North and the South anticipated a short war. When the issue was joined after months of vacillation and negotiation, there was an almost pathological eagerness for battle. From the middle of April, war preparations went on rapidly on both sides…”

op. cit., pp. 247-248.

War Preparations

“…both sides. “The Confederate government, which already had some 11,000 men in arms at Charleston and Pensacola, had on 8 Apr called for a contingent of 20,000 from the seceded states; on 16 Apr there was a further call for 34,000 volunteers.• In the seized arsenals the South found much military equipment, including over 100,000 stands of arms.…”

op. cit., pp. 247-248.

War Preparations



op. cit., p. 248.

“…of arms. Other weapons were secured by purchase from abroad. The forts, especially those of Charleston, furnished heavy guns. The occupation of the Norfolk Navy Yard, as previously noted, made available heavy artillery that the South could not herself have produced. Agents were dispatched to Europe, both to work for diplomatic recognition and a line of credit, and to procure military stores and naval shipping. Further fortification of the Southern coast was undertaken; plans were made to blockade the Mississippi River as far N as Columbus, KY.…”

War Preparations



op. cit., p. 248.

“…Columbus, KY. At the special session of the Confederate Congress, President Davis announced that he ‘had in the field, at Charleston, Pensacola, Forts Morgan, Jackson, St. Philip, and Pulaski, 10,000 men and 16,000 are now en route for VA.’ He also promised the immediate organization of an army of 100,000 men. “Corresponding preparations were made by the North. Lincoln’s call for volunteers on 15 Apr brought an enthusiastic response from all the free states, and from nearly every prominent citizen in the North. The state governors immediately set about recruiting and exceeding their quotas. Nearly double the 75,000 volunteers sought presented themselves for induction.…”

War Preparations



op. cit., p. 248.

“…for induction. “It takes some time to enlist, assemble, equip, and transport recruits, but in three months both sides had taken these first steps in the creation of citizen armies.…”

War Preparations



“…citizen armies. Such was popular demand and such was the inexperience of the general officers (commanding comparatively large forces for the first time in American history) , that these untrained innocents were thrown at each other at the first opportunity, a discreditable performance known as the first Battle of Bull Run (21 Jul 61).…”

Ibid.

War Preparations



“…Jul 61). Since the Union disorganization was the greater, and many of the blue-clad troops panicked in retreat, the South hailed it as a great victory. The North was correspondingly cast down. Southern officers also lost control of their troops in the field however, and the professionals on both sides were content to withdraw to train their forces into armies of soldiers. There were no further land engagements of consequence in 1861. “For the Union, the Battle of Bull Run was simply the culmination of a series of alarms and frustrations in the unlucky spring and summer of 1861—the loss of Fort Sumter, the abandonment of Norfolk, the quite reasonable fear that MD would secede and leave Washington a besieged city in a hostile land. Yet, though there were to be four long years of bloodshed and heartache before the Army of the Potomac could march in the victory parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, the foundations of a victorious grand strategy were already being laid.”

Ibid.

War Preparations



“In a cabinet that included William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and, later, Edwin M. Stanton, Gideon Welles, the new SecNav, a CT politician and newspaper editor, was far from being the most prominent member. Yet in many ways he was Lincoln’s wisest selection. For one thing, he had had experience as a naval bureau chief. For another, he was completely loyal to Lincoln, whom he recognized from the first to be a great leader. Finally he possessed most of the qualities of a great administrator, possibly all except the capacity to delegate authority. This failing he compensated by an enormous capacity for hard work. His extensive diaries reveal a man of first rate intelligent and great firmness of purpose—with an uncanny eye for character weakness in his peers.…”

Ibid.

Naval Secretary Gideon Welles



“…his peers. “Welles was ably assisted by Gustavus V. Fox.• After the unhappy Sumter Relief Expedition, Fox had been appeased by his appointment as Chief Clerk of the Navy Department; shortly afterward he became the first Assistant SecNav.”

Ibid.

Naval Secretary Gideon Welles

Cartoon map illustrating Gen. Winfield Scott's plan to crush the Confederacy, economically., J.B. Elliot, Dec 1861

The Blockade It is sometimes called the "Anaconda plan."



“The history of the Federal Navy in the American Civil War is an account not of winning sea supremacy but of exercising it, of making potential control actual control. Except locally, and under atypical conditions, the South made no effective challenge to the superior Northern sea power. Nevertheless, it required arduous service by hundreds of ships and thousands of men to make this superiority a heavy weight in the balance of victory and defeat. Offensive ops of great diversity were undertaken by the Union Navy. Coastal forts were bombarded, joint amphib assaults were effected, Confederate commerce raiders were hunted down. Above all, the ceaseless patrol off the Southern ports was maintained. It may be said that every Confederate naval effort was an attempt to breach the blockade, while nearly every op undertaken by the Union Navy was related to the constant effort to strengthen it. The blockade of the South was aptly characterized by Gen Winfield Scott • as the ‘Anaconda Policy.’ Just as a python’s coils grasp its prey loosely at first, then grip tighter and tighter until the victim is squeezed to death,• so the improvised navy of Gideon Welles gradually extinguished the commercial life of the Confederacy.…”

op. cit., pp. 248, 250.

The “Anaconda Policy”



op. cit., p. 250.

“…the Confederacy. “The South was peculiarly vulnerable to blockade because of the specialization of her economy. As the Anaconda tightened its coils, not only were there progressive shortages of munitions, uniform cloth, drugs, and surgical instruments, but even such commonplace materials as harness leather became unprocurable. In the months before Appomattox, shoes and even flour disappeared from the market. Having relied for nearly all of her manufactures on imports from the North and from Europe, the South lacked industrial economic strength in every major category—capital goods, financial institutions, technicians and engineers, and above all, manpower, in view of the demand for men in the armies. Cotton bales accumulated on docks and in warehouses. The bloodstream of foreign exchange dried up. The credit of the Confederacy in Europe, never good, became progressively worse as the war wore on.…”




op. cit., p. 250.

“…the Confederacy. “The South was peculiarly vulnerable to blockade because of the specialization of her economy. As the Anaconda tightened its coils, not only were there progressive shortages of munitions, uniform cloth, drugs, and surgical instruments, but even such commonplace materials as harness leather became unprocurable. In the months before Appomattox, shoes and even flour disappeared from the market. Having relied for nearly all of her manufactures on imports from the North and from Europe, the South lacked industrial economic strength in every major category—capital goods, financial institutions, technicians and engineers, and above all, manpower, in view of the demand for men in the armies. Cotton bales accumulated on docks and in warehouses. The bloodstream of foreign exchange dried up. The credit of the Confederacy in Europe, never good, became progressively worse as the war wore on. “Shortages of consumer goods precipitated a rise in prices in the Confederacy, where the misguided government answered the popular outcry against high prices by simply issuing more currency.• As prices spiraled steeply, ‘printing press’ inflation caused the Confederate dollars to decline to 1/225 of its worth in one year and by Sept 1864, one gold dollar exchanged for $2,000 in Confederate currency.”




Ibid.

“Yet it was the South that started economic warfare. On 17 Apr 61, Jefferson Davis issued a proclamation offering letters of marque and reprisal to armed privateers of any nation. Two days later Lincoln replied with a counter-proclamation, instituting a blockade of Southern ports from SC to TX. Secretary Welles in a heated Cabinet quarrel argued that it had been a mistake to proclaim a blockade as such, since this had the effect of conferring belligerent rights on the South and was a tacit recognition of the Confederacy’s claim to being a separate nation with rights of sovereignty. Welles, with Congressional support, argued that the proper procedure would have been to ‘close’ the ports of the South—a legalistic difference aimed at identifying the struggle as a domestic matter in which the rest of the world could have no proper interest. A law was finally passed requiring the President to proclaim a closure of the ports. He did so, remarking wryly that it would be ‘like the Pope’s bull to the comet.’ Since the previously proclaimed blockade was not explicitly canceled, no real purpose was served by the second proclamation. “The immediate task facing the USN was a formidable one. Under international law, neutrals are not bound by a ‘paper blockade.’ To secure foreign recognition of the blockade, it had to be made effective….”

Proclamation of the Blockade



“…made effective. And following the high water mark along shore from Alexandria, VA to Brownsville, TX, the Confederacy had 3,500 miles of coast, much of the Atlantic portion of it a ‘double coastline.’• There were 189 harbors and navigable river mouths to watch. For this task, the Navy in early 1861 had 7,600 men and 90 warships, of which 42 were actually in commission; 21 of the remainder were reckoned as ‘unserviceable.’ Many of those in commission were sailing vessels of a type that proved of little value.…”

op. cit., pp. 250-251.




“…little value. To cap this poor preparation, three of the vessels were in the East Indies, and 22 ships (236 guns total) were in the Pacific. On the other hand, eight of the ten navy yards were in the Union,5 and Norfolk was regained in 1862. Extensive shipyards and machinery-fabricating facilities existed in the North. Besides, the golden age of the American merchant marine was just drawing to a close, and numerous merchant vessels and trained seamen were available. “Welles immediately ordered home all ships but the Anti-Slavery Patrol off West Africa. All seaworthy craft were put in commission. Presently there were 76 vessels rated at 1,783 guns available for naval orders. In the same initial burst of naval activity the Navy purchased and adapted over a hundred vessels, including grain barges and ferry boats—anything stable enough to be a gun platform.…”

op. cit., pp. 250-251.


______ 5 Kittery, Portsmouth, Charleston, Sackett’s Harbor, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Washington, Norfolk, Pensacola, Mare Island.



op. cit., p. 251.

“…gun platform. Construction was pushed in private shipyards [such as Cincinnati’s steamboat building yards in the Tusculum-Columbia East End] and navy yards. By Dec 61, 264 vessels—in aggregate 218,000 tons—were in commission. This figure was added to at a somewhat less frantic pace as the war progressed. The North was also to build 74 ironclads [again in Cincinnati for the river campaign.• Iron dealer David Sinton • made his fortune then and bought what is now the Taft Museum] during the war….”




op. cit., p. 251.

“…the war. “Recruiting for the wartime service was initiated promptly, and by Dec 61 the Union Navy had a strength of over 20,000. There was no ‘boot camp’ in 1861, and the new ‘naval volunteers’ were often standing watches at sea within a few days of taking their oath. Though veterans of the ‘spit-and-polish’ traditions of Matthew Calbraith Perry’s • navy shuddered at the new men’s lack of smartness and their occasional ignorance of ceremonial observances, they were nearly all trained seamen from the merchant marine, soon indistinguishable from the men of the ‘Old Navy.’ “Once the blockade was initiated, it became obvious that its full implementation would require logistic support of a scale and variety not previously contemplated….”




“…previously contemplated. The inshore patrol would be steam-propelled; hence colliers and coaling stations, preferably near the blockading stations, would be required. As more ships joined the squadrons, more and larger base facilities would be necessary. Though there were adequate bases in the North, there was an evident need for others close to the Southern ports row Navy was attempting to seal. Possession of a base near Charleston and Savannah, for example, would greatly increase the number of Federal ships on station by eliminating the need for individual blockade vessels to return periodically to Washington or Philadelphia. Furthermore, ships taking on coal or undergoing repairs at such an advanced base would always remain available as a ready reserve for speedy reinforcement of the ships on patrol..’ “So the Navy planned to capture strategic sites for advanced bases as soon as adequate amphib forces could be assembled. With the ships and troops available in 1861, any attempt to seize fortified ports such as Charleston, Savannah, or Wilmington, NC was out of the question. Yet the sites to be occupied would have to provide good, deep anchorages and the possibility of developing docking facilities. Furthermore, they had to be near the Confederacy’s major ports and at the same time be easily defensible from the landward side. Luckily, the length and convoluted nature of the Southern coastline, which made blockade so difficult, facilitated capture of the sort of bases the Navy required. With thousands of miles of coast and almost 200 harbors, the Confederacy could hardly manage to fortify in advance every place the Navy might strike.”

Ibid.




“The short-lived Strategy Board,6 headed by Capt Samuel F. DuPont,• selected as the first coastal ‘key position’ to be seized, Hatteras Inlet, a break in the offshore sand barrier between the Atlantic and Pamlico Sound, off the NC coast.…

op. cit., pp. 251-252.

Hatteras Inlet

______ 6 This was one of the three officer boards appointed by Welles that helped the Secretary in his most important decisions. The others were the Retirement Board and the Ironclad Board



“…NC coast. This inlet, and the low-lying sand dunes on both sides, was believed suited to the special needs of the blockade, for it was easily defended and yet reasonably close to Beaufort and Wilmington, which were good ports and railroad terminals….

op. cit., pp. 251-252.

Hatteras Inlet



“…railroad terminals. “On 26 Aug 61, Flag Officer S.H. Stringham with seven ships and MGen Benjamin F. Butler • with 860 soldiers sailed from Fortress Monroe against Forts Clark and Hatteras, guarding Hatteras Inlet..

op. cit., pp. 251-252.

Hatteras Inlet



“… Hatteras Inlet. These log and sandbank forts, armed largely with antique 32-pounders, were lightly manned and inadequately supplied. After a gunnery duel on 28 Aug between the ships and the outranged shore batteries, 300 of Butler’s men landed behind Fort Clark, which was abandoned by her defenders.• The next day the unequal contest concluded with the capitulation of Fort Hatteras. As a base for the blockaders, Hatteras Inlet proved a disappointment. The shoal waters and shifting channels made it unsatisfactory even as an anchorage, and subsequent ops in this general section had to be undertaken later. The action is notable only as the first amphib assault of the War .

op. cit., pp. 251-252.

Hatteras Inlet



op. cit., p. 252.

“Of much greater strategic and tactical significance was the Port Royal op, which was undertaken less than a month later. Besides Norfolk, Beaufort, and Wilmington, the only Atlantic ports in the South with rail connections to the rest of the Confederacy were Charleston and Savannah, both of which were stoutly defended by stone and masonry forts with numerous heavy guns. But Port Royal Sound which lay between them on the SC coast,….”

Port Royal



op. cit., p. 252.

“Of much greater strategic and tactical significance was the Port Royal op, which was undertaken less than a month later. Besides Norfolk, Beaufort, and Wilmington, the only Atlantic ports in the South with rail connections to the rest of the Confederacy were Charleston and Savannah, both of which were stoutly defended by stone and masonry forts with numerous heavy guns. But Port Royal Sound which lay between them on the SC coast, thought far more formidably fortified than Hatteras Inlet, offered a suitable objective. In virtually all respects it would make an ideal blockade base, for there was ample deep water, it was close to major Southern ports, and counterattack from the interior would be difficult because the country back of Port Royal was so swampy as to be almost impassable….”

Port Royal



“…almost impassable. On the other hand, Forts Walker and Beauregard, at the entrance to the Sound, were strong enough to make the issue by no means the foregone conclusion the Hatteras Inlet action had been. In 1861 the Union Navy could not afford to lose many ships, and there had been till this time too little experience involving wooden steamers against forts for anyone to be able to say what the gun power afloat had to be to insure the overpowering of a given number of guns ashore.7 “Under these circumstances, Capt DuPont,• designated ‘commodore’ to lead this expedition,….”

Ibid.

Port Royal

______ 7 Traditionally one gun in a fort was reckoned ‘equal’ to four or five guns of a similar caliber afloat in sailing vessel. The problem in its new form was essentially a question of the degree to which the greater vulnerability of steam vessels, which could be disabled by a single shot, was compensated by their superior maneuverability.



“…this expedition. delayed sailing until he was joined by the first of the ’90-day gunboats’ Welles had ordered built, and until he had collected a truly formidable flotilla of warships, transports, and supply vessels. Not counting a collier and supply convoy of 25 ships that sailed separately under naval escort, Du Pont’s force, when it weighed anchor in Hampton Roads, comprised eleven large warships, 36 transports carrying 13,000 men under BGen Thomas W. Sherman,• and a number of smaller gunboats.8 “Heavy weather off the Carolina coast scattered this armada badly. Two supply vessels were driven ashore, and a transport was broken up at sea, though the 300 marines embarked were providentially saved….”

Ibid.

Port Royal

______ 8 The warships included several screws loops of the ‘tribal’ class (Pawnee, Iroquois, Mohican) carrying 11-inch Dahlgren smooth-bores. The transports were mostly chartered vessels, including big packets from the transatlantic run. The 90-day gunboats were vessels of 507 tons, carrying 4 to 7 guns.



“…providentially saved. The expedition had been planned as a joint op, but the loss of many of the landing boats in the storm compelled Du Pont to change the plan to a purely naval offensive.• On 4 Nov 61 the flagship with about half of the force crossed the bar that lies about ten miles off Hilton Head and anchored out of range of the forts to wait for the stragglers. Meanwhile boat parties took local soundings and reset channel markers, which the Confederates had everywhere moved or altered as a defensive measure. “The entrance to Port Royal Sound lies between Hilton Head and Bay Point, which are 2 ½ miles apart. Because Fort Walker, on Hilton Head was the stronger fort, Du Pont determined to concentrate his attack on it first. Reconnaissance indicated that Fort Walker was strong on its seaward (eastern) front….”

op. cit., pp. 252-253.

Port Royal



op. cit., p. 253.

“…(eastern) front. On its northern face, fronting the Sound, it was armed only with two obsolescent guns. The Commodore therefore elected to run up into the Sound and bombard the flank of the defenses. “In the morning of 7 Nov, Du Pont led 14 of his strongest vessels in two columns up the middle of the channel, firing at both forts as they passed between them. Inside the channel a defense flotilla comprising a river steamboat and two small gunboats made a gesture of resistance and then fled to safety up a nearby creek as the Union ships turned their fire upon them. “Du Pont’s plan was for his starboard division of five gunboats to remain inside the Sound, delivering a deliberate fire on the weak northern flank of Fort Walker, while he led his main force of nine vessels on an elliptical course in and out of the Sound, passing and re-passing the face of Fort Walker while delivering point-blank fire….”

Port Royal



“…point-blank fire. But when the flagship, the 46-gun steam frigate Wabash, turned to port to lead back past the fort at close range, only two vessels followed her. The rest stayed well inside the Sound with the gunboat division, joining them in delivering enfilading fire. “The three ships with Du Pont completed two ellipses and began a third. Actually it did not seriously matter that these vessels operated alone, for among them they carried nearly half the guns of the Union attack force, which as a whole enjoyed a 5-to-1 superiority in volume of fire over both forts together. The forts replied as best they could, making hits and inflicting casualties, but they found themselves gradually overwhelmed.At 1300 the defenders of Fort Walker abandoned the works. Fort Beauregard was vacated later in the afternoon.• Gen Sherman’s troops then came ashore and took possession of both….”

Ibid.

Port Royal



“…of both. The total success of the op in spite of only partial compliance with orders prompted Du Pont to withhold censure of his awkward or insubordinate captains.9….”

Ibid.

Port Royal

______ 9 Du Pont’s kindly impulse has led to confusion among historians. The account in Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion [SHORT TITLE: Official Records], Series I, volume XII, describes the plan rather than the actual battle. The most authoritative detailed analysis of this action is the unpublished study by RAdm John D. Hayes USN (Ret.).•



“…insubordinate captains.9 “In terms of casualties suffered, the Port Royal action was only a minor action, comparable to a skirmish of patrols in the land war. The fleet had eight killed, 28 wounded; the forts, 11 and 48. Ten of the 13 guns on the channel face of Fort Walker were dismounted, but the fort was abandoned only when the powder was running low. In terms of strategic importance however, it was a notable victory, enormously raising Northern morale and demonstrating that wooden ships could stand up to forts….”

Ibid.

Port Royal

______ 9 Du Pont’s kindly impulse has led to confusion among historians. The account in Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion [SHORT TITLE: Official Records], Series I, volume XII, describes the plan rather than the actual battle. The most authoritative detailed analysis of this action is the unpublished study by RAdm John D. Hayes USN (Ret.).•



“…to forts. Port Royal became a major base and supply depot for the blockaders and was so used throughout the war. “The Port Royal expedition has been described in some detail because of its place in the history of naval tactics and also because it is the archetype of numerous other expeditions undertaken later in the war.Similar in purpose, these differ only in detail from Du Pont’s ops. Some were uncontested: others were resisted with much spirit by the local defenders. Ops against Roanoke Island and Elizabeth City, and the capture of New Bern in early 1862 by amphib forces under Flag Officer L. M. Goldsborough and Gen S.E. Burnside gave the Union control of Albemarle Sound. As a result NC’s military strength was largely diverted to local defense, and the transport of the abundant provisions of the Carolina country to the Army of VA was thrown upon the inadequate railroad system. Du Pont’s concurrent occupation of Amelia Island and Jacksonville FL, and the Union recovery of St. Augustine and Norfolk, reduced Confederate control of the Atlantic seaboard to the ports of Savannah and the stretch of blockaded coastline between Wilmington and Charleston. The recapture of Pensacola (where Fort Pickens had never been surrendered) was an important preliminary to the seizure of New Orleans and Mobile and the closing of the Gulf coast to blockade runners.

op. cit., pp. 253-254.

Port Royal

Blockade RunningWith the regularity of express trains, swift vessels like this one left Nassau and Bermuda and traveled direct for their destination, timed to arrive in the night. So great were the profits of blockade running that in some cases one successful voyage out and back would more than repay the owners for the loss of the vessel. Under these circumstances it can be easily seen that men were tempted to take risks that ordinarily they would avoid—sonofthesouth.net

Confederate Blockade Runner(1860)—Bing

http://sonofthesouth.net



op. cit., p. 254.

”From the first, informed public opinion in the South confidently looked forward to European intervention—perhaps initially with proffers of mediation, but then, if the United States rejected such offers, with naval assistance. A number of reasons were plausibly adduced why the British would intervene, the most generally accepted being that the cutting off of Southern cotton by the blockade would depress British industry to the point of bankruptcy. This would presumably compel British intervention at least to the extent of raising the blockade. “But ‘King Cotton’ proved a grievous disappointment to those who enthroned him….”

European Intervention



op. cit., p. 254.

“…enthroned him. The record cotton crop of 1860, coupled with the threat of trouble, had resulted in inflated inventories in both England and France. It took nearly two years of mill operation to work off this material backlog. After that, the effects of the blockade began to be felt. Throughout the war some cotton reached Europe from the South, boys through blockade-running and through licensed shipments from ports in Union hands. But by 1864 American cotton received in England and France annually was only one tenth that received in the pre-war years. Still the British government did not feel compelled to intervene. The textile manufacturers compensated themselves for reduced volume of production by charging higher prices. The textile workers, who before the end of the war were hard hit by the shortage, were not yet enfranchised….”




“…yet enfranchised. Furthermore, actively and effectively propagandized by Northern abolitionists, the workers remained sympathetic to the people of the North. “Britain came closest to intervening, not to assure herself of a supply of cotton, but, ironically enough, over an infringement of her neutral rights by a warship of the US. The Confederacy, disappointed at not receiving full-fledged recognition in Europe—the right to maintain a ministry [‘lesser powers’ had Ministries, ‘Great Powers’ maintained Embassies] to negotiate a state loan, &c.—designated two of her most prominent statesmen, former US Senators, James M. Mason and John Slidell,• as plenipotentiaries to advance her cause in Europe….”

Ibid.




“…in Europe. No secret was made of this intention; it was widely advertised in the press, and, characteristically, the plans as generally known in the North as in the South. The emissaries, with families and secretaries, successfully ran the blockade to Havana, where they embarked on the British mail-packet Trent, bound for England. Without orders, Capt Charles Wilkes, USN,• then commanding the screw-ship San Jacinto, took pains to intercept the British packet. On 8 Nov 61 he compelled the Trent to heave to by firing twice across her bow, and sent a boarding party over. After a pro forma show of force, Mason and Slidell were taken off to the San Jacinto.• “This simple and apparently effective thwarting of the will of the Confederacy made Wilkes a national hero all over again to a public surfeited with the frustrations and disappointments of that black year….”

Ibid.




“…black year. The US had fought Britain in the War of 1812 for the principle that the flag conveys its nationality to the ship that flies it, that the ship’s deck is a floating piece of the country where it is registered. Now the shoes had changed feet! But the British public failed to see any glory in Wilkes challenge to their flag. Viewing it as a rude and deliberate affront, they expected and desired war. The fondest hope of the Confederate leadership seemed about to be realized. “A variety of circumstances conspired to thwart this stroke of fortune—the common sense of Lincoln (who pointed out that the act had not been sanctioned by the government) , the timely intervention of the British Prince Consort, the slowness of transatlantic communications • [Bailey points out that the first transatlantic cable (Aug-Sept 1858) had conveniently broken. Not until 1866 would there be reliable transatlantic telegraphy] ,•which permitted a lapse of time to cool the hotheads on both sides of the ocean….” op. cit., pp. 254-255.




“…black year. The US had fought Britain in the War of 1812 for the principle that the flag conveys its nationality to the ship that flies it, that the ship’s deck is a floating piece of the country where it is registered. Now the shoes had changed feet! But the British public failed to see any glory in Wilkes challenge to their flag. Viewing it as a rude and deliberate affront, they expected and desired war. The fondest hope of the Confederate leadership seemed about to be realized. “A variety of circumstances conspired to thwart this stroke of fortune—the common sense of Lincoln (who pointed out that the act had not been sanctioned by the government) , the timely intervention of the British Prince Consort, the slowness of transatlantic communications • [Bailey points out that the first transatlantic cable (Aug-Sept 1858) had conveniently broken. Not until 1866 would there be reliable transatlantic telegraphy] ,•which permitted a lapse of time to cool the hotheads on both sides of the ocean. After acrimonious debate in the US Cabinet, Secretary of State Seward • penned a conciliatory note to Lord Lyons, the British Minister to Washington, and Mason and Slidell were released from their dungeon in Boston harbor. “Despite her quick reaction to the ‘Trent Affair,’ Britain did not enforce a very strict interpretation of neutral rights….”

op. cit., pp. 254-255.




op. cit., p. 255.

“…neutral rights. She was adamant only in cases involving ‘the honor of the flag.’ She officially recognized the Union blockade, thereby setting the pattern that other European states followed. She acquiesced in some strained interpretations of international law, and allowed the USN to set new precedents therein. This apparently paradoxical surrender of selfish interests resulted partly from Britain’s tradition of defining belligerent rights broadly, and partly from a far-sighted realization that these precedents might be of value to her in future wars. “While British governmental leaders consistently opposed armed intervention in the American conflict, they generally favored mediation—but the time never seemed ripe for it. • Napoleon III of France also favored mediation and finally tired of waiting for the British to lead the way. In Jan 63, after the defeat of the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg, he actually offered himself as peacemaker. The Union firmly declined, and that was as far as European intervention ever got.”




“Up to the time of the fall of New Orleans, blockade-running was not unduly hazardous. Vessels of all types were loaded with cotton bales to make the run to Havana, Nassau, Bermuda, or St. Thomas. As the blockaders became more efficient and more numerous, it became no longer feasible to run through in small sailing vessels. Only fast steamers were left in the business.• Even so, the risks of capture became progressively greater as the war went on. By the summer of ’63, the Union Navy had captured 850-odd blockade-runners, and already specially built craft were being employed.…”

Ibid.

Blockade Running



“…being employed. “The more efficient the blockade became, the greater were the rewards to those who could run goods through. Joint-stock companies were formed in Britain; Clyde-built ships especially adapted to blockade-running and commanded by British officers were sent to Nassau and Bermuda. “These blockade-runners were fast, wooden-hulled, shoal-draft vessels of about 450 tons. For the most part they were paddle-wheelers, burning anthracite to avoid smoking. They had fine lines, a length-beam ratio of eight or nine to one being common. They were above everything, fast. Some could make 17 knots or better. Many of them had telescopic stacks; there was little top hamper; the masts were mere sticks.…”

Ibid.

Blockade Running



“…mere sticks. Painted gray, low in freeboard, proceeding ‘blacked out’ at night, they were nearly invisible. “In a typical run, the blockade-runner would load at St. George’s, Bermuda, be piloted out the intricate channel at nightfall, and dodge the Union vessels lying in wait outside the reefs. Through the night she would steam at something less than her best speed, maintaining a sharp lookout for Union cruisers. Navigating carefully, she would try to make a precise landfall two days later in the early evening, at, for example, Savannah. She would make her approach after dark, hugging the shore, and exchanging light recognition signals with the coast stations and the forts. Then came the final dash at top speed, past the ‘inshore blockade.’ At the pier the crated munitions and such luxuries as liquors, Paris gowns, linens, laces, corsetry, tea and coffee were quickly unloaded and the company’s agent took charge of speedily moving them to a warehouse. Without delay, bales of cotton were stacked in the hold and tiered on deck, with a few extra bales on top on the captain’s personal account. The ship would then be fumigated with sulphur to smoke out any stowaways. At nightfall, the ship’s officers got a fix on any blockaders visible and plotted them on their chart.…”

Ibid.

Blockade Running



“…their chart. Since the blockaders usually anchored at night, it was sometimes not too difficult to steam silently between them in the dark….If discovered, the blockade-runner could still rely on her superior speed. “Even after escaping the inshore blockade, there was still the chance of being sighted by one of the faster Union ships at sea. But on any one given voyage, the odds favored the blockade-runner as long as there was a Confederate port to run to. Up to Jan 65, 84 specially-built steamers had been regularly employed in blockade-running. Of this number, 37 were captured, 25 were lost by grounding, collision, and accident, and 22 survived the war. “In the period 1863-64, the profits of blockade-running were so large that two or three successful round trips, which might be accomplished in as many weeks, would more than pay off the cost of the ship. Coffee, for example, worth 12¢ a pound in Nassau, brought $2.75 (in gold) in Richmond. As early as Dec 62, the accepted freight rate from Nassau to Savannah was $500 a ton. Owners of a single lucky ship could easily clear over a million dollars a year. As the risks multiplied, even the officers and crews came to enjoy what were then deemed fabulous returns. A merchant skipper who in 1860 earned perhaps $140 to $160 a month received $5,000 a month for commanding a blockade-runner—and this was supplemented by opportunity for private speculation.…”

op. cit., pp. 255-256.

Blockade Running



op. cit., p. 256.

“…private speculation. Ordinary seamen received base pay of $100 a month, a bonus of $50 for each successful round trip. “It must not be supposed that the blockade-runners in any significant sense defeated the strategy of blockade. Indeed by draining off the South’s slender supply of trained seamen, by attracting capital that might otherwise have gone into further development of the South’s war industries, by stimulating the gold flow out of the country and hence further debasing the currency, the blockade-runners weakened the South.10 Their total carrying capacity was inadequate to move any but a small fraction of the cotton grown, and the higher profits in carrying expensive luxuries made a disproportionate share of the incoming cargoes frivolous items of no possible benefit to the war effort. The ‘blockade auctions’ featured bolts of silk, jewelry, and French brandy while industry was in desperate need of chemicals and boiler iron, and while hospitals utterly lacked opiates and other drugs. The resentment stirred by the speculatively few who amassed fortunes while the Army of Northern Virginia fought in rags compelled the Confederate Congress to pass an act (1 Mar 64) that forbade the importation of luxuries. This law was apparently not generally enforced however since editorial denunciations of the ‘speculators’ were as frequent in the Southern press afterwards as before.…”

Blockade Running

______ 10 It is of interest that the Confederate government itself entered this field of ‘private enterprise,’ being the secret owner of four blockade-runners, and having a part interest in a number of others.

Southern Privateers & Cruisers

While blockade-running was the passive response to the Anaconda Policy, the privateers and cruisers were the active response. By attacking Union ships the South mounted their “counterblockade.”



“It was Davis’ idea originally, as is evidenced by his Proclamation of Apr 61, cited above, to broadcast letters of marque and reprisal. Recognizing that the South lacked the ingredients of a navy, Davis hoped that foreign adventurers would be attracted by the profits of privateering. By establishing legal sanction to freebooting, by extending the protection of the flag, the South hoped to strike at the source of Northern economic strength, and equally important, to destroy the blockade by compelling the Union Navy to scatter its ships in high-seas search for privateers. Once Confederate sovereignty was fully recognized, consular prize courts could be established in foreign ports and prizes disposed of far from the harbors of the Confederacy. “In the light of the naval tradition of the US, it was natural for the Southern leaders to think first of guerre de course as basic naval policy. In both the American Revolution and the War of 1812, privateering had been the principal American offensive strategy on the high seas. But the drift of the times was against the practice. It had in fact been outlawed by the declaration of Paris of 1856, to which the US was not a signatory. The Confederacy itself, and also certain of its member states as individual sovereignties, actually commissioned a number of privateers, mostly small, ill-armed vessels. But few ships were available, and there was no seafaring population to man ships.…”

Ibid.

Southern Privateers



“…man ships. Furthermore, after the first few weeks of the war, it proved extremely difficult to get prizes in through the blockade. England refused to allow prize courts anywhere in her far-flung territories, and France felt constrained to follow the lead of her recent ally. Foreign capital and foreign adventurers hence found the slender prospects of reward incommensurate with the risks, and were not attracted. “All told, there were only about 30 privateers sent out by the Confederacy and the several states combined. In the first year of the war these were not wholly unsuccessful. For example, the brig Jefferson Davis, five guns, 74 men, 230 tons, in a seven-week cruise ranging from Cape Cod to Trinidad captured ten merchantmen. The Union Navy at one time had eight vessels assigned to running her down—suggesting that enough like her would have materially reduced the effectiveness of the blockade and other Union naval ops. Few as the privateers were, in the first five months of the war they captured between 50 and 60 merchantmen, with a loss of two of their own number. Marine insurance rates went up; transfers to foreign registry by US vessels became common. “Yet as one by one the privateers were captured, no others came forward to take their places.…”

op. cit., pp. 256-257.

Southern Privateers



op. cit., p. 257.

“…their places. Anyone with the necessary capital and a taste for this kind of speculation was drawn into the somewhat less hazardous and distinctly more profitable business of blockade-running. By mid-1862, privateering had virtually disappeared.

“The most effective naval effort by the South remained commerce-raiding after all; but instead of privateers, national cruisers became the instrument. These Confederate Navy vessels—most often foreign-built and foreign-manned, though officered by Southerners—inflicted enormous injury on the Northern merchant marine. Some notion of the ‘direct damage’ done is furnished by the fact that the Geneva Tribunal adjudicating the ‘Alabama Claims’ later awarded the US $15,500,000 for merchantmen destroyed by cruisers built in British yards.11 “Moreover, the indirect costs occasioned by the raiders were vastly greater. Marine insurance costs were of course much raised. American shipping firms sold many of their vessels, some even abandoning the business altogether…”

Southern Privateers

Confederate Cruisers

______ 11 A modern reader has difficulty in appreciating the magnitude of this figure in terms of the 1865 monetary situation. To put these damages in historical perspective, consider that the average annual total receipts of the US government for the period 1861-65 was $161,000,000. For a comparable economic effect today [in 1960!] , these claims would have to run to hundreds of millions.



“…business altogether. One hundred twenty-six US ships were transferred to foreign registry in 1861, 135 in 1862, and 348 in 1863, when the cruiser Alabama was at the height of her depredations. “Of greater importance to the Southern cause was the large number of Union naval vessels diverted from the blockade and scattered over the oceans in ‘needle in a haystack’ searches for the elusive commerce-destroyers. The Alabama, for example, had a squadron of seven vessels looking for her in the Caribbean alone. Inasmuch as some ocean-going cruising by the USN would have been necessary in any event, it is impossible to cite a precise figure for the number of ships pulled off the Southern coasts and away from inshore ops by the necessity of tracking down Confederate raiders. But it can be no exaggeration to say that the Confederate cruisers, few in number as they were, so diverted at least ten times their own tonnage. This, rather than mere destruction, was the principal objective of the Confederate government. “Considering the poverty of naval resources in the South, the strategic decision to send forth commerce-raiders was perfectly sound. They accomplished more than their most sanguine proponents could reasonably have anticipated…..It is possible that if the blockading squadrons had had available the sloops and other units that were pursuing the raiders, the Union timetable of amphib ops might have been advanced and the war concluded sooner.….”

Ibid.




“…concluded sooner. “The first of the regularly commissioned naval vessels to undertake commerce raiding was the Sumter,• a screw steamer of 500 tons converted from a peacetime packet. Bought by the Confederate government from a New Orleans shipping firm, she was refitted for war and armed with an 8-inch pivot and four short 24-pounders in broadside….”

Ibid.




“…in broadside. “Capt Raphael Semmes took her down the lower Mississippi [after superintending her conversion] in Jun 61 and played hide-and-seek with the blockading Brooklyn, whose draft was too deep to get over the bar.The favorable moment for escape came when the Brooklyn went off on a local chase. The Sumter made a dash for it and outdistanced the Brooklyn when the latter attempted to retrieve her lapse. Cruising in the Caribbean and off the coasts of Spain and Portugal, the Sumter took 17 prizes, of which six were burned, two recaptured, and two ransomed. Seven that had been sent to Cuban ports for disposition were seized by the Spanish authorities and later released to their Northern owners….”

op. cit., pp. 257-258.




“…Northern owners. “After the Sumter’s escape from the Brooklyn, the Niagara and the Powhatan were detached from the Gulf Squadron, and joined the San Jacinto, the Iroquois, the Richmond, and the Keystone State to scour the Caribbean in what proved to be a fruitless search. In Jan 62 the Sumter was finally run to earth at Gib by USS Tuscarora, which was presently joined by the Kearsarge and the Ino. Apart from the obvious danger of being blown out of the water if he ventured forth from his neutral sanctuary, Capt Semmes was bedeviled by a number of other problems. He could get no coal at Gib, his boilers were rusted through, and his engines needed repairs. So Semmes had the Sumter surveyed and sold. But she continued to work for the Confederacy, for her British owners converted her to a blockade-runner.

op. cit., pp. 257-258.


“The brief career of the Sumter is fairly typical of other cruisers. Its principal significance is that it was the apprenticeship of the master-raider of them all, the redoubtable Raphael Semmes.• From the cruise of the Sumter, Semmes learned to avoid such frequented roadsteads as Gib, to destroy his prizes rather than risk losing by diplomacy in neutral ports what his guns had captured. And he so perfected the timing of his cruises that he was apparently able to anticipate every move of his pursuers….”



op. cit., p. 258.

“…his pursuers. “The Sumter was unusual in being a Southern-owned steamer converted to a war vessel. Lacking facilities for building ships, the South was obliged to rely largely on the efforts of her agents abroad in purchasing vessels and in having them built. Shortly after the firing on Fort Sumter, the Confederate Congress authorized the purchase of, and made appropriates for, six sail-steam cruisers to cost $165,000 each, and two million-dollar ironclad [Laird & Sons Co.] rams….”




op. cit., p. 258.

“…ironclad [Laird & Sons Co.] rams. James D. Bulloch • and James H. North, both former officers in the USN, were sent to England to procure these vessels. This assignment was to involve a great deal of intrigue and peculiarly British red tape, problems with which the persistent Bulloch proved quite capable of coping….”




“…of coping. The American Minister to Britain, Charles Francis Adams,• and the American consuls in the British shipbuilding ports attempted by every possible expedient of diplomacy and British law to circumvent the Confederate agents’ efforts….”

Ibid.




“…agents’ efforts. “The British neutrality laws, like those of all civilized nations in 1861, specifically forbade the ‘equipping, furnishing, fitting out, or arming’ of a ship intended for making war on a friendly state. The manufacture and sale of arms or other contraband to either belligerent was permitted, though this could be done only at the subject’s own risk. So far as the courts of England were concerned, proof of the vessel’s warlike character had to be established to warrant seizure of the vessel. This provision opened the possibility that commerce-raiders could be constructed in British yards, then as unarmed vessels be cleared to a dummy foreign purchaser. The Confederacy had agents in many European and Caribbean ports. Some of these were foreign nationals. Meanwhile ordnance could be manufactured in England and transported to an agreed-on rendezvous. There the raider would be armed and commissioned. She need never have seen a Confederate port from first to last. Guided at every step by British legal counsel, Bulloch successfully followed this procedure to the end of the war, sending forth the Florida, the Alabama, and the Shenandoah [which fired the last shot of the war in Aug 65 in the Alaskan whaling grounds] among others.….”

Ibid.




“…among others. The purchase of British-built ironclads was another matter, since the warlike purpose of such vessels would be established by the details of their construction. Even the ingenuity of Bulloch proved unavailing. The firm of Lairds of Birkenhead contracted to build two ‘rams’ carrying a battery of 9-inch rifles,• ostensibly for the French government, later for the Pasha of Egypt. Lord Russell, British Foreign Secretary, ordered them seized in ’63 shortly before their completion. Had they actually been delivered to the Confederacy, they would have posed a severe problem for the Union Navy.…”

op. cit., pp. 258-259.




“…Union Navy. “The Florida was completed in Mar 62. She sailed to Nassau, where through the connivance of colonial authorities she was armed with two 7-inch and six 6-inch rifles,…”

op. cit., pp. 258-259.


“…six 6-inch rifles, and commissioned under the command of Cdr John N. Maffitt CSN.• She had an eventful and successful career, being finally captured in Oct 64 by the USS Wachusett in the harbor of Bahia, Brazil. This barefaced violation of Brazilian neutrality was later apologized for handsomely by the US. But the Florida herself was sunk • in an ‘unforeseen accident’ at Hampton Roads before she could be delivered back to Brazil.”

op. cit., pp. 258-259.

CSS Alabama The Alabama was justly the most famous of the Confederate raiders—Sea Power, p. 259

Artist Unknown, the USN’s Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC.



op. cit., p. 259.

“The Alabama was justly the most famous of the Confederate raiders. Barkentine rigged, she was 230 by 32 feet; loaded she drew 15 feet. Her 300 horsepower engine gave her a trial speed of 13.5 knots. While cruising she normally depended on her sails to conserve coal. “To avoid possible seizure by the British authorities, the Alabama, once she was launched, simply never returned from her trial run, proceeding rather to a rendezvous in the Azores where arms, coal and her prospective officers were sent by Bulloch to fit her out. While the Portuguese port officials in Porto Prada were encouraged to believe that the Enrica was merely coaling from the chartered Agrippina, a battery of six long 32-pounders in broadside, a rifled 100-pounder, and an 8-inch shell gun were winched into place in the cruiser. Eighty-three of the sailors who had brought the ship from England, mostly english and Irish adventurers from the Liverpool waterfront, volunteered as a skeleton crew to be filled out by volunteers from the prizes. Raphael Semmes took his ship outside territorial waters to perform the commissioning ceremony: mustering the crew, reading his orders, and raising the Confederate ensign. The Alabama was past her period of masquerade….”

The Alabama



“…of masquerade. She was a ship-of-war, ready to fulfill her mission. “Semmes was a stern and able disciplinarian; no lesser man could have handled his crew of Liverpool toughs. He spent the first two months in the North Atlantic, making 20 captures. Profiting from his experience in the Sumter, he took what he wanted from the prizes, then put them to the torch. When the accumulation of prisoners aboard the Alabama became too great a problem, Semmes stripped a captured vessel and made a cartel ship of her, on which the superfluous passengers could make their way to land. “After cruising as far as the Grand Banks, the Alabama, her coal nearly exhausted, made for Fort de France, a previously arranged fueling rendezvous. The Agrippina awaited her, but before coaling could be accomplished USS San Jacinto appeared and began patrolling just outside the 3-mile limit. Sending his tender ahead, Semmes slipped past the San Jacinto at night and completed coaling in an obscure little port of Venezuela. “Semmes now cruised in the Caribbean, hoping to capture one of the ‘treasure steamers’ on the run from Colon to NY with California gold in her cargo. The gold would enable him to pay the long-overdue wages of his crew, which had already attempted mutiny. He had no such luck. Of a number of captures in this area, the most valuable was a large passenger liner outbound from NY that yielded less than $10,000 in silver dollars and US Treasury notes. Semmes next moved into the Gulf of Mexico with the objective of interfering with an expected amphib op against the TX coast….” Ibid.

The Alabama



“…TX coast. Off Galveston, which a Union squadron was bombarding, the Alabama steamed slowly, inviting the attention of a Federal man-of-war. Presently the gunboat conversion USS Hatteras came out to investigate. Twenty miles away from the support of the rest of the squadron, the Hatteras hailed the Alabama, which first identified herself as a British ship. But when the Union vessel sent off a boarding party to inspect her papers, Semmes bellowed, ‘This is the CS steamer Alabama!’ and immediately ordered a broadside. The superior armament of the Alabama [Hatteras had only 4 × 32 pdr … guns, 1 × 20 pdr … gun—Wikipedia] made short work [45 minutes-Ibid.] of the Union gunboat….” op. cit., pp. 259-260.

The Alabama



“…Union gunboat. Semmes quickly transferred the surviving members of her crew to his own ship, and a few minutes later Hatteras sank. The Alabama then made a quick run to Kingston, Jamaica, to put her prisoners ashore on parole before the alarm was spread. “For another 18 months Semmes played cat-and-mouse with the Union cruisers scouring the sea lanes of the world in fruitless pursuit. Operating successively in the Caribbean, the South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, Sunda Strait,• the South China Sea and the Bay of Bengal, the Alabama gradually became the victim of her own successes. As Semmes worked farther and farther afield, he found progressively fewer Northern merchantmen….”

op. cit., pp. 259-260.

The Alabama



op. cit., p. 260.

“…Northern merchantmen. Doubling back to the South Atlantic again, the Alabama made two final captures as she cruised N to Europe to refit. On 11 Jun 64 Semmes took his ship into the port of Cherbourg and requested docking facilities from the French government. “While operating earlier in the broad oceans, Semmes had been able to forestall pursuit by timing his moves to anticipate Union vessels sent out to intercept him. Because there were no transoceanic cables, he normally had several days or even weeks of leeway. But when the Alabama anchored in Cherbourg,…”

The Alabama



op. cit., p. 260.

“…in Cherbourg, the US consul was able to telegraph Capt John A. Winslow • of US screw ship Kearsarge • anchored off Flushing on the Dutch coast….”

The Alabama



op. cit., p. 260.

“…Dutch coast. Three days later the Union warship appeared off Cherbourg. Without anchoring, the Kearsarge took up a patrol station just outside the port. “It had been Semmes’ plan to dock his vessel and send his crew off on a well-deserved leave. But it soon became apparent that he would not be granted the dock facilities he had requested, and the practical alternatives open to him were to accept internment in Cherbourg or go out and fight. Because the Alabama and the Kearsarge appeared to be evenly matched, Semmes allowed his temperamental bias in favor of the bold course to have its way….”

The Alabama



“…its way. Through the US consul he challenged Winslow to a single-ship duel as soon as the Alabama had refueled. “On the morning of 19 Jun the Alabama headed out to sea. The Kearsarge steamed ahead to clear territorial waters. The new French ironclad Couronne • followed and anchored at the three-mile limit. The private yacht Deerhound, of British registry, hovered about to witness the impending action. Thousands of spectators lined the shore….”

Ibid.

The Alabama



“…the shore. “When about seven miles from the coast, the Kearsarge reversed course and bore directly down on the Alabama, which sheered off to port in order to preset her starboard battery. The Alabama fired the first broadside at 2,000 yards. Most of her shot fell short, but one or two cut into the Kearsarge’s top hamper. Winslow held his fire as his ship bore down on his opponent. Quickly reloading, the Confederate got off another broadside at 1,000 yards. Only then did the Kearsarge in turn shear off to port, present her starboard battery, and begin firing. “In the ensuing action, the two ships turned in a clockwise direction on opposite sides of a circle a half mile in diameter. This maneuver was the result of both ships keeping starboard batteries bearing while on opposite courses, and of each endeavoring to achieve a raking position on her adversary….”

Ibid.

The Alabama



“…her adversary. A three-knot tidal current gradually set the rotating vessels down toward the coast W of Cherbourg. “It soon appeared that the antagonists were not evenly matched after all. The tired machinery of the Alabama could not keep up with her opponent’s speed. To conserve ammunition, the Confederate gunners had neglected drill. The Alabama’s powder and shells had deteriorated. The Kearsarge, on the contrary, was freshly refined and battle-ready. Moreover, Winslow had protected her engines and boiler spaces by hanging chains down down her sides and sheathing them over with boards, both to conceal them and to hold them secure [improvised armor]. After an hour of battle, and seven rotations, the Alabama was in a sinking condition while the Kearsarge was only slightly damaged. Semmes now attempted to beach the Alabama on the coast, but water rushing in through her riddled hull extinguished her furnace and left her helpless. The Kearsarge now cut across her bow and raked her, whereupon Semmes struck her colors. “As the stricken Alabama began to sink, both victor and vanquished quickly launched boats, and the Deerhound came up to help in the work of rescue….”

Ibid.

The Alabama



“…of rescue. Semmes flung his sword into the sea and then plunged overboard. Twenty minutes after her surrender, the bow of the Alabama rose perpendicularly in the air as she sank stern first. Semmes, together with 40 of his ship’s complement, was picked up by the Deerhound and taken to England. In Union eyes this avoidance of capture was the only flaw in the news of victory. Winslow received the thanks of Congress and was promoted to commodore.…”

op. cit., pp. 260-261.

The Alabama



“…to commodore. “Between 5 Sept 62 and 27 Apr 64, the Alabama had captured 71 Union vessels, destroying most of them at sea.• Semmes’ epic cruise is by all odds the most successful in commerce-raiding. Besides the direct damage inflicted, the Alabama caused enormous indirect losses to Union shipowners—higher marine insurance premiums, delays and cancellations of sailings, and spoilage of cargoes.…” op. cit., pp. 260-261.

The Alabama



“…of cargoes. “To take the place of the Alabama,• Bulloch purchased the Shenandoah, which was armed in the Madeira Islands by a tender in Oct 64.…”

op. cit., pp. 260-261.

The Alabama



“…Oct 64. The Shenandoah sailed at once for the Pacific, where she began her depredations the following month.• Operating chiefly around the Aleutian Islands, she captured a total of 36 vessels, mostly whalers, and gave the American whaling industry a blow from which it never recovered. Because news of the Confederate surrender did not reach Capt Waddell until 2 Aug 65, two-thirds of the Shenandoah’s captures were made after the end of the war. The destructiveness of the Shenandoah’s cruise was second only to that of the Alabama.”

op. cit., pp. 260-261.

The Alabama



op. cit., p. 261.

“From a naval point of view, the American Civil War, like the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812, was primarily a war of blockade and counterblockade. From the beginning, Union naval strategy was based on cutting off the Confederacy from imported war materials and impoverishing the South by destroying her export trade. Nearly all Union naval ops along the American coasts were to implement the blockade or to support amphib ops for securing bases (such as Port Royal) to facilitate the blockade. “The South, on the other hand, both by diplomacy and by naval ops, sought to loosen the coils of the Anaconda. Directly or indirectly, the strategy of the Confederate Navy was always designed to subserve this purpose. Such cruisers as the Alabama and the Shenandoah, by their raids on Union shipping in distant seas, were mainly useful to the South in compelling a major naval effort by the enemy in waters far away from the military theaters of conflict. “There is some question as to the importance of the commerce raiders in the total war picture. Certainly there were too few to constitute a counterblockade such as the German submarines were almost to achieve in the world wars of the 20th century, but their effect was far from negligible. It appears possible that a dozen Alabamas operating simultaneously could have destroyed Union sea commerce completely and thereby have disrupted the Northern war effort.”

Summary

Two of the Three Navies: Green and Blue

In 2006 the US Naval Institute put on a workshop on riverine warfare, newly relevant in this era of asymmetrical warfare.

That’s where I learned of this terminology—the three US Navies.

This session has focussed on the Green Water Navy, also called the littoral (li•TOR•al) or coastal navy, marked on this diagram as Step 1 of the Anaconda Plan.…

Two of the Three Navies: Green and Blue

In 2006 the US Naval Institute put on a workshop on riverine warfare, newly relevant in this era of asymmetrical warfare.

That’s where I learned of this terminology—the three US Navies.

This session has focussed on the Green Water Navy, also called the littoral (li•TOR•al) or coastal navy, marked on this diagram as Step 1 of the Anaconda Plan.

We also saw how our Blue Water Navy hunted and destroyed the Confederate privateers and cruisers. on the high seas.

Before we look at the Brown Water phase in sessions 3 & 4, cutting the Confederacy in two by riverine warfare, we will look at the new ironclad technology.

And that’s another story… jbp

To be continued

sp 3 sess. 5 civil war 1

Education