The Civil War at Sea
Craig L. Symonds. (Reflections on the Civil War Era Series) Santa Barbara, CA.: Praeger Publishing, 2009. 224 pp. Pref. Notes. Index. $39.95.
Reviewed by Stephen W. Sears
Craig Symonds, professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval Academy and author, with this book, of a dozen well-regarded studies of the Civil War and naval history, is a natural to tackle the broad topic of the Civil War afloat. In fact, my only complaint here is his title, which does not make it apparent that Symonds covers the riverine actions as well as the blue-water ones.
The Civil War on the waters tends to be a diverse and sprawling subject, and Symonds wisely has chosen to approach it topically yet with due respect for chronology. His opening chapter, "The Ships and the Guns: Civil War Navies and the Technological Revolution," is informative stage-setting. The Union was indeed caught unprepared for civil war, with only 42 ships capable of active service at the time of the Battle of Fort Sumter, yet a great deal were in the pipeline. The change from sail to steam was well under way, rifled naval cannon and explosive shells were at hand, power plants and propulsion were being modernized, and, most of all, the industrial base in the North was primed to turn out whatever solutions minds such as Swedish-American inventor John Ericsson's could conceive. His ironclad, the USS Monitor, and her numerous progeny initiated a naval revolution. As Symonds points out, however, especially in his chapter on the long and frustrating siege of Charleston, the Union Navy's addiction to the turreted monitor types was misplaced. They were unsuited for many of the missions assigned to them.
On the other hand, the riverine war in the Mississippi Valley was an almost unblemished Union triumph. Its story is not only one of swiftly developing the proper war vessels as needed, but of the Army and Navy determining how to work together. If the personalities were right-General Ulysses S. Grant and Flag Officer A. H. Foote, for example-things got done. (Army-Navy pairings, it seems, did not always work as well in coastal waters.) Symonds sketches incisive portraits here, drawn from his recent excellent book Lincoln and His Admirals, of such men as Vice Admiral David G. Farragut, Rear Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont, Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, and Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter.
In Richmond, he writes, Stephen R. Mallory, Confederate Secretary of the Navy, "possessed both the temperament and the necessary expertise to preside over the thankless job of conjuring a Confederate navy." Southern ironclads, beginning with the CSS Virginia, were inspired makeshifts, but makeshifts nonetheless, their further execution crippled by the lack of an industrial base in the South. Confederate commerce raiders like the CSS Florida, Alabama, and the Shenandoah succeeded in driving the American flag from high-seas commerce, yet they had no effect on the course of the war.
The blockade has attracted much attention, then and now. Symonds lays out the problem facing the Northern blockaders: some 3,500 miles of coastline and "189 harbors, inlets, and navigable river mouths that could be used by commercial shipping." The blockade leaked from the beginning, of course, and the last drip was not stopped until Wilmington, North Carolina, was shut down three months before the war ended. Confederate armies may not have been short of arms and ammunition due to the blockade, but they were bereft of much else. While the blockade did not keep everything out, it kept in much of the cotton the South needed for credit abroad.
For all its frustrations, Symonds writes, the blockade
was an important contribution to the Union war effort, for even if it failed to bring the South to its knees, it contributed to an early and growing sense of isolation and eventually depression, both economic and psychological, in the South. . . . [T]he blockade made the war shorter, and in doing so probably saved many thousands of lives.
Symonds writes briskly and with great competence, and The Civil War at Sea (and on the rivers) is a masterful overview of a most meaningful topic.
The Second Infantry Division in World War I: A History of the American Expeditionary Force Regulars, 1917-1919
George B. Clark. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2007. 268 pp. $35.
The United States Army Second Division Northwest of Chateau Thierry in World War I
John Thomason. Edited by George B. Clark. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006. 253 pp. Illus. Appens. Bib. $39.95.
Reviewed by James A. Ginther
George B. Clark's The Second Infantry Division in World War I: A History of the American Expeditionary Force Regulars, 1917-1919, and the reprint of John Thomason's The United States Army Second Division Northwest of Chateau Thierry in World War I, edited by Clark, are his latest contribution to a large body of work related to the exploits of the Marine Brigade during World War I. Predictably, both volumes relate to the actions of the brigade, promising to set these in the context of its parent organization, the Second Infantry Division. Clark does so with mixed results.
The first book traces the history of the division from its creation in 1917 and follows it through its major campaigns. Clark's work is divided into 10 chapters that narrate the history of the division from its creation, through its arrival and training in France and the battles of Toulon, Chateau-Thierry, Soissons, Marbache, St. Michel, Blanc Mont, Meuse-Argonne, and the postwar occupation. These are organized in chronicle form, allowing the reader to follow the division through its campaigns day by day. The book also includes photos and maps and detailed appendices, which provide short histories of the origins of each of the division's major units and a more detailed timeline of these organizations.
Despite its title, the book never really fulfills its promise or departs from a Marine-centric point of view. The text sticks to the activities of the Marine Brigade, discussing its Army counterparts in light of their relationship to the fighting done by the Marines of the division. Perhaps that is because Clark relies primarily on published memoirs and diaries of Marines serving in the division with the occasional reference to official published histories of the Army regiments of the division.
Clark admits in his introduction that no attempt was made to use the war diaries and correspondence of the 2d Division published by the War Department shortly after the war or available archival sources from both Army and Marine Corps. Nor does he make any attempt to consult German or French sources that would have added balance and perspective. The result is a narrative that delivers little that is not already known about the Marine Brigade and leaves the reader wondering if their Army counterparts made any significant contribution at all to the division's efforts during the war.
Despite these shortcomings, there is value here to students of the period, particularly as a ready reference. Clark organizes his material as a day-to-day chronology of the fighting done by the division from its entry into France through to the signing of the Armistice. Though, as mentioned, heavily Marine-centric, this structure provides a good basic timeline of the movements and fighting done by the division during the war. Second, Clark adds some valuable appendices containing capsule histories of each unit comprising the division, providing lists of commanding officers, places, dates, and summaries of each unit's combat service and training periods. He also includes a list, by unit, of the major military awards earned by members of the division.
Clark's book also raises, though never really answers, some intriguing questions about the difficulties of conducting joint operations, the complex relationships with our allies and the impact of those on military operations, and command and personal relationships among commanders within the division. All provoke interesting ideas on directions for future research. Although this volume will leave scholars disappointed, those looking for a good preamble and reference on the Marine Brigade and its counterparts during World War I will find it a useful introduction.
Clark's edition of The United States Army Second Division Northwest of Chateau Thierry in World War I, which was written by the novelist and Jeb Stuart biographer John W. Thomason, meets with better results. Thomason is probably better known as a writer of fiction than a historian. He joined the Marine Corps the day the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, serving in the 2d Division with the 5th Marines during the conflict. He served in the Corps in various capacities until his death in 1944.
In 1927, Major General Commandant John A. Lejeune tapped Thomason, who had gained some notoriety writing about his experiences during the war, to work with a team of Army historians and produce a history of the 2d Division during World War I. Through his own research and interviews, Thomason concluded that serious mistakes had been made by both Army and Marine commanders during the Chateau-Thierry campaign. A decade later, some of these commanders, now senior officers, apparently put pressure on Thomason to modify his views. Stating that he "had no intention of submitting a whitewashed account," he left the project in 1929. A couple of years later the effort was revived and Thomason was asked to rejoin the team, but he declined.
What we are left with is Thomason's history of the division from its March 1918 arrival at the front in the Toulon Sector through the end of the Chateau-Thierry campaign in July of that year. It chronicles the major events and turning points of the campaign in chronological order, highlighting the activities of specific units as they come to prominence in influencing the outcome of the battle. The book is illustrated with the author's own maps and a smattering of photos and illustrations that provide visual impressions of key points in the narrative. While not as analytical as a scholarly history, Thomason did attempt to evaluate and critique participants, events, and sources to try to extract lessons for his readers.
Drawing on the war diaries, correspondence, and notes generated by the division as well as French and German sources, Thomason weaves a rich and detailed operational-level account of the division's actions during the campaign, which is neither a hagiography nor unjustly critical. He also provides balance by weaving in material from both French and German military sources as well as a balanced mix of Army and Marine Corps sources. The text is well footnoted, maintaining all the original source citations.
Clark's editorial comments are limited to introductory material and minor insertions intended to provide clarity, context, or textual consistency. Two appendices also have been added, which include a brief biography of Thomason, a short history of the division, and some suggestions for further reading.
This reprint finally makes available a known but hard-to-find account of the 2d Division during the campaign, giving a well-written and fairly balanced if not comprehensive point of departure for students of the Chateau-Thierry Campaign, the 2d Division, and the Marine Brigade.
Bluejackets & Contrabands: African Americans and the Union Navy
Reviewed by Noah Andre Trudeau
Barbara Brooks Tomblin. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2009. 400 pp. Illus. Index. $39.95.
This is a meticulously researched and effectively written "nooks-and-crannies" book. Although it does not break any new ground, it fills in a lot of gaps and nicely validates many previously held generalizations about the intersections of the U.S. military and African Americans during the Civil War.
From the book's title one might assume that Tomblin's book is about African Americans serving in the Union Navy, but its scope is much broader. The Cis-Mississippi was bordered on three sides by water; the Mississippi River to the west, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and the Atlantic to the east. So for many Southern slaves seeking freedom, their first encounters were with Yankee bluejackets. From able-bodied males ready to work to extended families seeking sanctuary, thousands offered themselves to a naval establishment that was ill-prepared for the complex issues they presented. And while the Navy's story in many ways parallels that of the Army, there are some differences.
The book follows a chronological arc, although each chapter crosses time spans. The narrative begins with the struggles of naval officers to reconcile their sworn oaths to enforce U.S. statutes (in this case, the Fugitive Slave Law) with their moral compass. At first nearly everyone returned escaped slaves to their owners, but gradually more and more found defensible reasons not to send them back. How the African Americans made their way to the havens represented by the naval vessels occupies a second chapter, and the establishment of "contraband" camps to hold them, a third. Three chapters deal with the ways in which blacks aided the Union cause-as sources of information, as pilots knowledgeable about local waters, and as laborers.
The final chapters examine African Americans as U.S. Sailors and the roles they played in the war's final operations. It's worth repeating that at a time when the Union Army was struggling to admit African Americans into its ranks, the Navy already had such a tradition, though there were limits to how high a black Sailor could rise and to the nature of the tasks he was given.
Each chapter is packed with incident and anecdote. Real people emerge from the busy paragraphs in stories that can be inspiring and tragic. Like all historians working in this field, Tomblin laments the paucity of primary accounts-letters, diaries, memoirs-and then does an excellent job sifting through what there is, even if it is just to extract a few sentences buried amid a large collection of personal papers to illuminate the matter she is pursuing. Her footnotes are extensive and often continue to discuss a point in even greater detail. Kudos to the University of Kentucky cartography lab for the various theater maps that accompany the text.
Except for labeling several escaped slaves as "deserters" early in the text, Tomblin handles her subject with sensitivity and balances objectivity with compassion. However, despite the wealth of detail, the book lacks any strong summary points. How did the Civil War experiences of the U.S. Navy and Southern black communities change thinking or attitudes? For the Union Army, one visible legacy was the four "colored" regiments (two infantry, two cavalry) that became part of the regular standing military at the end of the war. The Navy, which entered the war with more official tolerance-or indifference-does not seem to have had a comparable transformation.
Nevertheless, this is a welcome book and a useful one.