The naval war

While the Federal armies actually stamped out Confederate land resistance, the increasingly effective Federal naval effort must not be overlooked. If Union sea power did not win the war, it enabled the war to be won. When hostilities opened, the U.S. Navy numbered 90 warships, of which only 42 were in commission, and many of these were on foreign station. Fortunately for the Federals, Lincoln had, in the person of Gideon Welles, a wise secretary of the navy who was one of his most competent cabinet members. Welles was ably seconded by his assistant, Gustavus Vasa Fox.

By the time of Lee’s surrender, Lincoln’s navy numbered 626 warships, of which 65 were ironclads. From a tiny force of nearly 9,000 seamen in 1861, the Union navy increased by war’s end to about 59,000 sailors, whereas naval appropriations per year leaped from approximately $12 million to perhaps $123 million. The blockade of about 3,500 miles (5,600 km) of Confederate coastline was a factor of incalculable value in the final defeat of the Davis government, although the blockade did not become truly effective before the end of 1863.

The Confederates, on the other hand, had to start from almost nothing in building a navy. That they did so well was largely because of untiring efforts by the capable secretary of the navy, Stephen Mallory. He dispatched agents to Europe to purchase warships, sought to refurbish captured or scuttled Federal vessels, and made every effort to arm and employ Southern-owned ships then in Confederate ports. Mallory’s only major omission was his delay in seeing the advantage of Confederate government control of blockade runners bringing in strategic supplies; not until later in the war did the government begin closer supervision of blockade-running vessels. Eventually, the government commandeered space on all privately owned blockade runners and even built and operated some of its own late in the war.

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The naval side of the Civil War was a revolutionary one. In addition to their increasing use of steam power, the screw propeller, shell guns, and rifled ordnance, both sides built and employed ironclad warships. The notable clash on March 9, 1862, between the North’s Monitor and the South’s Virginia (formerly the Merrimack) was the first battle ever waged between ironclads. Also, the first sinking of a warship by a submarine occurred on February 17, 1864, when the Confederate submersible Hunley sank the blockader USS Housatonic.

Daring Confederate sea raiders preyed upon Union commerce. Especially successful were the Sumter, commanded by Raphael Semmes, which captured 18 Northern merchantmen early in the war; the Florida, captained by John Maffit, which in 1863 seized 37 Federal prizes in the North and South Atlantic; and the Shenandoah, with James Waddell as skipper, which took 38 Union merchant ships, mostly in the Pacific. But the most famous of all the Confederate cruisers was the Alabama, commanded by Semmes, which captured 69 Federal ships in two years; not until June 19, 1864, was the Alabama intercepted and sunk off Cherbourg, France, by the Federal warship Kearsarge, captained by John Winslow. A great many other Federal ships were captured, and marine insurance rates were driven to a prohibitive high by these Southern depredations. This led to a serious deterioration of the American merchant marine, the effects of which lasted into the 20th century.

Besides fighting efficaciously with ironclads on the inland rivers, Lincoln’s navy played an important role in a series of coastal and amphibious operations, some in conjunction with the Federal army. As early as November 7, 1861, a Federal flotilla under Samuel Francis du Pont seized Port Royal, South Carolina, and another squadron under Louis M. Goldsborough assisted Burnside’s army in capturing Roanoke Island and New Bern on the North Carolina littoral in February–March 1862. One month later, Savannah, Georgia, was closed to Confederate blockade runners when the Federal navy reduced Fort Pulaski guarding the city; and on April 25 David Farragut, running the forts near the mouth of the Mississippi, took New Orleans, which was subsequently occupied by Benjamin F. Butler’s army.

But in April 1863 and again in July and August, Federal warships were repelled at Fort Sumter when they descended upon Charleston, and a Federal army under Quincy A. Gillmore fared little better when it tried to assist. Farragut had better luck, however, when he rendered Mobile, Alabama, useless by reducing Fort Morgan and destroying several defending Confederate ships on August 5, 1864, in the hardest-fought naval action of the war. The Confederacy’s last open Atlantic port, Wilmington, North Carolina, successfully withstood a Federal naval attack by Porter on defending Fort Fisher when Butler’s army failed to coordinate its attack properly in December 1864, but it fell one month later to Porter and to an ably conducted army assault led by Alfred H. Terry. Only Galveston remained open to the Confederates in the last months of the war. In short, “Uncle Sam’s web feet,” as Lincoln termed the Union navy, played a decisive role in helping to defeat the Confederacy.