Gunfire Around the Gulf : The Last Major Naval Campaigns of the Civil War

by Coombe, Jack D.

• ISBN13: 9780553381061
• ISBN10: 0553381067
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: Bantam

Summary

Here is the acclaimed historical account of the last major naval battles of the Civil War that took place in the Gulf of Mexico. Losing the Gulf battle closed off the Confederacy's only hope for desperately needed supplies and cash, and forced the Confederacy into a hind war it could not win.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(4)
The Preliminary War	5	(8)
In Pursuance of the Laws	13	(11)
The Confederate Tail Wags	24	(12)
Mallory's Gulf Dilemma	36	(14)
Prelude to New Orleans	50	(13)
Union Headache in the Passes	63	(12)
New Orleans---Phase One: The Fleet Gathers	75	(9)
New Orleans---Phase Two: The Day of the Mortars	84	(11)
New Orleans---Phase Three: Crucible of Stone and Iron	95	(14)
New Orleans---Phase Four: A City Surrenders	109	(16)
Preble's Injustice---The Florida Affair	125	(9)
The Happenings at Galveston	134	(15)
Mobile---Phase One: The Enigma of Mobile and Buchanan	149	(10)
Mobile---Phase Two: Again We Face Two Forts!	159	(8)
Mobile---Phase Three: Preparations for an Onslaught	167	(9)
Mobile---Phase Four: Into the Breach	176	(12)
Mobile---Phase Five: To the Victor...	188	(8)
A Glance Backward	196	(7)
Abbreviations	203	(2)
Notes	205	(20)
Bibliography	225	(8)
Index	233

Excerpts

Excerpt

Soon after the war began on April 14, 1861, with the capitulation of Fort Sumter, tall, thin President Lincoln stood beside the short, massive General of the Army, Winfield Scott, scrutinizing a map of the United States. The septuagenarian general, hero of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, was convinced that the Union was facing a potentially long and bloody conflict with the rebellious Southerners, and that a swift, decisive victory, with minimal bloodletting, was needed. Scott, euphemistically called "Old Fuss and Feathers" by his men, may have placed a pudgy finger on the East Coast and suggested as the first phase of the plan a massive, snakelike blockade winding around Florida, along the rim of the Gulf of Mexico, to the Texas coast. Such a blockade would prevent the Rebels from receiving military and material aid from foreign sources.

Then he may have pointed to the midwestern section of the country, particularly the Mississippi River at its confluence with the Ohio. There, in this second phase of the plan, 660,000 well-trained troops, backed by a fleet of gunboats and transports, would push down-river, taking enemy fortifications along the way until they reached the Gulf of Mexico. This move would split the South in two and cut it off from those states bordering the river, rich in agricultural, industrial, and manpower resources, thereby strangling it into submission.

Although Lincoln approved the plan, it was never officially adopted. Yet during the war, curiously, it was followed almost to the letter. A carping press derisively labeled it the "Anaconda Plan," in reference to the South American reptile known for squeezing its prey to death before devouring it. But as the plan uncannily proved its validity in the long, bitter conflict, the carping went into nothingness.

To the South, the Mississippi River was of immense strategic importance. It was a major highway of commerce, upon which steamboats and river rafts endlessly plied, carrying raw and manufactured goods as well as manpower. The railroads had not yet spread their tentacles sufficiently far and wide to handle the monumental traffic, except for a few feeder lines leading up to and away from the Mississippi; therefore the river remained the main mode of transportation.

From its humble beginnings at Lake Itasca in Minnesota, as a stream less than a foot deep and eighteen feet wide, the Mississippi River snakes southward for a distance of roughly 3,710 miles, touching Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana. (When one steps into that fairly narrow stream in Itasca, as this author has done on occasion, it is difficult to imagine its evolving into that wide, deep body of water that it becomes after it meets the Ohio.) The Father of Waters has more than 250 tributaries and literally splits the country in two.

To the Confederacy, control of the river meant control of a vital waterway. The South desperately needed the resources that the river brought, because of its shortage of machine shops, foundries, rolling mills, and powder factories, so necessary for production of arms and ammunition.

For the Union, gaining control of the river would mean cutting off the Confederacy from these vast resources. Isolating this region, coupled with a successful blockade, would prevent a prolonged conflict and hasten the end of the war. Unfortunately for the Union, however, at this juncture most of its military eyes were on the blockade of the East Coast. But Southern eyes were quick to fasten on that western anchor that would become known as the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy.

Not all states along the Trans-Mississippi fell within the Confederacy's influence: Kentucky and Missouri seesawed in their loyalties to either side. Thanks to quick handling by a few astute Union military leaders and an underlying sentiment of loyalty to the North, these states remained in the Union. But because Kentucky bordered on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, it became a defense perimeter for the Confederacy. After Lincoln's call for troops, Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin flew into a snit and declared his state neutral. Yet he failed to utter a peep when Confederates established fortifications on Kentucky soil.

For the Union, Cairo, Illinois, located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, became the fountainhead of military power in the Western Theater. Late in 1861 the astute Lincoln tagged industrialist James Eads to build a fleet of seven ironclad gunboats to support any military campaign downriver to the Gulf. The vessels, based on a design by the elusive Samuel Pook, were constructed at shipyards in Carondelet, Missouri, and Mound City, Illinois. Each vessel was of 500-ton displacement, 175 feet long, 50-foot beam, and seven-foot hold. The casements were of 13-inch charcoal iron plating, which protected 10 to 13 guns of various calibers. Five boilers, each with a 36-inch diameter and a 28-foot length, would feed two powerful reclining engines that drove two 22-foot paddlewheels located in the stern. Crew consisted of 200 officers and men.

The gunboats, named after midwestern cities, were especially designed for maneuvering in shallow waters; their nine-foot draft allowed them to navigate in the shoal waters prevalent in major river systems. Eads turned them out in a record one hundred days, using his own funds whenever the government was delinquent in payment.

This remarkable fleet of ironclads had an aggregate of 5,000 tons, an average speed of nine knots, and an approximate total of 107 guns.

Also part of this riverine fleet were three "timberclads," former freight passenger steamers of 500 tons' displacement, with conventional side paddlewheels, sporting an armament of eight guns. They were so called because of five-inch oak bulwarks that protected the boiler and engine rooms.

This formidable fleet, plus a well-trained army, came under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant, a veteran of the Mexican War who had received two citations for gallantry and one for meritorious conduct. Grant had resigned from the army after the Mexican War and settled on a farm in Missouri with his wife. When the Civil War broke out, he volunteered his military expertise and was given command of the 21st Illinois. Not long afterward, he was appointed a brigadier general by Congress and given command of a district in the Western Theater, with headquarters in Cairo. Armed with the trained army and the remarkable fleet of gunboats, he began planning the downriver assault on Confederate strongholds outlined in the Anaconda Plan. The small river town of Cairo was transformed into a bristling army and naval base.

The Confederacy, for its part, was shackled by a lack of shipbuilding facilities, manpower, and other war materiel, yet it did manage to put together a fleet of 20 fighting craft of all descriptions. Labeled the River Defense Fleet, it would be used to counter the Union threat on the Mississippi. It was to be backed by two ironclads at New Orleans and two more at Memphis, Tennessee.

Under the direction of the indefatigable Stephen Mallory, the Confederate secretary of the navy, this fleet took to the waters. The stage was now set for some fierce naval action on the mightiest of rivers, between two factions locked in a life-or-death struggle.

Copyright © 1999 Jack D. Coombe. All rights reserved.