Naval History: Why does the naval aspect of the Civil War receive relatively little popular attention?
McPherson: In terms of popular attention, I think you’re right. I’ve been impressed with how much scholarship exists on the subject. Quite a few general histories cover the naval war, and biographies deal with some of the principal naval personnel. Robert Browning’s work concerning the blockade along the South Atlantic coast (From Cape Charles to Cape Fear [Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1993]) is very good.
In the popular media and in popular history, the naval part of it doesn’t get much attention. A good illustration of the reason just might be something that happened to me recently. I chanced to have a conversation with the wife of a colleague, and I told her I was going to be doing a book on the naval war. She expressed surprise that there even was a naval war.
I think there is a tendency to think in terms of even the campaigns of (Lieutenant General Ulysses S.) Grant against Fort Donelson or the Vicksburg Campaign and the whole western theater of the war as being primarily an Army show, without much attention to the Navy.
In a way, I suppose that reflects the reality at the time. Those Eads gunboats were built under contract to the Army. And the Army, until the fall of 1862, actually controlled them. So at the time, in the Union military establishment there was a sense that the river war was primarily an Army rather than a Navy campaign.
People don’t think much in terms of naval dimensions when it comes to the Civil War for a combination of reasons. Perhaps their minds have been fixed too much on World War II in the Pacific as being the quintessential example of what a naval war really is.
Naval History: How effective was the Union blockade?
McPherson: As you are well aware, that has been a point of much debate. Those who claim the blockade was relatively ineffective cite the statistics of how many blockade runners broke through during the course of the war. And that constituted about 5/6 of them, which they say proves the blockade was as leaky as a sieve and really not very effective.
My argument has always been that that’s the wrong way of looking at it. The blockade clearly discouraged a lot of slow sailing cargo ships from even trying to run the blockade. The statistics to look at are the actual levels of foreign trade with the Confederate states. The amount of foreign trade, the number of ships entering and leaving Southern ports during the four years of war, was drastically curtailed to only about one-third of what it had been before the war.
Clearly, the blockade was effective in terms of denying a substantial amount of needed material from coming into the South and cotton from being exported out of it. In my judgment, the blockade played a major role in the Union victory.
Naval History: Do you think that was the view during the war, or did it need to be digested over time?
McPherson: I think primarily that was the view at the time. The Confederate State Department tried to use the statistics on the number of blockade runners that got through to persuade the British in 1862 that this was a paper blockade and therefore should not be recognized under international law. But the British certainly didn’t buy that argument.
The only people at the time who were arguing that the blockade was ineffective were those who had a self-interested purpose in doing so. The Confederates, at that stage of the war, were hoping the British Navy would intervene.
But, as Foreign Minister Lord John Russell said, the blockade met the criteria of international law by creating an evident danger for any ship trying to enter or leave a Confederate port. And that was the criterion the British recognized as being decisive. If you look at diaries of Confederates during the course of the war, many of them complain of all kinds of shortages as a consequence of the blockade.
Naval History: You mentioned the Confederate raiders and their sometimes spectacular successes against U.S. merchant shipping. Why did these successes not hinder development of the war effort in the North?
McPherson: Most of the merchant vessels sunk or burned by Confederate raiders, like the Alabama, were not necessarily carrying crucial war material for the North. A lot of them were whalers, for example. While whale oil was an important commodity, I don’t think the shortage of it really had any military effect. Other ships were carrying grain and other kinds of things that were being exported. The North was far more self-sufficient in its economy than the Confederacy, and while the several hundred ships that were captured put something of a crimp in the economy, it was really just more of a glitch than anything else.
The real impact of the Confederate commerce raiders was on the American Merchant Marine, which actually never recovered. Insurance rates went sky high, and a lot of the American merchant ships just transferred their legal ownership to neutral foreign nations. This began a practice—registering U.S. ships in obscure countries—still employed today.
Naval History: Turning to the river war, you had alluded to General Grant and the Army gunboats. How much credit did Grant give to the Navy during the war?
McPherson: He gave an enormous amount of credit to the Navy. He did so in his memoirs, and he did so in his reports at the time. He gave credit to (Rear Admiral David Dixon) Porter in the Vicksburg Campaign, saying he couldn’t have carried out that campaign without the support of the Navy. The same was true earlier for the Forts Henry and Donelson Campaigns. In two of the campaigns that really made Grant’s career, he generously and I think accurately gave full credit to the Navy.
In the Shiloh Campaign, two gunboats, the Lexington and the Tyler, shelled Confederate positions during the battle. Even though they probably didn’t have a major impact on the outcome, they were psychologically important, I think, to the Union Army. Of course, the fact that (Major General Don Carlos) Buell’s reinforcements could cross the river, bring in supplies, and evacuate the wounded from Shiloh was a consequence of the Union Navy’s having gained control of the Tennessee River in the previous months. That was important, as well.
Naval History: How would you rate the contribution of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to the Union victory?
McPherson: I have always thought Welles was a fairly effective Navy Secretary. He was kind of fussy and pedantic, and people know him primarily from his diary, which is full of interesting information, but also full of gossip and the prejudices Welles held.
Many saw him as a little bit slow. He was slow to recognize the importance of ironclads, but in 1861 that was true of other naval personnel, as well. He took a lot of criticism from Northern businesses, shippers and ship owners in particular, for not doing enough to run down those Confederate commerce raiders that were sinking their ships and forcing up insurance rates.
But Welles did a reasonably good job of building a Navy—not from scratch, because the United States had a pretty good Navy in the 1850s—quickly into a huge establishment to maintain the blockade. Part of that accomplishment we can attribute to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Gustavus Fox, who was very energetic and moved quickly in many areas.
Welles did feud with some of the Navy people, especially (Rear Admiral Samuel F.) DuPont, whom Welles may have treated unjustly for his failure against Charleston in 1863. Overall, though, Welles was a pretty good Navy Secretary.
Naval History: What about the Confederate civilian naval leadership, specifically Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory?
McPherson: Like Welles, Mallory has often been subjected to criticism, in his case, for being lazy. But in fact, I think he deserves a lot of praise. He was right on top of the ironclad question from the beginning. He also allowed (Brigadier General) Gabriel Rains to develop so-called torpedoes and to set up the torpedo bureau in the Confederate Navy. Mallory, I think, was one of the bright spots in the Confederate war effort. He was very much in favor of innovation, both in the area of ironclads and mines—or torpedoes, as they were called.
Naval History: Militarily, who were the greatest Civil War naval commanders?
McPherson: One would have to put (Union Admiral David G.) Farragut number one, for his leadership at New Orleans and Mobile and for some of his other operations on the lower Mississippi in 1862 and ’63, despite his embarrassment at the hands of the ironclad ram Arkansas on the Yazoo River in July 1862 and the initial failure to capture Vicksburg.
(Union Rear Admiral Andrew Hull) Foote deserves a lot of credit for the success of the initial campaigns on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, until his wounds from the fighting at Fort Donelson incapacitated him in the early part of the Mississippi River Campaign.
(David Dixon) Porter, despite his somewhat self-serving personality, was very good in the Vicksburg Campaign and in some of the other operations on the lower Mississippi. And he deserves a lot credit for the success in North Carolina against Fort Fisher in January 1865.
As I mentioned earlier, Du Pont scored some successes earlier in the war, but his reputation was scarred by his failure at Charleston. I have always had a kind of a soft spot for (Commander Samuel P.) Lee, Lincoln’s Lee, as his biographer called him, partly because I read and edited the letters of Roswell Lamson (Lamson of the Gettysburg [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997]), who served under Lee in the North Atlantic blockading squadron in 1863 and ’64 on the James River. Lee never got the recognition Lamson thought he should get for carrying out a difficult task in trying to blockade the Cape Fear River and some of the other North Carolina coast ports.
But I suppose you’d have to put Lee in a second rank, perhaps with (Union Rear Admiral John) Dahlgren, whose inventions had an impact but who wasn’t that much more successful than Du Pont had been. Charleston held out until (Union Major General William T.) Sherman cut its communications in February 1865. So I think you’d have to put Dahlgren in the second rank as well.
On the Confederate side was Raphael Semmes. As captain of the Alabama, he gets top ranking because of his spectacular success, whatever impact it did or did not have on the actual outcome of the war.
(James D.) Bulloch, who spent more of his time on shore in England than he did on the water, made an important contribution in contracting for some of the Confederate ships to be built, even though in the end, the Laird rams were detained.
(Admiral Franklin) Buchanan was probably the most successful of the Confederate commanders in action, especially when he led the Chesapeake Bay Squadron against the USS Cumberland and Congress at Hampton Roads and then in the gallant fight he made in Mobile Bay before he was captured.
Naval History: What aspect of the naval side of the war gets too little attention?
McPherson: I would say the major void has been the role the Navy played in protecting the logistical apparatus of the Union armed forces, both in (Major General George B.) McClellan’s 1862 Peninsula Campaign and in Grant’s 1864 overland campaign. The huge Army of the Potomac in both cases was supplied primarily by water, down the Chesapeake Bay and up the James River. Without naval protection of the hundreds of supply ships involved, those campaigns would not have been possible. The same can be said about many of the western campaigns.
In World War II, the protection of merchant convoys was absolutely essential. I think the same could be said of Union operations in many theaters during the Civil War.
Naval History: What would you say was the naval turning point of the war, if there was one?
McPherson: I would have to say that one turning point was the Fort Henry-Fort Donelson Campaign, which led, along with operations on the Mississippi River, to the capture of Nashville and the complete control of central and west Tennessee and northern Mississippi by Union forces.
Simultaneously came the capture of New Orleans from below. So events in the western rivers between February and June 1862 were probably, despite coming so early in the war, the most important naval contributions, leading as they did toward what was almost uninterrupted Union victory in that vast interior theater of the war.
Naval History: What about the Battle of Hampton Roads as a turning point?
McPherson: It was, but it was a turning point in the history of naval warfare, since it was the first clash between ironclad ships. I don’t think it had any conclusive impact on the long-term development and outcome of the war the way in which those western river campaigns did. Basically, those two ironclads neutralized each other.
I suppose you could argue that the existence of the CSS Virginia deterred McClellan’s campaign against Richmond, but knowing McClellan, I think he would have found some other reason to be deterred.
Naval History: How do you feel about the current practice of raising sunken artifacts, especially with human remains inside?
McPherson: I can recognize both sides of that argument. It’s extremely valuable for our historical understanding to be able to raise all or parts of ships like the (Confederate submarine) Hunley, the (Union ironclad) Monitor, and earlier, the (Union gunboat) Cairo at Vicksburg. I’ve taken several different groups to Vicksburg over the years, and they are always astonished to see the Cairo. It’s an eye-opening experience for them.
In no other way could they visualize what these gunboats looked like, how they operated, and what role they played. So it’s immensely valuable. I haven’t been to the Monitor Center (at the Mariners’ Museum) in Hampton Roads yet, but I need to go there. I have seen the Hunley a couple of times, and that is an amazing experience.
That’s the positive side of raising these ships. We understand and appreciate more than if we had never been able to see what they really looked like. On the other hand, many are the gravesites of people who served on them and went down in them. In the case of the Hunley, remains of the crew were buried recently with honors in Charleston. That’s an attempt to compensate, I guess, for disturbing a gravesite. On balance, I think raising the artifacts is a good thing. If it’s done with skill and the remains are treated with dignity as they have been in Charleston, then I think it’s okay.
Naval History: What do you see in the future for Civil War history? Is there a cadre out there to carry the torch from the likes of you and all the other well-known Civil War historians?
McPherson: Most of the people I know in the field right now are in their 40s or older. I can’t think of anybody younger coming along. So frankly, I don’t know. Maybe quite a few people are out there in their 30s or late 20s who just haven’t made a big impact yet and will do so in the next few years. If so, I’m not aware of them. I think there may be a decline in interest in the coming generation.
Naval History: We’ve heard you are at work on a Civil War naval book. Please tell us about the scope of it and when we might see it in print.
McPherson: This is a volume in the series Gary Gallagher (John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia) is editing for the University of North Carolina Press. It’s supposed to be part of the sesquicentennial observation of the Civil War, which I suppose will start in 2010, even though some of these books may come out sooner.
About a dozen books are scheduled for the series, on the both the military and nonmilitary aspects of the war. Since I had become interested in the naval war, especially when I edited the Lamson letters with my wife Patricia a few years ago, I asked Gary if I could do the naval volume in his series.
'What a Naval War Really Is'
He is one of the most highly acclaimed and sought after Civil War historians writing and teaching today. The George Henry Davis Professor of American History at Princeton University and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his landmark history of the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), spoke recently about the war’s naval aspects with Naval History Editor Fred L. Schultz.
An Interview with James McPherson